Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

South Orange is the very last place that Harry wants to be spending his summer and yet, coincidentally, he’s experienced precisely twenty-one in the very same location. The thought alone is evocative of countless trips to Coney Island, eating greasy diner food with his friends, and nights spent sneaking in and out of his bedroom window.

His entire past is encompassed within 3 square miles and there aren’t many places he can go that don’t already have a memory attached. It should be comforting and, in some ways, it is -- he’ll always be rooted there and it feels like nestling himself in a worn, childhood blanket when he arrives, but stagnancy is one of his greatest fears and the idea of an entire lifetime in one place feels stifling.

He doesn’t hate New Jersey or his hometown or the people in it -- far from, but having been away at college in Santa Barbara for three years already, he thought that maybe once, once he might actually get to reap the benefits of summertime in California. He’d had big dreams of escaping the familiar eastern humidity and wasting time at the artisan market at La Cumbre Plaza, maybe even passing a discreet bottle of wine back and forth with his friends while combing the beach at Channel Islands.

The idea sounds decadent in his head even still, 2,865 miles away from it all.

But his mom envisioned something different for him, and in the interest of saving money, he agreed to live at home for his last summer as an undergrad. The deal isn’t so bad. He’s given free reign over the pool house and the vintage Jag his stepdad has been restoring for years, and he knows it’s important to his mom that he stay with her for at least his last summer as an undergrad, because she has no say in where he ends up after he graduates.

Waking up on the lumpy mattress in the pool house, Harry reminds himself of that. It’s just one more summer of what he’s already so used to and by the next he’ll be spending it however he pleases. The world is his, really, even if it might be a feat to put his English degree to good use, and he doesn’t even want to think about concepts like starting his career and settling down that make him feel older than he is. There are still opportunities -- maybe he’ll spend some time traveling or find an apartment in New York. Nothing needs to be set in stone. He can just take it all as it comes and not be so hyper-concerned about plans like everyone else in his life seems to be. He doesn’t always want to know what’s going to happen before it happens.

It’s like a mantra that he repeats while tugging on jogging shorts and an old cross country t-shirt -- this might be your last summer here, it’ll never be like this again, at least try and enjoy it.

He draws up the blinds and tries to gauge how much he’s over-slept in by the position of the sun in the sky. It’s early Summer, the first day of June, and that familiar humidity hasn’t quite set in yet. Outside, everything is fresh-smelling and the sun is still too low to do anything other than cast pretty, leafy shadows on the patio.

Harry ties his shoes on the step outside of the pool house and looks around. The landscape is inherently familiar but so different from what he sees everyday in California, and even the thought makes him dimly aware of how annoying it probably is for him to constantly make that comparison. He’s been home for thirty six hours and he knows from experience those intrusive thoughts have another few weeks before they stop being instinctual.

The grass around the pool stretches up to the back deck of his house, and a glance to his left shows a few houses, not even separated by fences, just expanses of yards with playgrounds and grills, decks, pool noodles neglected and pressed up against the sides of garages.

It's early, still quiet. Harry stands up and stretches his arms overhead, fixes the headband he's wearing to push his hair back from his forehead, and just goes.

There's a route he normally follows, the one they used to run when he was on the cross country team back in high school, and he sticks to it without even considering another way. It's six miles, total, and he's not thinking through most of it, just going, breathing, pushing himself through the burn in his hamstrings and that familiar twinge in his back that reintroduces itself each time he runs uphill.

By the time he’s on his way back to his neighborhood there are kids being ushered onto buses and he thinks, almost excited for them, that it’s got to be the last day of school, or close to it. The run used to take him less than an hour with his team, but he checks his watch and he’s just a little over that by the time he starts walking for the last block.

It’s half past nine when he strolls, panting, back into his yard. He waves to Mr.Tyler next door, who’s letting his dog back into the house, and turns on the hose by the driveway, splashing his face with cool water and twisting it off again with a squeak.

It’s not until he’s at the door that he realizes: his keys.

Back in Santa Barbara, he’d become so accustomed to always having roommates around to let him in that he’s gotten out of the habit of bringing keys with him everywhere. Of course that’s coming back to bite him in the ass now, because his parents have already left for work -- both cars are gone from the driveway, and he knows his mom stopped leaving the back-door unlocked years ago after she’d gone to some Family Watchdog seminar that Mrs. Tyler put on.

He considers his options, feeling like he’s casing the place as he looks for open windows and twists the door handle in an exercise of futility, like it might have changed from locked to open since five minutes ago.

There isn’t any way that he can break in without actually breaking in and it’s too early in the morning to set off the alarm system and contend with cops showing up and asking him a million questions. Luckily, he has some vague memory of his mom telling him she’d left a spare key with the neighbors, for all the times when they’d been on vacation and one of the Woods had been in charge of watering her plants and feeding Dusty.

It all seems a bit pitiful as he walks across his yard and into the neighbor’s, sweaty and slightly embarrassed that he’s twenty-two and his path to adulthood is stunted by forgetting such necessary items in his daily life. The house seems quiet at first glance and it makes sense, Harry thinks, because they’ve likely already gone to work, too.

Still, he finds himself ringing the bell twice more when no one answers at first and he’s right on the verge of giving up, doing the walk of shame back to his house to call and make his mom come back from work just to let him inside, when he hears some rumbling on the other side of the door. It’s all muffled, but Harry can make out a distinct chorus of shit, shit, shit and the sound of footsteps padding closer to him.

There’s a bit of a fuss and then the door is pulled away, leaving him face to face with someone who is definitely not Mr. or Mrs. Wood. The guy in front of him is attractive even in his present state, wet and hurried and balancing a baby in a frilly pink bathing suit against his hip. Harry thinks he might be a few years older than him, at most, but it’s hard to tell when he’s trying so hard not to notice the beads of water skimming down his chest, sunkissed like he’d already spent a few weeks poolside.

Noticing the expectant look that he’s receiving, Harry perks up, standing straighter and trying to sort out his thoughts.

“Yes? What can I do for you?”

The guy looks a bit impatient with him, if only because the baby is starting to become fussy in his arms and he has to to reposition her, smiling and speaking encouragements to her until she settles once again.

“Sorry. I live next door,” Harry starts, gesturing in the general direction of his house before turning back to him. “I sort of...got locked out,” he says that part quicker, like it’ll be less embarrassing if he hurries through it. “Anyway, I think my parents keep a spare key here. I mean, the Woods still live here, right?”

The guy stares at him for a second, brows furrowed before he answers with a slowly delivered, "Yeah, they do."

"I grew up next door," Harry points with his thumb, and he's still sort of panting, and the air conditioning from inside the open door is enough to make him want to stand there indefinitely. The guy nods, and Harry continues. "I'm Anne's son," he offers, as though that might mean something to him. "Harry? I just need my key, they won't be back until tonight, I know where they keep it--"

"Okay, dude, calm down," the guy says, holding up his hand as if to tell him to take it easy, and Harry's surprised when he starts laughing. It's kind of unbelievable, actually, how much it changes his face, and it feels contagious. Harry grins back, feeling sheepish when he nods, and the guy backs up enough to let him through the threshold.

The baby he's bouncing on his hip makes a happy sort of screeching noise and Harry can't help reaching out to poke his finger into her tiny palm. She grabs it immediately, like the cutest venus flytrap in the world, and Harry lets her hold onto it as he follows them both through the living room and into the kitchen.

"Liz and Scott are at work," he explains over his shoulder. The hair at the nape of his neck is damp and dark, and the bead that drips slowly down the middle of his spine is more than a little distracting. Harry stubs his toe on the door frame to the kitchen and damns himself for having so little control of his limbs, always. "I'm taking care of the kids."

"Oh, like a nanny," Harry supplies, eyeing the key rack on the wall next to the refrigerator. Because it is apparently his lucky day, they appear to have keys from every single house on the block, and not one of them is labeled. "What's your name, again?"

"Louis," he answers. He's not looking at Harry, but when he does, his expression is deadpan. "But I prefer 'The Nanny', if you don’t mind."

Harry considers himself to be pretty good at reading people and for some reason, he’s not at all surprised by the immediate intrigue he feels for the shirtless, baby-wielding stranger in front of him -- or Louis, he should say. He’s funny, even while frazzled and rifling through an endless rack of keys. Honestly, he’s exactly the type of person that Harry is drawn to in any situation, someone who can keep up with him or even out-do him because Harry lives for being challenged. There’s a give and take about it that pulls him in, makes him curious for what will come next, and he already feels that way in their five minute exchange.

“I dunno. I’m not sure if it suits you the way Louis does,” Harry says, making a hum of consideration and bending his arm behind him to scratch at the back of his neck, unable to hide his smile when Louis gives him a not so subtle roll of the eyes. “I’m Harry, by the way. I think I already said that, but,” Harry cuts himself off when Louis abruptly passes the baby into his arms.

“Yes, you did. Well, Harry, this is Annie and I need you to hold her for me, if you don’t mind. As you can see, Liz and Scott aren’t exactly the biggest fans of organization.” Louis lets out an exasperated sigh, helping Annie get situated in Harry’s arms and meeting his eyes quickly, like he’s trying to judge whether or not he can trust him not to drop her or possibly run out the front door with her in tow. Next door neighbor or not, he’s still a stranger.

Harry returns the look with an eye roll of his own. “I’m fine! I know how to hold a baby.”

Annie has big, slate gray eyes that squint the slightest bit in consideration when he secures his arms around her, cradling her against his chest.

“Hi,” Harry raises his voice to a higher pitch and beams at her, bringing one of his hands up, pleased when she latches onto one of his fingers again. To his surprise, this time she brings it all the way to her mouth, trying to bite down at it.

“Um...is this normal?”

Louis shoots a brief glance in their direction and laughs, immediately going back to his task of sorting through keys. He seems to know well enough which ones actually belong to the Woods in some capacity and he’s taking the wrong ones systematically off of the hooks, narrowing down the search. “She’s teething again. Everything is her chew toy right now.”

In a matter of seconds Harry’s got drool rolling down his finger, but the cute factor far outweighs the gross factor and he only pulls away once she seems to have gotten bored with the momentary distraction. He fixes the loose strap of her bathing suit and watches Louis’ back as he goes through more keys.

“I didn’t think the Woods had a pool,” he frowns, adjusting Annie in his arms until she’s less squirmy. Her fingers tangle in the chain of his necklace and he doesn’t stop her when she tries to put the charm in her mouth, too.

“Just a kiddie pool. It’s got, like, a total four inches of water -- oh, finally.” Louis holds up a key, triumphant, and walks it back over to Harry, his hand extended. “Here you go.”

It sounds sort of final, the way he says it, like -- here, I found the key, kindly see yourself out. It makes sense, he thinks, because he is at work and he probably hadn’t expected a sweaty neighbor to come barging in demanding a house key. Harry takes it from him, nods, murmurs a thanks.

“No problem,” Louis says, reaching out to grasp Annie beneath her arms. Harry’s got a million questions and he’s no good at biting his tongue when he’s curious but something tells him Louis might not take well to Harry asking out-right how old he is and where he’s from and why he’s never seen him before.

He’s the kind of person Harry just wants to be liked by, right away; he exudes a certain self confidence that Harry’s drawn to, kind of a take-no-shit attitude without being a total asshole, either.

Louis doesn’t seem like he would hand many parts of himself over freely, and Harry likes that, the thought of being good at learning someone, and already he feels like Louis is a lock he can pick with a little effort.

Their eyes meet once Annie is out of his arms and back into Louis’, and it’s so strange, but Harry can’t help the smile on his face and he struggles to fight the urge to actually laugh, even though there’s nothing funny, except for the fact that Harry’s dripping with sweat and probably smells worse than he looks and the neighbor’s male nanny looks like a fucking model.

Louis looks away, pressing his tongue to the inside of his cheek, but Harry swears he can see the corner of his mouth turning up as he walks toward the back of the house.

“You can follow me out this way,” he says, and Harry does.

They head onto the back deck and down the stairs and onto the lawn, where there’s a swing set and a tee ball bat next to the garage and a kickball at the bottom of the steps and, finally, the kiddie pool in the middle of it all. Louis steps into it and Harry laughs when he sees the water come not much higher than the middle of his calves. Louis looks down and wiggles his toes.

“I’d invite you for a swim, but.” Louis grins, pulls a pair of aviators down from his head and over his nose, making his expression even more unreadable as he sits cross-legged in the shallow water, placing Annie on his lap. Almost immediately she removes the glasses and throws them into the water, giggling, and Louis’ face goes soft, like he just can’t help it.

“Well,” Harry says, pointing over his shoulder toward his own yard, separated only by a driveway. “Thanks.” He starts walking backward, taking one or two steps and returning the wave he receives from Louis.

“Are you here all the time?” Harry calls, still backing up, apparently unable to keep himself asking questions even as he’s trying to leave.

“Monday to Friday. Why, you plan on forgetting your keys everyday?”

Harry throws his head back and laughs at that, big and loud, and he’s a bit too far away to see for sure with the sun beaming on his face, but he thinks Louis grins, too.

“I might,” he counters as he walks another few steps back toward his house. “Good to have a backup plan.”

Louis throws him a thumbs up, and Harry returns it.

“See you tomorrow, Nanny.”

When Louis first took his job with the Woods, he’d been somewhat afraid of what it would do to his social life. All his friends from college who have been lucky enough to already land steady work in their respective fields are able to interact with their peers on a daily basis, and Louis -- well. He spends the majority of his time with three people who have the combined age of eleven.

His friends tell him all about who’s hooking up with who in the break room and which co-worker has mysteriously been out sick after facing paralyzing embarrassment due to whatever, the story changes every time, and what he has to offer back is how Annie spit up all over his favorite t-shirt and updates on the twins’ on-going quest to emphasize their individuality. It sets him apart sometimes, but they humor him, anyway, knowing it’s just a temporary gig until he finds a teaching position.

The thing is, even if it’s not always the most exciting thing in the world, Louis loves his job. Sure, he hasn’t lost hope that he’ll find a position somewhere in the area so he can actually do what he spent four years racking up debt for, but he couldn’t ask for better in the meantime. He loves the kids and he knows he’s great with them. Growing up with four little sisters had prepared him well for how emotional and unpredictable children can be, but they still never fail to surprise him.

Mostly, though, he lives for making them laugh and teaching them new things and being someone in their lives that can help foster their creativity. Their parents are big on that - fostering creativity. He loves it.

If he has a complaint at all, it’s that things can get a bit monotonous at times. He’s sat through the same episodes of every cartoon at least ten times and he doesn’t see a lot of fresh faces -- just the mailman and the occasional religious solicitor with a handful of pamphlets to offer him.

That’s why meeting Harry has been sort of wonderful. He’s a new element in his day to day; the promise of a neighbor closer to his age than any of the others on the block, and he knows they’ll cross paths eventually, and it’s sort of fun, the thought of it.

He doesn't actually expect to see him the next day, but as if on cue, it's ten thirty and he's there, this time wearing a pair of jeans so tight Louis' not even sure how he got them on considering the humidity. His hair is longer than it looked before, and dry this time, swooping over his forehead.

Louis doesn't trust that he just wakes up like that, but he also sort of gets the feeling that he does, because Harry is one of the most effortlessly good looking people he's ever seen, and he gets absolutely no satisfaction out of admitting that to himself.

He's wearing yet another old cross-country t-shirt and looking better than he has any right to, dangling the spare key out for Louis to take.

"I think I preferred you with the headband," Louis lies, and Harry grins, pushes past him to get inside the house.

"Want me to go put it on?"

So it's easy, yeah, to fall into this weird little habit of going to work with the expectation of seeing someone other than the three kids he's in charge of feeding and keeping occupied. They love Harry, though, and Louis is okay with having him around even though his excuses for coming over keep getting more and more far-fetched.

First it was to return the spare key, which -- okay. Then it was to ask if Louis had an extra iPhone charger. The next day it was to bring Miles a shoebox full of Harry's old Matchbox cars, and, Louis has to hand it to him, because entertaining the kids is pretty good way of getting on his good side.

Harry doesn’t really need to try, though, because they’re already there. Like, it only takes a few days before they start speaking in annoying voices to each other, each of them trying to get weirder and weirder until Harry inevitably laughs first and makes Louis feel like the funniest person in the world, which is Louis’ very favorite quality in any person. It’s why he likes kids so much, maybe. They think he’s hilarious.

After four days, Louis considers his knowledge of Harry to be minimal, but adequate.

He’s in college. He’s getting an English degree. He talks about it a lot, about school and his friends there, about how eager he is to get back to it, which Louis understands. It’s his final year of magical thinking, and he sort of misses it, himself -- that freedom from responsibility, from paying rent, from cooking his own meals.

He has an awful lot of tattoos, he is very careful with babies, and he has the most infectious laugh of anyone Louis has ever met.

He’s okay. Harry is fine. That’s what he says when Zayn asks about his new “quote-friend-unquote,” and Louis shuts him down almost immediately, and Zayn says he’s just asking the pertinent questions, and Louis stops answering him on Facebook even though Zayn can clearly see that he read his message.

On Friday, Louis takes the kids for ice cream at a mom and pop creamery just a few blocks from the house. It’s warm out, but doesn’t feel sweltering and so they decide to walk, loading Annie up in her stroller and securing the visor over the top to shield her from the sun.

Miles and Charlotte walk one on each side of him and Charlotte talks the entire way there, rambling on with some fanciful story that she’s instated herself as princess in. She’s dressed accordingly, leotard and puffy purple and teal tutu in place and a crepe paper crown on her head. Miles seems bored, heaving out a sigh every so often and pointing out inaccuracies in his sister’s on-the-spot fairytale.

Louis just laughs and ruffles his hair and they make it to their destination after twenty minutes, all covered in a light sheen of sweat from the humidity.

“What kind are you gonna get, huh?” He asks, the bell on the door chiming loudly as he tries to push it open while simultaneously getting the stroller through. Someone catches the edge of it, holding it open so that they can maneuver the rest of the way inside, and when he looks up to offer his thanks, he doesn’t know why he feels so dumbstruck. They live in the same town, of course they’re bound to run into each other away from their own homes from time to time.

“Louis!” Harry beams, not even attempting to try and hide what appears to be unadulterated joy at the sight of him, which Louis doesn’t exactly want to think too hard about.

Charlotte runs up to him, practically lunging into his arms and Harry catches her easily, lifting her up and earning a giggle in return. “Looking awfully pretty today, Princess Charlotte.”

Apparently pleased at that, Charlotte shoots a glance over to her brother, like the most obvious thing in the world has just been confirmed and she wants to make sure he’s heard. “See, Harry says I’m a princess!” She throws her arms around his neck in a quick hug then pats at his chest for him to let her down, suddenly more interested in running over to look at the line of different ice cream flavors to choose from.

Louis realizes, belatedly, that he’s been staring the whole time and maybe paying a little too much attention to the way the muscles in Harry’s arms flexed when he bent down to set Charlotte back on solid ground. He’s almost positive that Harry catches him, but it apparently hasn’t deterred him at all because he’s still making eye contact, still smiling and confident and obviously delighted that they walked in just as he was about to leave.

Harry parks himself at one of the little tiny kids’ tables, looking even more gigantic than he already is while surrounded by a dozen little kids in the ice cream shop. When Louis looks over his shoulder to check that he’s still there, Harry is staring right at him, fingers clasped on the table, looking both very juvenile and very ridiculous and smirking like he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“I’m sitting next to Harry!” Miles shouts and sprints toward the table at an alarming speed.

“Louis, tell Miles that I called it,” Charlotte, whines, tugging on his fingers. Louis laughs and Harry pipes up before he can say anything, telling her that she’s got the spot reserved the next time they get ice cream. Louis tries not to think about the implications of that, that again Harry seems to be dead-set on sticking around for the remainder of the summer.

He’s glad to see him, though. It’s been a weird week, having company at work, having actual adult interaction instead of heading out front to force a chit-chat with the mail carrier just so he wouldn’t have to listen to the Spongebob theme song one more time.

“So what happened?” he asks Harry, who shakes his head, confused.

“What do you mean?”

“I guess you ran out of reasons to harass me while I’m on the clock,” Louis says, licking mint chocolate chip from the corner of his mouth. “It’s a shame, actually. I thought you had more fight in you.”

Harry grins, like it’s a challenge he’s accepted. “I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he says.

Louis watches ice cream drip down Miles’ face and wordlessly shoves a napkin into his hands. “What’s that?”

And Harry, because he’s the worst, just shrugs and slow smiles, dimple and all.

Louis rolls his eyes and devours the top part of his ice cream because he’s not sure what else to do with his mouth and he’s sure as hell not giving in to that face.

They’re flirting, is what’s happening -- they’ve been at it all week -- but the thing is that Louis just sort of liked him right away, anyway, which makes it easier to tease him and joke around with him even though he’s known him all of five days. It’s a friendship borne partially out of boredom, and he understands that, but it doesn’t make it any less fun to have Harry around, crawling across the floor with Charlotte on his back and chatting easily with Louis about everything, anything.

“Did you guys do anything fun today?” Harry asks, and Miles pipes up immediately, launching into an exhaustive account of their day while they all finish off their cones, and Louis passes around more napkins. The kids are amped up on sugar and are quite literally bouncing, except for Annie, who has blissfully remained asleep in her stroller through all of it.

They all leave together and start the lazy walk back to the Woods’ house. It’s late in the afternoon so Liz and Scott ought to be back by the time they return, and Louis can go home and wash the kid smell off of him and do...nothing, probably.

Harry jogs up to walk beside him and bumps him on the shoulder. “I watched that episode of One Tree Hill you were raving about.”

Louis laughs at that, turning to meet his eyes. “Did you? What’d you think?”

“That show is fuck-- oops, sorry,” he claps a hand over his mouth and tries again, speaking in a quieter voice. “That show is terrible, man. You gotta watch The Sopranos. I can’t believe you haven’t seen it. I do the best impression of Christopher.”

Louis blinks, shaking his head. He has no idea who Christopher is, but he’s pretty sure he’d watch Harry make an ass out of himself doing an impression of anyone. “Do you have it on DVD?”

“I do.”

“You should let me borrow it. Hey! Wait for me to cross the street,” he calls out, and Miles and Charlotte halt at the curb, checking to make sure Louis is behind them before they all cross.

“What, you don’t want to watch it with me in my parents’ house?” Harry’s voice is sarcastic, and even when Charlotte smacks him on the hip to give her a piggy back ride, he still keeps his eyes trained on Louis. He can’t figure out if he’s serious or not, but the idea of sitting and watching anything while Harry’s next to him seems...challenging.

He’s bailed out of an answer because they’re back in front of the Woods’ house and, judging by the cars in the driveway, both Liz and Scott are home.

“Mom and dad are back, guys,” Louis tells them, and the words are barely out of his mouth before Charlotte practically dives out of Harry’s arms and she and Miles are bounding toward the front porch, trying to beat each other to the door. Louis collects Annie from the stroller and holds her against his chest, turning to look at Harry, who’s squinting against the sun behind Louis’ head, holding his hand against his forehead like a visor.

“So tomorrow’s Saturday,” he says.

Louis frowns and pretends to deliberate on that for a moment. “Wait, does Saturday come after Friday? Is that how it--” But he’s cut off when Harry knocks him on the shin with the toe of his white All-Stars, telling him to shut up.

“So you won’t be here until Monday,” he continues.

“Right again.”

“So but you’ll be here on Monday.”

Louis tries not to smile. He really does, but fuck, he’s cute. “Will you be here on Monday?”

Harry grins and drops his hand from his forehead to brush his hair away from his face as he starts to back up in the direction of his house. “Yep."

When Harry boarded the plane for South Orange a few weeks prior, he made a promise of sorts to himself.

In between bouts of conversation with the forty-something businessman to his left and pressing his earbuds in to turn up a Ray Lamontagne album at full volume, he’d assured himself that he would absolutely not, by any means, take interest in someone. Like that, anyway.

This summer is supposed to be about self discovery and being lazy and preparing himself for his last year of college, and he can’t be so free if he’s tied up with someone else. It’s his last year before everything will inevitably change, and his freedom will be snatched away the second he’s handed a diploma, and it’s fine, it’s the natural course of the college student, and he accepts it.

But Harry’s never been great keeping resolutions, especially utterly unrealistic ones. He’s a people person and the thought of going months without being drawn to someone is nothing if not absurd. One of his biggest downfalls is how fickle he is; it’s easy for someone to reel him in, to mention a song that they like or a piece of art that they admire and for him to immediately think they have some kind of unbelievable, unheard of connection.

His last date was with a girl who loved Polly Morgan’s work as much as him and who worked at a dark little bar on the wrong side of town. It was a good time, but Harry had forgone a second date because he got asked to hang out by a DJ whose sets he’d been admiring for weeks and whose record collection he desperately wanted to rifle through.

It’s just fun. He meets a lot of different people and it just works for him because even with all of his friends attached at the hip with their girlfriends and boyfriends, he can’t envision himself in that role. He hasn’t been anyone’s boyfriend since he was seventeen and he really kind of likes it that way.

Louis being his colossal promise breaker was an accident. The first trip next door had been entirely justified and it was easy to play it off like every time after that was because he just liked hanging out with the kids, which is sort of true, but...well.

The initial attraction he felt for Louis only seems to be amplified with every day that they spend together and he really doesn’t have a choice but to admit to himself that he wants him. Louis is a few years older, a hell of a lot more settled, and he’s so effortlessly witty and kind-hearted and just good that how could Harry not be interested in him?

It’s probably a bad idea, but he feels like Louis might be on the same page, and if he is, he doesn’t see anything wrong with them having a bit of fun together. Their connection was immediate and the intrigue is too strong to consider drowning it out completely, promise be damned.

He figures he’ll just play it by ear, see what happens, but he knows it’s something worth going for because he can’t seem to let go of the idea. Louis is one of the most attractive people he’s ever been around and Harry can’t help but to wonder what it would be like to get his hands on him, to kiss along the defined curve of his jaw and over his high cheekbones and to get him spread out in his bed to wreak havoc on.

His body is riddled with contradictions -- all soft and strong at once -- and Harry really, really just wants to take him apart.

Those are exactly the sort of thoughts that he needs to avoid at all costs when they take the kids on an impromptu trip to the park on Monday afternoon.

Annie is sitting up in the sandbox not more than a foot away from the bench Harry and Louis are occupying, dumping sand into a yellow bucket with a toy shovel. The twins are farther off, but still in their line of view, taking turns climbing up the slide instead of going down the right way.

“You wanna hear something funny?” Harry asks, handing over half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the cooler they’d packed before biting into the other. Louis looks at him with raised eyebrows, like he’s expecting one of Harry’s awful animal jokes that he pretends not to love.

“I mean, if I absolutely have to.” There’s the hint of a smile on Louis’ lips and he hides it by stuffing part of the sandwich in his mouth, ripping off the end with his teeth.

“You’ll appreciate this, I think,” Harry finishes chewing, licking away a few crumbs from his lips before continuing. “My first kiss was actually on this same bench. I was in the first, no, wait... second grade, and this girl from my class had her birthday party here. I guess I didn’t feel like the doll my mom picked out for her was a cool enough gift so I laid one on her,” Harry laughs, shaking his head a little and shooting a glance over at the kids before looking in Louis’ direction again, obviously curious if he’s as tickled by the story and the strange coincidence of it all as he is.

Louis scoffs, feigning indignation and trying in vain not to let his smirk show. “Nice, Harold. What kind of child were you? Poor girl just wanted to enjoy her cake and presents and you go and slobber all over her.”

At that moment, Louis reaches for his aviators that are at the edge of the bench and they accidentally go sailing into the sand beneath their feet in the process. They both reach down to fetch them at the same time and on the way down, Harry feels the side of Louis’ body brush up against his, their forearms sort of sliding together as they go for the same target.

Harry gets ahold of them first and sits up again, passing them into Louis’ hand with a lopsided grin.  “Careful there. Wouldn’t want to lose those. They look good on you.”

Louis’ face does a thing he’s never seen it do before, where his mouth sort of twists and his brow furrows and he seems like he’s trying not to react. Harry pretends not to notice as Louis brushes the sand away from his glasses.

“Everything looks good on me,” he shrugs, slipping them over the bridge of his nose and pulling a face when he looks back at him, his tongue sticking out and his mouth contorted in a failed attempt to appear ‘ugly.’

“Hmm.” Harry considers it, wrinkling his nose like he’s not entirely sure that’s true even though it’s probably the most factual statement either of them have spoken all day. “I can think of a few exceptions.”

Louis finishes the last bite of his sandwich and brushes his hands together, swinging his leg around so he’s straddling the bench and facing Harry. “Like what?”

“Like shirts,” Harry says, levelly, staring straight at Louis because watching him squirm is just a little satisfying. For the moment he can see his mouth drop open, but he has to give him credit for recovering quickly. Harry barks out a laugh before he speaks again and barely holds it together, knowing how ridiculous he’s being. “Might as well just skip it next time, you know?”

“I’m scandalized,” Louis says, completely failing to sound disgusted.

He turns and Harry follows his line of vision to where Annie is sitting and flinging sand over her own legs, making a mess and appearing to be perfectly happy about it. Louis smiles and looks back at Harry. “I think this counts as exploration, doesn’t it? Liz is always telling me not to hinder her exploratory tendencies.”

And Harry’s just not sure why or how he can go from wanting to tear him apart to finding him admirable in a matter of minutes, but he realizes he’s staring after an extended few seconds and sighs, curling his shoulders in as he looks down and picks at the wood on the bench because he’s not entirely sure what to say.

“Where’s the lucky girl now?”

Harry looks up, confused. “Who?”

“Your first kiss. The one you christened this bench with.” Louis taps it reverently, and Harry laughs, and reminds himself of how horribly inappropriate it’d be to kiss him in the middle of a park full of playing children.

“No idea,” he shrugs, glancing over at Annie again. “She moved away in fourth grade. Whoa, watch--” Annie’s wobbly legs have her near to toppling over when she tries to get to her feet, and Harry puts out a hand to break her fall.

“Nice save,” Louis says, stuffing the last bit of his sandwich into his mouth and getting to his feet to put the empty zip-loc bag back into the cooler they’d packed. “Will you please let me pay you?”

It’s a conversation they’ve had before and Harry still refuses to accept it, immediately shaking his head and telling Louis to shut up before he can get another word out.

“I told you, man. You’re the one who changes diapers. Annie’s just too cute to resist, that’s all.” He presses a smacking kiss to her cheek and she giggles and reaches up to stick her sandy fingers on his nose, to which he sputters dramatically, making her squeal and try it again.

Louis walks away to gather Miles and Charlotte and Harry watches him as he goes, his narrow frame and his tan calves and he actually grumbles, has to force himself to look away because there’s not one pure thought in his head and he knows that antsy feeling won’t quit until he does something about it.

It was a stupid promise, anyway.

The grass is still wet with dew when Louis walks across the lawn at ten past eight on Friday morning, a full twenty minutes earlier than he usually shows up at the Woods' house. He agreed yesterday to pick up season two of The Sopranos from Harry in the morning before work, which is the reason he's at the door to Harry's pool house with hair still damp from his shower, yawning into the back of his hand.

It's nice, he thinks, looking around at the dappled sunlight across the familiar yards and at the slow breeze ruffling the trees. It's been nice all week, and he doesn't think the four days he's spent flirting mercilessly with one Harry Styles has had any effect whatsoever on his perception of the disgustingly hot and humid weather which has been repeatedly complained about from literally every person he comes across.

Harry's going away for two nights, which doesn't matter, really, because it's not like he ever sees him on the weekends, anyway. He made a point to tell Louis the day before, though, like Louis might beg him not to go to Point Pleasant with his family even though he has plans of his own. Or he will have plans, if Zayn decides to answer his phone at least once in the next twenty four hours. There's not much more than a fifty percent chance of that happening, but Louis remains hopeful.

The pool house looks more like a renovated shed, but it's shaded by a huge oak tree behind it, which gives it the look of a little cottage. He’s never been inside before.

Louis stands at the step and knocks twice on the door, scaring away a bird that's apparently built a nest in the eave of the roof. He sighs and rocks back onto his heels, holding the season one box in his hands and tapping it idly onto his palm as he waits for an answer.

The door swings open and Harry's got a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.

"He's alive," Louis says, and Harry nods, attempting to smile, and dribbles a bit of toothpaste down the corner of his lip in the process. He looks adorable.

"Come in," he says, waving his hand.

Louis walks over the threshold and closes the door behind him, watching Harry as he bends over a sink attached to the wall. He's in a pair of black running shorts that are pretty dangerously close to slipping down his narrow hips, and a t-shirt so thin it's almost transparent; it may have been white at some point in the last ten years, but Louis can't tell. The sleeves are cut off and and Louis appreciates the way Harry's arms flex as he cups his hand around the stream of water, gulping some of it down before he stands up straight and wipes his mouth with his thumb and forefinger.

“Season two’s right there,” he points behind Louis and onto the small table beside the bed, where there’s a copy of American Pastoral underneath the box of DVDs. Louis picks it up, murmuring a thanks, clearing his throat just to make some sort of sound in the quiet room.

They’ve never been alone, really. Not outside of the Woods’ house, and never behind a closed door without the risk of a child running in at any given moment. There’s no reason for Louis to stay and he can’t think of anything to say, for once in his life, so he places down the first season set of DVDs and glances up at him.

“Leaving today?” he asks, resting his back up against the door.

“Yeah, right after I finish running,” Harry says, and crosses the room to sit on the edge of his bed. His bends over to tie his shoelaces, which gives Louis a distracting view of his broad back and shoulders.

It’s weird, because it feels like -- and there’s no reason for it, really, not that he can figure out -- but it feels like one of them should do something. It’s just that he’s very much aware of it being the first time they’re alone and the room is so silent and neither of them are saying much and Louis can’t think of anything to say because his mind is occupied with a mental image of pressing Harry back into the sheets and just touching, exploring, figuring out what the fuck it is about this kid that makes him want to implode if he looks at him the right way.

Harry seems perfectly calm, though. He finishes off the double knot of his second shoe and sits up straight, coughs into his hand and flicks his hair out of his face. Louis knows he’s staring.

They do that a lot. Sometimes it feels like a game because they’re so obvious and Louis wonders when, if ever, one of them will speak up about it. With the way that Harry is eyeing him from the bed, he almost considers that he might say something now.

“So, what will you be up to this weekend? Got a hot date?” Harry asks, wiggling his eyebrows and Louis levels him with a look because they don’t talk about their love lives often, but Harry knows he isn’t seeing anyone. That he hasn’t seen anyone in awhile.

He finds it strange that when they do have those conversations, Harry doesn’t seem to have a lot of input. Like, there are dozens of different people that he talks about, but none of them play a recurring role throughout his stories. Part of him admires the fact that Harry apparently doesn’t settle with anyone for too long, but Louis can’t really relate. He can count the number of people he’s dated on one hand and he still sees every single one of them from time to time. They didn’t just disappear from the picture like the people that Harry talks about seem to.

“No, ‘fraid not. I thought I mentioned it to you. I’m just getting drinks with my friend Zayn.” Louis shrugs, leaving out the maybe and the the fact that Zayn will probably want to leave after an hour because...he always does.

“Oh yeah, the hot one you showed me.”

