Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

-

Almost all of the floorboards squeak. There are cracks running through the walls. On the ceilings, there are signs of water damage. The mattress's springs dig into their already sore backs. The majority of the dishes are chipped, only being thrown away out of absolute necessity, like the time Addison cut her thumb on the sharp rim of a bowl. The windows are shit at keeping out the cold, probably due to the cracks in the glass. Half the time, the toilet doesn't flush. The fridge has been making loud noises lately. All of the lights are dimmed, and the one in the dining room makes a faint buzzing sound that gives them all a headache.

Like now, as Harry sits on one of their chipping wooden chairs at the wobbly table, the buzz makes his head hurt. He aches, literally, for some sort of quick fix, like an ibuprofen or maybe a nap. Normally, he would just turn the lights out -- it'd save money, anyway -- but he's trying to stay awake for Louis and their daughter Addison.

He glances at the clock and its hands show it's just past midnight. Louis will be getting home with Addy in the next half hour, finally getting off work. Harry hasn't seen either of them all day; Harry worked most of the day, and his boss won't allow him to take her with him. Both of Louis' jobs will, though. So by default, Louis takes Addison with him to work everyday. In the morning, she sits in someone’s office while Louis stocks shelves at a Home Depot, and at night, she sits in someone else’s office while he waits tables at a restaurant. Sometimes, if they aren’t busy, she can sit at one of the table’s so she can watch Louis, but that’s not all that fun, either. And while Louis’ jobs require him to be running around and working on his feet all day, Harry works at a small insurance company where he answers phones and organizes files. Another way Louis has it harder than him, even though they’re in this shitty situation together.

Harry's heart aches along with his head.

She's not theirs, obviously. Biology, and all that. Not too long after Harry got kicked out of his mother’s house, his sister tracked him down and dropped a baby in his lap. He remembers her being jittery and anxious, not from guilt or regret but because she was high. She was always high. Heroin, ecstasy, acid -- anything, really. She took it all. Probably still does, if she's alive. Harry hasn't seen her since she gave them Addison and adoption forms with her signature on all the right lines four years ago, but he knows she didn't go back home. She was kicked out of the house when Harry was sixteen, and they never stayed in touch after that.

Not more than ten minutes later, the door is being jostled open, because lately, it won't open smoothly. Rusty hinges, or something. Harry jolts awake, somehow having fallen asleep, and tries his best to pretend like he was doing something productive as Louis walks in. Louis' had a longer day than Harry has. The least he could be doing is creating a list of things they need, or going through their bills and finding out which are late-late (because all of them are late, most likely), or looking through the newspaper to find himself a part-time job, even though Louis doesn't think it's a good idea, not until it becomes 'absolutely necessary'.

Harry doesn’t know how it could get much worse than this. He’s almost certain they’ll eventually find out.

The first thing Harry notices is how exhausted Louis is. Not in a way that a good night's sleep could fix or simple wear and tear from a long day. He's tired in that bone-deep, nauseating type of way.

"Daddy," Addison greets cheerfully, running away from Louis and towards Harry. He scoops her up and stands, letting her wrap her legs around his waist the best she can. She's a bit tiny for her age, and Harry anxiously wonders if that's because she's not being properly cared for, or Gemma doing drugs while she was pregnant screwed her up somehow. She’s a relatively happy kid, though. Sometimes she gets upset that she has to go to work with Louis all the time, and sometimes she’s so tired that it makes them both feel guilty, but she’s okay. She’s still too young to know that this isn’t what most kids her age go through -- that’s what is, really. The fact is, she’s only met a few other kids her age in her lifetime, and she hasn’t had to face the reality that her life is a lot shittier than everyone else’s.

"Go to sleep," Harry tells Louis once he's closer. Louis' leaning against the door, looking at him through glazed-over eyes. "I'll feed her and then put her down for the night."

"She already ate," Louis mumbles. He grimaces as he shrugs off his jacket, and Harry sighs.

"Is it your shoulder?"

"Always is, isn't it?"

Louis tosses his jacket in the direction of the couch. It misses completely, and Louis doesn't seem like he cares much. He walks past the two of them and squeezes Addy's foot. Harry's relieved at first, thinking Louis' going to listen to him for once and go to sleep. Instead, Louis goes over to the couch and sits down.

"Bedroom's that way, in case you forgot," Harry says, irritated but hiding it with sarcasm. Addison giggles into his shoulder, pulling a smile out of them both.

Louis pats the spot next to him, beckoning Harry to come sit. When Harry doesn't move, he sighs. "Love, haven't had more than twenty minutes together all week. I wanna talk to you."

"Sleep is more important than catching up with one another." Louis looks offended, and Harry sighs. "I just mean you need sleep. We'll find time for us later."

"No, we won't," Louis argues, "and you've seemed more stressed out lately. I haven't asked 'cause I didn't wanna stress you out even more, but I wanna talk about whatever it is tonight."

No, he doesn't. Louis doesn't want to hear that it's almost certain that Harry's going to lose his job. That'll probably cut about five years off Louis' life due to stress, and Harry doesn't need Louis to worry about him. He's talking to his boss, trying to reason with him about things. It hasn't seemed to be working ("Harry, I know you need this job, but so does everyone else. Our budget got cut and as a result, we need to cut staff. It's just business, kid. There's nothing you can do.") but Harry can find a new job somewhere. According to his boss, Tim, he has about three weeks left.

"See, that face right there is why I wanna talk to you," Louis says.

"Fine," Harry huffs. "I'll put her to bed and then we can talk about it."

For about fifteen minutes, they lay on the floor together while Louis questions him about everything. Harry rubs Louis' shoulder while he answers, begging it to stop putting his poor boyfriend through so much pain all the time. He kneads and prods and massages all over Louis' right shoulder, getting rougher and rougher and only backing off when Louis warns him that it hurts too much.

Abruptly, Louis turns around so his back is on the carpet and he's facing Harry. He looks even more tired and stressed than he did when he came home, and it makes Harry feel like shit. How is it that Louis' managed to keep both his jobs while Harry can't keep a tight grip on the only one he has?

"I wanted to get you back in school," Louis whispers.

Harry frowns, sitting criss-cross next to Louis. "That's not even a possibility anymore, Lou. Don't worry about that."

"But you're so bloody smart, Harry. If we can get you through school and into a proper job, we'd be so much better off."

The topic just makes Harry fucking depressed. He made it two years into college before Louis and him just couldn't afford it anymore and he had to drop out. It's been about two months since he did that, and he still hasn't got another job, and now he's losing this one, and it's just -- Louis does so much. It feels like Harry can't pull his weight.

He was getting a degree in chemical engineering. He had the smarts for it, and his senior year physics teacher told him it'd get him good money as soon as he graduated from college. But, financially, it just wasn't working for them, and he had to drop out. He was about half way done, and he just had to give it all up. Yet again, Harry failed at providing for Louis and Addison.

"Addy's almost out of meds again," Harry says instead of a response to Louis' statement. It serves as a reminder of why Harry dropped out, though. Money was getting stretched too thin. When they started having to ask themselves if they bought food or Addy's medication for her epilepsy, they had to make the decision to get Harry out of school. They had no other choice.

Louis closes his eyes, sighing. "I swear we just bought her some."

"I know," Harry agrees, but says nothing else because there's no point. There's no point in anything, really, because this is going to be their reality for the rest of their lives. Louis and Harry are going to work themselves ragged and keep falling behind on bills, and the second Addison gets old enough, they're going to have to force her to get a job, and she's going to grow up to resent them for not being good enough. They aren't good enough. They can't promise her food every night, and she has no fucking friends because neither of them have time to take her out and get her socialized -- she doesn't even have a family, for god's sake. All she has is Louis and Harry, no grandparents or aunts or cousins. The closest thing she has to family outside of them is Harry's friend from school, Zayn, and Louis' co-workers Liam and Niall, but even then, she sees them maybe once a month.

"Did you wanna, like, do anything tonight?" Louis asks randomly, while mindlessly rubbing at Harry's ankle skin. "I could probably get hard. If you, like. Wanted."

"Louis," Harry says, pained. "Get up and go to bed."

His grip tightens on his ankle. "It's been four months since the last time we fucked. I realized that today. And that last time, you didn't even get off."

"Let's go to bed, babe. Please."

Louis sighs but listens. He pushes himself off the floor and winces before letting Harry lead him to bed. Addison's already fast asleep, her tiny snores filling the silent room. Louis squeezes his hand before crawling into bed next to her. She stirs slightly as Louis pulls her to his chest, but doesn't wake.

"You're gonna hate yourself for sleeping on that shoulder in the morning," Harry mutters, knowing Louis won't move. When he doesn't, Harry shakes his head and clambers into bed behind Louis. "Goodnight," he whispers, his breath fanning Louis' neck. He runs his tongue over his teeth self-consciously; it's recommended you brush your teeth twice a day, not a necessity.

"Goodnight, love."

Harry snuggles up closer behind him and prays to a god he stopped believing in a long time ago for a life he'll never get.

-

Up until the last hour before he was kicked out, Harry loved his mom and his mom loved him. They were closer than most mothers and sons their age, and Harry -- oblivious, naive Harry -- didn’t ever really see that changing.

Enter Louis. That’s when he started realizing maybe it wasn’t that simple, that maybe there were some things he could do that’d make his mom not want to be so close to him. He’s not sure if Anne suddenly started becoming more vocal about her homophobia around this time, or maybe he hadn’t noticed before, but whichever it was, Harry knew that he had to keep his boundaries clear with Louis.

He doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but he does believe in infatuation at first glance, and shit, was he abso-fucking-lutely infatued with Louis. He wasn’t new to the school, although he was new to Harry, so when he sat in front of him during a ninth grade social studies class, Harry wanted to know more about him. It helped that Louis wanted to talk to literally everyone, and they quickly became best friends.

Harry has known he was gay since he was nine. He knew he liked Louis in that way for sure when they went to the movies together and he spent so long picking out his outfit, trying to make sure he looked nice. And he knew that his mom hated gay people -- like, really hated them -- when they were watching the news while eating breakfast and she rolled her eyes and said that gay people were trying to take over the world.

He remembers freezing then. He remembers glancing at her, wide eyed and horrified, and asking her very carefully what she meant. At this point, Harry was in tenth grade and he was sure Louis was going to try and kiss him the last time they saw each other.

She called them an abomination, sinners. Disgusting. Unnatural. And Harry stared at her, feeling suddenly very sick to his stomach, unbelieving of what he was hearing.

“Yeah, but they’re -- they’re not hurting anyone,” Harry said shakily. Anne glared at him, and Harry quickly backtracked, desperate to stay on his mom’s good side even if it meant lying. “No, I agree with you, I do, but -- but they’re not hurting anyone. They’re not.”

She scoffed and took a sip of her coffee. “They’re hurting children. Have you ever watched the news? They’re sick, and -- ”

His phone rang, then, and it was Louis, and Harry scrambled to grab it and hurriedly said he had to answer it.

He cried to Louis then, he cried and cried and cried, and Louis kept telling him that it was okay and she probably didn’t mean it. When Harry eventually calmed down (and he was sitting in his partially walk-in closet to make sure his mom wouldn’t hear him, and the irony wasn’t lost on him, it just hurt), Louis carefully and gently asked him why he cared so much. And Harry was terrified of finding out that the person he cared about most in the world after his mom was homophobic, too, so he tried to lie and say it just surprised him.

“It’s okay if you are,” Louis whispered. “You know, gay. It’s okay. It’s -- ”

“Louis, God, shut the fuck up.”

“No. H, really, it’s okay. Your mom -- it’s just her generation. She probably doesn’t actually think that. It’s okay if you are. If you’re gay.”

Harry bit down on the edge of his sweatshirt and clenched his eyes shut.

“And it’s okay if you don’t want to admit it out loud,” Louis said, ever so patiently, “but just know that it’s okay, all right? I’m -- I mean, I like boys, and that’s all right, right?”

Harry’s whole chest seized, and he felt like he got kicked in the fucking chest by a goddamn elephant or something. He clenched his teeth together tightly as he forced himself to open his eyes, and he felt so, so dizzy, then, and he nodded to himself.

“Yeah,” he said quietly and breathlessly. “Yeah, Louis. Yeah, that’s okay, of course it is. I wouldn’t,” he sniffed and wiped his nose, “I couldn’t ever love you any differently because of something like that.”

Louis laughed. “Good. Now have that same energy about yourself.”

And Harry eventually did accept himself and the fact that his mother was wrong, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have to be careful. He told Louis, he told him so many times, that they couldn’t. When Louis kissed him for the first time behind the garage at one of their friend’s houses, Harry was so mad at him, because he liked it and he couldn’t like it and he told Louis so many goddamn times that he couldn’t be in a relationship with a guy, not now or ever. Not until he was ready to lose his mother. When Louis kissed him again in the bathroom at school, Harry asked him to stop being so reckless, but he didn’t tell him not to do it again.

“Just,” he whispered, clutching onto Louis’ forearms. “We just gotta be careful, okay?”

And when they kissed in the living room of Louis’ house when all his family was out, Harry felt so exposed and scared and like anybody could walk in on them at any minute. He didn’t stop it, though. That’s the first time he didn’t stop it. They kissed for a long, long time, and when they finally stopped, Harry burst into tears and said that he didn’t understand why this was so wrong.

They fought about it for the first time, then. Harry coming out to his mom. Louis wasn’t pushing him at all, but he was encouraging him to rip off the band-aid because he was so sure that Anne wouldn’t think he was wrong for being gay.

“I can’t,” Harry cried, his face hidden against Louis’ stomach. “I can’t, Louis, I can’t. We can -- I really like you, but you can’t expect me to lose everything for you. Not yet. Not when we’re still only juniors in high school.”

So they continued their relationship in hiding, and it eventually stopped being so scary. Harry learned to enjoy it more than he feared it. Everything was so normal for so long, and then they were graduating high school, and then --

And then Louis ranaway from home. It wasn’t that dramatic, it really wasn’t, even though it felt terrifying in the moment. Louis called him to tell him that he left his house and gave him his new address, and Harry drove two hours to meet him at his new apartment that looked far too worn down already, and Louis very calmly explained to him that he was sick and tired of being his step-dad’s punching bag.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, horrified at the implication. His arms were wrapped around Louis’ middle and his legs around his waist as they sat on the mattress, one of the only things in Louis’ apartment, and Louis shrugged.

Very calmly, he said, “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the bruises, H.” He laughed and kissed Harry’s wrist. “I appreciated you not bringing it up, I really did, but don’t tell me you haven’t seen them.”

And Harry had, so he just nodded and hugged Louis tighter and said they’d figure out the distance and it would be fine. Everything would be fine.

The distance wasn’t a problem for long, it turns out, because two months later, Louis and Harry were caught kissing in Harry’s bedroom at two o’clock in the morning. They barely ever kissed in Harry’s home, but Harry allowed it because it was late and his door was shut and his mom almost always slept through the night. And then she was standing in the doorway, and Harry was already so scared, and then it all got that much more terrifying when she demanded that he leave right then and there.

When Harry left, he had every intention of coming back. He thought his mom needed time to accept it, to accept him, and that never ended up happening. They talked twice after Harry was kicked out -- the first time, Harry was begging for her to let him back, crying and shouting that he wouldn’t see Louis anymore even though he knew that wasn’t true for a second, and the second time was when Harry very numbly got his bank account information from her so he at least had something to help Louis with.

It was already so hard. So, so hard. Harry was freaked out twenty-four seven, Louis felt so fucking guilty, and they were already running into money troubles because Louis had only the bare minimum for himself and Harry barely had any savings because he was a spoiled rich kid who hadn’t gotten a job yet. And they were both so naive, so fucking naive, because they actually thought they could get Harry through college using financial aid and whatever else they could scrape together themselves. It was the goal for so, so long, it was their one hope, the one thing they were banking on to save them, and then it was stolen.

Barely seven months into it, Gemma was at their doorstep with Addison. He hadn’t seen his sister in years, not since she was kicked out for her drug addiction, and he took the baby because he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her with Gemma and he thought Gemma was going to come back for her.

She never did.

Harry remembers the last week he got to spend in college. He attended every single class like normal, and he sat in the front and tried his hardest to absorb every ounce of information his professors were giving him. He wanted to learn, he wanted it so bad. He wrote his last paper for his general education English class on the affordability of college that took way too many hours that he could’ve spent working, and he ended it informally saying that he was being denied an education just because he couldn’t write a check. He hand-delivered it to his professor and then that was that. It had to end there, because he had a child to take care of.

The depression he faced after that was probably the hardest thing he’s ever pushed through. Out of everything, that was the thing he thought was going to break him. Everything felt so draining and he cried over the smallest things and he kept getting mad at the only people in his life who were trying to help. It was terrible, and it felt life-threatening, and that’s shit to think about because he doesn’t know if he got through it by now or if he just got used to it.

They’re going to die like this, him and Louis. They’re going to die without a retirement fund, working themselves to the bone in order to survive. He’s going to be one of those eighty year olds greeting at Wal-Marts. He can’t afford to shop at Wal-Mart anymore. Maybe Addison has a chance, except she probably doesn’t, because they won’t be able to afford a college education for her. They keep trying to start up a savings account for her, but they always end up dipping into it until it's empty because this or that comes up. She’s going to hate them for making her life so hard, and if she does somehow claw her way even to the middle-class, she won’t want to help them. She shouldn’t have to. And it’s hard to face that reality. Harry’s been looking it straight in the eye every day for the last four and a half years, and it never takes on a less terrifying form.

-

“Here.”

Harry glances up, and his co-worker Lydia is in front of him holding out a neatly packaged sandwich with a side of cut veggies. She’s a kind woman in her early sixties, and she has been packing a lunch for Harry every shift they work together since she started working here a year ago. He’s finally at the point where he’s not embarrassed accepting her help, and yet they’re both being let go in only a couple of weeks.

“I bought my own lunch today, but thank you.” He gives her a kind smile and she rolls her eyes.

“A bag of expired potato chips isn’t lunch,” she says, putting the food down in front of him. “Just eat it, Harry.”

So he does after quietly thanking her. They don’t really talk at lunch, they just enjoy each other’s company and that’s enough for them. They’re too tired to talk. Harry is, at least. Today, though, both of them find the energy.

“Any luck finding a new job yet?”

Harry shakes his head. “I’m hoping Tim won’t let me go if I beg hard enough.”

“Fat chance.” She scoffs and shakes her head. “Jerry’s been here for ten years and he was one of the first to be cut.”

Anxiety claws at his belly.

“I think I’ll go back to that laundromat I used to work at,” Lydia says, looking completely heartbroken by the idea. She tries to smile. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“How much were you making?”

“Ten-fifty an hour.”

Harry couldn’t make that work. He couldn’t. He’s at least getting twelve/hour here, he couldn’t risk that dollar and fifty cents. It’d put so much more weight on all of their shoulders. Still, he asks if she could put a good word in for him if she gets the job herself, and she agrees.

Lydia stares at him for a few seconds, and it makes him queasy. Or maybe that’s just the stress, he doesn’t know. Either way, he’s forcing himself to eat the sandwich. There’s barely any food at home.

“You’re so young,” she says sadly.

He looks down at the table self-consciously. “I’m twenty-two. Not that young anymore.”

“Please,” she scoffs. She looks at him sternly, like he’s being an idiot. Maybe he is. But if twenty-two is young and he feels this sore and tired, he doesn’t know if he wants to reach what is considered to be old. “You’re still a baby. You shouldn’t have to worry about money like you do. What happened to this country?”

“Same thing that’s always been happening,” Harry says, confused. Poverty isn’t anything new. It’s new to him, but it’s not new to Chicago and it’s definitely not new to America. “This place has always been a mess, and it doesn’t care how old you are.” His daughter is fucking four and dealing with this already.

It’s quiet like normal for the rest of their break.

-

-

Looking back, Harry really fucking hates himself for being so negative. He thought things were shitty then, and fuck. If only he knew then what he does now.

It all spiraled out of control when Harry's two-week notice was up. He came into work despite no longer being employed there and Tim had to pull him aside in his office to gently tell him that he was sorry but they were going to have to part ways. Through trembling lips, Harry had begged and pleaded. Please, Tim please, you don't understand. I have a daughter, she's four, I can't take care of her without this job. It was useless, though. Tim had given him a look of pity and asked Harry to leave.

From there, Harry scrambled to find a new job. He looked and looked and looked but the economy was shit and so was his experience, and he got rejected and rejected and rejected. Lydia’s laundry mat wasn’t hiring. He asked Zayn if they had any openings at the record shop he worked at, and Zayn told him no. Harry asked again a few days later, and Zayn said no. The third time Harry asked, the desperation clear in his tone (“I’ll clean the fucking toilets with a toothbrush, okay, just -- just tell your boss I’ll do anything, anything.”), Zayn sighed quietly and asked how desperate he actually was.

“I haven’t eaten in two days,” was Harry’s response.

Zayn offered it gently. “There’s this club,” he started. “It’s called Hot Shot. It’s not far from you, and my friend Brad makes good money there, and he’s -- you’re a lot better looking than he is, is all I’ll say.”

Harry’s stomach dropped and he closed his eyes. That was -- he hadn’t thought about that. Sex work. Which is stupid, probably. Who knows how much money he could’ve been making on the side by sucking random dudes off in the alley. And then he realized how absurd he is and cursed Zayn out, and it only lasted a minute before he shut up and took a deep breath to try and combat the panic.

“How much money does your friend make?” He sounded so weak, then. So pathetic. Young, is what Lydia would probably say. As he waited for Zayn’s answer, he bit his thumb nail so hard the skin around it bled.

“I don’t know exactly,” Zayn said. “But I can tell you I stopped asking after he bought a brand new fucking car that I definitly couldn’t afford. And look -- it’s not going to be crazy figures, or anything. I mean, you have to be good. Really good, to get tips, you know?”

Harry felt sick. His body was hot all over and he felt breathless. “I could learn,” he said, voice caught in his throat. He echoed the sentiment clearer, and Zayn sighed.

“It’s dangerous,” he warned, but Harry didn’t care. He didn’t care. He had to do what he had to do, dangerous or not.

Harry told him he’d think about it. A week later and still no luck in finding a different job, Louis came home late from work with his arm in a sling and a guilty looking Liam in tow. Louis' jaw was clenched so tightly Harry thought he was going to crush his teeth, and Liam was the one to tell Harry that Louis had fainted at work so they called the ambulance and it turns out the reason his shoulder hurt so much was because he broke his shoulder god-only-knows-when and it hadn't healed properly, obviously, because Louis didn't stop working.

But now he had no choice to quit working, because his boss wouldn't allow it. It's a liability issue, apparently, and he 'liked Louis too much' to let him hurt himself further.

So they were both out of a job, and Louis was only working his part time job and bills were getting late-late-late and Addison needed a refill on her medication and really, there was no other choice.

He takes the job on a Monday. It’s a Tuesday when he goes to see the club. It’s clean, which is the first thing he notices. It makes him let out a nervous, wet laugh, because why is that the first thing he observes? The dancers seem happy. The customers, too. He only feels sick to his stomach once, when the club manager Josh looks him up and down, asks him to take his shirt off, and says although he’s a bit skinny, he will do. Like he’s an object, or something.

At least he didn’t ask to see my dick, Harry thinks numbly to himself as he takes his seat on the train. He wants a car of his own. Any car, really. When Louis was working two jobs, it just made sense for him to have the car, and Harry has gotten used to taking the train. Plus, Harry isn’t fond of the idea of his boyfriend and child on a train. It’s safe, usually. But still.

“What’d you do before this, then?” one of the workers asked. He was grinning at Harry like it was funny, like Harry enjoyed standing there when he has a kid and an injured boyfriend at home who are wondering what the fuck they will have for dinner tonight.

“Answered phones,” Harry said, feeling so detached from reality. “I answered phones.”

The guy laughed again and told Harry that he’d be out of her within the week. He seems too normal, apparently, and normal people get scared off by a little hard work.

He feels the lowest of low when he gets home. He didn’t tell Louis where he was going or that he was even thinking of taking this job; all he told him is that he was going to go beg for a job at a restaurant down the street, which he did, to be fair, but that was before he visited the club. He’s scared of what Louis’ going to think of him. Losing Louis is his greatest fear, because what the fuck else does he have to lose, and he’s sure this will be it. Being gay was the final straw for his mom. Becoming a stripper might be it for Louis.

“Where’s Addy?” he asks quietly when he comes in to find Louis by himself in the living room, cleaning out a cabinet. He’s been restless during the days. At night he can still work at the restaurant; during the days he has nothing to do.

“Sleeping,” Louis answers, distracted. “She wants to come with me to the restaurant tonight so I told her to sleep.”

Harry’s heart twists at that. He’s feeling awfully emotional today. Slowly, he sits down on the couch. “Why? I’m home.”

“I don’t know. Routine, I’m pretty sure. She’s kind of attached to me, you know that.” He turns to Harry and holds up an old Pink Floyd record. “You think I could sell this to someone?”

Harry stares at it mindlessly. Maybe it’s good that Addison wants to go with Louis -- Harry’s due for a good cry. “Probably. For, like, ten bucks, maybe.”

Louis scowls. “It’s Pink Floyd. It’s worth more than ten bucks.”

They sold Louis’ record player a long, long time ago. They got a hundred bucks out of it, which wasn’t enough to snuff the panic they had at the time. They didn’t know how to stretch a hundred dollars then like they do now.

“Do you get that job, then?” Louis asks, turning back around to face the dresser. That’s good. This’ll be easier if Louis isn’t looking at him. “I’m assuming no. You seem sad.”

Harry has to swallow twice, three times, in order to feel like he can breathe properly. “Um, no,” he says shakily. His flexes and releases his hands against his thighs a few times. “But I, uh. I did get a job.”

Louis doesn’t turn around yet. “Yeah? Where?”

It takes a solid minute for Harry to say it. When he finally does, his fists are clenched tightly shut and he’s staring at the ceiling. “You know that club Hot Shot?”

He hears Louis turn around. He must know where this is going. Louis has never been dumb. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Are you -- what, then? A bartender?”

Harry wants to say no, but the word won’t come out. He sits there, frozen. And tired. He’s so tired.

“You are absolutely fucking insane if you think I’d let you whore yourself out like that,” Louis snaps, and it’s harsh and it’s mean and it makes Harry flinch. “Harry. Fucking look at me.”

Harry does. He expects to see anger or resentment or something worse, and all he’s met with is heartbreak on Louis’ face. “It’s just a job,” Harry says weakly. “It’s just -- it’s just a job, Lou.”

“No. You aren’t taking it.”

“I already did.”

“Well, fucking take it back,” Louis snaps, standing up. “You aren’t doing that.”

Harry stares at him, at a loss for words. He tries his best to find some. “It’s not prostitution. It’s only stripping.”

The look on Louis’ face makes Harry’s stomach roll violently. He has to look away from it, from the disgust, and he lets out a small cry. He hasn’t cried in so long. He usually doesn’t let himself, but right now, he has absolutely no control of it.

“We don’t have a choice,” Harry cries. He tries and fails to keep the strain out of his voice. It’s okay if Louis sees him cry, he tries to convince himself, but it feels untrue. He can’t cry when Louis doesn’t.

“I’ll figure something out.”

Harry closes his eyes, his wet eyelashes feeling sticky against one another. “There’s nothing to figure out.”

“I can’t believe you,” Louis spits. “I can’t -- I can’t believe you, Harry, shit.”

“Zayn’s friend makes good money doing it,” Harry says. He feels frantic, now. His knees feel weak when he stands, but they don’t fail him. “We can -- just for a few months, maybe. Until we get back on our feet. And when things level out, I can quit. Please, Louis, don’t hate me.”

Louis shakes his head. “It’s dangerous.”

“I can handle my own.”

“Are you fucking -- ” Louis lets out a mean laugh and he throws his hands up and turns around so he doesn’t have to look at Harry. Shame boils Harry’s blood. “You know how easy it would be for someone to drug you?” he asks, turning back around. “Drug you and rape you, or drug you and kill you, or all fucking three, or -- what if they follow you home, huh? You ride around on the fucking train. Anybody could stalk you and you’d have no fucking idea until you were fucking dead on the side of a street somewhere.”

Harry doesn’t have anything to say to any of that. He knows the risks. But he also knows the risks of being so poor that their daughter didn’t eat dinner last night. That can’t become a habit.

“And maybe nothing that extreme happens,” Louis continues. “But you know what will happen? What’s a given? That you’ll be touched in ways you don’t like, by people you don’t like. You’ll be fucking sexually assaulted every fucking night, are you -- how could you even consider agreeing to that?”

Before he can answer, Louis’ eyes flick to somewhere behind Harry, and his face softens. Harry almost doesn’t want to turn around to greet his daughter, but he doesn’t really have a choice, does he. He doesn’t want her knowing something is wrong. Quickly, he blinks back the tears and turns to her, where she’s standing in the doorway with her scratchy blue blanket pressed to her chest. She looks tired.

“Hey, Adds,” Harry says as he tries to form a convincing smile. “You going to work with Dad tonight?”

