Work Text:
Illustration for this fic- http://castornotpollux.tumblr.com/post/114704875396/i-suppose-this-is-my-coping-mechanism-continuing
----------
Harry found himself lying in the bath. He had been there for hours with his knees bumping up against the the edge of the rusting tap where water damage was beginning to make the plaster pucker. It was now 2am and the water had long since gone cold and the tips of his toes were slowly numbing but he found that he didn’t quite have the will to get up. He opted instead to remain still, staring at the ceiling expressionlessly and listening to the staccato of water dripping from the faucet- the tap tap tapping punctuating the silence a little bit too lightly.
He’d expected love to be different than this.
And he had expected a lot from love. He was a born romantic. That overdone crescendo that so often appears at the climax of romantic movies was the go-to soundcheck of Harry’s childhood. He’d practiced grand gestures on unsuspecting, albeit charmed, grade school teachers. He’d recited more poems than he could count to more girls than he could remember, and he’d spent even more hours than that trying to conjure up the feeling of butterflies in his stomach that he’d read about so fondly. Every walk to the grocery was a mission- an opportunity to stare longingly after passers by, waiting to be struck by love at first sight.
Love was supposed to be warm and come softly and play like a too-slow sepia super-eight roll. It was supposed to taste like tea in the late afternoon, the sort that you hand strain and bother to serve in a nice cup. It was supposed to be golden and slowly brewed.
It wasn’t supposed to feel like he’d been smacked.
And it certainly wasn’t supposed to come in the middle of illustration 301- an epiphany brought on by a too loud, too familiar cackle and a 50 pence sandwich to the face.
Is this what it feels like?
Harry felt more like somebody had died.
Death though, he had handled before.
The death of old relatives had seemed like a soft parting of ways, a kind of hollow relief similar to letting out a breath you didn't know you had been holding in. He had been asked to write a eulogy once and he’d spent a long time on his back porch, flicking his wrist as if the right words would come snapping out. It had rained and he’d been too distracted to go inside and the blank paper had become waterlogged and loose and had torn when he put a pen to it finally. It hadn’t mattered. Words didn’t mean much in death. He remembered discovering that the smallest details: smells, locations, sounds… these were the dead’s lasting legacies, the things that could fool you into thinking that they’d never left. But only for a second. These things had always been like little moments of apricity in the winter- fleeting and fickle. Despite them he couldn't quite trick himself into forgetting that they were gone for good.
And now he couldn’t shake little fleeting memories of a different sort- collected smiles and whispers and light touches...
But no, this was nothing so simple as mourning because this wasn’t anything he had in the first place. He was becoming nostalgic for glances and conversations that had never even happened.
A burmal sense of ennui was nestling itself in the pit of his heart and he was becoming increasingly frustrated.
It was difficult to brood in a room so brightly lit and full of his thoughts- a lingering silent admission to something Harry didn’t want to think about anymore.
He got out of the bath.
----------
London was at its best this time of year, right in the dead of winter. It was bleak, in an idyllic sort of way. The brick walk-ups in the East End seemed to lean in towards each other underneath low slung telephone wires and charcoal tree branches. On the street, cars teetered around swamp sized rain puddles, tagged walls, and flat store fronts with bright neon signs in red and white and yellow. The parks were blanketed in a hush of damp cold and the walkways were now populated by smokers milling about in bent-over, cynical looking clusters.
The studio buildings of Slade School of Fine Arts loomed like a sort of stainless steel sentinel across the street, casting a long icy shadow over the sidewalk where Harry stood. He found the building more ominous than inviting, and chose to remain where he was, hunched against the cold with his hands stuffed in his armpits.
He was the first one here.
Normally he met his mates before their shared life drawing class, but his early morning walk had lead him here with perhaps an hour to spare. The walk itself had been uneventful, dim, and charmingly quiet. Here, at five in the morning, he felt as if time was held filipendulous, just on the brink of falling off into an eternity of wandering walkways and twilight-shadowed trees. It was placid, verging on boring- far removed from his usual flashbulb lit strolls in public when he dared to venture out with Louis, who insisted on stopping to photograph every sidewalk crack he saw. Now that he was here though, he had nothing to do but wait and think.
He hated being alone with his own thoughts. They had kept him up the previous night and he’d almost caught a cold in the bath and now he had a full hour to mull about the outside of the studio and try his hardest to keep those same plaguing thoughts at bay.
Upon some digging about in the pockets of his coat he discovered a packet of pre-rolleds and a lighter left over from when Zayn had worn it last. He was desperate to entertain himself, and if there was a time to start smoking it was probably now.
The first one didn’t go so well.
He had gingery lifted a cigarette to his lips and had held it there too long while trying to work out the logistics of sparking the lighter and shielding the flame from the early morning wind at the same time. It had gotten soggy at the end and he tossed it into the brush.
The second one had been more of a success. He managed to light it and even though he spent about 2 minutes trying to hack up a lung after his first drag, he counted it as a win. After about 10 minutes he had worked dutifully through 2 cigarettes and was struggling against the breeze to light a third. He hadn’t heard Niall come up behind him.
“Didn’t know you smoked, mate.”
There was a lilt to his voice like he was suppressing a smirk and as Harry jumped and dropped his lighter, it became a full blown grin.
“Fuck me! You can’t just ...”
The words died in Harry’s mouth and he trailed off feebly as he met Niall’s gaze. He had a sort of enigmatic furrow to his eyebrows now and he looked a little bit red under the eyes as well. His hair was pushed up where it had been resting against the pillow at odd angles and his lips were redder than usual from the dry cold. Harry found himself leaning in his direction slightly, with his neck craned, and suddenly he was too aware of the sort of unnerving stork-like gaze he had fixed the shorter boy with. He shrunk back slightly.
They’d stood there wordlessly for longer than either of them had meant to, allowing a dolorous silence to settle between them. Niall had stared at him softly until he’d broken eye contact in favor of frowning off into the middle distance and resuming his previous attempts to light his cigarette. Niall shook his head.
“I really thought you hated those honestly.”
“I do. Something about them giving you cancer although I don’t quite remember the specifics.”
“Christ,” Niall smiled at that, smooth skin crinkling across the bridge of his nose ever so slightly, “you sound like you’re about fifty. How’s middle age been treating you? Is this why you’ve started to dress like somebody’s senile gran?”
He made a move to pluck at Harry’s shirt but Harry managed to swat him away, sacrificing his cigarette in the process.