There’s a self-satisfied grin on Harry’s face that Louis kind of desperately wants to claw off because apparently he doesn’t like the way Harry sounds when he’s calling someone who isn’t him hot. And, yeah, there is a difference, because Harry’s called him hot more times and in more ways than he can begin to keep track of and Louis loves the way it sounds then.

“Whatever you say,” Louis grits out, giving his best most obviously forced smile and gripping tighter at the DVD set in his hand. It feels like there’s tension in the air and he doesn’t know why exactly because Harry’s still smiling easily and Louis can’t decide if he wants to kiss him or strangle him.

Harry must be a little more sure of himself because he stands up straight and as Louis expects him to walk past him and start for the door, Harry moves directly in front of him, instead, and eases their bodies close together. He brings one hand up to rest in the space between his neck and shoulder, holding him there and bowing his head enough so that their eyes can meet.

Louis feels still, like he’s just waiting for something to happen and he’s not even sure if he’s breathing when Harry inches his face in and starts speaking close to his lips. “I’m gonna kiss you now.”

There’s something so fucking self assured about it and Louis’ honestly not surprised that Harry would tell him what he was going to do rather than asking first if he could. He assumes that Harry would be that way in bed, too, that he would go after what he wanted and manipulate someone’s body until they felt inside out, that he would be so sure and thorough and eager that he would leave someone wrecked and take pleasure in building them back up again.

Not that he’s thought about it at length, or anything. Maybe once.

It should feel sudden and out of place, but it doesn’t. Louis just nods, feeling like he’d beg if Harry would just close off the distance between them, anything so he can stop feeling the tease of Harry’s warm breath against his mouth.

He doesn’t have to reduce himself to that, though, because Harry moves his hand further up along his jawline and catches his lips. He’s almost expecting it to be quick and frantic, but it’s not -- it’s slow, the way Louis likes to be kissed, and Harry just takes his time, moving their lips together until his part to kiss him deeper. His mouth feels just as good as it looks; better, though, and he can’t even remember what he imagined it to be like because the reality is unbelievably good.

He makes a little hum of pleasure, finally out of shock enough to respond. His free hand moves to clutch at Harry’s waist and it’s thrilling, how long and sturdy his body feels under his touch as his fingers ascend to his ribcage.

Louis thinks that he should have known that a first kiss with Harry would feel like a last one, that he would be so interchangeably tender and aggressive that it would leave him shaky on his feet, having to press against his chest and his stupid threadbare t-shirt just to stay upright.

When it fades out, they’re out of breath, and he can feel it both under his touch and against his body when Harry’s lungs expand to inhale deeply. They stay like that for a moment before Harry steps back, and Louis feels like he should say something, maybe even ask him what the hell that was about. The words don’t come in time, though, and Harry just smiles at him while Louis’ still awestruck and panting and trying to process the fact that, yeah, that really just happened.

“Should really get to my run. We’re gonna be leaving soon.”

Harry opens the door and leans against the frame, bracing one hand on each side and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. Louis can’t think of anything to say, so he just presses his lips together in something close to a smile.

“Have a good weekend, alright?” Still grinning, Harry gives him a little wave and a thumbs up and turns on his heels, starting down the pathway out to the street.

Louis’ still standing in the middle of the room, holding the DVD with kiss swollen lips and flushed cheeks and he really, really hates Harry Styles. He kissed him and then quite literally ran away before Louis had a chance to say anything and it’s way too fucking early in the day for this.

He shuts the door in a rush before starting back toward the Woods’, trying hard not to keep thinking about what just happened, which is fucking impossible because he can practically still feel the shape of Harry’s lips on his own and he can remember too vividly how much taller and broader Harry seems when he’s pressed right up against him.

It’s a thing he’s only seen people do in movies, but Louis actually gives himself a slap on the cheek as he stands on the front step of the Woods’ house, telling himself to snap the fuck out of it. He’s still clutching the DVD in sweaty palms and he can’t fathom that it was the original, innocent purpose for his visit to Harry’s that morning. They’ve spent a few weeks together now, flirting like crazy and getting to know each other and laughing harder than Louis can even comprehend, so he’s not sure why the kiss is so surprising.

The only thing that doesn’t surprise him is that he felt like he’d been hit by a fucking truck as soon as Harry left, and that’s what he’s been afraid of; that it would be more than just some kiss.

To Louis’ surprise, Zayn actually follows through with hanging out on Saturday night. They go to Louis’ favorite Mexican restaurant and then settle in at a dive that’s a short walk from both of their apartments. It’s good being out with him because it’s been too long -- it always feels like too long -- and Louis’ sort of antsy to tell someone about what happened with Harry even if he doesn’t know how to breach the subject.

Over their first beer, Zayn asks if there’s anything new going on his life or with his new friend and Louis thinks it might not be an awful thing to mention their most recent developments. Louis slides his palm down the neck of his beer bottle, looking over Zayn’s shoulder at the group of guys playing darts in one corner of the bar as he considers how much he should say.

“Harry’s fine. He’s the same, you know? He comes over pretty much every day and the kids love him. He tells them stupid jokes and let’s Char put makeup on him. It’s kinda nice to have someone else helping out.” There’s obviously something left over, and Zayn’s too smart and knows Louis well enough to know that he’s barely skimmed the surface.

Rolling his eyes up, Zayn turns his pack of cigarettes down against his palm and hits against it a few times before taking one out and slipping it behind his ear. “And?”

He combs three fingers lightly through the front of his hair, pushing some strands back up into his quiff as if there aren’t already enough eyes on him as it is. He’s looking at Louis like it’s obvious that there’s more to the story and Louis sighs as he feels himself start to concede.

“We kissed. Well, he kissed me. I went over to his place yesterday morning to pick up a DVD and he was just tying his shoes and he...just kissed me. Like he’d done it a million times before.”

Zayn raises his eyebrows slightly and Louis can tell that he’s trying really hard not to smirk. “Don’t tell me you just stood there. Did you at least kiss him back? What happened?” Zayn’s been politely listening to him talk about the kids all night but Louis can tell that his interest is actually genuine now.

“Yes, I kissed back,” he says, exasperated, and stops to take another long swig of his beer before he feels like he can keep talking. “It was just weird, though. Like, he took off right after and now I don’t know what it’s going to be like when I see him on Monday. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say anything or if we can just go back to being...how we were before, or what.”

That’s the part that Louis’ the most hung up on because he’s not used to things working the way they apparently do with Harry. Everything is so unpredictable with him that he can’t honestly tell whether it was just an isolated incident that they’ll never mention again. Like, maybe after all the flirtation and build up, Harry just wanted to see what it was like and that was it -- which, yeah, might not be the worst thing in the world. It was a good kiss and he could probably live with it being a one time thing if that’s what Harry had intended.

Zayn must be able to tell that he’s zoning out because he smiles reassuringly and reaches over to knock his fist lightly against Louis’ jaw. “Just wait and see what happens when he gets back, man. If you’re going to keep seeing him so often then he has to say something eventually, right? Just play it cool. You know what you’re doing.”

It’s apparently already time for Zayn to use up that smoke and he leaves Louis at the table with a squeeze to the shoulders as he passes by. Louis sighs, putting down his beer and letting his eyes skim around the bar. Zayn’s usually spot on with his advice, but he was wrong about that last part. He feels like he doesn’t have a single clue as to what he’s doing. Everything just seems kind of experimental for Harry, which is...whatever, it’s fine, but it has the potential to fuck up the nice little dynamic they’ve had going for a couple of weeks.

One of the guys playing darts beckons him over when he loses his teammate and Louis sighs, finishing off his beer and migrating in that direction. Zayn’s mostly right, he thinks. There isn’t anything that he can do besides wait for Monday.

Narrowing his eyes, he lines up his first shot, trying to focus and to avoid thoughts of long legs and headbands and curls as he circles in on the bullseye and pulling his hand back a few inches before shooting. He’s so far off center and the stranger who chose him as a teammate grumbles off to his left when the dart misses the board altogether and falls pitifully down the wall. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, he thinks, he’s just hasn’t figured it out yet.

Chapter Text

Niall spends four more days in South Orange before heading back to Santa Barbara, making the same trip that Harry will be in just another three weeks. It’s almost impossible to fathom that the summer has gone by so quickly, and seeing Niall was a reminder of just how close he is to having to go back to that lifestyle that seems so far away now after only two and a half months spent back on the east coast. He’s kept busy since he came home in May, but it still doesn’t feel like enough, like somehow there’s a little bit left that he can wrench out before he has to leave.

That’s how he came up with the camping trip.

They take Louis’ car, seeing as a 1999 Jeep Cherokee is slightly more practical for a camping trip than Harry’s beautiful albeit tiny Jag. It’s loaded up with a rather half-assed attempt at preparation, but they have the basic survival necessities: coolers filled with hot dogs and bacon and eggs, Poptarts, trail mix, beer. Condoms.

Louis drives and insists that he control the music, so they work their way through the pile of scratched up mixed CDs that Louis made in high school and sing along to a steady stream of alternative rock hits that Harry hasn’t heard since 2004. The windows are down and Louis’ wearing his fucking aviators again and Harry can’t stop touching him, leaning over at red lights to kiss his cheek because it’s cute and stupid that he still loves The Fray, six years after the fact, and Louis’ defensiveness only makes him want to keep teasing him.

When they get to the campsite, they realize they’re actually pretty far removed from everyone else -- able to occupy their own little clearing away from everything where they can set up their tent and build a fire. It’s a process of trial and error, trying to get the tent to stay up when it just wants to collapse in on itself, but they manage it in the end and count it as the first triumph of the day.

The lake is just a short walk along a path near where they’ve set-up and the trip down to the water feels like being caught in the middle of a dust cloud with all the dirt they kick up under their feet. When they get there, Louis sets up his reel and throws the line out into the water, more for curiosity’s sake than the actual desire to catch anything. Harry finds a rope swing left by another camper and jumps off one of the low, rocky cliffs above the water about a dozen times despite Louis’ claims that he looks embarrassingly like Tarzan and all he needs is a loincloth to complete the image.

It’s later afternoon by the time they make their way back and Louis hasn’t reeled in anything but a lump of plastic from someone’s torn and abandoned floatie. Harry’s drenched, his hair pushed back off his forehead and chest already a bit pink from forgetting to put on sunscreen. He circles an arm around Louis’ waist, ignoring the huff he receives in return because Louis has managed to remain dry up until having Harry plastered up against him. He pretends to mind for about half a minute before Harry catches him looking off to the side to try and hide his smile.

“Saw that,” he beams, patting Louis on the ass lightly before darting ahead of him to start bulking up the fire pit.

“You saw nothing,” Louis protests, but his smile defies what he’s saying as he watches Harry add a few more rocks to the perimeter. They scour the area for wood, gathering up thicker pieces and twigs to throw in the center, along with a pile of dry leaves to use as tinder.

“Are you ready? Cause things are about to get Lower Paleolithic.” Harry wags his eyebrows in Louis’ direction and holds up a match, earning himself an eye roll in response.

“Yeah, don’t think they were using matches in the Stone Age. You’re cheating.” Louis drags over what seems to be the designated seating log on the campsite, and sets it back a short distance from the fire as Harry starts building it up.

“Did you know you can use a condom to start a fire? You fill it with water and make a lens with it. Same concept as y’know, like, using a magnifying glass to melt plastic army men.”

Louis laughs and walks up behind Harry, getting a grip on his shoulders. “As if I’m going to let you waste the box trying that out.”

The fire takes ten minutes to get started but eventually it roars and Louis stands in front of it with his arms outstretched like he’s some kind of god, like he’s summoned it, and Harry takes a photo of him like that, sending it to Instagram with twenty flame emojis as the caption.

They skewer hot dogs on sticks and roast them until they’re charred and eat them in front of the fire, dodging sparks and smoke when it billows in their direction. Harry shows off a little and brags about his perfect s’more, insisting that Louis sit back and relax while he works his magic. He toasts the graham crackers and pre-melts the chocolate and twists the stick intermittently to give the marshmallow a golden hue all around, then presents it to Louis in two hands, watching as he takes the first bite.

Louis smiles around it and a drop of marshmallow goo drips down the side of his lip, and Harry leans in to lick it away, a hand resting on his bicep to keep him steady. Louis gives him an appreciative thumbs up as he chews, and it’s all Harry can do to wait for him to finish before he crowds up in front of him again, their lips sticky as they laugh into a kiss.

By the time night falls their site is overrun with mosquitoes and they both reek of bug spray. Louis is wearing one of Harry’s old hoodies, his shoulders hunched up as he pokes at the fire, looking even smaller than usual. It’s an odd train of thought, but he’s never seen him in anything other than shorts or t-shirts or swim trunks and it occurs to him that he’ll miss Louis, in the fall. He won’t get to see him in cableknit when the weather breaks in October and he won’t get to hear him scream at the TV during the first Jets game. Louis existing outside of their own summer together is something Harry hasn’t let himself think about, but he’s leaving in twenty days, and it’s time.

“Bought my ticket yesterday,” he says, staring into the fire. “One way to Santa Barbara.”

“Can’t imagine having to fly to go back to college,” Louis says quietly, and Harry glances over at him, hoping he’s not uncomfortable with the subject change, but he keeps talking. “Paying for books was hard enough.”

Harry sighs. “I still need to buy those.”

Louis leans against his shoulder. The fire crackles and hisses and Harry tries not to dwell on the feeling he gets at the thought of Louis playing off the inevitable departure like it’s not a big deal at all. He wishes he were less empathetic so he could force himself to believe that Louis felt as nonchalant as he acts, but there’s something in him that can sense otherwise.

He wraps his hand around the inside of Louis’ thigh, squeezing gently. “Hey, did you hear back?”

“Hmm?” Clearly broken from some sort of revery, Louis turns to look at him, blinking a few times. “Back from what?”

“That first grade position. Didn’t you interview a few days ago? Or is that next week?” Louis had been talking about it a lot but he hasn’t said anything since, which makes Harry wonder if it’s good or bad news. He knows it’s not for lack of trying that he doesn’t have a steady teaching job yet, and definitely not for lack of skill. He’s going to be the best teacher, Harry knows it, but he’s aware that the economy he’s graduating into next year isn’t easy on anyone, even someone as deserving of it as Louis.

“Oh, yeah. No, they promoted from within.” Louis throws up air quotes around the words, shrugging. “In other words, the guy who got it is the nephew of the principal. Whatever.”

Louis does a pretty good job at feigning indifference, but Harry can see it written all over his face how defeated he feels. Actually making it in to interview this time had made Louis more hopeful and Harry knows it has to be frustrating to be that close and then have to go right back to square one, to hunting through job listings and making weekly calls to schools in the area in hopes of a new opening.

“Bullshit nepotism. I don’t know how they expect anyone to make it,” Harry sighs, shaking his head and stretching his arm out around Louis’ shoulders. He tries to play it off like its no different from the constant affection between them, but it’s a little bit about comfort this time, too, and comfort isn’t something that Louis readily accepts too often.

“It’s fine. Something will come up eventually. And when it does, I’m throwing a fucking party. I’ll have to be picked up off the floor by the end of the night.” Louis smiles and nuzzles in close again, resting his head down in the groove between Harry’s arm and chest.

Harry opens his mouth to say something, ready to spout off ideas for the party and how he’ll collect Louis and take him to bed after all the celebrating has gotten the better of him. He can’t get the words out, though, not when he has the realization that none of it will ever actually happen. More than likely, he won’t be around when Louis finally lands his dream job...he won’t be there to crack open a bottle of champagne with him or to fill up Louis’ car with silly congratulations balloons. There’s even the chance that he might not hear about any of it at all because even if they vow to stay friends, it’ll be so easy to drift apart. They’ll get caught up in their own lives and Harry won’t be the first person Louis thinks to share everything with anymore.

The thought must be manifesting in some physical reaction, riddling his body with tension, because Louis picks up on it and tilts his head back to get a good look at him. He frowns, circling both of his arms around one of Harry’s and nudging at him. “What are you thinking about?”

“Just that I’ll be out of your way in a few weeks and you’ll have more time to job hunt and focus on that, you know, since it’s really--”

“Harry.”

Louis’ poker face is terrible when he’s agitated, and it’s so easy to see something dark wash over his features as he turns away to look at the fire again.

“What?”

He shakes his head, tracing the outsides of his lips with his thumb and forefinger. “You aren’t in my way.”

Harry frowns. “Okay.”

Louis turns to look at Harry, his face resigned. “Are you serious? You really think it has anything to do with you being here that I haven’t gotten a job?”

It’s heavier than anything they’ve touched on before, but Louis doesn’t sound angry, just confused. “I just meant, like, I’ll be busy at school, you won’t be distracted anymore...”

Louis laughs, and Harry doesn’t understand why, and he can’t read his expression at all, but it sort of dawns on him too late, and he can’t stop himself from speaking the obvious when it finally hits him. “You don’t want me to go.”

It’s not like it’s a shock, but Harry’s been so amped up to get back to his normal college lifestyle that he hasn’t really given himself time to feel sad about leaving. Louis turns and gives him a confirmatory thumbs up, rolling his eyes like he’s about a year late to the realization.

“Louis,” he whines, hooking his arm around the back of his neck and kissing him behind the ear, wet and loud. Louis tries to shake him off, but there’s no real conviction behind it, and Harry keeps both arms wrapped around him as he presses his lips against his temple and his cheek and next to his eye, laughing.

“You’re slobbering on my face, you Great Dane,” Louis wrinkles his nose and swats him away, petulant and clearly dead-set on keeping his gaze straight forward, embarrassed by being called out. Harry clings to him, grinning, because Louis is even more endearing when he’s trying not to be.

“We’ve got three weeks, pal.”

“I know, bro.”

“So could you fucking kiss me back, already?”

The grin doesn’t leave Harry’s face, wide and infuriating and maybe a little too content given the topic at hand, but that’s the way he wants it. He’d rather make the most of the time that they have left rather than spending it being maudlin and putting distance between them sooner than what they have to.

Louis looks at him hard, like he’s suspicious of how happy Harry is, but it doesn’t stop him from kissing him anyway. Not much does -- not when Harry’s jealous or annoying or when it’s morning and he tries to squirm away because he hasn’t brushed his teeth yet.

One of his palms peeks out from from the sleeve of the hoodie, coming up to cup along the line of Harry’s jaw and keep him in place while their lips move together, slow until Harry stops smiling and actually kisses him with purpose.

“I have a confession to make,” Harry mumbles, inching them apart just enough so that he can lick over his full lips and lift his eyes up to set square on Louis’. He’s given a curious look in response, expectant as if Louis’ waiting for him to say something meaningful -- maybe back to the end of summer and Harry leaving.

“You’ve been carrying on a secret relationship with Jetski Man,” Louis supplies, earning himself a pinch to the waist as Harry laughs and shakes his head.

“No, that fucking bastard. What I was going to say was that...alright, you know how I may have laughed a little at your music on the drive over?”

“Well, not all of us have the same dedication to stalking Blogothèque as you do, Harry.”

“Aww, babe! You do listen to me after all.” A proud look spreads across Harry’s features and he brings both hands up to pinch at Louis’ cheeks like a grandmother. It’s a thing they do, always beating around the bush because the banter is so fluid between them and it’s not often either of them can tell a story or explain something without at least ten interjections and usually a kiss or two...sometimes three...when they feel the need.

“Would you come out with it already? I’m not getting any-- wait, no, I don’t like that expression. Just tell me.” Louis scrunches up his face and shoos Harry’s hands away from his face by lacing their fingers together instead and Harry squeezes, instinctively, feeling less playful all of a sudden, more steady and anchored.

“Alright, so. I may have poked fun at your music choices, but I actually went and saw The Script in the city my senior year. Was a really good gig.”

Something flickers across Louis’ face and he sits up straighter, eyebrows furrowing inward like he’s trying hard to concentrate as he counts something on his fingers. “Your senior year...so that would have been, what, 2009?”

Harry nods his confirmation, confused at why Louis is so hung up on that particular detail.

“You’re shitting me. I was at that same show!”

Louis is clearly thrilled by the idea, and Harry feels it, too -- that they could have been a few rows away, listening to the same band without any idea that they would end up in each other’s lives in any other capacity. Harry’s always found it strange that they both grew up in South Orange and never crossed paths, but the thought that they were somehow destined to meet feels comforting, like it helps makes sense of the whys and hows of them fitting into each others’ lives so effortlessly.

“I love that kind of stuff,” Louis murmurs. “And now I know why you knew all the words in the car.”

Harry wrinkles his nose. “I’m guessing you weren’t at the Vampire Weekend show that same year, though, were you?”

“Hey, fuck you,” Louis laughs. “I was in college, probably getting drunk while the bouncer was drawing an X on your 14 year old hand.”

If he wasn’t so funny Harry might take offense to Louis’ constant digs, but he just leans in and catches his bottom lip between his teeth, pinning it until Louis pinches his sides again.

“Did you look this good in 2009?” Harry asks, almost resentful, because he’s still begrudgingly besotted with Louis no matter how pesky he is.

“I had longer hair...wore a lot of stripes.”

“So yes,” Harry confirms.

“Wouldn’t have known what to do with you, though,” Louis says, his voice a murmur against Harry’s lips. The kiss turns breathless in a matter of seconds and it always seems to be that way, with Louis; there’s rarely ever a slow burn, just a sudden rush of need and want that Harry can’t articulate.

“What about now?” he asks, pulling back to trace his thumb over Louis’ bottom lip.

“Yeah,” Louis breathes, “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

Harry’s kissed more people than he can count. It’s not a humble brag, and he’s never cocky when he admits it, it’s just the truth, but he’s never wanted to eat up every kiss as slowly and deliberately as he does with Louis. They just fit: Harry’s hands are sized perfectly to squeeze the sinful curve of Louis’ waist, and Louis’ fingers twist in Harry’s hair like they were meant for it, and when Louis climbs onto Harry’s lap, he’s almost weightless.

The fire is close to dying when Harry gets to his feet and walks Louis back toward the tent, and there’s a mess of food that needs to be cleaned up, too, but Louis’ fingers are hanging on the waistband of Harry’s swim trunks and he’s already too caught up to care about anything other than getting Louis even closer.

Louis stops in front of the tent, letting go of Harry to unzip the flap and hesitating to actually slip inside. “Three weeks, you said?”

Harry pauses mid-step, having been ready to crowd up against Louis and nudge him along because he’s already so eager to get his hands on him, to ignore everything but how alone they are and the rustle and swoop of birds passing through the trees and how unfailingly good Louis’ body always feels under his touch.

“Three weeks,” he confirms, dipping his chin down in a single nod.

“Better hurry then.” Louis gives him a look that Harry has a hard time making sense of because it’s so wily and fox-like, but there’s a challenge there, too. Louis toes out of his beat-up Vans and slips inside, letting the flap fall back down behind him with the obvious expectation that Harry will follow.

He does, of course, only hanging back long enough to rid himself of his once white All-Stars and release the breath that he’s been holding in since Louis stopped him. Louis’ on him before he even has time to zip them in, edging up behind him and circling his arms around Harry’s middle while he presses warm kisses over the atlas of his spine. Harry drops his head forward, hair falling down in his face and eyes closing as he tries to commit the sensation to memory. He always has this odd feeling that Louis doesn’t just touch him for the physical response, but because he’s trying to communicate something to him.

“Come here.” Harry licks over his lips, turning around and walking himself backward until he can lie on the double layer of padding and sleeping bags that they’ve laid out. Louis crawls over him, straddling Harry’s lap and leaning down over him with both hands braced at either side of Harry’s head.

When they kiss, Harry sets his hands on Louis’ waist and can’t stop himself from smiling until Louis calls him out on it, asking what is it right against Harry’s lips.

“We should have been doing this all Summer.” Both of Harry’s hands slide up the front of Louis’ body, over his soft belly and narrow waist and finally to clutch over his collarbones, feeling like he needs something to hold onto as Louis nudges their hips together tighter.

“What, making out in tents?”

“Making out,” Harry mumbles back, brows furrowing when Louis drags his lips away to suck at the skin below his jaw, marking it up until Harry makes a mental note to ask him to do it again when it gets closer to the time he leaves. He wants his body riddled with bites and bruises and scratches that he can take home with him, that he can watch gradually start to fade over the days that they’re apart.

“Tell me about it. Could have had a few more weeks of this if we weren’t such stubborn bastards.”

Louis sits up more on his lap, both hands on Harry’s sternum to keep his upper body in place as he starts to grind down on him, swiveling his hips. He has to feel Harry starting to get hard because he works them together a little more eagerly and the movement hoists him up a bit too much, making his head hit the top of the tent and eliciting an ow that’s more amused than pained.

They both laugh, only temporarily broken out of their spell as Harry runs his hand over the back of Louis’ head and snorts.

“Be careful, would you? I’ve made it twenty-two years without any sex related injuries happening on my watch.”

“Not one?” Louis scoffs. “What a boring sex life you lead.”

That’s all it takes, really, for Harry to grip Louis by the shoulders and flip him onto his back with ease, and the little breath Louis puffs out once he’s staring up at him is all the retaliation Harry needs. He quirks his eyebrow and frowns as he runs his hand up from the waistband of Louis’ shorts and under his t-shirt, splaying out his fingers over his chest and watching his expression.

“I’ve never been called boring, actually. Take this off,” Harry says, sounding almost thoughtful as he helps Louis get out of his shirt. “I got told I was decent, once. That was painful.”

“I’d say you’re adequate,” Louis mumbles, but his voice catches when Harry wedges his thigh between Louis’ legs.

“Thanks, babe,” Harry says, curling his hand around the back of Louis’ neck. He knows Louis well enough now to realize that often when he teases he means the exact opposite of what he’s saying, and it’s why neither of them can stop smirking as Louis leans up onto his palms to kiss Harry again.

After that it’s harder to talk because they tumble around like they’re not in a dark tent that sleeps two people, and it’s a wonder that the stakes keep it down at all after how many times they kick the vinyl sides of it. Louis is just so pliant underneath him and Harry can’t help taking advantage of how small he feels, though he does manage to flip them over eventually and attack Harry’s neck with his teeth while he presses the heel of his palm into his cock, making Harry hum against his lips.

Louis’ gone down on him a few times since they first started hooking up, but when he finally stops teasing and pushes Harry’s trunks down his thighs so that he can get his mouth on him, it’s with a greater urgency than Harry’s ever felt from him. He fists down his shaft and moans when he wets his lips and eases them over the head until the sound is obscene. He’s definitely, absolutely been plotting out all the ways he can reduce Harry to a panting mess, and it works.

Harry’s always been picky about getting head, rarely getting off that way alone and even finding it boring with the wrong person, but it’s so much different with Louis. There’s nothing mechanical about it; he’s not just going through the motions trying to get him off, he actually enjoys it and tells him as much.

“Been wanting to do this all day,” Louis mumbles as he pulls off with a wet pop, stroking down the length of him while he eases his tongue in a slow line along the underside and sucks lightly just below the crown until Harry’s hands stop fisting at the sleeping bag below him and curl desperately into Louis’ hair.

Harry’s so hard it’s almost painful, helped along by the fact that Louis makes him feel sexy and so incredibly wanted in the way that he touches him and the way his eyes flash when he catches Harry watching him, and it’s obvious that he wants him to keep staring.

“Fuck, just...” Harry gets out, and he wants to tell Louis not to stop, but he can’t because he knows Louis will take the direction to heart, that he won’t stop until Harry’s fucking up into his mouth and falling apart for him and he’s so far from ready for that. They have the privilege of being alone, far enough from everything that it feels like they’re in a different world and Harry can’t see them not taking advantage of it, not when they only have three weeks worth of Summer left to indulge in a cycle of firsts and repeats.

It feels like a tragedy stopping him when Louis’ lips are pink and swollen and glistening from spit and precome, but Harry forces himself to do it anyway, getting ahold of him by the biceps and urging him up so their lips can meet. Harry shivers, kissing him filthily -- sucking at Louis’ bottom lip and licking inside his mouth like he’s addicted to the taste the two of them create.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to do all day, too,” he whispers, opening his eyes and almost gasping when he sees Louis has done the same at almost the precise moment. It’s no surprise with the way that they tend to mirror one another, but seeing his eyes that close unfailingly makes Harry’s heart feel like its in his throat.

“Gonna tell me or do I have to guess?”

“Might be fun,” Harry teases, bringing one of his hands between their bodies and taking hold of Louis’ cock, stroking him lazily while Louis looks at him like he’s trying to decipher whether or not Harry means it.

Louis switches their positions again, rolling onto his back and pulling Harry down between his legs, folding his knees up on either side of him. He rests both arms above his head and raises his eyebrows curiously, speaking to him like he’s throwing out suggestions for a grocery list rather than what Harry wants to do to him.  “I think you wanna fuck me.”

Leaning down over Louis, Harry sets a series of kisses over his collarbones and then looks up at him to shake his head. “Course I do, but that’s not it.”

Louis comes up with several more guesses, mostly ones that make Harry laugh and a few that make him blush, too. “Am I even getting warmer?”

“Not really,” he smirks, tugging down Louis’ shorts and boxers. He kisses the inside of Louis’ thigh and then drapes his leg over his shoulder. “Just let me, for a minute, I just want...”

Louis lies back after that, and he tangles his fingers into Harry’s hair, probably expecting Harry to start sucking him off, but there’s an audible gasp when Harry bypasses his cock altogether and spreads him wide with his palms. He has to know what’s coming and he stays impressively still as Harry breathes hotly over his hole, only whining when he brushes his lips over it and immediately draws back.

“Fucking tease,” Louis mumbles, and Harry sinks his teeth into the inside of Louis’ thigh, making him keen for more.

“It’s dark, okay, I can barely even--” He reaches out with his fingertips to find it again, going back at it hungrily with his mouth and making Louis cry out once he gets there. He keeps his thumb alongside his tongue, using his other hand to massage the inside of Louis’ thigh. He wishes he could look up and see his face, but the tent is too dark and he has no fucking clue where the flashlight is, and he fights the strong urge to laugh.

He’s obsessed with the little noises Louis makes underneath him, can’t get enough of the way he tenses up and then just lets himself love it, relaxing every muscle so Harry can dip his tongue inside of him until he actually whimpers.

Louis reaches down to palm at his cock and Harry covers his hand with his own, pressing a final kiss before he licks his way up the underside of his cock and then gets to his hands and knees on top of Louis, out of breath and so beyond ready to just destroy him that he can barely stand it.

“D’you wanna?” Louis asks, and Harry nods, breathless.

“We need to find it, though, I know I packed everything...”

The mood is almost comically frantic as they look around for their bags. Louis flicks on the lantern, sending an odd, unhelpful glow around the tent, but it’s bright enough to see Louis’ cock flushed pink and hard against his belly, and Harry growls out an involuntary noise as he continues to throw out every item of clothing in his bag, finally getting his hand on a box of condoms and the bottle of lube he stupidly packed at the very bottom.

“Should I hold up the lantern the whole time?” Louis asks, and Harry cackles as he dumps some lube onto his fingers -- too much, really, their sleeping bags are gonna be a mess -- and everything stops being giggle-worthy the second Louis lies back and Harry presses his middle finger into him.

He makes quick work of it -- probably too quick, but Louis tells him again and again that he’ll be fine, that he just wants him, and Harry isn’t one to deny those sorts of orders. He gets the condom on and tries for a minute to squeeze out more lube before he realizes the cap isn’t off.

Harry isn’t sure how it’s possible to laugh so hard while being so turned on he can hardly see straight, but he finally gets himself together and leans over Louis, licking a stripe up the side of his neck and telling him to shut up because Louis is still laughing. Unsurprisingly, it only makes Harry want him more, because his narrow shaking shoulders and his wide grin over his sharp little teeth are more endearing than he can endure.

He places a kiss against the side of Louis’ neck. “Okay?” he murmurs.

“Yeah, just--” Louis whispers, pressing his hand into Harry’s lower back, and Harry slides in, slow, because Louis is so hot and tight he can’t do much more than nudge himself at first. They build a gradual rhythm until Louis wraps his ankles around Harry’s waist and clenches around him, whispering into Harry’s ear until he fucks into him harder.

The trapped heat in the tent is dizzying. Harry’s eyes are wide open and he can just barely see the sheen of sweat across Louis’ forehead and his collarbone. He wants to taste, so he does, sucking the side of his neck as he fucks into him, Louis lifting his hips to him every time they collide.

It should feel strange being where they are, but it’s the carelessness that makes it even more of a thrill, like if someone were to stumble through their campsite on the way to their own, Harry probably wouldn’t have even stopped, only rolling his hips forward harder so Louis would cry out and whoever it was could hear just how his he was.

Even without anyone around, he wants to elicit that reaction and and so he guides Louis’ legs up higher, urging at him until his heels are digging into Harry’s back and their movements are so steady and rough that Harry feels like he’s moving on auto-pilot. Even a slight change in angle must come as a shock to Louis because he cries out, pushing his back up off the sleeping bag like he’s trying to curl himself into the feeling.

“Harry... Harry, c’mon, need--” he gets out, breathlessly, knowing they’re already far enough gone that Harry will oblige him without too much teasing -- and Harry does, pressing a hand down on his sternum to ease his body down flat again before he circles a loose fist around his cock and starts to stroke him.

Every time his thumb eases over the slit, Louis’ muscles contract, holding him in so tight and deep that Harry can’t do anything but succumb to the feeling of being worked like that. “Are you almost there, babe? Gonna come for me?” He draws his hips back just enough so that he can press back in one fluid motion.

Louis doesn’t have to give his confirmation because he grits out, “Don’t stop,” on the tail end of a loud moan, and Harry can feel it right as it hits.

Somehow it’s even more intense because he can’t see Louis’ face as he comes -- can’t see the way his lips part and his adam’s apple bobs in his throat or how he fists at his own hair as he tries to work through it. All he can do is feel Louis’ muscles spasming around him and the way his legs tighten to keep him in, to keep him still as he tries to ride it out.

Even without the visual, the absolute desperation that he can feel under his touch and hear in the way Louis cries out his name is enough to bring him to that same place, making him feel like he’s spiraling, helpless to do anything other than lose control.

“Fuck,” he chokes out after he’s spilled inside the condom, his body slumping down against Louis’ because he feels physically incapable of holding himself up any longer and Louis’ knees around his waist feel welcome to just cradle him in.

Louis brings one of his hands up, tangling it in the back of Harry’s hair and guiding his face down to nuzzle between his neck and shoulder. Harry breathes there, surrounded by Louis’ scent and his arms and the feelings that he’s learned he can’t control and just Louis. He feels utterly consumed by him.

“So good, Harry.” Louis’ voice comes out weak and high and far sexier than it has any right to and it’s enough to finally encourage Harry to actually lift his head, dropping their foreheads together gently, unsurprised when he finds Louis staring back at him.

His eyes seem almost glow in the dark, shining in an incomprehensible way, a way that’s so unnervingly beautiful that it’s almost enough to make Harry say things that he knows he shouldn’t...promises and praise that would probably sound a little more like worship when he feels that awestruck.

As a last ditch effort to stop himself, Harry carefully draws out, kissing Louis’ lips when he notices the wince the follows and, after tying off the condom and placing it carefully near the edge of the tent, he eases them both onto their sides.

