Archive of Our Own

Liam can remember his sixteenth birthday clearly. He'd planned this whole big party that was as much a desperate attempt to salvage his friendship with Harry as it was a celebration.

Harry did come, but it was three hours early, and he was shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. He'd come to say goodbye, he told Liam. That his mum got a new job somewhere in Cheshire, which might as well be the opposite side of the world, and he hadn't known how to tell Liam that he was moving.

"Maybe a good start would have been not on my sixteenth birthday," Liam had said, angry and frustrated – at himself as much as at Harry – and he watched Harry's face fall.

They'd hugged goodbye, and Liam had clung as close to Harry for as long as he dared, and then, hardly ten minutes later, Harry was gone forever. Liam almost didn't even care that only two people ended up coming to the party. He understood. He'd heard the rumours circulating school lately. He was the probably-gay kid now; it was dangerous for other boys to hang out with him. He kind of wished that Harry wasn't one of the boys to fall away, but he understood that, too. His crush was probably obvious from, like, Jupiter.

Liam can also remember uni clearly – the feeling of being free. He'd gone as far away from home as possible and ended up in Scotland. St. Andrews was prestigious, enough that he'd been convinced he'd never make it in, but he'd sort of buckled down on his studies after Harry left, really pushed himself to get the hang of school. He still wasn't the best at lessons, but he was great with his hands, and he was great at fitting bits and pieces together – parts of a machine, parts of a code, parts of a story – and that was enough to get him into a mechanics programme. Through societies, he'd found video game design, and he managed to shift his modules enough to learn more about it and really start to excel at it. He'd also found some boys he liked well enough to go home with, even a few he liked well enough to date. He'd toyed with the idea of looking Harry up on Facebook, but Harry was his first proper heartbreak so he never did.

He remembers the day that Simon scouted him, along with a lot of other fresh graduates, to come interview at his company. He remembers the day he met Zayn, that first day of work when he'd got the wrong desk and sat down at hers instead. He remembers the day they became friends, and he remembers the day they first started talking about making a game of their own.

Liam does a lot of memory exercises, lately. Sometimes he can't sleep – he'd refused the pain medication the nurses offered after the first two weeks, because he's used to being in hospitals and he can manage, usually, but sometimes the pain of his bones knitting back together is just so bad he wakes up gasping.

Liam can't remember the accident. He can't remember leaving his house that day, or at any point in the months beforehand. He can't remember any of the last year's worth of work he and Zayn put into talking about their game, or finishing up the last edition of the company's series of survival games. He can remember preschool and he can remember the day Harry moved into his neighbourhood, when his mum told Liam to be a good little lad and play nicely with Harry, the way they got on instantly and how, even then, even at five years old, Liam was probably a little bit in love with Harry. It hurts to remember these things, but Liam forces himself to do it, lying wide awake in the dark at night, forces himself to run through all of his memories over and over again. They're precious, he's learned. He doesn't want to lose any more. Maybe there was a time in his life he didn't want to remember Harry in particular at all, but now that he knows there's memories that he just can't capture, that lie just out of reach, teasing him – taunting him – forgetting Harry is the last thing he wants to do.

It's not some dramatic tragic tale, Liam-and-Harry. It's just the usual story: Boy meets boy. Boy and boy become best friends and go about doing everything, absolutely everything, together for ten years. Harry accompanies Liam on his doctor visits, holds his hand while he gets his injections, patting his arm and telling him not to cry. Liam goes with Harry when his no-good dad comes to town and wants to take him to the massive indoor playground two towns over. They share first sleepovers. Harry tells Liam about the girls he finds cute, and Liam pretends to find girls cute, too.

They love each other fiercely, start this trend of kissing each other hello and goodbye. Their moms find it cute. Their sisters – both of them have big stinky sisters – tease them for it, but shut up when their parents tell them to stop.

The kisses change, is the thing. They shift from the familiar sticky cheek-kisses, Harry all covered with ice lolly and Liam with Jaffa cake crumbs still in the corner of his mouth, to pecks on the lips. It's fine, it's just a friends thing. They go on double dates together. Even though Liam is fairly certain he's regarded as the weird kid in school, he's still Harry Styles' best friend. Since Harry's always got girlfriends, being his best friend has a certain amount of currency with girls. And while Liam is growing progressively more and more certain that he's gay, absolutely no one at all knows. No one can know. Not even Harry. Especially not Harry.

So, dates with girls that Harry finds for him it is.

They can never afford proper film tickets, but they go to McDonald's and the discount theatre on their double dates and always sit with the girls on the outside and Liam and Harry on the inside. Maybe it's weird that he and Harry always split fizzy drinks and sweets, but Liam likes it. Harry always ends up snogging his date halfway through the film. Liam holds hands with his date, and sometimes he kisses her on the cheek, but he feels weird kissing them on the lips. Lip-kisses are for Harry, when they say hello and goodbye every day.

There are some films Harry says they shouldn't bring girls to, and then it's just the two of them. They hold hands one time, and they snog during the film a different time, because Harry asks why Liam never snogs the girls he dates and Liam, in a flash of brilliance, tells Harry it's because he thinks he'd probably be rubbish at proper kissing. The kiss ends all too quickly, Harry pulling away and wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. Liam plays it off, rolling his eyes and laughing, but his mind is in turmoil. He's not surprised by how much he liked kissing Harry like that, but he was hoping he wouldn't actually feel anything this intensely longing.

When they have sleepovers they squeeze into the same twin bed, which is progressively harder as they grow. Liam has his first wet dream in Harry's bed, and he's endlessly embarrassed, but Harry's mum is terrifyingly kind about it and promises that she won't tell Harry why Liam's crying in the kitchen at half six in the morning in a pair of borrowed trackies.

By his fourteenth birthday, Liam is fairly certain he's head over heels in love with Harry. His palms sweat whenever they go to see films, whether or not they've got dates. He tries his very best not to be jealous of the dates, because Harry doesn't know that Liam's gay and Liam is pretty sure Harry is straight and it would be unfair of him to expect anything from Harry.

"Jenny really fancies you," Harry tells him, the summer before Liam turns fifteen.

"Oh," says Liam.

"She thinks you're well fit."

"Oh."

"Do you not think she's fit?" Harry asks, frowning in the way that Harry always frowns. There's a little rumple in his forehead that Liam kind of wants to smooth out with his fingers. He always wants to touch Harry's face. He needs to stop thinking about touching Harry's face when Harry's trying to talk to him about girls again, but Harry's frown is deepening with Liam's silence, and Liam's fingertips itch all the more.

"I guess," says Liam, and then: "I just don't really want a girlfriend, Haz."

"Okay," says Harry, agreeably. He shrugs, then grins at Liam. "She'd probably give you a blowjob if you ask, though."

Liam shifts uncomfortably. They're sat on the bench swing in Harry's backyard, a bowl of crisps between the two of them. He wants to give Harry a blowjob. His mouth waters with the thought. He bets he could be really good at it, given practise. He wants to give Harry everything. "Maybe later," he says, and Harry laughs.

"I didn't mean, like, right now," Harry says. "Now is Liam and Harry time. No blowjobs from girls during Liam and Harry time."

Liam sighs a little, leans over the bowl of crisps so that he can rest his head on Harry's shoulder. "Love you, mate," he mumbles. He means love like in-love-with, but Harry doesn’t have to know that. Harry doesn't have to know anything about that.

"Love you too, Liam," Harry says, slipping his hand, covered in crisp flavouring powder, over Liam's. Harry means love in the friend way, and that's okay. Liam will take what he can get. He's read some stories online, about gay boys falling in love with their straight best friends. Those stories rarely end well. Liam is coming to terms with the situation. Maybe. Hopefully.

(Sometimes he considers telling Harry, because he knows Harry will be really nice about it all, but he doesn't want nice and he's not ready to face rejection, so he swallows the words.)

When Harry kisses him goodbye, he cradles Liam's face with his hands and doesn't even move when the bench swing bumps against their legs. Liam's stomach twists so much that he feels a little like he might be ill, and he jogs all the way home to try and work off the feelings.

It's at the end of the Christmas holidays that year, a month before Harry turns fifteen, too, that everything changes. They're playing with friends, having a kickabout at the end of Liam's street, when Liam's mum calls him in for dinner.

"You coming?" Liam asks Harry, because half the time they have dinner at each other's houses anyway.

"Nah, Gem's making dinner tonight and wants me to be there," Harry says. He passes the ball to Jordan, poorly. It goes in Liam's direction instead, so Liam intercepts it and kicks it at Bobby.

"Give us a goodbye kiss, then," Liam says, unthinkingly.

"What," Harry says, freezing. Distantly, Liam notices that all the other boys have frozen, too.

"You heard me," Liam says, bravely. He chances a smile, but Harry ignores it, walking up to him with a slight frown on his face.

"Liam," he says, quietly. "Maybe we shouldn't."

"But we always do," Liam says. His stomach is clenching in a most unpleasant fashion. He frowns right back at Harry. "It's our thing."

"Yes," says Harry. "But – don't you see? It's kind of gay."

Liam's heart drops. He feels so sick. "I don't care," he says, fiercely.

Harry stares at him for a long moment, and Liam has just convinced himself that Harry's going to kiss him goodbye after all, when he looks around at all of their friends, who are still staring at the two of them. "I do," Harry says, quietly. He reaches forward, like he's going to pat Liam's face reassuringly or squeeze his shoulder, or maybe something a little less gay, but Liam can't stand the pity, so he backs away. He can't turn around, can't stop looking at the expression on Harry's face, which is so sad and so fucking pitying. He almost stumbles over the curb when he reaches it, and that's when he finally turns and runs into his house.

He doesn’t end up eating dinner that night, and things are never the same between him and Harry again. Liam can't stop remembering the way that Harry said I do. Liam had known for ages that Harry is straight and that he had no hope at all, but he hadn't thought Harry would react that way. They've always been on the same page. Liam's had Harry figured out since Harry's seventh birthday.

Or at least, he'd thought he had.

Harry tries to kiss him once more, in private, a few weeks later, but Liam jerks away. "Maybe we shouldn't," he tells Harry, cruelly. He doesn’t want to be cruel, not particularly, but he's just still so angry and sad about it all. "It's kind of gay, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Harry says, and he looks down at his lap.

They don't hang out much, after that. Being around Harry makes Liam feel physically ill. They're best friends forever; they promised each other as much back when they were thirteen. But that was before Liam went and fell in love with Harry, and now nothing can be the same again. That's just the way of it.

Liam spends months kicking at rocks on the path on the walk home from school, cursing the way the world works. He only cries himself to sleep twice, but his stomach hurts every time he sees Harry laughing with all his old friends from across the dining hall, every time he sits down in class and Harry doesn't sit down next to him. Almost no one does, though, now that rumours have started going around school that Liam likes boys.

Harry hardly looks at him anymore, and Liam lets it go on until he can't handle it. He overhears Harry during the last week of classes when he's in the toilets and Harry's at the sinks. Harry's telling some of Liam's old friends, "No, he's not gay; reckon I'd know if he was," and then Jordan's saying, "Yeah, but you hardly hang out with him anymore, do you?"

Liam presses a hand to his stomach, which instantly hurts again, a now-familiar hollow ache. The next day he sends an invitation to Harry for his sixteenth birthday party.

Boy meets boy. Boy falls in love with boy. Boy's heart gets broken and it's not anyone's fault but his own, really, for falling in love in the first place. Boy never sees boy again.

Simple.

Liam wakes up disorientated.

At first, he thinks that it's just that he's still adjusting – new bed, new room, new hospital, and all that – but then he realizes it's the voice in the hall right outside his door.

The voice is hideously, painfully familiar, and it's saying, "Was supposed to go out with Nialler tonight, meet that girl from her new job that she keeps talking about, you know the one, but—"

It can't possibly be who Liam thinks it is. The likelihood of the speaker being a man whose voice was only just changing and deepening the last time Liam saw him is radically improbable. Liam's been dreaming about him a lot these days, is all. He's probably still asleep, trying to pull even more memories of Harry to the surface. Now that he knows he doesn't want to forget, even as painful as remembering it all is – because forgetting anything these days is even more painful – he's been dreaming about Harry even more than usual. That's a much more likely scenario.

But then, Liam never thought that he'd be put in a coma by trying to avoid a lorry and look at where he is now: on his fifth week in hospital with low-grade amnesia and half his body busted all to hell. And if the guy isn't who he thinks it is, well. At least there's a ready-made excuse to fall back on. No one would protest if Liam claimed that a twist in his memory got the better of him.

Filling up his lungs as much as he can without his ribs screaming in protest, what with how they'rebroken and slowly knitting back together, he clenches his stomach and calls, "Harry? Harry Styles?" as loud as he possibly can.

The conversation outside grinds to a halt.

The last time Liam saw Harry, Harry's hair was short. It was starting to curl up again after years of being straight, and he was starting to grow it out, but the curls didn't go past his ears.

When Harry walks into Liam's rehabilitation hospital room, he's wearing the outfit that Liam has come to recognise as the uniform of everyone doing their specialty training. His hair is longer than Liam has ever seen it, and curlier, too, pushed back off his face by a headband of all things. His face is more angular than Liam remembers, but it's still so familiar it makes Liam's heart ache.

Harry is tall and lean and frowning at Liam's clipboard, which he must've taken off the wall as he walked in, and Liam would recognise him anywhere, even after all this time.

Twelve years, almost to the day, and Liam would be convinced that he's dreaming, that maybe he's got an infection during the hospital transfer and that he's feverish and hallucinating, but there's no way he could dream up the tattoos peeking out from under the short sleeves of Harry's uniform.

"What can I do for you?" Harry asks, not looking up from where he's running a finger down the chart on the clipboard, searching. "Mr –"

And then the clipboard slips out of his fingers, clatters to the ground, and Harry finally looks up at Liam and stares.

"Liam," he breathes, his eyes running over and over Liam's entire body. Liam can only imagine what he sees: half of his hair shorn short to clean around the wound, half of it grown out and curling, almost as long as it was when he was freshly sixteen and crying in front of his birthday cake. It's not like he can go to the barber when he's bedridden.

He's also scarred all up and down one side, and even though the plaster casts have come off, he's still got enough removable casts on to minimise movement while he sleeps that he's fitted with a catheter. At least the respirator's gone. Plus it's hard to see the scarring under the bedclothes and dressing gown, though, so Harry's probably not staring at that.

"Hey, Haz, alright?" Liam says, weakly, cursing the way that he can't talk fast anymore, the way he's cursed by his fumbling tongue and his still-healing brain to speak as slowly as –

Well, as slowly as Harry always has, if he's honest.

"Liam," Harry repeats. Liam doesn't know whether he's remembering the way Harry used to talk or whether it's wishful thinking, but he's fairly certain that's wonder in Harry's voice. "What are - what happened?"

"Rogue lorry," says Liam. "Rapid and unsuccessful evasive manoeuvres. And a bit of a coma. You know, head trauma. You?"

Harry looks very serious as he looks Liam over again, but he only says: "You know I always wanted to be a physical therapist."

Liam thought they sorted out that he doesn't actually know much about Harry after all, back when he found out he didn't know Harry was going to move away till Harry left on Liam's birthday. "Oh yeah," he says, instead of bringing all that up again. "That's right."

Harry stands awkwardly for a second, then glances at his watch. "Hey, Liam," he says, shifting his weight. "I've got to – I've still got to clock out."

That was quick. Too quick for Liam to get any kind of hopes up, so the hollow feeling in the centre of his chest is probably just heartburn from lying back in a fucking bed for over a month. "Okay," Liam says. He'd shrug, but that takes more coordination than he's got right now.

"No, I mean – can I come back after? So we can catch up?"

Something swoops in Liam's stomach. It's a familiar feeling – so Liam can't deny that it's there – but distantly so. No one has ever made his stomach knot up and churn like Harry has, and it's been a while since he felt it. "Yeah, okay," Liam says. He debates trying to fall asleep before Harry comes back. He doesn’t know why he called out to him. He's not ready to see Harry again.

More specifically, he's not ready to see Harry walk away again, even if it's just to go clock out.

Harry grins. He lurches forward, reaching out, like he's going to grip Liam's arm, or leg, or hand, but he stops himself and stumbles back before he can come close to making contact. "Be right back," he promises.

He scoops the clipboard up off the ground on his way out, flipping through the pages as he leaves the room.

The second he's gone, Liam reaches for his phone to text Zayn.

Zayn's got her hair pulled back tight in a ponytail, and she hasn't done her makeup beyond a swipe of mascara and chapstick. This means she's hungover, distracted, or both. It's cool for summer, and she's wearing a jumper over her sundress. She keeps fidgeting with the fraying cuffs of her sleeves.

"He stayed for almost an hour," Liam tells her. He's in his chair, and they're both staring out the window at the watery sunlight. "It was –"

"Nice?"

"Weird," he says. "We didn't talk about anything, really. Which makes sense, I guess, I mean what is there to talk about?" He's trying not to sound bitter, but the way Zayn reaches over to squeeze his knee – the one that wasn't shattered in the crash – tells him he hasn't succeeded in that. "He just left, Zayn."

"I know, babe," she says. "And you still love him."

"What," says Liam, but he doesn't deny it, because it's probably true. Her hand tightens on his knee, consolingly.