“You’re killing the earth.” he huffed quietly, more at the cigarette on the ground than the boy next to him. Banter like this with Niall was easy up until a day ago. Now it made Harry a little short of breath and a little red in the face and he was reminded of a 50p sandwich smacking him across the cheek….
“Give us a puff then” Niall piped, a little too brightly, and Harry passed him a new cigarette without looking at him, without watching the way his lips curled around the filter.
And so they’d stood like that for a while, both leaning stiffly against the cold and staring ahead, one of them with a furrowed brow and the other holding a pensively passive expression as he exhaled around the cigarette that was balanced on his teeth. As Harry had shifted from foot to foot he’d wondered vaguely if he should say something and had been caught up in formulating a sentence when Niall spoke first.
“Should’nt have got here so early. The other boys won’t be here till a quarter after they’re supposed to, and you’ll have been here for ages, looking like a knob.”
He was taking the piss but Harry hadn’t had the energy to hit back, and Niall’s comment had fallen flat to the empty morning air.
They continued to stand stock still on the sidewalk. Harry pursued a pebble across the pavement with the side of his shoe and tried to will himself out of existence so he wouldn’t have to breathe Niall’s cologne.
“Something wrong Harry?”
Harry opened his mouth but his brain was working slower than his facial muscles and he stood there gaping at Niall like a fish until an addison lee had ground to a stop on the curb and suddenly Louis and Liam were upon them, squabbling half-heartedly and trying to make a go of pinching each other's nipples.
“Why are we standing around outside, lads?” Louis asked between a dive for Liam’s balls and a rebuttal slap.
When he was met with no response, he straightened a little and eyed them properly for the first time.
“And where is Zayn?”
----------
After a lot of dragging of stools and an unnecessary amount of squabbling over the best easel, Harry found himself seated between Zayn and Liam in room 4b. The professor was scraping away at the board with a crumb of chalk. Zayn was slumbering across the top of his clipboard and Liam was chiding Louis for trying to dip his hand in his jar of brush cleaner. Niall was slumped in the opposite corner with a stick charcoal in his hand and a kneaded eraser in his mouth and Harry was tugging at the peeling bits on the toe of his boot, glaring in his direction.
It was rude, really, to look like that when all you were doing was rifling through your pencil case. Certainly not Harry’s fault that he suddenly felt poorly- flushed and unable to breath properly without bile rising in his throat.
They had been here just yesterday, rolling about on the floor after class- Harry trying to retrieve his newspaper pad and in the process, trying to touch every part of Niall’s body because that’s what they’d always done. Niall had sat up in a desperate attempt to escape and for a split second it had been as if Harry was seeing him for the first time all over. It had happened in slow motion. Niall had reached for his bag to grab that turkey and swiss monstrosity that he had purchased from ASDA the day before and he’d caught a shade of blue in the corner of Niall’s eye that he’d never noticed, and the way the studio lights illuminated the edges of the duck fluff poking out around his ears….
Realization hit him just before the sandwich did.
And now they were here again and everybody was acting as if things were still the same. As if Harry was not suddenly in love.
Lately he’d caught himself writing poetry, little verses and lyrics in his head and he hadn’t then realized why. He’d just done it if there was nobody around to talk to or in the silences where Niall would lean up against him especially gently or pause to shove food in his mouth, or when there was too much time spent staring out windows.
Too often he’d carried a feeling of happy moroseness in his gut, the kind that comes with mooning over a thing, even though he wasn’t sure why he was mooning. There’s something eloquent about wanting what you can’t have. Something almost pleasant about discovering somebody you like to look at even if they haven’t discovered you. It probably comes with the knowledge that Harry can quietly fill his head with descriptive little verses and nobody will ever know. He found himself at dinner, staring past dragging forks and shoulders of friends and struggling to feign casual conversation. The struggle had been mind-numbingly sweet- not in the way of being enjoyable like something happy is, but enjoyable as watching a thunderstorm roll in is enjoyable. Wanting created language he didn’t have when he was content. It turned even his most bitter moments into something with a aura of secret romance. And who doesn’t have a bit of an infatuation with romance?
Now he was staring at Niall who had begun to hum a song by The Who absently- plucking at invisible guitar strings with his fingers, trying to find a name for the haze he’d found himself caught in for the past several months. ‘Unrequited’ seemed to fit the ticket.
Harry was now sure that he’d realized he was in love with him long ago and had been pushing it to the back of his mind for a while.
He figured he’d actually known since that night they’d gone to Pryzm when Liam had gone to bed early and Zayn had stayed back to get drunk with Louis at their flat. They’d gone wandering into the red light district and had bought round after round of drinks at every bar they had come across. Harry remembered stumbling home with his hand around Niall’s waist, the reflection of the lights bouncing from the wet street to his eyes and the night air turning the tip of his nose red. He had leaned over and laughed, right in Niall’s ear just to annoy him and Niall just laughed back with his most obnoxious cackle and they had gotten back to Zayn and Louis’ walkup like that- stumbling and laughing together at nothing. They had crashed up the too-steep flight of stairs and into the flat’s dingy kitchen. Harry had fallen against the stove and knocked over a pile of unwashed dishes but it didn’t matter much because in a second Niall was trying to shove ice cubes from the freezer down his shirt and they chased each other until Harry had caught Niall in a corner. He had looked up at him with an expression he couldn’t read and they’d stopped laughing and everything was painfully, loudly, still. Harry could feel Niall’s breath ghosting over his lips and air was suddenly shallow in his lungs as if the oxygen had been vacuumed right out. They’d stood there gasping in each other's faces. Harry thought maybe he was trying to gasp himself back into reality. They were tipsy as tugboats and swimming in golden haze and suddenly everything felt very urgent. Compelling enough for Harry because he had spent a long time studying the thin curve of Niall’s lips and now he was so, so close to them. Compelling for Niall probably because alcohol can make anybody compelling and he was trapped in the corner anyway. Harry supposed he’d liked to pretend that the look in his eyes was more than the vodka but he never found out because Niall had laughed- a short humorless bark- and he’d been so startled that he’d backed up a step, allowing Niall to duck under his arm and dash from the room.
So there it was.
It had taken an actual slap in the face with a bit of bread but there it was.
And then Harry suddenly wasn’t sure if he could be in room 4b any longer. Niall had looked over at him when he’d spilled his charcoals across the linoleum in his haste to get up, and he’d excused himself with some mumbling about food poisoning before shoving his way out the door.