Louis’ relaxed and pliable, following his lead and slipping one of his legs between Harry’s while they form their bodies together like puzzle pieces.

“Incredible.” Harry finally settles on that, nosing against Louis’ cheek and setting a kiss there before allowing himself to relax. The way that Louis walks his fingers up his side is helping, and Harry feels grateful that he just seems to understand, that he never seems to expect them to be different after and that he doesn’t wait for words that are particularly profound or defining.

“I’s quite possible that we’re going to be attacked by bears,” Louis says, finally, voice still a bit hoarse.

Harry laughs, even though Louis actually has a point. All their food is strewn out around the remnants of the fire, and he can vaguely remember his mom telling him about an overabundance of bears the previous winter that had sent the whole area into an uproar.

“I should probably go out and hang up the food,” he sighs, rolling onto his back and stretching his arms out in front of him.

“At least put on your trunks first so a hunter doesn’t mistake you for a shaved Sasquatch and try to shoot you,” Louis grins, reaching over and patting him on the chest. Harry catches his hand before he can get away, laughing and going in to pinch the narrow dip of his waist.

“You’re hilarious,” he smirks, aiming in the dark to try to kiss him and narrowly missing his lips, getting his chin instead.

“Go fend off the bears, Squatch. You’re one of them, they’ll take kindly to you.”

“Fuck off, please, Louis,” Harry says politely.

In his haste to scramble away before Louis can retaliate, Harry clambers to his feet, completely forgetting that he’s a good seven inches taller than the tent. He trips over Louis when his head hits the pole at the top and falls into the side of the tent.

It all happens very quickly, and the result is unfortunate: the tent collapses.

Not all at once, exactly, but the center pole comes apart from one at the corner and Harry feels like he’s wearing a poncho, the way it drapes over his shoulders. Louis is laughing maniacally and unhelpfully on the floor of the tent.

“Could you fucking help me?” Harry laughs, reaching his arms up to create some distance between his body and the vinyl fabric.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Louis wheezes, and Harry can see him roll onto his side to reach for the lantern, and when he gets to his feet and holds it between them, they can see just how bad it actually is, and it becomes that much funnier.

Harry laughs so hard he can’t hold his arms up anymore and the tent just falls over them both as they collapse into a giggle fit that goes on for several minutes, both of them looking around helplessly and clutching their stomachs.

“Okay, stop, stop.” Louis holds out his hand, attempting to compose himself. “My cheeks hurt, fuck.”

“How the fuck did that happen?” Harry gasps, poking up his arm again and reaching for the zipper. Louis follows him out and then they’re both standing outside of their collapsed tent, completely naked, holding the world’s shittiest lantern.

“I swear to god, Harry, if I get a mosquito bite on my ass,” Louis warns, his tone anything but hostile.

“Hey, don’t blame me,” he says as he reaches for the center pole and hooks it back into the corner. “That’s good eatin’, right there.”

He turns and smacks Louis’ ass, for emphasis, and Louis tries and fails to look bothered about it.

As it turns out, they both wind up with bug bites in uncomfortable places by the time everything is back in order. Once he can get inside, Harry pulls on a pair of boxers and does his best to clean up the site will Louis takes the helpful route and steals the box of graham crackers. When Harry finds him he’s stretched out his tan little body amongst the mess of sleeping bags and pillows, looking practically luxurious. They don’t talk about Harry’s inevitable departure for the rest of the night, and they spend their time doing things they’re good at: eating cookies and scratching each others’ itches and making dick shadow puppets with their arms.

Every year, the last few weeks of August drag on too long, subjecting everyone in the Midatlantic coast to weather too muggy and hot to be considered enjoyable. Typically, Louis can’t wait for the weather to break, can’t wait for September so he doesn’t have to worry about sweating the second he walks out of his apartment, but for the first time since he was in grade school, he really, really, doesn’t want August to end.

He doesn’t really talk about it, though. Harry is excited to get back to California, but he’s also determined to squeeze in as much time with Louis as he can before he leaves. Despite the pesky cloud hanging over them no matter where they go, they actually have a lot of fun in those last two weeks.

They finally take Charlotte to Field Station Dinosaurs like they promised, and her and Miles take about a dozen pictures each with the life sized T-Rex. Harry takes turns hoisting them up on his shoulders so that they can see the pterodactyl replica more clearly. The four of them sit in the tiny movie theater wearing cheap 3D glasses, and the oohs and ahhs come more from Harry than from any of the kids.

Louis invites Harry back to his apartment, after. Strangely, it’s the first and only time he’s been there all summer, and he spends twenty minutes cackling fondly over all the embarrassing pictures on Louis’ walls -- of him and Zayn and his best friend from elementary school, Stan. He marvels over all the bad haircuts and even worse fashion choices until Louis gets ahold of him by the waist and drags him into the shower, where they do a mediocre job of washing off and Harry rips the shower curtain and almost falls over when Louis gets on his knees and sucks him within an inch of his life.

When there’s a breeze out on one of his Saturdays off, they take Harry’s Jag on a drive to South Jersey. They keep the top down, and while Harry drives, Louis tries to memorize the way his curls look being blown away from his face at 60 miles per hour on some nondescript country road.

It’s something that he does a lot of in the last handful of days that they have with one another -- he tries to learn the parts of Harry that he hasn’t already so that he’ll have a full picture in his mind when he thinks about him, when he inevitably cycles back to their summer together even as the leaves start to curl into hues of red and orange.

They listen to Counting Crows’ August and Everything After album as they go, because, well, it fits, and they both like it even if Louis feels like his heart is breaking when Harry’s brows furrow as he sings you catch me when I’m fallin’, you catch me if I’m fallin’, you catch me if I’m fallin’ down on you.

The only time that they pull over on their drive is when they happen upon a blueberry orchard with a sign that says PICK YOUR OWN - $5. They get out and pick blueberries from the bushes until their hands are stained and they have a whole stockpile to take back to the car.

The hood feels burning hot from being parked in the sun, but they get comfortable there anyway -- setting their feet on the bumper and looking out at the meticulous rows of crops they’ve just raided. Harry tosses blueberries into Louis’ mouth and says something to the effect of like at the beach, which makes Louis become so lost in thought that they miss the shot completely.

It’s too early, he thinks...too early to start reminiscing about things that they’ve done together, because it makes it feel like Harry’s gone already, like he’s not sitting thigh to thigh with him and looking more beautiful and sturdy than anything Louis’ ever seen in his life. It’s too much to think about the fact that he can soon he’ll go from tangible to intangible and there’s nothing that Louis can do about it.

That night, they go swimming at Harry’s place and the neighborhood feels quieter that it has in months. The stars are their only company as they swim laps across the pool, starting at opposite ends and meeting in the center each time for a kiss. When they get tired, Harry backs Louis up against the side and whispers that there’s no one in the world like him. Louis tries to say something back, but nothing comes out apart from a defeated gust of air and so he just curls his wet fingers into the back of Harry’s hair and presses his face right up against Harry’s throat until he forgets where Harry’s sudden bravery is coming from.

Harry’s leaving on a Sunday.

On Friday, he shows up at the Woods’ house hours earlier than he usually does. Louis has barely had time to settle in, only putting breakfast on the table for the twins and filling up the sink to give Annie a bath just as Harry comes through the door. He hadn’t expected to see him so soon in the day, and he’s caught off guard at his presence and at how chipper he looks hoisting himself up on the counter just as Louis eases Annie into the lukewarm water.

He’d tossed in a few of her rubber toys beforehand and she goes for the duck immediately, holding it up to Harry with a smile as she splashes around happily. He takes it from her, waving it in front of his face and making ridiculous quacking sounds that Louis would find far more endearing if he wasn’t in such a lackluster mood.

“Here early today,” he says lightly, cupping his hand around Annie’s forehead to shield her eyes as he pours a bit of water over her head. A few drops escape, sliding down her face and making her sneeze. He has to smile because she’s so, so precious, even when Louis doesn’t want to find anything remotely good about anything.

Harry smiles, too, and he reaches out with a single finger to wipe away the trails of water on her face while she holds out her hand for the duck.

“I know. I’ve got a bunch of errands to run later, but I wanted to ask you if you’d come to the airport with me on Sunday.”

There it is, Louis thinks. Even with all the reminders that Harry’s time in South Orange is nearing its end, none of it has felt final. He’s been waiting for a specific moment that it would really sink in and despite having prepared himself, it still sucks. Having to miss Harry Styles just feels like a fucking burden, and he hasn’t even left yet.

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

Annie squeals and holds up the duck, and Louis bends down so she can touch it to his nose. He makes a honking sound and looks offended by it, and she giggles and so does Harry and it’s really tough to remain morose when he’s surrounded by two cute people laughing their heads off.

Louis has his arms elbow deep in warm water, but there’s an errant lock of hair on his forehead and tries to use his shoulder to push it back. Harry notices and reaches over, pushing it away from his eyes, and Louis sighs.

“How are you getting there?” he asks, keeping an eye on Annie so she doesn’t try to eat the bubbles. She’s using her legs as best she can, standing up, wriggling around, splashing him in the chest -- he forgets how mobile she is now, and she seems dead set on trying to scramble right out of the sink.

“I dunno, yet. I was gonna say my mom, but.”

Louis glances over at him, and shrugs his shoulder. “I’ll drive you.”

“Yeah?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? Unless you want your mom to do it.”

Louis swallows. He doesn’t mean to sound so shitty with Harry, especially since he’s genuinely trying to do something nice for him, but it happens anyway.

Harry shakes his head and bites his lip, his gaze steady on Louis. “No, I want you to.”

Louis turns the water back on so he can rinse the suds from Annie’s arms and belly, then lifts her out of the sink. Harry’s hops off of the counter and he’s there with her soft little towel, holding it out so he can cradle her up as Louis takes the edges of it and wipes her arms down.

There’s no use in trying for a subject change because Louis can’t really think of anything other than that fucking scene from Armageddon, and he wants to drown himself in Annie’s bathwater for even considering it, so he just talks.

“Did you pack everything yet?”

Harry curls Annie closer to him and they start walking toward her nursery. “Not yet. Feel like helping?” He grins back at him.

“You want me to help? I can barely do my own laundry.”

“It’s for moral support, Louis. You can watch.”

Louis snorts. “Done that before.”

Harry’s mouth falls open and Louis smirks as he walks past him, happy to have rendered him speechless. He holds out his arms and makes grabby hands for Annie, then lowers her wiggling little body down onto the changing table and coos at her while he fixes her diaper and puts her in a clean onesie.

Having finished up his breakfast, Miles hops down from his chair and runs out of the room so quickly that three sets of eyes curiously follow his direction until he disappears from their view entirely.

He returns a minute later, holding a card that’s almost bigger than his little chest. Standing in front of Harry, he thrusts it out toward him expectantly until Harry’s eyes widen and he points at himself, asking, “This is for me?”

“We made it for you to take back to California,” Miles explains.

Louis looks down, eyes fixated on Annie as he gently towels off her hair, staying suspiciously quiet while Harry looks at the homemade card.

He already knows what’s on it -- a drawing of the five of them amidst various friendly looking dinosaurs (courtesy of Charlotte), a lengthy note about all the fun things they did together throughout the summer (courtesy of Miles), and even a little handprint that Louis had helped the twins with so that Annie could be included, too.

They’d asked Louis to sign it last, and he’d heavily considered writing a long, sappy testament to all the stupidly wonderful things Harry has made him feel throughout the last three months...possibly with some Keats interspersed. He couldn’t reduce himself to that level, though, and in the end he just scrawled out a bunch of inside jokes: imagine how much..., hi!, HAIR, quirky, Jetski, tumbleweed.

It’s a bit like something he would have written in someone’s yearbook in high-school and none of it would make a lick of sense to anyone else, but Harry would get it and Louis had anticipated the exact smile that curves its way onto his lips just then.

He almost looks like he’s going to cry, but he doesn’t -- thankfully. Instead he just passes a look toward Louis and then kneels down with his arms open wide for Miles and Charlotte to run into.

“Thanks for this, guys. I’m gonna hang it up in my apartment first thing.”

After Louis puts Annie down for a nap and the twins become immersed in an episode of Phineas & Ferb, they slip into kitchen under the guise of cleaning up the left-over breakfast mess. They barely even get the dishwasher open before Harry backs Louis up against the refridgerator and kisses him so slow and purposeful that Louis can’t bring himself to care that he feels magnets and all of Liz’s shopping lists digging into him.

“I’ve gotten so used to kissing you, it’s gonna be weird not being able to,” Harry mumbles, cradling his face in both hands and looking hard into Louis’ eyes when he pulls back.

“Oh, he’s used to me. How romantic,” Louis scoffs, hitting Harry’s chest, feeling breathless and a little overwhelmed.

“You know what I mean.”

Louis does know what he means and it’s so frustrating that he can’t even begin to articulate it, huffing out a helpless sound and fisting harder at Harry’s shirt, almost stretching out the fabric.

“When do you have to get to your errands?”

Harry licks over his lips, moving his hands down to Louis’ neck and holding him there while he sets kisses along his jaw and against his cheek and his forehead and everywhere, like he’s trying not to leave any inch of his face untouched. “Not for another hour or so, why?”

Louis lets go of his hold on Harry’s shirt and his hands fall to his biceps, dragging his nails downward as he guides both of Harry’s arms tighter around him until he’s all but forcing Harry to hold him. He presses his face in the curve of Harry’s neck and shoulder, closing his eyes as he takes in what it’s like to have Harry’s strong arms keeping him in and the way he smells -- so familiar to him now that he has the strange sense that he’s going to be homesick without it, even though he’s not the one leaving.

“I’m just not ready for you to go.”

The minute they get in the car on Sunday, John Fucking Denver comes on the stereo. He’s leaving on a jet plane, and doesn’t know when he’s going to be back again, and Louis will drive right off the road if he has to listen to more than ten seconds of it. Harry laughs, but Louis punches the radio like it’s done him a personal offense, because it has.

“We are not listening to that song,” he says, forcing a grin.

Harry has his neck craned to look back at his parents’ house as they head down the street, and Louis sees it at as sentimental even if Harry looks back at him a second later, more excited than anything.

“So we have to drive in silence, then?” Harry digs through the center console for some scratched up old mixed CDs, the ones they listened to on their drive up to the camp ground. He chooses one at random, apparently satisfied when The Killers start playing softly.

It’s better than silence, anyway. Louis almost wants Harry to leave, just so he can shed the sense of dread that’s been hanging over him for the last two days.

On Saturday he “helped” Harry pack; or, he sat with his legs tucked under him on the bed and begrudgingly folded Harry’s t-shirts into a neat pile for him to stuff into his suitcase. As he filled it up, the pool house emptied out, and by eleven they were sitting amongst three pieces of luggage, an empty pizza box, and an empty six pack.

Neither of them got drunk, but it took the edge off, and it wasn’t until midnight that Harry suggested they get some sleep because his flight left at eight which meant they had to be up by five.

Louis agreed, but he knew even as they turned off the light that it would be at least another hour before they went to sleep, and he was right; they spent a while just kissing, kissing like there was no end point to it, but Louis slipped two fingers underneath that ugly bracelet Harry had bought on the boardwalk and they just kind of fell into each other after that, the memories of that day enough to make him desperate for just one more thing to remember.

It felt a thorough goodbye, at least, if fucking Harry into oblivion counted for anything. Harry was practically begging for it after Louis scattered hickies across his chest, relentless and possibly overkill as bruise after bruise flowered up against his pale skin. Harry whined into his mouth, murmuring a please, but his words were so quiet that Louis made him repeat it again and then one more time, just wanting to hear him ask for it, wanting to remember the way Harry’s voice sounded when he asked to be fucked, and the way it strained when he asked one more time, louder, at Louis’ insistence.

He wouldn’t forget it, the way Harry looked staring up at him, the way his face twisted and contorted and the way he kept begging even as Louis thrust into him, like nothing would be enough, like he didn’t even know what he was asking for anymore, but Louis wanted to give it all to him.

They stayed awake until 2:30, and Louis got a whole two hours’ sleep, which was two more than he’d expected.

It all happened five hours ago, but it seems like a year-old dream as they merge onto 78. It’s so fucking early and the airport is a devastatingly short twenty minute drive away. He lets Harry chat through most of the drive, listens to him talk about how he’ll need to go food shopping once he’s there, about how Niall is throwing a welcome home get together.

Louis just listens and nods accordingly, even manages a smile here and there, because if Harry’s excited then he can be excited, too. Except he can’t, because he’s going to go back to his normal life, and he’s going to need to readjust to normal life as it was before Harry, and that’s an awful lot to swallow.

The final minutes of the drive are spent trying to figure out parking, and despite the clear roads on the way over, the airport is, of course, packed with cars.

Eventually Louis parks the Jeep and his hands shake when he opens the back. Harry’s already at his side, but if he notices, he doesn’t make a point to say so. He hoists two of his suitcases out and smiles his thanks when Louis reaches for the last.

It feels like the point where they should be saying things to one another, condensing all their final thoughts like it might change the outcome or at least make things feel even just the slightest bit easier. It doesn’t work that way, though, and Louis tells himself repeatedly to just be an adult about it. People come in and out of each other’s lives all the time to the point where they’re interchangeable and no one really leaves a mark.

The thing is, Harry has. With all his kisses and his pretentious music and morning breath and his ridiculously big heart, he managed to penetrate any amount of resistance that Louis had. He made it so good that Louis never once bothered trying to deny himself.

Even when Harry touches down on California soil and goes back to his classes and friends and all the other lovers that he’ll inevitably have, Louis knows that he’ll still think about him and wonder if Harry’s mind goes back to him even half as much. He’ll convince himself that no, it couldn’t possibly.

Louis waits around while Harry checks his bags, feeling out of place as he watches businessmen looking bored in line and a mom trying to keep her kids from wandering off through the airport. He’s always hated airports when he’s not the one going somewhere, when he’s the one being left behind and he’s just there to say goodbye.

When Harry’s finished, he finds Louis standing off near the back of the line and immediately links their fingers together, giving his palm a squeeze, making Louis wonder if it’s written all over his face exactly much he’d been needing it.

They walk toward the security gate, taking their time. Louis’ doesn’t feel like waiting around with him until the very last minute because even though a big part of him wants to sap out every second that they can together, it just feels like prolonging the inevitable.

“Well, I guess this is the point in time where I start singing End of the Road by Boyz II Men to you,” Louis says, though he’s not laughing or animated. It’s just...easier that way, to keep it light.

Harry smiles, scratching at the back of his neck and looking down at his feet like he doesn’t quite know how to proceed. Louis understands -- he doubts there’s any real protocol for their particular situation.

“Are you gonna miss me?” Harry asks, reaching for Louis’ other hand, too, and just holding onto them both while he studies his face.

The attention feels like too much when he’s already balancing on such a fragile plain just trying to keep it together and Louis nods slowly, trying to keep the bitterness out of his eyes as he works up the courage to meet Harry’s eyes again.

“Yeah, I’m gonna miss you, babe,” Louis whispers, feeling his breath catch because god, no, he wasn’t ready for this at all and all those moments of realization and acceptance that were supposed to prepare him had been a fucking joke.

Harry looks surprisingly sturdy, like he’s not on the verge of losing it the way that Louis is, but he still pulls Louis in and holds him crushingly against his chest, cradling the back of his head as Louis tucks his face against his shoulder.

“We’ll still talk a lot. I wanna hear everything about the kids and your dream job when you find it. Cause you will.”

“Shut up, Harry,” Louis mumbles, holding onto Harry’s shoulders for support and standing up on his tiptoes to kiss him. It’s not deep or particularly intense; it’s chaste, a sweet brush of their lips together before Louis lets go and takes a single step back, as close to resolved as he’ll ever be.

“You should get going. I need to go home and try to catch a few more hours of sleep.”

It’s a flimsy excuse, but he hates seeing Harry in front of him, hates seeing him in the airport, hates that he’s leaving in the first place, hates that he’s excited to leave. Louis knows once he watches Harry’s back retreat through the security checkpoint that he can at least get used to him being gone, and he wants to get a head start on it.

“Yeah,” Harry says, adjusting the strap of his bag over his shoulder and pulling out the boarding pass from his pocket. “Uh, I’ll text you when I land, okay?”

Louis murmurs his assent and folds his arms over his chest. He gets one last look at Harry, taking him in from head to toe -- his too-tight black jeans, his pigeon toes, his loose white t-shirt, his green, green eyes. He’s idly fingering his ugly ‘Louis’ bracelet bracelet, and at that, he has to look away. Harry seems fine, albeit a little sleepy, but Louis’ composure feels like it’s about ten seconds from breaking, and he has to get out of there before it actually does.

“Alright,” Louis says, resolved, backing up. “Have a safe flight, pal.”

Harry laughs softly, nodding. “Thanks, dude.”

He taps his board pass against his palm a couple of times, and Louis actually wants him to leave, but Harry eventually just makes a strangled noise and licks his lips.

“One more.” He takes a step toward Louis and kisses him, far less chaste this time, long enough to make Louis’ heart thud in his chest when he pulls away. The look in Harry’s eyes is unreadable, and the smile he wears doesn’t quite match it.

“Okay,” he mumbles. “Bye, Louis.”

And Louis doesn’t wait to see him through security, he just turns around and heads straight out, because watching Harry stalk through the crowd of people will just be a reminder that he’s definitely the most beautiful person in the entire airport and he really doesn’t need another reason to feel like shit.

The first three weeks after Harry returns to Santa Barbara are so busy with parties and book-buying and syllabi and catching up that it doesn’t entirely sink in that it’s his last year of college because there’s hardly any time to settle in let alone ponder the finality of it all.

And it’s not that he doesn’t think about Louis, it’s that he can’t bridge the gap between thinking about him and sending more than just a stray text when he wakes up in the morning. There’s not really any time to actively miss him because he’s always, always distracted by something else, whether it’s Niall drunkenly skidding around their kitchen floor in his underwear and socks or thirty people piling through the door all clad in fake mustaches.

There’s a pretty predictable cycle to fall into, and none of it leaves much time for sitting around and thinking fondly upon his summer like he’s Danny Zuko, or something. It’s pretty much just: wake up, go to class, take a nap, read for class, drink, stay up til four, sleep, repeat.

As the semester progresses, Harry’s aware that his schedule will involve a lot less socializing and a lot more falling asleep with his face in a book in the library, but the first month is always the most fun -- everyone seems to have changed just a little over the summer, but only in good ways, and the stories they swap are all still fresh and funny.

It pleases Harry that he and Niall have at least some shared memories over the summer, and that they involve Louis, too. No one asks much about him, but Harry’s gotten into a habit of having a few drinks and spouting off “stories” about Louis, which are really more just facts -- “Louis’ 1/16th Belgian,” he said one night, apropros of nothing, passing the bowl to his right after not one person reacted or seemed to care at all -- but aside from that, Louis’ name doesn’t come up much. There’s just so much else, so much happening at any given moment that there’s barely time to dwell on just one thing.

It almost never happens, and when it does, it’s not until he has a quiet mind in those few moments before he falls asleep at night; those are reserved for Louis.

It’s a Friday morning when he gets a call he’s been waiting for since he arrived back in Santa Barbara: his favorite tattoo artist has a cancellation that afternoon, and he can squeeze Harry in at the very last minute.

He skips his Chaucer seminar to go.

Before Harry left, Louis had been convinced that everything would feel different when he was gone, and he’s surprised to find that it’s not that way, really. There’s a definite gap in his days for the first couple weeks, and then life resumes its normal speed because what else can he do, really? No amount of pining is going to change their circumstances.

Charlotte and Miles start school, and Louis finds a job substitute teaching a few times a week. He still watches Annie on Thursdays and Fridays and picks the twins up from kindergarten at 3:00. They do most of the same things they did all summer -- going to the park, getting ice cream, playing silly games, and watching cartoons, and Louis tries not to think about the jokes Harry would crack or how he’d mimic the voices on the screen or any number of ways that he would just make everything that much better.

The kids make comments sometimes, to say they miss him or ask when he’s coming back. Louis just gives them generic answers, saying he’ll visit soon because he really doesn’t know what Harry’s plans for the future are. Any time they talked about it, Harry seemed to leave things completely open, and as far as Louis knows, he has no definite plan.

Even though it’s easy to fall back into a routine and keep himself busy, he still misses him. It hits him at the most inopportune moments, like when he’s grocery shopping for the Woods and gets stupidly emotional just putting bananas in the cart, or the day he does laundry and finds the cross country t-shirt Harry was wearing the first day they met, mixed in with all of Louis’ clothes. He casts a cursory glance around the laundry room and then takes a whiff of the collar, hoping for a whiff of something he can no longer smell.

The first couple days after Harry left, they texted almost non-stop, from the second he touched down in California all the way to falling asleep on the second night. It’s not that it turned into radio silence after that, but the texts became less frequent, and now Louis really only anticipates a single text from Harry in the morning and maybe one at night, on a good day.

It’s not the most effective or fluid way to communicate, if it can even be called communication.

Harry’s busy, going pretty much non-stop from what Louis has gathered, and he tries not to take it personally, but it’s still rough. He winds up feeling guilty and shitty about himself for all the time he spends thinking about Harry and hoping to hear from him when he really doesn’t know if Harry’s doing the same.

The only thing that comforts him is that he knows Harry will be gone for long enough for the sting to die down eventually. It has to.

He’s caught off guard on Friday night when he gets a text in the midst of dealing with a burnt lasagna mess after attempting to make himself dinner. It’s an uncharacteristic time to hear from Harry, and Louis raises his eyebrows at the screen, like he’s waiting for the words to vanish or to actually be from someone else.

hey, are you busy? come on skype!!! i want to show you something..

Louis sighs, reading the message at least five times while pinching at the bridge of his nose, hating the fact that he feels any anxiety at all about what to say back to him when not even a month ago they could have said anything to each other without a second thought.

It’s best to keep it light, though, so he settles on a joke rather than a question.

i’ve already seen your dick harry

He can imagine Harry laughing, all big and tickled like an overgrown five year old, in his apartment -- his home -- that Louis’ never been to; probably won’t ever go to.

excuse me louis, i am not that kind of boy. sign on come on i’m waiting!!!

Bullshit, Louis thinks, he is exactly that kind of boy. He bites his lip, trying not to grin, and starts hacking at the edges of the pan with the spatula, doing his best to salvage at least some of the lasagna even though his appetite vanished the second Harry’s name flashed on the screen. It’s somewhat therapeutic to take his frustrations out on his failed recipe, but he’s too distracted now. The mere idea of seeing Harry has his stomach in knots.

He drops the spatula down onto the counter, wipes his hand on a towel, and flips open his laptop on the kitchen table. While Skype opens, he runs into the living room to look at himself in the mirror, fixing his hair to the side and wondering whether or not he should feel embarrassed that he’s wearing Harry’s old cross country t-shirt.

Fuck it, he thinks, and jogs back into the kitchen, where he’s got a call waiting on screen from Harry_Styles.

Shit. He’s nervous, and he hates it. He wipes his palms on his thighs and lets it ring one more time before he answers and there’s a moment of silence where they’re waiting to connect, and Louis adjusts his screen to get a better angle.

“Can you see me?” he asks, frowning at the screen. Harry’s window is black, but he can hear his voice, and Louis breaks into a wide grin, so fucking happy just to hear him.

“Yeah, I can see you,” he says, and Louis can hear the smile in his voice. “Can you see me?”

For a second his window is still a black square, but then -- yeah. He can see him.

Fuck.

Their eyes meet and Louis scrunches his face up, trying to hold back his smile until it physically hurts, and then he just lets it break. “Hi,” he says, waves.

“Hiii,” Harry drawls, his expression going soft, and god fucking damnit this was a terrible idea, awful, the worst, because he looks so touchable and he’s just -- Louis can’t. He’s three thousand miles away.

Harry’s in a thin white t-shirt with a scooped neck and the sleeves rolled up. It’s still daylight in California, and the sun must be just about to set because the light in the room is golden, bright enough to see him perfectly.

As if on cue, they both start to laugh, maybe a bit nervously on Louis’ end, maybe just because it feels so good to see each other smile again, to hear Harry’s big laugh.

“So,” Louis says, expectant.

“Did you cook?” Harry asks, peering closer to the screen. Louis looks over his shoulder at the pan full of burnt lasagna, just visible on the counter behind him.

“I tried,” he frowns, and Harry snickers. “I was about to eat when you texted me.”

“Right.” Harry waggles his eyebrows, which is never good. He’s so fucking -- he’s so, so good looking, like, Louis has almost forgotten how beautiful he is because he’s been trying not to look at his Instagram pictures, but he’s so stupidly hot and sure of himself and he’s looking at Louis with the look he likes to pretend is just for him, and it’s all really, really overwhelming after three weeks of nothing.

Nothing more than the vivid memories he’s been using to get himself off, at least. But other than that, nothing.

“Are you gonna tell me, or are you going to make me guess?”

“I’m gonna show you.” Harry gets to his feet and for a second Louis really thinks he’s going to whip out his dick, but he just backs up, standing far enough away so that Louis can see his thighs in skinny jeans and his entire torso and his mouth feels dry with how badly he can imagine just how it feels to touch him, letting every small detail he’s let slip come flooding back to him as Harry grins at the screen. “Are you ready?”

“Did you learn the Macarena, Harold? Is that what you’re about to do?” Louis asks, genuinely unsure if there could be any other option at this point.

Harry laughs and reaches for the hem of his t-shirt, and Louis thinks no, no, no, fuck no, please no, silently begs for him to stop -- but it’s off in seconds, and he throws it somewhere off camera.

Louis blinks. There’s a butterfly tattooed across the top of Harry’s ribs.

It must be brand new because it’s glistening and even from a distance Louis can see it’s tinged with red around the edges.

Harry puts his arms behind his back and clasps his hands there, standing with his legs together like a very nice, polite boy.

He smirks at the screen with a sort of knowing look that drives Louis absolutely insane because his pose is all faux-innocence, like he’s not aware of how absolutely maddeningly good it looks on him and in that spot.

“D’you like it?”

Louis glances at his own face on the screen, embarrassed when he sees how awestruck he looks, and then he turns his eyes back at Harry, at his perfect torso and his narrow hips and that fucking butterfly tattoo. Harry is still stood with both hands behind his back, like he’s waiting for approval, or to be praised, but Louis can’t even speak.

Without a second thought, he shuts his laptop and gets to his feet.

“Fuck,” he groans, and then he says it one more time, even louder, as he undoes his button fly and goes into the bathroom and gets himself off so quickly his head is spinning by the time he opens his eyes again, his mind riddled with images of Harry’s body existing in California.

He’s pink-cheeked and embarrassed when he looks in the mirror. He splashes cold water over his face after he washes his hands and then goes back into the kitchen, opens his laptop again. Not a minute later, there’s an incoming call from Harry.

“Sorry,” Louis says, once the screens are back up again. Harry’s sitting at his desk again, leaning one elbow onto the table and staring at him with such smug satisfaction that Louis has half a mind to hang up on him again. “Internet went out.”

“Oh.” Harry sounds nonchalant, and he appears to have fetched himself a snack while Louis had a mental breakdown and went to jerk off in the bathroom. He pops a grape into his mouth and then leans closer to the camera, his brows furrowed. “What’d you do when your internet went out, Louis?”

Asshole. “Put your shirt on, Harry.”

Harry grins wide and reaches for another grape, his jaw clenching when he chews. “I see you’re wearing mine.”

Louis looks down and huffs, because it’s adding insult to injury that Harry has the upper-hand on everything, and Louis is floundering in his own embarrassment and hormones and in Harry’s too-big ancient t-shirt.

“Leaving now,” Louis grumbles, and shuts his laptop again, obviously unequipped to deal with Harry because he just feels too angry by how good he looks and too frustrated that he can’t be there with him and even worse is that Harry knows it and he’s pretending like he doesn’t.

A half hour later, he’s face down on his bed, wondering if it’s possible to smother himself with a pillow, and his phone vibrates next to him. Louis knows without checking that it’s Harry, and he steels himself before he looks down at the lit-up screen.

btw you look so fucking good

Louis actually whines and rocks his hips into the mattress on instinct, because fuck. He squeezes the pillow so tightly his knuckles are white by the time he lets go, then picks up his phone and taps out a response.

of course i do

He buries his phone under the pillow, after that, and wishes for a fast and painful death in his sleep.

Just as Harry had predicted, all the parties and all nighters of September turned into hours spent meticulously going over papers and cramming for tests once October rolled around. His Comparative Literature mid-term alone was almost enough to make him want to drop out of college and relegate himself to spending the rest of his life on his parents’ couch, but he spent the entire time telling himself that if he could just power through then he’d have Halloween to look forward to, at least.

He’d even spent his breaks between studying planning out an elaborate costume. He bought an old fishing rod at a thrift store and a wide-brimmed hat to top it off. The expectation he has for his friends to pick up on the Hemingway Old Man and the Sea nod is minimal at best, but he thinks it’s genius.

That’s why it’s particularly crushing when Halloween finally rolls around and he winds up in his bed with a 104 degree fever, his costume turned into the not so old man and the sea of used tissues.

He’s hopeful that maybe Niall will stay in with him, maybe watch some horror flicks in the dark with a bowl of popcorn that Harry’s throat is far too wrecked to eat. Luck isn’t on his side, though, because Niall just asks, “Are you sure you’re not going to die, or something?” before practically bouncing out the front door in his Godzilla costume.

With every cough Harry feels more and more pathetic, and each time he has to wince as he swallows he whines a little, feeling sorry for himself. Remnants of his costume are lying around the living room and he stares at them wistfully, mourning the wasted opportunity and thinking about how much fun Niall is probably having while he sinks deeper and deeper into the couch after three episodes of Friends reruns.

After he prepares himself his fifth cup of honey-laden tea, Harry places it onto the coffee table and shivers his way back under the blankets on the sofa, then reaches for his phone. His Instagram feed is particularly depressing -- there are so, so many pictures of people looking ridiculous and having what looks like the best time ever, and Harry hates missing out on things, especially on one of the biggest party nights of the year.

It’s a little past eleven at night on the east coast and his mind inevitably wanders to Louis, curious what he’s doing and what he’s wearing and in a rather bitter moment he thinks maybe he’s just sitting in with the kids or taking them trick or treating. One more scroll down his feed, though, reveals the answers to both questions.

Louis has drawn-on sideburns and his hair’s coiffed up off his forehead, shiny with pomade. An unlit cigarette dangles from the side of his mouth and he glares at the camera, doing his very best cool-guy face, holding onto the lapels of his leather jacket. The caption under Liam’s photo reads greasee lighteinggg!!!

It’s fucked up, actually, because he’s a better looking Danny Zuko than the real Danny Zuko. Harry’s fever is the only excuse he has for calling Louis rather than texting him, and he realizes even as he hears the phone ring that whatever bar he’s at is probably too loud to facilitate a conversation, but he still wants to try.

The ringing stops and is replaced with loud bassy music and people talking over it, and then a more distinctly shouted, “Hello?”

“Louis.” His voice is so shot and it hurts to raise it any higher than a loud whisper. Harry huffs, frustrated and pathetic, and wonders if he should just hang up.

“Harry? I can’t hear you,” Louis bellows, “Hold on one second, okay?”