She nods and comes over to him. In her way that shows him he wants up, she pulls at his pant leg and looks up at him. “Please,” she says, and Harry easily obliges her. As soon as he has her in his arms, she curls into him and presses her face against her neck. She’s missed him. It’s so easy to read her.

“You could stay with me, baby,” Harry says. “Tonight. If you wanted. You don’t have to go to work with Dad.”

“But it’s Tuesday. There’s tacos on Tuesdays.”

“I could bring you home a taco, love. You know that.”

Harry flinches at the sound of Louis’ voice. It’s the reminder that he’s here, of the fight they just had. And there's a hard edge to his voice, like he’s still angry enough to be unable to hide it from Addison. Harry turns to him, his grip strong on Addy’s hip, and mouths an apology to him. He is sorry. He has to be sorry. But it’s not his fault he hasn’t gotten any of the thirty jobs he’s applied for in the last few weeks.

Louis doesn’t look forgiving at all. Instead, he glances away with his jaw set firmly before leaving the room, mumbling something about needing to get ready for work.

-

His first shift is the following Monday. He spent the last few nights watching and trying to learn. It felt entirely intimidating at first, watching some of the moves the dancers did that Harry couldn’t even dream about doing, but he quickly caught on to the fact that most of the customers don’t need all that fancy stuff -- he saw someone get a hundred dollar bill thrown at him just for shaking his ass. Harry can do that.

Louis’ been cold to him all week. He says he’s not angry, and when he told Harry that, the relief only lasted a few seconds, because then Louis is saying, “Just kind of feeling blindsided. I didn’t know you were the type of person to do something like that.”

And he knows Louis didn’t mean anything vicious by it. He knows that. Louis has everything right to be surprised, and he wasn’t trying to imply Harry’s this filthy little slut, or something. He was probably only saying he hadn’t realized how desperate Harry is, or how scared he is. He’s sure that’s all he meant, because Louis is a decent man and he’s always been kind to Harry. Always.

Harry’s surprised by the bone-crushing hug Louis envelops him in before he leaves for work. He holds Harry tighter than he probably ever has before, and he tells him sternly to be careful.

“I will be, Lou. Promise.”

Louis kisses the side of his head before taking a step back and looking at Harry’s outfit. It’s not anything fancy -- the thrift stores aren’t well-suited to find hot stripper clothes, apparently -- but it’s good enough. Some of the dancers dance in jeans. You just have to sell it in any way you know how, one of the bartenders told him last night. You’ll figure it out. You’re cute enough to make it.

He’s wearing a tight pair of black jeans with a black lace top that was in the women's section. The underwear he found were in the women's section, too, but he’s not going to talk about that. (Josh said he’s got an innocent aurora around him that the older men will be drawn to. He told Harry he could probably get away with dressing more feminime because he doesn’t have all the hard muscles and impressive body. He’s dainty, Josh said, whatever the hell that means.)

“Do I look stupid?” Harry asks quietly, the shame and insecurity he feels evident in his voice. Louis quickly looks him in the eye and shakes his head.

“No,” he says softly. “You look good. You always look good.”

Harry nods. He doesn’t agree with that, but he doesn’t know what else to say. There’s nothing left to say; Harry’s about to go shake his ass for old rich men, and he basically forced his boyfriend into being okay with that.

“You keep applying for other jobs,” Louis says. He sounds stern, and to punctuate it, he lightly holds Harry’s chin. “The minute you get something else, you quit, all right? The very second, love, I mean it.”

“Okay,” Harry breathes out, nodding. He’s so fucking nervous. “Okay. Yes. I agree with you.”

Louis nods once. “Good. I have to leave now, but just -- be safe, okay?”

“I will. I’ll try.”

-

Harry works there for exactly two and a half months, almost every night. When he starts to get into the swing of things, he’s allowed to work weekends, too, and those nights are the best nights for money. He doesn’t earn thousands upon thousands of dollars during that time, but he does earn almost double what he was making at his last job. It helps. It helps significantly. It’s not nearly enough to change everything, or change much of anything at all, really, but it does take some pressure off of them. Harry doesn’t panic whenever he sees a new bill in the mail.

Still, when he gets a call-back for a job opportunity at a library, he’s beyond praying that he gets the job. And when he does get it, he doesn’t even flinch at the low amount of ten dollars an hour. It’s not enough, and it will put them back in a bad position almost immediately, but the only thing keeping Harry’s head on straight about the whole stripping thing is knowing he gets to quit the second a better opportunity comes by.

He doesn’t talk about the club much with Louis. Louis doesn’t ask, and Harry isn’t in a hurry to tell him anything. All Louis wants to know is if he’s being safe, and Harry always is, so there’s nothing left to talk about.

There are only two nights that Harry opens up about it to Louis. The first is when Harry comes home crying because a customer yelled at him, absolutely tore into him, for no fucking reason. Called him all sorts of things, and when he complained about it to Josh, Josh just said that that’s the sort of thing he gets off on and they won’t kick him out because he’s a good tipper. Louis held him and coddled him and told Harry that he didn’t deserve it, even when Harry could see the hardness in his eyes. He was still angry about the whole thing. And the second time is when Harry actually got punched in the jaw for accidentally bumping into someone while he was going to the bar to get a glass of water. Louis was beyond pissed, and Harry got over it fairly quickly because it was light enough to be able to be covered with makeup.

It wasn’t all bad. Really, it wasn’t. He made a few friends there and he got to eat for free. That in itself helped them save a few dollars a day, which adds up. Again: Harry’s extra money from stripping helped, but it didn’t fix anything.

Louis is beyond happy when Harry tells him he’s going to quit. His arm is out of the sling, although it’s still tender and he doesn’t want to immediately go back to stocking. It was broken for a long time, and the internet says that might mean it’s more susceptible to being re-broken. He’s been picking up more shifts at the restaurant, and the minute he finds something else, he’ll take it. If Harry works part-time at the library and Louis works part-time at the restaurant, that won’t be enough, but they’ll figure it out. They will. Between the two of them, their names are in a pile of application of every establishment within an hour of them in Chicago. One of them is bound to stick.

-

A month after Harry quits his job at the club, it’s May and he’s still working at the library and has recently gotten in at Lydia’s laundry mat, too. Now he’s the one who has two part-time jobs while Louis only has the one; it’s tiring, and he doesn’t know how Louis did it for so long. Between the two jobs, he’s working almost sixty hours a week (and goddammit, Harry keeps telling himself he’s going to stop allowing the library to work him overtime if they aren’t going to allow him to work full-time there, but he never has the guts to) and Louis’ working thirty hours a week. It should be enough, and it would be, if they didn’t start so far in debt.

It’s okay, though. They’re back to a somewhat stable place. Most of the bills have gone back to being only late, not late-late, and food is a promised thing again.

It should feel good, but Harry is so drained and defeated that nothing feels good anymore. Louis feels the same way. It’s just the way things are. Louis was on to something when he got that it is what it is tattoo all those years ago. Harry thought it was a little corny at first, and now he understands it so well he can’t think anything negatively about it.

Between his shifts one day, Louis and he are sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out all this kindergarten business. About a week ago, Harry printed off a few forms for a school nearby from the library’s printer, and it’s been stressing him out ever since. They need to get her a backpack and pencils and glue and whatever the fuck else kindergarteners need, and the stuff they can’t find at a thrift store shouldn’t be too expensive, but it’s just -- it’s so stressful. They need to get her more clothes, too, shit.

Harry’s halfway filling out of a form when he just stops. He doesn’t know why. The idea of writing anymore seems far too complicated. Louis doesn’t say anything at first, but after a minute or so, he bumps his knee against Harry’s.

“Come on. You leave in twenty minutes and I don’t feel like doing this by myself.” He takes the pen from Harry and drags closer to himself. He squints at it, mumbles something about immunizations and checks a box.

Louis ends up finishing the form himself, and once all the boxes are all checked and the lines are filled, there’s nothing else to distract themselves with. They’ve both been rewired to move constantly, and when they have a chance to slow down, it’s hard to digest.

“You okay?” Louis asks quietly. “Just tired?”

Harry nods and murmurs something that’s supposed to sound like a yeah. It’s not really the truth, he’s not just tired, but he doesn’t know how to verbalize what he’s feeling, and since Louis’ feeling the exact same thing, he feels it pointless to even try.

-

He thinks about calling his mother almost every day.

Usually, he thinks about how their conversation would go. Would she still be angry? Almost certainly. But would she miss him enough to hide that anger, if only for a few minutes? He’s not sure. Does she miss him? Surely. There’s no way she doesn’t. She missed Gemma after she kicked her out. Would she even answer the phone? He’s not sure of that, either. He doesn’t have his phone anymore. Neither does Louis. If they need to talk to each other while at work, they just use the work phone. He doesn’t know if his mother would answer a call from an unknown number.

He fantasizes about what their conversation would be like every single day. Sometimes he does it to help him fall asleep, or just during the day to occupy himself. It’s sick. He’s surprised he hasn’t driven himself mad with it yet.

On Mother’s Day, though, he gets an actual urge to call her. It’s strong, too. He wants to talk to his mom. He just wants to talk to his mom. He doesn’t know why; it’s not like she could offer him anything. It’s not like he’d be honest with her about everything going on in his life. But he really wants to talk to her. Maybe his brain still wrongly associates her with comfort and safety and love. Whatever it is, he wants to call her. So badly that he works himself to tears over it.

Hi, Mom, he’d say. She’d probably get angry with him. Why are you calling, Harry? He’d say, I don’t know. Just wanted to hear your voice. Oh, she’d say. Or maybe, I wanted to hear yours, too. Maybe he’d say something about the weather next. Or ask if she’s still living in his childhood house. Maybe she would’ve hung up by that point, though. He doesn’t know. I love you, he’d say. Even after what you did, I love you. And she’d probably say that she loved him too, or she’d call him an abomination again. Who really knows.

He pushes off the feeling for three whole days until finally he decides to just do it. He wrote her phone number down before he sold his phone, and he brought the piece of paper with him to work. Library’s aren’t very busy, are they, so he has the freedom to use the phone and call her. He types her phone number in, stares down at the phone for a solid minute, and then presses the enter button.

He’s biting down on his thumbnail when the line picks up. She answered. She actually answered. It’s not relief he feels -- it’s fear. It’s panic. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t have a clue. He’s gone over this exact scenario in his head so many times before, and now he's at a loss for words.

“Hello?” she asks. “Who’s this?”

Tears flood his eyes quickly, too quickly, and then he’s sat hunched over the desk in a library with a hand over his eyes. This was a bad idea. He doesn’t know why he thought he could handle this. He doesn’t know why he thought he wanted this.

“Hello?”

He takes a deep breath. Tries to, anyway. He forces himself to say, “Um. Hey, Mom.”

He thinks that’s the hard part. He thinks he’s in the clear now, that he’s identified himself and they’ll talk. Not a single part of him is naïve enough to think she’d accept him and forgive him wholeheartedly, but his gut is telling him that this isn’t going to end poorly. That this conversation was going to look like every time he imagined a positive, happy conversation between them. His gut is wrong, because there’s a faint, “Oh,” or maybe just a gasp, before the line goes dead.

As soon as she hangs up on him, a rock forms in the pit of his stomach. He goes hot with emotion; anger, betrayal, embarrassment. He kind of just feels stupid. He knew her denying him was a possibility, and yet he’s allowed himself to feel like this.

Time gets distorted for him occasionally, and right now, he has no idea how long passes before there’s a quiet cough. He removes his hand from his face and slowly looks up, and there’s a young girl looking at him nervously with a book gripped tightly between her fingers.

She flushes when he looks at her. “Is this where we check books out?”

He must look like a mess. Whenever he cries, his face stays red and blotchy for a long time afterwards. His eyes get a little swollen, too. Right now, though, he doesn’t really care about what some girl thinks about him, not when his mom just rejected him for the second time, so he grunts out an unhelpful sound, puts down the phone, and grabs the book from her.

-

He doesn’t tell Louis about the phone call. There’s nothing to tell, first of all, and second of all, he isn’t exactly eager to share that with anyone, even Louis. It’s hard to hide the fact that something’s wrong, that he’s sad and feels terribly dejected, but he barely sees Louis enough for him to get a whiff of that, anyway.

Lydia notices, though. It makes him want to cry; he spends more time with a coworker than he does his own boyfriend.

“You seem upset,” she says. “Is everything okay?”

He decides to be honest with her, which doesn’t exactly make sense considering he fully thought he would be too embarrassed to say it out loud. “I tried calling my mom, and she hung up as soon as she realized it was me.”

They’re putting the newly cleaned and pressed clothes into the plastic and hanging them. When Harry finishes, Lydia halts, but Harry doesn’t. They’re the only ones working today, they have a lot to do, and Harry really, really needs this fucking job. He can’t afford to do anything half-assed.

“That’s terrible.”

Harry shakes his head. “She made it very clear with me a while back she didn’t want anything to do with me. I should’ve expected it.”

Harry hasn’t told her any of this before. He’s bitched and moaned about how broke he is to her, but he hasn’t really told her how he got here. It’s embarrassing, and thanks to his mother, there’s always that fear of being shamed for being gay. The point is, he hasn’t told her anything about this before, so he’s not surprised that she seems shocked.

“What did you do?” she asks. And Harry didn’t really do anything. All he did was kiss a boy. Part of him wants to lie, or say that he doesn’t want to talk about it, but he doesn’t want Lydia to think he did something to his mother awful enough for it to warrant her ignoring him for life.

As nonchalantly as he can manage, he says, “I’m gay, and she doesn’t agree with that,” with a strained smile before he says they need more hangers and leaves to go fetch them. It’s not the most mature thing to do, but he doesn’t care. He shouldn’t have even brought it up. There’s no point in dwelling on it.

He manages to avoid Lydia and shrug her off for the rest of their shift. He doesn’t want to hear her thoughts on the situation, mostly out of fear of rejection. She’s older than his mom, so if it is just a generational thing (and that’s not an excuse, being brought up in a certain decade doesn’t make it okay to condemn people) Lydia might agree with her on her choices.

He’s sad and tired and misses his boyfriend, who he’s going to stay up for tonight no matter how much his body begs him not to. He’s hardly functioning anymore; not healthily, anyway. Every morning he wakes up and does the bare minimum of what he has to to get through the day. All hope or happiness or goals he had are gone. His only goal now is to work hard enough that he has somewhere to lay his head at night.

It’s startling, how quick you can get used to a life like this. He lived eighteen years in a big house with a big backyard with a few different cars in the garage. Eighteen years of his life, he got money from his relatives on holidays and if he wanted anything extra, he just had to ask his mom for it. Eighteen years versus four years -- that shouldn’t make sense, he should still be in denial, or something. He shouldn’t have been able to adapt to this so quickly. But he has, and it makes him downright depressed to think that.

He almost, almost, manages to escape the unwanted conversation with Lydia. He’s about to walk outside when she stops him, and she forces him to stop and look at her.

She doesn’t look mad. She doesn’t look disgusted. She just looks sad, too.

“You don’t deserve this,” she says quietly. He doesn’t realize what she’s doing until her arms around him, and even then, his brain trips over itself trying to remember that this is a hug. And it’s not that dramatic; it’s not like he isn’t hugged anymore because he is, everyday by his daughter and his boyfriend, but it’s. . . He can’t remember the last time he was hugged by anyone else. He can’t remember the last time he was hugged by a woman.

Harry hugs her like he would if she was his mom.

“I wish I was able to give you something more,” she whispers, stroking her hand down his back. He’s crying. He’s definitely crying. Maybe she won’t notice.

His fingers curl around the fabric of her coat. “You got me this job. That means more to me that you could ever know.” It meant the difference between having to seriously deal with the fact they might not be able to afford their shitty apartment anymore and getting to push that conversation back to a later date.

“You’re a good kid, Harry.”

His face twists. “Thank you.”

It’s a little awkward, then, when they pull away and have to face each other. Harry’s face is wet and red, and hers is colored an ugly shade of pity. They both let out a nervous laugh, and then there’s some awkward patting before Harry ducks his head and leaves.

The ride home that night is the longest it’s felt in a while.

-

Sometimes Harry thinks about what would’ve happened if they weren’t caught kissing that night.

They’d continue hiding their relationship, obviously. Maybe they’d fight about it sometimes, but it wouldn’t matter because they would both know it was for good reason. Harry would almost be done with college. He would be less than a year away from earning around sixty grand as an entry salary. Between semesters, Harry and Louis would probably go to different cities or countries where they could be out. Those trips would build a fire within Harry’s stomach that would turn to resentment towards his mom. Or maybe by then, Louis and Harry would have gotten their own apartment. A nice apartment. They talked about that sometimes. And Harry’s mom always encouraged the idea, because she had no idea they would be sharing the same bed there. And eventually Harry would be making loads of his own money, and Louis and him would be madly in love. Maybe even Addison fits in there somewhere. Maybe Harry would have still taken her in. It’d be the three of them against the world, and Harry would’ve gradually worked up the courage to tell his mom he was gay, and her rejection wouldn’t have stung so badly. How sad could he be, really, when he had money coming in and a happy family of his own?

One kiss. One kiss that was supposed to be between he and Louis and he and Louis alone made the difference between that life and this one.

Harry spends the night sleepily fantasizing about what their life could have looked like as he waits for Louis and Addy to get home. He’s mostly looking forward to seeing Louis; he loves Addison, of course he does, but right now he needs to not be needed. He wants to be looked after. He wants Louis to hold him and lie to him by telling him everything will work itself out.

When he hears the keys in the door, his heart hammers in his chest happily. Finally. It’s half past midnight. He was starting to get worried. Addison and Louis walk through the door, and Louis looks exhausted as usual.

“Let’s get to bed, babe,” Louis says, his lips pressed against Harry’s temple. “I’m exhausted.”

Harry tries not to sound too desperate. “I thought we could talk a bit before bed?”

Louis makes a sour face. He clearly doesn’t want to. He’d rather follow Addison, who is already heading to the bedroom. But when she goes and the door is shut, Harry grabs Louis’ wrist and, now far too desperate to keep it out of his voice, whispers, “I need you.” Nothing about it is sexy, just messy and broken and pathetic, but Louis somehow gets the message anyway, and he kisses Harry so hard that Harry momentarily forgets everything.

The only place they feel comfortable fucking in is the shower, which usually doesn’t pose as a problem because they rarely have sex anymore. Now, though, they’re both exhausted and don’t feel like standing or wasting the water. They push through it, mostly because Harry keeps repeating I need you, I need you, I need you like they’re the only words he knows anymore.

They’re out of lube, and it’s enough to deter Louis, but not Harry. Harry doesn’t fucking care. About anything anymore. He just doesn’t fucking care, and he wants Louis to fuck him, and if that means promising Louis over and over again that he doesn’t mind, then so be it. It’s worth it later on, when he’s laying in bed with Louis pressed closely behind him and a faint pain in his lower back.

“You gotta get a grip, Hazza,” Louis whispers against his shoulder. Not meanly. Never meanly. “Can’t have you breaking on me.”

Harry feels the most put together than he has in a while, so he doesn’t feel like too much of a liar when he promises Louis that he won’t.

-

They didn’t anticipate the amount of money it takes to send a kid to school.

The basics don’t catch them by surprise. Louis manages to get a backpack, a lunch box, a few stationary materials and a couple outfits that actually fit for under forty dollars at a thrift store. Harry thought that was the bulk of it, until he had to start making lunches every morning with too many plastic baggies and a water bottle. They make adjustments; Louis gets a reusable water bottle at the thrift store, and they start buying food that they don’t have to individually package themselves. It was also more than irritating when Addison came home from school with a syllabus requesting parents to buy their kids their own markers, colored pencils, glue, etc. because funds were cut short and the school can’t afford to buy enough for everyone. It’s fine; it’s annoying, but it’s fine. Harry spends more money on all that at the Dollar Store than he has on anything else other than food in a while, but it’s fine.

Harry’s head starts to hurt when Addy ruins her backpack, comes home with a field trip slip that is asking for fifty dollars, and gives them a note from her teacher saying her shoes seem to be too small because she keeps taking them off and complains about them all within the same week.

“So we won’t send her on the field trp,” Louis says, shrugging. “It’s a trip to the goddamn aquarium, she won’t care.”

But Harry can’t get the image of his daughter, his tiny daughter, standing in front of a great big giant tank with a dolphin in it out of his head. She deserves that. She deserves to see the world. And God knows that they won’t be able to afford to take her themselves any time soon, so he tries to push for it. He tries to break their motto that they only buy what they need, no matter if they have extra money laying around or not because they might need it later. And Louis gets mad at him for making him out to be the bad guy, which Harry understands. He understands.

Addison bursts into tears when they tell her she can’t go. She throws a proper tantrum, and she cries and she cries and she cries, and Harry’s hands are shaking by the time Louis gives in and tells her fine, she can go. She can fucking go.

“We have fifty bucks to spend,” Harry tells him that night, when Louis is kicking himself for giving in. “It’s okay.”

“We’re behind on the rent,” Louis reminds, shaking his head. “It was stupid.”

The worst of it comes when it’s winter time, and they find out that the school has policies. Children must have hats and gloves and scarves and boots and coats if they want to be allowed outside for recess. Addison has a coat, albeit not very thick, and she has a hat, but that’s about it. So they get her the rest, and then there’s another field trip, and it comes at a time where they actually don’t have twenty-eight dollars to give her, but they give it to her anyway because they want their daughter to see the ice sculptures.

And then Harry loses his job.

He loses his goddamn job at the library. More than a third of their income. Especially irritating because he doesn’t have access to a computer at his other job, the dry cleaners that won’t let him pick up anymore hours.

Harry’s back on the hunt for another job and they’re back to holding their breath, and they have to turn down two field trips (and it makes Harry so goddamn angry; he doesn’t remember going on this many goddamn field trips when he was a kid) and so many playdate invitations and events the school is holding. Addison takes the first few no’s like a champ, but after they have to say no to a museum she really wanted to go to, she starts to get more and more upset.

It’s February, they didn’t do anything for his birthday, and Harry’s coming home from a job interview when there’s an eviction notice on their door.

For a minute, he just stares at it. Nothing goes through his head, although panic and dread go through his body. His head is empty. It doesn’t start to make him feel ill until he picks it up, until he sees the words, ‘tenants must be out in thirty days’ in black, bold letters at the bottom.

So many emotions hit him at once. Confusion -- they’re behind on the rent, yes, but they always are, and it hasn’t been a problem before. They’ve gotten stern warnings, although they always pay it, even if it is a month or two late. They have been living here for five years, and they thought that bought them some sort of trust policy. Not to mention the fact that he knows for a fact a lot of tenants here don’t pay rent for months on end and have to be removed by police.

Denial -- this can’t be happening. It can’t be happening, it doesn’t make sense, why here, why now. Why now?

Anger -- they can’t just fucking do this. They can’t. Where are they meant to go? Do they not fucking care? They have a child to look after.

Cold, merciless fear -- they are completely and utterly screwed.

Louis’ inside. He’s inside with their daughter, and Harry has to go and inform him that they’ve been evicted. Whoever put this fucking note on their door should have had the balls to knock and tell Louis. Jesus Christ, Harry is about to bawl his fucking eyes out.

He stands outside the door for five long minutes before he pushes it open. Immediately, he’s met with a loud laugh from Louis followed by a much softer giggle from Addison, and it hurts so bad that it makes Harry flinch and clutch his stomach like he might throw up.

“Hey, baby,” Louis says, and then, “Hi, Daddy,” from Addison, and Harry looks Louis straight in the eye. It’s enough for Louis to know something’s wrong. Immediately, he gets up and comes over to Harry.

“What is it?” he asks, grabbing Harry’s elbow. “Are you okay?”

He can’t say it out loud, so he hands the notice to Louis. He watches as Louis reads it with furrowed eyebrows, and the more and more he reads, the harder and harder his grip on Harry’s elbow gets.

“They can’t do that,” Louis says after a moment. “They can’t -- they can’t do that.”

Harry doesn’t even attempt to speak around the clump of nerves in his throat. The only thing he can offer is a nervous whimper.

“Come on, we’ll go talk to them,” Louis tells him. “It’ll be fine. We can sort this out.”

He sounds so sure that Harry feels a fraction better. Louis tells Addison very sternly to stay put before he steers Harry out of the apartment and downstairs to the front desk.

“We need to talk to Selene,” Louis tells the man at the front desk. Selene is their landlord. She’s usually very polite. Seems like a logical, reasonable woman. Still, Harry doesn’t feel very hopeful as he waits for Selene to come and talk to them.

Selene isn’t polite, turns out. She’s not reasonable, either. She’s downright fucking evil. Louis and her fight it out, very loudly and publicly, for almost twenty minutes. Selene keeps saying in that calm voice of hers that they have routinely been late on rent and she has potential tenants in line that won’t be. Louis keeps telling her that it’s not fair, they’ve been here for over five years, and when he realizes he’s not getting anywhere, he says they have a daughter and they can’t end up living in a car, which is where they would be if she kicks them out for real.

“What can we do to stay?” Louis asks after the twenty minutes, tears running down his cheeks. His face is red with anger, and both of their hands are shaking. Harry’s are stuffed under his arms, but he can feel them shake anyway.

“Pay me last month’s rent and three more months of rent now,” she says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Think of it as interest.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Louis snaps. “Who the fuck could afford to pay four months of rent up front, are you fucking insane?”

She clings to her unwavering, calm front well. “You have proven to be unreliable tenants. Pay for the next three months of rent now, and I might begin to trust you again.”

Harry stares at her, feeling numb. This one lady is single handedly scrambling their lives and she doesn’t even care. “That doesn’t sound very legal,” Harry says, and she scoffs at him.

“Like you’d have enough money to get a lawyer.”

In that moment, Harry’s incredibly thankful that she’s a woman, because Louis would have most definitely punched her in the face if she wasn’t. Instead, he just calls her a cunt before grabbing Harry’s wrist and tugging him back to their apartment.

-

They get it figured out.

After a lot of panicking and too many things falling into place to be normal, they get it figured out. Louis borrows half a grand from Liam, and Harry borrows a hundred fifty from Zayn, and Louis somehow bargains his way into getting his paycheck early, and Harry starts working at the club again, and they figure it out.

In the midst of panic that first night, Louis asked Harry if he would be willing to call his mom and ask for a small loan. Just a small one, he kept saying, like that’d make any difference.

“I can’t,” Harry said.

“I know it’ll be hard,” Louis told him, grabbing his hand. “I know it’ll be hard and embarrassing and maybe she’ll say no, but maybe she’ll say yes, so -- ”

“Louis. I can’t.”

Louis sighed. “Well, I can’t ask my mom, and -- Harry. We need to make money appear from somewhere, so -- ”

Harry, beyond stressed and exhausted, ripped his hand away from Louis and stood up. “Jesus, Louis,” he snapped, “I can’t. I called her the other day and she just -- she fucking hung up on me, okay, so I can’t.”

“Oh,” was all Louis said. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

And they haven’t talked about that since. First, it was because they had much bigger issues to face, and then after they got the money, it became easier that way.

The relief from avoiding losing their apartment doesn’t hit him. He thought it would once he had all the money in their hands, but it didn’t. He still felt like his heart was trying to break through his rib cage. He thought it’d hit him when they stopped by Selene’s office and gave her the cash, and it didn’t. The only thing he felt besides panic is a small ounce of sick satisfaction with how surprised she looked. But relief never came, and now Harry is hit with the worst anxiety he’s ever felt every single time he walks up to their door.

Harry’s not stupid. They can’t survive the threat of eviction twice.

-

There’s no point in dwelling on the in between. On the time between one eviction note to the next. There’s just no point. They try, and they struggle, and they pay back their friends, and they overwork themselves and it’s still not even enough, and it still ends with an eviction note on the door.

Harry’s the one to find it. Again. Except this time, Louis’ at work and Harry’s left to cry by himself in their apartment (and it’s still theirs, it still is, even if it’s only for another thirty days). He screams and he shouts and he cries, he cries so hard. He’d break something if everything wasn’t already broken. So he just sits on the floor of their kitchen and cries and cries and cries, the eviction letter on the kitchen table like a centerpiece.

They won’t be able to find a way out of it this time, Harry knows it. And even if they could, even if the same friends decided to help them out again and Harry went back to the club, how long would that last? It’s only been six months since the last notice. They’re screwed. They’re so screwed.

When Louis and Addison get home, Harry’s curled up in the center of the bed, trembling and digging his blunt nails into his arm. It doesn’t hurt, and it’s not supposed to. It’s just meant to give him something to hold onto, because he feels sick to his stomach, genuinely ill, and he needs something -- anything, even it’s his own flesh -- to hang on to.

“Oh, shit,” he hears Louis say, and he sounds breathless. “What the fuck.” Now he sounds angry.

Addison’s soft, innocent, “What’s wrong, Daddy?” is what forces Harry out of bed. He stumbles into the living room, sniffling quietly and holding himself like he’s about to shatter. The look Louis gives him is. . . it’s heart-stopping. He looks petrified and young, so young. Addison’s looking at Harry now, too, but he barely even sees her.