----------
Zayn and Louis’ flat was dim, awash with blue shadows and off-white sheets that littered the room. The window sills hadn’t been dusted in a while and small coats of fine powder had collected atop the spray cans and succulents that lived there. A stack of records (for which there was no record player) sat like a centerpiece on a low slung coffee table amidst magazines, a grove of bottles, and a myriad of different colored pencil shavings. An enormous, heavily framed oil painting dominated the room- one of Louis earlier works. It was a picture of three oddly existential looking pineapples piled artfully on a rocky beach. They appeared to be gazing out across the water. Humorlessly. Darkly. Like any pile of existential looking pineapples would. For the amount of clothes, roaches, and unopened mail dashed across the wood paneled floor, it seemed oddly empty. The lingering scent of sun-heated tree bark and cigarettes caused a sort of odd tugging in Harry’s ribcage. They boys had been draped across the couches and arm chairs in the living room since morning, when Liam had arrived and appointed himself breakfast chef. The day had proceeded apace and none of them had moved much from their current positions, except for Niall who had popped out the door to pick up pizzas just 5 minutes ago. Louis had been flicking through netflix with his signature largesse, but he apparently decided that torturing Harry would be more fun because after mumbling his way through another movie summary he turned around with a meaningful smirk.
“What’s been up Harold, you’ve been acting like a right ass these last few days. Haven’t spoken to Niall at all.”
“Yeah,” piped Zayn from underneath a pillow on the floor, “That’s uncharacteristic. Usually you can barely keep yourself from blowing him in public.”
There was a pregnant silence for a full minute. Louis had caught Harry’s eye and studied him intently before something shifted in his expression- it became gentle and, to his horror, a little bit sympathetic. He then opted to throw a pillow at Zayn instead of pressing the issue, returning the smirk to his lips as quickly as he had put it away.
“Oh look who’s deigned to join the conversation!”
Liam looked up from his phone gleefully (ribbing on a sleep deprived Zayn was his favorite pastime):
“Careful Lou, don’t tease him! He’s only just started to act like he knows us in public.”
“Only because that aggressive acne breakout he had outed him as a mere mortal.”
“Yeah I remember. Didn’t want to tell him it was herpes though… He’s too sweet.”
Zayn shoved another pillow over his face in a valiant effort to block out the conversation but Louis pressed on:
“You know Liam, I think he likes that guy from our theory class more than us! What’s his name? Isn’t his graffiti tag Naughty Boy?”
“What a traitor...” and then a thoughtful pause, ”But I don’t think ‘likes’ is the right word.”
“More like worships,” Louis scooted closer to Zayn so he could lean down and talk in his ear, “tell us, when he uses the loo do you actually wipe his ass for him or do you just hold the hand towel or what?”
Louis earned a slap for that. His mouth formed a comical “o” and he clutched at the side of his face while Liam rolled around on the floor guffawing and normally Harry would be enjoying himself but there was something in his chest that had dug its claws into his lungs and he found that he was forcing a smile from his perch without participating.
Nobody seemed to notice his silence and the conversation turned. Zayn had risen from his pillow fortress to pants Louis good naturedly-
“Nice undies mate.”
“What the fuck, Malik!”
“What? I said nice pants I’m just being supportive.”
“That’s your idea of support? Nice pants? Mark me down as inspired. You should write one of them books full of inspirational quotes.”
“Hey I value my undergarments, I’m not an animal.”
Niall returned with the pizza and eventually the day wound downward. There was a peculiar tension towards the post twilight hours as the last dregs of beer drained from bottles and the boys lounged amidst the crumpled plastics and empty dime bags of a lazy evening. Louis had gone out for a smoke and Niall and Liam had trickled off into the dark one by one until only Harry and Zayn were left, sloshing their drink in the bottoms of their glasses, squinting in the crepuscular light because nobody had bothered to turn on a lamp. Zayn seemed to be toeing around something he was trying to put into words and Harry rubbed his neck in his many splendored awkwardness, waiting for Zayn’s thought to form. When he finally spoke it was barely above a whisper and Harry had to lean across the table to hear properly.
“You know, my mum sent me this book a few months ago…”
He paused to card his fingers through his hair, “That book’s been sitting in the same spot on the corner of my bed for ages. I haven’t read it I only know it’s title: The Faraway Nearby.”
He paused again, refusing to look at Harry and picking at his fingers. Harry, in turn, made a particularly frog like expression at the ground.
“I think I sleep curled around it ‘cause then it reminds me of all the things I want that I can’t have you know? Like, late nights I’ll open the book jacket but I never read it. I don’t know how to read the person I want either. It’s a stupid metaphorical thing.”
He looked up through his eyelashes and waited until Harry returned his stare.
“I’m sorry I said what I said… earlier. I didn’t realize.”
“Didn’t realize what?”
“That you’ve got the same thing. Niall is your Faraway Nearby. Isn’t he.”
It struck more as an accusation than a question. But Zayn didn’t seem to care that Harry had begun to put up all his walls with a stoney face, he just held him in his seat with eyes fluttering amidst a shock of black lashes. His stare had all the lost potential to be predatory, and he had a proclivity for making you feel like he could read your mind- one that Harry had forgotten about until now. Harry’s own eyes were pulled downward by the invented distraction of shoe laces.
“You know,” Zayn whispered, “it’s when you start to have songs that remind you of them. They come on when you’re doing the dishes or sommat and suddenly you can’t stand and can’t think ‘bout anything except for their face or laugh and it takes you minutes after the song’s over to start breathing normally again...that’s when you’re really fucked.”
Harry looked up finally. He could feel the first smile he had cracked in days playing hysterically across his lips.
“Guess I’m really fucked then.”
----------
Harry wasn’t sure if Niall was aware, but he did this thing with his eyebrows whenever they made eye contact- bounce them up to make a playful rendezvous with his quiff, give a wink and a sideways smile.
He knew it was just a simple gesture. A way of being friendly between mates.
It was an off-handed thing.
But it kept him up at night the way he’d feel his ears burn. And the nights when he had beer on his breath and his vision blurred and he couldn’t drink off that sideways smile even when he found himself pining at the bottom of a glass, he wondered if Niall ever toppled about after sundown thinking about him too.
But he knew he didn’t.
Harry had this recurring nightmare of him. It was his favorite nightmare, but only a nightmare because he was in it. He couldn’t forget what Zayn had said a month ago. Understand that, despite a penchant for half-baked ideas and a less than appealing past, Harry could be on occasion, analytical- so focused- too focused- on small things.
He could describe Niall in the shortest of abstracts or over multiple volumes of text but it was easiest to say that he was a little imp-ish. Altogether untroubled by somebody like Harry and he couldn’t really pin him by anything but the fine details. The fast crescendo of his laugh and his jittery hand patterns and knees that jutted out too far from his spider legs.