He waits. There’s more noise, and he can hear Louis excusing himself as he apparently battles a small crowd to get somewhere quiet. A door squeaks open and then the background noise drops out, and Harry reaches for his cup of tea and takes a fortifying sip.

“Hey,” Louis says, “You there?”

“Yeah, ‘m here.” Harry swallows and places his mug down with a shaky hand.

“What’s wrong?”

“What? I’m fine.”

“You sound like shit,” Louis says. “Are you okay? Are you...is that the Friends theme song?”

Harry groans, long and perhaps a little dramatic. It’s unusual for him to seek sympathy from anyone, really, but for some reason he really wants Louis to say something comforting, even if he knows it’s not fair to burden him with his own problems when he’s out having a fun time. “I’m sick,” he grumbles. “Fucking 104 degree fever.”

“Aw,” Louis drawls, his tone somewhere between serious and sarcastic. “Sorry, man, are you taking anything for it?”

“Well, yeah,” Harry pouts. “Tell me about your night, where are you?”

“Oh, we’re in Williamsburg. I forget the name of the place we are now, we just kind of stumbled in from another bar. Fuck-ton of people here, though. Some amazing costumes.” He draws out the word amazing long enough for Harry to realize he’s maybe a little tipsy, and it’s endearing as hell.

Harry clears his throat. “Saw you on Instagram.”

“Oh yeah?” Louis sounds excited. “What d’you think?”

“You look fucking hot,” Harry says flatly, like it’s obvious, because it is, and Louis has to know it or he wouldn’t have been smoldering at the camera like that.

“I bet you look great, too, Harry,” Louis laughs, teasing him, and Harry just grumbles, feeling hurt and annoyed and put-out because he’s missing out on everything he’d been excited for in the last month.

He misses Louis, and it kind of just happened all at once. Over the last two weeks he’s been too swamped to interact with him outside of an occasional text, and he’s reminded every time they do get a chance to talk that the way he feels toward him never quite ebbs the way he keeps expecting it to. The distance between them was just annoying at first, but after two months Harry can finally admit that he just fucking misses him, and it sucks.

It’s even less realistic than just magically feeling better, but what Harry really wants -- and he’s not expecting the weight of the sensation when it hit him -- is for Louis to just be there with him, even for a night, just to hang out and to tease him mercilessly and make him laugh until it hurts.

“Hey, don’t get like that.” There’s a second where Harry can hear Louis excuse himself out of the way of someone who must’ve just come into the bathroom, and then he speaks up again. “Why don’t you just try and go to sleep? And stop going on Instagram, you’re just gonna make yourself feel worse.”

“I know,” Harry mumbles, his face turned into the cushion of the couch, eyes shut. “Wish you were here.”

There’s a pause, and then Louis sighs. “Yeah.”

“Three weeks.”

“So, you’re coming home for Thanksgiving for sure, then?” Louis asks, almost like he’s been expecting Harry to bail out on the trip home.

Harry understands why Louis’ asking him that considering he’s complained about how much he hates flying during the holidays at least a dozen times to him throughout the past month, but it still sort of stings that he doesn’t even seem excited that they have a definite time in which they’ll be seeing each other. And, okay, maybe Louis doesn’t even have a tone to the way he says it, but Harry feels like shit and he’s quick to just hyperbolize the world being against him.

“I was always going to come home, Lou,” Harry grumbles, pushing his phone away from his mouth briefly to cough, feeling like a million tiny daggers have just pierced his lungs all at once.

“Okay. Well then, good. I know your family misses you already.”

It’s almost enough to make Harry end the call, maybe throw his phone across the room in some dramatic fit because Louis just sounds so nonchalant about everything and even if he’s drunk and even if they don’t wax poetic about how much they miss each other every time they speak, he wants to hear that Louis is the one who misses him and is anxiously waiting for him to come back.

Before Harry even has a chance to respond, he hears some rustling on the line like someone has just bumped into Louis and whoever it is must catch Louis’ attention because he can hear them speaking back and forth with one another and Harry just waits, dumbfounded that Louis seems to have actually forgotten the fact that he’s on the line.

The feeling that comes along with imagining Louis flirting with whoever he’s talking to is a thousand times worse than the jealousy he’d felt back at Point Pleasant because he’s at so much more of a disadvantage now. He has no claim over Louis and he’s not right there to try and get his attention back on him by being sexier or more witty than the other guy. It doesn’t feel like something he can win from across the country when someone is right in front of him, smiling and tangible and with the potential to be a lot more permanent in Louis’ life than Harry is.

He waits an entire five minutes, occasionally croaking out Louis’ name as loud as his throat will let him before finally giving up hope that he’ll hear him.

Feeling even more miserable than before, he ends the call, shooting a quick text for Louis to read whenever he finishes talking to whoever, the faceless person that he dislikes purely on principle because they can reach out and touch Louis and watch the way his eyes go a darker blue in the dim light of the bar, and he can’t.

gonna sleep. happy halloween

Harry doesn’t expect a text back, especially not as fast as it comes, and he takes in a painful breath to swipe his thumb over the lock screen and read the full message.

sorry didnt mean 2 bail on our convo. hard 2 talk in here but ill call tomorrow if not too hungover. have some chicken soup and pretend i made it for u. make sure it tastes like shit so its believable

It’s more of a response than he could have hoped for, but Harry had just really wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice because for some reason he’s started feeling the impact of being apart more than he has at any other point since leaving. Everything had been fine before, he hadn’t even been upset on the plane, but it all feels like it’s catching up to him at once and he doesn’t know how to hit the brakes and not make a fool of himself.

Harry hadn’t been looking for anyone like Louis to come into his life, but he had and he’d told himself repeatedly that it was alright, that they could have their summer together and it wouldn’t change anything else in his life.

Most days he still feels like that, but when he misses Louis, he really misses him.

He misses the way Louis looks when he’s up to his elbows in soapy water while he does the dishes and the way his aviators balance on the tip of his nose while he’s singing in the passenger seat and how he pretends not to be needy and the fact that he is in spite of that.

It was easy to ignore those things before because Harry has been so busy and he’s been enjoying the life that he’d already been used to before Louis Tomlinson was ever someone that he knew, someone that he’d laughed with and fucked and now someone that he missed, too.

Maybe it’s his fever or the realization that someone else is eventually going to fill up the gap he’s left in Louis’ life, but the fact that he can’t ignore it anymore almost makes him feel sicker than even his flu.

Dropping his phone, he thinks about making chicken soup just because it would probably feel good on his throat. Getting up from the couch requires effort that he can’t muster, though, and so he settles on watching teenagers hack each other up on the television, trying to focus on Ghostface rather than wallow in how abysmal he feels amidst his suddenly persistent and irrational jealousy.

Not much was traditional growing up in the Tomlinson household. After his dad left when Louis wasn’t even off of training wheels, Louis had done everything he could to help his mom get by, cracking jokes and trying to make her smile when he could tell that their situation was weighing on her. It was just the two of them against the world until she married Mark, and then his sisters started coming along. Even then, they still weren’t the most typical family unit, and they didn’t try to impress anyone or to play by any common rules.

Thanksgiving, though, has always been his mom’s favorite holiday, and every year she insists that it has to be carried out in the most idealistic, cinematic way possible.

Louis’ used to it -- the whole family has no other choice but to be, really -- but he still appreciates the novelty of walking into the house he grew up in and being overwhelmed by the smell of pies cooling on the counter and the turkey still in the oven. The dining room is decorated with a centerpiece that looks like it’s lifted from the cover of a Martha Stewart magazine, and knowing his mom, it probably is. It’s the kind of attention to detail that Louis took for granted when he was too young to care about much else than having days off from school and playing football with his friends before dinner, but he appreciates it now, the beauty and the ambiance and things that make him feel like an adult for even recognizing.

He watches the end of the Macy’s Parade and half of Miracle on 34th Street with his sisters, even though the VHS copy they have of it is ancient and crackly on the screen. Midway through, he rolls up sleeves of his white cable-knit sweater when he pops into the kitchen and dunks a roll into the gravy bubbling on the stove-top, and scuttles back into the living room to share with Phoebe.

“Hey,” his mom calls after him, poking her head into the living room. “Have you heard from Harry?”

It’s definitely not the question Louis was expecting, and it takes him a second to recover.

“Uh.”

It’s a little complicated to get into it, really, because the simple answer would be yes, that Harry arrived safely at the Newark airport at 11:46 last night, that he texted him as soon as he landed and told Louis he would see him after he had dessert on Thanksgiving.

But Louis’ not sure he can say any of that without launching into how he feels about it, how he’s going to jump out of his skin at the mere idea that Harry’s within driving distance and he hasn’t gotten his hands on him yet, about how he doesn’t even know how things will be between them since he hasn’t seen him since the end of August, when his skin was still tan and when he was, in a few ways, still just a little bit his.

On November first he called Harry as soon as he woke up, nursing a mild hangover and mostly a lot of regret that he’d let the call drop when Harry obviously needed someone to talk to. It wasn’t that Louis didn’t want to be that person, it was that he was afraid, really -- terrified of letting him see how badly he wanted to be the only one he called when he felt like shit, but he knew telling Harry only because he was vulnerable and because Louis was drunk wasn’t a good reason at all.

Things got easier as November progressed. Louis would never admit that he had a little countdown going in his head because it would mean he had his hopes up for something that’s never been a guarantee.

“He’s coming over after dessert, actually,” Louis answers, finally. “Is that cool?”

Jay smiles wide, nods. “Of course it is, honey.”

Louis kills time until dinner by watching football with his mom’s new boyfriend, Dan, and listening to Lottie go on about the quarterback at school that she’s apparently fallen madly in love with over the past few weeks. He does his brotherly duty by telling her that he’s too old for her, but he can’t help but find the way she goes dreamy-eyed as she talks about him more than a little endearing. Maybe he’s just going soft in his old age, or maybe it’s because he sort of feels the same way every time he looks at the old clock in the corner and remembers he’s going to be seeing Harry again in just a few hours.

Everything has been confusing between them since Harry left, but he feels like just having him back in front of him will smooth the tides, and maybe it’ll feel like he never left in the first place. It’s a far off hope, he knows, because they have to contend with the reality that Harry will be leaving again on Sunday, but he can’t let himself think that far ahead. He can’t immediately start thinking about saying goodbye again every time he has Harry back.

At dinner, the food is good enough to quell all the anxious feelings he’s been harnessing, and it feels nice, stuffing his belly and listening to his family go back and forth, catching each other up on their day-to-day and laughing about all the mishaps of previous Thanksgivings.

After seconds and dessert, Dan insists that he’ll clear the table so that Jay can kick her feet up and watch the John Hughes marathon that has the girls glued to the television. Louis joins them, flopping onto his back on the floor and drifting in and out of his food coma while Molly Ringwald wins over the most popular guy in school.

He must have been pretty far gone, because the next thing he’s conscious of is Fizzy slugging him in the shoulder and repeating his name.

“C’mon, what was that for?” Louis grumbles, not even bothering to open his eyes as he rubs over the same spot.

“Harry’s here.”

And it’s surreal, opening his eyes and seeing Harry standing there, looking down at him, smiling wide with his cheeks flushed from being out in the cold.

“Was starting to think you were dead,” Harry comments, reaching his hands out to loop around Louis’ wrists so that he can drag him upright. Louis doesn’t know how to process everything -- the fact that he’s back, and that nothing has changed about him upon first look, and that all he really wants is to pull him down over him and let Harry’s weight crush him into the couch.

It probably wouldn’t be the best idea with his entire family in the room, though. Louis gets to his feet and links his arms around Harry’s back, burying his face against his shoulder and not even speaking because he’s sure everything he wants to say would be too much.

Harry’s arms curve around Louis’ neck, holding him even tighter than he had at the airport. He’s close enough to hear his breath, to smell his cologne. It’s fleeting, but he brushes a kiss against Louis’ cheek that goes unnoticed by everyone besides Daisy, who giggles.

“You’re here,” Louis says dumbly, eyes scrunching up fondly as he smiles, the smile reserved for Harry that no one else can bring out of him.

“I’m here.” Harry grins, and he’s looking down at him so intently with that bordering-on-creepy Harry stare, and Louis is sure everyone else in the room must feel uncomfortable.

Someone clears their throat; Louis isn’t sure who.

“I’m gonna go to my room,” Lottie says, and she casts a final look at Louis as she pads into the hallway. Harry and Louis take up the space she left on the couch, wedging up against each other.

“How was Thanksgiving?” Harry asks, and it’s a mark of their mutual self control that both are capable of keeping up casual conversation at all. Harry is polite, he asks all the right questions, and Louis’ mom and Dan are clearly charmed by him as he tells all about how he had to sit across from his grandpa, who has no teeth and came close to ruining Harry’s appetite as he macerated his food. The conversation is light and easy, and Louis has to try very hard not to just stare at Harry as he speaks, but the warmth and weight of his body beside him and the vibrations from his deep voice are enough, for now.

Pretty in Pink ends, and the room empties rather abruptly, leaving Harry and Louis alone, finally, for the first time since August.

There’s plenty of space on the couch, but neither of them move. Louis turns to look at him, really lets himself just stare, and as if it wasn’t already abundantly clear, he’s really, really missed him. His stomach feels like it’s doing somersaults as their eyes meet; those heavily-filtered Instagram photos do no justice to the way he looks in person.

“Hi,” Harry says.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he repeats, and he cradles Louis’ face in his hands, leaning close to kiss him properly. Louis holds onto Harry’s wrists, encouraging him to keep his hands there, and wonders how he’s made it so long without this because even the first brush of their lips makes him feel stupidly, unreasonably happy.

He’s got four days, he reminds himself. Harry’s gone again after four days, and there won’t be anymore of this, no more of him showing up in a tweed blazer, no more of his thumb tracing Louis’ bottom lip; it’s all very temporary.

Harry seems to sense that Louis’ excitement has faded, and his brows furrow, giving him that almost angry look that spreads across his face when he’s worried or concentrating particularly hard on something. Louis wants to kiss it away, to make his features ease back into calm, the way he looked when he was first standing over him.

When he goes in for another, though, Harry flinches back slightly and just keeps stroking his thumb over Louis’ lip and along the point of his cheekbone.

It’s strange, because Harry’s so free with his affection and he’s never once stopped Louis from kissing him or going in for a touch. That fact alone, that second of hesitance is enough to make him feel like he’s just been punched in the gut because he knows it means something.

“Louis...” He starts, his breath hitching. Louis gets a hold of Harry’s wrist to bring his hand away from his face, and shifts back instinctively.

Harry immediately reaches for him again and strokes his hands up and down his forearms. The touch just confuses Louis because even though he knows something’s coming, he can’t wrap his mind around what exactly it will be. It’s not like Harry can break up with him when the relationship card has never once been put on the table. He considers, maybe, that Harry’s met someone else that he wants to get serious with. The thought has already crossed his mind, but it was never much of a worry for him, not when he knows how fickle Harry is about people.

“Let’s just...” Harry trails off, and the way he’s holding Louis’ forearms seems pacifying, restricting. “I think we should just try to keep it easy while I’m here.”

Oh. Louis blinks and pulls his arms free of Harry’s grasp so he can fold them over his chest. All he can do is repeat a word that makes no sense to him, one he needs Harry to define.

“Easy.”

“Yeah, like. I’m leaving on Sunday, and it seems kind of...”

“Right,” Louis cuts him off, doing his best to pretend he agrees with him, that he’s agreed all along even though the fact that Harry wants to keep things easy between them is a complete shock. He thought he’d prepared himself adequately for this possibility, but a big part of him must not have really believed it would happen.

The weirdest part, and the worst part, is that Harry’s expression does not at all match what he’s saying.

“You know what I mean?” Harry asks, like he’s ready to just get this part over with. Louis nods, and it’s a lie, because he doesn’t, really.

“Does this mean you’re gonna bail on black Friday shopping?” Louis tries for a grin, but it feels more like a grimace.

“No way.” Harry sounds more relaxed already, and he gets to his feet to shuck his blazer and drape it over the back of the couch, then toes off his shoes, too. “I definitely really want to wait in lines with you at four in the morning, so yeah, we’re still doing that.”

“If you’re gonna complain about it, Harold, I will leave you in the Best Buy parking lot.”

And there’s that cackle. Louis smiles, too, because he’s never met anyone with a more satisfying reaction to his jokes than Harry Styles.

He’s all cozied up on his end of the couch, dressed down in socked feet and a soft t-shirt he was wearing under blazer. Louis just wants to crawl on him but he stays folded up on the opposite end, listening intently as Harry talks about his flight, about the last few weeks of school. He asks about the kids, about Louis’ job search, laughs in all the right places. It reminds Louis of how it was before they’d ever even kissed in Harry’s pool house, a moment he’s romanticized so much he’s not sure how much of it he’s built up in his memory.

They both turn to look at the TV when The Breakfast Club starts up, and despite all that’s weighing on his mind, the food coma is still too strong, and Louis can barely keep his eyes open. He dozes off, and wakes up to Harry climbing over onto his end of the couch, wedging himself behind Louis until they’re perfectly slotted against each other.

Louis tries not to get his hopes up, doesn’t understand why casual kisses are too much but casual spooning is acceptable, but he still feels genuinely happy with Harry’s arms around him. Safe. Relaxed, like he’s finally home, even though he’s been there all day.

Harry wakes up to the muffled alarm from coming from the phone in Louis’ back pocket. The TV’s still on, rolling the credits for the second airing of Pretty in Pink, and he feels a moment of disorientation about where he is until Louis makes a soft sound in his sleep and curves his body back into him.

Based on his new rules, he should probably ease out from behind him or gently stir Louis awake so that he realizes what he’s doing, but Harry just lets him curl up that way, splaying his hand out over Louis’ stomach to keep him close. He reaches into Louis’ pocket to tug out the phone and switches it off with a sigh, trying to collect himself.

It all feels bizarre, being in Louis’ parents’ house and hearing the tick of their grandfather clock and seeing the way Louis’ face looks in the shadowy room. Harry can only make out his profile, but he can see his eyes moving behind his lids like he’s dreaming and he wonders whether it’s something beautiful or hilariously nonsensical that he’ll hear about later.

He looks so peaceful in spite of everything that Harry almost wonders if he really is okay with his decision. Louis hadn’t even asked why and Harry couldn’t help but to take that as some sort of confirmation that it was alright, that he’d been thinking the same thing, and it makes him feel a little better about it, even though the exchange went a little too smoothly.

“Louis,” he whispers, right up against Louis’ ear. His name makes him stir slightly, but Louis almost looks like a kitten, trying to curl in on himself as he fights to stay asleep.

Harry heaves a sigh, wishing he didn’t find every single thing that Louis does so endearing because it would be a lot simpler to keep it easy between them. The truth is that he does, though, and he knows that means he’ll just have to fight a little harder with himself.

After Halloween, he’d realized exactly how much had been left up in the air between them. They were living such different lives, and the last thing he wanted to do was to be constantly plagued by jealous thoughts and pining for someone that he might never be able to have full-time.

Harry doesn’t even know if he wants that with Louis or anyone else, and it definitely doesn’t fall within the idealized picture he has in mind for his next few years. It seemed like it would be easier to walk away from those heavy feelings, but so far it’s even more of a burden to keep Louis at arms’ length, and he’s already doing a shitty job of it.

“Louis, wake up,” he mumbles, pressing his lips once against his cheekbone and trailing his hand up to his chest, wanting to feel the way his heartbeat quickens as he wakes.

“Mmf,” he murmurs, and rolls toward Harry. He opens his eyes, and Harry can’t stand the look on his face as his expression slips from relaxed to guarded.

“Time to buy your mom that new TV,” Harry whispers, untangling from Louis so he can get to his feet, and Louis groans.

“I already regret this.” Louis’ voice is a quiet rasp, and the tail end of it is cut off with a yawn. He claps his hands together, determined to get going. “First, we need provisions.”

--

They make a pit stop at a 711 on the way to Best Buy and Louis emerges a few minutes later with two comically large cups of coffee and four doughnuts, dropping the bag of them onto Harry’s lap before he starts the car. His beanie is askew and Harry wants to fix it, has all of these domestic urges with Louis and it’s like playing Whack-A-Mole to keep them all at bay.

Things between them are mostly the way they were before Harry left, except that they both seem to have the same resolution to not look at each other in the eye, and each time they do, the contact breaks almost immediately. It’s easier, that way, at least for Harry, because he can feel his composure slipping each time their eyes meet, and he needs to remind himself all over again that there are only 72 hours until his flight leaves for California.

They don’t touch, either, which is different. They still laugh together when Louis cuts thirty people in line and they get away with it, and they still sort of move in sync in a way Harry had forgotten about. If he didn’t live three thousand miles away, he wouldn’t think twice about crowding up behind Louis in the line at Toys R Us and whispering something filthy in his ear just to watch him squirm.

The only indulgence he allows himself is staring openly when Louis isn’t looking: when he’s reading the back of a DVD case or sorting through the boxes of Legos or tugging up the waistband of his jeans. Harry thought it would be easier, and he was a fool, because he’s never had any self control with Louis and it is a physical strain not to touch him when they’re so close.

It’s noon when they stop in the food court, eating greasy pretzels at a tiny table as Louis scrolls through the list his mom emailed him.

“I think I’m so tired that I’m actually delirious,” Harry says, and taps Louis’ foot under the table when he doesn’t respond, and hopes a question might get him to react. “What’s left on the list?”

“Just need to stop at Barnes and Noble and then we’re done, finally.” He makes a grabby hand, and Harry gives him the lemonade. He watches his cheeks hollow when he takes a sip, and looks down at the crumbs on the table to distract himself.

“And then?”

“And then I’m taking the world’s longest nap,” Louis says, like it’s obvious.

Harry holds up his hand for a high five. “Count me in.”

Louis whips his head around, eying Harry under narrowed brows, looking from his hand and back to his eyes and then back to his hand again.

“Isn’t that against your rules, pal?”

It’s ugly, the way he says it. Harry’s never really been subject to a negative gaze from Louis, but he hates it, even when Louis is obviously doing his best to make it seem like a joke.

“Touche,” Harry says, trying for a grin.

“Gotta keep you in line.”

Harry swallows. “Actually, I--”

“Shit, it’s Liam!” Louis sounds genuinely excited -- possibly relieved -- and calls for him again, shouting as loud as he can until Liam sees them and raises a hand and offers a dopey smile by way of a greeting.

“Happy Thanksgiving, guys,” he says, dropping his bags to give them one-armed hugs. He steps back and looks between them, eyes lingering on Harry for a second. “How’s the shopping going?”

“Great. Some woman ran into me with her cart at Best Buy, so.”

Louis rolls his eyes and gestures down to the sea of bags laid out at their feet. “I’d say it was a success. Got almost everything on the list. He’s just cranky because we’ve been up since 4:00.”

Liam smirks, and even before he speaks Harry has a vague idea of what he might say, and he cringes when he’s proven correct.

“Right, as if the two of you even slept.”

Harry just looks away, stuffing the last bit of his pretzel into his mouth as they dissolve into an awkward silence that’s especially jarring considering all the sounds and the flurry of movement around them as people scurry from one store to the next, trying to score last minute deals on junk that will inevitably end up collecting dust in their garages.

Liam’s still oblivious. “I mean you’ve been apart all this time, and knowing the two of you...”

It just keeps getting worse. Harry knows he should probably say something for Liam’s sake, but anything that comes to mind would be an even greater slap in the face.

Finally, Louis interjects, and Harry doesn’t know if he’s thankful or not after what he says.

“Yeah, that’s...not really how it is, Li.”

“Oh.” Liam looks toward Harry and then back at Louis with his eyebrows raised, realization settling on his features. He scratches the side of his neck, and then reaches for his bags. “Alright, well, it was good seeing you both. I’ve got some more shopping to do so I’ll see you guys later, alright? Have a safe flight if I don’t see you again before you leave, Harry.”

Liam smiles and waves and once he’s gone, the tension doesn’t just dissipate the way that Harry wants it to. Things feel a lot heavier than they have all day, and now it all feels like there’s even more distance between them than during the months Harry spent in California.

He glances across the table at Louis, watching his profile as he looks everywhere but at him. When he finally catches Harry staring straight in his direction, he huffs out a frustrated exhale, looking more fragile than Harry’s even seen him before, like he’s just barely keeping himself from falling apart.

“What?”

“D’you want more lemonade?”

Louis stands up. “Let’s just go.”

“Okay.” Harry picks up one of the bags. “Barnes and Noble is at the other end, I think.”

“No, I think I just want to go home,” Louis says, gathering up the trash on the table. “Sick of these crowds, you know?”

It’s a decent excuse considering a toddler just puked on the ground next to them, but Harry still feels guilty and he can’t put his finger on why, because his decision was supposed to help them both, in the end. Maybe he should’ve told Louis before he flew home about his plans to distance himself from the more intimate aspects of their relationship. It would be easier if Louis would fight with him about it, but he if he knows him at all, he knows his pride is wounded, and that’s definitely Harry’s fault.

They try to make it better on the way home, and it sort of works. Louis turns up the Christmas music station on the drive home and makes Harry laugh when he rolls the window down at a stoplight and blasts “Wonderful Christmastime” at full volume, but the people in the car next to them don’t find it nearly as funny.

There’s the strongest sense of deja vu when Harry parks in front of Louis’ apartment; if it weren’t for the leaves on the ground and the cold air, he’d swear nothing had changed at all.

“So you’re going to Gemma’s tomorrow?” Louis asks, turning down the volume to a more reasonable decibel.

“Yeah, she and her fiance just moved. I told her I’d help paint the living room.” Harry pauses to look at Louis, staring intently until he gives in and returns his gaze. “See you Sunday morning, though, right?”

Louis looks dazed. “Isn’t your flight at, like...nine in the morning?”

“Yeah, but I wanna say goodbye before I go. I’ll text you, okay?”

Louis doesn’t say anything, and Harry considers begging him to at least pretend he’s alright so that he doesn’t have to drive away when his face is so sullen.

“Okay, Lou?” he tries again, hating that he has to ask twice.

“Yeah,” Louis says, finally, and he must be reading Harry’s mind because he turns to smile at him while he opens the car door. “Yeah, great. Text me.”

The door slams and Harry watches Louis retreat toward his apartment with armfuls of bags. He idles by the curb, waiting for Louis to turn and wave or smile or flash him the middle finger or anything before he goes inside.

He doesn’t, though. The front door closes, and then he’s gone.

Harry counts to ten and then puts the car in drive, wondering what the fuck he’s done.

There’s nothing but radio silence from Harry for the first half of Saturday, and Louis is relieved.

He’s not ready to confront how awkward things were after seeing Liam, or his unceremonious exit that he actually feels guilty for in spite of everything. Harry’s already seen him vulnerable more times than he feels comfortable with and he hates it. He hates that Harry made him feel like it was alright to let him in so deep only to make him regret it in the end

What’s even worse is that he never saw it coming, even knowing how Harry never sticks to anything for long. His room at his parents’ house is packed with things that he started and never finished: instruments and art projects and a fucking fencing sabre. He hasn’t been in a relationship since high-school, he doesn’t consider one person his best friend, and yet he has hundreds of acquaintances to clog up his Facebook feed on any given day.

So, yeah, there’s no reason why he should feel so blindsided by the fact that Harry wants to start putting distance between them. Harry keeps himself a safe distance from everything. He doesn’t know why he thought he was somehow exempt or why he believed in having any sort of permanence in Harry’s life, but he feels like an idiot for how naively hopeful he’s been.

It may be overreacting because there’s no real fear that Harry will actually cut him out of his life completely, but Louis feels like he needs to prepare himself for it. He doesn’t want to feel caught off guard like this ever again.

He spends the day on his couch, drifting in and out of sleep while watching old episodes of One Tree Hill until he gets too lazy to keep changing the discs. Breakfast and lunch both pass by, and when he finally pushes himself up to go into the kitchen to heat up some leftovers for dinner, he sees a text from Harry. After a morning spent agonizing over everything, Louis’ stomach twists before he even opens the message, expecting the worst.

It’s a picture of Harry sticking his tongue out and giving a thumbs up with one hand and holding a brush in the other. There’s paint spattered all over his white t-shirt and flecks of it in his curls that are even more ridiculous and out of control than usual. The caption is typical Harry -- a corny dad joke. Need to BRUSH up on my painting skills!!!

“What the fuck?” he says aloud to no one, and then chucks his phone onto the counter.

He’s not sure what’s worse -- the fact that he got the text in the first place, or the fact that he fully plans to ignore it. After he eats dinner he turns his phone off in a moment of self-pity and decides that 9:34 PM is a perfectly acceptable, responsible time to go to sleep on a Saturday night.

In the moments before he drifts off, he hopes, darkly, that Harry will just leave without saying goodbye, that he’ll forget about Louis, that he’ll do something hateable and terrible and that Louis will be one step closer to getting over it, because that has got to be easier than this limbo of longing.

There’s a bang.

Louis sits straight up in bed, his heart racing, eyes bleary. It’s a burglar, surely, because his alarm clock reads midnight, and there’s no way anyone he knows would come over without calling first.

Except that his phone isn’t on. Shit.

He waits for five seconds, his chest heaving as he looks helplessly around his pitch-black bedroom. It must have been the neighbors coming home, or something, because there’s not another noise, except then -- rap-rap-rap -- there’s one more, and Louis clambers out of bed.

“Fucking bullshit,” he mutters, heavy eyed as he pads through the hallway and into the living room in his boxer briefs and a t-shirt. His shin hits the coffee table and he grunts, even more annoyed than before when another knock sounds.

By the time Louis unlocks the deadbolt and reaches for the handle, he’s about ready to kill whoever’s on the other side of that door, but when it swings open, he’s too shocked to feel angry.

There’s only a split second for him to process what’s going on and he swallows around the lump in his throat as he stands there, suddenly helpless and stuck in the sort of paralysis he’s only ever felt before in dreams. He’s shocked and completely still until the steps toward him make him walk back, even though the last thing he wants to do is try and get away.

It’s like there’s an invisible force between their bodies, pulling Harry into him until Louis’ body is forming up against the wall behind them. He feels his back collide with it painfully, but Harry’s hand is behind his head before he even realizes it, cradling there to keep him from hurting himself and to crush Louis’ lips desperately against his own.

He tastes just like the first time they kissed, the same sweetness on his tongue, but his urgency defies it. It’s not new anymore and Harry kisses him like he knows him, all the ins and outs and the fucked up mess that he’s become over the last twenty-four hours.

It’s enough to make Louis feel raw, like he’s coming more and more out of himself every time Harry’s tongue eases up against his own and even if he had the presence of mind to wonder about why it’s happening, he wouldn’t care. He’s never been more willing to be destroyed, to just be irresponsible with himself like it might expel something he needs to get out of him.

His hands shake as he curls them around Harry’s collarbones, digging into his skin so tight that Harry gasps into his mouth and he knows he must have broken skin, that he’ll see red lines when he has Harry laid out for him. They’re both giving each other what they want; Louis likes to be taken apart by kisses, for them to make his knees buckle, and Harry keens for more every time Louis makes him hurt just a little bit.

One of his knees moves between Harry’s legs, trying to line their hips up, but their bodies are shaped too differently to form together that way while standing up. Before he even has time to mourn for the loss of contact, Harry’s tender touch around the back of his head turns to something hungry, splaying his long fingers out over his ass and dragging him up on his tiptoes so Louis can feel how hard he is behind his painted on jeans.

The heat between them is almost unbearable, making his apartment feel sweltering until Louis is finally compelled to come up for air. Harry’s lips are flushed and kiss-stung and right there, still, only weakly brushing against Louis’ as they share gasps between them.

Louis brings one of his fists up to pound once against Harry’s chest, tipping his head back to finally get a good look at his eyes, even though it’s a decision that he regrets immediately when he sees how they fiercely bright they look in the dark. There’s a bit of angry red along his waterline like could have been crying at some point during the night, and Louis can’t even think about that. He can’t think about what it means that Harry’s in his apartment after midnight, touching him like he never took the permission to away from himself in the first place.

“Louis,” Harry whispers, letting go of Louis so that he can rest flat against his feet again, but Louis doesn’t. He stays on his toes, bracing his hand on Harry’s chest while Harry cradles his face in both hands and gives him a look that Louis’ so afraid of that it’s his instinct to start shaking his head.

“No, just...come to bed.” There’s no discretion in the way Louis’ eyes dart from Harry’s eyes, to his lips, and back again. Harry immediately gives in and kisses him, already back to the place he’d been in when he first stepped through the door.

Louis feels somewhat proud when he realizes he’s stopped Harry from spiraling away from the only thing that he knows for sure they both need right now. Harry proves it, dragging him away from the wall and crowding up behind him as he ushers Louis back toward the bedroom.

They’re sloppy, crashing into a table and a frame on the wall and stopping every so often for another kiss so shattering that the last few steps feel like miles. Harry holds onto his shoulders and pushes Louis to fall down against his unmade bed, watching him walk himself backward toward the headboard and prop himself up by the elbows to look at Harry start to get undressed. It’s sexy even just watching the muscles in his arms flex as he bends down to untie his All-Stars and peel off his socks. After he stares for a minute, Louis strips out of his own shirt, taking the time to just lie there and appreciate all the parts of Harry that he could have easily taken for granted before.

His hair has grown a bit since summer, and his tan has faded. There’s a butterfly on his chest now, too, but that fucking bracelet is still in place around his wrist and when he’s finally down to his boxer briefs, he looks up at Louis with the same amount of desire in his eyes that Louis’ been trying to recreate in his mind for months.

They’re silent as Harry moves over him, nudging his thighs apart with one of his knees so that he can lie down between them. They rut up against each other, Harry’s hands lithe and practiced as he strips away the last two sets of fabric from their bodies so that he can move his palm over Louis’ balls and up the length of his cock, just holding onto him like that while Louis smears precome over his belly.

“I’m gonna fuck you,” Harry mumbles, still on the trail of another one of their kisses, keeping them going like aftershocks until Louis pushes him back just slightly, getting ahold of the necklace that’s been dangling against his chest and tugging once, experimentally.

“You’re always so sure of yourself,” he whispers back, watching Harry’s eyes for signs of change, wondering if he should believe his own words.

There’s a second where Harry falters and Louis regrets what he’s just said, because he should know that even if it’s only ninety percent true, the other ten still counts for something. It hits him like a tidal wave, the fact that Harry’s not impenetrable. For as much time as he’s spent idealizing him, he’s forgotten some of the softer details.

Before he has a chance to say anything, Harry kisses him, sweet in contrast to the way he gets ahold of his arm and urges him to turn over. Louis feels his cock twitch at the roughness of it, loving the fact that Harry never tries to be too careful with him.

He eases up on his knees, setting his forearms down against the mattress and rocking back as he lets Harry rifle around in his nightstand. The same half empty bottle is left there from the last time they were together in Louis’ apartment, and it might as well have Harry’s name written on it, because no one’s been there since.

The position alone makes him feel vulnerable, knowing how needy he has to look to Harry with the way he tries to get friction on his cock from the crumpled up duvet below, and how his breath hitches in anticipation when he hears the flip of the cap and then feels two of Harry’s fingers teasing over his hole. It’s incredible being touched by someone else, by Harry, after months without it.