“We’re so screwed,” he says, voice breaking on every other syllable. He lets out a shaky laugh. “We’re so -- we’re so done for. There’s nothing good that comes after this, Louis.”

Louis doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t tell him to stay positive or that he’ll figure it out or that he shouldn’t talk like that in front of Addison. He doesn’t say anything, he just sits at the kitchen table and puts his head in his hand. Neither of them move when Addison bursts into tears, clearly sensing that something is wrong. She just stands there in between them, crying and rubbing her eyes, and neither of them do a thing about it.

The following morning, after a sleepless night, Louis and Harry talk to Selene, and she doesn’t give them an ultimatum this time. She tells them that there’s not a thing they can do to get out of this. Louis stares at her silently, chin raised like he’s trying to reserve some of his pride. Harry looks her straight in the eye and says, “I hope you can live with yourself knowing you’ve just put a five-year-old out on the street.”

She matches his stare. It’s not like he thought he was going to win anything by saying that, or that he thought she’d feel bad. Clearly, she has no remorse. “I’ve done it before,” is all she says before turning on her heel and heading towards her office.

Harry’s not a violent person, but he truly considers what the ramifications of strangling someone to death might be. Prison, probably. A bed to sleep in every night and food to eat every morning. Doesn’t sound too bad at this point.

“You have work soon, right?” Louis asks, and his voice doesn’t sound like his own. Harry nods silently. “I’ll take Addison with me to see Liam, okay? I can. . . I can talk to him.”

“About what?”

Louis shrugs and wipes a hand down his face. “He’s the wealthiest friend we’ve got,” he says. “If anybody might be able to help, it’ll be him. Even if -- even if all he can do is put us up in a hostel for a bit, or we could try interim housing maybe. I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to him.”

Harry feels so, so numb. He barely even processes what Louis says. “We could live out of the car, Louis, but not Addy. She’s five. She’ll get taken away from us.”

“Don’t start that kind of talk,” Louis snaps harshly. “She’s our fucking daughter, she’s not going anywhere. Just let me fucking talk to Liam first before we start freaking out.”

As if they aren’t already freaking out. Both of them are, so it’s a stupid thing to say. Regardless, Harry doesn’t argue and follows him back to their apartment. It’s still theirs, it’s still theirs, it’s still theirs.

-

Liam offers to have them stay with him for a little while. However long they need is how he puts it, Louis tells him. Liam, sweet, caring, selfless Liam, immediately offered up his own house to them as soon as Louis told them that they were evicted. Weakly, Louis tried to say no, that it wasn’t necessary, but Liam insisted. It feels like the first break they’ve gotten since. . . Well, they’ve never really gotten a break, have they?

When Harry gets home and is told the news, he doesn’t even know how to react. Not in that sense that he’s so overwhelmed that he can’t process it, it’s like his body has forgotten that it’s allowed to feel certain things. Relief, hope; those have been eliminated from his system, probably, because he just keeps nodding and fumbling with his fingers as he tries not to cry, and not in a good way. He just wants to cry.

“Harry, babe,” Louis whispers, grabbing his wrist, and Harry yanks his hand away like he’s been burned and he doesn’t even know why.

“I’m going to shower,” he says, because he needs to get away from people before he completely explodes. And Louis lets him go, and the shower does him good to clear his head and calm him down. The cry helps, too. He sobs so hard his throat aches after he gets out of the shower. Once he’s dried off and dressed, he opens the door and makes a beeline to Louis, who’s talking quietly to Addison as he boils some water at the stove, and hugs him from behind. Louis relaxes into him easily enough, and he turns around in his arms so he can kiss Harry’s jaw and whisper to him that they’re going to be okay.

Squatting in your friend’s house because you’ve just been evicted is a new definition of ‘okay’, but Harry doesn’t point that out.

-

Liam comes by to talk to them about the logistics of things the following week. Already, there are some boxes that Louis got from work laying around. Since Harry and Louis are so busy, they’ve just been using whatever spare time they have to pack as they go. He hopes it doesn’t look too eager to Liam.

The conversation is awkward, mostly because Liam is too nice for his own good. He asks Louis and Harry if it’d be okay if they bought their own groceries and things like that -- “But only if you can, and of course you can eat my stuff, too,” -- as if they’re the ones doing Liam a favor.

“We’ll pay for our side of things across the board,” Louis tells him. “We don’t -- rent’s the thing that kills us. Everything else we can usually manage okay, but not rent.”

“Or Addison’s medicine,” Harry says quietly, because they’re running low and are currently unsure of how they’re going to pay for it. He’s not asking Liam to pay for it, of course not, but he doesn’t want Louis making them seem better off than they are.

“If you can’t pay for her medication, let me,” Liam says instantly. “Seriously. I mean it. Don’t hesitate to tell me if she needs that.”

Louis shakes his head. “It’s okay. We’ve got it covered.”

So he’s still trying to hold onto a bit of pride, it looks like. He’s embarrassed, trying to make things look better than they are, as if Liam isn’t sitting in their shitty apartment right now, seeing firsthand at how bad they’re doing.

Liam lays out the rules as politely as he can manage. They can have guests over so long as it’s not too late or too early, as if Harry and Louis have many friends or time to invite them over. They can use his car if he’s not working, but they have to make sure there’s gas in it when they get back. Harry might actually take up that offer; he is so sick of riding around on trains all the time. Chores, like cooking and cleaning, should be rotated. And his last rule is that he doesn’t want any illegal activity going on in or around his home.

“What, you think we’re heroin addicts or something?” Louis asks, clearly joking, but maybe Liam does think something like that because he is too quick to say no, of course not.

“We’ll stay out of the way as much as we can,” Harry tells him, once everything’s said and done. “We don’t want to be any trouble. Louis and I just have to figure out some stuff,” his voice is getting strained, and his throat is hot, “and then we’ll leave. We’re really -- um. We’re really grateful that you’d do this for us.”

Louis nods. “And Addison’s a good kid. She comes with me to work most days, anyway. She won’t be any trouble.”

“You three are good people, I know that,” Liam says, looking confused. “You’re not going to be a burden. I don’t want you three thinking you have to, like, hide in your room or something. Once you move in, it’ll be your house, too.”

Harry and Louis both agree to that, as if either of them aren’t going to try their hardest to make it feel like they don’t live there at all. They don’t want to be a bother.

When Liam leaves, Louis and Harry cuddle on the couch together, holding each other tightly. They haven’t cuddled during the day in a long time, and he feels oddly exposed.

-

It’s Harry's second shift at the gas station, and he can tell it isn’t going to last long. The owner of the store, Tony, doesn’t like him and hired him out of pure need. Harry had put in an application here months ago, and he didn’t get a call back until last week. Tony wasn’t happy with how scattered Harry’s resume was, at how he seems to jump from place to place, and Harry tried explaining that in every single case, he’d been let go because the companies were downsizing staff, not because he’s not a hard worker. Tony didn’t seem to buy it, and he still doesn’t, apparently, because every fifteen minutes or so, Tony comes over to give him another task, asking why it hasn’t been done.

He’ll be let go from this job, too. As soon as Tony finds someone else willing to work midnights (and Harry won’t have time to go home between shifts, so he has his uniform for the dry cleaner’s on underneath his clothes) Harry will be cut. And that’s okay. Harry can’t keep feeling like a failure every time he gets canned by someone else. If he does that, he’ll go insane.

The doorbell rings, signalling a new customer, so Harry stands up from where he was stocking the shelves under the counter. It’s a mom and her son. He must be only a few years older than Addison, and Harry can’t help but notice that his shoes are cleaner than hers and the coat he’s wearing looks softer than anything she owns. The little boy gives Harry a polite wave before his mom pulls him towards the direction of the chip aisle. Once they’re done shopping, Harry checks them out like normal. Everything goes smoothly, and the little boy waves goodbye to him. As they leave, Harry bends back down to continue shocking the shelf. It only takes Tony about a minute to come out of his office to stand beside Harry.

“Are you going to flirt with everyone, then?” he asks.

Harry doesn’t even bother looking up. “I wasn’t flirting with her, Tony.” At this point, there’s no point in playing nice. Nice never gets him anywhere. Besides, if push comes to shove, he can always go back to the club. He never thought a stripping gig would be his safety net, but here he is.

“It sure looked like you were. And the last three females who have come in here.”

“I’m gay,” Harry snaps, glaring at Tony. After only a second, he regrets it; he doesn’t normally offer up that information to anybody, but this is ridiculous. Tony is ridiculous. He quickly diverts his gaze, looking back down at the box in front of him. “I’m not flirting with anyone, okay,” he says meekly.

Tony’s silent for a solid thirty seconds. “I thought you said you had a kid,” he says.

Harry closes his eyes briefly before opening them again and focusing on what he’s doing. “I do.”

“How does that work, then?”

“Why do you care?” Harry asks, and there aren't tears in his eyes. There’s not. Because if there were, that might indicate that he’s losing his grip, and he promised Louis he wouldn’t.

“I don’t,” Tony says immediately, defensively, as he backs up. “Just -- I don’t want you staring at me, okay? Don’t make any moves.”

Harry lets out a hollow laugh. “I won’t.”

“You better not. And would it kill you to dust back here? It’s filthy.”

There’s no point in arguing, no point in pointing out that he’s only been here for forty minutes and there’s no way he caused much of a mess already. He just agrees quietly, and Tony goes back into his office.

-

They both get sick a lot. Anytime a cold is working its way through one of their workplaces, they always manage to get it. It’s beyond irritating, but that’s what happens when you sleep like crap and don’t eat the healthiest. If you don’t take care of your body, you can’t expect it to take care of you.

Louis’ the one to get sick first. He says one of his coworkers was out with the flu last week, so he’s not exactly surprised. It’s just a bit of a stuffy nose, a sore throat and a headache. He’ll be okay, and so will Harry, when he inevitably gets it next.

Like clockwork, four days after Louis initially complains that his throat is sore, Harry wakes up with a pounding headache and a stuffy nose. And to make it worse, he has to be at work in an hour, from eight a.m. to four p.m., and his shift at the gas station starts at seven. He probably won’t bother coming home; instead, he’ll find somewhere to sleep for a bit before walking to the gas station. He’ll get off work at two in the morning, meaning he won’t be home until probably three.

They’re supposed to be moving into Liam’s in five days, and they still have to pack a decent amount. They’re taking every last thing with them. Absolutely nothing is getting left behind if they can help it, not when they’ve worked so hard for it. It’s been stressing them both out, so Harry’s not been sleeping well. Worse than usual.

Basically, Harry feels like crap already, and today is absolutely going to kill him. Thankfully, he doesn’t work until the afternoon tomorrow, so he’ll be able to get a decent amount of sleep.

The day doesn’t start becoming difficult until one o’clock, just after Harry’s taken his break. He pushes through -- he has to, doesn’t he -- and after he’s finished at the laundromat, he walks around the area until he finds a park that isn’t very busy. He finds a bench that’s in the shade, pulls his knees up to his chest, and tries to sleep. Since he’s exhausted and sick, it isn’t very hard to sleep. It is, however, hard to stay asleep, because he is paranoid that he’s going to sleep too long and miss his shift. He doesn’t have a phone to set an alarm with, so he has to get up and go inside of a cafe to check the time every time he wakes up and doesn’t know how long he was asleep for.

After about the fourth time he’s done this, it’s six o’clock and he has to start walking to work. Louis loathes Harry walking around by himself like this, especially when it’s the early hours of the morning, but Harry makes sure to stand tall and take advantage of his height and build. Nobody ever pays him any attention, aside for women who walk a little faster or scoot away when he comes around. He doesn’t take it personally.

As usual, Tony is a prick to him. Any hope that Harry had for Tony warming up to him after a while is gone, because it’s been two and a half weeks and Tony still treats Harry like he’s an idiot.

“You sick or something?” he asks after Harry says hello to him. He’s scowling at him, and Harry doesn’t look him in the eye.

“It’s just a little cold.”

“Don’t go coughing around the customers,” Tony warns, and Harry nods, says he won’t. He doesn’t want any trouble, and he’s never really been anything but nice to Tony, so he doesn’t understand why Tony hates him so much.

Harry’s just glad he still has a job here.

At eleven, Harry goes outside to take his break. He sits down on the cement, the cool air feeling nice against his skin. Nausea has been coursing through him all day, so he has to talk himself into eating the package of peanut butter crackers he has as a snack. He’ll regret it later if he doesn’t eat now, so he does, even though his body makes it known that it’s not very happy with that.

When he gets back inside, Tony glares daggers at him from behind the counter, saying he’s one minute later. Harry makes an indistinctive noise as a response.

On the train, Harry sits in a section by himself, avoiding the homeless people for no reason other than that’s what he was taught to do as a child. Technically, he’s homeless. He doesn’t have a place to call his home anymore. Liam’s house is just that: Liam’s.

He feels sick to his stomach when he gets home. As the day progressed, his headache intensified and his throat became all hot and scratchy, and he’s exhausted. To catch his breath, he lingers outside the door for a few minutes. He’s not ready to have anybody else need him right now. But after a minute or two, he starts to feel guilty, so he unlocks the door and walks inside.

The first thing he sees when he comes inside is Louis, and it makes him smile tiredly. It’s always so nice to come home late to see that Louis’ stayed up for him, even though he should get some sleep. Louis’ sitting on the kitchen counter, and judging by the empty cabinets and the swarm of boxes around him, he’s been packing.

“Hey, you,” Louis says, turning to look at him. “How are you? Good day?”

“It was fine,” Harry tells him. He sidesteps all the boxes to get to Louis, and when he does, he puts a gentle hand on his back. “Let me get the rest down for you. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Louis scoffs and blindly reaches behind him to swat at Harry. “Already did, thank you very much.” He carefully turns around and hops off the counter, and he’s so close and feels so warm, Harry just wants to melt into him. Louis holds up his hand, showing the bloodied napkin taped to his skin. “Sliced the shit out of my hand on one of those stupid plates. And we didn’t have any bandaids, so.”

He seems so nonchalant that Harry expects the cut to be minor, but when he pulls back the napkin, it exposes a cut running across the length of Louis’ palm, and it looks deep. It makes Harry cringe.

“Jesus, Louis. It needs stitches, don’t you think?”

“Probably,” Louis agrees, pulling his hand away and taping the napkin back down over the skin. “But my sister busted her chin on the window once, and it cost three hundred dollars for a few lousy stitches, so. It’ll heal on its own.”

It makes Harry feel so fucking guilty, even though none of this is really his fault. Either of their faults. Just a lot of shit luck, really. But it doesn’t matter what caused it. All that matters is Louis’ hand is about split in two currently and they can’t afford stitches to fix it, and Louis’ a server, so it’ll get irritated and will heal even slower.

“I stole you a burrito from work,” Louis says, motioning the fridge. “Eat. You look like shit.”

Harry listens, even though he’s not sure how a burrito will make him feel any better. As he heats it up in the microwave, he asks Louis if he actually stole it, and Louis scoffs and says of course he did.

“I’m not going to get in trouble, though,” Louis tells him, digging through a box, looking for a fork for Harry. He packed almost everything in the kitchen. “Don’t worry about it, people do it all the time.”

Harry nods, and then the microwave goes off before he can stop it. He cringes, hoping it didn’t wake Addison. After a few seconds and there’s no sign that it bothered her, he gets out his food and sits at the table, taking the fork that Louis fished out for him.

“How’s Addy?” Harry asks, poking at the burrito. He’s not in the mood to eat, but he knows that he should.

“Grumpy as shit. She’s mad that she didn’t get to see you all day.”

Harry frowns but doesn’t say anything. What is there to say to that?

“Do you think it’ll be any better at Liam’s?” Harry asks later on, when they’re getting ready for bed. Harry’s taking a piss while Louis’ poking at a cavity in the back of his mouth.

“Yeah,” Louis says, voice muffled by his fingers in his mouth. “Can’t get much worse, can it?”

“Yeah. It could.”

Louis gives him a look as he pulls his fingers out of his mouth and wipes them on his pants. “You know what I mean,” he says. Harry nods, because yes, he does. Living at Liam’s is better than living out of their car, which was and still is a very real possibility.

Harry nudges Louis out of the way of the sink once he’s done so he can wash his hands. As he does so, he watches Louis watch him in the mirror.

“You look really sick, babe,” Louis says softly. He sounds apologetic, almost. “It’s only been a few days since I first got sick and I feel loads better. You look like you have the plague. I never felt that bad.” He touches Harry’s forehead with the back of his hand and frowns. “You’re warm.”

“I’m fine.”

Louis roughly taps his forehead to be annoying and then presses a kiss to his shoulder. “I’ll see if anybody at work tomorrow has any cold medicine.”

Harry agrees quietly before drying off his hands, grabbing Louis’ wrist and pulling them to bed. As soon as they’re settled next to an undisturbed Addison, Harry falls asleep faster than he ever has before.

-

Liam helps them move in a few days later, as if he hasn’t done enough. He does have a truck, though, which proves to be helpful. Once everything is transported to Liam’s house, they start taking everything downstairs, where the three of them will be most of the time. Liam’s renting a nice house with three floors, and Harry, Louis and Addison will take over the downstairs. It has a bedroom and a bathroom, and really, that’s all they need. Addison doesn’t seem too pleased at the idea of sleeping in a basement, but once she realizes that it’s well-lit and spacious, she doesn’t seem to mind. As they unpack, she sits on the guest bed, playing on Liam’s tablet.

Moving is a lot of work, it turns out. And Harry worked this morning before they began moving, so he’s already exhausted. He doesn’t complain, of course he doesn’t, but after about the third trip back upstairs and to the car, he starts to feel lightheaded and more nauseous. He’s still sick, and he definitely has a fever, but they’re ignoring that for now. Louis got some cold medicine from one of the girls at work like he said he would, and it’s helping. A little.

After the fifth trip to the car, Liam grabs his arm and says, “Whoa, wait. You look super pale, dude. Do you feel okay?”

“I just have a cold, I’m okay.” He shrugs out of Liam’s grasp to reach for a box, but Liam grabs his hand.

“You’re shaking,” he says, concern bleeding into his tone. “Come sit down. Let me get you some water, come on.” He pulls Harry to the kitchen and tells him sternly to sit at the table, which Harry does. He feels like shit; he’s not going to argue. Liam pours him a glass of water and hands it to him, and Harry drinks from it slowly.

“Are you sure it’s just because you’re sick?” Liam asks cautiously, and Harry has to narrow his eyes at him for that.

“What, do you actually think we’re drug addicts or something?”

Liam’s eyes widen and he shakes his head. “No. No. Why do you two keep saying that? I’m just saying, man. You and Louis are both a little skinny. A little too skinny.”

Harry closes his eyes, shame coloring his cheeks. “Don’t, Liam. We’re fine.”

“When’s the last time you saw a doctor?”

Harry’s reluctant to answer. “When I was seventeen, okay, but it doesn’t matter. We’re fine.”

Liam’s about to say something else, probably something stupidly heroic, but Louis comes up the stairs, saying something about Addison’s toys. When he sees them sitting, he asks if they’ve gotten everything from the car. Liam, again, is about to say something before Louis narrows his eyes at Harry.

“You look really pale,” he says, coming over to Harry and grabbing his chin. He stares at him like he’s going to see anything visibly wrong.

“I told you,” Liam mumbles, sitting back in his chair.

“Do you feel okay?” Louis asks, and he touches Harry’s forehand. “You’re still warm. How sick do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” Harry says sternly, giving Louis a look he hopes reads as strict. “Go finish unpacking. There’s only a little left.”

Louis reluctantly agrees, and he goes with Liam following after he places a gentle kiss to his forehead. As soon as they’re gone, Harry sets his head on the table and concentrates on not throwing up.

He swears he’s halfway asleep in less than a minute, until he hears Addison from downstairs. “Daddy?” she calls. “Liam?” So he pulls himself off the chair, takes another sip of water, and slowly descends the stairs. Addison’s at the bottom of the stairs, pulling on her shorts.

“What’s the matter, love?”

“Where’s the bathroom?” she asks, and Harry sighs a little because yeah, that would have been a good thing to tell her about an hour ago. He guides her to the toilet and she thanks him. He feels decent for all of about two seconds, and then he’s so lightheaded that he has to grip the railing. Deciding not to push it, he sinks down to the floor, sitting on the bottom step and leaning against the wall.

When Liam and Louis return downstairs, both carrying boxes, Louis kicks at his ankle and tells him to go to sleep. Harry barely opens his mouth before Louis tells him not to argue, so Harry sighs, pulls himself up, and goes to the bed.

And holy fuck, he’s forgotten what a proper mattress feels like. He groans quietly, almost out of pain; he’s not used to his body melting into a bed, he’s used to moving around, trying to get comfortable until he eventually falls asleep. And the pillows are nice, too, they aren’t lumpy or rough, they’re soft and squishy.

“Can I get you anything?” Llam asks, and Harry is mad, almost, at him for ruining this moment for him. God, he’s learned his lesson and won’t ever underestimate the power of a good bed again. He mumbles out a small, “No,” to Liam before pulling the covers over him, and he’s so comfortable he could actually cry.

-

It’s weird, living at Liam’s. For so many different reasons.

First of all, living in a house is so different. There’s more space and less steps and not as many neighbors. There’s no evil fucking landlrod. The train ride to get over to this area is longer, but it doesn’t matter. He’ll take a longer commute over living in that shitty apartment any day. And he loved that apartment, he did, even as it started to break on them and get more and more bare. He loved it all the way up until it was stolen from them, so now it’s just a shitty fucking appartment.

Aside from that, living with someone else is different, too. Harry woke up that first week more times than he can count, breathless and clutching onto Addison because he heard a noise and Louis was right behind him and Addison was right in front of him. And then he realized it was just Liam, and he could fall back asleep, only to do it all over again an hour later. And Liam always makes dinner for them, even when they tell him he doesn’t have to. Gradually, Liam’s figuring out just how broke they really are.

“I didn’t know,” he told Harry one morning. Harry was staying home, missing his shift at work, because he couldn’t stop throwing up. Thankfully, the laundromat is more understanding than Tony is. If he had to call in on Tony, he’d be fired, probably. Liam was sitting by his feet in bed, a hand firm on his ankle. “You and Louis are like family to me, even though I don’t see you two all that often. If I would’ve known how tough of a spot you guys were in sooner, I would have helped. I don’t know why you didn’t ask for my help.”

Harry, who was still nauseous as fuck and half-awake, just shrugged and made a noncommittal noise into the pillow. He didn’t want to talk about it, ever but especially when he was feeling so poorly.

After two missed shifts at the laundromat, some strong cold medicine Liam got him, lots of soup that Liam leaves at the bedside and many hours of sleep he usually can’t afford, Harry gets better and gets back into the swing of things again.

It takes a month into living with Liam for him to sit them down to have a talk. He tells Addison to go play on his tablet somewhere else, and he looks so stern that Harry panics, thinking they’re getting kicked out. He tries to figure out why, tries to figure out what they’ve done and where they can go next, until Liam looks at them straight in the face and says, “You two work too much.”

Harry lets out a loud sigh of relief. Jesus Christ. Louis laughs.

“I’m being serious,” Liam tells him, frowning. “It’s not healthy. Harry, you’re working, like, twenty hours a day sometimes.”

“Only sometimes, and I always have the next day to sleep in.”

Liam makes a face. “It doesn’t matter. That’s too much. That’s insane.”

“We’re broke,” Louis says, on the verge of snapping. “In case you haven’t noticed.”

“You’re not paying rent anymore, and I’m sure your grocery bill has gone down a bit since living here, so you shouldn’t -- ” Liam pauses, takes a deep breath, and continues. “Right now you’re at a point that you can slow down for a little. I understand that times were tough before, and that they might be again in the future, but for right now, you need to take it easy. You have the opportunity to.”

Harry’s gut is twisting with embarrassment and worry. “We’re fine, Liam.”

“You’re not, though,” Liam denies. “Addison doesn’t see you at all some days. I don’t know how you two have a good relationship, considering you barely ever make time for each other. I mean, shit, I fully expected to have to hear you fuck, I bought noise cancelling headphones and everything, and you haven’t heard so much as a peep since you’ve moved in here. So unless you’re just freakishly quiet. . .”

“Addison starts school again soon,” Louis says, and now he’s angry. Now he’s getting his words out through gritted teeth. “Do you know how many fucking field trips a kids go on? A lot, apparently. And they’re expensive. And it’s really hard to tell your kid no. And this cut on my hand?” Louis raises his hand that has an actual bandage on it now, although it still hasn’t healed. He’s managed to reopen it twice now. “I most definitely needed stitches for it, and we couldn’t afford it, and now I’m pretty sure it’s infected and I’m still ignoring it because we still don’t have the money to go to urgent care. Harry’s been on the verge of flinging himself of a cliff for a fucking year now, and we don’t have the money to get him to see a therapist, let alone to get him on any sort of antidepressants or something stupid like that.”

Harry shoots him a confused look. He’s not -- that. He’s not suicidal. He never has been. He hates his life, yeah, but he doesn’t hate it enough to end it. And if he were to die, Louis couldn’t afford to take care of Addison on his own.

“Did you know Harry was a stripper for a while?” he snaps, and Harry rolls his eyes and glances off to the side, hurt spreading through his chest. That’s not something he just wants Louis to tell people, fucking hell. “He got punched in the face one night, and I had to be all like, ‘Sorry, babe, that sucks, but you have to go back to work tomorrow because our daughter hasn’t fucking eaten properly in two days.’ Do you realize that?”

Liam stares at him, at a loss for words.

“I know you’re just trying to help,” Louis continues, calmer this time. “And you are. Seriously, Liam, I’ll never be able to repay you. But don’t talk about our fucking relationship or our money when you don’t understand what it’s like to be shit poor. Don’t talk to me about how many hours I have to work when you live in a house with three stories and I was considering the possibility of being homeless last month.”

He stands, then, and grabs Harry’s hand off the table, tugging on him to come with. Harry does, mostly because he’d rather face Louis right now than Liam. They go downstairs, and Harry’s fuming with hurt and anger, at both Louis and Liam, and he’s expecting them to at least talk about this, about any of it, about the fact that Louis thinks he wants to die. That’s the logical thing anybody would expect, right? What he doesn’t expect is for Louis to barely make it off the last step before he’s grabbing Harry’s face and kissing him, hard.

“Jesus Christ, Louis,” Harry says, pulling away briefly before not quite understanding the point of doing so. Louis’ looking at him expectantly, and they’ve never been great at communication before, so Harry pushes down any sense of responsibility and tugs Louis closer by the back of his neck.

What the fuck are we doing? is all that goes through Harry’s head, up until the second they’re both naked and in the shower. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing anymore, not when Louis’ touching him in places he hasn’t touched him in a while and kissing him harder than he’s ever been kissed before. Who cares if they’re being stupid? Who cares if they’re having a lapse in judgment? They’re still young, they’re still in love with each other, and there shouldn’t be rules to how they figure it out.

Still, Harry can’t help but feel like it’s a little out of character for them. Especially when, after they’ve finished, Louis carelessly washes off the come on his stomach before stepping out of the shower, drying off, and leaving the bathroom. Harry thinks that he’s done something wrong, and as he tries to figure out what, standing underneath the spray of the water by himself, Louis comes back and tosses clean clothes on the counter for Harry. He doesn’t say anything before he leaves again, but at least now Harry knows he’s not mad.

Harry spends a few more minutes in the shower, trying to catch his breath and get his head on straight. He does eventually get out, changing into the clothes Louis brought him. They’re Louis’, which isn’t exactly weird considering Harry usually grabs for whoever’s clothes are the cleanest, but he can’t help feel like that adds to the puzzle of confusion. As he stares at himself in the mirror, smoothing over Louis’ sweater he realizes that Louis’ probably feeling awfully insecure at Liam insinuating they have an unhealthy relationship. Louis and Harry feel the same exact way about each other: the other is the only person in the entire world who will never let them down or ask for too much or care too little. The fear of losing that is shared between them, so of course Louis isn’t going to like Liam pushing on it.

And Harry will take the time to reassure Louis that they’re doing fine, he will, but for right now, that’s not what he’s most worried about. Louis’ sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the TV playing the news channel but not looking as though he’s actually watching, and Harry sits at the head of the bed against the pillows.

“I don’t want to die,” he says, and it sounds like a very surreal thing to be saying out loud. “Like, I’m not suicidal. I don’t know why you’d say that to Liam.”

Louis hunches forward further. “You’re depressed.”

“Probably. We probably both are. But that doesn’t mean I want to die.” He pulls one of his knees up to his chest, setting his chin on it. “You don’t want to either, right?”

Louis scoffs. “Please. Like I’d leave you to take care of Addison alone.”

It soothes Harry’s nerves, until he realizes that that’s not really a no. He decides not to push it; if Louis’ not going to do it, there’s no point in dwelling on it. Or something like that. “Okay,” he says. “And I hope you don’t get in the habit of telling random people I was a stripper. ‘Cause that’s, like, kind of really fucked up, Louis.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s private,” Harry snaps. “You’re ashamed of me doing it? Yeah, well, imagine how I feel. So don’t tell people. I’m not asking, I’m telling.”