Harry though these things at 3 am, alone in his bed, and wondered if there was anything behind that sideways smile. Zayn was right. He was well and truly fucked.
He had taken to staying up, watching some horrid action movie in hopes of numbing his mind into submissive sleep. He’d found that he couldn’t afford to lie in the dark with his own thoughts. They’d recently become wandering and dangerous, spiraling endlessly into a galaxy of ideas he had never had before- like a tv antenna that had accidently found a real connection to the outer cosmos. His current train of thought was dulled out by the sounds of cars on the tv leaving trails of rubber down an airport runway, and it had just begun to become difficult to keep his eyes open when his phone rang.
When he chose not to answer it, it began to buzz urgently every couple of seconds and upon investigation he discovered it was Louis- sending him text after text demanding a call.
After some thoughtful seconds spent chewing on his lip, Harry replied with a cactus emoji. He got a perverse kind of pleasure from using the most out of context pictures possible and also he was feeling a little bit prickly. It seemed appropriate.
This had sated Louis for a full five minutes before his phone began to ring again.
“Listen Tommo, it’s 2 am. You better be dying or worse.” Harry’s voice held no edge and instead came thickly from the back of his throat in a sleepy rumble.
“Wow you ok? You sound like Ian Curtis… did you break your nose?”
“No you twat it’s just that it is an ungodly hour of the morning and you’re forcing me to speak.”
He switched the tv off moodily and shoved further under his sheets as if they could shield him from whatever news Louis was about to bring. He hoped dearly that this wouldn’t be another one of his midnight revelations in which he would announce apropos of nothing into the receiver that he had just discovered his left ball looked like Steve Buscemi. Although that would have been neither uncommon nor unexpected.
There had been a long pause on the other end of the line- so long that Harry was lifting the phone away from his ear to disconnect when Louis’ voice floated wispily into the room in an uncharacteristic sort of shmaltz.
“Do you recall when we all went to that ice rink? The one in Holmes Chapel?”
“No.”
He did in fact, remember the outing, perhaps better than he would care to admit. Christmas holiday their first year at uni, they’d sojourned to his hometown. In the second week of the stay they had gone to the Deeside Leisure Center, and Liam had ended up talking them into skating. Zayn had been rubbish and spent the whole night with his arms hooked around some part of Liam’s body. Louis had claimed to be ace at skating but was also well fed up with Liam at the time so he’d spent the good part of an hour pouting on the bleachers.
“Why,” Harry sighed long-sufferingly, “would you ring at 2 am to remind me of an ice rink?”
“Because. I’ve had a revelation.”
“Excuse me?”
“Also I’ve got Chinese and I want you to watch me eat every one of the spring rolls I’ve just purchased.”
There was only a second for Harry to fear the worst before Louis chirped “See you in 7!” and the line went dead.
It was 15 minutes, not 7, when Louis turned up in a rush of rain droplets and flushed cheeks and smoke. He stomped his cigarette out under his heel, clapped Harry’s shoulder in an assuaging way and let out a nepheligenous cough before striding over the threshold and inviting himself to a seat on the couch.
“Was there some tacit agreement in which we decided that this was a thing?” Harry waved vaguely at Louis’ trainers dripping on his coffee table.
“Yes. When you decided that we were very good friends.”
“I decided…wait a second I thought you were bringing me food”
Louis plowed on as if Harry wasn’t speaking, “Look sharp I’ve only got 5 minutes. You’ve seemed off lately and I’m worried.”
Suddenly Louis looked older than he’d ever seen him look before, the bags under his eyes seeming weary instead of snarky and the curve to his eyebrows was less judgemental than arched in concern. His hair was deflated from the rain and his cheekbones stuck out so sharply it seemed as if they too were accusing him of something, but he wasn’t sure what. He didn’t get to figure out before the expression that had ghosted over his pixie features was gone.
“I’ve decided that we are going to see a film. We haven’t done anything all five of us since that ice skating mess. Tomorrow…. No! No you can’t disagree it’s already planned and it will be good for you.”
Louis glanced up at Harry with a hint of a glimmer in his eye, “Liam will have a fit if I cancel now he’s so looking forward to it- the goof- and maybe we’ll get to finally see you and Niall, seeing as you two are always off having loads of fun without us.”
Harry knocked over the drink that was balanced on the sofa next to his elbow.
“Ah Haz! You’re the reason why we can’t have nice things.”
Louis stood up too brightly and bounded for the door and Harry only had the chance to flip him off before he’d swung it wide to the sheets of rain and was disappearing around the frame.
“We’ll be by to pick you up at 8. Be ready!”
With that he was left alone on the sofa in a puddle of wine and broken glass with a distinct vision of an echo-y rec center and scraped side panelling. A gloved hand. An excited little dance- one that he would have laughed at if it hadn’t been so earnest. He remembered letting Niall lead him into the ice in a throng of small children who were slipping and sliding between their legs. At one point they’d gotten too close to each other, pushed together by bodies pressing inward as the crowd wobbled past. He’d turned towards him so quickly they’d accidentally bumped noses. Niall’s face had flushed and he’d laughed a little too quickly and they’d stood there staring at eachother smilingly lightly for what had felt like ages. Harry hadn’t stopped grinning that night until Louis had poked his dimples and told him he looked like an idiot.
It had always been easy with Niall, because Niall was easy. He was relaxed. He was comfortable. He didn’t spend his evenings imagining Harry’s lips or how the nape of his neck might taste…
And since when did he think those things?
It wasn’t easy anymore.
Harry needed to go to sleep.
----------
The morning began early, with Liam showing up at Harry’s window- faced pressed to the glass and a McMuffin in his hand. He had to let him in, on the grounds that it’s easy to kick your cat out of the house when it shows up at 3 and scratches on your door but when your dog comes and makes puppy eyes at you, you’re a shit human if you don’t pet it. Besides, Harry couldn’t refuse him a thing.
Liam found his way into Harry’s bed and was in the process of sniffing one of his scented candles for the fifth time when Harry finished inhaling his english muffin and egg and managed to kick him in the side under the duvet
“Liam. I love you. You know I adore you, but Louis came round last night and I’m not sure if I’m up for whatever this is.”
Liam looked so stricken, so worried that he had overstepped his bounds -with his round eyes going wide and his pouty lip sticking out over his morning scruff- that Harry decided he didn’t mind so much. Liam had gotten up so quickly that his leg got caught in the sheets and he tumbled off of the bed. Harry could only gasp between wheezing laughter that he wanted him to stick around after all.