By the time he works up to three fingers, curling them up to hit his spot, Louis clenches and almost comes right then, feeling his body drop down further toward the mattress, forehead resting against it. He lets Harry keep playing with him like that, a visible shiver coursing down the length of his spine when he feels himself being spread apart more so that Harry can watch his own fingers open him up.

“Harry,” he warns, barely getting the word out through gritted teeth because he feels himself buckling more and more and Harry isn’t even inside of him yet. The ache that he’s felt since August and that has intensified since the last time they spoke isn’t going to be quelled by just being touched. He needs Harry to fuck him, to make it so hard and so good that he forgets what it was like to miss him and the prospect of a relentless cycle of feeling it all over again.

Harry goes for the condom he’s set out beside them and Louis hears him start to rip the package with his teeth, reaching back for the only bit of skin he can get to, holding meekly over the sharpest point of Harry’s hipbone to stop him. “No, forget it. I just want you. Unless...”

He can’t even finish the question without feeling sick to his stomach, but Harry doesn’t make him dwell too long in that pit of churning thoughts. He moves behind him and leans down to kiss between his shoulderblades and up the side of his neck, his breath ghosting over his skin and making Louis ticklish as he whispers in his ear, “I haven’t.”

It’s stupid, but Louis feels relief wash over him, choking off the sound that wants to escape him because he’s been more worried about it than he’s allowed himself to acknowledge. It’s not like he’s under any false pretense that Harry will only ever be his, but with him holding him down that way, so solid stretched over him like that, he feels like he is.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Harry demands, sliding his hand from the back of his neck and around to the front of his throat, just holding there without putting any pressure on his skin.

He doesn’t think he can answer, but he forces himself to just say the first thing on his mind. “Wanna feel you come,” he breathes, then clarifies, “inside me.” It’s the Cliffs Notes version, but it’s all that matters at that particular second.

Harry’s breath hitches and he stretches his palm tighter over Louis’ neck, holding down for just a split second and making Louis gasp even just at the tease of having his airway cut off before he kneels behind him again. He digs his fingers into the line of muscle between Louis’ neck and shoulder and squeezes hard, distracting him from the dull ache as Harry presses the head of his cock inside. The slide in is slow, a little rough, and Louis’ head drops down, too weakened by the stretch to even hold himself up.

“Breathe, Louis,” he murmurs, and Louis doesn’t even realize he’s holding his breath until he exhales, shaking, feeling overwhelmed by how good it feels to have Harry again, taking care of him like this, knowing exactly how to read him without any effort at all.

Harry palms the side of Louis’ neck and tucks two fingers underneath his jaw, lifting his head back up, and he presses his fingers there until Louis’ entire throat is exposed, his back arched. He draws himself out, a drag so slow Louis bites back a whine, and then Harry starts to press into him again, this time smoother and faster, making Louis’ head spin.

The pace becomes frantic immediately, and Harry’s grip on Louis’ jaw lets up so he can hold onto his shoulder, tugging him back against his cock each time he thrusts forward. The noise of Harry’s hips against Louis’ ass is so loud, and just imagining Harry’s point of view is enough to make Louis squint his eyes and grip the bed sheets in an attempt to ward off his orgasm just a little bit longer. He didn’t expect this at all, and being caught off guard makes it even harder to keep himself together because he’s bowled over by how good it is, how long it’s been, the way Harry’s manipulating his body in all the right ways.

“Louis, fuck.” Harry punctuates his words by using both hands to palm at Louis’ ass, spreading him apart and digging in his fingertips until it hurts.

Louis can’t hold himself up anymore, not after that. He presses his forehead to the mattress, weakened, and lays his arms out in front of him. Harry grabs his wrist and leans over, breathing hotly into Louis’ ear, and it sends a shiver down his spine because it feels so intimate, so close that Louis can turn his mouth and kiss him roughly, once.

“I’m--” Louis whispers, a warning, because it’s too much, suddenly. “I can’t--” and Harry understands, or he seems to. He brings his hand around to the front of Louis’ throat, stroking down the length of it, holding him loosely there and whispering against his neck. “Want to make you come, Louis, come on. Look at you, you’re so fucking open for me. Thought about tearing you apart like this for months,” he urges, reaching underneath him to tug once at his cock, and that’s all it takes for Louis to buck his hips to chase the feeling. He groans, then comes fast and so hard into Harry’s hand that the force of it shakes his entire body, makes him clench around him.

“Oh my god.” Harry sounds like he’s in disbelief, as if he may have forgotten just how staggering it is when every time they do this. He rakes his nails down the length of Louis’ spine, making him shake even harder, and then finally Harry goes silent, no gasps, no moans, nothing except for a hot pulse and a throb and a fullness that makes Louis’ cock twitch one last time as he spills inside of him.

It’s so much that Louis’ body flattens against the mattress, whimpering at how full he feels, how used in the best possible way. Without any barrier between them, the heat feels so much more intense and he shudders when he feels Harry’s forehead dropping down to rest between his shoulder blades, like his body has finally given out.

He can feel a bit of Harry’s come dripping from him when Harry pulls out and he shudders at how filthy it feels, how good and hot and addictive. Easing out from under his weight, Louis situates himself on his back, arms draped above his head on the pillow while he allows Harry to kisses his neck and his lips and his forehead, lavishing him with affection that Louis is still too gone to return.

It feels good, though, how Harry never just goes cold after sex. He has to kiss and hold and talk while he comes down.

Harry’s lips finally form over his again and Louis sighs, bringing one of his arms around Harry’s neck to hold him there. Harry gets ahold of his forearm, though, moving their lips apart by mere inches and looking at him with an entirely different urgency. “I didn’t mean what I said. I thought it might make this easier, but it’s fucked. It was a stupid idea.”

“It’s alright,” Louis says, because he’s not sure what else to tell him, but Harry shakes his head and kisses him again, tracing Louis’ jaw with his thumb.

“It’s not,” he mumbles, “I’m sorry.” He looks away, visibly frustrated. “I just feel like I wasted our time.”

“Harry,” Louis says, close to annoyed by how insistent he’s being just to convince Louis that he fucked up. “We knew that it would suck either way.”

Harry swallows hard enough that his Adam’s apple bobs, then slips his arms between Louis and the bed and holds him tight around the middle. “I don’t know what I was thinking. But I just wanted you the whole time. All day yesterday, like, from the minute I saw you.”

There’s never a sufficient way to prepare for the level of brutal honesty that Harry injects into his compliments, and Louis just smiles in an attempt to brush it off.

“I did,” Harry insists, and nips Louis on his bottom lip. “Your ass could solve the budget deficit.”

“It could incite world peace, actually.”

Harry snorts and squeezes him tight, all affection and tenderness and good humor. “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

What Louis wants the most is to relax into the feeling that washes over him as their breathing syncs up; he wants to bask in the way Harry’s weight presses him into the bed, in the quiet noise he makes as he leans in to press a kiss down the side of Louis’ throat. All of it, though, every nice thing he feels is overwhelmed by dread that’s so constricting it threatens to ruin what delicate happiness they’re sharing after months of uncertainty and missing him so much that it felt like a physical ache. Louis can feel it start to build again as each minute passes, and it makes him feel sick.

He wants to ask; he wants to know if Harry feels the same, if he’s missed him in the same way, but he can’t bring himself to ask such a loaded question, not when the answer could crush him. It’s better not to know, he thinks, if Harry isn’t going to supply that information willingly, and after the last couple of days, he sure as hell isn’t going to tell him first.

Harry’s been silent for a few minutes, and Louis can practically hear all of the unspoken thoughts he hasn’t voiced.

“What’s up?” he murmurs, nosing Harry’s cheek until he looks back at him.

He looks, but he doesn’t answer. It’s the expression Harry gets when he’s thinking, and it’s when Louis just has to be patient, because he knows whatever comes next is going to be something he’s obviously been thinking about for the last five minutes.

He just kisses him, buying himself time, and Louis lets it happen, gets dizzy at how good it is all over again before Harry finally draws himself back and props their foreheads together.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Harry whispers.

As much as Louis’ been wanting to hear it, the words themselves are devastating, more of a hurt than a comfort. He swallows and bites his lip, and looks back up at Harry, finding his eyes in the dim light of his bedroom.

“What if I ask you to stay?”

“Don’t,” Harry shakes his head. “Don’t do that to me, Louis.”

He curls both hands around Louis’ face and kisses him, and Louis knows it’s just to shut him up, but he lets it happen, anyway, because he’s already said too much and he can feel the word please on the tip of his tongue, can feel himself closer to begging than he wants to be.

He lets Harry’s mouth dizzy him until he’s exhausted, until they’re both panting for breath and rolling onto their sides to face each other, and even then it’s difficult to stop, so they do it in increments, and they don’t say a thing before they pass out, nothing at all, because every word in Louis’ mind will complicate things even further.

Any naive hope that Louis had that saying goodbye to Harry would be easier the second time around is put to rest as they pull into the airport. It feels so much different, so much heavier than before, when they were so sleep deprived and in such mismatched moods that it all felt like surreal, like they were just watching themselves through a lens. Harry was there and then gone, as close to a clean cut as possible, but Louis can already feel that this is going to be a thousand times harder. There’s no way that he can detach himself in the way that he tried to do before.

Stealing a look over to the passenger’s seat, Louis lets his eyes drink in Harry’s profile, feeling like it was as good of a time as any to be indulgent and really look at him. Harry’s too distracted anyway, just like he has been since they first loaded up the car, and it takes him a full minute before he even notices Louis’ eyes on him.

“Why is it so hard this time?” Harry stuffs a hand through his own hair, pushing it up into a messy clump on the top of his head that looks so ridiculous that Louis can’t help but to hum weakly at its hopeless state, reaching to pull Harry more toward the center console so that he can fix it for him.

Harry comes forward easily, only sparing a curious look at him before Louis brings his fingers up to pat down Harry’s curls and push the heap of them in the front to the side instead. One of the lapels on Harry’s blazer is tucked inward and Louis fixes that, too, all while ignoring the fact that Harry’s looking at him in a way that he can only imagine as being too soft for him to bear.

“There. Much better.”

“Thanks, babe,” Harry mumbles, moving his hand to the curve between Louis’ neck and shoulder, ignoring the gear shift just so that he can steal a kiss. Louis knows they’re prolonging the inevitable, but the needs it this time, because he already knows what it’s like to let go of Harry and he wants to keep running away from that feeling for as long as he can.

“I don’t feel ready,” Louis confesses, letting go of Harry so that he can look ahead again, not wanting to see if there’s any guilt in his eyes because of what he’s just said. Making Harry feel bad about already having a life somewhere else is the last thing he wants to do, but he knows it might come off that way, like he’s trying to convey to him that everything would be alright and all of this would go away if Harry would just stay.
Maybe it’s true, but it’s also nowhere near that simple.

Eventually they head into the airport and, after Harry checks in, they push two chairs together at an empty table in front of the Dunkin Donuts. Harry has his boarding pass and his ID out on the table in front of them, and he’s taking sips of coffee like it’s a distraction more than a necessity. He hasn’t taken his hand off of Louis’ thigh since they sat down, and the touch is so casual and familiar that it seems ridiculous that Louis will be without it in less than an hour.

It’s been over a year since Louis’ called himself someone’s boyfriend, which is actually something of a long time for him. He functions better in relationships and he always has because the back and forth and the not knowing and the “dating” drives him to a point of frustration he hates, which is why this thing with Harry is, Louis is sure, going to slowly kill him. There is nothing guaranteed here, not even with Harry’s long fingers squeezing his thigh like he has the right to, and he can’t stop wondering what it would be like if he wasn’t about to board a plane to the opposite side of the country.

He wants to ask, maybe. He wants to ask Harry every what-if question he can think of, but he knows that even if he hears what he wants to hear, it still wouldn’t change anything.

There’s also no good reason for Harry to look so put-together at seven in the morning on a Sunday after five hours’ sleep, but there he is, in his teenage dream jeans and an expensive white t-shirt and a tweed blazer.

“Don’t you ever want to be comfortable on a plane?”

Harry brushes some powdered sugar from his fingers and shrugs. “I am comfortable.”

“You’re wearing jeggings.”

“They are jeans, Louis, and they have some stretch in them.”

“My sweatpants have stretch in them,” he points out, looking down at his legs and his old Vans with a hole in the toe. “Though to be fair I guess I do look like your hobo brother who’s here to say goodbye to you before you fly off on one of them newfangled flying machines.”

Harry snorts and nearly spits out his coffee, and Louis feels relieved, at least, to have gotten a genuine laugh out of him, even if he’s the one who could use a comfort.

Things are slightly less tense, after that, but there are times when Harry is so clearly not listening to what Louis’ saying and is just staring at him in a way that, to the outsiders’ perspective, would probably appear creepy and obsessive. Louis calls it his serial killer stare, and he pretends not to love it.

He cuts Louis off, once, in the middle of talking, just to drag him close and press a series of kisses against his cheekbone and temple, and it catches him so off guard that Louis forgets what he was going to say.

“Should start walking to security,” Harry says in a small voice, and gives Louis’ thigh a quick tap. “Come with me?” he asks, as if he’d let him go alone.

Louis wills his hands to stop shaking but Harry takes hold of them, holding both of his in both of his own and pressing a kiss to the back of Louis’ knuckles as they walk. It steadies him until they get to the beginning of the rows of security where the crowds are thicker, at which point Louis feels himself go into panic mode.

Louis can remember how it was in August, back when Harry was excited to leave, and they gave each other a rather chaste goodbye. They’d joked and promised to talk soon, and Louis had walked out in one piece, but he gets the distinct feeling that when he leaves today, he’ll be torn in half.

Harry looks like a wreck, and it’s hard to watch. His eyes are earnest when he stops and turns to Louis, his posture awful, his palms clammy. “Hey,” he says, “Come here.”

And they’re already close, but Louis knows what he means, and he wraps his arms right around Harry’s middle lets himself be held tight around his shoulders. He doesn’t shut his eyes, he doesn’t fight it, he just squeezes and squeezes and Harry does the same until they’re both gasping for something more than air.

“Harry,” he warns, because he’s not sure how much longer he can stand there like that, and fuck it, he’s not going to cry about it, he’s not, but the longer he stands there, the closer he comes.

“I’m sorry this sucks so much,” Harry says, voice muffled in the top of Louis’ hair.

“Not your fault,” Louis says, automatically. Harry squeezes him tighter like he wants to crawl inside and stay, and Louis would let him if he asked.

“Feels like it is.”

They’re being reckless and cutting things close, and if Louis was any more selfish, then he probably would have insisted Harry keep holding him until he’d missed his flight to buy even a few more hours together, but Louis eventually musters every ounce of strength that he has in his body to let go of him, dropping his arms down weakly at his sides.

Harry doesn’t catch on, still hugging him so tight that Louis brings his hands up to set on his chest to try and gently urge him back. Even still, Harry doesn’t budge, holding onto him and murmuring to him so helplessly that Louis wishes he could carry the whole load on his own to spare him what it’s like to feel this way.

“Just a few more minutes.”

Louis can feel himself crumble, the strength that he’d tried for collapsing as he relents, winding his arms around Harry again and burying his face against his chest.

“Will you think about me?” He’s too afraid to look up and meet Harry’s eyes because it’s the first time he’s ever asked something like that, the first time he’s ever gone looking for validation from Harry.

For as badly wants him to, but Harry doesn’t let him off the hook. He gets ahold of his face in both hands, insisting that he look at him.

Harry’s brows were furrowed like he was confused by the fact that Louis even needed to ask, but the second Louis allows him to meet his eyes, his entire face falls into something softer, his gaze going so helplessly fond that Louis regrets looking up.

“Last time we were apart so many things reminded me of you that I actually started seeking out things we’d never seen or done or that had no attachment to you, you know? I ate a lot of sushi. You and I’ve never eaten sushi together.”

It’s so stupid and overwhelming and so Harry of him to say that Louis gets frustrated, pushing him hard against the chest until Harry actually gets knocked a step back. His expression is confused only for a second before Louis balls his fists up in the collar of Harry’s shirt and drags him back to kiss him, hard, not like the tentative pecks they’ve been stealing from one another all day.

“You’re the worst....you’re fucking awful...” he mumbles against his lips, “I want to eat sushi with you, sashimi, whatever you want.” He’s rambling, muffling his words against Harry’s mouth until he feels tongue sweep hotly against his.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he realizes that they’re probably being gawked at, that they’re making out in front of an unsuspecting audience and he can imagine cranky old men grumbling to themselves and children having their eyes covered, but he still doesn’t care. He thinks the old men and moms and curious kids would understand if they knew Harry.

The kiss fades out, losing its fervency in favor of Harry repeatedly kissing his cheek and the corner of his lips, so sweet that it’s like he’s trying to seal each one of them in. “We will. It’s a date.”

“I’m holding you to it.”

“I know better than to cross you,” Harry grins, lopsided. It’s not even funny, really, but Louis appreciates the effort it took to make a joke, and he smiles back.

“You gotta go.” Louis can already feel it, the growing emptiness in his chest, and it’s so close that he almost wants to chase it so he won’t be stuck waiting anymore. “Tell Niall I said hi.”

Harry nods and leans down to kiss him one more time as he adjusts the strap of the bag on his shoulder, and he lingers for a moment and then takes a big step back and looks at Louis and just shrugs his shoulders, like, there’s nothing else they can do, no more time to stall, nothing to say. After he picks up Louis’ hand to kiss his palm, Louis can still feel the warmth of it when Harry turns around and walks away and stands at the back of the line.

Something awful threatens to rip from Louis’ throat, a noise or a sob or a whine, and he just turns around, walking as fast as he can back toward the parking lot, his breath hitching over and over again as he replays the last ten minutes in his mind. It’s a miracle he manages to find his car in the huge lot, and he’s shaking so vigorously that he can barely get the door unlocked and opened and the engine started, and it’s only when it roars to life that he loses it.

An undignified stream of sticky-hot tears tumble over his steering wheel when he presses his forehead against it, and he’s so distracted by the fact that he’s crying at all that he almost forgets what they’re for.

Except that he can’t really forget, and he rolls his eyes and brushes underneath them when he pictures Harry’s face. He’s annoyed at himself for caring, annoyed at Harry for leaving, disappointed that he’s let himself get to this point, and frustrated beyond understanding. He wants to skip ahead to the part where he doesn’t feel like this anymore, because feeling nothing would be better than this embarrassing, shameful pain over saying goodbye to something that isn’t really his to begin with.

His head is killing him. He sniffs and tries to collect himself when he hears a too-loud honk from behind the Jeep, and it’s only then that Louis puts the it in reverse and backs up, secretly hoping to accidentally graze the impatient BMW that’s waiting to steal his parking spot.

When he gets home, his apartment has traces of Harry all over it -- the coffee table is askew, there’s a half-empty cup of water he left on the counter, and his pillows and sheets smell like him when Louis crawls back into bed to go to sleep. It’s a mark of his exhaustion, he thinks, that he can still go to sleep amidst such strong memories, that he can feel himself dozing even when he swears the bed trapped their shared body heat underneath the heavy down quilt.

                                                                                                                        --

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Why would I want to talk about it?”

“Because, like, you’re obviously fucked up over it and that would be the healthy thing to do.” Zayn puts out his cigarette on the brick wall of the platform and flicks the butt onto the train tracks.

“Don’t litter, Zayn.”

“Have you talked to him?”

Louis looks to his left, hoping to see the bright lights of the train. “Where is this thing? It’s fucking freezing.”

“Louis.”

“Zayn?”

“Have you been talking to him?”

“I mean, it’s been three weeks since he left, so yeah, we’ve talked in that time period, Zayn, yes.”

Zayn laughs, and Louis does, too, because he knows he’s being insufferable. “I’m gonna push you onto the tracks, you dick.”

The ground rumbles and the crowd of people on the platform all look left to watch as the train approaches, louder and louder until it stops in front of them. Zayn gives him a look that clearly reads “we’re not finished with this”, and they file onto the train and steal a backward-facing seat before it lurches off in the direction of Manhattan.

“Yeah, I mean, we’ve talked,” Louis starts, like he’s picking up where they left off. “He texts me a lot, and stuff, but it’s like...I don’t think either of us are looking to be in some long distance thing.”

Zayn nods and looks at him patiently, knowing not to push too hard. “Did he say that?”

“I mean,” Louis clears his throat and stares down at his hands, then back up at him. “No. We haven’t...we don’t talk about that.”

“Maybe he does want it, though,” Zayn suggests lightly. “You don’t think you could have that conversation?”

The way he says it makes sense, because it’s Zayn, and because he knows Louis and he knows how Louis operates, normally. With anyone else he wouldn’t second-guess himself so much, he probably would just flat-out ask if it was an option, but Harry’s so different from anyone else’s ever been with even for a one night stand that he’s so afraid of being rejected and fucking it up.

“I honestly don’t know,” Louis says, and Zayn gives him a sympathetic look.

“I guess you’ll see him over Christmas, though,” he offers.

“We’re all going to my granddad’s, actually, so I don’t think so.” It’s a cold laugh, but he manages to see it through. “I dunno, man, it’s fine. I’m just gonna focus on, like...getting a steady teaching job, and I’m busy, you know, it’s not like I don’t have anything else going on.”

“Yeah, but.” Zayn takes off his snapback and fixes his hair, and a girl walking by almost trips on her own feet when she watches him. Louis snorts, and Zayn keeps talking, completely oblivious. “It sucks to just have no closure, doesn’t it? I know it has to being fucking eating at you, dude, I know you.”

“Fuck off,” Louis says, fondly. He loves Zayn, but he doesn’t need such a heaping size of his unprompted reality checks. A moment later, Louis’ phone vibrates and it’s shameful how quickly he moves to check it, how he can feel his face involuntarily light up when he sees it’s from Harry.

“If he sent you a picture of his dick, I swear to god,” Zayn warns, and Louis just laughs, shaking his head.

“He’s requested a picture of the Christmas tree.” Which is adorable, but he leaves that bit out when he sees Zayn’s face.

“But we’re going to Brooklyn.”

Louis frowns. “Well, I mean, we can stop by Rockefeller Center, can’t we?”

“Are you fucking -- it’s December! It’s gonna be a madhouse, Louis, no -- stop hugging me, we’re not, Louis, do not lick me, dude, I swear--”

They go see the tree.

He buys Zayn all of his drinks to make up for it.

The weather for the first three weeks that Harry’s home in Santa Barbara is so sunny and perfect that it’s easy to forget that it’s December already. It’s weird being able to take walks along the beach and only wear a thin knit sweater when he knows his friends and family back on the East Coast are bundling themselves up and trudging through snow on the way to work. It doesn’t feel a thing like Christmas is less than a week away and he thinks, for the first time since moving out of his parents’ house almost four years ago, that he might actually be homesick.

It’s bullshit, really, but telling himself that...that he’s homesick, is easier than admitting that he’s longing for someone he left there and not the place itself. He’s flying back in just another two days to spend Christmas with his family, but even that isn’t any consolation when he knows that Louis won’t be there. He’ll be away with his own family and Harry’s not sure when they’ll get a chance to see one another again.

He knows he’s been miserable to deal with the entire time he’s been back, breaking plans and going out on his own to get completely fucked like that might help ease how persistently he misses him. It feels like it’s taking over his life, like his day revolves around feeling like shit because he can’t just walk over and see him and even their calls and texts don’t help much. If anything, they make it that much worse because it’s like a tease, to hear his laugh and to imagine the words on the screen in Louis’ voice and yet not actually have him right there to watch how animated he is and take in the way he smiles when Harry’s just laughed at one of his jokes.

It’s all pathetic and so uncharacteristic of him that Harry’s too ashamed to tell anyone, let alone Louis, like he feels that everything in his life is spiraling out of control. He only has a few months left of college and it feels like there are simultaneously too many and not enough options for after. He’s pulled in so many different directions and yet none of them are a sure thing. The last thing he wants is for his complicated situation with Louis to be added to the list of things that are up in the air, but that’s just the way it is. He has no idea what to make of any of it.

Niall must have the patience of saint because he puts up with Harry being quiet and opting out of parties for weeks until he finally cracks, insisting that Harry go out with him even while Harry spouts out every excuse in the book for why he can’t.

In the end, it’s the way Niall’s face softens, going more serious than Harry’s used to seeing him as he admits that he’s worried, that finally makes Harry relent.

Harry’s usually more into clubs because he can never anticipate who he’ll meet there and because he likes the way he can lose himself in a big crowd full of nameless faces. Niall prefers low-key little pubs, though, hole in the wall places where at least half the patrons are over forty and look like Hell’s Angels. There’s so much empty space when they walk toward a table in the back that Harry feels panicky, like he’s too exposed in a place that’s so quiet and desolate. There’s nothing to distract from the questions that he knows are coming.

Niall orders a beer and shoots a look in Harry’s direction when he tells the waitress he wants straight whiskey.

“Didn’t know it was that kind of night,” Niall chuckles, stuffing peanuts from the center of the table into his mouth.

“It’s that kind of month,” Harry sighs, stuffing a hand through his hair and tugging at it once, not caring that he’s left it in complete disarray.

“Yeah, I guess I noticed.”

Something about the way he says it makes Harry feel guilty, even though he knows Niall wasn’t trying for that. He doesn’t mean to shut everyone out or to put a damper on the last stretch of senior year when they should be living it up, but he can’t seem to get away from the feeling no matter how hard he tries.

It must take Harry too long to come up with a response because Niall keeps talking, nodding his thanks when the waitress sets their drinks down in front of them and then putting his elbows on the table to lean in closer.

“Harry, you’ve gotta talk to him.”

Harry scoffs, rolling his eyes and drinking too large of a gulp all at once. He knew that had been coming. “Talk to him about what?”

Niall’s one of the most laid back, collected people that Harry has ever met and not much ruffles him, but Harry can tell that he’s worried. He can’t exactly blame him after the way he’s been acting, but he doesn’t know how to explain to Niall that it isn’t as simple as that. There’s no quick and painless solution because he doesn’t even know what he wants, let alone what Louis would agree to.

“Anything. Does he even know how much you care about him? I’ve heard you on the phone with him a dozen times and I’ve never heard you say once that you miss him. You act like everything’s just a fucking breeze.”

“It would just make him feel bad,” Harry mumbles, staring down at the table and not back at Niall because even though it feels like the whiskey has gone straight to his head, he still can’t drown out how confused and guilty and all over the place he’s been feeling.

Thanksgiving fucked him up. It was too much, too close to something that he hasn’t let himself feel in years and he doesn’t regret it, but he also knows that it changed certain things between them. It changed certain things in him, too, because before he’d had no problem keeping things casual and he never felt like they had to build toward any specific point. Since he got back, though, everything just feels heavy and hard to cope with and he hasn’t fully shaken the sadness he’s felt from the very second he boarded the plane.

“I don’t think it would. I think he’d like to hear it,” Niall protests, holding tight to the neck of his beer like he’s determined to get Harry to stop being so stubborn. “So, what’ll it be then? Are you going to keep being a prick about it or are you gonna do something?”

For as harsh as his words are, Niall’s tone is anything but and when Harry finally raises his eyes to look at him, he actually sort of feels better just for being called out on his shit. He can always rely on Niall to tell him things exactly as they are, blunt but so caring that it’s no surprise that absolutely everyone loves him.

“I don’t know, maybe. I’m sure I’ll see him when I go back home for Gemma’s wedding.”

Niall looks suspicious as to whether Harry is actually going to make a change, and he has every right to be, because Harry’s only being optimistic for his sake and he has no actual plans to deliver some big spiel to Louis.

“Good,” he says, “‘cause you’ve been out-drinking me, and it’s gonna give me a bad rap.”

Harry laughs and sips at his whiskey for emphasis. “Shouldn’t it be giving me a bad rap?”

“You kidding? I’m Irish. I have a reputation to uphold.” Niall snorts, and Harry’s grateful for the subject change. “C’mon, buy me another.”

It’s just a glorified house party, really, except there’s a cover at the door and everyone is wearing fancy dresses or shirts and ties and there’s some guy wearing 2013 sunglasses and throwing handfuls of glitter on everyone. Zayn knows the guy who lives in the loft so he and Liam and Louis got in for free, and they were promised they could crash there considering traveling back to Jersey from Bushwick on New Year’s Eve will be an inevitable nightmare.

There’s a dance floor set up in the living room and, hilariously, an out of order disco ball duct taped to the ceiling. At the edge of the room there’s a DJ at a table with his face lit up by a laptop screen, and he’s been staring at Louis all night.

He’s...not much, really, he’s okay, he’s really tall and there’s something engaging about him even though he’s freckled all over and his nose is kind of big. He’s got a good head of hair, pushed off to the side in something a fallen quiff, and he’s wearing a suit, tailored to fit him perfectly. He waves him over at 11:30, and Louis is too drunk to play hard to get.

The guy lets his headphones fall around his neck and gives Louis an embarrassing once over.

Apparently his name is Nick. Apparently he’s a DJ. Apparently he knows some famous people. Apparently Louis is desperate, because even though there’s something smarmy about his face, it’s New Year’s Eve and there are things he wants to forget and, for some reason, Nick is just annoying enough to keep him interested.

“I can’t believe you’re wearing suspenders.”

“I can’t believe you’re wearing a three piece suit.”

“It’s a good suit, though, isn’t it?” He looks down to adjust his jacket and raises an eyebrow at Louis, who hates to admit that, yes, it is a good suit.

“Who’re you trying to impress?” Louis finishes the last of his PBR and hands the empty can to Nick, who takes it and then keeps his fingers circled around Louis’.

“Just you, actually,” he says. “But I don’t think it’s working, for some reason. What gives?”

Louis rolls his eyes and Nick laughs and he’s really annoying, actually, he’s irritatingly confident and friendly and not especially nice, just cocky. He has a big personality, and Louis is used to being the louder one, the more annoying one in any dynamic, so he’s not entirely sure what to do with Nick. The longer he looks at him, though, the easier it becomes to stop picturing a pair of wide green eyes that have been threatening to ruin his night.

Harry went back to California for New Year’s Eve, and Louis missed him by a day when he drove back to South Orange from his granddad’s house on the thirtieth. On Christmas Eve -- which also happens to be Louis’ birthday -- he got a nice text from Harry, wishing him a ‘happy happy birthday’ and saying he’d call him soon.

That was last week. Still no call.

They all move onto the roof deck at five minutes to midnight. Nick is right behind Louis, and he inches closer as they hit 11:58.

“Will you let me kiss you at midnight, Louis, or are you going to be a brat about it?”

Louis shrugs, doing his best to keep nonchalant, although he’s not sure what his face is doing -- he kind of thinks he might be smiling. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

They all count down from thirty in unison in their loudest voices. Louis and Nick laugh their way through it, shouting into each others’ faces and punching the air. Somewhere down the block, someone sets off fireworks right as midnight strikes, and Louis watches for a second before he shuts his eyes and lets Nick kiss him, and he’s really fucking drunk, and his head spins when he shuts his eyes and he tears his fingers through his stupid hair and then holds tight onto the lapels of his expensive jacket.

In the end, he’s not sure how he wound up back inside, and he’s not sure what he said to make Nick leave him alone, but as he leaves with Zayn and Liam he realizes he sort of wishes that he could’ve left with Nick, and neither of them are very helpful at all, won’t explain where he went or why they’re going back to the train. They file into the cab and Zayn tells him to stop yelling and he laughs and promptly falls asleep on his shoulder, clutching his phone in his palm.

Harry

Harry’s not sure how it happened, but after enough convincing, he lets Niall drag him along to a party at some new “hotspot” in West Hollywood for New Year’s Eve. They have to drive an hour and a half in the thickest traffic he’s ever endured and eventually find some shoddy little motel that they can come back to at the end of the night before taking a cab to their destination. It all feels like a bit of a hassle, but after spending a low-key Christmas with his family, getting out again seems like a good idea. He could use the distraction.

It’s the grand opening, as it turns out, and there’s a line extending all the way around the block that’s full of girls in sequined dresses and obnoxiously drunk guys who obviously got an early start on the night. Niall knows someone who’s friends with the owner and so they’re able to bypass the line, but the crowd is so thick once they’re inside that even just getting past the doorway is a feat.

“Why here, of all places?” Harry asks, having to repeat himself when Niall just gives him a look and then cups his hand around his ear to try and hear him better. He still doesn’t understand him on the second time around and Harry gives up, trying to convey with his hand gestures alone that he’ll meet up with him later. He must look ridiculous. Niall looks at him like he’s ridiculous, but luckily he seems to take the hint and gives Harry a pat on the shoulder before taking off toward some girls near the stage. Harry can see him sidle up to a dark haired girl that he’s seen before at their own parties, once or twice, and it becomes pretty clear why Niall insisted on driving all the way out to Hollywood to spend New Year’s when there are plenty of good parties going on in Santa Barbara. It’s sweet, really, his apparent dedication.

The whole vibe of the place doesn’t match up with Harry’s mood, though, and he figures it couldn’t hurt for him to go exploring on his own. There have to be other bars in the area and Niall will be fine without him.

The bouncer gives him a dirty look when he walks out not more than five minutes after coming in, but Harry just shrugs, giving him a jovial thumbs up because it’s New Year’s and he’s not drunk yet and he feels like being a shit.

Even on the sidewalk, the crowd is thick with people coming in and out of restaurants and bars. Harry encounters at least three couples mid-breakup and one girl having her hair pulled back while puking in the gutter before he eventually stumbles upon somewhere that seems marginally more quiet and empty than the rest of the block.

Through the row of glass windows, he can see that the inhabitants aren’t necessarily in standard club fare. Mostly everyone is sitting at candlelit tables, but there are quite a few people hovering around the bar and Harry feels himself gravitating in even though he knows how out of place he’s going to look.

Luckily, he doesn’t feel out of place when he takes someone’s abandoned stool at the bar and he’s handed a glass of champagne before he even makes an order. He smiles his thanks, raising his glass in the bartender’s direction before downing half of it at once. There’s a live jazz band somewhere in the building and Harry can only hear but not see them.

Before he has a chance to order a second champagne, the woman who has been sitting at his left since he came in turns in his direction, crossing her legs toward him and looking him over curiously. She’s blonde and leggy and the way her black dress forms over her curves makes Harry feel breathless when he looks back at her.

She’s beautiful. He can’t deny that, even if it seems weird to feel that the way he does after so months of being preoccupied with someone else. He’s made out with a few people since Thanksgiving, mostly just because he was drunk and they made the first move, but he hasn’t had this immediate sort of intrigue toward anyone since Louis.

“You don’t look like you’re supposed to be here,” she says, biting at her perfectly shaped cherry red lips.

“Where do I look like I’m supposed to be?” Harry counters, nodding his thanks when he’s brought over another champagne. As much as he wants this distraction, he also can’t stop the persistent thoughts of what Louis is doing and whether or not he hates him for not trying harder to stay in contact. It’s just hard, and it’s beginning to feel futile, being so far apart and missing him full-time and Harry needs a break. He wants to at least try to rid himself of the weight of those feelings, even if it’s just for one night.