Liam is settling on the side of 'distracted,' given how Zayn keeps looking out the window at the birds and startling when he speaks. He can't blame her, though; she's got the game, and a life outside of the four hospital walls in general. All Liam's got is a best friend he's loved and not spoken to for twelve years suddenly back in his life as a medical trainee, and a best friend that he loves but not in the right way, who's trying to figure out an end to their game for both of them without him there, and no roommate in his little room.

Zayn'd been dancing the night before, she tells him eventually, so maybe she's distracted and hungover. Liam misses dancing.

"Thought I was going to have a heart attack," he tells her, after a long, mostly-comfortable silence.

"When he first walked in?"

Liam shakes his head. He lets his hand drift over so that it rests on hers, heavily. "When he came back again."

"Someone's popular," Harry teases gently, coming into Liam's room the next time he clocks off. Liam isn't actually one of the patients on Harry's current rotation, which is partially why Harry hadn't known that Liam was in the hospital in the first place.

Liam wonders if it's allowed, doctors – or trainees – treating the ex-best friends they used to kiss. He wonders if Harry's requested not to have Liam put on his rotation. He's not certain he wants Harry massaging him or manipulating his limbs.

On the one hand, he's thrilled to see Harry again, thrilled that Harry seems to be healthy and happy, but on the other hand, seeing Harry feels like his broken ribs puncturing his lung all over again.

"What d'you mean?" Liam asks. He presses his good hand to his chest, trying to stop his heart from beating so painfully.

"Lots of visitors signed in for you," Harry says, nodding at the clipboard. Which Liam supposes is true enough; Zayn's been by a lot even since Liam transferred hospitals, and Louis has stopped by once or twice, and Selena after work once, and Sophia from the flat below Liam's brought his post by and chatted with him about Loki for a bit. Sophia and her girlfriend Eleanor are godsends, really, keeping Liam's dog occupied and his apartment in order whilst he's laid up in here.

"I have other friends now," Liam says, stiffly, before he catches himself. He's decided to try to be kind to Harry, because if he's learnt anything in the past few months, it's that life is extremely uncertain and you don't know when evading a lorry will overturn your car and land you in a coma and then the hospital for weeks on end. He doesn't want to be on bad terms with anyone anymore.

But Harry being back in his life, along with all of Liam's secret memory exercises, has sent his dreams off in a direction they haven't gone in ages – since he was eighteen, at least. His sleep is fitful now, full of the ghost of Harry's lips on his. The dream is always the same: the kisses last longer than they ever did in real life, and go deeper, Harry's hand on Liam's cheek, Liam's hand fisted in Harry's hair. In his dreams, Harry's hair looks much like it does now: long, and curly, and perfect for grabbing during a kiss or a blowjob.

In his dreams, right when he starts to lick into the seam of Harry's lips, Harry freezes. "This is kind of gay, you know," he says, "and I'm moving halfway across the country. Goodbye."

Liam always wakes up as Harry disappears, hard as anything, heart aching.

"Of course you do," Harry says, uncertainly. "I never meant to imply –" he breaks off, shakes his head. "Can I pull up a chair?"

Liam takes a deep breath. His ribs creak a little, painfully – they're still healing – and then settle. It sharpens his awareness somewhat. "Yeah," he says, forcing a smile. "Be my guest."

"I'm sorry that I've forgot how to talk to you," says Harry, once he's sat at Liam's side.

Liam looks away, because he's sorry, too. "It's fine," he says, still a little stiff, and then, because he has spent the past twelve years missing Harry, he shifts his head back around. "Missed you, Haz."

Harry looks very much like he wants to reach over and touch Liam – his arm, or his hand, or his knee – but then again, he used to look like he wanted very much to kiss Liam goodbye, and look where that got them. "I missed you too, Liam," he says, a little roughly, and he mumbles something that Liam can't quite make out.

Liam doesn't ask. "Glad you're here," he adds, which he isn't entirely sure is true, but which feels like the right thing to say.

Harry takes a deep breath and inches his hand forward. Liam waits, watching, unmoving, while Harry rests three fingertips tentatively on the back of Liam's hand. "I'm not glad you're here," says Harry, and Liam's stomach clenches in that old familiar Harry-way, but then Harry continues: "I'd much rather have run into you in Sainsbury's than my hospital. But I'm glad to know you again."

That's such a typical Harry thing to say. Liam wishes talking weren’t still a little difficult for him, physically; there's so much he wants to say to Harry. He settles for turning his hand over and squeezing Harry's fingertips, as gently as he can. It's not hard to be soft; he's lost a lot of his grip. It's one of the billions of things his physio is going to help him with.

And Harry – Harry smiles. It's the first time Liam's seen that dimple of his in twelve years, and he hates it because it just reminds him that he's apparently never quite managed to stop being in love with Harry. He's never really had to, with Harry gone forever.

"So," says Harry, after their companionable silence has stretched into something with potentially a little more meaning – a little too much meaning, even. "I was going to pop in during my lunch break today."

"Why didn't you?" Liam asks. "I wouldn't've minded."

"You seemed a little occupied," Harry says. He pauses, and his smile widens, in a twisted sort of way. The dimple disappears. Liam scolds himself for missing it. "Zayn is very pretty."

Oh. Liam bites his lip. Harry, who must be one of the few people on the planet who doesn't vaguely remember Zayn as the gorgeous girl who used to go out with Perrie from Little Mix, is going to ask for her number and Liam's going to have to out her. He hates telling people when other people are gay, even if, like Zayn, they've told him time and time again that it's okay. It reminds him of when he came out properly to Jordan and Jordan told the whole entire school he finally had confirmation that 'Payno's a fucking homo' and then no one spoke to him for months and months. "I guess," he says, carefully.

"How long have you two been together?" Harry asks. He's tugged his fingers free of Liam's grasp, and Liam's hand, ridiculously, feels cold.

Liam stares at Harry. He laughs, one loud, sharp ha! before he starts to get angry. "What the fuck?" His hands can't really clench into fists right now, but, almost unconsciously, he makes the effort.

"What?" Harry asks, defensively. He looks a little startled. Good. He deserves to.

"Honestly," Liam says. He wishes he could push himself up, even to just his elbows, but he's not allowed yet. He settles for twisting as much toward Harry as he's able. It hurts, but it's worth it. Probably. "Are you trying to make me angry?"

"Are you not dating her, then?" Harry asks, frowning. He scoots back a little in his chair, but he doesn't scoot his chair back from the bed. "I'm sorry, it's just – she's over here a lot, and you seem very close."

"She's my partner," Liam says, stumbling over the words. "Work partner. And my best friend. She's g – not my type." He frowns deeply. "Have you seriously forgot that I'm gay, then?"

Harry's jaw drops open. "You were never," he says.

"I always was, Harry, catch up," Liam says, cursing the way his words are still just a shade too slow to form. "It's why you stopped kissing me goodbye, remember?"

"No," Harry says, angrily. "I stopped because I fancied – um. You know. Boys." He says boys with a peculiar sort of emphasis. "I didn't want to put that on you."

"It was on me more than it was ever on you," says Liam, bitterly, remembering the whole two people who came to his birthday party, the way that no one invited him to any house parties for three full months after Jordan told everyone. "It wasn't your decision to make."

In retrospect, Liam maybe shouldn't have put that on Harry, then. The kissing. Maybe he should've thought not to try. Maybe Harry had difficulties with the lads after Liam tried to kiss him in front of them.

Maybe he laughed it off and didn't think twice after Liam went into dinner that day.

"I guess not," Harry says, quietly. He's silent for a long moment, and then he glances up at Liam. "You never said a word."

"I thought it was pretty obvious," Liam says. He takes a deep breath, sighs. Lets it go. Life is short. "Given the way everyone stopped talking to me because of it and only started talking about me, instead." Okay, so maybe he doesn't let it go entirely. He's fully counting Harry as one of that number. He tries the inhale-exhale again. It's not very calming. "You never said anything, either."

"Didn't want to make things any weirder, did I?" Harry asks. Liam's stomach hurts more than ever. That old weirdness of being crazy in love with a best friend who, as it turns out now, was not actually all that straight but who still clearly did not return the feelings, is rancid in his gut.

The joke is that Liam still can't turn that off. The muscle memory of being in love, or whatever. He doesn't like Harry very much right now; he's incredibly angry at him, but… given the chance, he's pretty sure he'd still be with Harry, in any way that Harry would have him. The knowledge that Liam is still this smitten rankles, and Liam feels itchy with it. He scratches his side, but it doesn't help.

They're quiet for a long time, long enough for Liam to start to doze off. He wakes up a little, just in time to hear Harry murmur, "See you tomorrow, then," and brush a kiss against Liam's cheek.

The lights go off quickly enough that Liam is fairly certain Harry didn't notice the way his cheeks burn with the kiss.

Liam feels awful for thinking it, but he almost prefers Louis's visits to Zayn's. Zayn is his best friend, basically, but he can't shake the feeling that she blames herself for his accident. There's this cloud of guilt that follows her whenever she visits him, and it's only intensified since their video game concept got greenlighted. Louis doesn't have that hanging around him. It's very clear he feels for Liam, but it's a happier sort of caring.

"So how's your blast from the past?" Louis asks, after he's spent fifteen minutes updating Liam on the antics of his students. Liam suspects that half of Louis's stories are false. There's no way his students are that crazy, drama class or no.

"Dunno," Liam says, after a long silence. "S'weird, isn't it?"

"You've been describing him as your dream man as long as I've known you," Louis points out, leaning against the railing on the side of Liam's bed.

"It's not like –" Liam sighs, breaks off. "I mean, my dream guy was more like – someone who looks like him, and makes me feel the way he does, but who didn't break my heart on my sixteenth birthday."

"I understand," says Louis, and a shadow crosses his face. "If Selena ever decided I'm not what she's looking for..."

That's probably not precisely it, but Liam doesn't have the energy to argue the point. He just says, "It's not like I've been waiting for him, yeah? Never thought I'd see him again. I mean, I could've looked him up on Facebook, I suppose, I just. Didn't know whether I actually wanted to." But that's a lie, isn't it? Liam does know. He didn't want to. He didn't know what he wanted to find, if he looked for Harry, so he never looked.

Louis is quiet for a long moment, looking at Liam's vitals monitor. Liam hates that he's still got a vitals monitor, but it's not hooked up all the time now – just twice a day – and it's not like he has any choice but to suffer through it. It's not plugged in now. He's glad. "How do you find him?" Louis asks, eventually, looking back at Liam. "Now that he's here, suddenly."

"It's –" Liam frowns, trying to sort out his feelings. "Hard."

Louis nods seriously, and Liam takes a moment to marvel at the gesture. Before the hospital, he rarely got to see Louis focused and intent – not directed towards him, at least. He'd seen Louis like that with Selena once or twice, and Zayn more than a few times, because Louis has a soft spot for Zayn the size of Jupiter even though a lot of their friendship seems to be thumping each other and teasing each other and generally being happy nuisances. He'd seen Louis get like this when he was talking about his students, too, whenever something serious came up during the day and Louis couldn't just laugh it off and talk about his job like he's telling a marvellous story to an enthralled crowd. But in the six years he's known Louis through Zayn, he's seen this side of Louis easily less than twenty times.

He likes it, that Louis has expanded his circle to include Liam. Not that he hadn't before, but it hadn't been protective; Liam hadn't needed protection anymore, for most of the time he's known Louis. He still doesn’t, not really, but – it's still nice, that they've got closer.

Of course, he wishes they could have come about it a different way.

"Hard how?" Louis asks. He reaches over the railing to squeeze Liam's hand. Liam squeezes back; it's good exercise, working on getting his grip back.

"Like," Liam says, He closes his eyes to focus his thoughts. "I just – I used to love him so, so much, yeah? And then we parted on such awful terms, and I haven't seen him in twelve years, and – before I saw him again, I thought that if I ever ran into him, it would've been enough time for it to feel like all that past stuff didn't really matter, you know?" He pauses. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth for talking so much, but that's probably just psychological. There's no reason for his tongue to feel weird. His jaw didn't shatter in the accident or anything. He takes a few deep breaths and licks his lips, and then suddenly there's plastic against his lips. He opens his eyes again – Louis's water bottle. He sips gratefully, swallows, and nods his thanks. "But then I saw him, and it does still matter."

Louis re-caps his water bottle. "Have you loved him this entire time?" he asks, softly, and Liam remembers, suddenly, that Louis had been considering going into child counselling before he realised how much longer he'd have to be in school for that and went the teaching route instead. He can recall walking in on Zayn ending a phone call with Louis just before their very first production meeting at the company, and Zayn mentioning that Louis has pursued extra training, so that he can talk to his students if they come to him with problems. ("And also me," she had said self-deprecatingly. "For when I'm a mess of anxiety about all this as well." That had been the first time she'd opened up to him on a personal level, and the first time he'd thought of her as 'friend' instead of just 'competition.')

"No – maybe? I don't know," Liam says. "I've loved other people, too, and it's not like – I haven't thought about him every day, or anything. I just – lately I've been trying to make sure I still have my memories. As many of them as I can keep." He tries to shrug, but his shoulders don't really cooperate. "I've found that I've got a lot of memories of him."

"Ah," says Louis. "Yeah, that might do it."

"So it's just hard, sometimes. I don't know how to talk to him anymore. I can't - I can't make him into someone I've just met." That's what Sophia had suggested, when she came by with his post.

"Of course not," Louis says. He stretches a little, settles a hand down on Liam's shoulder. "Do you want to – you know. Move forward? With him? Fix things?"

Liam is silent for a long time, trying to decide.

Liam is in his office. It's a cosy space; he's got an ergonomic chair and a little potted tree in one corner. His tree is real, unlike the ones in the hall outside Simon's office; it was a gift from Ruth, who is a florist in Bournemouth, one of the ones who works in proper posh greenhouses with all sorts of plants, not just flowers.

He's also got two computers with two monitors each, because while Zayn does all the actual design when they work together, which is often, Liam is the one who puts everything together into a story to tell, and he likes space to sort out his thoughts.

There are photos between his computers that he doesn't remember seeing before – him and Harry, throughout their lives, but unlike the photos in the dusty albums Liam only takes out when he's at his very saddest, these don't trail off after Harry's fifteenth birthday and stop entirely by Liam's sixteenth. It's the two of them growing up together, laughing into kisses on the cheek in some, holding hands in others. There's one where the wind is whipping their hair around, and it looks like it did back when Liam let it grow out long and curly after Harry left. Only here, Harry never left, because Liam's hair is tangling with Harry's, and they're grinning into the wind, standing on the deck of some posh boat or another.

In the back, there's a photo with the two of them in suits, kissing. Harry's big hand is splayed along Liam's cheek, and Liam's got a hand of his own resting solidly on Harry's waist. Liam's mum is in the background, weeping with a smile on her face, and it's impossible to miss the thick band on Harry's ring finger, pressed right under Liam's ear.

Liam gets up and leaves his office. It's clear that it's a dream, because he can walk easily, and instead of seeing the door to Zayn's office as soon as he steps outside, he's on Tower Bridge, wind tossing his hair about even though rain is wetting it down against his head. Suddenly, Harry is there, teeth flashing bright in the half-light from the setting sun. "C'mon," he says, extending a hand, so Liam takes it, and then they're in the middle of a busy street – Liam can't place it; he's fairly certain it's not an actual street that exists in any part of London he's been in – and a lorry is bearing down on him. His feet freeze to the pavement, and he can't move, and then Harry is on the sidewalk, pointing and laughing, as the lorry bears ever closer. The headlights are blindingly bright.

Liam wakes up a split second before impact, screaming.

The worst part is, Liam had got over Harry years ago. Or so he thought. Maybe he tricked himself, or maybe it's just the near-death experience Liam had not two months ago, but now he spends his days not sure whether he's dreading Harry's return each evening after his shift, or whether he's looking forward to it.

He just wants to get back into the office. Liam's mum once insinuated that Liam was far too married to his job, but that's not it at all. Liam is a little married to Zayn, maybe, because they're both the only really gay people at the company and she's his best friend and they just fit together, professionally – it sounds maybe new-agey and weird, but they've got this connection when they make games. They're always on the same page, and it's just – it's nice.

Liam does date, of course; he gets lonely when he doesn't, so he's always saying yes when his friends tell him that he just needs to meet this great guy they know. But it never sticks, not really. He dated one guy for almost a full year, but it never really went anywhere. Mostly because Liam had a stronger connection with his job than with the guy, and he feels badly about it, but the one time he confided in Louis about feeling bad, Louis just rolled his eyes and patted Liam on the arm. "When you're ready," Louis said, "you'll meet the right person."

That had been just a few months before the accident. Liam doesn't think there'd been anyone else since – it's possible that there was, and he just doesn't remember, but even if he had been seeing anyone else, it obviously hadn't been serious enough to merit any visits.

The visits are the weirdest thing about being in the hospital. Liam misses Zayn, which is a bit ridiculous, because she visits more than anyone else, but it's also clear that she blames herself even though she wasn't actually there and has no reason to feel that way. It's like his accident kind of shoved at their relationship a bit. It's just a little off-kilter, a little harder to get at that easy connection of theirs, because she's so caught up in her head over everything and, if Liam is honest, he's a little caught up in his own head, too. Also there were the weeks when he was literally caught up in his own head – or something; he's still not entirely clear how comas work and he was in one - and the weeks after that where he was recovering and could hardly speak at all, too uncoordinated to make his mouth work enough to formulate all the words he'd need.