Once they were situated back in a sea of pillows and Harry was half way through his second breakfast, Liam decided to speak.
“Been golfing with Niall yesterday,”
Harry imagined Niall’s shoulders twisting under one of his thin sports shirts. Liam didn’t seemed to notice that Harry had gone starry eyed.
“Been golfing with Niall yesterday and I think he might be a bit upset that you’ve not talked to him for over a week.”
Harry imagined Niall lining up his shot. Squinting into the afternoon light that landed on his hair and shoulders like little flecks of gold...Maybe the light was coming from Niall himself and Harry imagined burning up into little ashes because Niall was the sun…
And then Liam poked him in the ear with a wet pinky finger.
“Oi!”
“Are you even listening to me? I said Niall was proper cut up, and no offense mate but it’s sort of your fault.”
Harry blinked at him. Liam pushed on through, by now very immune to Harry’s doe eyed confusion.
“Anyway I didn’t come to tell you off.... only you might want to talk to him.”
“Thanks, mum”
“Don’t. I’ve had enough of that for a full day already. Louis is having a strop back at his place and I’ve only just escaped. Just wanted some peace and quiet.”
Liam bent over to pluck at a loose thread and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. He put on some cartoon and had gone to make popcorn as Harry let his eyes become heavy and he drifted off, imaging brown rooted hair and a used to be snaggle-toothed smirk that stretch from the inside of his eyelids and away into his dreams.
Liam’s coveted peace and quiet hadn’t been long lived. Louis had re-appeared with Zayn in tow at half 5 and had set about the business of harassing Harry, predictably attempting to pour his tea on him and give him titty twisters. Harry had been shoved to the floor and forced to relive something out of The Great Gatsby- Zayn had thrown the contents of his closet across the room in a dramatic shower of prints and sheer fabrics and Louis had wailed about all of his beautiful beautiful shirts in his best impression of a hysterical Daisy that was decidedly not as funny as Liam had found it. Harry had told them he was going to go drown himself in a pool.
“Can’t do, man,” Zayn huffed from underneath the duvet that Louis was currently trying to smother him with, “You haven’t finished your last 3 panels for Light and Motion. Prof will have your head.”
“Well I’d be dead anyway that’s sort of the point...”
“Yeah you told me you’d let me have a look at those actually,” Liam piped, “where are they.. somewhere in your portfolio yeah?”
He made a move to grab the black handled case from under Harry’s bed frame, but Harry was too fast- snatching it up against his chest protectively, pouting like a child. To his further distress, the motion captured Louis attention.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you move so fast Haz! You hiding something?”
His eyebrows quirked wickedly. Zayn too, caught onto Harry’s mounting discomfort, like some sort of preternatural 6th sense for mischief that he and Louis shared… a 6th sense that allowed them to circle up like sharks moving in for a kill.
“What is it Harry?” Louis pressed. “Some naughty drawing of that model that you like? Come on don’t be shy. We all draw nudes outside of class…Actually you’ll never guess who I caught Zayn drawing the other day…”
Zayn smacked Louis a little bit harder than necessary across the shoulder and glanced at Liam to see if he was watching... but Louis shook him off easily
“Let’s have a look then shall we?”
And as if on queue they pounced, wrestling the portfolio from Harry’s grip and spilling its contents across the floor, shuffling his pieces off under his dresser and chairs into the ensuing silence.
For the past two weeks, every time Harry put a pencil to paper, he discovered himself outlining the same curve of pale lips and triangle nose and soft tipped hair that pushed out around ears and napes of necks in blond tufts.
And now two weeks worth of drawings of Niall were fanned across his floor in a neat sort of pile that thinned out right at Liam’s toes where he’d stood too fast and spilt his tea.
Nobody moved. Louis was still clutching Harry’s upturned portfolio bag and Zayn still had Harry’s shoulders wrestled to the floor. For the first time in quite a while, Louis’ condescension was obfuscated and Zayn’s taunts never came and Liam’s belly roll laugh never left his lips. It wasn’t until they heard footsteps down the outside hall that Louis snapped into action. He began to shove the drawings back into the folio case urgently and Zayn stooped to pick up the ones that he missed and Liam disappeared to stall Niall at the door and Harry sat dazed on the floor. His fingers curled around the only drawing he had managed to keep from the others. Tucked to his stomach.
----------
Niall was none the wiser. He’d showed up at the door flushed, with paint under his nails and down his shirt and across the toes of his high tops, knees poking out of his impossibly tight jeans. As soon as Liam had let him by he’d rushed to Harry as if he hadn’t seen him in ages, wrapping him against his hip tightly and smiling brightly at the side of Harry’s face. He smelled like rain, and ozone, and wet cement, and acrylics and was out of breath. The rasping he made as he greeted everybody brushed the shell of Harry’s ear and made all the blood in his body rush to his extremities. It was all he could muster to look down at his own bare feet next to Niall’s muddied converse and think very urgently about his grandmother.
Niall’s smile faltered when Harry didn’t move or speak and he removed his arm from his waist gingerly- as if burnt. When he spoke next he was clipped and a bit callous-
“Are we going to this movie or not then?”
Louis had let Zayn pick the film and they’d ended up at an obscure venue that had an old fashioned marquee and yellowing posters for upcoming independent pictures plastered outside the ticket window. To Niall’s delight they discovered they could order pints in-house and he had bought them all a round before they were ushered into the darkening theater. Louis had shuffled Liam and Zayn into a row quickly and had seated himself on the end so that Harry had no choice except to sit next to Niall- something he suspected that Louis had done on purpose- and the seats were tattered and thin and made for children probably because Harry found his knee bumping against Niall’s no matter how much he shifted in his chair.
The movie begun with some grey toned opening shot of a woman in a bath, chain smoking and engulfed in a slow, discordant synth soundtrack that indicated Zayn had picked an art house feature that was less about plot and more about shot per shot cinematographic significance.
Typical.