It turns out that he’s crashed a private party for the company she works at. She’s a buyer for an art dealership and she’s just finished a Master’s Degree in Art History and Marketing. She’s super smart and she doesn’t laugh at any of his jokes and she’s sexy. They spend the better part of the hour drinking and talking and Harry keeps forgetting to ask what her name is, but he asks everything else he can think of until she shuts him up with a hand on his thigh.

At eleven, she makes a passing comment that she lives nearby and it leads to them walking three blocks to her place, Harry’s hand on the small of her back the entire time. She’s older than him and she has the sort of confidence that he appreciates and it’s easy to finish off a bottle of wine with her in the kitchen and laugh at their lack of coordination as they stumble through her hallway, and it’s even easy to fall into bed with her to kiss and touch their way into the new year.

The only thing that isn’t easy is waking up the next morning, turning over onto his side with a splitting headache and seeing her mess of second day curls on the other side of the bed. It strikes him that it’s not what he’s used to anymore and he reaches down to the floor for his discarded jeans, rifling his phone out of his pocket and not finding a single missed call from who he’d been hoping for.

The first twenty five days of January are the best Louis has had in a long time.

On New Year’s Day, he wakes up in a bright living room to Zayn dropping a hot wrapped bagel sandwich onto his chest, and it’s just barely enough to make up for the headache he has from drinking and the backache he has from sleeping on Zayn’s leather sofa. They laugh at each others’ New Year’s Eve antics and don’t talk much about Nick, mostly because Louis is somewhat embarrassed that he doesn’t really remember more than his name and fireworks at midnight and the kiss that followed. Liam comes over and they pretend to care about football as they all doze in and out of a day-long nap on the couch and floor of Zayn’s living room.

At noon, Harry sends him a text that just says happy hangover xx. Louis almost throws up.

The rest of the month is better; it’s good, actually. He lands an interview for a first grade position at the school he really wants to work at, and he knows it’s just the first of a few, but the teachers there love him from all the times he’s substituted for them and he thinks -- he hopes, desperately -- that he’s got a good chance of getting it. He wouldn’t start until September, of course, but at least then he can start to plan his life accordingly, and it’s the first move he’s made in a while that feels like a step forward. It doesn’t completely fill up the gaps he still has, the ones he feels most acutely when he remembers it’s been four days since he’s lasted heard from Harry, or something.

When they do talk, though, it’s okay, like they’ve come to some kind of friendly understanding and Louis tries to accept it because it seems like Harry certainly has. He’s great, though, when he hears about the interview, and he texts him the morning of and he texts him after and he calls him that night to hear all about it, but Louis doesn’t get his hopes up, not about Harry, and not about the job.

                                                                                                                           --

The twenty sixth of January is a Saturday. The last time he heard from Harry was on Thursday, late at night, when they just sent a series of random emojis back and forth until Harry sent the peach-that-looks-like-a-butt emoji next to the tongue emoji, and Louis sent him back the monkey covering his eyes and he giggled his way into sleep, because it was four in the morning, and honestly.

It’s unusual to hear from him on a Saturday afternoon, so when Louis gets out of the shower, he’s surprised to see three texts, all from Harry.

louis!!!
you home?
i’m home, get ready

He has to reread them a few times because he has no fucking clue why Harry would be home or what he’s doing or why Louis has to get ready. He calls Harry to no answer, then sends him a message that consists of a series of question marks. With his phone lying face up on his bed, he gets dressed in a pair of black jeans and a blue button-up shirt, feeling antsy and stupidly shaky as he slips into his Vans.

A car honks its horn outside and Louis thinks, it couldn’t possibly, and then he pokes his head from behind the curtain and, yes, that’s Harry in the fucking Jag, of all possible vehicles, and he honks again when he sees Louis in the window. Louis holds up a finger and grabs his keys and his coat and tries to prepare himself as he takes his sweet time going down the stairs, because he hasn’t seen Harry since Thanksgiving, and it’s maddening, how he can slip right back into this feeling.

Harry’s outside of his car when Louis opens the door, wearing a pristine white shirt and a tweed blazer and black skinny jeans and a pair of black boots, looking fancy and fucking gorgeous and obviously en route to somewhere much nicer than Louis’ apartment.

“What are you doing?” Louis asks, looking him up and down and feeling justified, because Harry is standing there with his hands clasped behind his back, smiling wide.

“Come to the reception.”

“Reception?”

“Gemma got married today,” Harry says, taking a step forward. “Give me a hug, I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Harry,” he says against his chest, too surprised to really enjoy or revel in the fact that he and Harry are having a casual hug after months of distance. He gives him a final pat on the back, then pulls away. “I can’t show up dressed like this when you’re, like...” He gestures to his get-up, which looks like it’s been lifted straight off of some spread in GQ. Harry grins and opens the passenger door, waving for Louis to get inside.

“Just come on, I already told my mom you were coming.” Louis scoffs, and Harry ignores him. “No one cares what you’re wearing, but we gotta go, we’re gonna be late.”

“Jesus Christ,” Louis grumbles, but he gets into the Jag, anyway, and fusses with the front of his still-damp hair.

“You’re better looking than the groom,” Harry grins, flashing his dimple rather rudely, as far as Louis is concerned. “You weren’t doing anything else tonight, were you?”

“Actually, I was going to solicit a hangout from one mysterious Zayn Malik.”

Harry snorts. “What were the chances that was going to pan out?”

“Higher than the chances of you showing up and inviting me to a fucking wedding reception,” Louis says, and Harry barks out a laugh, reaching over to pat him on the leg. “It’ll be fun,” he says, “I swear.”

And Louis has no doubt it’ll be fun, he’s just not sure if there was any way for him to mentally prepare for a night spent with Harry after sixty-something days without him. It’s not that he’s not happy to see him, it’s just that a little warning would be nice, maybe, since he’s been doing very well these last few weeks and an unexpected visit from his summer fling deserves some kind of heads-up.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?”

Harry looks at him when he stops at a red light, shrugs. “Thought it’d be kind of fun to surprise you.”

“This was your plan all along? Kidnap me and use me as your plus one?”

“Pretty good plan, right?”

Louis rolls his eyes. It’s frustrating, how easily Harry can predict Louis’ inability to deny him. He should have given him the finger from his apartment window and told him to fuck off, really, he should’ve asked him to please leave him alone so he could enjoy a calm Saturday night of forcing Zayn to hang out with him, but if Harry knows Louis at all, he knows the way to his heart is spontaneity.

They had that in spades, this ability to make anything fun, to make any space their own, and Louis can already feel it building between them. The way he and Harry showing up fashionably late in his Jag feels right, the two of them set apart from everyone else, making heads turn the second they walk in.

The reception is held in a former warehouse, which isn’t much from the outside, but there are lights strung up across the exposed brick walls inside, making it feel intimate and much smaller than it is. Louis is surprised and pleased to find his name written on piece of paper and strung up on a piece of twine along with the rest of the guests, and Harry just smiles at him, obviously proud at having kept this a secret for so long.

Even though Louis is technically his date, neither of them utter the word, and they avoid all couples’ dances in favor of pulling their worst faces in the photobooth at the back of the hall. They’ve never had a problem isolating everyone else in the room, and it’s like picking up where they left off when Louis jerks his head toward the table full of pies -- Gemma hates cake, apparently -- and dares Harry to dunk his finger into the meringue on top of the Key Lime during the bouquet toss.

Harry does, of course, and he predictably swipes it onto the tip of Louis’ nose, which earns him a tap to the balls. Louis knows what’s coming next but he can’t move when Harry darts his tongue out to lick it off and leaves a little bite on his cheek that he’s afraid might be a precursor to a kiss. It doesn’t happen, though, and he’s grateful because...it’s just, they’re having a great time together, an easy time, and he’s not in the mood to complicate things.

“Watch this. It’s about to get ugly,” Harry whispers, knocking their shoulders together to break the tension, and Louis looks out toward the dance floor where all the bachelorettes have congregated. They’re all pressed up together, half of them eager, and half of them looking very much like they’ve been dragged out by their friends. Gemma turns her back to the crowd, ready to hurl her bouquet behind her as “Single Ladies” starts blaring from the speakers.

“Who do you think it’s gonna be? My money is on the blue dress up front.”

“Smart choice. That’s Gemma’s best friend, Kate. She’s...feisty.” A smile passes over Harry’s features like he knows that from experience and Louis gapes at him, crossing his arms over his chest in disbelief.

“You’re something else, Styles.”

Everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion once the bouquet is suspended in air and they watch the girls grapple at each other, stepping on toes with pointy heels and creating general chaos for all of a minute until a red haired woman near the back holds up the bouquet -- mostly just stems after all the petals had been ripped and shaken off in the battle -- looking victorious while everyone else grumbles about their misfortune.

“Wow, was not expecting Elizabeth to win that one.” Harry claps and seems impressed, his smile going wider as the winner makes her way over to the table they’re hovering around.

She’s a good friend of Harry’s mom, apparently, and she easily strikes up a conversation with them once they congratulate her.

Like the charming bastard that he is, Harry makes a point to tell her that her future husband will make a very lucky man someday. It’s incredible, really, watching the effect that he has on people and knowing firsthand what it’s like to fall under his spell. As much as he hates to admit it to himself, Louis still feels special, because even if what they have...or had...never had any definite label, it was still something more than the hoards of people Harry flirts with on a daily basis.

“Are you going to introduce me to your....” She passes a look in Louis’ direction, looking him over with a smile, and Harry hesitates like he doesn’t know exactly how to fill in that blank for her. It’s awkward, but Louis takes mercy on him and sticks his hand out to introduce himself. “Friend. I’m Louis.”

He tries to ignore the fact that Harry looks relieved by his answer, but it sort of stings, the fact that he’s just relegated himself to friend and Harry has nothing to say about it. There’s no reason why he should, because for all intents and purposes, that’s what they are. It just feel weird to say aloud after everything that they’ve had together, like he’s oversimplifying them.

The DJ’s voice booms out over the speakers to announce the bride and groom’s first dance as a married couple, and the music strikes up as the crowd quiets down. Gemma and Will are so tuned into one another that the moment looks far more intimate than it ought to, considering they’re in a crowd of people, but it’s lovely, really.

The first dance has always been the part of weddings that gets to Louis the most, that makes him the most pensive and a little bit curious as to what it’ll be like when he’s the one in their shoes. He can sit through the most gut-wrenching vows and sappy wedding videos and not feel remotely compelled to shed a tear, but just hearing the first chords of the music start up and seeing two people standing in front of each other, sharing a look like this is it before they meld into one, gets to him every single time.

Louis passes a look in Harry’s direction, not expecting to be caught because he thought Harry would be watching his sister, but he’s watching him instead and it makes Louis lose his breath for a few seconds. It feels like all the champagne he’s had hits him at once and Louis sets his hand back on the table to steady himself, never more grateful for anything in his life than when Elizabeth interjects.

“Doesn’t your sister just look beautiful, Harry?” She marvels, clutching her hand over her heart and looking at Gemma and Will in a way that Louis can easily recognize as some combination of awe and envy.

Harry swallows his entire flute of champagne at once. “Yeah, she’s gorgeous. You know, Louis has four sisters.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth says, obviously confused. She claps when the dance ends, and turns to look between them. “That’s...four is a lot of sisters.”

Harry grins, nodding, and Louis has to clasp his hand over his eyes because it’s kind of mortifying, the way he brought him into a conversation with the single lamest segue he’s ever experienced.

“You know, people are going to start thinking you have a one track mind, Harold,” Louis accuses, pointing his finger right in the center of Harry’s chest and looking up at him expectantly, as if Harry might have an answer for himself.

But he only shrugs, and of course he doesn’t bother trying to lie. “Maybe I do.”

Louis spends an embarrassing thirty seconds trying to come up with some sort of comeback, but Gemma comes up to take hold of both Harry’s hands and drag him out on the dance floor with her. Kate does the same to Louis, and the dance floor crowds all at once and the whole party spend at least half a dozen songs getting down, laughing as their dance moves get steadily more ridiculous. Harry ends up dancing with his dad, doing their own interpretation of the waltz that has everyone around them in stitches. Louis gets passed back and forth between most of Gemma’s bridesmaids and manages to only step on one of their toes, which he considers a monumental achievement for how tipsy he is.

It’s fun, and Louis is amazed at how well he feels like he fits. He barely knows Harry’s family and hadn’t even met Gemma before tonight, but he feels like they’re old friends after they both seem to have an appreciation for Louis’ most famed and possibly his worst best dance: stop the traffic, let the people through.

“She’s better at it than you are, Harry,” he laughs over the music, watching fondly as Harry does his best impression of a sprinkler.

“Too bad she’s taken,” he shrugs, staring so hard at Louis that he whacks his mom in the face with his arm-sprinkler.

Everyone groans as the macarena starts up and yet, Louis notices, they all stand in a line, facing the same direction. Harry stands right beside him and watches Louis intently as he tries to not fuck up the dance moves, though when he turns, Harry is facing him instead of turning the opposite direction.

“Wrong way,” Louis laughs, bringing each hand to the back of his head.

“Woops.” Harry grins, obviously not fussed at all about it. Louis wraps his hands around his hips and shimmies a little, and Harry shakes his head, looking predatory.

“There are children around,” he mumbles, leaning in close to pat him on the ass, like he just can’t help himself. Louis makes sure he really goes for it the next time around, because honestly, Harry shouldn’t have mentioned it at all if he didn’t want Louis to put on a little bit of a show.

Eventually, Harry and Will take a break to get them more drinks and almost immediately, Gemma weaves her arms around Louis’ neck to speak into his ear.

“Be patient with my brother, okay?”

Louis doesn’t know what to make of that, but he doesn’t have it in him to tell her no or even ask why, not when she’s smiling at him, encouraging and mischievous and so much like Harry.

The song they’ve been dancing to comes to an end just as Will walks out to recollect his bride with a grateful smile and Louis stands back, holding his hands out dramatically like he’s presenting her to him. Gemma grins, taking a bow and practically throwing herself in Will’s arms. He catches her and twirls her and they stay like that, her feet not touching the ground, holding onto each other as the next song starts up.

The DJ announces that it’s the last song, and wishes them a good night and tells them all to get home safe. Chairs scoot back from their tables as people walk with their hands linked out to the dance floor, just as the first notes of the song starts to play.

There’s a pulse to old soul songs that Louis has always loved, just gentle, building steps that take a second seat to the voice that covers them. The wavering and the yearning just sound like love to him, and Otis Redding must have wrenched the most out of twenty-six years that any human possibly could, because even just the first line of “These Arms of Mine” makes Louis believe that he understood everything about what it’s like to need someone.

He feels aimless on the dance floor for a few seconds and then panics, deciding to just get a drink to avoid standing out there by himself. But as he turns to walk back to the refreshments, his eyes land on Harry just a few feet away from him. His blazer has been discarded sometime during the night and he has a bit of lipstick on his cheek from his grandmother kissing him and he’s so breathtakingly beautiful that when he holds his hand out and smiles and shrugs, Louis can’t understand how anyone could ever try to deny him.

Louis certainly doesn’t. He closes off the distance between them and tucks his chin over Harry’s shoulder, breathing him in deep and letting himself be overstimulated by his smell and Harry’s hands on the small of his back and the slow rhythm of the song.

They’re holding so, so tight to each other, and even as the song ends they keep hugging, Louis’ eyes shut tight because it’s a moment he hadn’t expected and now he doesn’t want it to end. There are chairs scooting around them and the DJ thanks everyone for coming and eventually Harry’s muscles loosen around Louis’ body, and Louis takes a step back and fixes the hem of his shirt and the front of his hair and Harry coughs into his fist. Louis can feel him staring but he doesn’t look back, he just jerks his head toward their table and says something about having to find his phone before they leave.

If they were going to kiss, he thinks, that would’ve been the time. He’s not happy that it didn’t happen, but it might be better, he tells himself. It’s good that they didn’t, because hugging during an Otis Redding song came really, really close to being Too Much, on top of being Harry’s surprise wedding date and on top of being introduced to his entire extended family as his Friend.

Harry makes his rounds to say goodbye to everyone, and Louis hangs back a little bit, waving and smiling to the ones he’s met. He hugs Gemma and shakes Will’s hand, congratulating them one more time before they head off in the old Bentley they’ve rented to take them back to their hotel.

“Some people are going to the bar,” Harry says, offering Louis his coat and shrugging into his own. “If you feel like going?”

“I dunno.” Louis clears his throat and looks at Harry, searching his expression for the right thing to say. He’s thought a lot about how the night could end, but he can’t stand the rejection if he says the wrong thing, and he doesn’t want to be the one to make that decision. “What do you want to do?”

“Well. There’s tons of extra champagne.”

“Okay, so we’re taking a bottle.”

Harry grins. “Good.”

“Go get one,” Louis says, nodding toward the bar, and Harry’s so easy that it takes the smallest amount of coaxing to get him to do anything. He’s only a little bit obvious when he walks directly behind the bar and tries to hide a bottle underneath his coat, then comes shuffling back to Louis, looking a bit frantic as he whispers go go go under his breath and they cackle their way out to the car.

It feels like old times, if they’ve even been a Thing long enough to have old times. There’s this mutual hesitance that Louis can’t really place, but he knows they’re both trying to make up for it by being as ridiculous as possible, like they can drown out the awkwardness with their laughter. Louis is laughing hard enough to pretend it doesn’t still sting that Harry would go days at a time without answering his text messages, and he chooses to forget all the times he purposely ignored Harry’s phone calls when he knew for a fact his voice would send him into a tailspin.

It’s tough to remember the two months of distance, though, when they can pick up where they left off with so little effort. Not for the first time, Louis thinks about how easy it could be if he liked Harry any less every time he saw him again, but it’s not ever that way; each time he’s just a surprising and lovely and endearing. Just as long-limbed and green-eyed. Just as pigeon toed. He’s just Harry, and Louis just wants him.

But, no, getting into trouble with each other is a solid distraction, it’s what they’ve done since the beginning, and it’s easy. Once they’re at Louis’ apartment, they take turns trying to get the bottle open, and eventually the cork flies off and hits the wall and ricochets into the bowl of bananas on Louis’ kitchen counter, and Harry takes a picture of it amidst a series of infectious giggles.

“It’s not even that funny,” Louis says, though he can’t seem to stop smiling, and teasing Harry about it only makes him laugh harder.

They make themselves comfortable on Louis’ couch and pass the bottle back and forth, talking about nothing, making fun of each other. Louis holds the remote but doesn’t turn on the TV, doesn’t have a good enough excuse to watch anything other than Harry. He’s shoving his toes underneath Louis’ thigh, wiggling until Louis squirms and clamps his hand down over Harry’s ankle.

“What’s going on with your foot, Harry?” he asks, clunking the bottle of champagne onto the floor beside the couch.

Harry pouts. “Come over here.”

“Eh.” Louis wrinkles his nose and shrugs, like he can think of a better idea, even though absolutely nothing comes to mind. “Don’t like the looks of that end of the couch, honestly.”

Which is, maybe, the biggest lie Louis has ever told, because Harry’s shirt is unbuttoned down to reveal the bird wings on his collarbones and his eyes are glassy from drinking and he’s staring at Louis like he’s something to conquer. He wants that; he wants to be taken apart tonight, wants Harry to just do whatever the fuck he wants, to take what he wants, but it won’t happen that way. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again, which is why Louis is totally fine with this, what they’re doing; giving each other a hard time, using every excuse not to touch, but there’s only a half inch of champagne left at the bottom of the bottle and Louis is kind of running out of reasons.

“You’re missing out,” Harry says, and Louis rolls his eyes, looking away just long enough to miss it when Harry leans over and yanks him back by the wrists with his stupid, strong arms so that Louis lands on Harry’s stupid, broad lap.

He’s dizzy from sitting up too fast and from the half bottle of champagne that’s making the room spin, not unpleasantly. Louis burps, and Harry laughs, sliding his hands up Louis’ sides.

He forgot, unfortunately, how good and big his hands are. “Better over here, right?”

Louis shakes his head. “Awful.”

“I’m hurt,” Harry mumbles as he bunches up the fabric of Louis’ shirt in his hands, then uses the grip as leverage to pull him down close enough to kiss him on the jaw. It’s a relief that he doesn’t try to kiss him properly; keeps things from getting too intimate, and they learned their lesson last time, with the whispering and the lights off and the endless, ridiculous, breathless kisses.

“No, you’re not,” Louis mumbles, petulantly, even though he closes his eyes and lets his head lull to the side when Harry’s lips brush behind his ear, his teeth grazing over that same spot until Louis squirms in his lap. “What are you doing anyway, Harry?”

“Celebrating.”

“It’s not our wedding night, so.”

“Who said anything about the wedding? Not what I’m celebrating.”

Harry picks his head up, easing his hand up the front of Louis’ body and pressing his nose against his cheek until he finally stops being stubborn and opens his eyes to look back at him. It’s fucking infuriating, the way that all he has to do is stare a little too long and Louis forgets how to resist, forgets all the reasons why he needs to.

It’s just that, in the moment, he never wants to say no to Harry, to push him away or to be smart about what he’s doing to his own heart. It’s like muscle memory, the way their bodies react to each other, fitting into place like that’s how they were meant to be, like the two of them are supposed to indulge in the tangled up, irresponsible mess that they keep finding themselves in.

Louis’ just too drunk and too attracted to every single part of Harry to worry about things like being smart and responsible. He tells himself that he’ll deal with it later, that the aftermath will be different this time, that it won’t be so crushing anymore because he’s already felt all the worst things he could possibly feel. Now he just wants to have fun while they have the chance, to take the parts of Harry that he can get when he can get them, and accept it all for what it is.

There’s a curious look in Harry’s eyes, almost like he’s waiting for Louis to push him away, but Louis basks in surprising him, proud of the way Harry’s eyes light up when he curls both arms around Harry’s shoulders and pushes himself up closer. His chest is pressed up against Harry’s and their hips are lined up so well that Louis rocks his forward, experimentally, shivering at the spark that it sends through him.

“You call this a celebration?” Louis rolls his eyes, doing his best to look bored. “Pretty boring,” he adds, even though the way Harry’s hips circle up to meet his is already starting to get him hard. He tells himself that it’s because he hasn’t gotten laid since Thanksgiving, that this has nothing to do with Harry.

It never takes much to set Harry off and he predicted as much when he lifts Louis off his lap, switching their positions and to push Louis back against the arm of the couch. Louis lets himself meld to the fabric when Harry starts undressing them, stripping them down piece by piece until Louis’ only in his boxer briefs and Harry’s belt is off and that god damn white shirt is all the way unbuttoned.

“God, Harry, do you have to be so repulsive?” Louis groans, knowing that the way he’s looking at him completely defies his words. Harry smirks, sinking down on his knees in front of him and actually straightening up a bit, like he’s letting Louis get a good look. It’s pornographic, really, because Harry’s always hotter than the last image that Louis has in his mind of him and he doesn’t need anything else to fuel his fantasies. He doesn’t need to be able to vividly imagine Harry on his knees for him, broad and lean and more defined than he was two months ago.

“Sorry about that,” he says, voice deep, even more slowed down from drinking. “I guess I’m going to have to work on it.” He gets ahold of Louis’ thighs and tugs them apart so that he can fit his body between them and then starts mouthing at his cock, teasing until Louis doesn’t know if the fabric is wet from him leaking or from Harry’s tongue easing along the outline.

“There he is,” Louis murmurs, trying to sound careless and nonchalant. “One-speed Styles, taking his sweet fucking time.” He pushes his hips up for emphasis, feeling dizzy with how badly he wants it.

He’s not usually so forward when it comes to hurrying Harry along or telling him explicitly what he wants, but everything about this time is different, or it feels that way, at least, and Louis doesn’t think he can handle Harry’s usual modus operandi of breaking him down slowly. Not tonight.

“Patience, grasshopper.”

Louis wants to punch him, or maybe tug Harry up by his curls to walk him straight out the door because he’s so cheesy and sexy and he doesn’t want to want him this way. He strongly considers actually going through with it, faking sick or just telling him to get the fuck out of his life and stop making everything complicated, but Harry chooses that exact moment to finally drag down his boxers and to start lowering his mouth over his cock without any preamble, making Louis’ hips buck up instinctively.

“Harry...Harry, fuck, Harry...” As hard as he tries to muster up something else, his brain short circuits and all that wants to come out is Harry’s name until Louis finally just forces himself to shut up, trying to make up for how much he’s already embarrassed himself. It’s just that he’s drunk and the room is spinning and Harry’s like a drug, himself, one that’s slowly ruining Louis’ life.

Dropping his head back against the couch, he refuses to watch the stretch of Harry’s perfect, cupid’s bow lips moving over him. By the sound of it he’s trying to make himself choke on it, which is...Louis’ not sure he’s ever known anyone who likes giving blowjobs more than Harry does or who looks better doing it, but the fact that he’s so eager, that he always pushes both of their limits makes it so mind-numbingly good that he almost can’t take it.

“Missed this,” Harry mumbles, coming up for air and just teasing his tongue over the head, giving him little licks that feel like nothing more than wisps of air -- enough to make him shiver, but nowhere near what he needs. Louis slips one of his hands behind his neck, digging his nails in and pushing his mouth down further again. Harry grips his thighs this time, clawing at tops of them as he gets almost his entire length up against the back of his throat, nose brushing up against his belly.

“Bet you did.” The thing is, Louis believes it, and it sends a surge of something through him, making him feel like maybe he has the upperhand for once or that he’s better apt to pretend this time.

Reaching down for the base of his own cock, Louis eases his hips back, tapping the head up against Harry’s lips and feeling his eyes glaze over when Harry whines, snaking his tongue out to lick at him and to try and take Louis in again.

“You want it? Christ, you love that dick, don’t you?” Louis sets his hand on his own stomach, stretching his body out invitingly and Harry grins up at him, setting his hand over Louis’ and lacing their fingers up backwards, keeping a loose grip on him.

Harry looks pleased with himself, like Louis has just pointed out the most obvious thing in the world. “You have no idea,” he breathes. “Just fucking give it to me.”

It doesn’t take more than that to make Louis stop teasing, to forget the fact that he felt any sort of power over Harry because he doesn’t feel in control of anything while he holds onto the sides of Harry’s neck and fucks his mouth, least of all himself. Every time he looks down and sees too-long curls and green eyes staring up at him, watching his face like he’s looking for approval, Louis feels like he’s spiraling.

“God, I’m gonna come,” Louis gets out, thrusting up twice more against the warm pressure of Harry’s mouth trying to get more of him in before he lets go, fighting to keep his eyes open so he can watch some of it spill out onto his lips. Louis moves his hand up immediately, cupping around his jawline and dragging his thumb inward over Harry’s mouth to trace it away. Harry catches him, sucking his thumb past his lips and licking and biting at it like, greedy for the taste.

There’s a long series of seconds where Louis feels spaced out, just staring at Harry between his legs and the way he’s pressing kisses up the inside of his thigh. It’s too tender and it brings him out of his daze, gripping Harry by the shoulders and dragging him up to get him pushed back against the other end of the couch. Louis licks over his lips as he lets his eyes scan the length of him.

He’s about to move in, to drape himself over Harry and kiss down his body until he can return the favor, but Harry holds him around the biceps, looking at him with hesitance that Louis can’t make sense of.

“What is it?”

Harry sighs, pushing himself up by his arms and curving his hands around Louis’ neck, the same way he does when he’s about to go in for a kiss, but that part doesn’t come and Louis feels both disappointed and grateful for it.

“I just...wanted to do that for you.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “Stop being such a dick martyr, Harry.”

“Dick martyr?” Harry seems indignant, though he doesn’t put up much of a fight. “I mean it, you don’t have to, like. Do this.”

“I know I don’t have to do it, sweetheart,” Louis says, licking his lips as he looks down the length of Harry’s body, then back up to his face. “Do you really not want me to?”

“I just--” But Harry whimpers when Louis finally touches him, and he gives up speaking altogether when Louis finally fits his mouth over the head of Harry’s cock, and eventually he doesn’t do much more than say Louis’ name over and over, right before he comes barely two minutes later.

“Now was that so bad?” Louis can see the exact opposite written all over Harry’s face, the look of calm that’s made his gaze seem even more ethereal than usual, that satisfied smile Louis feels proud to have put there.

“No, Louis,” he says patiently, his voice amused. “It was just fine, thank you.”

Their mutual straight faces last another five seconds, and then they each laugh, a little sheepishly. Louis reaches for the bottle of champagne so he can finish off the last swig and so that he won’t look at Harry and want for things he can’t have.

He washes down the last of Harry’s taste in his mouth with the flat liquid in the bottle and then carries it into the kitchen under the guise of recycling and saving planet Earth and not because he wants to kiss Harry on the mouth.

He washes his hands in the sink, and when he turns the water off, Harry speaks up from the living room.

“Gonna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” Louis plays dumb as wanders back into the room and tugs on his boxer briefs in front of Harry.

“The fact that we do this every time I come home.”

Shit. Louis keeps it light, the levity of his voice enough to downplay the situation in only a few words. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Harry stares, and Louis wills himself not to look away.

“Not really,” he says, finally. “I mean it’s fun, right. So.”

“Yeah,” Louis nods. “So.”

Yeah, it’s fun, so they don’t need to go into details about why it’s ten levels of fucked up that they can turn off the intimacy of a blowjob even when it’s the total opposite of what Louis actually wants.

Louis excuses himself to brush his teeth, and when he comes back from the bathroom, Harry is snoring on the couch. His limbs are too long for it and the thought of shoving him around so that Louis can fit seems unnecessary, in light of everything.

Louis stares for another minute, making sure Harry is actually asleep, and after he finally shuts the light off, he doesn’t dare look back.

In the morning, Harry comes to Louis’ room to say goodbye, and Louis pretends to sleep through the warm kiss pressed to his forehead, pretends he doesn’t feel the way Harry brushes the hair back from his eyes and whispers a single goodbye.

The front door to the apartment shuts, and it’s fine. Harry will be three thousand miles away by the end of the day, and Louis will absolutely, definitely be fine.

Six days later, Harry turns twenty two.

The whole night winds up being one long pub crawl with most of his friends from school. Niall buys Harry a Birthday Princess tiara and he wears it to every bar and doesn’t pay for a single drink and, miraculously, doesn’t get nearly as drunk as he feared he might.

He’s actually feeling okay, though, he’s got a good buzz going by the time the group of them walks into the fourth bar of the night. They know the bartender there, and Harry doesn’t exactly tell everyone, but this guy in particular never, ever lets Harry pay for a drink. Not once.

After Harry downs his whiskey, the bartender beckons him closer with one finger and jerks his head toward the back of the bar, where there’s a curtained off hallway under a sign that says Employees Only.

Fuck it, he thinks. It’s his birthday.

Eric -- that’s his name, he’s pretty sure -- is an okay kisser. He’s got a lush mouth, but he smells a little too strongly of Acqua di Gio. Harry doesn’t hate it when he feels him palm his way down the front of his jeans with practiced fingers, but something about the way his own hand looks on Eric’s shoulder seems wrong, and he realizes all at once it’s because that silicone bracelet he’s wearing still has an L on it even though the rest of the letters have almost rubbed off.

He taps Eric a few times on the back, shaking his head.

“Gotta go,” he mumbles, laughing in a way that he hopes doesn’t seem too dismissive.

He probably should tell someone that he’s leaving, but it’s easier to just go, and he keeps his head down as he makes his way through the packed bar and walks out and keeps walking until he’s home, still wearing his tiara.

The time on his phone is 3:12 when he walks back into his apartment. There’s a string of birthday texts and a missed a call from Louis about forty minutes ago, which -- yeah, that was right around the time Eric was grabbing his dick through his jeans.

Harry toes off his boots and settles onto the couch, and Louis answers his phone on the fourth ring.

For a second it’s quiet, and then a raspy, “Hello?”

“Hiii,” Harry drawls. “You still awake?”

He can hear him shifting around, possibly rolling over, and he feels somewhat guilty that, no, Louis is obviously not still awake. “Mhmm,” he lies.

“Sorry, I know it’s late,” he mumbles. “Just wanted to hear your voice.”

“S’okay. I called you, like, an hour ago.” Louis doesn’t sound annoyed at all, just genuinely happy to hear from him, and for the first time Harry feels actual guilt at having done something with another person, even though he didn’t really even do anything.

“Yeah, I just saw that. Sorry, kind of a loud bar.”

“Have a good birthday?”

“Was pretty good,” Harry says, unbuttoning his shirt with his phone tucked between his neck and shoulder. “Just went on, like, a pub crawl, I guess. Did you do anything tonight?”

Louis sighs, his voice a little muffled by what Harry assumes is a blanket or a pillow. “Hmm, no, just kind of hung out, got food with Liam, came home, watched a movie in bed...”

“You left out the part where you jerked off to that picture of me in my birthday tiara.”

Louis snorts. “I thought that went without saying.”

“Don’t tease me,” Harry grins, pulling off his shirt the rest of the way. He balls it up, uses it as a pillow when he leans back against the arm of the couch.

“How do you know I’m only teasing?” Louis asks, his voice unreadable without being able to see his face, but even that -- the mere thought of it -- is enough to make him feel a thousand times more interested than he did with Eric’s body pressed up against his in that employee bathroom.

“Guess I don’t,” Harry says, fingering the hem of his boxer briefs. “Is that why you called? Needed some encouragement?”

“Would’ve been nice,” Louis murmurs. “Still got myself off, though.”

Harry is going to choke on his tongue, maybe. “Don’t fuck with me.”

Louis laughs, and it sounds somewhat strained. “I’m not, Harry. Fuck, I could probably do it again right now.”

Jesus. “You do that a lot? Think about me when you...” Harry’s asking for a lot, he knows, but it’s his birthday, and he’s wearing his birthday princess tiara, and he deserves to know if Louis thinks about him when he gets himself off on a Friday night.

“Harry,” he mumbles, sounding almost rueful. “You don’t even know.”

“Fuck,” Harry whines, rolling his face until it’s pressed into the side of the couch. He squeezes his eyes shut and pictures Louis, his tight body and his small hands and the way he looks when he comes. “This is why I couldn’t do it this time because it’s like...no one else is you.”

“What?” Louis’ voice is sharper, and Harry’s eyes fling open.

“What?”

“This time?” he asks, louder. “Are you...oh my god.”

“Louis, what are you--”

“So this is a thing?”

“What’s a thing?”

“You couldn’t do it this time, but there are other times when you can do it?”

Harry’s mouth feels dry, and his heart races. “I mean, Louis, we aren’t...we never had that conversation, so I didn’t think--”

Louis laughs, and it’s completely humorless. “Fuck, and I actually felt guilty about just kissing someone else on New Year’s Eve.”

“You kissed someone else on New Year’s Eve.”

And it really shouldn’t, but the realization actually stuns Harry, makes him feel angry and hurt and sad even though he knows it’s practically platonic in comparison to what he’s done with other people.

“Yeah, but don’t worry, I didn’t fuck him. That’s only okay when you do it.”

“Lou--”

But the sound cuts out on the end of the line, and the conversation is over, and all Harry can hear is his own breath hitting the receiver.

He feels sick when he realizes he’s been taking for granted this entirely unfounded idea that Louis just won’t move on, ever. That Harry has nothing to worry about, because he seems so dedicated to him, so static every time he comes home and sees him in all the same places. It hits him hard when he thinks of all the times he assumed Louis was just out with Stan that he could’ve been charming every person in every bar -- which wouldn’t even be surprising, considering he’s the most lovable fucking person in the universe, and he charms almost anyone if he looks at them the right way.