He probably should just tell Zayn that it isn't her fault, but he's not sure how to bring that up. He's not sure he has the energy for that kind of discussion, not yet, so when she slips her hand in his during her visits, he squeezes as hard as he still can and hope that it tells her, somehow, that just because he was on his way to pick her up doesn't mean she's the reason he's in here.

He sees Louis a lot more than he used to, though, and that's nice.

They still both only make it once or twice a week at this point, though. Liam can't fault them. Louis's school is halfway across London, and now that Zayn's been put on a new project, she's dead busy. Liam knows what that's like. It's fine. In the first hospital, after he got out of intensive care and went into a high-dependency unit and was just starting to register things in a way he could consistently remember, Zayn would visit almost every single day. She visited when he was in the ICU too, very nearly every single day, but he can't remember that.

Her visits have trailed off since he moved to the rehabilitation hospital, but that also coincides almost exactly with their game getting the green light. He's okay with her being preoccupied now, though he does sort of wish she'd been at her busiest back when he was still sleeping most of the day away, instead of now, when he's awake more often than not.

He kind of wishes he had more friends in the city, even though he's never been dissatisfied with his number of local friends before, because now that he's actually spending his days awake, being stuck in a bed except for during physical training is boring, and he hasn't got his hand-eye coordination or fine motor skills back strongly enough to ask for someone to bring him some video games so he can at least pretend like he's able to do anything related to work. He's taken to reading, which has never been something he's particularly enjoyed before and which tends to give him awful headaches, post-accident, but it's the best alternative he's got. The telly gives him even worse headaches.

The other weird thing, specific to this new hospital, is that Harry now stops by literally every day. So now, after twelve years of total radio silence, Liam sees Harry more than he sees anyone besides his own doctors and the regular nurse staff. And as much as it hurts, he kind of likes it. Having someone to chat to regularly, at least, even if they don’t about anything personal or important anymore – just the weather, or the books Liam is reading, or the colour scrubs that Harry's trying to find. He's missed just talking, and the more he does it, the easier it gets to move his mouth and breathe deep enough to force words out through the ache in his cracked ribs.

He almost forgets that Harry's an actual specialty trainee doing his actual higher specialty training until almost a full week has passed since he first heard Harry's voice in the corridor.

Liam's main doctor here is an older woman, very capable with a very severe bun in her hair and a withering look that makes him glad she doesn't wear glasses – it would remind him far too much of his scariest aunt if she wore glasses. She leads a team of some of the trainees, and Harry's mentioned working under her before, but he's also somehow managed to wrangle it so that he never steps in for Liam – conflict of interests, Liam presumes, but he doesn't ask. He doesn't particularly want to know.

Thursday evening, however, Harry comes in during rounds. "Oh," Liam says, startled. "Are you done, then? Where's Dr Cooper?"

Harry laughs a little, but it sounds somewhat forced. "She's got the evening off," he says. "Her daughter's had a baby." He pauses. "I'm – sorry, Liam, but I'm on rotation tonight."

Oh. Okay. "Okay," Liam says. It's not like their routine is very involved, not in evenings – just a bit of her helping him to stretch, get his muscles used to the idea of working again, and some conversation to assess his cognitive re-growth.

Or something along those lines, anyhow.

Harry consults Liam's chart. "Right," he says, and comes forward to unbuckle Liam's temporary casts. "Looks like we've got you for some massage tonight, a little bit of stretching." He looks a little hesitant, at first, but he moves his hands deftly enough, enough that Liam can see that Harry is good at this. He lifts Liam's left leg up, pushing the blanket off it. "Can you flex your toes for me?" he asks, cupping Liam's calf, gently pressing with his fingertips. Liam's breath catches; he can't help it. He can't turn it off, any of it, now that Harry's back in his life. Not the confusion, not the longing; tt's like he never had a chance to stop loving Harry at all.

He's not certain that he does anymore, though. Love Harry, that is. It's all very muddled, and he keeps going back and forth on whether he actually loves Harry or whether he just acutely remembers loving Harry. A lot of conversations probably should happen before he makes up his mind about how he feels.

"I'm to ask you if you've remembered your accident yet, while we do this," Harry says, as Liam strains to point his toes. He can wiggle them, a little, but flexing his feet properly hurts still. Luckily his muscles haven't totally atrophied, but it will still be longer than Liam wants to think about until he's walking again.

"No," says Liam. "I remember – I can remember what I was doing that week up to the day, in the way that I'm not sure whether I actually remember or whether it's just because Zayn has told me so much that I’m just creating memories based on what she's said." He pauses. His main doctors know that his memory is fuzzy at best for the entire year leading up to the accident, that a lot of it may be second-hand from friends reminding him. He doesn’t want to see the look on Harry's face when he tells him as much, if Harry doesn’t already know.

Harry nods. "Has the memory loss – sorry, Liam." He breaks off, takes a deep breath. "I don't know how to – you're a patient, but you're also a friend, and I don't know how to talk to someone who is both patient and friend."

"You also don't know how to talk to me anymore in general," Liam blurts, and then he winces. "I mean, I don’t know how to talk to you either. It's fine. Just talk to me like I'm just a regular old patient."

"But you're not," Harry says, quietly. His hands don't fumble or pause at all, and the pressure he's using to press into Liam's muscles doesn't change. He just moves his hands slightly lower, toward the ankle, reaches down to cup Liam's heel with one hand and help Liam's flex along. He sighs a little. "Have you forgot much beyond the time leading up to and immediately after the accident?"

"I've been trying to check," Liam admits. "Just – remembering everything I can. I don't think I've forgot anything beyond what's already in my file." He pauses. "Been going through my – our – my childhood a lot lately."

Harry's hand stills, and then he sets Liam's leg gently and moves to his other one. "Oh?"

"Yeah," Liam says, smiling a little. "We had some good times, eh Haz?"

"We certainly did," Harry says. There's a smile in his voice. Liam looks up at him – his head is ducked low over Liam's knee, which he's feeling, gently, to check how it's healing. "The best."

"Of course," Liam says, because it is more or less true. And then, because he's got nothing left to lose, not really, not anymore, and even though he's still not sure whether or not he wants to fix the past now, he's going to have to confront it all sooner or later, he takes a deep breath. "Still remember you breaking my heart, too."

Harry freezes. "Excuse me," he says, in a very odd sort of voice, and then he's walking out into the hall. Liam isn't sure whether he's just… going, or whether he'll come back, or whether he'll send someone else in – his temporary casts are still off, and they've only gone through half the routine – but there it is. He'd forgot, because he's stuck here in the room with everything he says, unable to leave if the situation gets too tense, that other people can go. Which is stupid, people leave Liam alone in his room all the time, but at least with everyone else it's usually mutually agreed upon.

He reaches over for his phone, thumbs it unlocked, and has a blank message to Zayn opened, debating what he should say to her – if he should say anything – because as much as he misses her being there even when she’s right in the room with him, she’s still his best friend, when Harry comes back.

His eyes are red-rimmed and he’s quiet, now, just mutters an apology for leaving so abruptly and then continues the physical part of Liam’s examination in silence.

Liam shifts uncomfortably against Harry’s touch. His hands are good, strong; Liam can feel that Harry is just as talented at this as Dr Cooper is. And they’re sturdy, too, even though when Liam looks closely, Harry’s chin is trembling.

It’s not even the fact that it’s Harry touching him, really. Probably. Maybe. It’s just – it’s the silence, and the history, and the pressing weight of the knowledge that Harry used to practically function as an extension of Liam’s own heart and now he doesn’t even know how to talk to him, except for in fits and starts that are more digs than anything else.

Liam’s still hurt, is the thing. He’d forgot about the hurt over the years and years that he didn’t see Harry, but now Harry is in front of him, biting down hard on his lip as he helps Liam stretch out and walks him carefully through strengthening exercises and all those years suddenly seem to have collapsed into a single instant. And even though Liam has had over a decade to let the hurt of Harry backing off when Liam started behaving gayer and only showing up to his birthday party to tell him he was leaving forever scab over and form a tight little knot in the back of Liam’s mind that he only poked at when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself, everything is now raw again, and immediate, and difficult.

"I never," Harry says, when he's nearly done. He places Liam's foot gently back onto the bed and walks up to take Liam's hand in his. Liam's heart skips a beat, and then he remembers that this is just the last of the cycle of stretches. "Did I?"

"It was my birthday, Haz–ry. Harry." That doesn't even begin to encapsulate what Liam is feeling – the months of ache, the way that Liam watched every single one of his friends slip away after Harry did, the murmurs in the hall of did you hear? He's gay and worse, as the word spread. It doesn't begin to touch on the way that Liam is more confused than ever, now that he knows that Harry likes boys - liked boys – and yet wouldn't stand with Liam through the fallout.

Harry has the decency to look ashamed. "I didn't really ask my mum to move," he says.

"You could have told me literally any other time," Liam says. "The day you found out, maybe. I was right there. For months, Harry. I was in the cafeteria, you know, at a table. By myself. I was in our classes. I was in the house where I lived my whole entire life." He closes his eyes against the memory. "There was a time you could find that house better than your own. You had ample opportunity to tell me at any point at all before my sixteenth birthday." He forces himself to open his eyes. "I threw that party for you, you know."

"Your sixteenth birthday party?" Harry asks. He sounds confused.

"Was hoping it'd – bridge the gap, I suppose." He doesn't remind Harry that it's not like it could have been for everyone else, that no one else was really talking to Liam at the time.

Harry is silent for a little while, stretching Liam's arm out, pushing down against it while Liam holds it as steady as he can. Harry's weight isn't familiar, but it doesn't feel bad, per se. "Thought you hated me," he says, eventually. "You didn't really make any big efforts to bridge the gap, Liam."

"Yeah, well," says Liam. "Thought you didn't want to be around the gay boy anymore, didn't I? 'Swhat everyone else at school was talking about."

"I assure you," Harry says, intently, and then he breaks off, shakes his head fiercely for a moment. "No. Never mind. I mean, I hope you know by now that wasn't the case. At all."

Liam suddenly wants Harry to leave, wants to go to sleep. "I dunno. Maybe."

"I didn’t even realise you weren't straight."

"I wasn't the one dating girls in between kissing you, Harry," Liam says, tiredly. "Are we done here?" He knows they're not – he's got an entire arm left for Harry to stretch out – but he wants them to be.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," Harry says. He moves around the bed to Liam's other hand and goes through the stretches as quickly as he can without properly rushing. They're quiet the whole time.

The only thing that happens the next day is that Liam gets his catheter officially removed. Harry doesn't stop by at all. Liam can't decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

"Listen," Harry says, bustling into Liam's room early Saturday morning. Liam looks up, shocked, and sets his phone aside. Texting Zayn can wait. "They've – I'm advancing in my programme, it's been like another year, and they've given me a larger caseload, and I just –" he trails off, staring at Liam, and then he shakes himself. "You've been put on it. My caseload. And I don't want to hurt you any more than I already have, so I can ask to be switched off, if you want. I just. Thought I'd ask first."

Well, that explains why Harry hadn't worked with him before Thursday night. "You have careful hands," Liam says slowly, because it's true, and then: "You'll be a good doctor, Harry." But Harry hasn't been careful with Liam's heart, in the past. Which is a weird way of thinking about it, maybe, but it's true.

But it was also over ten years ago. Liam can't leave this room like other people (Harry) can; maybe he should work on fixing the hurt of years ago again and moving on with his life as long as he's stuck in here, especially if Harry is going to be overseeing part of his primary care. It'll be, like, a metaphor for his recovery. Body and spirit, or whatever. Physical and emotional heart.

He's got to get off the last of these pain meds.

"I – thanks, Liam."

"You can keep me," Liam says, because it's not Harry's job to be careful with Liam's emotions, or thoughts, or anything – just his physical recovery, and Liam is pretty sure he can trust Harry with that much. And maybe it will be helpful, too, for Liam's decision to get over something that happened literally over a decade ago. "If you want to."

"I won't hurt you again," Harry says, earnestly, and despite his recent resolution to at least try to start moving on from the past, Liam has to bite his tongue to keep from telling Harry not to make promises he can't keep.

"There's more than one way to hurt a man," he says, though, because that does bear saying. And then he forces a smile up at Harry. "Don't think you can hurt me any worse than I've already been hurt, though." It's vague enough that it could be a reference either to their past or to the lorry that landed Liam in here in the first place, and Liam himself isn't entirely sure which he means at this point. But he can work on sorting that out. He needs to work on sorting that out.

"Then I've got a lot of space to work with," Harry says, trying a grin back at Liam. It's obviously forced, but Liam appreciates the effort.

And that's when he notices that Harry's not wearing his scrubs. "Are you even working today?"

Harry looks down at himself and flushes slightly. "Oh," he says. "No, I'm not. I just got the latest schedule and wanted to come in and talk to you before my shift tomorrow. You know, to make sure I wouldn't have to talk to anyone, get anything switched around at the start of it all." He shrugs a little. "Also my mate Niall's coming out to lunch with me today and I told her to meet me here. So."

"Harry, it's nine in the morning."

"I figured if you didn't want to see me ever again I could text her that plans changed," Harry says. "And that if you did... we could talk, maybe? If you're okay with that?"

"Ready to build that bridge, finally?" Liam asks, lifting his eyebrows at Harry. "Twelve years later?"

"Should have brought a birthday cake," Harry jokes. It falls flat, and they both realise it. There's a moment of awkward silence before Harry clears his throat and tries again: "I mean. Please," he says, earnestly.

Liam doesn't have the heart to say anything but yes. "Okay," he says. "Can you – um."

"Anything," Harry says. He casts about, pulls a chair up to Liam's bedside, sits down. "Name it."

"Help me change shirts first?" Liam asks, a little awkwardly. "Only no one... stopped by, yesterday, and I didn't really want to bother the nurses last night, because I got a bath in the morning, but I'm feeling. Grungy. You know."

"You're still on bed-baths, aren't you?" Harry says, suddenly, looking Liam up and down. "With those casts, and those injuries."

"Yeah," Liam says, making a face. His mum comes down every few weekends to help him out, and she always gives him a good sponge-bath, which is properly humiliating, and the nurses help him out the rest of the time, which is less humiliating, but he's excited for a time when he's strong enough and healed enough to take a real shower.

"You'll be ready for proper showers in no time, with my help," Harry says, grinning hopefully at Liam, and Liam tries to chance a smile back at him.

"We'll see," he says, lightly, and then he holds his arms out at Harry. "Help me out?"

"Right, of course," Harry says, and he hauls himself up by the railing on the side of Liam's bed. "You have extras...?"

"In the drawers under the telly," Liam says. He can unbutton the shirt he's wearing, but he can't really pull it off or pull a new one on, not with his arm still healing the way it is. He sets off, clumsily unhooking the buttons from his shirt while Harry fetches a change.

"Here, I've got you," Harry murmurs, suddenly. He helps Liam open his shirt the rest of the way, helps Liam sit up enough to draw the shirt off. "D'you want a flannel or anything? Wipe off before you put your new one on?"

"Eh," Liam says, shrugging as best he can – one shoulder maybe wiggles a little, at least. He did just get a bath yesterday, and he's got another one scheduled for the next day. "I think I'm okay."

Harry nods, and goes to guide Liam's hurt arm into the sleeve of his new shirt when: "You've got tattoos!" he says, shocked. "You always used to say you would never. Because you'd had --"

"Too many needles in my life," Liam says, at precisely the same time as Harry. "Haz, my world didn't stop turning just because you left." Except – it had, a little, before it started up again. But that's meant to be in the past now. Liam has to remember that.

Harry's face shutters closed, loads quicker than it ever would have before, back when their friendship came easy and Harry didn't hurt – they didn't hurt each other. "I didn't mean – Liam," he says, softly.

"No, it's okay," says Liam, because he wants it to be.

Harry nods. He smiles again, but it's more reserved than before. "They look sick, Liam. Very cool."

"I'm just glad they didn't get scarred through," Liam says, looking down at his arms. They're all still intact – the quarter-sized interrobang above his elbow that matches Zayn's; the script reminders of important lessons he's learned; the hieroglyphic name of the best character he's created – little reminders of important things, etched dark into his skin.

Now he's going to have a red scar etched dark into his upper arm, a deep, jagged gash from a long shard of broken windshield that winds from his bicep down over his elbow and almost barely touches the last dot in the ellipsis after Everything I Wanted but Nothing I'll Ever Need..., too.

Not that he'd mind, particularly, if they got scarred through. At least he's alive, right? That's what truly matters. His mum makes a point of saying that on each of the odd weekends she manages to make it to London to see him, like he wouldn't be able to remember that on his own. But being grateful to still be alive is not where he's got trouble with remembering things.

Harry's noticed the scar, too; his fingers trail along it, so gently that Liam is almost convinced that he's hallucinating Harry's touch, as he eases the more useless of Liam's arms into the shirt. "I'm glad that you're alright," he says, abruptly, once Liam's new shirt is on save for buttoning.