As it happened he seemed to be the only one actually paying attention. Twenty minutes in and Liam was jabbing at Zayn’s ribs trying to ask what was going on now, Louis was texting, Niall was running two fingers along the rim of his empty glass, and flicking the fingers of his other hand along the neck of an imaginary guitar with his eyes closed. Harry could hear him breathing out the opening of Hotel California through his nose…. and Harry. Harry himself hadn’t caught a word of the spotty dialogue since the movie had begun. He had opted instead to use the cover of darkness to stare at the side of Niall’s softly illuminated face. Whatever muted lighting choices the director had made, they were highly commendable- it rounded off the tip of Niall’s nose and caught the tops of his cheeks and his upper lip in a dull blue glow. He was a little flushed and breathing out rhythmically and bobbing his head, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks and Harry was hyper aware of Niall’s bad knee resting against his own, brushing his jeans every time he tapped his foot to the beat. He was suddenly possessed by the need to touch that scar that streaked down the front of Niall’s knee. To draw it later- he told himself.
For scientific reasons.
He was just a centimeter away from brushing up the thick red line when the lights came up. Zayn was upon them, rambling about the brilliance of the color pallet and why it was significant in which scenes and Liam was bobbing along behind him as if he understood every word. Niall was clambering out of his seat with “Fuck, Lou don’t push me, me knee’s stiff!” and Harry found himself the last one in the row with his hand still hovering right over where Niall’s knee had been a moment before and Hotel California playing back in his head.
This could be heaven or this could be hell...
Louis had been the one to drop him off at his flat that evening, toeing around to the passengers side after Harry had gotten out and following him up to his door.
“Gonna let me in then?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.” Louis shoved past him and flung his legs over the arm of the sofa, stretching his back and propping his hands behind his neck. Harry flung his coat onto the back of an armchair and made to stomp off to his room before Louis could so much as open his mouth but he had only made it to edge of the living room before Louis had spoken.
Fast but not fast enough.
“Haz.”
“I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”
He heard Louis sigh long-sufferingly behind him.
“Fine.”
There was a pause.
“Get me a cuppa then? You’re losing your hosting touch Harold.”
“Get it yourself.”
Usually Louis would protest, or take the mickey out of Harry until he would be forced to escape to the kitchen anyways, but to Harry’s surprise, Louis pried himself from the couch and loped off into the kitchen without so much as a peep to turn on the stove. Harry found himself sinking into the armchair across from the couch and settling his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. He remained like that until Louis had returned with two teas and his last biscuits and made a show of plopping down across from him before extending his arms and legs like a cat and pulling Harry’s laptop onto his chest.
“I found a song you might like the other day…” Louis tried, letting an edge of hopefulness creep into his voice. He sounded vulnerable in a way he only did when he was trying especially hard to make up for something and Harry was bad at resisting these half apologies anyway, so he gave in and looked up.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s dope.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Harry fell asleep like that. Right in the armchair, letting Louis lull him with soft songs and lyrics that made him think of scars and knobby knees and rolled jeans.
----------
Harry couldn’t stop drawing Niall.
Well, not Niall specifically. Parts of Niall.
Things that were Niall and things that were Niall’s.
Two days ago they’d been in life drawing practicing hands and Harry found the hands that showed up on his pad to be a little ropey and thin, with calloused fingers like they spent a lot of time pressing into nylon strings.
They’d been assigned a perspective drawing and Harry found himself outside of Niall’s favorite dive pub trying to get the angles just right and that little figure in the window that looked all too familiar...
All his prints came out in warm, deep yellows and ceruleans and steel blues and clover greens- pallets that the professor did not fail to point out were far from his maroon undertones that he was so fond of.
The lady at the shop had lectured him about 90 gauge hot press papers and he had day dreamed about hot press sheets instead- warm mornings and lazy mornings and mornings spent with his legs tangled with somebody elses…
He carried these drawing with him. Little reminders. But they sort of hurt.. sort of tugged at his heart and made him more aware of that boy across the room who wouldn’t stop singing Jumping Jack Flash and who’s chicken legs wrapped around his easel so that he could tilt it forward and lean against his drawing pad, tongue between his teeth in concentration and backlit by the gray london light.
It was after one particularly distracting class period of watching Niall twirl a pencil between his lips, that Harry found himself crowded into the corner of the classroom next to the sink and drying racks. He had turned to find Zayn, a little too close for comfort, golden eyes alight with something that he might have pinned as anger if the rest of his expression hadn’t been so soft.
“You’re being thick. You know that right?” he rumbled, right next to Harry’s ear as he leaned around him to clean a brush,
“That and you’ve missed half the assignments because you’re drawing mr. sunshine on the other side of the room. Can’t hide from me I sit right next to you.”
Harry opened his mouth to protest but Zayn now had a hand on the wall next to his head and was leaning in with a vaguely threatening hiss.
“You know, for being so deep into your over observant, sad-art-boy bullshit you’re really missing some obvious things.”
“What?”
“I’m saying. If happiness is staring you right in the face you better at least talk to it before it gets away.”
“Zayn…”
“Or starts following Louis like some puppy.”
“Zayn, what...?”
“I mean, talk to him at the very least. Maybe if you’d stop shitting all over his feelings and do us all a favor…!”
He was cut off by the bang of the classroom door as Niall burst back into the room to retrieve his pencil case. They all three stood looking at each other for a solid minute, as if frozen in place. Zayn now had Harry full on pinned against the wall and it seemed like the sight made Niall forget he had come for his pencil box at all. He just stood next to his stool dumbly, a bright red creeping up the back of his neck and into the corners of his eyes…
“I..Um. I’m sorry to interrupt… I’ll just…”
His mumbling disappeared with him back around the door frame as he rushed out of the room.
Harry stood, baffled and completely lost as to what had just happened, but Zayn seemed to catch at something that he didn’t, slapping his hand over his eyes darkly.
“Shit.”
----------
If Harry had been the one avoiding Niall for the past month and a half the tables were turned now.
Niall didn’t show up to room 4b the next day. He sat in the far left corner of the class during Illustration, just out of Harry’s eye line, and when the lecture was over he packed up so quickly that he forgot his good eraser and 3 micron pens under his chair.
He didn’t come back for them.
When Harry did manage to catch sight of him he would turn tail and rabbit, never getting closer than a few meters away. Never speaking…
And he looked different too. The sweats he hadn’t worn since freshman year resurfaced suddenly, accompanied by mismatched jumpers, soft hair that sat flat and unstyled against his forehead, and great dark circles under his eyes.
He stopped coming round to Louis and Zayn’s for pizza on the weekends.
For that matter, Liam also stopped coming round and Zayn spent an increasing amount of time holed up in his room, curled up amidst a growing pile of dishes and half smoked joints. He didn’t even turn on his lights at night, according to Louis, who figured he must just sleep most of the day and through the evening.
Harry spent most of his own evenings in his bath, with his knees bumping up against the faucet, trying to keep his mind blank.
Trying not to wonder what had happened with Niall.