Louis makes a grouchy noise before leaning back against the bed, stretching out. His head falls near Harry’s ankle. “I just fucked you,” he says, a small smile on his face. “Shouldn’t you be a little less pissy?”

He’s joking, of course, so Harry lets the subject go and nudges Louis’ cheek with his toe. “You’re in kicking distance. I’d be careful.”

Louis tips his head back, and he’s smiling at Harry. Small and warm and quiet. He has work in an hour, and he’s leaving Addison to be with Harry and Liam. Addison loves Harry, and of course Harry loves her, but she does prefer Louis. Or maybe she doesn’t prefer him, maybe it’s just what she’s used to, since she’s always stuck following Louis around when he takes her to work.

“I’m going to talk to Liam about getting a few hours in at my old job,” Louis tells him. “Not now, obviously. Not when he’s up our asses about ‘working too much,’ whatever the fuck that even means. But eventually.”

Harry frowns. “But you’re hand. You can’t stock heavy shit when your hand is injured.”

“It’ll heal.”

“Yeah, unless it gets infected first.”

“I told you,” Louis says, turning around so he’s sitting on his stomach. He leans his head against his arms. “I think it’s already infected. I’m gonna have Betsy at work look at it. She’s a nursing student.”

Harry goes to grab his wrist to see for himself, but Louis pulls his hand away and tucks it under his chest. “Let me see it,” Harry says, confused. When Louis just shakes his head, Harry nudges him with his foot. “Louis, seriously. If it looks bad, I want to see it. Let me help.”

“Mmm, no. It looks gross.”

“Louis. Stop being difficult.”

“Harry,” Louis echoes, mocking. “Stop being annoying. I’ll have Betsy look at it tonight.”

Harry sighs heavily and leans forward to shove at Louis’ shoulder. “Fine,” he says. “But you better come and cuddle me, ‘cause now you have me in shit mood on my day off.”

Louis rolls his eyes and does as he’s told anyway. He gets them both under the blankets before pulling Harry into his side. He pets at his hair obnoxiously rough for a moment, just to be even more annoying, and Harry grunts softly against Louis’ chest. Louis stops and starts messing with his hair in a way that feels nice. Harry doesn’t mean to fall asleep, and it doesn’t even feel like he did, but the next time he wakes, Louis’ gone and it’s darker outside.

-

It’s one o’clock in the morning when Louis gets in from work. Harry’s asleep, as he should be considering he works at eight, but Louis gently shakes him awake. Harry, sleepy and confused, lets out a quiet whimper and tucks his face against Louis’ knee, mumbling something that’s supposed to sound like, “What is it?”

“Stupid Betsy said I should go to urgent care, so. That’s what I think I should do. Figured you might want to come with? Addison’s upstairs with Liam.”

Harry wakes up more, then, turning over on his back to see that Addison is gone from the bed. He doesn’t like that he didn’t wake up to that. “Does it really look that bad?” he asks, sitting up. A yawn escapes him as he scratches at his chest. “They’re probably going to give you antibiotics. Those might cost a lot.”

Louis looks guilty. “I know, but it does look bad, H. I probably should’ve gone sooner.”

“Okay, that’s fine.” Harry leans forward to press against the corner of Louis’ lips, too tired to panic. “We’ll figure it out. Just give me five, okay? I have to pee and wake up a bit.”

Louis does, says he’ll be upstairs waiting.

As soon as Louis pulls back the bandage to show the doctor the cut, Harry winces and stands, grabbing his wrist. “Jesus, Louis. You didn’t tell me it looked that bad.”

The skin around the cut is swollen and red, and the scab that’s formed over the cut has gone yellow and greenish, almost. The doctor gently takes Louis’ wrist from Harry and examines it herself.

“It’s definitely infected,” she says distractedly, and well. Duh. “Okay. I’ll prescribe you some antibiotics that should be taken orally and we’ll get this flushed out. It should be fine, if you take care of it now.”

Louis eyes her carefully, probably wondering how much that is going to cost them. “We don’t have insurance,” Louis tells her, sounding apologetic. “And we’re, like, shit broke, so if we could, um. Could you just do whatever’s cheapest and that’ll get the job done?”

She looks sympathetic, something Harry greatly appreciates. Even though she’s making bank from being a doctor, she’s not the one who created the system. She didn’t have a say in how much bias towards poor people would be fundamentally implemented in it.

“Of course,” she says. “I’ll ask around, see who’s offering your antibiotics for the least amount. And the cleansing of your wound is nothing fancy, so it’s not going to cost you too much.”

“Thank you,” Louis says, cheeks gone red. It shouldn’t be embarrassing to be poor. Or maybe it should be, he doesn’t actually know. But they shouldn’t have to feel crap about themselves on top of everything else.

As soon as she steps outside for a moment, shutting the curtains behind her, Harry thwaps Louis’ arm roughly. “You’re an idiot,” he says, ignoring Louis’ complaints that it hurt. “Do you know how much more money it’d cost if, I don’t know, you needed your fucking hand to be amuptated or something?”

Louis stares at him with a bored look, staying patient until Harry’s finished. “That’s a very weird way to show you care about me,” he says, and no, Harry’s not in a joking mood. Louis’ fine, it’s just an infected cut, but -- just. He needs to take care of himself. He must see that Harry is actually upset because he grabs Harry’s hand and tugs on him. “I’m fine. I’ll continue to be fine. I didn’t let it get too far, did I? No. Just trust me a bit here, okay?”

Harry squeezes his hand, suddenly feeling so small and scared. “I just really hate this, Louis,” he whispers, hunching forward and settling his elbows on his knees. “I hate having to worry all the time. I hate -- I hate, God I don’t even know. I just hate everything.”

Louis squeezes his hand painfully hard, and he’s about to say something before a nurse comes in to clean Louis’ hand.

It only costs them a little over a hundred and fifty dollars, and Louis doesn’t mention what Harry said, but he does grip Harry’s hand tightly the entire way home. And when they get inside, Louis thwaps him back.

“What the hell was that for?” Harry asks, rubbing over his arm. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but he wasn’t expecting it.

Louis looks at him sternly and says, “If you get to hit me for not taking care of myself, then I get to hit you for the same reason.”

“I’m okay,” Harry starts to say, and before he can even finish, Louis shushes him sternly.

“No,” he says. “Just because my pain is physical, doesn’t mean yours hurts any less.”

Harry looks off to the side, wondering why the hell Louis’ so worried about him all the sudden. He’s fine. Tired as shit and drained and sad, but fine. “Well I don’t see what I can do about that,” he grumbles, kicking off his shoes. He bends down to pick them up and heads downstairs.

-

It’s a Monday when Tony tries to sleep with him.

A normal, casual Monday morning. It’s three in the morning, so nobody’s coming into the store all that often. Harry’s leaning against the counter, thinking about what they need for Addison’s next year of school starting in a little over a month, when Tony comes out of his office. Harry gives him a thin, fake smile, and he’s about to tell him that he’s going to mop the front in a few minutes, but he stops when Tony keeps walking closer and closer and then -- oh, fucking shit, that’s Tony’s hand on his junk.

“Jesus, what the -- ” Harry curls away from the touch, shoving Tony’s hand off of him. It’s not -- the touch was gentle, almost. Curious. Completely unwarranted and not okay, but not malicious. So it’s awkward afterwards, when Harry’s staring at him with his crotch directed away from him and Tony’s staring back, looking confused.

“I thought you were gay,” he says, and he sounds stumped, like he can’t think of any other reason why Harry wouldn’t want to sleep with him.

“I have a boyfriend,” Harry tells him, feeling awkward for no good reason. He didn’t cause this. “And you didn’t ask me if you could do that, so.”

Tony nods once, and his eyebrows are furrowed, like he seriously has to concentrate on what Harry’s saying to make sense of it. “Oh,” he says after a moment. “Oh. Well, the front has to be mopped. It looks like shit.”

Harry nods. “Yeah. Um. Yeah. I’ll go do that.”

“Yeah, you should.”

“Okay,” Harry mumbles, scooting around Tony and grabbing the mop and the bucket. He’s hesitant to turn his back to him, scared that he’s about to be attacked, but when he does, nothing happens. And he doesn’t really expect it to, either. At the club, Harry learned how to identify who was dangerous, and Tony doesn’t seem dangerous. Completely pervy and creepy, yes, but not dangerous.

Still, Harry pays far too much attention in making sure he doesn’t point his ass in the direction of the camera as he mops.

He tells Louis and Liam what happened a few hours later, when they’ve all managed to catch each other at the same time for breakfast. Harry’s getting in from work, Liam’s getting ready for work, and Louis is awake because Addison kicked him in her sleep and woke him up.

“You know Tony?” he says, grabbing Louis’ coffee cup to take a sip.

Louis hums, and Liam nods. “Your boss, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What about him?” Louis asks.

Harry shrugs and takes another sip from the cup. “He grabbed my dick this morning,” he says, doing his best to sound conversational. He’s not -- it’s not like it scared him or something. He’s not traumatized. It’s really not a big deal to him. But he’s scared that it should be and he’s just become numb to the world, so he wants to make sure he’s not screwed up.

“Oh,” Louis says, and he doesn’t look happy about it, but. He pats Harry’s thigh and says, “Some men are just like that. Women, too. It’s a curse having a cute butt, you know. You’re fine, though, right?”

Harry nods, and Louis pats his thigh again. “Good.”

There’s a weighted pause before Liam blurts out, “That’s illegal.”

Harry and Louis stare at him, unsure of how to respond to that.

“Why are you looking at me like I’m crazy?” Liam asks. “That’s -- he shouldn’t be doing that. You should tell somebody, Harry.”

“It’s okay,” Harry says, and Liam makes an exasperated noise.

“No, it’s not. Are you kidding me? He sexually assaulted you.”

Harry regrets mentioning it. He stands and kisses the top of Louis’ head and he scoots behind him to get out from behind his chair. “Yeah, maybe. But it wasn’t a big deal. I’m usually at least paid for it, though. Maybe he’ll add something to my check.”

He’s being cruel, joking about this when Liam is so visibly upset. Joking about him stripping when he told Louis not to mention it again. But he’s starting to realize that he doesn’t like Liam getting to have an opinion on what they do. Liam -- bless his heart -- is doing more than okay financially. He’s renting a house in his early twenties. He’s driving a brand new car. He talks to his mom every night before bed. He doesn’t get to have an input on what Harry finds and doesn’t find serious.

“Haz, I didn’t mean to piss you off,” Liam tells him when Harry starts walking in the direction of the stairs. It’s clear he’s not happy about saying it, that he still believes what he said, but he says it anyway, for Harry’s sake.

“You didn’t piss me off,” Harry says. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just going to sleep. Have a good day at work, man.”

Liam makes an unhappy noise, and Louis tells him he’ll be down in a minute. As Harry goes down the stairs, purposefully slow, he hears Liam ask, “Your boyfriend says someone else put their hand on his dick and your response is to make jokes? I’m not -- I’m not judging, but, like. Tommo. Aren’t you supposed to take care of him?”

“We take care of ourselves, Liam. I have to trust that he’s doing that. Trust me, I know how to tell if he needs looking after, okay? He’s a tough son of a bitch.”

Harry, settled by that response, finishes walking down the stairs and climbs into bed with their daughter, who’s sleeping soundly.

-

When Addison is back in school, it’s so much less stressful with Liam around. Harry and Louis do not ask Liam for much, and they discourage Addison from asking much from him either, but when things could be done so much easier if they’d accept the help Liam offers, and it'd directly help their daughter, it’s harder to say no.

So when Liam offers to take Addison to school and pick her up when he can after he hears Louis and Harry frantically trying to figure out the fuck can pick her up on certain days, they say yes. Hesitantly and reluctantly, they agree. And when a field trip comes around -- these goddamn fucking field trips -- and it’s forty dollars, she tells Liam about it and he offers to pay. They have forty dollars, and they tell him as much, but he shrugs and tells them it’s fine. So they accept that, too.

It’s nice, having someone else in your corner. Having someone else look after your kid.

In October, Louis and Harry start tossing back and forth the idea of finding another apartment. They’ve been at Liam’s for four months now, and even though Liam said they can stay as long as they need, they know that every promise has an expiration date. But when Harry borrows Liam’s laptop to start looking around, and Liam sees cheap apartments Chicago in the history, he tells them that they don’t have to start looking yet.

“Wait until the winter’s over, at least,” Liam tells him. “Cheap apartments might have shit insulation.” And he looks so honest, so trustworthy, that Harry lets it go. It settles some of the ever-present anxiety in Harry’s stomach; after winter gives them at least five more months. Six, if he’s considering the fact they’re in Chicago and March is most definitely still winter.

He feels safe for the first time in a while. And he learns that you don’t really realize how bad you were doing until you start doing good. He’s so much more. . . He feels lighter, almost. Less worried about everything. And Louis notices him brightening up a bit, and it makes him happier, too, and it’s really fucking amazing. It feels really good. And if Harry cuts back his hours a bit, barely, at the laundromat, well. He thinks it’s okay.

“What’d you learn at school, then?” Harry asks Addison after picking her up from school. Even though it always annoyed him whenever his mom asked him that, it feels right.

“About trees.”

Harry looks down at her. “What about trees?”

“I don’t know,” she says, shrugging. “Roots and stuff. I don’t know. Where’s Liam’s tablet?”

“Probably in his room, where you’re not supposed to go.” She starts to walk away anyway, and Harry tugs her back gently. “Hey, come on. Play with your toys downstairs or something.”

She slumps against him, wrapping her arms around his leg. “Fine,” she mumbles. “When is Daddy gonna be home?”

“Late. After your bedtime. But he’ll take you to school tomorrow, okay?”

Usually, she’s a champ about this sort of thing. She doesn’t get frustrated with them very often, so when she does, Harry excuses it. It’s justified, he’s pretty sure. “I don’t wanna go to bed by myself,” she tells him, pouting grumpily. Harry works tonight, his shift starts at eight, so he’ll get her ready for bed before leaving. Liam will be home by then, and he said he’d put her to bed if she didn’t listen to Harry; another liberty they didn’t have before staying here. Liam’s an angel, he’s sure of it.

“You won’t be by yourself, bub. Liam will be here.”

She whines, and he pats at her head and tells her not to start. She doesn’t, thankfully. “Can we at least play outside?” she asks, only stomping her foot a little. “Liam bought me chalk. Said I could draw on the driveway.”

It’s hard knowing that there will come a day where she won’t have that again. Chalk. A driveway to doodle on. Because even though Liam’s is great for right now, it’s not like they’re living here permanently. They will certainly be moving into at the very most an apartment next. But just because she won’t have that later doesn’t mean she shouldn’t indulge in it now. He can’t condition her to get used to unhappiness.

“Of course,” he tells her. He takes her outside, and once he’s sat on the bench, she sits in his lap and asks him to braid her hair. He does, and since he doesn’t have a hair tie, they’re loose, but she doesn’t mind. Once he’s finished, she hops out of his lap and grabs the chalk box and plops on the ground.

“What did you want me to draw for you, Daddy?”

He smiles at her. “A tree,” he tells her. “With roots and stuff.”

She nods very seriously, and he watches her draw the tree for him, with roots and all.

-

Tony is. . . a bit of a problem, you could say. Not right now, but he most definitely will become one later. Harry’s been waiting to get fired ever since he rejected Tony, but it hasn’t happened. He was confused for a while, until he realized that Tony was jacking off in his office almost every shift, presumably to the thought of Harry. He’s keeping him around because he likes the idea of him. Of his body, of his sexuality. And that’s going to become a problem, it is, but Harry’s taller and stronger and already on guard. Tony doesn’t have shit on him, except for the fact that he’s his boss. But Harry has no problem losing his job if it’s because he hit him upside the head for touching him inappropriately again.

So yeah, he’s a looming threat, but not a current one, so Harry tries not to focus on it. And he tells himself it’s okay that he’s continuing to work for a man who is most likely fantasizing about harming him, because it’s better for it to be him than someone’s daughter or son.

It does get his heart hammering sometimes, like whenever he has to go out of his way to talk to Tony. Like tonight. He spends twenty minutes working up the courage to go and knock on the door of Tony’s office, the door that isn’t all the way shut on purpose so Harry can hear the broken off moan as he comes. Harry waits at the door, not stupid enough to allow Tony to trick him into “accidentally” walking in on him. After about a minute, a scratchy voice tells him to come in.

Tony’s face is flushed and his fly is undone. “What do you want?”

Harry clears his throat and looks nowhere but Tony’s eyes. “I, um. My shift at my other job ends at six-thirty tomorrow, and I know I start here at seven, but, um. I might be a little late, if that’s. . . I mean, is that okay?”

“Fine,” Tony snaps, giving in much easier than Harry thought he would. “But that means you can’t leave here until this place is spotless, you hear me?”

“Yes. Okay, I will. Thank you.”

He turns to leave, and before he goes, Tony asks him to take the trash out from his office. Harry eyes the only half-filled trash can annoyedly, knowing full well there’s a freshly jizzed on tissue on top of it. There is, Harry can see it, but he decides it’d be best to just do it other than argue.

Not even ten minutes later after Harry brings the trash can back to the office, he hears Tony getting off again. If he wasn’t so fucking digusted, Harry could maybe find it in him to be impressed. Twice in under twenty minutes is good stamina for someone over twice his age.

-

Sometimes, usually when Harry and Liam catch each other going to and from work in the morning, they have long, quiet talks about all sorts of things. Usually it turns serious, but that’s okay. Sometimes Harry doesn’t mind talking about his problems.

Today, though. Today, it snowed for the first time and as he walked up the steps to Liam’s house, he remembered the time his mom took him and Louis to a ski resort for Harry’s birthday. They fucked in the cabin while his mom was out with her friend, and she came back and didn’t have a clue. He thinks about that and it makes him want to cry a little, knowing how perfect his life would be if he just managed to keep that part of him hidden like he did that day, so when Liam asks him about his mom, Harry’s throat immediately gets hot and scratchy with tears.

“So you and Louis don’t talk to your parents, then? Either of you?” is what Liam asks. And not in a judgemental way, not at all, but Harry still feels awfully defensive about it.

“No,” he says quietly. “Louis cut himself off from his mom and step-dad, I got cut off from my mom. I haven’t seen my mom in years, same for Louis.”

“He told me what happened to you. With your mom catching you two and shit. That’s terrible, man, I’m sorry.”

Harry shrugs. “It’s okay. I’ve gotten used to it.” He talks a long, burning sip of his coffee and they sit in silence for about two minutes. Then, Harry says, “You know, it’s like. Sometimes Louis tells me that he regrets leaving home. That things would be different if I moved in with his parents instead, if he was still living there. And I just think that sucks, you know? He was -- his step-dad was a prick, but he’d rather deal with that than us being like this.”

Louis doesn’t talk about it often, his step-dad beating him. As far as Harry remembers and from what Louis’s told him, it was never severe. It’s not like Louis was being beaten within an inch of his life, or anything. And Harry hopes that that means Louis wasn’t miserable back then, too. That he had a few good years before things got bad, like Harry did.

“I can’t imagine not speaking to my mom,” Liam says. “That must be so hard. I’m sorry.”

Harry shrugs, too worked up to say anything.

Liam sighs. “You two deserve better. All three of you do. You did nothing to deserve this, any of you.”

A strangled sound, half-laugh, half-sob crawls out of Harry’s throat. “According to mom, I have. I just wish -- God, I just wish I wasn’t gay, you know? Like -- like if that one thing about me was different, then I wouldn’t -- ”

“Then you wouldn’t have Louis,” Liam interrupts, and Harry shakes his head.

“I’d have him. Of course I’d have him. We’d be friends still. I’m pretty sure, no matter what, we’d be friends.”

Liam’s voice is so, so soft when he says, “There’s nothing wrong with being gay, Harry.” And still, it’s enough to cause Harry to flinch, pull back like he’s been hit. He scrubs a hand over his face and shakes his head.

“That’s a stupid fucking thing to say to me.”

“It’s true,” Liam argues. “Your mom is wrong, not you.”

And that’s not true. It’s not not true, either, it’s just -- no. That’s all he can think, really. No. Because Harry would rather believe that something is fundamentally wrong with him rather than believe that his mom gave him up because of a belief that had no backing to it. He’d rather be damned by God, as his mother believes, rather than damned by her.

“Either way,” Harry says, faking indifference. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m still here, aren’t I? Still got kicked out. It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong.”

Liam’s frowning, and he looks like he might try to grab Harry’s hand, so he tucks them in his lap. “If you think you’ve done something wrong because of your sexuality, do you think Louis’ wrong, too, then?”

“Louis’ bi. It’s different.”

Liam laughs. “Is it?” When Harry doesn’t say anything, Liam sighs loudly and leans back in his chair. “If you wouldn’t say something about him, you shouldn’t say it about yourself either. Love yourself like you love him.”

Harry snorts, standing up. He grabs his coffee mug off the table so he can pour the rest of it out, and once he’s done, he says, “You should be one of those people who come up with those Hallmark cards, or something.”

“You think?”

Harry nods. “You’re doing well in business, Liam, but I think being a Hallmark card-maker would really show your skills. Think about it.” He leaves to go to sleep, then, and he hears Liam laugh quietly, muttering, “Fucking Hallmark cards, can you believe it?”

-

“The boss says you’re not working Saturday anymore,” Lydia says. They’re washing off the machines while it’s slow, and she’s halfway across the room from him. There’s not any customers inside, so it’s okay. “That true?”

Harry nods.

“Why? You always work Saturdays with me.”

Harry lets out a long sigh as he wipes at a stubborn smudge on the washing machine handle. It looks like paint, almost. “Liam wants to take Addison out sledding for Christmas. Louis got work off, and he wanted me to as well. It’s not something I want to miss, so.”

“She’s never been sledding before?”

“I don’t think she’s ever really played in the snow before school,” he tells her honestly. They weren’t going to let their kid go out and play in the snow when she didn’t have any snow pants or boots, were they. Liam’s bought her all that stuff now. Liam buys her a lot of things. Not too much, not enough for it to be insulting or spoiling, but enough for the guilt on Harry’s heart to grow. He’s done absolutely nothing in his life for Liam, and here he is, giving him all this.

“Oh, well. Have fun.”

“I will.”

They do. Harry feels giddy, almost, getting ready with Louis. They went out and bought themselves thicker jackets and boots at the thrift shop a few days ago, and they have a hat each and two pairs of sweats on.

“This is so stupid,” Harry whispers, smiling so wide that it hurts as he buttons up his coat. “We’re going sledding, how stupid is that?”

Louis presses against him, his nose pressing against Harry’s cheek, his smile against Harry’s jaw. “So stupid,” he whispers. He kisses Harry softly on the lips. “So stupid,” he repeats, and then he yanks Harry forward and they walk up the stairs. Liam’s in the kitchen talking to Addison, who’s complaining that she’s too warm.

“You won’t be saying that in about ten minutes,” Louis teases as he scoops her up and she shrieks and kicks out. Harry watches, feeling so happy that he’s almost breathless with it.

It’s one of those rare moments where they actually feel like a family. He tries to remember it all; Louis’ blinding smiling, Addison’s giggles, Liam’s strong arms pushing her down the hill. Louis falling down and taking Harry down with them, after which they laugh and laugh and laugh, laughing so hard it takes them a few tries to stand back on their feet. Harry getting a try on the sled and feeling scared the first time, so scared, so he makes Louis go with him the second time and with Louis’ arms firm around him, all the fear is gone and he just feels free. So free.

Whenever he thinks of that moment, that moment that has become his happy place, the place where he goes when he doesn’t want to be where he actually is, that’s the feeling he always remembers: freedom.

For an hour, just a single hour, the three of them were free.

-

It’s the end of January when Liam tells them that their time is up.

Harry’s sitting in the bedroom, coloring one of Addison’s coloring books because he doesn’t have anything else to do and Louis isn’t home from work yet. It’s actually quite relaxing. Harry’s coloring the braid of a princess when he hears the door open, and he smiles quietly to himself, knowing that that means Louis’ home. They’re both home tonight, which is always a good thing. Louis takes a little while to come downstairs to find him, which is fine. He hears him talking to Liam, although he’s not sure about what. They’re probably just talking about Addison, he thinks, who is playing video games on Liam’s TV in his room.

They’re not talking about Addison, and Harry knows it as soon as he sees Louis’ face when he stands in the doorway. He gives Harry a watery smile, shuts the door, and climbs into bed with him. He sits behind Harry, wrapping him in his arms and pulling him to his chest, and sets his cheek on Harry’s shoulder. Harry pushes away the coloring book and shifts in Louis’ arms so he can see his face.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, frowning at the tears in Louis’ eyes. It’s probably cruel, making Louis say it out loud. Harry knows what’s coming. Nothing else would make Louis upset like this.

Louis clears his throat and squeezes Harry’s hip. “Liam got a new job,” he says, voice still coming out strained and croaky. He clears his throat again. “It’s, um. It’s in Michigan, apparently. So he doesn’t need this house anymore.”

Harry closes his eyes, betrayal and anger chasing each other around in his heart, trying to figure out which one is hurting worse. Louis lets out a choked laugh.

“He’s moving next month, but his lease here isn’t up until March, so he said we can live here until then.”

“Jesus, Louis,” Harry whispers, and he’s crying. Of course he’s crying. “Can you imagine that?” he asks, sniffling uselessly. “Having skills that some company in an entirely different state wants you? Having the money and security to drop everything and move? Can you even imagine having that?”

Louis shakes his head and lets out a small whimper against Harry’s shoulder. His nails are digging into Harry’s side a bit, but it’s okay.

“He says he’s sorry,” Louis says, and his voice cracks.

Harry doesn’t say anything to that. Not because Liam should be sorry, but because there’s nowhere else for them to go after March. If things were different, if their credit wasn’t shot and they had deeper pockets, it would be okay, they would land on their feet, but neither of those are true for them. No apartment complex would look at the amount they make each year and agree to have them as tenants. Louis got away with it all those years ago because he was young and had a job and was only one person. There’s no possible way to get into another apartment, unless they run into some really nice landlords, which are basically as foreign in this part of Chicago as fucking unicorns are.

“He offered to help us get a new apartment, to get us on our feet, but Harry. . .”

“There’s no point,” he whispers, finishing Louis’ sentence. If Liam somehow coughs up enough money to pay the downpayment and the initial rent, which is already unlikely, then it’ll only take a month, maybe two, for them to get kicked out. They don’t make steady enough money to afford rent on top of groceries and gas and basic living expenses. It’s pathetic, really, but it’s true. Even after all these months of saving money on rent, it’s not realistic, because the money they were saving was going to Selene to pay off their debt there, and paying off Louis’ credit card debt, and paying off Harry’s student loans, and Louis’ hand and fucking winter wear so they could go sledding.

“I’ll talk to Josh at the club tomorrow,” he says quietly. “I can get back in there until we figure it out. And I can quit the gas station, so the hours won’t clash.”

Louis’ nails dig deeper. “I’ll ask my boss to let me go full time at the restaurant. If she doesn’t, I’ll find a different job.”

“Who will pick up Addison from school, then?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

They won’t.

-

Harry tries not to be a dick to Liam, he really does, but it’s really fucking difficult. Jealousy is a vicious little prick, and so is Harry, apparently, because Harry can’t even look him in the eye anymore. He can’t, because whenever he does, he sees the three of them living out of Louis’ shitty car and wants to punch him in the face.

Misplaced anger isn’t the worst of Harry’s traits, so he lets it be.

Harry starts working at the club again, and he starts feeling like shit all the time again, and he and Louis stop having sex again. Louis does manage to weasel his way into getting a full-time position at the restaurant, which is good, if things can be considered good anymore. They continue to save their money and pray that it’ll be enough come March.

Harry’s been working at the club again for two and a half weeks when Liam figures it out. They didn’t tell him, considering the hours are the same as what he was working at the gas station. There was no point in telling him.

Harry’s not even sure how he figures it out, but he does one morning when Harry gets in from work and Liam’s just about to leave.

“You’re stripping again, aren’t you?” Liam asks, sounding in disbelief. Harry gives him a cold stare and doesn’t respond until Liam looks away.

“Who cares?”

Liam shakes his head at him. “You could get hurt.”

Harry scoffs, narrowing his eyes. “Who cares?” he repeats, harsher this time.

“Harry,” Liam says, in that little stupid tone of his that he gets when he’s about to go on and on about some shit. Harry moves past him and shakes his head.

“I don’t want to fucking hear it, Liam. I really don’t.”

“Harry,” Liam repeats, and really, Harry can’t be blamed for exploding. In a quiet way, of course, because his five year old daughter is asleep downstairs and he has an ounce of good parenting left.

“I have to go to sleep, Liam, because I work again in about five fucking hours, where I’ll wash other people’s laundry for hours until I get off of work. And then you know what else I get to do? I get to go sleep in a park for a few hours before I walk to the club, where I work my fucking ass off until three in the morning. You know sometimes I get so fucking dizzy that I think I’m going pass out? Especially when I’m at the club and have gotten shit sleep, so if you fucking excuse me, I’m going to go try to sleep so I can get through the day tomorrow.” He pauses, chest heaving, before saying, “Or do you have actually something useful to tell me?”