Liam can handle the buttons on his own, though, and he fumbles them through their little holes with the clumsy fingers on his better hand. "Yeah," he says, and he settles back in his bed and closes his eyes.

"Do you want me to go?" Harry asks, tentatively, and Liam feels a little hot flash of frustration at the way that Harry is so careful around him, the fact that it's come to this.

But then again, if he's honest with himself, he's been feeling frustrated by Harry since he was fourteen years old, so it's not like this is a new thing for him. And, he thinks charitably, it's not like he's been giving Harry any reason to treat him any differently. "No," he says, stiffly. "Just – give me a minute."

Harry shifts a little in his seat, but he sits quietly until Liam is able to open his eyes and blink over at him again. "Better?" he asks, gently, and Liam has to tamp down on his lingering annoyance again.

"Yeah," he says, after a moment. And then, taking a deep breath: "So there's an elephant in the room."

"What?!" Harry yelps, jumping out of his seat and looking around wildly. Liam catches a glimpse of Harry's dimple, popping where he's trying to bite down on a smile. "Where?"

It's just so – so quintessentially Harry – the Harry that Liam remembers from when he was thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and laughing helplessly at Harry's antics, and not the Harry that has been tiptoeing around Liam and his hurt for the past week – that he can't help but huff out a little laugh. It hurts his chest slightly, but Harry's triumphant grin when he settles back down into his chair makes it all a little bit more worth it. "In the corner," he tells Harry. "Wearing the t-shirt emblazoned with 'WE HAVEN'T REALLY SPOKEN IN TWELVE YEARS.'"

"Ah," says Harry. "That elephant."

"Yes," says Liam. "That elephant."

"I'm sorry," Harry says, seriously. "I did think about looking you up. You know. Over the years."

"Why didn't you?"

"Dunno." Harry shrugs, one shoulder rising up as he twists his mouth ruefully. "Thought you must hate me, to be honest."

Right, they established that a few days ago. Liam remembers. "I did, a little," he says, even though 'hate' probably isn't the right word for the soul-wrenching pain of first love unreturned, of his heart breaking for the first time twice in a row over the same boy: when Harry didn't kiss him goodbye, and when Harry didn't come for his party.

It's hard to put that feeling into words, though. He's good at scripting dialogue for video game characters, but scripting dialogue for this kind of situation is harder, especially because he can't just write Harry's response in the way he'd want it to be. Also he's not ready for Harry to know just how much Liam's heart was broken, even after all the years between.

"That's not entirely true," Harry says, after a long pause, and – what? How does he know that hate isn't the right word for what Liam felt? "I did find you on Facebook once, about halfway through uni. You had a profile picture – some kind of costume donkey bum?"

Right; that's when Liam was dating George. They'd gone to a fancy dress party as two halves of an ass. "But you didn't add me or anything, obviously."

"Yeah," Harry says. He inches a hand over the railing on the side of Liam's bed, lets it linger. His fingertips brush against Liam's sleeve, but it's not close enough for Liam to feel anything real, just the ghost of pressure and warmth. He swallows hard, anyway. "Was a bit of a chicken about that, to be honest."

It was probably for the best, but Liam doesn't say as much. It's still possible to make up for lost time, though, and he shifts a little to get comfortable. His arm knocks against Harry's hand, and there's the pressure, the backs of Harry's fingers light against his bicep. It almost doesn't hurt at all. "So," he says, deliberately not twitching away from the touch. "What've you been up to for the past twelve years? Besides going to doctor school."

"Doctor school," Harry says, eyes bright, smile tugging at his lips, and then he starts to talk.

Liam gets tired eventually, from talking more than he's ever done since his accident, and Harry moves his hand slowly, distractedly further down Liam's arm until their fingers are linked. By the time Harry brings his other hand over to earnestly squeeze Liam's hand between both of his own, murmuring that he's thrilled that they've got this second chance at friendship, Liam's skin has stopped tingling from the touch.

He's looking out the window, debating asking Harry why he's letting his hands linger, when Zayn comes in.

He hears her footsteps, the soft thwup of the sandals she wears when it's warm enough out and she doesn't have to go into the office, along with the squeak of a set of trainers. The footsteps stop just inside the door.

Liam doesn't pull his hand from Harry's, even though that's his gut instinct, because that would imply there's something more to Harry's hands folded around his own. He doesn’t turn to face Zayn either, though. It's not that he's afraid she'll see something in his eyes that he, himself, doesn't want to acknowledge. It's just – the moment feels fragile, somehow.

It shatters, whatever it is, when a woman with a loud, Irish accent says, "Hey, Harry, what's a girl got to do to get some food around here?"

"Nialler!" Harry says, and tugs free of Liam. Liam does not miss the whisper of the touch of Harry's hands; that would be ridiculous. "Hey."

Liam does miss the quiet stilling around them as they learn to sit together in companionable silence again, though. He will admit to that. They haven't sat like that that in – probably even longer than twelve years, if Liam's honest; by the end of it all back then, he was so in love with Harry that none of their silences felt particularly companionable.

"Liam," Zayn is saying, and the way she walks over to him – the nervous energy that's clung to her every time she's visited him since his accident has... not disappeared, per se, but it has dissipated a little. It's not clinging to her quite so strongly. The corner of her mouth is etched deeper into her cheek than usual, and she seems a little looser. The indicators are so small Liam would have missed them entirely if his job didn't centre completely around character study, and if he hadn't had the past few weeks with learning the people around him in and out as the main source of his entertainment.

But he knows Zayn almost better than he knows himself, probably, and what he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt right now is that she's had sex, very recently, probably for the first time since his accident.

"Hey, babe," Zayn says, and her voice sounds the way it does after they wrap up massive projects – another point in the just-had-sex column, considering Liam knows for a fact, after six years working together, that Zayn should be hitting crisis mode right about now.

"Hi," he says, blinking a little. It can't've been Niall; Zayn drew a line under having sex with colleagues and moved on after Geneva, ages ago. He'll get it out of her soon. "Morning. Um." He blinks again, eyes darting to Harry. "This is Harry."

Zayn turns to greet him, running her hands down her front in a way that pulls the massive button-down she's wearing flat against her chest. Liam looks closely at Niall, behind Zayn; the way that Niall's eyes track Zayn's hands. Maybe…

Maybe not. Don't make it your business until Zayn does, Liam admonishes himself, even though he wants desperately to let himself fall into speculating over Zayn's love life so he can ignore the way that sitting quietly with Harry after an actually productive chat feels – nice.

Harry and Zayn make their introductions, and Liam feels a tiny kernel of something, deep in his chest. His childhood best friend (first love, the traitorous warmth deep in his chest insists) and his best mate meeting is an impossible thing, and something he'd never so much as dreamed about before Harry walked back into his life. But this nice, watching the way they shake hands, watching Harry give Niall the same kind of deeply inspecting look that Liam has been giving Zayn ever since they came in.

Watching the way that Zayn watches Harry and Niall walk away, off to lunch.

If Liam's honest he's watching Harry and Niall walk away just as closely as Zayn is.

"So," Zayn says as soon as they're gone. She's got a wicked tone to her voice, and an arch to her sculpted eyebrow. "Harry, then?"

Liam feels his face heat, even though there is absolutely no reason for it to do so. He rolls his eyes. "Shut up."

"Is it nice?" she asks. Her tone settles, soothing now. "Seeing him again."

"Yeah," Liam says, because he's fairly positive that's the most honest answer he can give. He slumps back against his pillow, letting his eyes fall closed for a moment. "I missed him."

Zayn hums sympathetically. "Do you have a, um. Thing?" she asks, reaching to take his hand. She strokes his fingers with the blunt tips of her fingernails, which are lilac today and lovely. "Like, now."

Liam honestly can't remember how much Zayn knows of the story. He never really talked about Harry, before. There was no point in doing so. Whenever Zayn used to ask Liam his type, back when they used to go out together to help each other pull – well. Liam was guilty of describing Harry, the way he remembered him but aged up a few years, and now when Zayn doodles pictures of Liam with his Dream Man, she's doodled someone who looks a lot like Harry does these days, although maybe with his hair a little different and his smile a little less wide and bright.

But it's only been just over a week since Liam heard Harry in the corridor, and Liam's fairly certain he hasn't told Zayn anything that he hasn't decided definitively on, regarding having Harry back in his life. Especially because she's been gone the past few days. He's told her he was surprised to see Harry again, and not entirely displeased by it. That's about it, though.

So he just says, "Dunno, really. Maybe someday," and blusters on a bit about being open to revisiting the past, because that's also more or less true and he's fairly certain that none of it would strike Zayn as too out of the blue.

He must not introduce any radical new ideas, because Zayn just says "Yeah. I get it," in this thick voice and falls silent, staring at a point just past Liam's head for a bit.

"So," he says, interrupting her reverie. "How's work?" He tries to infuse his words with a little bit of a suggestive tone, meaning is there anything going on with Niall, but Zayn just tells him, glibly, about how stressful getting the game off the ground is.

She does mention Niall an awful lot, though, and Liam reminds himself that it's possibly just because Niall has (temporarily) replaced him on the project – name-dropping the girl doesn't mean that Zayn has slept with her. Probably.

She'd tell him.

Possibly.

It's none of his business.

He shakes himself. Just because Zayn is clearly dancing around something doesn't mean he can just make her tell him what it is. Would he have pressed her, before his accident? He can't remember. He thinks maybe him getting hurt has changed some things – the way that Zayn acts more careful around him now, more reserved. Like she feels guilty, even though she has no cause to. Even though Zayn has clearly just got laid and should be relaxed, even though she's just updating Liam on her life, she's awkwardly quiet in a way that Liam can't remember her ever being around him before.

He can't just outright tell her not to feel guilty, though. She'll make excuses, insist that she never did, and anyway, if guilt comes up then he'll have to talk about how he feels guilty, too. Guilty that he doesn't remember the ending to their game, which he'd apparently thought up the same day of his accident, guilty that now Zayn's more stressed than she has any right to be because of the shakiness of his memory. Liam does not want to go into those feelings right now, not after how emotionally fraught his day has already been. So he grins at her and tries for their old, easy camaraderie. "Well," he says. "Looks like you've found a proper good replacement for me. Now I won't have to worry about going back to work!"

It's clearly the wrong thing to say. Zayn's face shutters closed so fast that Liam practically gets whiplash. The colour drains from her cheeks, and she stares at him in horror. "Nobody could replace you," she says, hollowly. "Ever. Niall's just a – friend. Who's, like, filling in temporarily." She's staring at him now, intently, like she's trying to drill how earnest she is deep into his skull.

When Liam glances down, Zayn's knuckles are white.

"I never said she wasn't," Liam says, as apologetically as he can. Something has absolutely happened between Zayn and Niall. She wouldn’t be reacting like this if it hadn't.

"What?" she asks. She's clearly uncomfortable; it carries through in her voice. She's meeting his eyes, but her glance is dragging away slightly, like it's difficult for her.

He can't make her talk about this, not if she's this walled off. "Never mind," he says. He takes a deep breath, changes the subject: "You know what I really miss? Ice cream at that place round the corner from work."

"They've got a new employee, that place" she says immediately. Gratefully. "Proper sexy."

It's not till he's half asleep that night, Zayn still sitting by his side, ruminating, that she mumbles, "I slept with Niall."

He's not even sure that he's not dreaming. He squeezes her hand reassuringly and says, "Okay."

When she doesn't add anything, and he's edging closer and closer to proper sleep, he says, "Tell me later," and lets himself drift away.

If Liam is entirely honest with himself, even though he's trying his hardest to catalogue his memories, try to get the year he's lost prior to the accident back, trying to make sure he doesn't lose anything else – there are some things he secretly, in his heart of hearts, wishes he couldn't remember. There are some memories he would like to take back or change, if he could.

He hadn't taken Harry leaving lying down. He hadn't just been sad and perplexed. He'd also been furious. He'd lashed out. When he hugged Harry goodbye right before Harry walked out of his life forever – or so Liam had thought at the time – he wasn't sure until the last moment whether he was going to punch Harry instead. He wasn't sure whether Harry was going to punch him either, until he didn't – some of the things Liam had said were cruel indeed, lashing out to try and protect his breaking heart. Insinuating that Harry was no better than the bullies that plagued Liam when he was younger, for example.

He'd spent six years wondering if that was the reason Harry never wrote.

Harry writes now, literally speaking. He takes notes on Liam's progress and talks to Liam and asks him questions to try and jog Liam's memory, all about the more recent years of Liam's life. Liam's deepest, most insidious thought is that Harry's avoiding their past now, again, but that's uncharitable so he tries to squelch it.

There's a lot to say about the present, anyway. Liam tells Harry about how Zayn is working on the game they've been dreaming up since they started making video games together, years and years and years ago. He tells Harry about the plans they'd made for the game, and how Liam forgot the most important part – the ending – but he's trying not to feel guilty about it even though he knows Zayn's tearing herself apart trying to come up with something. He implies that Zayn internalises when she feels bad or stressed or – any bad feelings, really. But he doesn't tell Zayn about how that's one of the reasons she and Liam get along so well. Liam internalises too. But he knows that about himself, so he doesn't really see the point in correcting it, or in telling Harry about it.

He definitely doesn’t tell Harry that Zayn is incommunicado, because that's none of Harry's business and it's definitely something Liam expected to happen, because he knows Zayn and knows how much she sinks into herself when things aren't fitting together right. He especially doesn't tell Harry that Harry's a little bit right when he asks if Liam's hurt that Zayn's going ahead on this without them being there, because there isn't a damned thing he can do about the fact that Simon gave Zayn the project because Liam was in hospital.

Louis comes to visit one night the week after Zayn brought Niall by, when Harry's doing his usual manipulation of Liam's limbs, trying to get him to build some muscle mass back before they put him into the rehabilitation pool, now that his flesh wounds have all healed up. Louis is full of stories of his students, like who wants to date who and who's doing well in his classes. Liam doesn't remember who any of the newer students are, of course, but he doesn't point that out to Louis.

"Sel keeps talking about going somewhere warm," Louis says, when he's exhausted work stories.

"That's what you get when you date a girl from Texas," Liam says, and Louis laughs. Harry snorts from where he's stretching out Liam's arm, and Louis looks over at him. Liam can't tell whether Louis's eyebrows are raised in surprise or approval, but either way, it's not a bad reaction, per se. He feels a flush of pride, then squashes it down. There's no cause to feel that way right now, no cause at all. Not about Louis not-disapproving of Harry, even though by now Liam's certain Louis knows their entire history by now.

"Gonna take her somewhere nice," Louis says, smiling distantly. Liam feels an urge to poke Louis's cheek, mostly because Louis literally always fails to pretend that he's anything less than dead fucking romantic. "A beach. Surfing."

"Always wanted to go surfing," Liam says, wistfully. It's always looked so fun in the youtube videos he's watched.

"When you're better," Louis says, immediately. "I'll take you and Selena to Australia, mate."

Liam laughs, even though it still hurts a little to do so. Something about his core muscles, probably, and how they're practically liquefying inside him what with how much he's been lying down lately. Harry must notice the wince about his mouth, because he presses a reassuring hand to Liam's shoulder. "I'm sure Selena would love that. Spending all your hard-earned money on bringing a third wheel along."

Louis sobers quickly. "Liam," he says. "Selena and I and everyone else we know would be fucking ecstatic to pay all our savings to take you somewhere nice when you're better." He frowns, then forces his forehead smooth. "There was a while when we weren't sure – well. We're just glad you're getting better, is all."

"We'll have him ready to run a marathon as soon as possible," Harry pipes up. "Get him back on the Olympic team and everything, that's how much we're going to fix him up."

"Liam was never on the Olympic team," Louis says, loud with surprise, but he says it kindly, resting a hand on Liam's arm.

"He nearly was," says Harry. "Back when we were kids. Kept training and everything. Couldn't get him to go for chips with me for months, he was that busy and dedicated." He turns to Liam. "Remember?"

Liam remembers. It's one of the things Liam doesn't want to remember, though; his failures in life include missing making it onto the Olympic running team by just a few seconds even though he tried his hardest. His failures also include not making it past judge's houses when he decided to try out singing on the X Factor when his Olympic running attempts failed, letting Harry break his heart when he was just sixteen, and being put in a coma and then months of hospitals by a fucking lorry right before he could tell Zayn about the perfect ending to their game. Not a single one of those memories is even a little bit pleasant. "No," he says, archly, and Harry frowns.

"Liam, your memory loss – it shouldn't extend that far back –"

Liam sighs. "It doesn't," he says. "I remember failing that pretty well, thanks."

"No, you were really great," says Harry. He tells Louis, "Liam was marvellous, really, you should've seen him. Ran like the wind."

"I'll have him show me when he's back on his feet," Louis says, hand on Liam's arm tightening. "You hear that, Payno?"

"I hear that," Liam says, resignedly, but even though he seems to be caught in a mire of bad thoughts today, there's a flush in his chest from knowing that his friends think he'll be able to recover that well, even when he's not convinced of it.

After Louis leaves – via the hospital shop so he can get Selena flowers and rip the 'get well soon' tags off them – Harry sits down in the chair by Liam's bedside.

"Slacking off on the job, Styles?" Liam jokes, and Harry smiles but it's fleeting.