Harry gets up from the couch and pours himself a glass of water to ward off an inevitable hangover. He throws his tiara onto the kitchen floor and folds himself back onto the couch and calls Louis again, but it goes directly to his voicemail, and Harry falls asleep with his phone in hand, just in case.

It takes a full week of silence, of Louis persistently avoiding his calls and leaving his texts unanswered for him to finally crack.

Seven days also happens to be the precise amount of time it takes for a person to go crazy from being so meticulously shut out and left alone with nothing but their own nagging thoughts.

Harry replays their last conversation over and over, and yeah, okay, he realizes where he went wrong there. He should have never been so nonchalant when let it slip that he’s been seeing other people, and his reaction to Louis kissing someone else was actually embarrassing. He was a total hypocrite and kind of a prick, and Louis didn’t do anything wrong.

The thing is, he’s also been going over other things they’ve said to each other in the past and as far as he remembers, none of it even hinted at any kind of commitment. He never considered as a possibility because they live so far away and it’s unrealistic to be tied down when there’s no indication that things will ever change, isn’t it? It just seems like some sort of slow form of torture that Harry’s not sure he’s willing to subject himself to.

Unfortunately, coming to terms with their lack of commitment doesn’t make it any easier to swallow that Louis acted on it. It all floods his mind in such vivid detail that it leaves him feeling sick to his stomach, imagining Louis with some faceless guy’s hands all over him, kissing him too messy and fast and just wrong.

It shouldn’t matter. There’s no reason why it should change anything between them, but it does; Louis doesn’t feel permanent anymore. Someone else could easily win him over and treat him better and just...be there, no less, and Harry realizes for the first time just how much he doesn’t want that to happen. He wants Louis to stay his in the fucked up, unofficial way that he’s belonged to him ever since they met.

Normally he wouldn’t take phone calls during the middle of his Romanticism lecture, but he grabs his things as soon as he sees Louis’ name on the screen and practically sprints out into the hallway.

“Louis, listen,” Harry starts, but he’s cut off immediately.

“No, Harry, just...are you busy?”

“Not at all. I mean, I was in class, but it’s not important.”

Louis clears his throat. “I just booked a flight to California.”

“Wait, what? You’re kidding.” After the last time they spoke and the absolute silence over the last week, it’s the very last thing he expects to hear.

“No, I just...figured the weather must be nice there this time of year, so why not.”

“You’re flying here for the good weather?”

Louis clears his throat. “And you. You’re sort of a selling point.”

It’s ridiculous and so uncharacteristic of him, but Harry actually flushes at that, smiling to himself as he lets the compliment wash over him, even if he’s probably undeserving of it. He has no idea why Louis is choosing to just let things go and to act like that particular conversation never happened, but if this is what it’s going to be like, Harry can’t say that he minds.

“I can’t fucking -- I’m in shock. I thought...I didn’t hear from you for a week, so...”

“It’s fine,” Louis says, and it’s after that that Harry realizes he should just stop trying to explain himself because clearly Louis has come to some kind of resolution. And that resolution led him to fly to California.

“I promise I’m a good host. Got quite a comfortable bed, too.” He switches his phone from one ear to the other, feeling happier than he has since... well, at least since the last time he saw Louis. No one else seems to have quite the same effect on him.

“Who said I’m sleeping in your bed, Harry? I was planning on shacking up with Niall.”

“Have fun with that. He farts in his sleep. When are you coming?”

“End of next month. I figured that would give you time to break off any dates you have planned.” It’s the first bit of indication that Louis gives that he’s even thought about what happened since then, but he sounds amused, if anything. Not like he’s been analyzing things non-stop the way that Harry has.

“Louis.”

“I’m kidding. It’s okay, though, right? I know I probably should have asked.”

“No, I mean, it’s the best news ever. Of course it’s okay.” He really wants to ask where the fuck he’s been for a week, what he was doing when he was ignoring every single text and call and Facebook message he sent him. “Anything else exciting happen in the last seven days?”

“Actually...” Louis clears his throat, and Harry can practically hear the smile in his voice when he speaks. “I heard back from the school.”

“Holy shit, and did you--”

“I got it.”

Harry’s not sure he’s ever wanted to hug someone more than he wants to hug Louis at that moment, because no matter what happens between them, he can’t ever imagine not wanting the best for him. “Fuck yeah,” he says, “I’m so happy for you, Lou, I just got chills.”

Louis laughs. “I can’t fucking believe it. I bought the ticket like, an hour after they called.”

“Why?”

“I dunno,” Louis says, his voice a little softer, and Harry looks down at his feet, smiling, because he knows. He knows that exact feeling of something good happening and wanting to just share it with someone -- with Louis -- and for once that feeling doesn’t seem too big or scary or overwhelming. It’s just a good thing.

“You’re gonna be the best teacher ever, Mr. Tomlinson.”

Louis snorts. “Say it again.”

“Mr. Tomlinson,” Harry says, this time dropping his voice down to its lowest possible octave, and he can hear Louis’ resigned snickering from the other end.

“Alright, I gotta go, I haven’t even told my mom yet,” he says. “Text me, okay?”

Harry’s heart does a clenching somersault thing, and he smiles wide. “Yeah, I will.”

Louis’ plane touches down in Santa Barbara in early afternoon and as he walks through the gate and heads straight to baggage claim, it strikes him just how odd it feels to be here to greet Harry rather than to say goodbye.

He spent most of the flight thinking about how impetuous it was to book a flight after the argument they’d had and the subsequent week of silence that followed. Those seven days were strange and illuminating and Louis had tested himself in a few different ways, just to see how he could function without talking to Harry at all (terribly) and to see if he could just let go of the fact that he’d apparently fucked other people (not really, but he made a solid effort).

At the end of the week, after he got the call about the job, he realized just how much he wanted to share that moment with Harry, and it was that realization that made him buy that plane ticket without even asking. It was one of the more thoughtless decisions he’d ever made, and it felt good, knowing that his desire just to see Harry could bring him to such a point of spontaneity. Somehow, it took that strange week in February to realize that the Harry Styles chapter of his life isn’t one that he’s willing to close, at least not without giving it one last shot to see if something is supposed to happen between them.

Harry doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight as Louis heads toward the sliding glass doors, and Louis has a moment of sheer panic when he considers the prospect of being stood up after flying 3,000 miles and enduring a pretty torturous four hour layover in Houston.

But he finally spots him, waiting politely behind a short line of people. His expression is somewhat frantic until they spot each other from where they’re standing and Harry starts waving at him from behind an old woman in a straw hat.

“Louis, hey! I’m sorry I’m late!”

The security guard at the door turns to give him a dirty look for screaming in his ear, and Louis laughs, covering his face with one hand and shaking his head. It’s so easy to forget that Harry hurt him and that they’ve been in the most confused, fucked up relationship he’s ever willingly taken part in since summer ended.

The crowd finally disperses, and Harry walks up to him, throwing his arms around him and squeezing. Louis drops his bag right there where they’re standing and holds onto him, his long tree trunk torso and his narrow hips, and the thousands of miles were definitely worth it.

“You almost punched that old woman in the head,” he smiles, slipping his arms around Harry’s waist and holding him so tight that he has to be crushing him. “Get a grip.”

It’s easy to hide his grin from Harry as he tucks his chin over his shoulder, but to anyone looking on he must look like the happiest person in the world, the way his eyes are squinting and his cheeks are flushed.

Harry laughs, soft against Louis’ ear, the best sound in the world. “I’m just happy to see you.” He moves one hand up further to tangle in the back of Louis’ hair, urging his face up to kiss him. Louis doesn’t know why he finds it so jarring considering Harry’s never had a problem with kissing him in public, but he realizes he had some small fear that in Harry’s territory, so to speak, things might be different, or Harry might be different.

It feels the same, though, the familiar minty taste of gum and of Harry and the way he smells that floods Louis’ senses. Even when someone knocks him in the calf with their rolling suitcase, Louis still stays put, eyes on Harry’s so he can soak in every ounce of that heavy gaze he likes to pretend is reserved just for him.

“C’mon,” Harry says, after a minute. “Let’s get go before my car gets towed.”

He takes Louis’ bag from him once they’re at the car, making a grunting noise and pretending like it’s a strain just to hoist it up into the backseat. “Jesus. Don’t pack light, do you?”

“I’m staying for a week, Harold. Better safe than sorry.”

“High maintenance,” Harry teases, shooting him a sideways grin as they get buckled in. Louis expects him to start up the car and pull out to take him back to his place, but Harry hesitates, sitting crooked in his seat to keep looking at him. “It’s just so weird. I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Do you want me to pinch you so you know you’re not dreaming?” Louis reaches out to poke at one of Harry’s nipples, pinching it through the fabric of his t-shirt while Harry squirms and gets ahold of him by both hands, dragging him closer so that he can set their lips together, grinning into it.

“Think this might do,” Harry mumbles, parting his lips to kiss him deeper, more languid and the way Louis has wanted to be kissed since the last time Harry left him equally as breathless. His kiss with Nick and all the careful dodging he’d done with Harry after Gemma’s wedding left him greedy for something more, for the kind of passion that he’s not confident he’ll ever be able to recreate with anyone else.

When they pull away, Harry pushes a few strands of Louis’ hair back from his forehead with two fingers, smiling up against his cheek and letting out a long, steady puff of air. Louis feels almost like, no matter what else happens while he’s there, even if it turns to complete and utter shit, it’ll be worth it purely because of the way Harry’s looking at him now.  “I can’t even tell you how much I missed doing that.”

“This is just an idea,” Louis murmurs, “But if you’d start the car already you could take me home and show me, maybe.”

He keeps a hand high on the inside of Harry’s thigh on the way home, and Harry comes dangerously close to getting a speeding ticket.

Louis didn’t think it was possible for Harry to be any more well liked than he was by literally every person they came across together in New Jersey, but the sheer number of friends that he has in Santa Barbara is actually somewhat overwhelming. There doesn’t seem to be anyone that Harry doesn’t know and doesn’t already have some sort of intricate back-story with, each a little more random than the last.

They’ve only been at the house party for fifteen minutes, and Louis has already been introduced to Alex, a guy in his late 20’s that Harry met when he took a nature photography class, and Ashley, who’s been one of Harry’s good friends since he mistakenly ended up in the ladies’ bathroom at a club.

Everyone seems to be a little bit in love with him, which isn’t surprising -- he has a way of staring and listening that makes people want to keep talking, and Harry gets all the best stories out of them, surrounds himself with people who are genuinely fun and interesting and strange.

His socializing is a lot easier to cope with considering Harry makes a point to introduce Louis to every single person, and winds up back at his side to kiss his cheek or bring him another drink after he’s wandered off for a few minutes.

The funny thing is, despite the fact that Harry’s friends aren’t necessarily the type of crowd he would end up hanging out with on his own, Louis actually really likes everyone he talks to. A few of them have their heads so far up their own asses that he literally has to stop himself from rolling his eyes as they one up each other with obscure references, but everyone’s nice and welcoming and they sprung for good beer, so he can’t complain.

“You having fun?” Harry presses a kiss against his temple and speaks right against his ear. “You good?”

“I’m fine,” Louis grins, because it’s the third time Harry’s asked him in the last half hour. He squeezes his shoulder and Harry sticks his tongue out at him and Louis makes like he’s going to bite it. Harry laughs and squeezes his hip bone and they turn their attention back to Alex, who’s in the middle of telling them a rather self indulgent story about his latest trip to Lake Tahoe.

It’s boring, but Louis is trying to be polite, and he glances around the small circle of people, watching expressions and quizzing himself on their names. Harry’s not listening, either, though it takes Louis a second to realize why -- there’s a guy whose name he doesn’t know and he’s standing right next to Harry, curving his hand around Harry’s shoulder and turning him until they’re facing each other.

Louis watches the way Harry’s face lights up a little too closely, and his stomach churns. As hard as he tries to be rational, he can’t help but to look the guy up and down, rolling his eyes at his dumb ironic t-shirt and wondering whether or not he’s someone Harry’s been with, wonders if it’s the guy from his birthday.

It’s fine, he tells himself. That guy’s wearing a stupid t-shirt. Harry would never fuck him, he thinks, he’s a tool, and he’s got no ass, but Louis can’t seem to convince himself that it’s nothing to worry about when Harry sets his hand on the guy’s chest and leans in to say something in his ear.

Louis’ heart sinks, and he immediately falls into I should’ve known mode as he excuses himself to get as far away from Harry and the too-tall, too-quirky, too-not him guy.

All the drinks are set out on the counter in the kitchen and Louis stares at them, thinks of all the possible ways he can get drunk enough to stop acting like an irrational prick. Whiskey might do it, he thinks. Maybe some red-colored punch that has “disaster” written all over it.

He reaches out for a beer, eventually, but Harry gets ahold of him by the forearm.

“What’s up?” Louis asks, going for nonchalant, although the expectant look on his eyes gives him away. Despite how confused and jealous he feels, he really doesn’t want to have the conversation he knows is coming.

“Why’d you leave?” Harry asks, handing him a beer.

“Just kind of loud. I needed a break,” Louis lies, fiddling with the bottle, twisting the lid even though it calls for an opener.

“Okay,” Harry says, but he looks skeptical when Louis finally works up the courage to meet his eyes, and the fact that he seems so genuinely confused is both endearing and frustrating.

“It’s just kind of... it’s awkward, you know? Like, we’re here together and then you have some guy all over you, acting like I’m not standing right next to you.” It’s too much at once, but if he doesn’t get it all out now he’ll just hold it in and stay angry, letting it fester and potentially ruin the rest of his trip. He didn’t come just to act like Harry’s friend, like someone who’s totally okay with the fact that he has no claim over him. He came because he wants a change, even if he can’t really voice it yet.

Before Harry even says anything, he cups his hand between Louis’ neck and shoulder. When he looks up at him, he’s surprised to see Harry smiling. “Babe, it’s not like that. Do you honestly think I’d do that?”

The question hits him hard because Louis doesn’t know how to answer. He knows a lot of things about Harry, like, he’s the most frustratingly beautiful person he’s ever met and he loves Mexican food and drives too fast and is more like an old man in a twenty-two year old body sometimes and that he makes Louis inordinately happy. But he’s still not sure whether he could ever just be with one person, and that thought alone hangs like a cloud over everything good about him.

“I don’t know,” Louis admits, finally, and he’s embarrassed when he says it. “You did before.”

They shouldn’t be talking about it here, in the kitchen of one of Harry’s million acquaintances while an overplayed Imagine Dragons song that Louis hates is blaring in the other room, the same room where there’s another guy who obviously thinks he has a chance with Harry, who possibly already has had a chance with Harry.

Louis stays in place when Harry tries to pull him closer, resisting because he’s scared Harry is just going to say some bullshit that will pacify him for the rest of the night but not really get them anywhere.

“I’m sorry you had to see that in there,” Harry starts, holding onto Louis’ shoulders even after he refused to be tugged into his embrace. “And I’m sorry about before, alright? I know that probably doesn’t mean shit now, but it’s not gonna be like that anymore.”

“Then what’s it gonna be like?”

Harry shrugs. “Like I just told him I was here with you.” He takes the bottle from Louis and bangs it on the edge of the table so that the cap goes flying off, and then he hands it back to him. Stupid fucking party trick. Stupid fucking endearing college student he’s enamored with. “And that I was leaving with you.”

“Oh.” Louis clears his throat. He wasn’t prepared for this. “Well.”

“Well?”

“I mean, good, I guess.” He’s embarrassed, now, flushed at the thought that he made a big deal out of nothing.

“Just...I dunno, just trust me,” Harry murmurs, leaning in close to touch his lips to Louis’ forehead, then glances down at him. “Can I get a kiss?” Harry leans forward, a slow grin spreading across his features. “A good one?”

“Shut up,” Louis says, and presses the cold beer against Harry’s belly when he kisses him, deep and somewhat inappropriate considering they aren’t exactly alone. Something feels like it’s been locked into place, though, and it’s intoxicating. Harry told that guy to fuck off in what Louis is sure was the most polite way possible, and Louis can’t even fathom how happy that makes him.

“Your friends are nice,” he mumbles against his lips, “But can we go?”

Harry nods, giving him a final kiss and squeezing Louis’ waist before he lets him out of his hold. “Yeah, c’mon, let’s go home.”

They pass through the crowd in the living room on the way out and Louis notices the look that stupid t-shirt guy gives him as they stop to say goodbye to Alex and he can’t help the surge of pride that comes over him because no matter how wanted Harry is, no matter how many options he has, he still chooses him over anyone else.

There’s already a routine, and Harry could get used to it.

It doesn’t require any discussion and it’s not complicated, but it goes like this: Harry wakes up first, because he has to. Louis is usually sleeping on him or somewhere close to him, clutching his arm or pressing his forehead up against Harry’s shoulder. He grumbles when Harry gets out of bed and then becomes a starfish across the entire thing, limbs flung out to all corners over it, looking up at him, small and soft and inviting with the sheet tangled up between his legs.

But Harry’s classes start early and even though there’s a Louis Tomlinson in his bed, he gets in the shower and dresses himself and then just leaves before he can even think about giving into temptation.

By the time he comes home, Louis is up and about, playing Fifa with Niall or eating bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch or even, one time, washing dishes.

Harry grins through his lectures, happy and distracted with a belly full of butterflies, anxious to get back to his apartment and to Louis. He doesn’t count down the days until he leaves. He doesn’t let himself worry. He just is glad and relieved as soon as he unlocks the door and sees Louis in one of his t-shirts on the sofa.

On Thursday, though, his alarm doesn’t go off at all, and he wakes up to Louis prodding him in the belly, sunlight streaming in from the window behind his bed.

“You don’t have class?”

“Uh-uh,” Harry mumbles, reaches out to grab Louis by his soft waist to drag him closer until they’re tangled up tight and warm and loose-limbed. “Not on Thursdays.”

“You mean I actually get to keep you to myself this morning?” Louis presses his face right up against Harry’s throat, and he can actually feel him grinning.

Harry hums out his affirmation, pushing his head back more against the pillow so that he can look down at him properly. The way that he looks just waking up is almost unreal because his chapped lips and heavy eyelids shouldn’t be as appealing as they are to Harry, but Louis always manages to maintain a level of accidental perfection that makes no sense at all. He didn’t even think it was possible to be so attracted to all the unrefined, most human parts of someone, and yet the rough edges are his most favorite things about Louis. He’s never been in so deep.

“Whatever are we gonna do?” Harry asks, his voice no more than a croak. “Breakfast? Go back to sleep?”

He doesn’t really need to ask, not when the answer is already written all over Louis’ face as his eyes flit from his lips and back up to his eyes. Louis nudges Harry’s legs apart so that he can slot his own between them, and Harry knows what he wants. It’s exactly what they’ve been depriving themselves of all week while Harry was a responsible senior and actually went to his lectures instead of skipping out for a lazy make out session with the covers pulled up over their heads, or a quiet fuck with the beautiful boy sharing his bed, all while Niall burned pancakes in the other room.

“M’not tired anymore,” Louis mumbles, flattening one of his hands out on the pillow beside Harry’s head and kissing him softly at first, luring him into a false sense of things being slow and chaste when it actually heats up quickly, Louis licking hot and teasing into Harry’s mouth and pulling a ragged moan from him.

“Want to know a secret?”

Harry nods, enamored and breathless. “Tell me.”

“Got myself off after you left yesterday morning...right here. Made myself come twice before I ever got up.”

It’s the most unabashed thing that Louis has ever said to him and combined with the look in his eyes, he definitely knows what it’ll do to him. Louis gets like this sometimes; cocky about his ability to just completely stun Harry, and every single time it makes Harry want to take him apart, to get Louis to the point where he’s so desperate for him that he forgets he even had the power to tease in the first place.

Harry keeps his cool, licking over his lips and doing his best to keep his eyes neutral even though just the thought of what Louis told him is making his cock start to fatten up under his briefs.

“Couldn’t wait until I got back? And I’d even fucked you the night before, too. Greedy.” His hand trails down the length of Louis’ back too slow, just barely inching downward until he reaches the curve just above his ass. Louis wriggles his hips, trying to get Harry’s hands where he wants them.

“Hm, I dunno,” Louis says, his voice light, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. “Everything smells like you in here and your side was still warm.”

Something about the way he says it, your side, is so domestic and just...real, that Harry feels a second of being overwhelmed. As right as it always feels to be with Louis, he still has the occasional nagging thought that he’s not ready for something like this, not with anyone.

But then Louis will look at him a certain way or scratch his nails down his side, rough like he knows Harry likes it, and Harry will be reminded that this is different somehow. Louis isn’t anyone else. He’s the person who Harry has been trying and failing to get out of his mind for months and who he doesn’t want to keep at bay anymore, especially not when he’s right there, warm and mischief-eyed and something that Harry very much wants to keep in present and future tense; today and tomorrow and maybe an indefinite number of tomorrows after that.

“And what did you think about, hm?” Harry mumbles, finally giving in and cupping one of his big palms over Louis’ ass, just holding onto him possessively like he wants to remind Louis exactly who he belongs to while he describes his own hands on his body.

Louis stares at him hard, like he’s trying to decipher how much Harry actually wants to hear. His cheeks turn a pretty rosy color that makes Harry grip him a little tighter, encouraging him.

“I was thinking about how hot you were the night before,” Louis starts, licking over his lips and looking at Harry with a surprising amount of assurance. “Like...your body, the way you held me down...it was like you were putting on a show.”

Harry fights off the desire to smirk over being called out because Louis’ right, and they both know it. “What else? Keep talking.”

He can feel Louis’ cock, hard and pressed up against his own. Harry’s barely touched him and he’s already so worked up that it’s thrilling, thinking about how far they can take this. He wants to find out how slowly he can push Louis along, deconstructing him bit by bit. Sometimes the way Louis teases him makes him think he’s striving for that, like he’s trying to get Harry to just break and finally wreck him.

“Swear I could still feel you,” Louis whispers, finally getting to the point where he has to look away because it’s too much, moving his lips behind Harry’s ear instead, leaving damp kisses that are so light and good that Harry doesn’t insist on him looking back up again. “My fingers weren’t half as good as your cock.”

“How about my fingers?” he asks, digging them harder into Louis’ ass and speaking just against his ear. “Were yours as good as mine?”

Louis swallows hard and makes a sound, but doesn’t answer.

“Sorry,” Harry whispers, very aware of how annoying he’s being when he looks right at Louis, challenging him. “Didn’t hear you.”

Louis bites his lip and shakes his head, once. “Not as good.”

Harry pushes one of his legs between Louis’, rocking his hips up as his hand slips below his waistband, running his fingertips teasingly down the center of his ass. “Did you tease yourself?”

He’s being mean, he knows it, but it’s too easy when Louis’ breath gets so shaky with every question he demands from him and his body wants to give into it so badly and yet he still denies himself, playing Harry’s game.

Muffling a sound against the top of Harry’s shoulder, Louis grinds down on him, his hips working in confused motions like he can’t decide whether he’s more drawn to the heat of Harry’s cock against his or the single finger barely grazing his hole, just circling the rim and not giving him even half of what he wants.

He nods half-heartedly, but the answer doesn’t come fast enough or clear enough for Harry’s liking and he brings his hand down against Louis’ ass, giving him a rough spank that makes Louis’ skin bounce under his touch. “Answer me.”

Louis doesn’t, staying quiet, but there’s the hint of a defiant smirk on his lips when Harry looks at him, like he’s actually trying to antagonize Harry as a strategy to get him to push harder. Harry raises his eyebrows, giving Louis another few seconds to take the bait, but he doesn’t and it’s like an invitation that leaves Harry speechless.

It doesn’t take much maneuvering to slide his body out from Louis, leaving him stretched out flat on his stomach, legs parted just enough for Harry to kneel between them. Harry gets ahold of his hips, dragging Louis’ ass up so that they’re pressed together and Louis can feel how hard he is for him. He bends over and covers Louis completely, tucking his chin over his shoulder and smoothing his hand down the front of his chest.

“You don’t want to tell me, then?” he whispers against his ear, brushing his hand lightly against Louis’ ass. He can feel Louis shiver at that, twitching his hips for more. “Seemed really talkative a few minutes ago.”

He knows, now, that Louis won’t say anything just so he can get Harry like this, get a rise out of him, but he just runs his hand slow against Louis’ ass, hot from where he spanked him before, nudging his cock up against his thigh because even the friction is too good to deny himself.

“Harry...” Louis warns, breath catching when he turns to look over his shoulder, and Harry’s face is so close to his that his lips graze against his cheek. The touch is barely there, but it’s so intimate and so sweet in contrast to the way they’re building up that there’s a second where they both lose it, just looking at each other like they’re in a state of shared disbelief that anything could be so utterly, wholly, frustratingly good. Harry’s never felt like he’s understood another person’s body so well, but with Louis it’s just instinctive; he knows where to bite or kiss or trail his fingers to make him feel utterly worshipped.

“Well, I guess if you don’t want to talk about it, we can do something else.” Harry plays it cool, brushing his lips against the middle of Louis’ forehead and easing off of him, pretending like he’s going to get out of bed, but Louis reaches back and gets ahold of him by the front of his thigh before he has the chance to get very far.

Even in the quiet of the room, he can’t quite make out the words that Louis muffles into the pillow and Harry raises his eyebrows, staying in a kneeling position behind him and letting his hands frame down Louis’ sides, and they end up back on his ass since he can’t seem to stop touching him there.

“What was that?” Harry hums out, looping his fingers in the waistband of Louis’ boxer briefs and easing them down slowly over the swell of his ass. Each new inch of skin that he’s rewarded with is more perfect than the last and he tucks his bottom lip between his teeth, biting down hard to keep from moaning just how exposed Louis is and the fact that it’s all for him.

“I said,” Louis starts, his voice reedy, “Why don’t you stop fucking talking and do something?”

Harry smirks, even though Louis’ so clearly frustrated with how slow they’re moving. Louis’ ass is faintly pink tinged from being spanked and Harry traces his fingers over the mark, bringing his hand down harder than before because he’s suddenly obsessed with the thought of what it would look like red, stinging and blooming with heat.

“Being bossy won’t get you anywhere, Lou.”

Louis shoots a look back at him and his lips are parted and swollen from biting on them and Harry needs to kiss him, right then, even if it means losing focus. He hovers closer to him again, licking over his lips and pressing them against Louis’ as his hand soothes over his skin before delivering two more smacks, making Louis cry out sharply right against his lips even though his body defies him, pushing back into the feeling.

“You like that?” Harry mumbles, dragging Louis’ bottom lip forward with his teeth and stroking his hand over Louis’ ass, kneading and soothing the flesh under his palm. Louis actually whimpers at the question, nodding frantically and looking up at Harry under heavy lashes. He is broken down and beautiful and Harry almost loses it right then; he wants to give him everything, anything.

“Harry, fuck,” he whispers. “Please.”

“You want it?” He smoothes his hand against Louis’ ass again, pressing his fingers in, palming the red skin with his fingers splayed out. Louis makes a noise that Harry takes as a yes, and he keeps his hand moving, spanking him again as he presses a series of kisses onto his shoulder blade and down the center of his spine, making Louis shiver, making his entire body flare up in goosebumps.

The bottle of lube they’ve been using all week is somewhere on the floor beside the bed and Harry reaches down with his free hand, keeping the other moving slow over Louis’ ass, and it seems like the trailing, deliberate touch is making him even more desperate because he rocks his hips down against the mattress and clenches every muscle and wriggles around, and it’s gorgeous to watch.

When his fingers are coated, Harry sits a few inches behind Louis, the view too good to pass up as he presses inside of him, eventually working up to two fingers. For a few minutes they say nothing, mostly because the little noises Louis makes are so fucking hot that Harry doesn’t want to miss a single one of them.

“Good, babe?” he asks, holding onto the back of Louis’ knee to keep him steady while his other hand pushes deeper and curls and makes Louis quiver. “How about one more?”

Nothing but muffled assent sounds from Louis’ lips, and Harry goes for another, sighing at how beautiful Louis’ body looks as it adjusts. His perfect thighs are stretched out and the dip of his lower back is absolutely obscene, and there is just so much want and to touch and grab that Harry can’t fathom his luck.

“Gorgeous, Lou,” he mumbles, leaning down to press his lips at the bottom of his spine. He kisses him again, right on the swell of his ass as he pulls his fingers out, and Louis turns back to look at him, obviously not in the mood to wait much longer. Harry ignores his pointed gaze and slicks himself up, pumping his fist around his cock once and twice and it feels amazing, but as he kneels up behind Louis he can’t even steel himself for how perfect it is when he slides in, the slow acceptance that’s indescribably good.

There’s nothing but a series of stunned gasps between them for a few seconds. Louis gets up onto his palms and rocks back, and Harry leans forward with his hand on Louis’ belly, holding his back to his chest as he curls his hips forward so Louis can feel the entire length of him. He keeps his hands on Louis’ hips to tug him back against his cock, his mouth hanging open as he watches the space between them open and close every time he thrusts in.

“Fuck, you feel good,” Louis cries out, dropping his head back against Harry’s shoulder and resting it there limply, throat stretched taut, utterly taken by him. He tries in vain to push his body tighter back against Harry’s, but it’s futile when Harry is already holding him so close, working his cock into him so steadily that he can’t do much but to try and keep breathing.

Harry can’t last much longer, he knows he can’t, not when Louis’ muscles resist every time he rocks into him. No matter how stretched Louis gets around the width of his cock, he’s still so tight that Harry can barely move, let alone pound into him the way he wants to. The pace is so slow and deep that each time he drags his cock almost all the way out just to ease it back in again, Harry feels shaky, like it’s too slow and too maddening and yet he’s right there, so ready to surrender to the feeling that’s been twisting his stomach in knots for what feels like hours now.

“What’s it gonna take to make you come, huh?” Harry’s voice is gritty, and he muffles his words right up against Louis’ ear, still holding him tight around the chest.

Louis’ arm moves in front of their bodies, reaching down to circle his fingers around his own cock, fisting too rough and too dry at himself as he tilts his face back to look at Harry. “Spank me again,” he whispers, so quiet and blissed out that Harry can barely hear him over the buzzing in his own ears. “Harder. Want it to hurt.”

Harry gives it to him harder this time, bringing his hand down right against the cleft of Louis’ ass, knowing it’ll make the sensation that much more intense when he matches up the hits in perfect time with the head of his cock nudging up against Louis’ spot. He goes at him again until his palm stings, watching his face for a reaction every time, making sure it’s still right and good and not too painful, but Louis’ face is fucking blssfull, gorgeous and desperate and needy, and Harry keeps going.

Louis opens his mouth like he’s trying to warn him, but all that comes out is a strangled gasp and Harry can actually feel it before it hits. Louis’ muscles spasm around his cock, keeping him in as the rest of his body trembles, threatening to fall slack against the mattress if Harry stops holding him so tight.

“Yeah, baby, that’s...” Harry murmurs, encouragingly, kissing along the shell of Louis’ ear as the aftershocks shoot through Louis’ body, and it’s so hot that he can’t even finish his thought, just murmurs a “fuck” against his skin and keeps going. “I’m gonna,” he warns, and it’s indelicate and too hard and he doesn’t really give Louis the chance to react before he squints his eyes shut and breathes hotly against his skin, losing every part of himself to Louis for those few seconds.

“Fuck,” Harry croaks, and Louis answers with a grunt, wriggles his way down to the bed again. Harry laughs because he’s not sure what more he can do when he feels so fucking elated and high and he remembers for the thousandth time why morning sex is actually the greatest simple pleasure in the world.

“You okay?” he asks, and Louis turns to look at him and crosses his eyes and Harry grins and leans forward, lying down next to him with his legs tangled between Louis’ and kisses him until they catch their breath, recovering, piecing it all back together.

“I’d be okay starting every morning like that,” Louis mumbles, pushing the hair back from Harry’s face with gentle fingers, thumbing across his eyebrow and studying his face. Harry feels like he’s being absorbed, like Louis is taking a thousand pictures per second, and he keeps his expression still to make sure he’s getting exactly what he wants.

“Wish we could.” Harry’s tracing circles over the hot spot on Louis’ ass, soothing it, appreciative and crazy about it and too overwhelmed to really dwell on the impermanence of their situation. There’s golden light streaming through the window and dust motes floating in the streak of sun behind Louis’ hair and he’s tan from one day at the beach and Harry is just the luckiest. He just is.

Even if there’s nothing else, even if this is it, the extent of them, Harry will think of Louis this way forever. He kisses him softly, warming up to it for only a second before he gives him a final squeeze. “Let me make you breakfast.”

Louis nods. “Okay.”

Harry makes egg on toast, and Louis watches.

There’s a long welt down his back that Louis feels no remorse for and he has a perfect view of it, considering Harry doesn’t believe in clothes even when Niall is home and when he’s not he really has no excuse to put on anything more than his underwear, which is all he’s wearing. Even those are haphazardly tugged on, too low; Louis can see his protruding hip bones whenever Harry turns around to make sure he’s still listening to him.

And Louis is listening, sort of. He’s trying. But he’s drinking coffee on an empty stomach while he waits for Harry to finish breakfast, and his mind is racing, and he has that distinct sensation of a word being on the tip of his tongue and just a little too far away for him to grasp.

It’s stupid, because he knows what it is, but he just takes another sip of coffee and watches as Harry performs a dramatic stretch amidst a series of groans, twisting right and left and shaking himself out like a Great Dane before he looks at Louis, coughs into his fist, fixes his hair, and shrugs. “What?”

It’s so sweet and unassuming and Louis just takes in the scene for a few seconds, the sight of Harry in front of the stove, all legs and a long torso, a pan of eggs bubbling behind him and his prison tattoos and a few red marks across his milky skin that make him look even more contrasted and beautiful than he already does.

Louis loves him.

Harry frowns and there’s that line between his eyebrows, and oh, no.

Louis is in love with him.

He stares down at his coffee cup, suddenly petrified that Harry will be able to read it in his eyes.

“Do you need more coffee?” he asks, and his voice is curious, just a first guess at what could’ve made Louis go suddenly silent.

“No,” he says, looking up again, showing him that he’s fine, that his face is normal, that nothing has changed.

“Come give me a kiss,” Harry says, like he’s asking him to pass the salt, and Louis loves him. He gets up and leaves his mug on the table and walks into Harry until his back is up against the counter, kissing him with a hand on each shoulder. It’s perhaps more reverent than Harry meant it to be, and Louis flushes when they pull back.

“You okay?” Harry grins, tapping him on the hip.

“I’m fine,” Louis says, glancing to his right. “Gonna burn those eggs, pal.”

“Mmf.” Harry kisses him one more time and then smacks him in the ass with the spatula and tips the pan to deposit an egg over each piece of toast, and they eat it messily, hungrily, and it’s the best meal Louis’ ever had.

The weather on Louis’ last day in California is fittingly awful.

After six full days of sunshine and sea breeze, the sky apparently decides to turn gray just to see him off, looking far more moody than Louis actually feels. In fact, he actually feels sort of...alright. Good, even.