Liam looks like he might cry. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“Good,” Harry snaps. “Then don’t waste my fucking time.”

To be able to live with himself, he has to shower before bed. He won’t get into bed with Louis with other people’s fingerprints on his body.

-

If Harry learned one thing from getting used to the life he had at Liam’s, it should have been to avoid having hope. Hope hurts. Hope leads to other painful feelings, like happiness and security and a sense of freedom. But no, apparently he’s fucking dumb, because in the early days of March, he and Louis meet with a landlord about possibly moving into one of his apartments. He looks over their paperwork and says it could work, but they don’t sign anything that day because Bill has yet to draw up the paperwork. But Harry and Louis both have hope that they have figured something out, even if said solution is a small, smelly room in a shitty apartment complex in a bad neighborhood.

And then Louis’ car gets totaled. The one car they have, the car that they need, gets fucking totaled last minute, a week after they think they’ve figured it out. It was a minor car accident -- minor in the sense that nobody got hurt -- but it’s enough to wipe out the car.

Harry doesn’t know any of that when he gets home to an empty house hours after Louis was due to get home with Addison. It’s four in the morning, and Louis works no later than one at the restaurant. He’s always home by one. Always. And if he had to leave for reason, there’s no way that he wouldn’t have left Harry a note.

To say he freaks out is an understatement. He tries to stay calm at first, which lasts about all of three minutes before he’s pacing the living room, gnawing on his fingernails and whispering, “Come on, come on, come on, Louis, come on.” He has two of his nails bleeding and his frantic whispering has escalated to a near constant stream of shouting when there’s a slam outside, the distinct sound of a car door, and Harry flings himself to the door.

Louis and Addison are getting out of a police car, and Harry stands on the porch, confusion planting him in place. “You got fucking arrested?” he snaps.

Stress doesn’t start bleeding out of him until Louis looks at him like he’s an insane person and says, “No, what the fuck? He was just giving us a ride.” He turns to the cop and thanks him quietly before grabbing Addison’s hand and guiding her up the steps. As soon as Harry’s brain starts working properly, he scoops Addison up in his arms and presses a hard kiss to her head before pulling Louis towards him as well.

“Where were you guys?” he gets out in almost a whimper. He strengthens his hold on Louis. “I was losing my mind over here. Is everything okay?”

Louis pulls away from him so he can get in the house, and once he has the door shut behind them, he gives Harry a tired, pointless smile and says, “Well, um. The car’s totaled.”

Harry’s grip on Addison becomes so hard that it probably hurts, so he quickly stops and kisses her forehead as an apology. She presses her face to his neck. “Are you two okay? What happened, was there an accident?”

“Yes. We’re both fine. A car t-boned us, on my side. She’s fine, just a little shaken up. The cop got her an ice cream cone.”

Harry bites back an annoyed remark about them getting ice cream while Harry panicked here by himself, thinking something awful happened. For a little while there he thought Louis had left him.

“Are you sure you aren’t hurt? How’s your shoulder?”

“I’m fine,” Louis says, looking like he’s telling the truth. He comes closer so he can grab Addy off of him, and she goes willingly, clinging onto Louis. “Shower while I get her to bed, okay? You smell like a bar.” He squeezes Harry’s bicep, probably trying to communicate that he doesn’t mean anything cruel by that. He drops his voice to say, “And then we can figure out what the fuck we’re going to do about the car.”

-

It’s the night before Liam is coming back to Chicago to give the keys back to the owner when Harry and Louis officially make the decision that they’ll put themselves up in the cheapest motel they can find until they find an alternative to living out of their car. The car is newer than Louis’ last one, but it’s still a piece of shit. They bought it for a few grand they scraped together after they decided that it’d be a better investment to buy a car than get that apartment they almost signed on to. With the apartment, it was likely they wouldn’t be able to keep up on rent after a while and they’d lose it, and if they lost it, then they wouldn’t even have a car to call home.

They have a list of what-to-do-next plans. They’re going to ask Zayn if they can crash with him for a little while, but considering he lives in a studio apartment with his girlfriend and a dog, he’ll say no. Plan #2 is to see if anybody at the club -- not anybody, not the fucking weirdos, but anybody that Harry trusts with his daughter -- is open to having a few new roommates for a bit. They’ll all say no, probably. Plan #3 is seeing if there’s any rooms for rent nearby; they’re hoping a homeowner will be more understanding if they can only promise a few month’s rent before they get kicked out. Plan #4, which is written in Louis’ handwriting because Harry wants absolutely no part of it, is asking Harry’s mom to let them stay with her for a bit. And if not them, at the very least Addison could stay with her while Louis and Harry figure things out. Harry’s been working like crazy at the club, and if he keeps it up and manages to avoid dropping dead from sheer exhaustion, they should be good to go on an apartment in a few months.

Harry will not even think about option number four, so one of the others will have to work out. Harry cannot give up their child to his fucking mother. He will not. And no, Louis’ not necessarily wrong when he says that it’s the safest option, that they have to start thinking about Addison’s quality of life and the only reason why he’s not offering up his own mother’s house is because Louis’ step-dad still lives there and he doesn’t want to put her in harm’s way. But it’s downright insulting to suggest that after everything she’s caused -- she put them through this, all of this. If she hadn’t kicked Harry out, things would look so, so different.

Harry hasn’t talked to Louis aside from the bare necessities in the past week since they made that stupid fucking list. And it’s not exactly a hard thing to do, considering they’ve barely seen each other all week since they’re both working so much.

Tonight, though, their last night here, is spent sitting on the couch with Addison downstairs, not talking to or looking at each other but existing together. Louis tries a few times to say something, but Harry either shakes him off or ignores him completely.

“You don’t have to be so mean to me,” Louis whispers after about an hour of silence.

Harry scoffs, looking down at the hole he’s picking open further on the knee of his sweats. “Where the fuck has nice ever gotten me, Louis?”

“Nowhere, I know that. But that doesn’t mean you have to be mean to me. I thought we were in this together.”

Harry can’t hold back his anger at that. “You want me to go crawling by to my mother,” Harry seethes, standing up. “She took everything from me and condemned my entire existence, and you want me to ask her to take our child. There is no ‘together’ in that, is there, Louis?”

“Well I can’t fucking ask her, can I?” Louis snaps back. “She’d have no problem saying no to me, the boy who corrupted her perfect fucking son. And I’m not asking her to take Addy, I’m asking her to take all of us, which she isn’t going to do, I know that, but we have to at least try. And this isn’t about me or you, Harry, it’s about her. It’s about our fucking daughter. So don’t act like I like this anymore than you do.”

“Fuck you,” Harry spits, for no other reason but he doesn’t have a logical argument for any of that. “I lost everything for you.”

“No, you didn’t. You lost everything because of me. There’s a difference. Don’t pretend like you had any say in what happened.”

“Fuck you,” Harry repeats, for the same reason as the last time. He hasn’t got anything to say, but he’s angry and he needs to get it out. “You don’t -- there’s no way you could love me, asking me to do a thing like that. There’s just no fucking way.”

He doesn’t know what he’s saying, but he does know that he doesn’t regret any of it. It’s not true, it’s not, but it feels right.

Louis looks him straight in the eye as he stands up slowly. He raises his finger, points it at Harry, and with more venom and weight than Harry could manage when he said it, Louis says, “Fuck you.” He looks disgusted when he turns away, and Harry stands there, feeling breathless and terrified, as he hears Louis walk down the steps, away from him.

-

Awkward doesn’t cover the intense uncomfortableness between Harry, Louis and Liam the following morning. Louis and Harry haven’t spoken a word to each other since their fight, not even to say their regular ‘I love you’ before bed and when they wake up. Louis won’t even look at him, which -- Harry deserves it, probably. And even if he didn’t, he was angry, too. He still is. But he wants to be the only one angry, he doesn’t want Louis being mad at him. Which isn’t fair or right, and quite childish, honestly. And now an already awkward situation is made about a million times more awkward because Liam catches onto the fact they aren’t talking almost immediately. It’d be a hard thing to miss.

“Do you need help with packing?” Liam asks, and Harry shakes his head.

“We finished packing the car yesterday,” he tells him. “We’re good to go. Louis’ just downstairs making sure we haven’t forgotten anything.”

Liam looks uneasy. “You two aren’t talking. Is everything okay?”

Harry scoffs as he leans over to grab the car keys off the kitchen table. He can wait for Louis and Addison in the car. “Everything’s just fucking peachy, Liam.”

It’s so wrong. He should be thanking Liam for giving them so many months of security and home. He should be saying that he really appreciates it and there’s no hard feelings. Because just because they can’t move on in their life, that doesn’t mean Liam has to stay put, too. But Harry’s pissed off and just a prick lately, so he leaves the house without saying anything else and sits in the car.

He sits on the passenger’s side, since that’s what he’s used to, but he doesn’t like it. It feels like he’s giving Louis the upper hand, somehow, like Louis’ going to take it as a sign of submission or an apology. It’s such a dumb thing to think; he knows Louis not a mean person, and he always sits here. There’s no reason to think of him so negatively, even if they are in the middle of a fight right now.

Harry’s tired. He’s pretty sure that’s why he’s being such an asshole. And it’s not a good enough excuse, but it’s the only one he has.

It takes about a half hour for Louis to come to the car with the last bag in one hand and Addison’s hand in the other. His jaw is clenched tightly, but not out of anger. Harry knows how to read him by now; he’s trying not to cry. As Louis helps Addison get in the car and puts the bag in the trunk, Harry tries to work up the courage to say something, to grab Louis’ hand and tell him it’s okay like Louis’ done for him thousands of times before. When Louis sits in the driver’s seat, he takes a deep breath before starting the engine, and Harry knows it’d be a perfect time to comfort him. All it would take is a gentle touch, a squeeze on his elbow or a hand on his knee, but Harry can’t convince himself to risk rejection so he sits still, his body directed away from Louis.

When they get to the motel, there’s no need for any awkward small talk between them. Louis booked them this motel yesterday, and they paid for a week to start off. It’s sixty-five dollars a night here, so that’s four hundred and fifty-five dollars per week. It’s not sustainable for them at all, but maybe by the end of the week they’ll have somewhere else to go. Somewhere else that isn’t his mother’s house.

The room isn’t bad. There’s one bed, a couch and a coffee table. They’ll make it work; it’s not like they have any other choice, anyway. It wouldn’t matter if they liked it or not. Harry sits on the bed with Addison, and he figures they’ll unpack later, but Louis’ already leaving the room, telling Addison specifically that he’ll get her things out of the car.

The second time Louis leaves to go back out to the car, Addison leans against Harry’s arm and looks up at him with wide eyes. “Is Daddy mad?”

“No,” he replies immediately. “No, Adds, everything’s fine.”

“He told Liam that you were being mean,” she says quietly, like she knows she shouldn’t be telling him that. “He used a bad word.”

Harry looks down at her, sadness tearing through his heart. “Yeah? What’d he say?” He brushes his fingers through her hair and smiles. “You can say it just this one time.”

She hides her face against his rib cage before she says, “He said you were being bitchy.” Her little hand grabs for his, and he squeezes her fingers. “What does that mean?”

“Just means I’m being silly, love, that’s all. But don’t say it again, okay?”

She nods against him.

“Promise?”

She nods again. “Promise, Daddy.”

Harry pats her head before stretching across the bed to grab the remote off the side table. He clicks through the channels, trying to find something she can watch. When Louis comes to the room, dropping off more bags, Harry’s chest tightens with anxiety, and he forces himself to stay very still and avoid any eye contact.

“Do you need help, Daddy?” Addison asks, looking hopeful. Louis shakes his head and tells her there’s only two more bags he has to grab and that he can do it himself.

“But thank you, munchkin,” he says, and Harry’s chest tightens again, this time out of his guilt. He put a giant fucking wedge between them when they need each other the most, and he doesn’t have the balls to fix it.

When Louis comes back into the room for a final time, shutting the door behind him, Harry feels trapped. It doesn’t get any better when Louis sits on the couch, far away but still too close. Thank God Harry works tonight, because he’s not sure how they’re going to manage being stuck in a room together when they’re so angry at each other. Harry says he’s going to shower, hoping that’ll create enough distance between the two of them so he can manage to catch his breath.

-

It’s never been like this between them before. They’ve fought before, of course they have, but they always fought knowing they were still on each other’s side. It’s different now, with Harry feeling betrayed by Louis and Louis feeling betrayed by Harry. It was a stupid thing to say that Louis didn’t love him, because of course Harry knows that he does. Of course he does. He wishes Louis could stop pretending like he actually thinks Harry meant it, because it’s about the most outrageous thing he’s ever said. Louis’ said plenty of things to Harry in anger that Harry brushed off, and now Louis can’t do the same for him. And Harry still feels like he’s the only one who gets to be mad here.

The way they sleep on opposite sides now, Addison between them as a barrier, makes Harry’s skin crawl. He feels exposed without Louis behind him. The way they haven’t spoken more than a handful of words to each other in eight whole days hurts his stomach, because Louis’ the person who keeps him sane in everything, and losing those few minutes of intimacy every day feels like losing a limb. Two days ago, on the sixth morning of them not speaking to each other, Harry came home from the club feeling so lost, and he didn’t have anyone to help him be found. He just sat there on the couch, feeling dazed and replaying the night in his head over and over again, remembering every stranger’s smirk and whistle and lust-filled eyes. And Louis was awake, Harry could tell by the way he was so still, and he didn’t ask if he was okay and Harry didn’t tell him he wasn’t.

As predicted, Zayn said no to taking them in. Nobody at the club aside from Howard, a middle-aged man who is rumored to be on the sex offender’s list, said they could crash with him. For as second, a tiny second, Harry considered it, and then one of the other boys joked that Howard would rape him in his sleep and Howard laughed far too loudly for it to be appropriate, so Harry said nevermind. Now their only hope is that Louis, who’s been using the library’s computers after work, can find them a room to rent in a house somewhere.

Gradually, Harry’s coming to terms with the fact that he’ll be seeing his mother very soon.

On the tenth day of them ignoring each other and the ninth of them being at the motel, they’re getting ready for work together in the bathroom. Harry nearly drops his toothbrush when Louis looks at him in the mirror.

“Your cough sounds bad,” is what he says, and it takes Harry by surprise. That’s not what he was expecting. After barely speaking to each other, the first thing he says is about Harry’s little cold he’s been fighting with for the last few days.

Harry looks down at the sink. “It’s just a cold.”

“Yeah, well.” Louis messes with his hair one last time before turning away from the mirror. “I was just saying. It sounds bad.”

“Okay,” Harry says, a little awkwardly. He doesn’t know what to say. And then Louis’ walking out of the bathroom and telling Addison to say goodbye to her dad because they’re leaving. Addison comes running in, telling him goodbye all cheerfully, and Harry kisses the top of her head and tells her to have a good night.

After he finishes brushing his teeth, he spits in the sink and washes out his mouth. He coughs again, and for a moment he realizes that maybe Louis’ right, maybe it does sound a little more rough than normal. He brushes it off; he feels mostly fine, aside from the cough, and it wouldn’t really matter if he didn’t.

-

Two days later, Harry feels a little worse. He had to take a little break during the walk from the train stop to the motel because he felt winded. When he pushes open the door to their room, it takes all of two seconds for Louis to stand up and snap, “What the hell took you so long?”

Harry stares at him, confused. Not only is he talking to him, but he’s berating him for being late by maybe ten minutes. “What?” he says, trying to figure out why Louis might be mad. Louis takes a deep breath and shakes his head.

“Nothing. I’m sorry. But look,” he comes closer and hands Harry a note. “It’s from Addison’s teacher.” As Harry unfolds the notes, he looks to Addison, who looks extremely guilty. He’s thinking that maybe she got in a fight at school, or that she didn’t do her homework. But it can’t be that easy, can it?

To the guardians of Addison Styles,

I understand that you don’t have a phone number to reach you, so I thought this would be the best course of action. It is critical that we meet soon as Addison has been telling me some worrying things that need urgent attention. I would like to meet with you both before I consider taking further action.

Best,

Miss Tammy

“What the fuck did she say?” Harry asks frantically. And then he turns to Addison, who’s pulling on her shirt anxiously. “What did you say, baby? What did -- what did you tell her?” He’s trying not to sound so desperate, but further action keeps ringing in his head. That means CPS, it can’t mean anything else. And if CPS gets involved. . .

“Nothing, Daddy,” Addison says, tears in her eyes. “I didn’t say nothing.”

“She mentioned that we keep moving around,” Louis tells Harry, and Addison’s lip forms into a pout. “She was complaining about it. About the motel. And what the fuck kind of teacher is going to hear that their student is staying at a motel with her two dads and not call -- ”

“Shut up,” Harry says. He can’t hear him say that. “Just -- I can blow off work tonight, I can -- we should go back up to the school now, do you think she’d still be there?”

Louis nods. “That’s why I was waiting for you. Come on, Addison. Get your coat.” She does, sniffling quietly, and Harry hushes her as he comes closer. She can’t be crying when they get there, for fuck’s sake. “Baby,” he whispers, rubbing her shoulders. “You’re fine. There’s no need to cry, you aren’t in any trouble. But we have to go talk to your teacher, okay? Not about you, but about us. And you can’t -- no tears, baby. And if she asks you any questions, don’t lie, okay, but maybe don’t say anything that’s not great. Happy things, okay?”

She nods and wipes at her nose. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“Don’t be, love. It’s okay.”

It’s really not, but Harry picks her up and sits her on his hip and keeps telling her it is anyway.

When they walk through the school doors, Louis’ hand darts out to take Harry’s. He thinks maybe he’s doing it for looks, to make them look like a happy couple, but when Louis keeps squeezing him, he realizes that he’s probably just as nervous as Harry is and needs the comfort.

“We’ll be okay,” Harry whispers, to Addison and Louis. They have to be. Harry can’t keep living this life if he doesn’t have his family with him.

Addison directs them to the classroom, and it makes him oddly proud, for some reason. But when she points to a room down the hall and says that’s the room, Harry’s heart leaps in his chest and he lets out a shaky breath. They get closer and closer, and Harry’s eyes start to burn more and more and his heart races faster and faster. How are they going to convince Miss Tammy to leave it be? How are they going to prove to her that they are trustworthy and good parents?

Harry feels light headed as he turns into the classroom. Kind of like how he did earlier when he had to stop during his walk, but for an entirely different reason. A kind looking woman smiles at them as they enter, and all Harry can do is pray that she won’t be the reason they lose their child.

“Go play in the back, baby, okay?” Louis whispers to her. He takes her out of Harry’s arms and sets her on the ground, and her hand shoots out to grab a hold of Louis, not wanting to let him go. “Just for a few minutes, okay? Draw me something.” He presses a kiss to her cheek and stands, and she slowly walks to the back, keeping her eyes on them the entire way.

Harry and Louis turn to look at Miss Tammy. She motions for them to sit, and as they come closer, she holds her hand out to shake. They do, and Harry hopes that she can feel the way his hand is shaking. Or maybe he doesn’t, maybe that makes him look guilty.

“I’m Miss Tammy,” she says. “But you can call me Tamera. I’m assuming you’re the guardians of Addison?”

Louis and Harry sit down in the chairs in front of her and ignore how ridiculous they feel sitting in seats short enough for children. “We’re her parents, yeah,” Louis says. Harry wonders if he’s annoyed with how she keeps saying ‘guardians’ like he is.

“I’m Harry,” he says, and his voice is shaking. It’s trembling; there’s no way he can get through this. “And this, um. This is Louis.”

“I’m assuming you got my note?”

They both nod. It feels inappropriate to hold hands in front of her, so Harry settles for pressing his leg against Louis’.

“Addison seems frustrated by the three of you moving around a lot,” Tamera says. “Can you tell me more about that?”

“She’s only lived in three places her entire life,” Louis tells her, and he only sounds a bit defensive. Harry supposes it’s justified. “We lived in the same apartment for the majority of her life.”

Tamera nods once. “She says you’re living in a motel now.”

“Temporarily,” Louis says. “It’s only a temporary thing, I swear to you. We haven't even been there for two weeks yet.”

“Where are you going next?”

And Louis can’t answer that, can he? They don’t know. They don’t have a plan yet. But they can’t just tell her that, can they? Louis opens and closes his mouth a few times, and she frowns.

“My mom’s,” Harry says quickly. Louis and Tamera both look at him, and Harry digs his thumb nail into the side of his pointer finger. “We’re going to move in with my mom soon.”

“Oh, that’s nice. How soon?”

Harry wants to throw up. “The end of this month, probably.” He has to cough, it’s trying to claw its way up and out of him, but he keeps swallowing and hopes it keeps it at bay. He doesn’t want to show her anything that might raise some kind of question. Having a cold as a parent doesn’t make you a criminal, and he’s being ridiculous, but he can’t help it.

“Does she have a phone number that I can reach her on?”

“I don’t know it off the top of my head, I’m sorry,” Harry lies. He digs his nail into his skin harder. “I can write it down and send it with Addison to school on Monday, is that okay?” Thank God it’s a Friday. That gives them at least some time to figure this out.

“Sure, that’s okay.” There’s a small pause before she clears her throat and says, “You know, in these sort of cases, I normally resort to reaching out to outside sources.”

Louis pushes his knee against Harry’s. “Why? I don’t -- she said that she’s upset we’re moving, and I understand that and we’ll talk to her about it, we will, but why does -- that doesn’t make us bad parents, does it?”

“CPS isn’t only for bad parents,” she says, and a small, quiet gasp escapes Harry as he turns his head to the side. That’s the first time that word has been spoken to them. “It’s for parents in need of help, of extra guidance. And Addison mentioned that you two work a lot as well. She said she doesn’t get to see you some days.”

God, Harry wishes Addison would have just kept her fucking mouth shut. What the fuck.

“I do work a lot,” Harry admits. “I have two jobs, but Louis only works one. I see her almost every day and when I can’t, I make sure to spend extra time with her the next day. And she spends loads of time with Louis.”

Tamera gives them a gentle smile. “You two seem a little worked up. We’re just talking about what’s in the best interest of your daughter. I understand you’re protective of her, but I want you to know that I’m only doing my job.”

“Your job is to call CPS on parents who work and move?” Louis asks, and now he sounds really defensive. Too defensive. Harry tries to smooth it over.

“Your note made it seem like something was really wrong, is all,” Harry says quietly. “We thought she got hurt, or something. And we’re not trying to be rude, we’re just trying to understand.”

“I understand that,” she says. “And I haven’t decided if I’m going to contact CPS or not, Louis. Don’t feel like I’m threatening you, because I’m not. I just want to have an open and healthy dialogue.”

“Please don’t,” Harry pleads, shifting in his seat. “Please don’t put us through that. You can call my mom, you can -- I can give you our phone numbers at our work, and you can call us there if necessary. Talk to Addison every day and ask her if everything’s okay, and if she tells you it’s not, then do what you need to do, okay, but please just give us a chance.”

“We both adore Addison,” Louis continues for him. “We love her so much, and I promise you, I promise you, it’s in her best interest to stay with us.”

“And we’ll talk to her about moving,” Harry says. “We’ll try to make her feel better about it.”

Tamera’s quiet for a minute, probably trying to work things out in her head. “Addison seems like a really happy kid,” she says, and Louis’ hand reaches for Harry’s. Harry tangles their fingers together.

“She is,” Harry says.

“And you both seem to really love her.”

“We do,” they say at the same time. Louis squeezes his hand.

“Well then.” She leans back into her chair and smiles again. “I don’t see why we would need to get anyone else involved. If anything changes, however, I will not hesitate to contact someone who can help. I expect that this dialogue remains open between the three of us from here on out, okay?”

Harry doesn’t know what the fuck that means, but, “Yes. Of course.”

“Okay,” she says. “You can leave now. It was nice speaking to the both of you.”

“You, too,” Louis says. He reaches forward to shake her hand again, and as he does, Harry turns to see Addison looking at them. He gives her a soft smile, hoping that it tells her that everything’s okay, and she stands slowly. He motions for her to come over and she does, and Harry takes her hand in his, resisting the urge to squeeze too hard.

The walk to the car is tense, and Harry and Louis don’t relax until they get in the car. As much as they can relax, anyway. Harry takes a deep breath and glances at Louis, who’s already looking at him. He leans forward to press a gentle kiss to the corner of Harry’s mouth, and Harry cups the back of his neck, keeping him close.

“I love you,” he whispers, because they haven’t said that to each other in far too long. Louis kisses Harry on the lips properly before telling him that he loves him, too.

They’re silent for the rest of the way back to the motel. When they get in, Harry starts getting ready for work, and Louis frowns.

“I thought you were going to blow off work tonight,” Louis says quietly.

“Meeting took less time than I expected it to. There’s no point in skipping out.”

Louis sighs. “H, come on.”

“It’s a Friday night,” Harry argues, grabbing his bag off the floor. “Do you know how much I make on a Friday night? I’m not giving that up.” Another harsh cough rips through him, and he takes a sip of water out of Louis’ cup on the nightstand. He goes back to digging through his bag, trying to find one of his club shirts. “Talk to Addison tonight about everything.”

“What about your mom?”

“What the fuck about my mom?” Harry snaps, glaring at him. The anger fizzles out quickly and he shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, okay?”

“We have to talk to her.”

“I know that, don’t you think I know that?” God, he’s never been this mad at Louis before. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. He glares at the ceiling for a second before softening his look and looking at Louis. “I’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out. I can. . . I can call in sick from the dry cleaner’s tomorrow and we can go to her house.”

“Yeah? Unannounced like that?”

Harry shrugs. “It’ll be harder to say no to us if she sees Addison.” He glances at their daughter, who’s sitting on the couch with a stuffed animal in her hand, looking sad. His stomach churns. “Just -- I don’t know.”

“It makes sense,” Louis says, probably trying to make Harry feel better about it, even though that’s not possible.

“I’m gonna go shower,” Harry says, sighing loudly. It’ll be good for him, working tonight. It’ll take his mind off things. He grabs his clothes and walks towards the bathroom, kissing the top of Addison’s head as he goes. He lingers at the door for a second, wondering if it’d be wrong to invite Louis with. If Louis’ still mad at him. . . Harry can’t take being rejected. And they should probably talk about the tension between them this last week before they jump straight back into sex, but it’s -- he doesn’t want to leave Louis thinking he’s still mad, and clearly he can’t talk without being bitchy. There are other ways to show him that he’s not angry. So he sighs quietly and stares at Louis, waiting for him to catch his eye. Once he does, Harry nods towards the direction of the bathroom and shrugs.

“Yeah?” Louis asks, looking hopeful and sad all at once.

Harry shrugs again. “Yeah.”

He almost doesn’t expect Louis to come join him. It’s been a least a few minutes since Harry started the shower, and he hasn’t come in yet. He tries not to be upset about it, tells himself that it was a bad idea anyway, but clearly he doesn’t believe that at all, because as soon as the door opens and closes, Harry’s stomach explodes with butterflies and he smiles softly.

“I put Addison to sleep,” Louis tells him as he takes off his clothes. “I didn’t want to leave her upset.” As soon as he’s undressed, Harry reaches out for him with a wet hand, and Louis takes it and steps into the shower with him. Louis wraps his arms around Harry’s neck, pulling him closer. “Don’t you ever say I don’t love you, you hear me?” he says, looking Harry dead in the eyes, making him squirm. He swallows and sets his hands on Louis’ hips.

“Okay, you’re right,” he whispers. “But don’t ever believe me if I say it again.”

-

Despite him and Louis seeing eye to eye again, Harry’s still in a shit mood when he gets to work. He doesn’t let it get in the way of his responsibilities -- in the way of his tips, he means -- but he’s still upset and dreading tomorrow. How is he going to face his mother after all these years? How is he going to look her in the eye and ask her to do him a favor barely twelve hours after he finished shaking his ass at a gay strib club? He hasn’t got a clue, and it’s beyond stressing him out, so when he gets a break, he’s more than relieved.

He’s talking to the bartender while sipping on a Jack and Coke when a customer slides into the seat beside his. It’s a bit irritating, considering there are other empty stools not directly next to him, but he doesn’t let his annoyance show. There’s no point; it’s probably some dude trying to catch an extra look at Harry. Which. . . Harry’s never found himself insanely attractive, but after working here, he’s pretty sure every man would want to fuck him, given the right drinks and music.

He’s halfway through a sentence when the stranger clears his throat and says, “So, you like working here?”

Harry’s smile falls a bit as he gives the guy a look. “Yeah, it’s nice.” He turns back to the bartender, Taylor, and continues telling him about this time in high school when Louis got so black out drunk that he puked on the host’s dog. Again, he’s about halfway through his sentence when the man says, “What’s your name? I’m Greg.”

Harry gives him a dry smile, trying to keep the peace while simultaneously getting the message across that he’s not interested. “I’m not working right now, sorry.”

Greg looks him up and down. “It looks like you’re working to me.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“How much for a blowie?”

Harry scoffs in disgust. “We don’t do that here.”

“You could start,” Greg says, smirking. “Seriously, man, how much?”