"Nah," Harry says. "I've got some important questions for you, though."

"I still can't really piss by myself, if that's what you wanted to know," Liam says, and then flushes. He doesn't know where that came from.

"No," says Harry. Tentatively, he leans closer. "Does it bother you very much? Not remembering things?"

"Imagine you've spent a year with lots of life changes," says Liam. "Promotion at work. Finishing a huge project. Maybe going on some dates, I don't know, if there were any they weren't important enough for whoever it was to come by, or for Zayn to catch me up on them. Maybe I've found a new park to walk Loki – that's my dog. Obviously. Maybe I tried a new flavour at the ice cream place near work. It could happen!" he insists, when Harry's mouth twists. Back when they were kids, Liam only ever ate vanilla and chocolate. He refused to try anything else. He still mostly refuses to try anything else, but Harry doesn't need to know that. "But then you wake up one day and everything hurts and they tell you you very nearly died, but you can't remember how, and you can't remember anything that happened in the year leading up to it." He clears his throat. "Nicola had a baby," he says.

"Oh!" Harry says, smiling suddenly. "Congratulations to her!"

"I met him," Liam says. "Six months ago, when he was just a few weeks old. At least that's what Nic tells me. I've got a picture on my new phone" – his old one had been shattered in the accident and he was too paranoid to use cloud storage, so all he has now since his last back-up is stuff people have sent him – "of me holding him, and he's very cute, but I can't even remember how hard his grip was. I can't even remember what he sounds like when he cries. She hasn't brought him by because she doesn’t want to travel all the way from Liverpool with an infant, but she's sent pictures, and I couldn’t recognise him at all when I first got them. I still can't recognise him from actual real life memories."

"Oh, Liam," Harry says. He clasps Liam's hand in his own – it's warm, and a little sweaty, but Liam doesn't hate it. "Oh, Liam, I'm so sorry."

"Not your fault," Liam says. "I just try and try to remember everything that's ever happened to me, even though some of it is hard, Harry, and some of it is just – I feel like there's a wall, and if I could only break it down I could remember, but I can't and it's awful. I could help Zayn stop kicking herself all day long if I could only remember my epiphany about the game that morning, but I can't and she's going to run herself ill trying to come up with something." Furiously, he notes that he's tearing up. He'd go to dash it away, but his arms still don't work the way they should and Harry's holding his good hand, anyway.

It's all just so frustrating. Liam hates being cooped up more than anything, and he hasn’t been this cooped up since school, when he was trying to avoid all the terrible things everyone was saying about him whenever he walked past, in the months before and a few weeks after Harry left. He's upset with Harry for asking and making him talk about it, and he's upset with the world in general that he's winded after that little speech because his body is so broken down, and he's upset with himself that he can't remember things that would make the lives of people he loves easier if only he could just have one inkling about it.

He's also upset with himself that he's so upset, which doesn't help anybody.

"Liam," says Harry, face soft. "You can't be expected to remember everything in a day."

"I haven't been able to remember everything in weeks, though," says Liam, biting his lip. The sharp pull of his teeth distracts him from the way he's close to tears, and he's able to close his eyes and take a deep breath.

"There you go," Harry says. Distantly, Liam registers that Harry's stroking his hand. "You've got it. You're good."

You've got it. You're good.. Harry's said that to Liam before, back when they were fourteen and fifteen, before everything went to shit. Harry's always been a lot more book-smart than Liam. Liam knows people now, understands them fundamentally, and he knows design, and storytelling, and he's satisfied and comfortable in his knowledge, but Harry's always been one for maths and sciences and the like. When they were younger, Harry would tutor Liam, explaining algebra to him patiently in a way their teacher never quite managed, showing him how letters and numbers could fit together and tell them something about the world.

There's a sharp twist in the pit of Liam's stomach as he remembers the two of them, knees pressed together under Liam's scratched-up and worn-with-over-polishing kitchen table, heads bent together over their maths homework so close their breath mingled, while Harry pointed out with a pencil where Liam would have to divide by 3 and multiply by Y, or whatever it had been. The way, one day, everything had slotted together all at once and Liam had grabbed Harry's pencil and finished the problem himself.

"You've got it!" Harry had shouted, happy and proud. "Liam, you're so good."

And Liam had been so happy, so flush with his success and the closeness of Harry, that he'd given into the tug in his gut and pulled Harry in for an ecstatic kiss.

It hadn't been a proper snog like the one time they practised kissing at the cinema. It was honestly just a hard and fast press of lips against lips, but it wasn't a hello and it wasn't a goodbye and in that way, the fact that it was pure celebration, made all the difference. Harry'd looked shocked when Liam pulled away, and clapped him on the back. "Yeah!" he had said. "Great job!" he had said, and Liam hadn't stopped grinning all the rest of that day.

The feeling is back, of the happiness and success, and the joy at being praised and being alive and being with Harry. And that joy lingers when Liam opens his eyes, however much it might be mingling with the ever-present pain of his bones knitting back together, the resentment of still being stuck in a bed in a hospital away from everything he knows and wants to be doing, the itch of anticipation under his skin. I need to talk to Harry, he decides. Tell him everything. Put all my cards on the table. Completely fucking clear the air.

But all he says is, "Thanks."

Liam hadn't meant to come out the way he does. He had thought, abstractly, about telling his mum when he went off to uni, if he got into uni, or the X Factor, if he made it on the X Factor, or some other major triumph that would soften the blow of something he wasn't sure how to be proud of. If he couldn't embrace it, how could he hope for his mum to?

Before they fell apart, Liam had briefly considered confessing to Harry that he really was actually gay. He would have had to give up the kisses, because there's no way Harry would have kissed a gay friend hello and goodbye, but he'd thought Harry would be okay with it, would help him plan coming out.

It's been clear ever since that abortive attempt at a public kiss, though, that Harry has more issues with gayness than Liam had ever thought he would, so that threw all of Liam's tentative plans completely out. And now Harry's moving halfway across the country, probably – Liam has never even heard of Holmes Chapel, but he has a vague notion of where Cheshire is – so coming out to him will clearly never be a possibility again.

Liam's mum switches the telly to mute, the drone of a movie he's never liked cutting silent when he drags into the sitting room. His party is supposed to start in two hours and twenty minutes, but he doesn't think anyone will show up for it. No one wants to be caught at the gay kid's house.

He must look a dreadful sight – beyond the shouting that happened right before they resignedly hugged goodbye, and beyond the way he slammed the door shut behind Harry, which she must have heard – because she's looking at him with a frown etched deep into her forehead. "Oh, Liam," she says. Liam can't handle the faint disappointed edge to her tone. He didn't really have friends before Harry, and she'd been so, so pleased when he brought Harry home the first time. So, so pleased when they became the very best of mates and did everything together. She's been sad on Liam's behalf ever since he and Harry started to fall apart, even though she doesn't know what happened to precipitate that, and indignant that Harry has turned his back on her baby boy – she literally said as much to Liam when he told her he was going to invite Harry to his birthday party anyway – but Liam knows she had hopes nearly as high as his for today.

"Harry couldn't stay, then?" Liam's mum asks tentatively, eyeing the way Liam is vibrating out of his skin with anger and anguish and bone-deep sorrow.

Liam thanks every single potential higher power out there that he didn't cry in front of Harry. That would have been the worst possible reaction he could've had, even worse than saying those terrible things to Harry about how he never wants to see him again, how Harry's no better than any of the bullies in school and is, in fact, worse. How Liam hates the way Harry used to try to set him up with girls against his will, and the way that he hates that Harry stopped trying everything – the girls, the kisses, being friends with Liam at all – altogether. How Harry is the biggest fucking coward Liam knows, for stepping away from him at school when everything was starting to get worse for Liam, and for not telling him he was moving until the day he left.

Liam had yelled at Harry until he was nearly hoarse, and Harry had just stood there and nodded and took it all and didn't argue a single point, though his jaw was clenched tightly shut. He'd had tears glistening in his eyes by the time Liam had shouted himself out and finally hugged him goodbye – because as angry and devastated as Liam was, and is, he hadn't wanted Harry to leave forever without one final hug – but Liam's eyes had been dry as a bone throughout.

But the second Liam's mom reaches forward to touch his arm consolingly, he bursts into tears. The loud, snotty, gross kind of tears that he hasn't cried since the night Harry refused to kiss him goodbye. "Mum," Liam says, gasping through his sobs, trying not to choke on tears and snot and spit. "Mum, he's moving away forever and I'm so in love with him I don't know what to do. I hate him and I'm so, so mad but I'm so in love with him and I'll nev –" He hiccups, chokes on a sob, and continues. "Never see him again and I'll never, ever forgive him."

Liam's mum clearly doesn't know what to do or say, but she tugs him until he's sitting down on the couch and pulls him into a nice warm hug, cradling his head against her shoulder. "You," she says, stroking Liam's hair. "Harry? A boy?"

Liam just cries harder at that, so his mum gentles her hands as they glide over the back of his head, as soothing as she can be. "Liam," she says. "You can always go visit him on a weekend. It's okay, we'll find the train fare somewhere."

"You don't understand," Liam says, but his voice is muffled by her chest, so he pulls his head back a little. Her shirt is a mess of his tears and his snot, which is gross. She's the greatest mum in the world for letting him do that to her nice-occasions shirt. "He hates me now. He's awful and I hate him but he hates me even more. So I can't."

"Oh, Liam," Liam's mum says, and moves her arm down so that she can scratch at Liam's back, soothingly, running her nails from shoulder to shoulder and holding on tight so she can rock him back and forth like he's a little baby again until Liam's tears have collapsed into great, shuddering sobs. She keeps rocking him on and on until he can finally breathe without hyperventilating. "It'll be okay, Liam, we'll figure this out. He can't hate you forever, and if he does, he doesn't deserve you as a friend anyway. It'll be okay."

It won't be okay. It will never, ever be okay, but Liam doesn’t tell his mum that.

Liam's dad gets home less than an hour before his party is supposed to start, and by that point, Liam's more or less not crying anymore, but his eyes are still puffy from the little crying jags that hit every twenty or so minutes. He's still on the couch with his mum. The telly is still playing on mute in the background.

"Everything okay?" Liam's dad asks when he walks in and sees Liam sat there, still cuddled up to his mum. "All ready for the party?"

"Our Liam's just had his heart broken," his mum says, when Liam doesn't respond, and she and his dad have a long conversation with just their eyes.

"Oh Liam," his dad says, coming over. "A girl didn't turn you down on your birthday? Who was it? Annie down the way?"

"No," Liam says, and he can't bring himself to explain 'Harry's moving' without his breath shuddering again, tears threatening to spill over, so he just shrugs miserably and turns his face back into his mum's side. He hadn't meant to come out to his parents until he had a good idea about how they might feel about having a gay son. Well. First he waited because he didn't know for sure whether he was gay, and then he waited because everything with Harry went tits-up for the first time and he didn't want to lose his best friend – he steadfastly avoids thinking of Harry as the love of his life, even though Harry is probably both – and his parents in the same year, if he could help it.

But now it's all out there. "You can tell him," he tells his mum, heavily. "I'm going to go wash up before people get here."

Only Jordan and Andy come, even though Liam's invited loads of boys from school. It's still more than Liam had expected.

He likes Andy well enough, even though Andy is no Harry – and Liam can't think that, not now, not anymore, not when Harry walked out of his life like that. But maybe it's a good thing, Andy not being Harry. Anything might be better than Harry right now – but he's fairly certain Jordan only came because Jordan's never been to his house before and wanted to see if Liam had any gay things lying about his room, for final proof. But Liam doesn't know how to be gay, or if there's anything he has to do to be properly gay. He only knows how to be in love with Harry, and he clearly doesn't know how to do that properly, either, or else he wouldn't be feeling so hollowed-out and dry all over right now.

Morbidly, Liam thinks that the only gay thing he has sitting out in the open is his broken heart, shattered and bleeding on the shower floor, and that's something only he knows is there anyway, so. Jordan won't be getting any proof from this party.

It's awkward anyway, because Liam is only playacting at being happy to see them. He knows it's obvious that he's pretending.

It's possible they think that he's pretending because they're the only ones that showed up, but now that Harry leaving is probably common knowledge, it's also possible that they've figured out that Liam is in big fat gay secret love with Harry and is falling apart at the seams. But even though Jordan doesn't bring a present and Andy just brings a melty chocolate bar he didn't even wrap, they sing Happy Birthday and eat some of the cake Liam's mum made and hang out in Liam's room for a whole hour afterwards. Andy asks how Liam's singing practise is going – Liam is surprised that he remembered at all – and Jordan asks who Liam's favourite superhero is, and when he asks if Liam has Harry's new address, Liam is able to say that he doesn't without his voice even wavering a little.

They don't hang around much longer after that, though. Liam walks them to the door and slumps against it when it's shut, and then goes to find his family.

"Did you have a nice time with your friends?" Liam's dad asks when he finds his parents at the kitchen table, and he shrugs.

"Yeah," he says, because it went as well as could be expected, once all of his expectations for the birthday party had been ground into the dirt beneath Harry's feet right before it started. "It was fine." He tries not to think about his birthday last year, and how Harry was there, and how ten other kids from school were there too. They all left when Harry did, and he still can't decide whether it's because they were really just Harry's friends or whether they don’t want to be seen with the kid everyone suspects is gay. He doesn't know which would be worse. Probably both.

"Do they know about, um," Liam's mum says, and she winces a little before adding, "I mean, do they know that Harry is leaving?"

"Yeah," says Liam. That was pretty obvious, that Harry'd mentioned something to them ages before he told Liam. The worst part was that he hadn't even felt surprised. He'd just felt the same old hollow ache he'd been feeling all day, first from his own conviction that Harry would never show, and then from the knowledge that Harry was leaving forever. "He'd told them."

"Right." Liam's mum hesitates, stretching out a hand as if to touch Liam's arm, but then she lets it fall to her lap. She hesitates longer still, until the silence starts to grow uncomfortable. Right when Liam's about to break it, she says, "So – are you gay, then?"

Liam sighs and pulls out the chair across from her. He drops into it, slumping down against the table. "I mean," he says. He is, he is, but he doesn't know whether he should say as much. Admitting it may be a second felling blow. Worst sixteenth birthday anyone has ever had. One for the history books.

But then again, if he lies about it, his mum will find out anyway. If he ever gets over Harry – which is never going to happen – and finds a boyfriend – which is probably also never going to happen – she'll find out. She'll ask about girls, but there will never be a girl. Liam doesn’t want to date any girls just to make his family happy. He wouldn't want to do that to anyone. Unless maybe the girl was a lesbian, in a similar situation to him... but what would the chances of that be? Liam doesn’t even know any lesbians.

"Yeah," he says, finally. "Think I am."

"Oh," she says, and she exchanges a long look with his father.

"Are you sure?" he asks, and Liam can't help but laugh, a bright, jagged, pained laugh.

"Pretty sure," he says, thinking of the way he felt every time Harry's hand touched his, every time they kissed. How guilty he felt doing it even when Harry had no idea how much he liked him. So, so guilty, but never guilty enough to stop doing it. Too greedy for the sunshine in his veins and the knots all over his stomach and the gooseflesh whenever Harry's breath puffed against his ear whenever he leaned in to whisper something. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, Liam," his mum says. She reaches out her hand again, but instead of touching Liam, she takes his dad's hand.

"We still love you, son," says his dad. "Don't you ever doubt that."

Liam bursts into tears at that, for what feels like the thirty billionth time that day. But instead of the wracking painful sobs of earlier, these are silent. Not grateful, not relieved, just – acknowledging, maybe. "Thanks, dad."

"Just maybe don't tell your nan," Liam's mum says, worriedly. "Or – or anyone else, really. Most people here won't like that."

Liam's pretty sure his parents don’t particularly like it, either, and he feels hollower than ever. But then again, he doesn't much care for it, either. "I know," he says. "I kinda got that feeling."

"Has anyone said anything?" his dad demands.

Liam loves his parents, he really does, because even though they rarely understand anything – why he and Harry fell apart, why Liam had such a hard time making friends when he was younger, anything – they're still violently supportive of him, and protective to the max. He was so sick for so long as a baby – still is, a little, but it isn't as dire anymore – and so left out as a child that they'll do anything to make sure he's okay.

"No one knows," Liam says. "They just suspect, I guess. It's fine. I can handle it."

Both of his parents look impossibly sad at that. "Just let us know if we can do anything," Liam's dad says. "Denying it, or talking to someone at your school, or anything."

Liam's fairly certain saying 'bring Harry back so I can punch him in the face and then confess my love for him' doesn't really count as the kind of thing his parents are willing to do, so he just shrugs. "Okay," he says, and then, "Can I be excused?"

"Of course," says his mum, so he leaves before she can offer to fix him a warm milk or a tea for bed.

Their walls are paper-thin, so even though he goes up to his room and shuts the door, he can still hear the murmur of his parents strategizing how to deal with him being gay for what feels like hours.

The best thing he can say about his entire sixteenth birthday is that he doesn't cry himself to sleep.