It’s not that he won’t miss Harry or that saying goodbye ever really gets any easier, but it just feels different this time. He doesn’t feel like they’ll be so isolated from each other this time, not after living in Harry’s apartment for a week, falling asleep in his bed every night, and seeing more sides to him than he’d managed to all summer. Watching Harry do laundry and agonize over exams and just go through all the simple mechanisms of his life turned him far less enigmatic and more and more like someone Louis could actually, legitimately see himself being with.

He doesn’t know what exactly inspired him to be honest with himself about how he feels for Harry. It could have been the burnt toast or his broad back and sleepy morning voice singing Neil Young or the fact that absolutely nothing has been successful at getting this boy out of his head since they first met, but Louis knows the feeling isn’t going to go away. He just wants him, he loves him, and it’s such a simple, heavy admission.

It’s a conversation that he knows they should have, but it’s so hard to breach when everything feels so good and a bit like he’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Harry’s become so open and so tender with him and Louis lets himself consider that maybe it’s love for him, too. He’s been turning the idea around in his head, analyzing every look and touch until he actually has to remind himself to chill out before Harry picks up on the fact that he’s acting like an absolute headcase.

They make one last detour to the beach en route to the airport, and Louis is a ball of nerves. Walking along the water with their fingers tangled up loosely between them is a good distraction, and Louis doesn’t even let it deter him when Harry knocks their shoulders together and presses a kiss to his temple, acting calm even though his smile tries to give him away.

“The apartment is gonna be quiet without you,” Harry comments, dipping his toes into the very edge of the water when the tide creeps up to their feet.

Louis laughs, pulling a face at him and doing the exact opposite by directing himself closer to the shore, switching places with Harry before his feet can get wet. “Are you calling me loud? Need I remind you that you live with Niall.”

“Shit, good point. Should follow you back to New Jersey to get away.”

“If only,” Louis mutters, looking at Harry with a sheepish smile and being met with an equally reverent expression. He refuses to acknowledge it for fear of their last couple of hours together turning needlessly heavy. “What are you going to do these last few weeks? Graduating soon.”

“Was thinking of erecting a large statue in your honor,” Harry says slowly, keeping his expression neutral when Louis snorts. “Spend a few nights crying and dedicating songs to you on the radio.”

“Erecting,” Louis says, laughing the word out, and Harry finally breaks, grinning back at him. He lets go of Louis’ hand to hold him around the waist instead, keeping him close.

“I dunno,” he starts, shrugging. “There’s an internship in New York that I really want. It’s paid and you’re pretty much guaranteed a job by the end of it as long as you’re not a total idiot.” Louis nods, trying not to appear too obviously hopeful.

“You are,” he says, like it’s obvious, “But I have faith in you.”

Harry laughs and then clears his throat, and keeps his eyes on the water. “I’ll probably put in some applications around here, too.”

“Good,” Louis says, encouraging, maybe too enthusiastic. “Let me know if you need me to pretend I’m your employer, or anything. I’ll put in a good word. Great with his hands, has a very broad vocabulary, always comes on time...”

Harry’s laughing so hard he’s wheezing, and Louis knows it’s not that funny, he knows, but Harry does the best job of making him feel like no one else has ever made him laugh before in his life, and Louis, yes, he does love him.

There’s nothing dramatic about the airport, this time. Maybe except for when Harry kisses Louis so thoroughly and squeezes him so tight that Louis’ feet dangle a few inches from the ground, but Louis doesn’t feel the urge cry, and this time he’s not scared, and it’s the opposite of fear when he flies away from Harry. It’s resolve.

“How’d it go?”

Harry shuts the door behind him and tugs off his blazer, letting it hang over the back of the couch. It’s too fucking hot outside for more than one layer of clothing -- for any clothing, as far as Harry is concerned -- but for the interview, he really had no choice but to look the part of hireable young college graduate who knows how to dress himself in work clothes.

Niall looks back at him, guitar resting against his chest, the fingers of his left hand still placed over the frets even though he’s only looking at Harry with an expectant expression.

“Great, actually,” Harry admits. He unbuttons his shirt halfway and sits on the couch beside Niall, relaxing his muscles, relieved to be home after a stressful morning fussing over his resume and wondering how best to talk himself up in front of Professional Adults.

“Think you’ll get the job?” Niall starts picking a quiet pattern with his fingers and Harry watches, considering.

“Well,” he starts, and then pauses. The interview could not have gone better, in all honesty, and the job itself was a perfect entry-level gig, something that would look good on his resume whenever he wanted to move on to something bigger. It was just a copyediting position, the same sort of thing he’d been applying to everywhere, but they loved Harry; they basically offered him the job on the spot, the message peeking out through formalities about how they’d let him know on Monday.

“I do think I’ll get it, yeah,” he says, finally, and he doesn’t really want to say the next part, but he’s not sure he can look Niall in the eye without admitting to it. “But I don’t know.”

Niall knows something’s up, and he nudges him in the side. “What?”

“You have to be honest with me,” Harry says, angling his body to face Niall, who ceases his finger picking to look at him levelly, and the look on his face says that obviously he will be.

“How fucked up is it for me to want to, like.” Harry swallows and looks down, pressing his tongue to the inside of his cheek for a second. “Not take the job because of, like.”

“Jesus Christ, dude, spit it out.”

“Because of Louis.”

Niall tilts his head to the side and then laughs, and then looks away, and then just keeps laughing until his shoulders are shaking and he’s doubled over against his guitar.

“What?” Harry pinches his arm.

“Nothing. Just saw it coming.”

“Well, like. Answer me.” Harry frowns, frustrated, which just makes Niall giggle again. He’s genuinely curious, though, because he’s not entirely sure whether or not it’s a good idea to refuse a perfectly good opportunity in California on the chance that Louis will still want him when he’s in New York, but even the thought of it sends a hot thrill through him, and it must be written on his face, because Niall gives him a rueful stare.

“You already made up your mind, buddy. It’s not like you’re moving to, you know, the middle of nowhere. Like, New York is massive, right? Full of opportunity.”

“I just feel like that’s so primitive of me, though, you know? Like, it’s so rom com to abandon your life in one place and move across the country to be with someone,” Harry pushes a hand through his hair, mussing it up.

Niall looks at him incredulously, strumming a random, ominous-sounding chord. “And you’re about as rom com as it gets. Funny that, right?”

Harry shoots him a look that Niall actually seems amused by, tucking his pick into the neck of the guitar, under the strings, and setting it aside so that he can lean closer to Harry with his forearms braced on his knees.

“Look. You love him, you want to be with him, it’s as simple as that. Stop trying to to over-complicate things. If it doesn’t work out in New York, you can always come back.”

Harry goes still before Niall even finishes speaking, stiffening in his seat and opening his mouth to protest. The thing is, no matter how hard he tries to form his lips around the words, nothing comes out.

Niall just made one hell of a presumption and Harry can’t even tell him that, no, it’s not true. He hadn’t even allowed the prospect of love to enter his periphery before, but suddenly it’s blaring at the forefront of his mind and he can’t help but wonder if everyone realized it before he did. Somewhere along the way, between coasts and sheets, he’s fallen for Louis and it very well may already be some open secret that no one bothered to let him in on.

“Shit. You haven’t told him, have you?” Niall’s eyebrows shoot up so far that Harry’s convinced they might actually reach the back of his head.

“Fuck, no. I didn’t even...I haven’t even thought about it.”

It’s strange, because he sort of loves everyone generally and he feels momentarily in love with most people that he meets...or the concept of them, at least, but the whole state of being in love is something entirely new to him. He’s never truly felt it until Louis and it’s not at all like the idealized image of love that he’s had drilled in his mind. It’s not some giddy, perfect, be-all, end-all feeling. It’s gritty and it’s good and it’s like all the moments they’ve had together settling into him and the yearning for more of those moments.

“Well, do you?”

Harry doesn’t have to say a word. His silence manages to do it for him and Niall just settles back, looking at him hard before breaking into a fresh grin.

“Guess I’d better start looking for a new roomie, huh?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Harry scolds, despite the fact that he feels almost thrilled by all this new information. For the first time since realizing he has serious feelings for Louis, everything seems possible, attainable, in reach, and he’s not afraid of it.

“Do I get to be your best man? My uncle’s a caterer, he’ll cut you a sweet deal on filet mignon.”

Harry grapples for one of the throw pillows behind him and heaves it at his head.

It’s stuck in his head the rest of the day. Love. L is for the way you look at me. L for Louis. L for the only letter not rubbed off on his ugly boardwalk bracelet. L for the letter Louis drew on his wrist that night in his backyard.

L for Harry has obviously fucking Lost his mind.

For the next three weeks, Harry’s mind is crowded, practically overflowing with a bunch of shit he really feels unprepared to deal with at any time, let alone in the amount of time alotted to him.

It’s a delicate time to realize that he’s in love with someone he’s been labeling as a hookup for an entire year and he’s not sure how he’s supposed to process that on top of finals, on top of graduating, on top of having to say goodbye to a life he’s lived very cozily for four years now. Harry considers himself transient, adaptable, not fussy about his surroundings, but there’s something utterly crushing when he thinks about the finality of it all. Every step through every hallway feels like a goodbye in the last week before graduation, and it weighs on him when he sees Niall packing up his room, and the trip down memory lane he takes when he packs everything he owns is probably not helping.

There’s the job situation, too, which is the worst of all. It will ultimately decide whether or not he takes the job in Santa Barbara or if he’ll be moving back east to work in New York and -- he hopes, because he hasn’t even mentioned it to him -- be with Louis in some capacity.

It’s the topic of conversation at every Senior Week mixer he attends, though mercifully the entire point of those things seems to be ‘get as fucked up as possible with your professors,’ so people mostly rant about the economy and tell each other that they’ll be fine and make emotional toasts to each other, to the class of twenty-thirteen, to being college graduates.

Commencement is on a Thursday, and one thing he knows for certain is that his family will be there on Wednesday morning, and Louis will be, too, and they’ll have dinner and then Harry will wear his cap and gown on Thursday morning and he can be done with it all, finally, can just be through with dragging out this goodbye to his college experience.

On Tuesday he wakes up with a particularly impressive hangover after singing karaoke until three in the morning at the English Major Barbecue, as it was rather hilariously being called. It had turned into something a little more than that, and if it weren’t for Harry’s phone buzzing repeatedly underneath his pillow, he would’ve slept through the day as he was hoping.

“Huh?” he says into his phone, eyes still shut.

“Harry?”

“Lou?”

He laughs. “You awake?”

Harry yawns and sits up, blinking and clearing his throat and attempting to sound like an alive person. “Yeah, ‘m up. You okay? What’s going on?”

“I’m watching the weather channel,” Louis says, and Harry narrows his eyebrows because, well.

“What?”

“Yeah, and they’re saying Santa Barbara is expecting some kind of wind storm, did you hear about this?”

Harry gets up and starts walking out of his bedroom toward the front of his apartment, sticking his face up close to the window. “Nothing about it,” Harry mumbles. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. What’re you doing? Did you pack yet?”

“Yeah, but like, just check, for me? They said power lines are going down and I know there’s one right outside of your front door.”

Harry doesn’t know if he’s just really hungover or if Louis’ request is uncharacteristically careful, but he’s too tired and Louis is too convincing to deny, so he mutters his assent and opens the front door, walking out wearing nothing more than his briefs.

It’s a gorgeous, sunny day. There is no wind. A bird tweets somewhere near his head, then flies off.

“Louis, it’s fucking perfect outside.”

He can hear him laugh through the phone, and then he can hear him laugh, and then he can hear Niall laugh from inside, and then Harry turns around and there’s Louis and he drops his phone onto the ground and flings his arms around him, his heart racing.

“What the fuck?” he asks, laughing into Louis’ hair. He knows he has to smell like alcohol and morning breath but he doesn’t care and he kisses Louis’ wide smile and holds his face and swears it’s the best hangover cure in the world. “You’re here early? I was like...the fuck is he talking about with winds, man,” Harry laughs and takes a step back to look at him, to take him in. “God, hi, you look amazing.”

“Hi,” Louis laughs, the best noise in the world, and squeezes his arms. “Thought I’d come a bit early, help you pack. Watch you pack,” he adds, shrugging, and gets onto his toes again to press a kiss to Harry’s chin. “You smell like gin.”

“I got drunk,” Harry admits, keeping his arm around him as they walk back into the house. Niall’s on the couch and Harry can’t stop smiling, holds out Louis like he’s his show-and-tell item. “Niall, Louis is here!”

Niall shovels a huge spoonful of Lucky Charms into his mouth and nods. “I know,” he says through his bite. “Hi, Louis.”

Louis waves, and Harry looks between them. “You knew? You knew he was coming?”

“Uh, yeah,” Niall laughs, putting down his bowl so he can accept Louis’ fist bump. “We’re having a party today. Told him he couldn’t miss it.”

“Niall!” Harry beams, letting go of Louis so he can crouch down and press a wet kiss to Niall’s cheek, and then another until he’s squirming out of the way and saying something about his cereal getting soggy.

Normally he would have slugged him in the shoulder for keeping such a big surprise from him, or for playing cupid, in a sense, but Harry can’t feel anything but grateful for whatever part he played in getting his boy there a full twenty-four hours before he was meant to. Even with the party and the fact that they’ll have hoards of people filling up their apartment in just a few hours, it’s overwhelmingly nice to have Louis to himself, before his family arrives and his attention has to be divvied up equally among everyone.

All the prep work for the party has been taken care of and setting out bowls and the copious amounts of alcohol that they’ve stocked up on won’t take more than fifteen minutes before the guests arrive, and so Harry eyes Louis playfully, looping one hand around each of his wrists and walking backward to drag him toward the bedroom.

Niall rolls his eyes, stealing a look in their direction before immediately going back to his cereal, because not even the idea of the two of them having a helloImissedyoudon’tleaveagain fuck in the other room is enough to make his interest wane from food.

“Shit, at least put a record on. Still haven’t recovered from the two of you going at it like rabbits last time Louis was here,” he calls out.

Harry scoffs, but it’s supremely ineffective because he’s already got his lips pressed tight to Louis’, parting for the expectation of more and it only takes half a second once they’re behind his closed bedroom door for him to press Louis’ back into it.

It’s been too long, it always feels like too long, and everything just feels a little different this time, by default. He wants to hold onto this and, he thinks, maybe it can happen. The way Louis kisses him, warm and breathless and like he’s been holding himself together since the last time only to finally deconstruct, makes it hard not to believe that this is exactly how things should stay.

The party turns out to be a success. Harry and Niall’s mutual friends are far more laid back than the crowd at the last party Louis accompanied Harry to and it’s a thousand times easier to talk to everyone and actually feel a part of things instead of like an outsider.

By eleven thirty, he’s won beer pong five times and announces that he is going out on top in order to give everyone else a chance to win. He receives a few eye rolls, and Niall grabs his arm.

“Where are you going, Tommo? You’re carrying the team, dude!”

“Gotta go check on my boy,” Louis says easily, wiggling his eyebrows in Niall’s direction, solely to torture him. Niall rolls his eyes, but commendably does not say a word about the fact that they’ve been all over each other and obnoxiously co-dependent since Louis showed up.

He finds Harry at the counter in the kitchen, playing bartender. Louis can’t help but grin when he notices the guy he hands his next concoction over to coughing and squinting his face up like he’d just bit straight into a lemon.

“Trying to kill people, Harry?” He grins, pressing his lips between Harry’s shoulderblades, over his t-shirt, and squeezing both arms around his middle.

“You mean you don’t want one of my famous Styles Sours?”

“No, thanks, I don’t want to end up on the floor,” Louis says, squeezing him a little tighter and leaning up on his toes to kiss the dip between Harry’s neck and shoulder, the spot that always elicits a pleased little hum from Harry’s throat.

He turns around in his arms, leaning down to ease their lips together once, cradling one arm around Louis’ back and holding his face with the other hand, dragging his thumb over where he’s just kissed. “What if I want you on the floor?”

Louis raises a brow at him, hitting him in the chest for good measure, trying in vain to look as scandalized as he possibly can. “Bad.”

“Sorry to interrupt, boys. Just need a refill.” One of Niall’s friends holds out her cup sheepishly, smiling as she looks between them.

Harry pats Louis’ sides once before letting go of him to turn around and make her drink, but Louis stops him mid-pour, carefully taking the bottle out of Harry’s hands and ignoring the glare he earns in response. “Think you’d better let me handle this one.”

The girl laughs at Harry’s expression, but she seems to understand, clearly a former victim of Harry’s sub-par bartending abilities.

“Sorry, Harry. I think your...” She stops and stares at Louis expectantly, at a loss for words because there’s obviously no way she can know they haven’t had that particular discussion yet and Louis’ not sure how soon it’ll happen. He clears his throat to make some kind of bad joke about how he doesn’t even like him, but Harry speaks up first.

“Oh, you mean my date, here? Cute, isn’t he?” Harry pinches Louis’ cheek and Louis snarls at him and Harry tries to mimic his expression but they wind up laughing and the girl sees herself out, accidentally privy to the little bubble they create when they’re together, the one that accidentally alienates entire rooms full of people.

“You scared her off,” Louis scolds.

“D’you think she’s mad?” Harry’s smiling, but there’s a hint of genuine concern to his voice, and Louis rolls his eyes, pressing up to his toes for a kiss, mumbling, “Probably hates you,” against Harry’s mouth.

“Should go apologize,” Harry murmurs, and Louis nods, a muffled assent that means nothing as they knock over a stack of red plastic cups and Harry grips Louis’ hair tight and kisses him with such ardor neither of them can stand upright and they sink to the floor, hiding up against the kitchen island just to steal a few more kisses, like they’re running out of time, like Louis has any intention of letting Harry go again.

There’s a steaming mug of coffee on the table beside the bed when he wakes up, and Louis is walking around his room wearing Harry’s cap and gown with only his briefs underneath, sing-songing Harry’s name to rouse him. It’s too early and too sunny and Harry is too hungover to deal with today, is actually dreading having to sit around and wait for three hours just so he can walk across a stage in front of thousands of people.

“‘S a little bit long on you,” Harry croaks, sitting up in bed. “But feel free to wear it. Better you than me.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” Louis says, coming over to sit on the edge of the bed. His expression is a forced calm, and Harry wonders why until Louis picks up Harry’s phone and holds it out to him. “Had a missed call a few minutes ago.”

Mid-sip, Harry puts down the mug and raises his eyebrows. “My mom?”

Louis shakes his head. “From a 917 area code.”

New York, then. Harry feels like, combined with his hangover, the thought of hearing back from the job in Manhattan might actually make him sick. He checks his phone and sees that they left a message, and his palms start to sweat.

“Is it--”

Harry clears his throat. “Yeah.” He presses play on the voicemail, but all it says is for him to call the office at his earliest convenience, and he relays the message to Louis, feeling so anxious he’s actually shaking, looking at him wide-eyed for any sort of encouragement. “Should I call?”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to stop thinking about it during graduation if you don’t,” Louis says, and gets up from the bed, making room for Harry to swing his legs over the side. “Just call, so you know.”

It’s huge, is the thing. The internship in New York would mean so much in terms of big things like his career and benefits and security and things so many of his fellow graduates would kill to have. And even though he knows for sure now that whatever he does in the future will involve Louis in some way -- it has to, and he’s still so stunned that he can feel and want and love someone so much when literally no one before has ever come close to being enough for him -- the enormity that he can actually be with him if they offer him the position is something he can’t even begin to fathom.

“Okay,” Harry says, standing up from the bed. He can’t stop shaking. “I’m gonna call from the bathroom.”

Louis nods, and grabs him by the bicep, pulling him close for a kiss. When he pulls back, he gives Harry an encouraging slap on the ass, and waves his arm toward the bathroom. “It’ll be fine.”

Harry trusts him and he knows it will be fine, but the anticipation clouds every rational judgment and makes him imagine all the worst possibilities. He shuts the door behind him and leans against the wall of the shower door, shutting his eyes when he holds the phone up to his ear and waits for a ring.

When the woman talks, Harry focuses on little things: the mat under his feet that needs washing, the “Hi!” and a smiley face Louis drew on the mirror with toothpaste. For as badly as he wants to listen closely, his mind buzzes and hums and drowns out all noise and the only words he hears are “start July 22nd” and “looking forward” and “congratulations.” Harry thanks the woman profusely -- probably too much, he probably sounds like an overeager idiot who doesn’t even have his degree in hand yet -- and he waits for her to hang up first before he bangs out of the bathroom, ready to tell Louis.

But he’d been listening by the door, obviously, so he’s right there, holding his arms up for two high fives and whooping and smiling wide when he hugs him.

“Holy shit,” Harry says, and Louis laughs, squeezing him around the neck with both arms, and Harry lifts him up easily spinning him around until one of his bare feet knocks the lamp off the night stand and then drops him down, laughing and breathless.

“You’re coming home,” Louis says, eyes shining when he looks up at him.

And Harry ought to just be happy about having an internship-turned-job, but he’s happy about having Louis, too, and he thinks it’s not a bad thing if those two things coincide, because so much happened to get them to this place -- strange coincidences and plane tickets and terrible nights and really great nights and he can’t imagine it any other way, in the end.

“I think I would’ve, anyway,” Harry shrugs, and Louis sighs, tilting his head to the side in the way he does whenever Harry says something he doesn’t quite know how to react to.

“Love you,” he says, finally, and Harry nods, kissing him and repeating it against his lips once and twice and a third time and he feels fucking sappy but it doesn’t matter, things are good, things are so sure for the first time since he can remember and he feels locked into place, finally, with his boy in his arms and the prospect of too many good things to count

When Harry drops him off at the airport later he doesn’t say it, but he thinks: this is the last time I have to do this. Louis seems to understand and it is, by far, the happiest goodbye he’s ever exchanged.

“Three weeks.” Louis pats him on the hip, encouraging him to confirm it.

“Three weeks,” Harry repeats, and kisses his forehead. “Then the lease is up, and...”

They just grin wide at each other, and Louis nods, tells him he loves him, and they kiss again before Louis fixes himself up and heads off in the security line for the last time.

Three more weeks, and then no more Skype, he thinks, and no more airports and no more thousands of miles between them.

Louis adjusts the party hat over Annie's curly head of hair, and then kisses her on the cheek. She pulls the fabric of his t-shirt with her tiny hands and looks up at him from her perch on one of his thighs, expectant and trusting in spite of him making her look a tiny bit ridiculous.

"Looks beautiful," he says. "Just leave it for a minute, alright?" But his plea is a futile attempt against Annie's strong will, and she tries to knock it off with her tiny fist, not doing much more than causing it to sit askew on her head. Louis snorts and hoists her up onto his hip again, carrying her back into the yard while she tries her best to make him kiss her stuffed turtle called Max.

"Annie, babe, I can't kiss Max and walk at the same time," he tries to reason, and she squeals with delight when he finally halts in his tracks to kiss the blue plush turtle on the face and then makes her do the same. "Okay? Is Max ready to say hi to everyone?"

Annie looks at him very seriously, nods, and Louis starts to walk again, having been given permission by a two year old.

In the yard it's sunny and hot and there's pop music playing from someone's iPod speakers on the deck. A gaggle of seven year olds is wreaking havoc on the lawn, waiting for a turn in the bounce house that Liz and Scott rented for the twins' seventh birthday party. Louis can't really believe it's been a year since the last one, especially since Zayn and Liam are there, too, nursing beers on the patio and chatting with Anne and Robin like it's only been a week since they’ve last done exactly this.

Liz is right there with her camera when she sees them coming, and Louis grins wide at Annie when she snaps a photo, rather than in the direction of the lens.

"You're gonna have Mr. Tomlinson for first grade some day, aren't you?" Liz coos, letting her camera hang around her neck so she can scoop up Annie into her arms. She fixes her dress and presses a kiss to her chubby cheek, and Louis brushes his hand down Annie's back and tries not to think about how he'd spoil her if that were the case, but it makes him smile to think about, anyway. "We're just going to miss you," she adds, looking at Louis and reaching out to touch his shoulder.

He smiles and tilts his head to the side, flushing, embarrassed even though he feels the same and she tells him as much everyday. "I told you, whenever you need me.”

Liz nods, forces a smile that's weepy but genuine. "I know. We just love you, Louis."

"Ah, I love you guys, too," Louis mumbles, hugging them both and letting Liz give him a few extra squeezes that he thinks he might need just as much as she does. It's a little awkward, and he laughs when it's broken up by Annie wriggling around between them.

When he takes a step back, Liz glances at the driveway, then back at Louis. "What time’s he coming?"

Louis smiles wide and looks at his phone. His stomach flutters. "Any minute."

He's downplaying his excitement quite a bit, and Liz must know it. She smiles back at him and lets Annie down to the grass. "C'mon, baby," she says, holding onto Annie’s fingers as they both start walking toward the bounce castle, and she casts one more look back at Louis. She reminds him a lot of his own mother when she says, "I'm really happy for you, honey," and it's so genuine that Louis actually blushes and can't say anything so he just nods his thanks as they split off.

After Louis helps himself to a beer from the cooler, he walks across the lawn to where Zayn and Liam are sitting on the deck. Anne comes out of the house holding a bowl full of potato salad and lets the door swing shut behind her, and she smiles wide at Louis when she sees him. They spoke earlier in the day, and she thanked him profusely for bringing home her son, like he had anything to do with the fact that he got the internship -- but he knows what she means, and it’s flattering enough to shut him up and quell any self deprecating protests.

“Louis, would you mind running inside for more cups? There’s a stack of them on the kitchen counter.” She jerks her head back and nods toward her house.

He ignores the fact that there are stacks and stacks of cups literally right next to her and doesn’t think twice about why she’d be requesting more when he reaches for the door handle. “Anyone need anything while I’m inside?” he asks, casting a cursory glance around the deck.

Zayn coughs. “Um.”

“What?”

“Hiii,” Louis hears, and he turns to see Harry, laughing from inside the screen door and pushing it open so that Louis has to take a step back. Niall follows behind him, bellowing a, “Heyyyy,” and holds out his arms as if he’s prepared to hug every single person at the party all at the same time. Louis wouldn’t put it past him.

“You guys were supposed to surprise him!” Anne calls from the food table, and Harry just shrugs, circling both arms around Louis’ shoulders for a hug so tight he can barely breath. He murmurs a more private hello into the side of his neck, and Louis squeezes back and grins into a chaste kiss, relieved and pleased and in disbelief that his presence on the east coast doesn’t have an expiration date anymore.

“Sorry I’m late,” Harry says, and everyone collectively brushes him off. Niall hugs Liam and laughs at who knows what, bringing an even more relaxing energy to an already relaxed party.

“Yeah, we were just talking about how rude you are,” Zayn says, knocking Louis out of the way to give Harry a hug. Liam’s next up, and he pokes Harry in the cheek and Harry pokes him in the chest and Louis really does not understand their strange relationship, but they hug and Harry circles one of his long legs around Liam’s hip, so Louis knows he’s happy to see him.

“Alright, buddy,” Liam says, tapping his thigh, and only then Harry straightens himself and unlatches from him.

“I know a set of twins who really want to see you,” Louis says to Harry as he casually wipes off a very sloppy wet kiss Niall has just planted to his cheek. “You ready?”

“Am I gonna be pelted with water balloons again?” Harry links their fingers as they walk onto the lawn, and it’s so fucking normal and, god, Louis is so glad he’s home. “Oh, shit, a bounce castle. They really went all out this time.”

“Yeah, that one’s actually to celebrate your return home.”

Harry laughs. “Thanks for that.”

Louis doesn’t even have a chance to get a word in before the twins catch wind that Harry’s arrived, bounding past their friends and parents and practically tugging Louis back and out of the way so that they can each attach themselves to one of Harry’s legs. It's hard to be offended when it's so endearing that they're just as excited to see him as he is, like they've somehow been waiting all this time for him to get back, too, even with the distraction of friends and kindergarten and being kids. Liz made a point to tell him that it's all they've been able to talk about for days.

“Harry! Harry! I missssed you.” Charlotte beams when Harry reaches down to scoop her up, balancing her on one hip and ruffling over Miles’ hair with his other hand.

“I missed you guys, too! So tall now,” he comments, and Charlotte beams, toying with his necklaces and looking pleased to be held by him even though she’s at the age where even her dad picking her up earns a complaint. “Was a long time, wasn’t it? Feels like ages since last summer.”

And it’s strange, because Harry's right. It does. In some ways, Louis can’t even put himself in the same mindset that he was in a year ago, when everything had felt so up in the air and like life was at a standstill. He hadn't been able to find the job he really wanted and he hadn't even been thinking about starting a relationship with anyone, but then Harry just happened to come along, turning everything upside down. Meeting him in the first place had been serendipitous and like a gift, really, and even at their most complicated Louis always wanted to keep trying; the prospect of keeping Harry in his life has been his fuel for the past year, whether or not he knew it at the time.

The party is the same as last year’s, the same faces and the same patterns on the paper plates, but it doesn’t feel like a repeat. Somehow everything still manages to feel fresh and new and so exciting that Louis almost can't wrap his head around the fact that this is his life now, that he could be so lucky. He’s buzzing with as much energy as the group of kids stacking up water balloons in two pails a few feet away.

“Are you gonna have a water balloon fight with us?” Charlotte asks, patting Harry on both cheeks and offering her most winning smile. She passes one in Louis' direction, as well, like she's trying to convince them both simultaneously, not knowing who will be a tougher sell.

“It’s customary,” Miles’ chimes in, and Louis snorts. He should be used to his award winning vocabulary considering he's partially to thank, but it still impresses him. It makes him swell a bit every time, like an affirmation that he's actually good at what he does...that he will be good when he starts his new job at the end of the summer and has thirty kids to teach.

“Yeah, I’ll be right out. Just gotta catch up with the boyfriend for a few minutes, you know,” Harry says, making eyes in Louis’ direction and smirking until Charlotte giggles.

"Louis is your boyfriend now? Oooh." She drops her head back to look over at Louis, grinning at him like she's somehow been privy to the fact that it's what he wanted all along.

Louis looks between them, gaping. "Would you two stop looking at me like that? God, Harry, go back to California.”

Harry snorts and lets Charlotte down, and Louis grins wide when she suddenly plays coy when Niall asks to give her a kiss on the cheek.

“Get your game face on, boys,” Niall calls over his shoulder, and Harry whoops, and Louis knows no matter what happens that it’ll wind up being the same as last year; they’ll all wind up soaking wet, passing around beers and watching the sun go down from the porch.

Maybe Louis will write his whole name across Harry's hand this time. Maybe they’ll do this every single year.

Louis makes a beeline for the food table, prepared to devour a hot dog and possibly a burger and definitely some macaroni salad, but Harry intercepts him before he has a chance to actually get away. Two arms tighten around his chest, pulling his back up to form against him, and Louis can’t move a single inch.

“Got you now,” Harry mumbles, brushing his lips once over Louis’ neck, obviously forgetting the fact that they're surrounded by a crowd that primarily consists of children. Louis can't blame him; he's wanted to pounce on him since the second he caught Harry mid-surprise entrance.

It’s only been three weeks since he left Harry in California and he looks so good, almost better than the image he's had in mind of him since that very first day they met. It's probably just his imagination, but Harry seems taller, broader, maybe even a little older than he did a year ago when everything about him was still completely new and infuriating and confusing.

Except there's no back and forth this time. There's no definite goodbye waiting in a few days or a week or a couple months down the line, and it’s such a fucking relief, and Louis feels like, more than anything else, they deserve it.

With Harry's arms around him, Louis notices that same ridiculous bracelet around his wrist and laughs quietly, shaking his head in disbelief that he hasn't grown tired of it yet or finally realized how hideous it is. He shouldn't be surprised, though; it's Harry, after all. He has the fucking Green Bay Packers logo tattooed on his arm.

They're pressed so tightly together that Harry must feel his laughter rattling his chest. “What’s so funny?” he asks, hiding his face against Louis’ shoulder and reaching higher on his chest to pinch at his nipples once.

“Ahh, hey. Cut it out. Innocent little eyes present,” Louis protests, pushing Harry’s hands away and holding onto them instead. He actually holds one out, forcing his wrist in front of them so that he can get a good look at the bracelet that’s still in place there. It’s seen better days -- even the L is half gone by this point -- but Louis can still see the raised letters where the paint used to be and runs his fingers over them, smiling.

“I can’t believe you’re still wearing that thing. Don’t you think it’s time to let it rest in peace? Or in a garbage dump somewhere, either way...”

“Nope,” Harry answers, like there’s no argument to be had. He leans in and touches a quick kiss against Louis’ forehead. “C’mon. Let’s go to the pool house.”

“I was about to eat,” Louis protests amidst a grin. “If there’s no more potato salad left, Harry, I--”

“Then I’ll make you a gallon of it,” he says, taking Louis by the hand, “Let’s go.”

It’s a good excuse to avoid water balloons, anyway, which are seconds from being launched as they walk hand in hand across the lawn. Louis hasn’t been in the pool house since the summer before, but when they swing open the door, the smell of it brings back such strong memories he smiles as soon as it hits him. Their first kiss was there; their second kiss, too.

Louis shuts the door behind them and Harry switches on the table lamp, casting a cursory look around the room. “I’ve gotta start moving my stuff in.”

“What?”

“My stuff,” Harry repeats, slower this time, and turns to face Louis. “Some of it’s still in the mail, though, so--”

“Wait, you want to live here?” Louis is incredulous, because he thought the solution was obvious.

Harry pauses. “Well,” he starts, shrugs. “I mean, yeah, until I find a place.”

“Just live with me,” Louis blurts out, walking toward him, and Harry was obviously not expecting him to say it, but Louis didn’t even consider any other option, really. “The train station is two blocks from my apartment and it’ll be cheaper than living in the city. I mean, you don’t have to, I just thought...”

“No.” Harry’s voice is insistent, and he holds out a hand, reaching for Louis’ wrist. “No, I want to. Definitely. Fuck, I just wasn’t sure, like, I didn’t know if...I don’t know.”

“I want you to.” Louis isn’t interested in vague statements anymore, not after a year of skirting feelings and distance and agonizing over every punctuation mark in Harry’s text messages. “It’ll be good.”

“It’s already good,” Harry says, bringing his hands up to Louis’ face. He kisses him, slowly, and then draws back, eyes shining when he looks at him again. “I love you so much, Lou.”

“I love you, too,” he murmurs. He still can’t say it without a dopey grin on his face, but Harry mirrors it, and Louis feels better. He’s right there with him; he always has been.

They’re backed up against the door again, and if someone told Louis that a year later he’d be in love with the same boy who’d kissed him stupid in the exact same spot, well. He might have believed them, actually, because there was just something and he just fit and he’s never, ever met anyone like him, and he just adores him. All of him.

A few minutes later they’re summoned with a rap on the window, and they can’t actually see Niall but his voice is loud enough to get the point across: the two of them are wanted outside for the most epic water balloon fight since last year, and they won’t start without them.

Harry grins wide and kisses him one more time, then reaches for the door handle. “Come on. We’ve got time.”

And he’s right, Louis thinks as they walk back out into the yard. They’ve got all the time in the world. So much had to happen for them to be right where they are, and the chance that it would all work in their favor was so slim from the start, and Louis is just grateful, humbled by all that’s brought them together.