Trying not to think about Niall at all.
He failed miserably every time. More often than not he would be forced to get out of the bath early. Go to his room and shove himself as far as possible under his sheets as if he could hide from the rest of his empty room what he was doing- getting off quietly and ashamedly to the thought of his best mate’s accented whispers in his ear.
It was mid March when he spoke to Niall again.
Harry had been shuffling around the edges of Trafalgar Square, rolling towards the shelter of shops that lined the roads as cold sheets of rain scattered the pedestrians like marbles. He had ducked under a cafe awning, maneuvering his feet around pots of flowers that had bloomed too early in the indian summer and were withering now, and shouldering his way into the queue for tea, bobbing to the opening chords of some live musician that was softly plucking…
G chord, G7, C…
Desperado, he recognized after a moment, and then the singer kicked into the opening lyrics and Harry lost his breath.
Niall was perched in the corner, his 15£ beater of a guitar on his leg and a mostly neglected tip jar at his foot, eyes shut to the rest of the tea house and lips too close to the mic, kissing it every time his mouth formed p’s and t’s. He looked a little strung out and red in the face, like he was singing to a lover, or maybe like his guitar was his lover and he was clutching the curves of it gently and crawling up the neck softly with the pads of his fingers and his voice was a little hoarse...
He looked perfect.
He sounded perfect.
It was like hearing him play for the first time all over- and the lyrics fit a little too nicely with the moment-
You better let somebody love you, before it’s too late
Like a second of jamais vu, Harry found himself in an unfamiliar state of rapture and he didn’t notice when the barista asked him for the fifth time what he wanted to drink, and he didn’t notice Louis ringing him on his mobile, and he barely noticed when the song was over and the clamoring of spoons against cups and filled the room in the following seconds as if nobody noticed Niall was even there.
It sort of felt like Harry was the only one in the shop when Niall looked up and caught his eye. And he was so absorbed in the way Niall moved that he only caught that he was leaving until the heel of his converse was swinging out the door and into the downpour and suddenly he was scurrying after him, slipping on the wet cobble stone and falling over himself.
“Niall!”
Niall swung around with an expression painted on his face akin to the one he wore when he had thought that their animation professor was about to give birth in the lecture hall- that blank processing expression, the human equivalent of that rainbow wheel on a mac.. spinning… spinning.. until finally:
“Oh. Hey Harry. Didn’t see you there.”
That was a blatant lie and they both knew it but Harry decided to let it float.
“Yeah hey. Niall look what…. why haven’t you talked to me?”
“What?”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
Niall set his jaw at that, “Have I?”
There was a pause as he readjusted his guitar case on his shoulder and pushed the droplets cascading off his quiff out of his eyes, “Well I figured you would want some alone time with Zayn.”
“Sorry?”
Niall shrugged with painfully forced indifference,
“You know. New relationships and all. Couples never have time for their other friends.”
Harry wanted to laugh. It was hysterical really. All this time spent mooning after Niall and here he thought… him and Zayn.
Before he could stop himself a cackle was ripping out of him and he wanted throw his head back into the rain and laugh for ages and explain to Niall, that way he could join in- just a casual laugh. A laugh between the two of them. Something they hadn’t shared in ages.
But when he finally caught himself with his hands on his knees, Niall was already stalking off across the square and wiping something off of his face with the heel of his hand roughly.
----------
The next time he saw Niall was upon Louis’ instance.
He had begged Harry to come for a drink, meet the boys at a pub they hadn’t been to in a while, just for old times sake. The conversation had been smooth enough, Niall had laughed at Harry’s joke about the lift operator even though they all knew it was his worst one. Liam and Zayn had been in an especially good mood and had disappeared early with Zayn hanging off Liams shoulder and whispering in his ear as they had toppled off into the night and things had felt almost normal.
Almost.
Until Louis had picked up a conversation with a particularly odd man who had a towering quiff and a sequined blazer and a radio announcer voice and had wandered off into the back of the pub, leaving Niall and Harry alone at the bar. They had sat for a moment, scraping their fingers along the grooves of the old oak bar top until they had met by accident. On impulse, Harry grabbed Nialll’s wrist and tickled the palm of his hand with his fingers.
“Fire!” He slurred.
Niall laughed. Genuinely laughed, his eyes crinkling, making a move to shove Harry off his barstool and if Harry had almost fallen it wasn’t because Niall had shoved him hard enough so much as he hadn’t heard that laugh in a while and it hit him right in the gut.
“We’re not even playin’ rock paper scissor you nutter, you can’t just pull that out any time you want”
“Can so!”
He shoved Niall back and Niall gripped at his collar for support, cackling right into his face and Harry could smell the shots of Jameson he had had a moment ago and something that was distinctly Niall… and Harry was grabbing the front of Niall’s shirt sloppily and tugging him forward and…
Niall swore suddenly.
“Fuck wasn’t Lou going to get the tab?”
“Um,” Harry blinked slowly, “yeah I think so…”
“Well that fucker’s just hailed a cab and left.”
Harry pressed his fingers to his lips, considering ponderously before looking at Niall.
“I haven’t got any money.”
Niall groaned and fished into his back pocket before coming up empty.
“Me neither”
“Well I suppose we’ll just have to run for it.”
Harry had been half joking but Niall’s eyes had lit up at that.
He found himself being tugged out of the door and before he even knew what was happening they were tumbling down the road, pursued by the footfalls of the bouncer and a volley of curses that reverberated with Niall’s laughter around the walls of the too-thin alley way that they had bolted into and Harry was holding the sleeve of Niall’s jacket as they bounded around a dumpster and a load of crates out the back of some restaurant, and they kept running and running until the bouncer had long lost his breath and given up. Running and running down back alleyways and finally spitting out onto Fleet Street, gasping and holding each other’s shoulders and giggling like school boys.
“Let me get us a cab.”
“Harold I thought you said you hadn’t got any money!”
“Not for that beer. It tasted like piss.”
Niall guffawed at that and didn’t stop laughing until they were piling into the back of a cab and Harry found himself pressing into Niall’s side, but Niall didn’t move away, so he just stayed like that.
They took the rest of the ride in silence, all the way back to Harry’s flat and up the flights of stairs and Harry only really registered that Niall was still with him when he let him into the entry hall and was shucking off his boots because he was too lost in thought, and maybe he was a little bit dizzy because he hadn’t smelled Niall’s cologne in a while and it made his head spin...
They were standing in the hall, Niall with his hands on his jacket collar, as if unsure whether or not to take it off, and Harry exhaling right into his neck where he had unconsciously crowded him against the coat rack.