It's not that Liam chickens out about clearing the air with Harry, it's just that he doesn't get around to it for a while. For starters, he's got a new doctor taking him through more and more strengthening exercises, carefully building up muscle around his shattered bones and building up his core strength again so that he can sit up on his own without getting strapped into a chair or having someone support him all the way, and so that he can piss in a bedpan instead of leeching wee into the eternally-annoying catheter attached to his dick. When he's not going through these new exercises or getting shoved into the magnet for the doctors to take yet another brain scan to see if there have been any functional changes to the way the head trauma and resultant coma fucked up his memory, he's generally sleeping, or painstakingly tapping every thought he can dredge up about the game he and Zayn have been planning into his phone, because even though he makes even more typos than usual, it's still worlds easier than trying to manipulate a pen or pencil at this point.

It also doesn't help that Harry's doing a rotation in a separate bit of the hospital this week, filling in for a fine-motor specialist that's away at some big-name conference and gaining more cross-applicable skills that will look great on his CV, or something. He used a lot of big words when he explained it to Liam, apologetically, telling him that he hasn't got full training in Liam's new exercises yet and he needs to expand his repertoire in other ways now that he's got the opportunity to do so, so he won't be with his usual patients ("Or friends, Liam, because you know that you're more than just a patient to me") for a little bit. One of the benefits of still being in training, he told Liam, wryly, and now when he has time to visit, it's a toss-up of whether he or Liam is more exhausted. He's dozed off in Liam's room about ten words into their conversations more than once, especially since he stops by straight away after finishing up his shift.

Liam doesn't really mind it, though; Zayn's been MIA since she slept with Niall, so he hasn't had much by way of visitors outside of Harry. He's tried texting Zayn a few times, because even though he's fairly – resignedly – positive that seeing Liam doesn’t help her mental state or self-blame about his condition, he's also got years of experience with her getting caught in anxiety spirals when work starts getting stressful, and likes to think that he could do more good than harm for her right now. But she doesn't respond, and he's so tired when Louis and Selena come by mid-week that he can hardly string four words together to ask about how they're doing, or Zayn, or anything at all, really.

Liam has started feeling the pressing weight of a need for closure with Harry all the time now, instead of just when Harry is at his bedside, or his chairside, but Harry's visits are a welcome distraction from Zayn's marked physical absence and total radio silence now, so he manages to put it aside and let himself embrace Harry's presence.

Even though he barely has visits from people to break up his days, he's so caught up in his recovery and pushing himself to become as strong as he possibly can, as quickly as he possibly can, that he forgets it's his mum's weekend for visiting until she shows up Friday evening.

She stays in his flat when he comes by, dusts a little and takes his hospital clothes home for a wash and changes them out with new things and generally makes sure everything is tidied up for when he can come home, because even though Eleanor and Sophia have been so good about taking care of Loki for the weeks and weeks that Liam has been in hospital, he hadn't felt right asking them to flat-sit on top of that. She shows up with a stack of new books, which he won't read unless he's dead bored because the eyestrain still gives him too much of a headache, but which he'll still make Zayn or Louis – or Harry – google the plot of so he can pretend like he's read them between her visits, regardless, and a couple of squeeze-bags full of sand and rice so he can strengthen his grip, which he will use, and gladly.

She has a nurse help him into the tub and gives him a running-water sponge-bath, which stopped being embarrassing around the fourth time that it happened, taking extra care with his uneven hair. "Wish you'd let met trim this up nicely, love," she says, after she's poured cups of water over it to rinse out the shampoo she rubbed in.

"Might as well wait till I get out of here," he says. It's not like he spends a lot of time looking at himself in the mirror anyway, and as much as he trusts his mum to cut his hair safely after spending most of his childhood sat in one of their scratched-up kitchen chairs with her trimming it as nicely as she could, he's a little paranoid about anything with sharp edges getting close to his head anymore.

"Just watch," she says, stroking it back once she's all done with it. "Soon enough you'll be giving Louis a run for his money." She met Louis the first week Liam was in hospital, back when he was still in a coma, and he charmed her as much as anyone has ever been able to charm Karen Payne. Liam can still remember her offering to trim up Harry's hair when he first started growing it out a little when they were fourteen; the fact that she hasn't mentioned a single word about Louis's being too long is just proof positive of how impressed she is by him.

"Long hair is in now, mum," Liam says, thinking of how long Harry's hair is now, and how soft it looks.

"Now, Liam," she says. "I know you're gay, but you'd hardly know what's fashionable if it bit you on the arse."

"Mum!" Liam says, scandalised, even if she's not entirely wrong. He likes being comfortable, so sue him. He's got Zayn to dress him up for important events, like gaming conferences and big important meetings and hanging out with her ex's band. "You can't say stuff like that!"

"Oh hush, you know what I mean," she says. Her hand is never stops being gentle as she runs it over his damp hair, which is dripping onto his back. "Can you hang on a tick? I'll get someone in here to help me get you back up into your bed."

"I'll try not to drown in the tiny puddle of water down here," Liam promises, and she glares at him.

"Not funny, love," she says, and hands him a towel for modesty as she goes out to hit the call attendant button.

Harry shows up a few minutes later, and in the nanoseconds between him arriving at the door to Liam's in-suite bathroom and him saying, "Hey, I was about to clock out when I saw your light, is everything okay?" Liam remembers a very essential and very important thing:

He never told his mum that Harry's shown up again.

It's almost comical, the way his mum's face goes from open and engaging to cold and closed-off. "What are you doing here?" she asks, giving Liam a hard look.

"Um," Harry says, looking between Liam and his mum, eyes wide. "Hi, Mrs Payne, it's been a while."

"Mum," Liam says with a wince, wishing very hard that he wasn't lying naked and damp in a tub with just a little towel covering his dick and the scarring all up and down his side. The towel doesn't hide the way his leg is still a little twisted, and the way the deepest bruises he got in the accident are still a little yellow even though they've mostly cleared up by now. "Meet my – one of my doctors. Harry Styles."

"Doctor in training," Harry corrects, carefully, still staring at Liam's mum like he's seen a ghost. He wrenches his gaze back to Liam after a moment. "Have a nice bath? I expect we're getting you back to bed?"

"I'm sure I can manage," Liam's mum says, coldly. "Or a nurse can help. Mustn't bother you."

"I don't mind," Harry says. His voice is smaller than Liam can remember it ever being, except maybe for on his sixteenth birthday, right before he left Liam's life for good.

"I do," says Liam's mum. "Good day, Harry."

"Mum," Liam says, softly. "It's really okay. Harry is a very responsible doctor. In training."

"Is he," she says, sceptically, and Liam can practically see her remembering the way he cried on her for hours and days after Harry left that day twelve years ago.

"Yes," he says, firmly, and she holds his gaze for another long minute, where he tries to convey I am a grown-up adult and I am okay with this as much as he can, before she all but throws her hands up in the air.

"If you insist," she says, pressing her lips together into a thin line, and even though Liam is fairly certain that's mum-ese for I don't believe this is a good idea but we will discuss it later, she steps back to let Harry closer to the tub.

Harry's gentle, as Liam knew he would be. He eases Liam out of the tub and onto his chair, with Liam's mum's help, and together they get Liam back into his room proper. Harry even steps back and looks determinedly out the window while Liam's mum helps Liam back into boxers for Liam's modesty, even though he's definitely been present on rounds where Liam's other doctors do full-body inspections to make sure he's not getting any bedsores and that the bruising near his groin is clearing up without any more insidious complications.

He does turn around to help Liam back into a t-shirt, because he knows that Liam's side has got sore with all of his rehabilitation exercises and he can guide Liam's mum in being properly careful about it. She doesn't get any less stern with him for the help, but her eyes grow a marginally – almost unnoticeably – softer as he does.

When Harry ducks out to properly clock out and switch into his normal clothes, Liam's mum rounds on him. "You didn't tell me Harry was here."

It's impressive, how neutral she sounds given how upset Liam is fairly certain she feels. "Sorry," he says, sheepishly. "It just. Didn't come up."

"How does something like that not come up?" she asks, archly, but she sighs when she sees the look on Liam's face. "Sorry, love. I just worry about you. Don't want you getting any more hurt than you've already been."

"I know, mum," he says, smiling bravely up at her. "I've already told him that, anyway, so. He's promised to be careful."

"Are you –" she hesitates, frowning. "You know. Special friends with him again?"

"If you're asking if I'm still interested," says Liam, "I haven't figured that out yet." It's not entirely true, but he hasn't decided whether he's going to do anything about it – that'll come after they finally clear the air, all of it, about their history. At the look on her face, he adds, "Don't worry, mum. I'll be careful."

"I'm more worried that he won't be careful with you," his mum says, frankly. "Liam, you were so sad for so long."

That's true, Liam supposes. He's never really thought about how it must have looked from his parents' side of things – he's always been so caught up in how it felt on his end. But he did cry, for so long and so often, and he came out to them in such a dramatic and possibly-unexpected way. It took him ages to pull himself out of his sadness, and to get over the fact that he no longer really had any friends.

Andy had been decent, until it came out at school that Liam was actually truly gay, after which he was the only one who wasn't awful. But he still wouldn't hang out with Liam for ages, so Liam had thrust himself in his studies and got good grades in his GCSEs and ended up being one of just a few of his old friends who went on to sixth form. He'd done different A levels than everyone else – more academically-oriented ones, because he had time to study for them with no friends to hang out with, once he started actively ignoring the way he was still hung up on Harry.

Eventually he'd made new friends in his courses, ones who hadn't been at his old school for the great dramatic fallout or else ones who just plain didn't care about it. Eventually, his mum had stopped looking hopeful every time he brought his friend Jade home to work on class projects together. Eventually, his dad had stopped asking if he was going to go out with a nice girl like Jade ("No, dad, I'm not ready"), or Danielle from uni ("No, dad, I'm gay"), or Zayn from work ("No, dad, she's gay too"), or Sophia or Eleanor from the flat below ("No, dad, they're dating and I'm still not into girls").

He still isn't sure whether his dad was asking because he genuinely forgot Liam was gay (unlikely), or because he wished Liam wasn't. Liam loves his dad and knows that his dad loves him back, completely and totally, but he also knows where his dad is coming from. He tries not to ruminate on the way that he's still not out to anyone else in his dad's family, the way they'd look at him if they knew.

Anyway, Liam's managed to convince himself that his dad just doesn't want Liam to get hurt again like he was by Harry. Thinking that way is for the best. It's not like it's entirely inaccurate, either.

But here's Liam getting caught in his thoughts, whilst his mum is stood right next to him, worrying. "I'm not sad anymore," he tells her. Or. Well. "Not about that, at least. Not like I was."

"Oh, Liam," she says, and spreads a hand over his arm. Her skin looks thinner; her hair has more grey in it than he ever remembers seeing before. She's got old in the past few months. His stomach clenches at the thought, and he very nearly winces. "I know, honey. I just worry."

"I'm a big boy now," he says, half-smiling up at her. She half-smiles back, and changes the subject to the crafts classes she's started taking on the weekends she doesn't come down to London. She's still talking about the birds that have come by the little birdhouse she painted when Harry returns.

She leaves soon thereafter, citing exhaustion from her travel, but promises to come back first thing in the morning and casts a wary glance at Harry as she walks out the door.

"You can ask," Liam says, after Harry hesitates for three impossibly long minutes, a few feet away from Liam's bed, his face a mask of consternation.

"Should I not have come back?"

That wasn't the question Liam had expected – he'd expected something more along the lines of 'why does your mum seem to hate me so much?' – but it's a fair one. "It's better that you did, if I'm honest," he says, carefully.

"She doesn't like me anymore," Harry says. There's a dismal note to his voice, almost like resignation.

"She doesn't have a frame of reference for you anymore," Liam says. "Outside of, um." Here he hesitates, tries to sort out the best way to put it. "The way we stopped being friends. Back then."

"I really hurt you, didn't I?" Harry asks, quietly. He's still a few feet away, but they feel like miles.

"Water under the bridge," says Liam. It's not, but he wants it to be. A little selfishly, he adds: "She'll probably like you better if you come back tomorrow."

"Then I guess I'm coming tomorrow," Harry says, waggling his eyebrows at Liam, finally, visibly, relaxing.

Liam manages to grin back at him. Grinning gets easier when Harry finally moves closer.

Harry's in Liam's room wearing his civilian clothes when Liam gets back from a pool therapy session with one of the full doctors in the hospital. His hair is driving him crazy, long and pulled straighter with gravity and the damp of the water. There's one strand that's dripping water all the way down his back, which is itchy with the chlorine of the pool. It's still curlier than it was before his accident; he used to get it trimmed every three weeks, and he hasn't had an appointment in twice that long.

The nurse wheels Liam into his room. "Do you ever leave the hospital, Dr Styles?" she asks, when she notices Harry stood at the window, looking out across the patch of green separating the hospital from the streets of London. Rare sunlight is streaming through the window, lighting the edges of Harry's hair like a halo. He's fucking beautiful; his hair is pulled back into a loose bun and frizzing out at the edges. His legs are longer than anything in jeans and boots, and he has his hands latched firmly behind his back. He looks like he could be a character in one of Liam's guilty-pleasure tv shows. Liam swallows, trying to push his heart back down his throat. He doesn’t get much opportunity to just look at Harry like this; it's hard to twist his neck around that much when he's stuck in the bed and Harry is flitting about, stretching out his limbs.

Harry turns around. "Didn't you hear, Mary?" he asks, glancing at her briefly before looking directly at Liam and not looking away. "I live here now. Moved in just last week."

"Oh, Dr Styles," she says, laughing. "Liam, shall I put you in the bed?"

"No, this is fine," Liam says. He's still staring at Harry. "I'm sure Dr Styles can help me out before he heads out."

"I'm sure," she says, in a tone Liam can't quite place. Liam hardly even notices her leaving. He doesn't know what it is about today, why he suddenly can't look away from Harry, and the way he's got about twelve thousand rings on his fingers now that he's out of his scrubs. The knees of his jeans are fraying, and the toes of his boots are scuffed. His shirt is completely fucking ridiculous, a vivid orange with animals all over it. Liam had already realised, if only distantly, that Harry doesn't dress like he did when they were kids, but it's really hitting him now, how much Harry has visibly grown away from the boy Liam once knew, and how much he's stayed the same.

"How's your new home treating you, then?" Liam asks Harry, partly to distract himself from his own train of thoughts, and Harry grins. His hair is tugging free of the bun and falling around his face, and his grin is wide. He looks – joyous.

"It's good," Harry says. "It's so good." He looks down at Liam earnestly. "Got a promise of a recommendation letter this morning. For when I apply for a job when I'm done with my specialty training next year. My supervisor really likes how I've been doing."

"Harry, that's great," Liam says, trying to ignore the sudden hollow press in his stomach, the sudden cold fear that Harry will leave again. "That's wonderful."

"I know," Harry says. He's still grinning, hair falling into his face, hands shoved into his pocket. Liam remembers him doing that once or twice when they were kids, pushing his hands so deep in his pockets he almost took out the lining because he didn't know what to do with them in his excitement. Liam wants to hold them tightly, tight enough to keep Harry from walking out of his life again.

This is ridiculous, he admonishes himself. A letter of recommendation doesn’t mean Harry's going to disappear again. He's sharing this news with you, on the day he got it. That doesn't mean he's going to pull a runner. "How are you going to celebrate?" he asks, as brightly as he can. His heart is in his throat again, but this time he feels sick with it.

"Celebrating right now, aren't I?" Harry asks, face open and happy. "With you. Nialler's busy with Zayn, so I'm double-celebrating with her when your game gets approved."

"Oh," Liam says. He doesn't know how to feel. Get over it, he tells himself, because he's sad about not working on the game and happy for Harry and sad that Harry is moving on with his life again, like Zayn is, while Liam is stuck here in the hospital bed, still unsure if he'll ever be able to run again like he used to.

"Are you okay?" Harry asks, frowning suddenly. "Did – was it me bringing up Zayn? Or your therapy today?"

"No," Liam says, shaking his head to clear out the fuzz in it. His hair drips down his back again and he tries not to wince. "Yes, I mean, a little, but no."

"What is it?" Harry asks. He leans down, right into Liam's personal space. Liam both does and does not want him to move back.

"I just," Liam says, and he clears his throat. "I'm being ridiculous. That's all."

Harry crouches, pausing noticeably before taking Liam's hands in his own and looking up to catch Liam's eye. "Tell me."

"Just," says Liam. "You have, what, a year left?"

"Three," Harry says. He doesn't look away. "Two. Two and a half. Speciality training lasts like five years, and I'm only halfway through it."

"Oh," Liam says. It still hurts a little to roll his eyes, even though his head wound is mostly healed up, but he does it anyway. "Yeah. I'm being ridiculous."

"But how?"

Liam sighs. "I was just," he says, shrugging with his un-injured shoulder. "You know. Hoping you wouldn't disappear when you leave this time."

It must take Harry a moment to process, because he nods once before he suddenly looks stricken. "Liam," he breathes, sharp and pained. He takes a deep breath, chest rising and falling, but his hands don't leave Liam's. Harry – Liam is fairly certain it's an attempt at a smile, but his face is mostly just twisted around his mouth really weirdly. "Technically you'll be leaving before I do," he says. "Clean bill of health and that."

In for a penny, in for a pound. "You know what I mean," says Liam.