Harry ignores him and turns back to Taylor. “I’m going to go sit in the back room for a bit, I’ll catch you later, yeah?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Taylor tells him. So Harry stands and heads for the back, and he makes it two steps before Greg is circling his fingers around his wrist and pulling him back. Harry yanks his hand away and turns to Greg.

“I’m not working,” he says, punctuating every word. “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be working again, okay? Just chill out.”

But Greg doesn’t let up, because of course he doesn’t. Of course Harry can’t have an easy night tonight. “You should take me to the back with you. Show me around.”

Harry shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m not doing that,” he says, and he turns around again to start walking. He’s not on edge, he doesn’t think Greg is anything more than an annoying, horny prick who can’t quite conceptualize that not everybody wants his dick, but Greg grabs his wrist again, yanking him back this time.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Harry snaps, prying his hand away. Maybe on a different night, Harry would sweet talk his way out of this, but it’s not a different night. It’s the night of the day that he was threatened with CPS. It’s the night before he has to crawl back home to his mom. Harry’s not in the mood to coddle boys with a big ego. “I said, I’m not working, so don’t fucking touch me.”

Greg narrows his eyes. “Watch your mouth, slut.”

“You don’t have to be such an asshole,” Harry snaps, jutting a finger out at him. “You can wait twenty minutes to get my attention, and if you can’t, then leave.”

He’s being short. He’s pushing buttons. He knows that. But he doesn’t think either of those things warrant Greg, a man who’s got half a foot on him and looks like he works out too many times a week, to punch him in the face so hard that it puts Harry on the ground. He swears he blacks out, or maybe just becomes too disoriented to process the next few seconds, because one second Greg’s pulling his arm back and the next Harry’s on the ground, hand pressed to his eye and coughing. That sort of shit doesn’t fly here, so he feels at least protected in that. Taylor comes around the bar to shout at Greg, who’s already being escorted out by a bouncer, and two random men that put hundred dollar bills in Harry’s underwear about twenty minutes ago come and help him off the ground.

“Let me see, kid,” one of them says, while the other pulls his hand off his eye and cringes, says, “Ooh, yeah, that’s a shiner.”

It hurts, and his head is already pounding and there’s some blood on his hand, and he’s going to cry. He’s positively, one-hundred percent going to cry, so he’s glad when Josh appears out of nowhere to steer him to the back, rubbing his shoulders and telling him that he’ll be fine. He guides Harry to the bathroom, where there is too much glitter and neon thongs thrown about, and sits him down on the toilet.

“You weren’t being mouthy, were you?” Josh asks as he digs around in the cabinet under the sink, probably looking for a first-aid kit.

Harry sniffles pathetically. “No," he says. And then, “Maybe a little, I don’t -- I just told him I wasn’t working right now. I don’t -- Josh, it hurts.” He reaches up to touch his eye, and Josh pulls his wrist away, tells him not to touch. Harry listens, so he hits there sniffling and trying not to cry. He feels so childish, suddenly. So vulnerable and aching for a little bit of affection.

Josh tilts his head up by his chin as he cleans the area around his eye, and Harry watches him, sniffling and clenching his fists in his lap.

“You can’t work until this heals,” Josh tells him. Harry makes a sad noise.“Sorry, kid. We can’t have our people walking around with black eyes. Not a good look.”

“I need the money.”

Josh shrugs, but not unsympathetically. “I can give you an advance on your check, but besides that, there’s not much I can do for you.”

Harry closes his eye -- the one that isn’t already mostly shut from the swelling, fucking Greg -- and bites down on his lip. He’s screwed. He’s so screwed, really.

“Some of the boys told me earlier that you were a little down tonight,” Josh says, dabbing a piece of wet tissue on his cheekbone. “Want to talk about it?”

“I’m just so done, Josh.”

“With what?”

Harry shrugs. “Everything.” He lets out a soft sigh and squeezes his own thigh, trying to calm himself down. “Wish I could just speed up my life, you know? Like. Fast forward it.”

“Yeah?” Josh asks. “How far ahead would you go?”

“A time where I’m not working so much. A time where me and Louis are happy.” He laughs, even though he’s awfully close to crying. “That’d probably mean we were dead, though.”

Josh makes an unhappy sound at that. “That’s dark.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re still young,” Josh says, like that means anything.

“That just means there are so many more years left that I have to be miserable for.”

Josh squeezes his shoulder. “Jesus, Harry, lighten up.” He lets go of Harry’s chin and backs up. Harry opens his eye, and after Josh gives him a hard look and nods, he tells him that he’s all set. Harry stands up and looks in the mirror, and oh, God, it looks terrible. It’s already swollen and bruising, and Harry lets out a small whimper.

“I have to see my mom tomorrow,” he says, voice small and shaking. Josh frowns at him in the mirror.

“Is that a bad thing?”

Harry nods and wipes at his nose, which hurts, somehow. “I haven’t seen her since I was eighteen. She kicked me out for being gay.” He turns to Josh and lets out another small cry. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do, Josh. I don’t -- I don’t know anymore. I don’t know.”

“Harry,” Josh says sadly. “You’ll figure it out. It’ll be fine.”

It’s so obvious that he doesn’t actually care about Harry, that the only reason why he’s sitting here dealing with the tears is because he’s a human being who cares about other human beings in general, not Harry specifically. He’s trying to say whatever will get Harry to hush, probably because he’s making him uncomfortable, and rightly so. Josh is his boss; Harry should at least try to be a little more professional.

“I’m going to go home,” he says. It’s only eleven o’clock, which means he’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight, if he can manage to fall asleep. “Can someone walk me to the train stop? In case Greg is sticking around?”

“Yeah, of course. Ask one of the bouncers outside, they’ll take care of you.”

Josh leaves, then, and Harry gets changed and grabs his stuff before making his way out of the club. The throbbing around his eye doesn’t feel like it could get any worse, up until he walks outside and the cold air hits him and it stings even more. He hisses quietly, takes a steadying breath, and then asks the nicest looking bouncer if they could help him out. They do easily, and they don’t bother with small talk as they walk Harry to the train stop. It’s not awkward, somehow. Harry appreciates it.

The train ride is long. Too long. It leaves him too much time alone with his thoughts, and that’s about the worst thing possible right now. He’s going to be on his mom’s doorstep in less than twenty-four hours with his almost six-year-old daughter, a black eye and the man who he was caught kissing. There’s not a single way that’s going to go over smoothly. The only thing Harry can wish for is that she takes Addison in with or without them, and without calling CPS on them.

He doesn’t know if he’s relieved or not when he gets back to the motel and sees light leaking out under the door. Does he want to face Louis right now? He’s not sure. He’s just happy they’re on better terms now so it’s less awkward when Harry inevitably cries in his lap.

Louis curses when he sees Harry. “Fuck,” he hisses, standing up from the couch. It looks like he was playing dolls with Addison, who’s staring at him with wide eyes when she should be asleep. “Who the fuck hit you?” Louis asks, grabbing his chin and moving his face so he can get a better look at his eye. “Jesus, Harry. Are you okay?”

Harry doesn’t say anything. Can’t, more like. He just wraps his arms around Louis’ waist and sinks into him, sets his forehead on Louis’ shoulder and heaves. A loud cough rips through him, and Louis squeezes the back of his neck.

“You weren’t mugged, were you?”

“No,” Harry whispers shakily. Louis smells so nice, like shampoo and sweat and him. “Happened at work.”

“Why? Nobody tried anything, did they?”

“No,” Harry repeats. “Just some guy, being a dick. . . Hurts, Lou.”

“No shit,” Louis says, pulling away from him. He swipes a stray hair off of Harry's forehead and kisses his jaw. “I’ll go find you some ice, okay? Did you clean it?”

“Yeah, it’s cleaned.”

“Good.”

And then Louis’ gone, and it’s just Harry and their daughter, who’s staring at him like he’s a horror film. He forces himself to swallow and handle this like a responsible father who isn’t going to try and pitch her off to someone else tomorrow.

“I’m okay, babe,” he says, voice only coming out a little shaky. He sits on the edge of the bed and beckons her to sit next to him. She does hesitantly, and he squeezes her cheek gently. “Just a bit of a -- of a scratch, is all.” It’s the only thing he can come up with. She’s told old for boo-boos, but too young for black eyes.

“Does it hurt?” she asks quietly.

“A little, but I’m okay.” He gives her a flimsy smile. “Daddy’s always okay, love. You don’t have to worry about us.”

It’s hard to convince her of that when they’re all stuck in one room and Harry’s seconds away from exploding into a fit of sobs. It gets worse as the time progresses, the need to feel, and it doesn’t help that Louis’ cuddling him for the first time in a week. Harry’s holding an ice pack to his eye, and it only makes it hurt worse, until he can’t feel it at all, the cold numbing it. He can only hold back the tears for about twenty minutes until he’s turning around in Louis’ arms so the sob that rips out of his mouth is quieted by his chest.

“Hey, hey,” Louis whispers soothingly, rubbing his back. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Harry.”

But Harry can’t stop crying, so Louis helps him out of bed and tells Addison it’s okay and guides him to the bathroom, where they lock the door that Harry sinks down in front of, crying and crying and gripping onto Louis like he’s the only good thing left in the world. Sometimes it feels like the truth.

Harry cries for a long time. It gets worse when he starts to cough in between every sob, and he gets all sweaty and hot and cries some more. Louis stays crouched down in front of him, one hand holding one of Harry’s and the other rubbing his thigh. “You’re okay,” he keeps saying, like Harry’s naive enough to believe that anymore. Harry doesn’t start calming down until after he gets caught in a coughing fit and winds up slumped in front of the toilet, certain he’s going to throw up. He doesn’t, thankfully. That’d be too much crappiness for one day, he thinks.

Once he’s cried out and the coughing stops, he rests his cheek on the toilet seat. Louis quickly moves him up, tells him that that’s disgusting, and moves around so Harry’s cheek is leaning against his thigh, his head in his lap.

“You’re okay,” Louis says again, petting over his hip. “You’re okay, Harry.”

Harry doesn’t believe it for a second, but it feels good regardless.

-

The morning is a blur. One second he’s explaining to Addison that she might stay with her grandmother for a bit, and the next he’s standing in front of his mom’s door with Addison on his hip, playing with the collar of his shirt nervously. Louis’ waiting in the car for now. Harry’s too scared to knock. At least he knows it’s the right house; one of her cats is sitting on the porch, eyeing him carefully.

“What are we doing, Daddy?” Addison says after about a full two minutes of Harry standing there. Harry lets out a nervous sound before kissing her on the head and finally knocking on the door.

There are no words for how he feels, then. Waiting. It’s the worst anxiety he’s ever felt, and yet it somehow gets a million times worse, more painful, when the door opens and his mother is standing there.

They stare at each other through the screen door for at least a minute. He wants her to be the one to say something first, but he knows he can’t be afforded that when she goes to shut the door and Harry has to lunge forward to open the screen door and stop her from shutting the main door.

“Please,” he says, breathless. “Please, Mom. Hear me out. I’m not here for me.”

Anne looks at Addison for the first time, then, who’s staring back at her with a frightened look. Her blunt nails are kneading into Harry’s skin, and Harry wants to tell her it’s okay but he’s not really sure that it is.

“What do you want?” she asks, cold.

Harry swallows thickly. “To talk. Can we please talk?”

It feels like he’s walking through a dream as she takes him through the kitchen and tells him to sit at the table. He does, and Addison is still clinging to him so he lets her sit on his lap. Anne doesn’t sit. She just stares at him from a few feet away, looking so, so disappointed.

He sets a shaking hand on top of Addison’s head. “This is Addison,” he says. “Gemma’s -- ”

“I know who she is.”

“Okay,” Harry says quietly. “Um. Adds, love, this is your grandma. My mom.”

Addison doesn’t say anything, just folds into him more. Harry kisses her cheek.

“Where’s Louis?” his mom asks, tone still void of emotion. “Are you not together anymore? I’m not surprised. Gay couples are much more likely to break up.”

Harry stares at her in disbelief. He shouldn’t be surprised, he really shouldn’t, just -- what the fuck. Seriously? After all this time. . .

“Louis’ in the car,” he tells her thickly. “He didn’t want to intrude.”

She scoffs and crosses her arms. “He should’ve thought about that a long time ago.”

“Mom,” Harry whispers, pleading. “Please. I want to talk to you.”

She stares at him -- Jesus, if only they would say what they’re trying to communicate through their looks -- before nodding once. “Not in front of her,” she says. “She can watch TV in the sun room. The cats are in there.”

Harry nods, standing up. “I don’t think she’s allergic,” he says, and it hurts, the way he still knows his way around this house. It’s not his anymore. It doesn’t feel like it ever really was. When Harry sets her down on the couch and tells her to play with the kitties and watch TV while he talks to Anne, she looks hesitant. Harry has to coax her into it; “Look how soft they are, love. They’re so cute, right? Come on, pet them, they’re nice.” He grabs her hand and pets the cat sunbathing on the couch, and she breaks out into a slow smile.

“Nice,” she echoes, and he nods.

“Yeah. Be nice to them back, okay? Don’t play rough. Just pet them for now.” He hands her the remote, says he’ll be right back, and goes back to his mother. She’s sitting at the table now, and he sits across from her, even though it’s about the most intimidating thing he’s ever done.

“What happened to your eye?” she asks, and despite the question, it doesn’t sound or look like she cares too much to know.

“I got hit,” he says a little uselessly. She raises her eyebrow at him.

“By Louis? You know, that’s common in homosex -- ”

“Stop talking about him like that, I swear to God,” Harry snaps, feeling widely protective and defensive. “Louis is a good person. He’s good. I don’t care if you don’t like that we’re a couple, he deserves some respect. He’s a human being, Mom.” He didn’t expect to get this emotional so quickly, but there’s already tears in his eyes and his voice sounds thick.

She purses her lips and doesn’t say anything.

Harry presses the heel of his hand against his uninjured eye and exhales deeply. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe this isn’t a safe place for Addison, not if Anne’s going to be spewing homophobic bullshit to her. It’s difficult for Harry to have to hear that, and Addison’s much younger than him. That’s not fair on her.

“Who hit you, if not Louis?

Harry forces himself to stay calm. Louis and he decided honesty will help them here more than it will hurt. The last time his mom found out the truth about something, it cost him everything. It’s not the same thing, but still. There’s no point in lying. “Work,” Harry says.

“Where do you work?”

He rubs his eye a final time before putting his hands on the table and staring at them. “A dry cleaner’s during the day,” he says. “And, um. A club at night.”

“A club?”

“A gay bar,” he clarifies, and he has to look at her then. Her eyes are narrowed at him, and Harry’s not even sure she put two and two together yet. So he tries to move past that, to take a little bit of heat off of himself. “Louis works full-time at a restaurant.”

“Neither one of you went to college?”

He gives her a helpless look. “How do you think we could afford that, Mom?” he asks, and again, his voice breaks. “We tried putting me through college, but we couldn’t afford it. I was studying to be an engineer. I was pretty good at it, too.”

She doesn’t have a response to that, just looks at him expectantly, like she’s waiting for him to get to the point. He doesn’t understand how she can be so unaffected by this. By him. He’s her son.

“Did you not miss me at all?” Harry asks quietly. He’s so scared to hear the answer.

She frowns at him. “I didn’t know you. How could I miss someone I didn’t know?”

“You did know me,” he argues. “You knew me better than anybody else. You raised me, Mom. You brought me up to be the person I was, of course you know me.”

“I did not bring you up to be gay.”

“Oh, Christ,” Harry whispers, and he has to stand. He can’t take being seated anymore. “Will you just let that go? What do you want me to do about that?” She opens her mouth, and before she can say anything, he glares at her. “And do not tell me to repent or see a priest or whatever the fuck else.”

“Acknowledging your sins isn’t difficult.”

“Neither is loving your son,” he tells her. “Or your daughter, for that matter.”

Gemma is a wound that will never fully heal for him. He doesn’t know where she is now, dead or alive, sober or worse off than before. She was never a very good big sister to him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her.

“Gemma chose her own path,” she says slowly, like she’s explaining something to him that he has no ability to understand. “She was rebellious for her entire life.”

“She was mentally ill. She was addicted to drugs. She needed help, Mom.”

Anne sighs and shakes her head. “She needed to listen to her mom, that’s what she needed.”

“How did you expect us to listen to you when you stopped talking to us?” Harry asks, furrowing his eyebrows.

“Before it got that far,” Anne corrects, as if that means anything.

“You let it get that far.” He scoffs and crosses his arms. “Maybe -- maybe Gemma dug her own grave a bit. She got chance after chance, but you didn’t even give me one. You abandoned me like it was easy.”

She must realize he’s right, she must, because she changes the topic quickly. “Is that what you’re here to talk about?” she asks. “If all you came here to do is blame me for your shortcomings, you can leave.”

He takes a long, deep, calming breath before sitting back down at the table and folding his hands in front of him. Maybe he did get a little carried away, but it’s justified. For all he knows, this is the last time he’ll get to talk to her. “You’re right,” he says. “Me and -- um. Louis and I are facing some. . . difficulties. Financial difficulties. And we need your help.”

She glares at him, her eyes squinted and eyebrows raised. “You’ve come to ask me for money?”

“No,” he says quickly. “No. I mean, if you would be willing to maybe give us a loan that’d help us out a lot, but I assume you wouldn’t do that.”

“No, I most certainly would not.”

Harry nods. That doesn’t hurt; he wouldn’t have expected her to say yes. “It’s -- the three of us don’t have anywhere to go right now. We, um. We’re living in a motel, but me and Louis can’t afford that much longer. It’s. . . We had an apartment for a while. A long time. But we couldn’t afford rent anymore and we got evicted, and then we stayed with someone else for a while but he ended up having to move states, so we. . .” He scratches the back of the neck and coughs quietly. “Me and Louis can live out of our car until we sort something else out. We can do that, but Addy doesn’t deserve that. It wouldn’t be fair to do that to her, and we’re not -- giving her up is not an option. It’s absolutely not on the table. But we were wondering if you would maybe be willing to take care of her for a bit?” Her expression changes, from judgement to something else, and before she can say no, Harry continues on. “If you don’t want to let me and Louis stay here, too, I understand. I don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t agree with your views, but I understand that you don’t want anything to do with either of us. But Addison is your granddaughter, and you haven’t even met her before. If you want to have a relationship with her at all, now’s the time.”

Anne is silent for an intense minute before she asks, “You’re asking me to look after Gemma’s daughter?”

“My daughter,” he snaps, the anger and protectiveness too hot to keep at bay. “And only for a little while. Temporarily. If you agree to take her in, you have to agree to give her back.”

He doesn’t expect her to agree so quickly. He thought for sure that she’d fight with him a bit; deep down, he had a feeling she wouldn’t say no to Addison, but he didn’t think it’d be so easy. But it is.

“Okay,” she says.

Harry’s heart swoops down to his stomach. “Okay?”

“Yes. Okay.”

“But you have to give her back.”

“I will,” she says. “If you’re living in a stable environment.”

Harry eyes her carefully. “If you contact CPS, I swear to -- ”

“Harry,” she snaps, holding her hand up. “I have no interest in ruining the life of that child. Don’t think so lowly of me.”

Tears rush to his eyes and his bottom lip wobbles. He has to wait a few seconds to form any words, and when he does, his voice comes out unsteady and croaky. “You can’t make her hate us,” he says. “You can’t -- don’t teach her that we’ve done anything wrong. Please, Mom.”

Anne doesn’t agree to that part so quickly, but after a minute, she shrugs. “She’ll learn that on her own eventually. I won’t lie to her, but I won’t go out of my way to bring it up, either. I suppose that’s fair.”

It’s embarrassing, the soft sob that he can’t hold back. He doesn’t want to cry in front of her, so he puts his hands in front of his face, elbows on the table, and tries to calm down. When he realizes there’s no stopping the tears, he wipes uselessly at his face and tries to look at her again. “Can we have time to say goodbye? Can -- can Louis come inside and say goodbye?”

She raises her chin, and he thinks that she’s going to say no. “Fine,” she says.

That makes him calm down a bit. “Okay,” he says shakily. He lifts up a bit to pull a list out of his back pocket and smooths it over with clumsy hands. “I wrote down everything important. Like, where she goes to school and where we work and the phone numbers. And, um. We kind of ran into a bit of trouble at her school. Miss Tammy -- Addison’s teacher -- is a little wary of her home life. I told her she could call you on Monday, so, um.”

“I’m not lying for you.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Harry says. “I told her she’d be staying with you for a little while.”

Anne nods, so Harry continues.

“And she has epilepsy. It’s not a big deal, her medicine works well and she hasn’t had a seizure in years, but she has to take her medicine every day. She’s good about it, so it shouldn’t be hard. And me and Louis will continue paying for it.”

“Is she a good kid?”

Harry nods eagerly. “Yes. She listens well and she doesn’t complain much and she’s sweet. Really. She’s probably more mature than most kids her age. You can. . . you can go talk to her. Maybe it’ll be better if she gets to know you a little better before we leave.”

He hopes desperately that this won’t be a hard transition on Addison. That, for everything she’s missing, like Louis and Harry, she’ll be gaining so much more in its place. An expensive, comfortable home. Pets. Her own room. A grandmother. He doesn’t want her feeling abandoned. It’s a shit feeling; he should know.

“And we’re going to visit as much as we can,” Harry says. “Louis probably more than me, since he works less, but. . . I’ll try my hardest to see her a few times a week. Is that okay?”

“Just to visit, sure. Don’t expect me to make dinner for you or something.”

It almost feels like a joke, even though it isn’t and it would be entirely inappropriate for the context, anyway. He nods. “Of course not.”

He nods again and stands. Fear consumes for a moment, but he forces himself to push it down. Even if this causes Addison to hate them, it’s still worth it. It has to be. She’s not going to be living out of a car.

“I’ll go get Louis, then,” he says, rounding the table as he heads to the door. She mutters something sarcastic under her breath that Harry lets go and opens the door. As he approaches the car, he can see Louis staring out the window, looking tense and chewing on his thumbnail. Harry’s so fucking grateful that he gets to tell him good news.

Louis jumps when Harry opens the passenger’s door and sits. He relaxes a little when he sees it’s just Harry, and Harry smiles. “She’ll take her,” he says, and immediately, Louis lets out a sigh of relief. Harry can see the tension leaving his body.

“And you told her about everything? Her medicine and school and visits and stuff?”

“Yeah. She agreed to pretty much everything.”

“But we can’t stay here?”

Harry shakes his head, and Louis doesn’t look too upset by it. Neither of them expected her to invite them back into her home like that. “She said you can come in, just. Be careful. She doesn’t seem to like you much anymore.”

Louis scoffs at them and mumbles a quiet, “Shocker.” And maybe to prove something, to Anne or to himself, he leans over to kiss Harry, hard, on the lips. “Are you okay?” he asks, his lips still brushing against Harry’s. Harry pulls away and nods.

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t like leaving Addison, but. . . we’re doing what’s right, I think.”

“We are,” Louis agrees. “She’ll understand someday.”

They get out of the car, then, and as they’re walking up the pathway, there’s a cheerful, “Oh, Harry, dear, is that you?” Harry turns to see his mother’s neighbor, an old woman named Mrs. Walker waving at him eagerly. Harry used to do the yard work for her on weekends, took the trash in for her, shoveled the snow. He wonders who does it for her now.

“Hi, Mrs. Walker,” he says, waving back at her.

She grins. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. How have you been?”

They exchange the normal small talk as Louis stands awkwardly behind him. Once Mrs. Walker says she has to go back inside because her TV program is on, Harry waves her goodbye and turns to walk back to the house. On instinct, he reaches out to brush his fingers over Louis’ hip, and after he’s done it, they both look at each other warily.

“She’d probably piss herself if we do anything in front of her,” Louis says, and Harry nods. She probably would. “For the next however long, we’re just friends and I’ve totally never had my tongue in your ass.”

“Jesus Christ, Louis,” Harry mumbles, laughing quietly. He pushes him lightly, and then they’re at the door again. The same nervousness consumes Harry, but Louis has no problem opening the door and walking right in. It’s fascinating, the way Louis can cling to his dignity.

Anne and Addison are sitting at the table petting a cat and talking about school. As soon as Addison catches sight of them, she goes to stand, and Harry tells her she can sit. She does, looking nervous. Harry tried explaining to her that she might live here this morning, but that was all hypothetical. Now, it’s very real. Now, she might get upset. So they try to act like everything’s normal as they sit down, Louis at the farthest seat from Anne. Anne lets out a bitter chuckle, and Harry ignores it.

“Hi, baby,” he says. “Aren’t the kitties nice?”

She nods. “Yeah. They’re soft.” She pets the cat again, like she’s double-checking. “Can we get a kitty?”

Louis and Harry exchange a look before looking back at her. Louis clears his throat and smiles. “Well, Anne’s got loads of cats here. Loads.” He’s pushing buttons in the subtlest of ways, and it’s almost entertaining, how visibly irritated Anne’s getting by it already. Harry doesn’t want the situation getting any worse by Louis and his mom ripping each other’s heads off, but he’s not sure it could go any other way. “And, Adds, it looks like you’re going to be staying here for a bit, okay? With Anne. So you’ll get to see the kitties all the time.”

“With you?” she asks, looking nervous.

Louis shakes his head. “No, baby. Me and Dad are going to be at the motel. But you’ll be perfectly safe here, okay? And we’ll visit all the time.”

Addison’s face turns a light shade of pink and she starts squeezing her hands together like she doesn’t when she’s anxious. Harry stands and goes over to her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and kissing her cheek.

“You’ll be okay, sweetheart,” he whispers. “Me and Dad would never leave you somewhere that you won’t be completely okay, you know that, right?”

She doesn’t say anything, just turns to hide her face in his chest.

“Darling,” he whispers, pained. “I promise you’re going to have fun, okay? I grew up here, and I had tons of fun. I know you don’t know her very well, but your grandma’s a very nice lady, okay?” And now he’s talking as quiet as he possibly can to ensure that Anne can’t hear him. She doesn’t deserve to hear him speak highly of her. “She’ll keep you safe and make sure you’re happy. You’ll be happy here, baby. I promise.”

“Want you to stay,” she says, curling her fingers around the front of her shirt.

“I know. I know you do. But sometimes we can’t have what we want, yeah? You know that.” He squeezes her hand as a reminder that he loves her. So much. “I know it’ll be scary at first, but you have to promise me that you’ll give it a shot. Okay? Promise me?”

She lets out a soft whimper before whispering a small promise against his chest. They don’t deserve her, they really don’t. She’s far too good for them.

“Come on, love,” he says, pulling away from her a little. As he does, she pushes closer to him, not wanting him to get too far away. So he picks her up and sets her on his hip. “I’ll bring your stuff in from the car, okay? So all of your things will be here with you. And we can get your room ready for you before we go, would you like that?”

She nods against his neck, and he pokes the tip of her nose. As he hoped, it makes her smile a bit.

“Okay, bub. Sit with Dad while I grab your things.” Louis stands and Harry hands her off to him, and she clings to him just as tightly. He turns to his mom and asks, “Is she going to stay in my old room?”

Anne shrugs. “I guess that’s fine. I haven’t touched it much since you left.”

He looks at Louis. “Just take her to my room, Lou. Show her the nearest bathroom and everything.”

Louis nods and as he walks forward, Anne stands up, too. Louis gives her a look, one that makes Harry’s skin crawl, and says, “Don’t worry about it, Anne. I know where his room is.”

And it’s bold, reminding Anne that he knows every part of her son. That’s what he’s trying to do. And maybe it’s wrong, considering she’s letting their daughter stay with her on such a short notice, but it doesn’t matter. Because what’s really wrong is kicking out your son for being gay. That’s fucked up. So if Louis needs to make jabs at her to remind her of her place or remind her of his own, then so be it. Harry isn’t in a rush to defend his mom.

And seeing the look of disgust on her face is kind of amusing to Harry, in a twisted, painful kind of way.

Addison sitting on what used to be Harry’s big, comfy bed comforts him endlessly. This will be a safe space for her, the same was it was for Harry all the way up until that one night. She’ll be fine here. She’ll learn to like it here. It’ll be okay. And Harry’s everywhere in this room; old posters still stuck to the wall, scholar achievements on his dresser, some old knick-knacks laying in the drawers. She seems to like that this used to be Harry’s room, too, and she likes it a lot more when they get her blanket and pillow put on the bed and her toys on the side table and her clothes in the drawers. She’s still apprehensive as fuck, Harry can see it in her eyes, but it’s okay.

“She doesn’t have a lot of stuff,” Anne points out, and Harry shrugs.

“She has what she needs. Don’t spoil her too much, okay?” And he regrets it after he says it, because Addison deserves to be spoiled for a few months. A few months, that’s it, that’s all they’re giving themselves. If they still haven’t figured it out in three, maybe four months, then they’re taking her back anyway. The plan is to secure an apartment and have enough money to afford a couple of month’s rent before taking her back, but if that’s not possible, then it doesn’t matter. He won’t have their daughter away from them for that long.