He was breathing a little too hard and when he spoke it came out in a low breathy whisper into the curve of Niall’s ear where his hair curled under his lobe and Harry could taste his sweat because his lips brushed his skin when he spoke and maybe it was his imagination but Niall seemed to twitch involuntarily at his shoulder.
“Me and Zayn, you know… he was telling me off that one day. We weren’t having a snog he was yelling at me because I’ve been pining after somebody. And he was right, I’ve been really pathetic about it and I don’t think I can handle not knowing anymore… I just thought they couldn’t possibly feel the same and ...but yeah, Zayn. I’ve never wanted Zayn like that…”
Harry was rambling now, eyes shut and brow furrowed in concentration. All the words were swimming around just under his eyelids but his thoughts were vodka soaked and he wasn’t getting them past his teeth like he wanted to.
“I mean, Zayn is hot. Anybody could see that. Any fool would be stupid not to but he’s not... I mean I think Liam has been particularly stupid about that bit of information but the point is I don’t want him like I want… like I want...you know.” he finished lamely, gesturing at Niall before putting his hand right over Niall’s heart.
“Harry...”
Niall’s chest was fluttering under Harry’s palm and he was bright red and chewing his lip and Harry really couldn’t resist anymore.
Harry spent a lot of time staring at the stars at night when he was a kid. Outside the London fog you could catch glimpses of the constellations and he knew the names to every single one.
The pleiades had always been his favorite- a little cluster of seven stars, a teaspoon you could only catch if you weren’t staring directly at it. Something you could only find when you’re not really looking. That’s what love was like, he supposed.
There was something to that- only really finding what you want when you don't have any expectations.
He’d expected a lot from kissing Niall.
Not one of his expectations were met.
It was far better than that.
Far better than the smooth sort of movie finale kiss he had envisioned over and over in his head where Niall just melted right into his arms and kissed him back hungrily and tasted like candy and was soft-lipped and let him carry him off down the hall whispering sweet nothings in his ear...
No, Niall was laughing into his mouth and Harry felt a tear roll down his own cheek and settle between their lips- Niall’s rough, chapped lips and tongue that tasted like cheap whiskey and that day’s cold pizza lunch.
And then they were both laughing and Niall was reaching up to thumb a tear away from under Harry’s eye.
“What the fuck you crying for?”
“I don’t know!”
“Why’d you kiss me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Yeah, I guess it is.”
“You going to stop asking stupid questions?”
“Just one more.”
Harry shut his eyes, waiting for the worst, but Niall just leaned in and whispered:
“Why a moth? Seriously that is the worst tattoo I’ve ever seen. Makes your chest look like the cover of that Silent Hills horror movie…”
“Fuck off! It’s sexy!”
“Yeah. So sexy. Totally gets me off.”
“Does it?”
Niall blushed at that and Harry crowded him up against the coat rack again trying to kiss every one of Niall’s freckles that lined his neck like a constellation of their own, brushing his fingers across Niall’s cheek until he caught them between his lips...
“Gross Haz, you smell like pub.” Niall made a half hearted effort to push him off.
“You love that pub!”
“I might love you.”
It was barely a breath but Harry caught it anyway and he was just fast enough to reached out to grab the edge of Niall’s jaw between his fingertips before Niall could look away.
“You mean that?”
“Yeah.”
“I might love you too.”
Harry didn’t remember getting to his room, or losing his shirt in a shower of ripped buttons that he later found in the living room ...or tearing the hem of Niall’s jumper that they discovered later on the hallway floor, or bumping over his canvas that was still drying and left a Rorschach stain where it landed. But he did remember pushing Niall onto his bed lightly and breathlessly- the way that the back of Niall’s knee felt in his hand as he cupped it, trying to tug Niall’s painted on jeans past his jutting out hips.
“How the fuck do you even get these on?”
“Hey tight jeans was a style I picked off of you remember? Besides at least mine let my junk breath... you’re never going to have any kids- fuck! don’t bend my bum knee like that, mate!”
“Sorry!”
“Wow, I thought rumor had it you were smooth in bed. Harry Styles, great seducer of the ladies of Slade.” Niall moved his hand in a wide arching motion and gazed off into the middle distance, as if envisioning the title of a great work of art. He’d have looked properly dramatic if his jeans hadn’t been around his ankles with Harry holding one foot and an elbow pressed into the pillow behind him.
“Says who?”
“All the birds in my Light and Shadow class, to start.”
“Birds aren't really my speed, Niall, in case you haven’t figured.”
“What is your speed then?”
“Irish tossers. Ones that play the Eagles really well and have nice blue eyes”
Niall snorted at that,
“That’s pretty specific.”
“I’m a man of refined taste.”
Niall’s hair looked nicer on a pillow than he had expected, the way it fanned out in blond fluffs and complimented the flush that had crept to Niall’s ears that had also found it’s way to the tip of his nose and his lips that were bitten and slightly parted with each ragged little breath. He looked completely fucked out already. Harry needed to remember this moment forever. Not because he was a sentimental sap, obviously- To draw later… for science reasons.
Niall had gone quiet in a way Harry had never seen before- quiet and soft and pliant under the pads of his fingers and it was much more than he could handle, the way Niall was leaning in to his touch as far as he could, considering that his wrists were gently held under one of Harry’s massive hands.
He’d heard Niall sing- but this was a different kind of music all together. It was pure instinct, the way he knew how to bring those little airy whimpers straight from Niall’s lungs and where to curl his fingers and how... There was a circular rhythm to it, like the most perverse kind of beat poetry. The assonance of all of Niall’s small ah- ah- ahs! and Harry’s deeper moans. The way the sounds arranged themselves into versus punctuated by snapping hips and the way Harry bent over to ask salaciously if Niall wanted more, if he liked it, just so he could hear Niall’s gasps of yes! Oh god.
It was like a prayer the way he said it, and each plea was like an enjambment to the next, a continuous sea of motion interrupted in short caesuras of gasping for air and the falling meter of the headboard bumping the wall. And then Harry was drowning in a sea of Niall’s cologne and Niall was yelling his name and gripping at the sheets around him with a sort of rapturous “Oh!” and everything was over in a dizzyingly climactic flourish.
Harry spent the whole night wide awake with Niall curled around his back, tracing little patterns into his forearms where they draped across his torso.
And in the middle of the night he felt Niall shift ever so slightly and mutter into his shoulderblade. He couldn’t quite make out the words, but they sounded suspiciously like
‘think I might love you.’