"I do," Harry says. He rocks back on his heels and almost falls down – Liam can feel the tug in his arms. Harry lets go of his hands, but it's only long enough to drag one of the freestanding chairs over to just in front of Liam. Harry sits and takes Liam's hands back. "I won't walk out of your life again," he says. "I promise. When we're no longer both here every day, you'll still – I'll still want to see you. If you want the same thing."

Liam bites his lip. "I do," he says, quietly. "I – Harry, I don't think I could take it again. You leaving."

"Then I won't," Harry says, resolutely, and he squeezes Liam's hands.

Liam takes a deep breath, ribs aching as he does. "Okay," he says. "Okay. I can believe you."

"Please do," says Harry. The corner of his mouth twists up, but it's not a real smile, not yet.

Liam nods, but he's fairly certain this promise isn't enough. They have to clear all the air to move forward, probably. He needs to clear the air. He needs closure so that he can open himself up to Harry again, even just as a real friend. "Look," he says, before he can lose the nerve he's been trying to work up for days now. "We should probably talk about it."

"Seeing each other after you're out?" Harry asks. "Okay."

"No, I mean," Liam takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. "You know. What made us fall apart. Before you left, you know, before. Earlier. When we were kids."

"Oh," Harry says. He's quiet for a moment, worrying his lip, and then he nods decisively. "Okay. I wanted to protect you."

That. Is not what Liam was expecting. "What?"

"Like," says Harry. "I knew I was really into boys, right? By like… your fifteenth birthday, at least."

That was months before they had their falling-out. Liam had already known he was gay, had already known he was in love with Harry. "You didn't say anything," he says. Even if Harry never, ever became interested in Liam, Liam could have helped him figure it out. He could have told Harry what he knew about being gay.

"I knew what people said about boys who kissed other boys," Harry says. "And the way none of our classmates probably understood being bi at all, so they'd especially not understand me, you know? And I'd – I'd hoped you would have supported me even if you knew? But I thought you were straight, so. I didn't want you to have to deal with knowing, do you know what I mean?"

Liam considers for a moment. "Okay, I understand that," he says, eventually. "I didn't tell you, either, and I'd known I was gay for at least a year by that point. So that was… nice of you, I guess, if really misguided. Of both of us. But the thing is, Haz –" He pauses to sort out his thoughts. Wetting his lips, he continues. "The thing is that I had to deal with it all anyway, because I really was gay and people started to suspect and when I came out for real, after you left, no one talked to me for months."

"Liam," Harry says, squeezing Liam's hand, but Liam shakes his head, and Harry, misunderstanding the gesture, drops Liam's hand immediately and leans over to pick up his bottle of water.

"Let me say this," he says, and takes a deep breath, closing his eyes to try to sort out all the pieces of this puzzle, as Harry starts unscrewing the lid on the bottle. "So you were protecting me by telling me you couldn't kiss me because it was too gay, and then not talking to me for ages after. And I didn't have anyone else to talk to either, really, because I couldn't really confirm to anyone that I was gay, much less tell anyone – least of all you – that the boy I was really kind of hopelessly in love with stopped kissing me and talking to me, in that order, because it was 'too gay.' So."

There's a sharp silence when he pauses to take a breath, and then a clatter, and then he feels a splash of wet on his feet. When he opens his eyes, Harry's bottle is on the floor and there's water everywhere. Harry's hands are frozen mid-air, and his eyes are wide with shock. "Um," Harry says, drawing out the –m, hands still not moving. "What?"

"What?" Liam reflects on what he just said, and then – oh. Oh, shit. "Oh."

"You were in love with me?" Harry asks. His eyes are still so, so wide, and so green, and Liam has to bite his tongue before he can say something stupid and maybe-true like 'still am' or 'never stopped.'

"Was it not hopelessly obvious?" he asks finally, curiously, because he'd always thought that it was the worst-kept secret he ever had from Harry.

Harry frowns, lips pursing for a moment, eyelashes casting beautiful shadows across his cheeks. He chuckles a little, finally – not unhappy, but not super-joyous, either – and says, "Maybe in retrospect."

"Yeah," Liam says. He shrugs with his good shoulder again. "So."

"Yeah," Harry says, and he laughs again, shaking his head. "I was too, you know."

Wait. "What?"

"I was in love with you too," Harry says, though Liam can't be certain that Harry actually does say it, what with the way the blood is rushing through his ears and the way he's overwhelmed with the sound of his own heartbeat, which is strong and fast. But he knows that Harry did say it, and he knows that Harry said it earnestly, because for all that he feels almost like he's just gone deaf, Harry's face is open and honest and practically yearning – but for what, Liam can't tell. Honesty, maybe. Maybe he's imploring Liam to believe him.

And Liam does. He startles himself by laughing, and then he can't stop, even though it hurts his ribs more than he'd care to admit with how hard and uncontrollably he's doing it. "God," he says through his laughter. Harry looks at him for a long moment and starts to smile as well, almost cautiously. "God," Liam says again. "What a waste. What a fucking waste."

Harry's smile shifts somewhat, in a way that Liam has forgot how to read – if he ever knew it in the first place. "Well," says Harry, odd look on his face. "At least we have now, right?"

Liam's stomach churns at the words, like he's trying to digest the way Harry said now, with a hopeful lilt to his voice. "Now?" he echoes.

"To get to know each other again," Harry clarifies, and – oh. That wasn't quite what Liam was expecting him to say. But then Harry's taking Liam's hands in his own again, and smiling earnestly at him, and Liam can't help but smile back. "I won't disappear this time. Won't get so caught up in trying to protect you that I don't realize I'm actually hurting you." His eyes twinkle, a little. "Won't get so heartbroken that I stop talking to you when you refuse to kiss me after I've already unwittingly broken your heart by refusing to kiss you."

Liam manfully resists quipping that that sounds like a lot of kissing. "Good," he says, instead, and then, fully aware that he's probably going to end up falling in love with Harry again, if he hasn't done already, and fully unwilling to say as much, he adds, "No secrets, though."

"No secrets," Harry agrees. He smiles so big his dimples practically pop, so Liam gives in to the urge and pokes one.

If possible, Harry's smile widens even further.

It takes Liam a stupid long time to realise that Harry specialises in treating traumatic brain injury, and not just physical rehabilitation medicine.

"Suddenly everything you've said about reading scans makes sense," he tells Harry, after the rest of the doctors on Liam's rotation have filed out of the room. They've been discussing the latest tests Liam's had done, a kind of whole-body recovery update. Frankly, Liam understood maybe one word in two throughout, but to the best of his estimation, his skin has already healed up, but the scar tissue probably won't ever fade. His bones are knitting together the way that they should, and his muscle mass hasn't completely fucking atrophied – thanks to Harry, and his nurses – and the bruising and swelling in his brain seems to have finally vanished. That one's thanks to the passing of time, rather than Harry, but Harry is the one who reports on it, dressed up in his scrubs, hands fixed firmly behind his back. "You looked very professional up there."

"Cheers, Liam," Harry says, grinning, dragging a chair over to Liam's bedside. "I do make an effort. You know, occasionally."

"I should hope so," says Liam. He stretches his fingers out and tries to move his arm over to take Harry by the hand. He sort of manages it, but Harry meets him halfway.

Liam tries not to read too deeply into that.

"Did you think I just did bodywork?" Harry asks. His voice tone is fond, and his eyes are soft.

"You did want to be a physical therapist when we were kids," Liam points out.

"Guess I got interested in brains in uni," Harry says, shrugging. "That's why my specialty training is taking so long. Same concept, more body parts. More, you know." He trails off uncertainly for a moment. "Stuff. To learn about."

"I hope that's what you put into your foundations programme applications," Liam says. He stretches his hand out slightly in Harry's grip, turning it over so that he can lace his fingers with Harry's.

Harry's eyes dart down to the join of their hands, tracking the movement. "Absolutely," he says, after a pregnant pause. "Hi, I'm Harry Styles and I would like to join your program to continue learning about all types of body parts. Brains, and legs, and arms, and torsos." He squeezes Liam's hand in his, still looking down at it, before looking straight into Liam's eyes. "And hands."

"Are hands your speciality?" Liam asks. Mustering every ounce of his strength, he brings his other hand over to cover Harry's. Harry's hands are warm and dry and soft, though his cuticles are rough. He used to bite his hangnails when he was stressed, back when they were kids. Somehow, the fact that it seems like he still does makes Liam feel all soft inside, instead of sad that he was missing the memo on such a big part of Harry's life.

"Absolutely," Harry says. He doesn't look away from Liam's face, his gaze practically searching. For what, Liam can only hope. "Can't you tell?"

"I can tell," Liam says. "You're very careful with mine."

"Some might argue," Harry says, and he pauses to lick his lips. "That I've learned to be pretty careful with hearts, too. You know, for someone who isn't a cardiologist."

"You've got a way with words, Styles," Liam says. He doesn't know what else to say. He doesn't know whether to acknowledge what Harry is implying, or to ignore it completely, or what. He decides to deflect, ultimately. It wouldn't be fair to either of them if he committed to a maybe-something he's not certain he's ready for, yet. "Surprised you didn't read English instead of medicine."

Harry's expression shifts slightly, grows a little less earnest. He doesn't lose the smile, though, so Liam doesn't let himself feel too badly about it. "And be forced to read Chaucer? No thank you."

Liam laughs. Harry's hands feel incredibly heavy resting between Liam's own. "I hardly know who you've become," he says, before he can think about it.

"You know exactly who I've become," Harry says, sitting up straight. "I'm in my third year of my specialty training. Various forms of TBI and the associated physical rehabilitation. I'm still Harry, Liam."

"But I don't know how you got to be Doctor Harry," says Liam. "I don't know the story. I don't know if anyone broke your heart in uni or how your foundations programme was or what all your colleagues think about the way you spend, like, all of your free time in here with me. I know you're friends with Niall and I know your mum and Gemma are okay, because you told me, but I don't know about your other friends. I assume you're not dating anyone right now –" though maybe that's just wishful thinking – "but I don't even know if you have any pets. We've talked about our past to death, and you've told me about your present, but I don't know a thing about your individual past. Not really."

"I had a fling with a teaching assistant at Imperial College when I was doing my undergraduate degree," says Harry. "It went sour before it could get serious, which is the one time I looked you up on Facebook." He takes a shaky breath. "I did my Foundations programme in Manchester, for a change of scenery and to be a little closer to home. Fell half in love with a neurosurgeon there. Took her on a few dates, but it didn't really go anywhere. She was getting ready to move back to America. Missed real pie, she said, and by that time I had to focus on my ST3 applications. I did do a rotation with her for the neurology focus," he says. "Her last few months in Manchester. Learned a lot about taking care of brains. Learned a lot about communication and the different ways relationships can work, too." He pauses, looks seriously at Liam. "We weren't ever in a proper relationship, because the timing wasn't right, but given a chance, she could easily have been – well. A new you, if you will."

Something shifts in Liam's chest at that. He can't tell if it's a good shift of a bad shift, so he just nods. "Are you still in touch?"

"We hang out at conferences," says Harry. "Get coffee whenever she's back in the area for vacation. She's got a lovely wife now."

"Oh, Harry," Liam says, hand tightening on Harry's, reassuringly.

"No, I'm really happy for her," says Harry. "I introduced them, in fact. Karlie was on an exchange program in London when I was in uni and we had a few classes together." He shrugs. "I came back to London for my specialty training. Clearly. No pets, because my flat doesn't allow for it. I've been crashing at Niall's more often than not, though, as my building has a bug problem right now. I've a few friends in my program, and from uni, who are in the city, but they're more grab-a-pint-after-work type friends than anything."

"How did you and Niall meet?"

Harry grins. "She just fell into my life, you know? One of them things. I was wasting time dicking around on – god. Do you remember those old Neopets accounts we used to have?"

"Vaguely," Liam says, even though he suddenly remembers it vividly, begging Harry's mum to let them onto their old dial-up internet so they could try and nab something from the Money Tree together.

"Yeah," says Harry, giving him a very knowing look indeed. "Anyway, I was in a coffee shop right at the end of uni, completely fucking convinced I'd failed all my applications to foundations programmes, and I logged into it for the first time in forever, you know. I um. I used to go in and read the Neomail you'd send me when I was down." Before Liam can say anything to that revelation, Harry barrels ahead. "I mean, so, I was looking at the new games, when this complete fucking stranger pulls her chair halfway across the room and plops it down next to me. 'I made that one,' she said, and pointed at the screen. I didn't believe her at first, so she insisted on meeting up again to prove it." He grins. "The rest is history. And now – you make video games, too! How did that one happen?"

"Oh, you know," Liam says. He shrugs as best he can, letting his good shoulder lift a little and drop back down to the bed. "Went into mechanical engineering at St Andrew's for a while. Got involved in a soc that focused on gaming and game development, and the rest is history. I'm more into creating the storylines than the actual coding, but I can do both." He sighs. "Zayn does the art. We met at work – we were hired at the same time, and we were both the only out gay employees, and we developed this competitive thing between the two of us that turned into, you know, working on a dream game together in our free time and best-friendship. In fact, we –" He breaks off when a loud beeping suddenly starts, from the vicinity of Harry's pocket. "What's that?"

"Shit," Harry says, scrambling up. "Shit, I've got a session with another patient – Liam, I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay," Liam says, and then: "Thank you."

"I'm glad we talked about this," Harry says, smiling down at Liam. They're still holding hands, Liam abruptly realises, so he lets his own slip down. "It was nice, you know. Starting to fill in the gaps."

"It was," Liam agrees, and Harry pauses for a long moment, gaze searching, like he's trying to make a decision. But then his beeper goes off again, and he jolts, reaching forward to muss Liam's hair quickly.

"I'll be back after my shift," he calls over his shoulder, and then he's gone.

"Bye," Liam calls after him, but he's already too far away to hear.

Liam is in his car. Traffic is heavy as anything, and he's halfway into the junction even though the light is red, what with how slowly it's been moving. He tries backing up to clear the way, but the car behind him honks at him, loudly.

"It's okay," Harry says, reaching across to place his hand on top of Liam's, which is hovering on the gear stick between the two of them.

Liam hadn't realised Harry knew how to drive. He hadn't realised Harry was in the car with him.

"We're going to be late," he says, looking out the window. The sky is dark and the street is unfamiliar and the traffic in front of them isn't moving an inch. There's no traffic to his side, but he's stuck in the middle of the junction, and that's bound to be uncomfortable.

"Zayn will understand," says Harry. He spreads his hands over his belly, which looks swollen – almost pregnant, save for the way it's glowing intermittently, like there's a flashing light underneath his skin. "We'll have our little game when we get there and no sooner. There's time."

But that's when the lorry swerves into Liam's peripheral vision, going far too fast for this part of the city at this time of day, clearly out of control. "Harry," Liam says, panicked, as it bears ever-closer, but when he looks, it becomes clear that it's Harry behind the wheel of the lorry itself. He's not looking where he's going, which is directly at Liam and himself, carrying Liam and Zayn's brainchild of a game in his pregnant belly. "Harry!" Liam shouts now, and he doesn't know if it's to the Harry next to him or the Harry behind the wheel of the lorry, but neither of them seem to notice anything amiss.

The Harry next to him grins. "I can think of a way to pass the time in this traffic," he says, and places a hand firmly in Liam's lap, which is when Liam's vision is enveloped by the familiar bright light that comes with the collision every single time he ever dreams of it.

As with all of his dreams lately, he wakes up screaming.

Liam tries to avoid paying attention to the way that Zayn hasn't been by to visit in nearly two weeks – not since she confessed to sleeping with Niall – but it's hard, especially when she's been by at least two or three times a week since his accident till now. He wants to talk through his Harry situation with her – the way Harry is so attentive, the way Harry has opened up so much, the way he can hear the nurses talking about how Harry's always in his room when they think he's asleep in his bed.

The way he's worried that Harry's personal attachment to Liam may be jeopardising his job. The way he's still trying to determine what, precisely, the extent of Harry's personal attachment to Liam even is.

But she's drawing close to the presentation of their game, he knows this. She wouldn't be able to focus on Liam anyway, even if she wanted to - which she does, Liam reminds himself. Liam knows how Zayn can get when she's close to finishing a project, because he's the same way. They both get so wrapped up in it they practically live, eat, and breathe it. Zayn will be trying to make sure everything is perfect and blaming herself for everything that isn't perfect. At least Liam is usually there with her, just as caught up but a little more able to help her re-focus on positive thoughts.

He wonders how Niall is handling her, and if Zayn is able to gain enough distance from her work to breathe when Liam isn't there. Selfishly, he hopes she misses him. He misses her, misses work, misses his dog, misses being outside of the hospital, misses being surrounded by his monitors as opposed to the hospital's ones, misses the stories swirling in his head. It's hard to come up with a plot for a game that millions will play when he's confined to the same four walls and the rehabilitation rooms in the hospital almost all the time.

Harry takes him outside to the hospital's garden on a particularly nice day and lets Liam soak up the sun, and it does help a little, but it just isn't the same. Even though it's more of a nurse's job than a doctor in training's, Harry stands there while Liam flips through his phone, texting Zayn intermittent apologies that he can't remember the ending he came up with for the game, interspersed with assurances that she'll completely own her presentation to Simon.

She doesn't really respond, but then, he never expected her to. He knows his girl. He minds, but he understands.