When Anne tells them it’s time to go, Harry stops feeling so optimistic about the whole thing. He’s leaving his daughter alone. Even if it’s with someone he trusts, that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Harry and Louis are going to officially be living out of their car as of tomorrow. Harry’s out of a job at the club for at least a week, maybe two, until his eye clears up. What the fuck is there to be optimistc about? But he tries to hang onto that little bit of hope long enough that he can say goodbye to Addison without crying. And it works, to some extent. He doesn’t technically cry, even if his voice goes all tight and his hand shakes as he brushes her hair back out of her face. Addison cries, though. She cries and cries and cries, and Harry and Louis have to leave her like that, because Anne keeps saying she has to start lunch and that she wants them gone.

Walking out of the house without their daughter in hand feels so wrong. It goes against every single one of his instincts, and he can’t help the way he grabs Louis’ hand. He knows his mom is watching them, he can feel her stare on his back, but he can’t help it. He needs Louis, and Louis needs him right back. She’s grown, she can take seeing them holding hands.

When they get back to the motel, they stay silent for a long time. It’s eerily quiet, even when Louis turns the TV on. After about an hour, Louis grabs Harry’s arm and tugs him closer, and Harry closes willingly, folding himself against Louis’ side.

“What do you think she’s doing?” Louis asks quietly, stroking his hair. Harry draws random shapes against Louis’ stomach.

“Playing with the cats,” Harry guesses. “They’ve probably just got done eating lunch. Maybe they had a sandwich. Or soup. My mom likes soup.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And she’s probably -- she’s probably going to go outside next. Play with her chalk. The backyard is huge, Louis, she’s going to love it. She’s going to -- she’s going to forget all about us.” He laughs even though everything hurts, and Louis kisses the top of his head.

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah. Yeah it does.”

Even though it feels entirely wrong given the circumstances, Harry and Louis have sex tonight. It’s just the two of them, and they have enough privacy for it to be okay to fuck on the bed. Harry hasn’t been fucked in a bed in so fucking long. At first, they’re awkward and teary-eyed and clumsy, but eventually, they find their stride and a way to turn off the emotions and just feel. Feel the pleasure, the slight twinges of pain, the other. It’s a lot, emotionally and physically. Harry feels so ugly, and not only because of his black eye. It’s hard to give yourself to someone else when you don’t even want yourself, but he pushes through it and gives into the feeling. He lets himself have it, this one night, because who knows what their nights will look like after this.

-

Harry knew living out of the car wouldn’t be easy. For the obvious reasons: lack of space, uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, barely any reinforcement to avoid the outside weather. And he thought about the more unconventional reasons, too, like the fact that sometimes Louis worked when he didn’t so Harry either had to walk to Louis’ work to get to the car or find somewhere else to go, and how hygiene would be difficult. He stopped by the club to ask Josh if it’d be okay if they used the showers there, and Josh didn’t care. It makes Louis wildly uncomfortable, especially when some of the boys give him a hard time, but he’s a big boy, he can handle it. And he’s pretty sure the cops don’t allow people sleeping in their cars, for whatever stupid reason. But Harry didn’t realize the mental impact it would have on him. On both of them. He feels trapped and suffocated, even when he isn’t in the stupid car. It’s like he lost all his purpose in life, without a homebase and his daughter. It’s. . . it’s about the hardest thing he’s ever been through, probably, and it’s only been a month.

The last time Harry saw Addison was about a week ago, and Anne asked to speak to him privately. He complied, and she told him that she didn’t want Harry working in a “gay cesspool.” He tried to tell her that it was their largest source of income, but she said if he wanted Addison living with her, then he’d have to quit. And it’s not like he’s in any position to argue, so he listens and quits. Two nights ago was his last shift, and Josh was a little annoyed like he always is whenever Harry ducks out again, but he says he’s welcome back whenever. To try and make up for the lack of income, Harry’s going to go back to the gas station, to Tony, to see if he can start working nights there again. He’s dreading it, so he’s pushing it off until tomorrow.

To make matters worse -- because that’s how it always is, isn’t it -- Harry’s small, infrequent cough has turned into something else. Something worse, maybe. He’s coughing more now, and it sounds more crinkled and congested than before. He’s starting to notice himself losing his breath sometimes, and yesterday when he was messing around with Louis in the backseat, he let out a sharp moan which then prompted a fit of coughs that led to him coughing up mucus and spit. It was -- gross. And a bit concerning. Every time they see each other now, Louis checks him for a fever.

Everything’s difficult. Harry’s sickly and missing his child and living out of a car, for fuck’s sake. And there’s no positive in that, no silver lining, but he does recognize how much harder it would be if he didn’t have Louis. As fucking stupid as it sounds, Louis’ his homebase, and as long as he has that, he has something to look forward to.

-

He’s nervous, going back into the gas station. Super fucking nervous. He’s ready to get chewed out by Tony, have him laugh at him and say he’ll never be hired again. And there’s another fear lurking into the corner of his brain, one that he won't acknowledge. But he has to at least try, so he stops by the store during the day while Louis’ at work and walks in, his hands shoved in his pockets and his breath caught at the bottom of his lungs. He nods at the girl working at the counter and tells her that he’s an old employee, so she lets him behind the counter. Harry takes a long, deep breath before knocking on the door to his office.

“What the fuck do you want, Bethany?”

Harry lets out a shaky laugh. “Not Bethany,” he says. “It’s -- um. It’s Harry.”

There’s a short pause before Tony tells him to come in. Harry does, and once he’s stepped in the office, he realizes how small it is in here. How cramped. He stays by the door and only cringes a little bit when Tony tells him to shut it. He does, telling himself that it’s okay, that Tony’s a good foot away still and sitting down.

“Hey, Tony,” he says awkwardly. “Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Sure. About what?”

Harry squeezes his hands together and tries not to look too nervous. “I was wondering if I could have my old job back. You know, working nights here. Is that possible?”

Tony leans back into his chair. “Depends.”

“On what?”

Tony gives him a dirty little grin and stands. Harry, very aware of what could happen and not naive enough to try and deny it, puts his hand on the doorknob. He knew he shouldn’t have come here. He knew it. He made sure to tell Louis about fifty-thousand times where he was going so if Harry didn’t show back up, Louis would know where to start looking. That alone should have been enough to convince him not to come here.

“How bad do you want this job?”

Harry’s heart really starts slamming in his chest when Tony takes a step forward. “Not that bad,” he says. “I have to go.” He twists the knob and has the door pulled up not even an inch before Tony’s right there, slamming the door shut and digging his nails into Harry’s wrist, trying to get him to let go of the doorknob. Harry’s not fucking doing this, he’s not, and he won’t let go of the fucking doorknob because his life could very well depend on it, so he uses the hand farthest from Tony to smash the heel of his hand against Tony’s nose. And Harry’s the one who got violent first, so now he knows he really needs to get the fuck out of here, and he tries, he does, but Tony slams him against the door, using all of his body weight. Harry cries out, and he manages to get the door open the tiniest bit, and he puts his hand there to make sure it doesn’t shut again, but then Tony’s slamming the door again, this time on Harry’s hand, and Harry fucking screams, because holy fucking shit does that hurt. He draws back his elbow of his free arm to knock Tony back the best he can, and it barely works, Tony’s got him in a bad position. He’s frantic now, trying to get Tony off of him while simultaneously trying to get his hand out of the door.

“Bethany, open the -- ”

Tony slaps a hand over his mouth and yanks him back, and Harry can feel the skin rip off his fingers as it’s yanked from the door, and even though his hand is searing with pain and he’s completely panicking, the door is now cracked open and Tony’s given him room to move. He slams his elbow back again, this time actually hitting Tony, and drives his foot back to aim for Tony’s knee. It misses, it hits his calf, but his elbow catches Tony’s face and Tony lets him go for a fraction of a second, long enough for Harry to get his hands off of him and to grab a binder off the filing cabinet and turn around and use all of his strength to slam it against Tony’s head. He doesn’t look back to see how bad it hurt before he’s opening the door all the way and running out, and Bethany’s looking at him with such horror on her face that he almost feels bad for her.

“Don’t call the police,” he snaps at her just before he pushes open the store door and just fucking books it down the sidewalk, running as fast as he can. The adrenaline aids him, while the congestion in his chest threatens to suffocate him. He doesn’t stop though, not even when he feels vomit boil in his stomach. He can’t stop, can’t get caught, can’t get hurt. Eventually he does have to stop, and when he does, he throws up so violently that it hurts every part of him that doesn’t hurt already. There’s a woman nearby staring at him as he hurls into a bush, but she doesn’t ask him if he’s okay and he doesn’t blame her. Once he’s finished, he turns around to make sure nobody has followed him, and once he’s sure Tony’s nowhere near him, he starts moving again, this time at a speed-walk to try and soothe the fire in his chest. It doesn’t help, and by the time he makes it to Louis’ work, he’s coughing so hard that it makes him throw up again. He slumps behind a wall, careful to make sure nobody sees him, and finishes throwing up and trying not to cough to death. After about five minutes, maybe more, Harry stops coughing so roughly and wipes at his mouth with the hand that he only notices now is bleeding. The middle three fingers’ skin is all torn apart, especially around the knuckles, and he lets out a soft cry and cradles his hand to his chest. His black eye has only recently healed, and now this.

And now this.

But he’s with Louis now. Sort of. He has to at least try and make himself look presentable before going inside. So once he’s sure he’s not going to die via a coughing fit as soon as he stands, he makes his way to the car and changes into a clean shirt and wraps his hand with an old bandana he finds tucked into Louis’ visor. He tries to find a water bottle he can drink from, but they’re all empty, so he wipes his face and heads inside.

It’s stupid, how caught off guard he is when a hostess asks him if he wants a table or a booth. He stares at her for at least ten seconds before he clears his throat.

“Is, um. Is Louis busy?”

The girl looks out at the seating area. Harry follows her gaze. It’s moderately busy, at least half the restaurant filled, and Harry spots Louis right away, laughing with some customers seated in a booth.

“Can I just wait for him to have a second?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure. Are you Harry?” He gives her a weird look, and she laughs. “He talks about you a lot. Sit wherever you want.”

Harry thanks her quietly before finding a seat that’s in the corner, tucked away from everyone else. He doesn’t want Louis to see him and worry, so he sits facing away from him and slouches a bit. This isn’t -- he’s not going to bother Louis at work. He kind of just wants to sit here, to be honest. He doesn’t want to be by himself. If Louis has a minute to talk, then sure, Harry won’t mind pulling him away for a bit, but he doesn’t want him to get in any trouble.

He’s messing with the frayed edge of the bandana when a voice approaching him says, “Hi, welcome to Rosy’s, what can I -- oh, Harry.” Louis’ at his table, then, smiling a bit, although he looks confused. “What, did you have to piss or something?” He hits Harry over the head with a menu, gently, obviously, before sitting across from him. He’s about to say something else when his eyes drop down to the bandana wrapped around Harry’s hand. “Are you hurt?”

Harry shrugs, completely unconvincingly, as he puts his hands in his lap and says, “A bit. I’m fine. Do you mind if I just sit inside for a bit?”

“No, that’s fine. We aren’t really busy anyway. What happened to your hand, though? And why do you smell like puke?”

Harry scowls at him. “Gee, thanks, Louis.” He runs his tongue over his teeth subconsciously and shakes his head. “Slammed it in a door. And then puked. So. That was fun.”

Louis stares at him for a few seconds before saying, “Yeah, you’re not telling me the truth. I’ll get you some water and whatever that’s been sent back to the kitchen in the last hour. And I’ll interrogate you when I have a moment, ‘kay?” He stands and kisses Harry’s cheek before heading to the kitchen. He returns a minute later with a water and a plate of mozzarella sticks. Louis sets it down in front of him, drops his voice and says, “That lady over there said these looked too dark. What does that even mean?”

“I have no clue, but you’re not going to get in trouble giving me food, are you?”

“No,” Louis says. “They would be thrown out if somebody didn’t eat them, so.” He reaches forward to brush his fingers under Harry’s jaw, and Harry’s far too emotionally fragile right now because it makes him want to cry a little bit. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Harry nods. “Fine, Lou. We’ll talk later, okay? Don’t let me keep you.”

Louis complies, mostly because he has no other choice. For the next half hour or so as Harry eats the mozzarella sticks, he can feel Louis keeping an eye on him. Harry considers leaving -- he really doesn’t want to be a distraction -- but he can’t stomach the idea of being all alone inside a hot car right now, so he stays. He stays all night, even after Louis tells him to sit at the bar so he can seat a happy-looking family of five. The bartenders offers Harry a free drink, but Harry rejects it. At first. He ends up taking him up on that offer after about the fifty-thousandth time he reruns through what happened earlier in his head. The bartender hands him what looks and tastes to be a Sea Breeze, and he’s sucking on the straw when Louis comes over and touches his elbow.

“I’m on my break, come on,” he says. “Come talk to me for a bit.”

Harry follows him out back, only a few feet from where Harry was sitting earlier. Louis sits on the ground, back against the wall, so Harry follows suit, making sure he doesn’t spill his drink.

“What happened?” Louis asks him. “You seem sad, H. And we have a half hour to talk about it now, so. Talk to me.”

Tears jump to his eyes immediately as he tries to think of how he’d even explain what happened. Or what almost happened. To try and suppress them, Harry takes a sip of the drink. It works a little. He clears his throat and keeps his eyes focused on the crack in the pavement in front of him. “I stopped by the gas station. To see if I could get my old job back. And Tony, like. I don’t even know.”

Louis’ quiet before he asks, “Did he hurt you?”

Harry resists the urge to flex his hurt fingers and nods.

“Why? What happened?”

Harry lets out a bitter laugh as he looks up at the sky. It’s bright, and it hurts his eyes to look at it, but he figures it’d hurt more to have to look Louis in the face. “I didn’t want the job bad enough to blow him,” he says. “Or -- or maybe he wanted to fuck me, I don’t know. I didn’t let him get that far.”

“Harry.” Louis sounds serious now. “He didn’t -- what did he do to you?”

“He didn’t do anything. He just tried to.”

Thankfully, Louis doesn’t ask him to spell it out. They’re both intelligent enough to know what he means. “How did you hurt your hand?”

Now Harry bends his knuckles, and he regrets it as hot pain shoots throughout his hands. “I tried to leave, and he didn’t want me to. He slammed my hand in the door. And then,” Harry’s voice cracks, and it makes him sound so weak. “And then he, like, pulled me back hard enough for my hand to come out of the door, and it -- it hurt. A lot.”

“Can I see it?”

Hesitantly, Harry holds his out for Louis. Louis’ careful about unwrapping it, and as he does so, Harry keeps looking at the sky.

“Jesus, Haz,” Louis says, sighing. “Do you think your fingers are broken?”

“I don’t know.” Harry looks down at his hand, and he doesn’t want to look at the mess of his fingers, so he stares at the four nail marks embedded in his wrist.

Louis makes sure to be gentle with him, and he doesn’t touch where it hurts. Softly, he sets Harry’s hand on his knee before standing up. “I’ll go get you a bandage, babe. Hold on.”

“I don’t need -- ”

“Shut it, Harry,” Louis grumbles, looking down at him. “You put a however-many-year old, dirty bandana on an open wound. Not the brightest idea.”

Harry stares up at him. “You used a napkin to try and stop the bleeding on a two-inch cut.”

“A clean napkin,” Louis says, smiling to try and hide the sad look in his eyes. “Hang tight, I’ll be right back.”

He leaves, and true to his word, he does come right back with a first aid kit in tow. Harry rolls his eyes and mumbles that it’s not that bad, but he’s not going to deny ointment and a bandage when he actually needs it.

As Louis patches him up, he asks, “So I realized we never got to the puking bit of the story. Care to share?”

“I was running -- he didn’t chase me, but I was scared he might -- and I had one of those stupid coughing fits. And I threw up in a bush. And then in front of the restaurant. Sorry.”

Louis lets out a long, tired sigh. “Maybe we should think about taking you to see a doctor.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“It’s been getting worse.”

“I’m fine,” Harry insists.

Louis shakes his head. “I’m seeing Addison tomorrow morning before work. I’m going to talk to Anne about having you stay with her.”

Harry yanks his hand from Louis, and it’s hard to ignore the wave of pain it sends through him, but he pushes through it. “No, you’re not,” he snaps, holding his hand to his chest. The middle three fingers are bandaged together, although the bandage hangs loose since Louis didn’t have a chance to secure it yet. “Don’t be stupid. She’ll just say no.”

“What if she says yes?”

“Then I’ll say no,” Harry tells him. “I’m not leaving you.”

Louis gives him a look like he’s being unreasonable. “Harry -- ”

“No,” Harry interrupts. “Shut the fuck up about that. I’m not leaving you alone.”

“But -- ”

“No.”

Louis sighs again and takes back his hand. Harry lets him finish up the bandage. “Fine,” he says. “But if your -- cold or whatever gets worse, we’re doing one or the other. Doctor or your mom’s house.”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll see a doctor if it gets worse.”

Louis doesn’t push it, and they spend the rest of Louis’ break in comfortable silence, leaning against each other. Once his half hour is up, Harry tells him he’ll stay in the car but Louis insists that he come back inside, that he’s not in the way. And Harry doesn’t actually want to be all by himself, so he follows Louis back inside and sits back at the bar and agrees to have his cup filled again.

-

He sees Addison the following night, barely four hours after Louis said he was going to see her. They try not to stop by the same day unless they’re with each other, but Harry worked this morning and Louis works tonight, and they both wanted to see her today. So, if Anne is going to be annoyed with them, Harry’s okay with that. He just wants to see his daughter. Addison, like she always is, is ecstatic to see him, and she drags Harry upstairs to her room to show him this dollhouse that Anne bought her. It’s big and bulky and probably cost far more than it’s worth, but Harry doesn’t say anything about it. Addison deserves nice things, and if Anne can be the one to give her them, then so be it. He does, however, frown at how shitty the dolls they bought her from the thrift store look next to the new, shiny house.

They play with the dolls and talk for about an hour until Anne knocks on her door and tells her that it’s time to shower. Harry keeps his qualms with that to himself until Addison leaves the room, and when she does, Harry gets up off the floor and looks at his mom.

“We don’t let her shower by herself just yet,” he says cautiously, careful not to make it sound like he knows better. “We like to at least have the door open so if she needs us, we can be right there.”

Anne shrugs. “She’s almost six, she’s a big girl. And there haven't been any problems so far.”

And, well. Fair enough. He can’t tell Anne how to do things, partly because she’s doing them a huge favor and partly because she’s raised two kids and they didn’t die by showering without supervision.

“Speaking of her birthday, me and Louis wanted to take her out, if that’s. . . okay.” It feels wrong, having to ask permission for that.

“I already promised her that we’ll have you over for dinner,” Anne tells him, and it’s beyond surprising. And kind of scary to think about, because she looks so annoyed at the idea and that’ll mean they have to be around her for at least an hour when she doesn’t want them to be. There’s no way he would pass that up, though, so he agrees.

There’s an awkward silence between them before she turns on her heel to leave and tells Harry to come downstairs with her. Harry does, albeit a little nervously, and as he walks down the stairs, he can’t swallow back the cluster of coughs that come out of him. He covers his mouth, he tries to make them sound less serious than they might actually be, but she gives him a look anyway.

“Are you sick?”

Harry follows her to the kitchen, where he sits at one of the stools while she pours him a glass of water. He takes it reluctantly; he doesn’t not want them to be on good terms, but he also doesn’t want her to be nice to him out of pity, or to show that she can afford to be. “It’s just a cold,” he says.

“Are you sure? You look like you’ve lost a bit of weight since I last saw you.” She gives him a cold look. “More weight. You’re skinny.”

“I’m fine.” He sighs a little and takes a sip of water. “How’s Addison’s school going?”

“Great. She seems to have a lot of friends. What happened to your hand?”

Harry glares at her. “Stop it. Please.”

“I thought I told you to quit that club.”

“I did,” he snaps.

“Then what happened to your hand?”

He gives her a hard look before shrugging. “I got in a fight,” he lies, because he’s not going to tell her that some man tried to attack him. He’s not going to give her anything that she’ll use to reaffirm her beliefs towards gay people.

“A fight?”

“Yeah, a fight.”

“You were never the fighting type before.”

He scoffs and stands up. “All I’ve done for the last six years is fight, Mom.” He leaves, then, mumbling that he’ll wait for Addison upstairs. He sits on her bed and fights the urge to lay down to avoid risk of falling asleep. Addison comes back into the room a few minutes later, her hair in a towel that way he taught her to do and a towel around her body. He asks if she needs help getting dressed, and she gives him a sweet smile and shakes her head.

“I got it, Daddy.”

It makes him sad. So sad. But then she puts her shirt on backwards and he gets to help with that, and he’s reminded that maybe she does need him after all.

-

“What’s the first thing you would buy if you were rich?”

“You’re so annoying.”

Harry laughs and sits up a bit. “No, I’m serious,” he says. “What’s the first thing you’d buy if you had a boatload of cash?”

They’re laying in the backseat together, their legs tangled together in the middle seat. Louis’ smoking a cigarette he bummed from someone at work, even though Harry told him it was a bad idea and he shouldn’t fuel an addiction they can’t afford. Louis flipped him off and lit the cigarette.

“Well, let’s see,” Louis says. There’s a chill coming in from the window, and it’s blowing against Harry. Harry shivers a little, adjusting the covers over him, and Louis stretches behind him to throw the cigarette out the window so he can roll it up. Once he’s done, he goes back to Harry’s question. “A house, obviously.”

“Besides that. Besides the obvious stuff, like a house and a better car.”

“I don’t know, Harry.”

“Come on. Entertain me.”

Louis goes quiet, actually giving it some thought, before he answers. “Probably. . . probably a bunch of kitchen stuff.” Harry snorts, and Louis narrows his eyes at him and digs his toe into the side of Harry’s thigh. “No, I’m serious. I miss cooking, even though I’m fucking shit at it. When’s the last time either of us made anything that we didn’t just eat up or buy somewhere?”

“You’re right. I guess that would be nice.”

Louis hums. “What about you?”

Harry doesn’t have to think about it as long. “I’d hire a P.I. You know, a private investigator? To find Gemma. I’d want to help her, but I doubt she’s even in Chicago anymore.”

“You think she’d move?”

He shakes his head sadly. “I think she’d flee. I think she’d have something to flee from.”

“No,” Louis says, sitting up completely. He leans forward to set his hands on top of Harry’s knees and squeezes. “She’s living on the other side of Chicago with some rich guy and, like, two spoiled rotten kids.”

Even though it’s basically impossible, Harry would like to believe that. He smiles softly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why wouldn’t she come back for Addison?”

Louis leans forward even more to press a chaste kiss to Harry’s lips. “Because,” he whispers. “She knows she’s safe with us.”

Harry rests his forehead against Louis, the tips of their noses bumping into each other. They smile at the same time, and it makes Harry’s chest tighten, in a good way.

-

For Addison’s sixth birthday, they buy her a four-pack of playdoh, a new doll and a locket. Louis had found it at work a while ago and he’s been saving it for her birthday. They don’t have many pictures of the three of them, and the ones they do have are at least a few years old, so for now they put a little note in there, a simple we love you x. They’re going to ask Anne to take a picture of them and put it in her necklace for her. Harry can’t imagine why she would say no.

As they drive to Anne’s house, Harry keeps his head against the window, the slight coolness it brings doing him good. He woke up this morning feeling clammy and flushed, and he didn’t need Louis checking his forehead to know he had a fever. A tiny one. They bought a thermometer at the dollar store, and he’s not even hitting one-hundred degrees yet. He’s totally fine.

And he could probably convince himself that if he didn’t feel so weak and his cough was so persistent. He’s trying to keep it hidden, and he keeps saying he’s fine, but he knows Louis doesn’t believe him.

“I want you to ask your mom for some cough medicine or something,” Louis tells him as they walk up the driveway, their hands intertwined even though it’s a bad idea. “I can pick you up some at the pharmacy, but she’s probably got the good stuff.”

Harry scoffs. “You make her sound like a drug dealer or something.”

When Anne answers the door and sees them holding hands, she immediately scowls at them, but Harry and Louis ignore it and step past her to see Addison. She runs over to them and hugs them both, and they wish her a happy birthday.

“You feel old yet?” Louis asks her, twirling the bottom of her braid in his hand. She shakes her head.

“Not yet.”

Harry pokes her nose and she squirms away and tells them to follow her. She leads them up the stairs, and as they follow her, they walk past a cat, who Addison scoops up and carries with her. The cat doesn’t seem to like the way she’s holding them, but it doesn’t scratch and Addison puts them down soon enough. Addison digs through her drawers before turning around and showing them a bathing suit.

“Grandma’s going to teach me how to swim,” she tells them, absolutely beaming. It makes Harry so happy for her.

“No,” a voice says behind them, and Harry turns to see Anne coming up the stairs. “Grandma’s going to pay someone else to teach you how to swim.” She stops at the doorway and looks at Addison. She looks completely in love with her, and Harry didn’t expect anything different, but it still makes his stomach roll nervously. “I was telling Addison about how awful of a swimmer you are.”

It’s not mean. It’s actually sort of fond, which makes Harry look at her in surprise. He smiles a bit and shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, really. It’s not like there’s any water in Chicago.”

“It’d be good for her to learn anyway,” Louis says, and Harry nods. He wants her to be protected from as many threats as possible.

There’s a natural pause in conversation as they all watch Addison shake around her swimsuit, showing it off. And then Anne says, “Are you any good at swimming, Louis?”

It makes Harry nervous. Whenever they interact it makes him nervous, but her directly speaking to him is an entirely different level. He presses his knuckles against Louis’ thigh, trying to soothe him from a burn that hasn’t appeared yet.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” Louis sounds a little guarded. He’s probably surprised, too. “I taught my little sisters.”

Anne nods slowly. “And have you talked to any of your sisters recently?”

Louis shakes his head and stands before leaning down in front of Addison and taking the swimsuit from him. He doesn’t like this topic of conversation. “They’re better off without me, don’t you think?” Louis asks, and now he sounds a little defensive, like he’s reminding Anne that she thought of them as such bad people that she couldn’t even associate with them. Before Anne can respond, Louis’ picking Addison up and saying they should all sit outside for a little while. So they do, and as soon as they get outside, the fresh air does something to Harry’s lungs and he’s coughing so hard that even Addison looks at him worriedly. He covers it up quickly.

“Still got your chalk, baby?” he asks, sitting on the bench outside. Addison nods. “Draw us something, if you want.”

“Okay,” she agrees, and she takes Louis’ hand and walks him to the garage. Jealousy tears through Harry’s stomach; his mom has a garage and a shed. He used to live in such a nice fucking house.

“You look flushed,” Anne says, and before Harry can push her hand away, she checks his forehead with the back of her hand. “You’re warm, baby.”

He whips his head up to look at her. It makes him so -- so fucking mad. “Don’t call me that,” he snaps. “Don’t you fucking call me that.”

She ignores him, which makes him even angrier. She shouldn’t feel so comfortable invalidating his feelings like that. “You have a fever,” she says. “I’ll get you a Tylenol. And a cough drop.”

Another few coughs hit him as she goes inside, and it’s actually starting to hurt, coughing this much. His chest feels sore and so does his stomach, and it’s so annoying. When she returns, he takes the medicine from her and downs it with the glass of water she brings him. The cold of the water clashes with the hot of his throat, and it makes everything burn worse. Despite that, he thanks her for the medicine. He glances back at Addison and Louis, who have just come out of the garage with a bucket of chalk.

“You should see a doctor,” Anne tells him, and he scoffs lowly.

“You do realize you lost any right to parent me the minute you kicked me out, right?”

He stands, then, not wanting to hear anything else she’s going to say. He joins Addison and Louis on the cement, where they’ve barely begun to outline the shape of a birthday cake. Harry sits down beside them, and Addison tells him that he’s in charge of handing her what color she needs.

The night goes over smoothly, for the most part. Addison finishes drawing her picture outside, and then they go back inside and eat dinner. Louis and Harry both do their very best to pretend like they aren’t absolutely dying over how fucking good the stupid pot roast tastes. After dinner, they get that picture that they wanted. Louis and Harry are crouched down on either side of Addison as she smiles in that cute way of hers at the camera. Anne promises that she’ll print it out and put it in the locket for her, which makes Harry stop giving her the cold shoulder. Not like she deserves anything else, but still. She’s the dick here, not him.

When they sing happy birthday to her and she blows out the candles on top of a delicious-looking, chocolate cake, Harry cheers loudly and it shakes another series of coughs out of him. It’s a bad one, one that he can’t quickly move past, and he’s so close to puking when the coughs finally calm down and he can catch his breath. He does, and Louis’ right there, rubbing his back soothingly and whispering to him quiet things Harry can’t quite process.

Addison touches his arm softly. “Are you sick, Daddy?”

“No, baby,” he says, voice hoarse. His throat is burning. “Just had something in my throat. Dad’s going to cut the cake while I go use the bathroom really quick, okay?” He kisses the top of her head as he goes.

In the bathroom, he splashes cold water over his face and takes a few minutes to collect himself. Even when he’s breathing normally now, there’s this slight wheeze to it, and it’s -- Louis’ taking him to the doctor soon. Harry will ask him to, but he’s pretty sure Louis will demand it anyway. And if it’s a simple cold that he wastes money on, he’s going to be pissed.

Anne’s waiting for him outside the bathroom when he opens the door. He frowns at her.

“I’ll go to the doctor, I know,” he says shortly, and he goes to side-step her, but she puts a gentle arm on his hand. He pulls back from it quickly and glares at her. “Don’t touch me.”

“I want you to stay here,” she says. “In the shed. It’s big enough for you, and it’ll give you time to get healthy again.”

Harry stares at her, not even letting himself get excited by the idea. “Not without Louis.”

She sighs loudly. “Seriously, Harry? I’m trying to help you.”

“Not without Louis,” he repeats simply, before walking back to the kitchen and sitting with Louis and Addison. It takes Anne a few minutes to join them, and once she does, she’s irritated and more rude to Louis than normal, and it all about does Harry’s head in. He keeps his cool, solely for the sake of his daughter.

If he purposefully becomes more touchy with Louis after that, well. They all show their anger in different ways.

-

Louis and Harry go to urgent care five days later. The cough just keeps getting worse, even when Harry is sure it would be impossible to, and he’s even more congested and he keeps coughing up mucus. Every time he feels something wet come up his throat, he’s terrified it’s blood. He doesn’t want to let it get that far, so Louis picks him up after his shift at the dry cleaner’s and takes him to urgent care.

The waiting room isn’t very busy, so Harry gets seen fairly quickly. He gets his temperature and weight and height taken like normal, and he squints at the number on the scale, wondering if it’s smaller than it should be. The nurse takes him to an exam room where he explains his symptoms, and then he does it all over again less than ten minutes later to a doctor. The doctor, a middle aged man called Dr. Franklin, seems a little lax about everything, and it ticks Harry off.

Once Harry’s done talking, Dr. Franklin nods and says, “Yeah, it sounds like pneumonia to me. The fever, the cough, the congestion. It sounds as if it’s been left untreated for a while, so it might have progressed. I’d like to take a chest x-ray and a CT scan to see what we’re dealing with.”

Harry stares at him. It’s almost funny. “How much will that cost?”

“We don’t have insurance,” Louis adds, and Dr. Franklin shrugs.

“The chest x-ray will probably run you around three-hundred dollars, and the CT about four-hundred.”

Harry leans forward on the table. “We can’t afford that. Can’t I just take antibiotics?”

“I’ll prescribe you some, but I’d really like to take at least an x-ray.”

“And I’d really like three-hundred dollars to let you do that, but I guess we’re both out of luck,” Harry says, maybe a little shortly. He grabs his coat from behind him and slides it back on, all while Dr. Franklin looks at him like he’s being difficult. Maybe he is, but he doesn’t care. He’s too tired to care.

“Ignore him,” Louis says. “Just -- will the antibiotics take care of it?”

“It should significantly help. But if the infection has spread, it might be harder to handle.”

Harry wants to die a little bit. No, he doesn’t. Metaphorically, not literally. Just -- he’s so irritated. Thinking about money all the time is fucking exhausting. “If the antibiotics don’t work, then we’ll come back,” he says, trying to be less of a dick. “That’s all we can really do.”

Louis doesn’t seem to like that idea. “You can’t just do the scan for him? He sounds terrible. I mean, don’t hospitals do pro-bono stuff occasionally?’

“Not here,” Dr. Franklin says. “Sorry. I’ll go write you that script.”

“Thanks,” Harry mumbles, standing off the table. He doesn’t want to feel like a patient when he’s not necessarily being treated like one. He sits down next to Louis on a normal chair, and when Dr. Franklin leaves, Louis touches his forehead with the back of his hand.

“You’re still warm.”

“Obviously, Louis,” he says, smiling a bit. “I haven’t done anything for it yet. It’s not just going to go away because I stepped foot in a doctor’s office.”

“But still. Did the nurse tell you what it was at?”

Harry sniffs and pulls Louis’ hand away from his face. “100.7 degrees.”

“It’s gotten worse, then.”

“By, like, .8 degrees, yeah. I’m fine.”

Louis grumbles something under his breath and presses a kiss to Harry’s cheek. “You’re annoying, you know. If I was the one with the fever, you’d probably be doing the same thing as me.”

Harry nods. That’s true. “And you’d be being difficult like me.”

“Fair enough,” Louis mumbles. Maybe to remind himself, Louis runs his finger over the scar on his palm. Things always go alright if one of them pretends like they don’t have a care in the world and the other panics for them. It’s how they do things. “Maybe Anne could loan us the money,” Louis says quietly, and Harry sighs as a response. "Okay,” Louis mumbles. “Okay. You’re right. Sorry.”

Harry leans against him while they wait for the doctor. Eventually, Dr. Franklin comes back with a prescription and Harry and Louis thank him before leaving. They pay the seventy-five dollars owed for just showing up and leave. It’s almost poetic, the way Harry coughs so hard he dry heaves into the bushes outside the hospital.

-

The antibiotics help, they do, just not nearly enough. His cough is still there, and it hasn’t lessened much. At the laundromat, the boss comes by one day and hears Harry coughing and he sends him home. Harry tries to tell him that it’s just pneumonia, but she looked at him like he was crazy and told him that pneumonia was contagious. He didn’t really know that, but considering Louis hasn’t gotten sick yet, he’s not really worried about it. He is, however, worried about getting Addison sick, so when they both have a day off and Louis says they should visit her together, Harry is apprehensive.

“Just come inside,” Louis tells him, stroking his arm. He feels so guilty for how poorly Harry is feeling, even though it’s not his fault in literally any way. “We can tell her that you’re sick and not to touch, that’s fine. But she’s going to want to see you.”

And Harry’s not one to pass up the opportunity to see his daughter, so he agrees.

Each and every time Anne opens the door for them, Harry swears she looks less and less evil. Maybe it’s her softening, or maybe it’s him craving motherly affection that’s making it warped. Maybe it’s both. Either way, she actually smiles a bit when she sees them today.

“She’s upstairs doing her homework. She should be finishing up soon.” Anne calls for Addison then, saying Harry and Louis are here to see her. She doesn’t say the word ‘dads’ but Harry couldn’t care less. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Addison comes running, her feet loud as they bounce down the stairs, and Louis reaches for her first so she goes to him. He sets her on his hip and Harry waves at her. “Hey, baby,” he says, and she smiles.

“You know, she’s getting at the age that you shouldn’t be picking her up so much,” Anne says, not sounding judgemental. She sounds like she’s genuinely trying to help, but Harry and Louis both exchange a pissy look.

“I’ll pick her up as long as she’ll let me, huh, munchkin?’ Louis kisses her cheek. “Daddy’s got germs, okay, so stay away from him. No touching, you hear me?”

Addison pouts the same time Anne frowns. Harry ignores them both.

Addison wants to watch a movie with them, so that’s what happens. Except, twenty minutes into the movie Harry leaves the room because he can’t stop coughing. He sits at the kitchen table, breathless and tired, coughing into his elbow. When it doesn’t stop after a minute or two, he goes outside so he doesn’t interrupt the movie. It’s a little chilly out, but it doesn’t really matter. He lays down on the bench, his legs curled so he can fit all the way, and pillows his head on his forearm, still coughing away.

He’s only just stopped coughing when his mom comes out, and Harry closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to talk to her. To make it clear, he doesn’t sit up so she can sit with him on the bench; instead, she sits at the table a few feet away.

“You’re sick,” she says.

Harry scoffs. “I know that.”

“It sounds serious.”

“I’m taking care of it.”

“Is it. . . Is it AIDS?”

And Harry was already fucking annoyed today, and that just sends him over the edge. His eyes snap open and he sits up on his elbow. “Shut the fuck up,” he snaps angrily. “Don’t fucking talk to me like that. Not every gay person has AIDS, Mom. How ignorant can you be?”

She keeps her cool, just like she always does. “Well, have you been tested?”

“I saw a doctor two weeks ago. I have pneumonia, not AIDS. Thanks.”

“But were you tested for -- ”

Harry groans and lays back down, this time on his back. He clenches his eyes shut and scrubs his hands down his face. “Me and Louis haven’t slept with anybody else since we’ve met each other, practically. I don’t have any STDs. Leave me alone.”

“Infidelity is common in -- ”

“Shut the fuck up,” he seethes, punctuating every word with as much malice as he can muster. He glares at her, chest heaving. “Just stop talking to me if you can’t go five mintues without insulting my relationship. I love Louis, and he loves me.” He scoffs again and shakes his head. “I’ve been with Louis for almost ten years. Isn’t that longer than you were with Dad?”

She doesn’t like that at all. Even when they were on good terms, Harry wasn’t supposed to talk about his father. About how he left when Harry was three for some other younger woman. So he knows he’s digging into her wounds, and he’s trying to dig his nails in as deep as they can go. She deserves it.

“That’s embarrassing, isn’t it?” Harry asks, mocking. “Two guys can manage to have a healthy, functioning relationship longer than you? Is that why you’re so fucking mean all the time? Because Louis looks at me in ways that you’ve never been looked at before?”

Her calm exterior is cracking. She raises her chin, and her hands are balled into fists in her lap. “At least I’m going to Heaven.”

Harry snorts, closing his eyes again. “Yeah. Okay. You tell yourself that.”

Neither of them say anything for a long time. A long, long time. It’s probably nearing fifteen minutes when Harry starts to cough again, and he turns on his side, facing away from his mom as he coughs into his arm. It feels like he’s going to break a fucking rib by the end of this from coughing so hard. Once he’s done, he pulls away to see that there’s mucus on his coat now, which is. . . great. He’ll have to hand-wash it next time he goes to the club to shower.

“Are you taking any medication?” Anne asks, and she sounds distant, like she’s only asking because she has to.

Harry rests his cheek against his arm, avoiding the wet patch. “Yeah. I’m on antibiotics.”

“And they aren’t helping?”

“No, they are. Just. Not as much as I feel like they should be.”

Tears randomly float to his eyes, and he rubs his cheek against his coat, trying to soothe himself. He feels small, suddenly. So childish. Kind of like he did after he was punched and Josh was taking care of him.

“I’m okay,” he says shakily. “I’ll be okay.”

“What did the doctor say?”

Harry shrugs. “Come back if the antibiotics don’t work.”

“And will you?”

“What’s the point?” he asks.

“What do you mean, Harry?” And now she sounds sad, like she’s trying to understand, and Harry resists the urge to wipe at his eyes. He doesn’t want her knowing he’s upset.

The plan quickly backfires, because when he replies, his voice shows how raw he’s feeling. “I can’t afford it. I can’t -- I’ll go back and they’ll tell me the same thing they did last time, that I need an x-ray and a CT scan and that’s almost a grand, and then I’ll say I can’t afford it and have to pay seventy-five dollars for just showing up. There’s no point.”

She’s quiet for about a minute before she sighs loudly. “Let me take you,” she says reluctantly. “I can pay for the scans and you can pay me back later.”

“No. I don’t want anything from you.”

He regrets denying that as soon as it’s out of his mouth. It’s stupid. Nobody else would ever offer him something like that, and if he doesn’t see a doctor, he’s probably not going to get any better. He’ll probably find a way to get much, much worse. And even though he’s not on good terms with Anne, that doesn’t mean he can’t accept things from her. He accepted her agreeing to take care of Addison because it was for the sake of his daughter; Addison needs both of her dads, alive and healthy.

“Harry,” she says sternly. “Stop it. Let me help.”

A tiny whimper escapes from his throat as he nods. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. Please.”

“And I want you to get tested for STDs. Both of you.”

Harry rolls his eyes and tears fall out, but, “Okay. Fine.”

He hears her stand, and he tucks his face further into his arm. He doesn’t want the tears on his face to be seen by her.

“We’ll get you taken care of, Harry,” she says, and then she walks inside, shutting the door softly behind her. As soon as it feels safe to, he lets out a quiet cry.

-

Anne insists on taking him to the doctor’s the following day, so Louis gets his shift covered by someone else and they meet her at a doctor’s office. A proper doctor’s office; not an urgent care, not a rundown looking hospital, a doctor’s office. The kind Harry hasn’t stepped foot in since the last time he went to get his yearly check-up when he was barely seventeen. And he’s beyond nervous, so he holds onto Louis’ hand tightly.

Anne’s waiting for them by the entrance, and she’s alone. Obviously he didn’t expect her to take Addison out of school to go to the doctors with him, it’s just. He misses her so much, all of the time.

Anne takes one long hard look at their intertwined hands and doesn’t say anything about it. “Okay,” she says, standing up. “Let’s go.”

The appointment goes over smoothly. Harry feels like a fraud, but the doctor doesn’t seem to think they look out of place. She treats them normally, and she doesn’t even get too bothered by Anne repeatedly inputting her opinion where it’s not needed. Harry gets the tests, both the CT scan and the x-ray, and he hates it. He absolutely hates it. But he’s not fucking five, he can handle it without panicking, so he forces himself to remain calm the entire time. They are there for what feels like forever, and there’s a lot of waiting, and the three of them don’t really talk, but Louis is always touching him in some way when the doctor’s gone. Hand on his knee, his shoulder, in his; he’s always right there, and it makes Harry feel loads better.

After a long wait, the doctor comes back in with his test results and tells him he has an abscess in his right lung, and immediately, immediately, Louis scoots his chair over so he can hold Harry’s hand.

“Is that a tumor?” Harry asks, beyond petrified.

“No,” Dr. Leahy says. “No, not at all. An abscess is a cavity in your chest filled with fluid from the infection. It’s probably why you’ve been feeling so bad for so long.”

“How do we treat it?” Louis asks. He’s rubbing his thumb back and forth over Harry’s hand, and it gives him something else to focus on that isn’t the consistent anxiety flowing through his body.

“Antibiotics and a lot of rest,” she says. “The antibiotic he’s on now probably isn’t the best in treating the abscess, so we’ll switch that and get you onto an antibiotic that’ll be more suited to help. Since the cavity isn’t that large, we won’t need to do any draining or surgery or anything like that. But it’s important that you take care of yourself now so we don’t have to talk about any of that in the future.”

Harry bites down on his bottom lip roughly before releasing it. “How long will it take to heal?”

“Three to eight weeks.”

Harry lets out a weak laugh. “I have to work. I don’t have three to eight weeks.”

“You can still work,” Dr. Leahy says. “Just take it easy. Don’t work too hard. Make sure you’re sleeping enough and eating healthily. And if you still feel poorly, you need to come back to see me, okay? You waited a long time. There could have been some complications.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she says, smiling brightly. “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

There’s an awkward pause as he makes eye contact with Anne, who raises her eyebrows at him expectantly. He lets out a huff before turning back to the doctor and smiling drily. “Would it be possible to be tested for any STIs? Just a routine check-up. For the both of us.” He shrugs and glances at his mom again. “Or maybe all three of us.”

Anne narrows her eyes at him. “Harry Edward Styles,” she hisses.

“I don’t know what you’re up to,” he says, shrugging again. Now that he’s made it entirely uncomfortable for everyone, he decides not to subject the doctor to anymore unnecessary torment. “I’m kidding. Just me and him, please.”

“Of course,” she says, laughing. “We can do that. Are there any issues I should know about? Any sores or warts or anything like that?”

And God, Harry would be so angry if he wasn’t so satisfied with how uncomfortable it’s making his mom. “Nope,” he says. “Last I checked, we’re both clean.”

Louis nods, squeezing Harry’s hand, probably telling him to chill out.

“Okay. I’ll get a nurse in here to help out two out with that.”

When she leaves, Anne glares at him. “Is that really necessary, acting like that?”

“Yes,” he says simply, and he leaves it at that.

Harry and Louis agree to the standard cheek swap, blood test and the urine test, but as soon as the nurse asks them if they want a physical exam, too, Harry says no.

“Harry,” Anne warns, and Harry scoffs at her.

“I’m twenty-four years old,” he snaps. “If I don’t want someone touching my dick, they’re not going to touch my dick.” And these poor staff members don’t deserve such a difficult patient, and he’s being completely out of line, but he can’t help himself or bring himself to care. “Unless you have a male nurse,” he says, and immediately, Anne raises her hand and says that’s enough and that will be all for today.

As they make their way to the parking lot, Louis grabs his hand and Anne squints at him.

“That wasn’t very appropriate, Harry.”

Harry stares straight forward. “I don’t care. I did it, didn’t I? You didn’t say I had to be nice about it.”

She stops him right in front of the door, a hand held in front of him. “Knock it off with the attitude. You’re still my son.”

Harry’s more than ready to bite back at that, but Louis tugs on his hand and sets a hand on his back. “You both need to stop,” Louis says. “We don’t have to like each other here. This isn’t about any of us, it’s about Addison.”

“He treats me with zero respect,” Anne says. Louis scoffs.

“It’s almost like you made him hate who he is and launched him into a world of poverty,” Louis says, and then smiles bitterly. “I have no interest in revisiting the past here, nor do I care enough to try and change your beliefs, but you have to at least acknowledge you screwed up his entire life.”

“You did that,” she argues.

“I did not,” Louis replies calmly. Too calmly. Harry doesn’t like it; he likes it better when Louis’ being mean to his mom, too. “If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else. A different boy. And you might not like me much, but you should realize how differently things could have gone for him. I’m not a prick. I’m not a perv. I’m the type of person who takes in your screwed up daughter’s kid and raises her as my own. You didn’t have any idea where you were sending him off to, and you didn’t care.”

Anne frowns. “He made his choice.”

“No, he didn’t,” Louis says, and Harry shakes his head.

“Yeah, I did,” Harry disagrees. “I made my choice. I chose Louis. I’m sure if I came crawling on your doorstep, talking about Jesus and apologizing, you probably would have taken me back. But I chose Louis over you. I chose a shitty life over what you could have given me. But I didn’t want you if I couldn’t have him, because it shouldn’t have been a choice in the first place. He loved me. You didn’t.”

He pulls Louis to a different door, one that his mother isn’t standing in front of, and they walk outside together. As they walk to the car, he mulls over his words, and even if he doesn’t completely agree with them -- he really didn’t have a choice -- he hopes that they hurt her the way he wanted them to. He’s not malicious. He’s not a bad person. But he’s also not a push-over; he’s not going to play nice with his mom when there is no point. So long as he’s with Louis, there won’t be a point in trying with her. And that is a choice he gets to make.

-

They don’t see Addison for a week after that. Neither of them are in a rush to see Anne, and by default, that means they can’t see their daughter. It’s only a week, though, and then they decide they should probably stop by. Before they head over, they stop at the health clinic to pick up their STI results.

“This is your last opportunity to tell me you’re cheating on me and I have some gnarly case of crabs,” Harry says as he rips open his results. He knows they’ll all be negative, but he figures he should check anyway.

Louis grunts out a laugh. “Yeah, I’ve been messing with your boys at the club, sorry to tell you like this.”

As Harry reads over his results -- negative, negative, negative, negative -- Louis does, too, and Louis gasps quietly.

“I have syphilis,” he says, clearly lying, and Harry hits him in the arm and tells him to shut up. They put their results back in their envelopes and Louis starts to drive. As he does, Harry lets out a quiet laugh.

“Do you think my mom will accuse us of faking the results?”

Louis rolls his eyes and sighs. “God, I hope not. I would rather die than going back and getting retested with you and your mom. Like a bunch of little kids.” He’s only joking, because he blindly reaches over to pat Harry’s head. Still, maybe he’s right. Maybe it isn’t fair on Louis to purposefully go out of his way to irritate his mom; with Louis, he only makes subtle jabs that Anne can only roll her eyes at. With Harry, he’s been basically firing shots loud enough for the whole city to hear.

“I’ll chill out,” he promises, grabbing Louis’ hand and kissing the back of it. “Promise. She did take me to the doctor’s, so I guess I should be less of an asshole.”

The antibiotics are helping more than the last ones. Not as much as he thought they would, but he definitely feels a difference already. His chest feels lighter, someone. But he still does have an ugly cough, so whenever his boss stops by at the laundromat, he hides in the bathroom whenever he feels a cough coming on. He has to get a second job, they are both painfully aware of that, but Harry has to heal before he throws himself into something else. Even he knows that.

Anne looks irritated when she opens the door to them, ruining the pattern of seeming less and less annoyed every time they visit. So Harry raises his hands in surrender and says, “I won’t be a jerk today.”

“Fine,” she says. “Neither will I, then.” She gives Louis a stern look, and Louis just smiles and holds out the tests. She takes them and opens Harry’s first.

“I have syph, watch out,” Louis says, and Harry laughs and shoves him forward so they can get inside. Anne shuts the door behind them, and he’s about to ask where Addison is when the back door is yanked open and she comes tumbling inside with a cat in her hands.

“I think he’s an outdoor cat, love,” Harry tells her, coming to give her a hug. He’s pretty sure he’s not contagious anymore, since he’s been taking antibiotics for a while. She puts the cat down and wraps her arms tightly around his neck.

“It’s a girl, and I don’t care. It’s mean to leave her outside. It rained yesterday and they were outside.”

Harry smiles at her and pats her back. “Okay, love. Whatever you say.” He used to be the same way, but it was more so because he was worried they wouldn’t come back home or they’d get hurt and he’d never know what happened to them. Anne must be thinking the same thing, because when he glances at her, she’s smiling.

“Your dad was the same way,” she tells Addison. “But like I told him when he was a kid: the ones who want to stay inside, stay inside, and the ones who want to go outside will find a way out no matter what.”

Addison pouts and rests her head against Harry’s shoulder. “Are you still sick, Daddy?” she asks quietly.

“No, baby. Not really.”

“You still sound congested,” Anne points out, and he turns to look at her.

“It’s getting better,” he says. “Really, it is. It might take a while, but it’s getting better.”

She smiles, and it looks genuine. “Good. That’s good.”

Like the last time, Addison wants to watch a movie. It’s the sequel to the last one, so he supposes it makes sense. Harry and Louis sit next to each other, and Addison sits between Louis and Anne. It’s. . . a little weird, not feeling intensely angry or uncomfortable here anymore. He still doesn’t like being around his mom, but it’s not this unbearable, terrifying thing anymore. She doesn’t have anything that she can take away from him now.

About twenty minutes into the movie, Harry shifts as quietly and slowly as he can so he’s leaning into Louis. Anne doesn’t look at him, so he waits a few minutes before dropping his head against Louis’ shoulder. He doesn’t want to piss off his mom, but he also doesn’t want him barely cuddling with his boyfriend to be enough to piss her off. He doesn’t see if she glares at them or not, because his eyes slip shut almost as soon as he’s resting against Louis. Right before he falls asleep, he feels Louis put his hand on his knee.

When he wakes up, the movie is over and Anne’s in the kitchen doing dishes. He doesn’t know where Addison is, but he figures it’s okay because Louis’ still next to him. He burrows into the warmth of him, and it’s peaceful for a few seconds until Harry has to cough about a gazillion times. He sits up, more awake now. He’s still sleepy, and the way Louis’ gently rubbing his lower back makes him want to go back to sleep, but before he can convince himself into believing that’s a good idea, Anne comes into the living room.

Louis’ hand freezes on his back.

“Louis, can you go tell Addison to start her homework?” Anne asks. “It’s spelling, so she’s probably going to need some help.”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Louis agrees. He squeezes Harry’s waist before standing up and leaving the room, and then it’s just Harry and his mom staring at each other. She doesn’t say anything until Louis’ steps up the stairs fades out.

“Come talk with me at the kitchen table,” she says, and before he can respond, she’s turning around and going to the kitchen table. He sits for about thirty seconds, just because he can, before standing and following her to the table. He sits across from her, and it feels eerily similar to the first time he sat with her over two months ago.

She’s tapping on the handle of the mug in front of her, and Harry stares at that instead of looking at her.

“I want you to stay here,” she says, and Harry doesn’t look up.

“Not without Louis,” he tells her, tone bored.

She sighs. “Harry -- ”

“Not without Louis,” he repeats, and he pushes himself up to stand, but she tells him to stay before he can get very far. He doesn’t stand, but he stays ready to push himself up off the chair.

“I was going to say that I understand that your loyalty lies with Louis,” she says, and she seems. . . reserved. She clears her throat. “We both know that I don’t agree with it. And if I could change things, I would, but it doesn’t seem like I can. I don’t want you living in a car, especially when you’re sick.”

Harry stays quiet, but his heartbeat is starting to quicken. She’s not going to tell them they can stay here, together. She’s not. He needs to be realistic here.

“I don’t regret kicking you out,” she continues. “But I do understand that it left you in a bad position. I raised you to rely on me, and I. . . And then things turned out differently for us. I don’t think I quite thought about where you would go. I just thought you’d figure it out.”

“I did.”

“Right,” she says, nodding. “But living the way you have been isn’t sustainable. And it’s not. . . It’s not what I had hoped for you. I never had very high hopes for Gemma, but for you. . . I thought you were going to do great things.”

Harry furrows his eyebrows at her and shakes his head. “Don’t insult Gemma to make your point.”

“You know what I mean,” she says, and Harry resists the urge to tell her that no, he doesn’t. “I just think that I overestimated how much you could handle at eighteen. And Addison. . . Gemma told me she was going to hand her off to you, but I didn’t think she’d actually do it. I didn’t know you had a kid in the mix of that all.”

Harry shrugs. “We’ve done an okay job so far.”

“You have,” Anne agrees. “I think that it’s important for her to have a female influence -- ”

“Mom, stop.”

“I’m not saying anything negative, Harry, it’s just a fact. Kids need both a female and male influence, that’s a fact.”

Harry stares at her, pointedly silent. He’s not going to argue with her about this.

“I want you to consider staying in the garage,” she says.

“With Louis?” he asks, fully expecting her to say no. He’d bet his fucking life on it, and good thing he hadn’t, because his mother hesitantly nods.

“With Louis,” she says.

He feels so mad, suddenly. She’s messing with him, isn’t she? Or she’s luring him into staying, and she’ll kick Louis out or something. Something. Because this is -- that’s crazy. She wouldn’t do that for him, not after everything.

“Are you kidding?” he asks, tone cold.

“No.”

He narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Addison needs her parents around. And I want you to heal.”

“And then what? You’re going to kick us out when I get healthy?”

She shakes her head. “No. And then,” and she looks pained as she says it, “and then we’ll talk about me helping you get an apartment. A nice one. And you will owe me every cent back, don’t you think I’m not keeping track, but. . . yes, that’s what I think will happen next. If you follow my rules.”

Of course there’s a catch.

“Rules?”

“I want you and Louis going to church every week,” she says, and he rolls his eyes. “No, Harry. Listen to me. I’ve been taking Addison every week and she enjoys it. She likes the music.”

Harry glares at her. “We didn’t tell you that you could do that.”

“A child shouldn’t be deprived from faith.”

Harry stares at her for a minute before sitting back in the chair. “Fine,” he says. “Me and Louis go to church once a week. That it?”

“You have to go Confession and talk to the priest about your sin.”

It pulls a bitter smile out of him. “My sin? Me being gay, you think a priest is going to care about that? You do know that priests touching children is, like, an epidemic here, right?”

“That’s a myth,” she tells him, waving him off. “But yes, Father Williams would like to hear about your relationship with men. He might be able to help you.”

“Okay,” Harry says. “So how far into detail should I go, then? Should I tell him about how Louis -- ”

“I’m doing you a massive favor here,” she snaps, pointing a finger at him. “You will not sit here and talk to me about what you and he do behind closed doors.”

“Fine,” Harry snaps back, because maybe she’s right. Maybe he’s being ungrateful. But he has every right to be angry with her. “Church once a week and one confessional with the priest. Fine. But if you think you’re going to turn me straight, you’re wrong.”

She sighs. “Church once a week and a confessional each. And you have to stop using vulgar language around me. And you and Louis can’t do anything. . . sexual while you’re here.”

“What, are you going to babysit us at night?”

She gives him a look. “Harry.”

“There’s no way you’d be able to tell what we do, so fine. Sure. Let’s go with we won’t do anything while we’re here.”

“I just don’t want to hear about it,” she amends, and it’s a baby step in the right direction. The babiest of baby steps, but a step nonetheless.

“That’s fair.”

“And you can’t work at that strip club anymore.”

His cheeks burn. He didn’t realize she knew it was a strip club. “Fine,” he agrees.

“And you’ll be tested for STDs every month.”

He scoffs. “Like hell I’m paying for that.”

“I’ll pay for it,” she says, and Harry shrugs.

“Fine. I don’t care. It’s a waste of time and money, considering STDs don’t appear out of thin air and me and Louis are both clean, but fine. I don’t care.” She doesn’t immediately follow up with another rule, so he raises his eyebrow. “Is that it?”

She shakes her head. “You have to start doing the yard work for Mrs. Walker again. It’s killing my back.”

It pulls a genuine smile out of him. He likes being helpful in ways he can, especially for people who deserve it. “Okay,” he agrees. “And I can. . . Me and Louis can do the yard work around here, too.”

“Okay then. Do we have a deal?”

Church once a week, a ten minute talk with a priest, STD checks and some yard work in exchange for a place to stay on the same property as his daughter? He laughs and nods easily. “Deal.”