When Harry takes him inside, they go straight down to the rehabilitation pool. "Dr Cooper is overseeing me tonight," he says, so Liam moves a hand and tries to stretch it, across his chest and around to where Harry is holding onto the handles of Liam's wheelchair. He can only reach the side of Harry's palm without his entire body screaming in residual pain, but he pats it anyway.

"You'll be so good," he says, reassuringly, and Harry laughs.

"Cheers," he says. Liam can hear the smile in his voice even without turning around.

The session goes well, all things considered. Liam is learning how to move on his own in the weightlessness of the water, helping build up his own muscle mass in the water now that everyone is certain his brain injury didn't significantly or permanently affect any of his gross motor skills. Harry is attentive, supporting Liam where he needs it, like when he's moving Liam to lie back horizontally in the water, and letting him move, interminably slowly, on his own steam when he's able to. Liam can't say for certain, but Dr Cooper seems to be pleased as well, both with Liam's progress and with Harry's work.

In the changing room when they're done, Harry wheels the available waterproof chair into the appropriate large shower and turns the spray on. "Do you want me to?" he asks Liam, taking a washcloth from a stack on a shelf.

"Don't fancy itchy pool-chemical skin," Liam says, and watches as Harry wets the cloth and squirts soap onto it, massaging the soap into a lather.

He wipes Liam down gently, starting with his arms and working down his torso. He's careful around Liam's scars, and even more careful when the scars butt up to Liam's tattoos.

(There's one tattoo Liam doesn't remember getting, an outline of something he doesn’t completely recognise at his ankle. He discovered it his first time in the rehabilitation pool, but he hasn't had the opportunity to ask Zayn what it means. So he tries not to think about it.)

"Can I?" Harry asks, when he reaches the waistband of Liam's rehabilitation swim trunks.

Liam goes to shrug, but his shoulder is aching from the work he just did in the pool, so he clears his throat. "Might as well clean off everywhere," he says, so Harry carefully eases them down off Liam's hips and draws them off his legs entirely.

"Would you like to wash your own – " Harry pauses, then looks up at Liam, imploringly. "I don't want to cross any boundaries."

"Sore," Liam tells him. "Just – the showerhead should take care of it?"

"If you're certain," Harry says, and, averting his eyes politely, he brings the cloth around to wipe down Liam's legs.

He's bringing it down Liam's thighs, the spray from the shower flattening his hair against his neck – it's so long when it's wet, Liam can't help but notice – when his hand slips and the cloth falls between Liam's legs. The edge of it brushes against Liam's balls. Harry fishes it out, careful to keep from touching more than is strictly necessary, face bright red.

Even though his fingers only brush the inside of Liam's thighs as he retrieves the cloth, the damage is already done. It's a combination of the fiercely careful expression on Harry's face, the way he worries his lips between his teeth when he's concentrating, and the way his fingers feel when they brush nakedly against the tender skin in between Liam's thighs.

Desperately, distantly, Liam registers that his cock is slowly chubbing up, right there, between him and Harry. He stares at it in horror for a moment – it's been over a month and a half since he's so much as been able to touch himself, and he's woken up with his cock stiff and aching on more than one occasion, unable to take care of himself, but it's never been right in someone's face like this since his accident.

"Um," he says, face heating up intolerably. He moves his hands, cupping them around his crotch so that it's hidden, and tries fiercely to smooth his facial expression out so that he can pretend that absolutely nothing has happened at all.

"Liam," Harry says. He's frozen in position, one hand hovering over Liam's knee, the other one supporting himself on the side of Liam's chair. The cloth is falling from his fingers, brushing against the skin of Liam's shin. Inanely, Liam notices that there's a thread pulling loose from one edge of it.

"Don't," he tells Harry, tightly. Covering his dick with his hands wasn't as effective as he'd hoped; now that there's flesh pressing against it, it's threatening to grow into a full erection. "Just – ignore it."

"Do you want me to go?" Harry asks. He tilts his head up toward Liam's face, toward his voice, but his eyes are screwed tightly closed.

Liam sighs a little at the sight, at the offer, at the terrible and painful kindness of it all. "A little," he confesses.

"I can call in a nurse," Harry says. His eyes are still closed. "To help you get dressed again. If you want."

"No, I just –" Liam sighs and goes to run his hand through his hair, but there's his dick right there, reddening at the tip and demanding attention when he moves his hand away. "Just give me a minute to stop being embarrassed."

"You have literally nothing to be embarrassed about there, mate," Harry says, and then his eyes fly open like he's startled himself. Quickly, he closes them again. "I mean. Um."

Liam wants to laugh, but he also wants to cry. "What's that?"

"I mean," Harry says, clearing his throat. "Everyone gets stiffies. It doesn't have to mean anything. Just, like – proximity. Or something."

"Or something," Liam murmurs. The tips of Harry's hair are curling against his neck, water still sluicing down over his back. "Roll me into the spray? I want to rinse off."

"Yes, of course," Harry says. He rocks back on his heels so quickly that he almost tips over backward, but he catches himself in time and hauls himself up so that he can push Liam directly under the stream of water. "Do you – do you want me to step out for a moment?"

Liam is fairly certain he's going to die of mortification. "I survived a horrific car crash and now I'm going to die of embarrassment," he murmurs, which startles a laugh out of Harry. "Um."

"Just so that you can regroup," Harry says, and Liam latches onto that excuse.

"Yeah," he says, and watches Harry slip out past the shower curtain. His arms aren't in a place where he can jerk off – he wouldn't have gone so long without doing so if it were physically possible to maintain that kind of friction for long enough – but he can push his palm roughly down against his cock enough that it kind of feels good.

That, coupled with how utterly long it's been and the knowledge that Harry is stood right outside somewhere, dripping wet and looking very much like a real-world McSteamy, or whatever the character is called in that awful television show Nicola watches, has Liam spilling off into his own lap fairly quickly.

He lets the water wash the evidence away and folds his hands back in his lap before calling out to Harry, "I'm okay now."

"Soap all gone?" Harry asks, coming back through the curtain. He's clearly towelled off a little whilst he was outside, his hair a curly mess on top of his head. "Shall I turn the water off?"

"Go ahead," Liam says. He can't meet Harry's eyes, so he doesn't know if Harry's looking at him or not. "I think I'm good."

He can't meet Harry's eyes even when Harry dries him off, carefully, and helps him into a clean outfit, and switches him to his personal wheelchair. He just sits there and moves what Harry tells him to move when he tells him to move it.

"You know," Harry says, as he pushes Liam back to his room. "I get that you're embarrassed, and I get why, but you really don't have to be."

"Still am," Liam says, ruefully.

"Happens to the best of us, you know," Harry says.

"I know," says Liam. "But please don't-" go on about it, is what he intends on saying, but it suddenly occurs to him he's heard that exact phase before. Happens to the best of is, you know, except Liam had been the one saying it. Don't go on about it, someone else had said. There was – was it spaghetti sauce all over Liam's top? Or was it wine? "Harry!"

"I'm sorry, I'll stop," Harry says, but Liam is already shaking his head.

"No," he says. "No, I mean – Harry, I went on a date three months ago."

"Oh," Harry says, tone suddenly neutral. "I'm happy to hear th- wait. Liam."

"Harry."

"Did Zayn or Louis tell you about this date you went on?"

Liam smiles, a slow, spreading smile that hurts, it gets so big. "They did not," he says. "I – it was a mess, so it must not've been very monumental."

Harry stops plum in the middle of the hallway. "Are you certain?" he asks, urgently. "Are you absolutely positive it was three months ago?"

"He spilled something down my front," Liam says. "I don't remember what it was, something red. I – I told him it happens to the best of us, and he told me not to go on about it." He frowns, head aching with how hard he's trying to remember. "It was definitely three months ago. It was at South by Southwest. I don't think I saw him after that."

"Liam," Harry says. "Liam, oh my god."

"I know," says Liam. He presses his hand – his right hand; that arm is less hurt overall – against his cheek. He can feel his own smile, stretching across his face. Everything hurts – his muscles, from the pool, his head, from trying to remember, his face, from the smile – but it's such a good hurt. "Harry!"

"I –" Harry rounds the chair to face Liam directly. "I'm going to have to report this. There will have to be more tests. Maybe not today, but with your memory coming back –"

"I don't care," Liam says. He moves his hand from his cheek and, even though they're in the middle of a hall and he's still worried about the level of professionalism Harry absolutely fails to maintain when he's not working directly on Liam's recovery, he takes Harry's hand tightly in his own. "My memory's coming back. I don't care how many tests I have to go through as long as I start to remember."

"God," Harry says. His smile is big enough to match Liam's own. "Okay. I'll fill out the report as soon as I get you back to your room." But he doesn't let go of Liam's hand. Instead, he leans in, closer and closer, until Liam is fairly positive Harry is about to kiss him. Liam knows Harry's kissing face, even though he hasn't seen it since he was fifteen. He knows the way Harry licks his lips and blinks twice, because those were memories he never even lost, no matter how much he wanted to, once upon a time. And he's ready for it; he wants it. Wants to know if Harry's lips feel the same way he remembers them feeling when they were kids, wants to know how Harry tastes. Wants to take Harry on a terrible date neither of them could possibly forget, and then see him again the next day.

Wants to let himself remember if he ever managed to fall out of love with Harry in the first place.

But then there's footsteps pounding down the hall behind him, and some bloke calls, "Dr Styles, we've been paging you, you're needed on the third floor ASAP," and Harry's jerking away, eyes wide, chest heaving.

"Let me get my patient back to my – back to his room, first," he says. His voice is unexpectedly rough – maybe he's choked up? Liam hasn't heard Harry close to tears since Harry's voice deepened, but it's a possibility.

"Dr Styles, your schedule –"

"Oh, fuck it," Harry mutters, and then, louder: "Mr Payne just had a breakthrough in his condition. I will need to return to monitor it more closely as soon as I'm done with Ms Waissel. Can you return him to his room?"

"Harry," Liam whispers, as the assistant nods and moves to take control of Liam's chair.

Harry turns to face Liam, eyes shining. "Soon, Li," he says. Despite the assistant standing right there, he lets his finger trail across the back of Liam's hand as he turns to go.

"I just wish I could remember anything from the day of the accident," Liam says, two days later. He's got bits and pieces from the months leading up to it, but nothing about the game. Nothing that can help Zayn. He knows the game meeting is today, so it's probably too late to help, but if he could only remember –

"You're making such good progress," Dr Cooper says. "It won't all come to you in a few short days." She glances down at her clipboard, then back up at Liam. "You realise you may never remember the day of the accident, yes?"

"I know," Liam says. He wishes he didn't. He wets his lips. "Ha – Dr Styles told me."

"As he should," she says. She lowers her clipboard. "Dr Styles is caring for you well?"

"Very," he says, striving to avoid guiltily avoiding eye contact. Normally Harry would be walking Liam through his memory exercises, but it's his day off. Liam doesn't dare hope that Harry shows up to visit him anyway – Liam wouldn't want to come into his place of work on the eighth day in a row if he didn't have to, either, probably.

Or. Well. On a normal week, at least. He'd go into his work twenty days in a row non-stop if it meant not being in the fucking hospital anymore.

"His bedside manner is impeccable," Liam adds, because he can't help himself.

"Good," Dr Cooper says. She doesn't crack a smile. "We always like to hear that of our trainees."

Good luuuuck he texts Zayn when the doctor has left. She doesn't respond.

"I thought you had today off," Liam says, when Harry comes tumbling into his room, close to the end of official visiting hours.

"Missed you," Harry says. He's visibly agitated about something. "And today is a big day for you, even if you couldn't be there. So. I wanted to see how you're doing." He looks expectantly at Liam.

Liam sighs. "Well," he says. "I really do wish I could be working on the game, you know? Especially because I promised Zayn the perfect ending and then forgot it. And I haven't heard from Zayn in like, two weeks. Not since she – not since you met her, actually. So she's either been on a real roll with finishing things up, or else she's beating herself up for not being able to pull it all together, but she hasn't been here to tell me about it, so I don't know for certain. But it's probably the second thing." He feels himself pouting, and forces himself to take a deep breath and release it slowly. "I just – I don't know what to do, you know? I don't even know how the proposal meeting with Simon went today."

"Liam," Harry says, and he goes over to rest a hand heavily on Liam's good shoulder. He stands still for a moment before clapping his hands and facing Liam directly. "Okay, so here's the thing," he says. "You can. Help with the game, that is."

"What do you mean?" Liam asks, but Harry's going over to the door and calling someone in.

It's a girl. Grey top, blonde hair, exhaustion lining her eyes. "Hey, Liam," she says, smiling faintly at him, pulling up a chair to sit down at his side.

"Niall?" Liam asks, incredulously. This was not precisely what he'd expected.

"I told you how I've been bunking with Niall because of the bug problem at my flat, right?" Harry says. "Anyway, so she came home today, and –"

"The meeting didn’t suck," Niall interrupts. "I overheard what you were just telling Harry, sorry, so I know Zayn hasn't told you yet, but basically we had it all sorted but the ending, and we've been granted a short extension to finalize that. But Zayn's being very, um."

"Very Zayn?" Liam offers, heart sinking a little. "Very – anxious? Blaming herself?"

"Refusing to accept any potential ending that she doesn't think is good as the one you likely came up with?" Niall says, and Liam's heart sinks further. He hates that his suspicions were right. "Yeah, she's been very Zayn about it all. So I told her to go home so we could start fresh tomorrow."

"Good," Liam says, feelingly. That's precisely what Zayn would need at a time like this. And then, remembering what Zayn told him on her last visit, knowing what she can be like – "She's been treating you well?"

"Well enough," Niall says. There's an edge to her voice that Liam can't quite interpret. It probably means that Zayn has been quietly flipping out about hooking up with Niall. She’s probably gone all weird around Niall because of it.

"She'll start to process it," he says, reassuringly, and Niall's gaze cuts quickly up Liam's face. "As soon as she stops being able to distract herself with this project."

"She told you?" Niall asks. She sounds shocked.

Liam laughs a little. "She thought I was asleep.”

Niall nods, like it makes perfect sense, and Liam feels his heart go out to her. He loves Zayn to death, but he'll be the first to admit that she puts up incredibly prickly walls, even around her closest friends. "Anyway," says Niall. "She won't admit as much, not out loud, but I know part of her can't help but think of me as replacing you. Like, I get it, it's been your brainchild for years and suddenly I'm on the team and you're here, but."

"I'm sorry," Liam says, suddenly remembering the joke he'd made about Niall replacing him on the team. The way Zayn had clearly believed it.

"No, but we can work with this," Niall says, and she starts to grin. She's beautiful when she smiles, and so charismatic. Liam can see why Zayn would be drawn to her. "Harry’s been telling me a little about how much you wish you could be working on it with her – with us – and –”

“You have?” Liam interrupts, startled. Somehow he hadn’t thought at all about Harry telling other people about him, outside of the hospital. Harry hadn’t mentioned telling anyone else. Liam looks over to Harry, who nods back at him, like duh, and, well. That’s. That’s something.

“Of course he has,” Niall says, fondly. “Proper smi – uh. Proper glad to have run into you again, isn’t he? But anyway, yeah. We were talking about it again when I got back from work today and that's when me and Harry got this great idea."

"It really is fantastic," Harry cuts in, though he shuts up when Niall rolls her eyes at him dramatically.

"Look," Niall says. "I know you wish you could be in the office working in the game.”

"Anything is better than this hospital," Liam says. "No offense, Harry."

"I'm very offended," Harry says, straight-faced, but he laughs when Niall flips him off.

"But yeah," Liam continues, after attempting to roll his eyes at Harry but mostly just ending up smiling fondly at him for a beat too long. "I do. It's important to me, too, that game."

“We can’t get you out of the hospital to the office,” Niall says. “But, okay, so why don't me and Zayn both come here and troubleshoot the ending till we figure it out?" She smiles, wide and excited. "Together."

Liam closes his eyes and envisions pages upon pages of code, offset by detailed descriptions of game plot and Zayn’s gorgeous art. “Yes,” he breathes, and opens his eyes. “But I won’t be able to do any of the actual typing, you know.” His gross motor control is improving daily, but his fine motor control still feels like it’s pretty much limited to clumsily stroking the back of Harry’s hands. Not that that’s a bad thing for it to be limited to, necessarily. He just wishes it wasn’t limited at all.

Niall shrugs. “You can dictate,” she says. “I think, really, you being involved in any way right now will get Zayn on board with an ending to the game, you know? I mean, beyond all the work you put in before you got hurt, which, let me tell you, was a lot. Clearly labelled, too. Easy to work from. Cheers for that.”

“You’re welcome?” Liam says, dazedly. He can definitely tell what Zayn would see in Niall – her self-assurance, her openness, her frankness. He can also see how Zayn could get scared off, a little. That kind of authenticity can be overwhelming.

Niall grins. “I’ll clear it with Zayn and call Harry tomorrow to set up a time to come in?”

Harry clears his throat. “Maybe after hours,” he says. “I don’t know. You’ll be wanting to keep details under wraps, I expect? I can sneak you both in, whichever night you decide to come.”

“Yeah,” Liam says, gratefully. “That would be good.” He turns his head to face Niall more square-on. Carefully, he reaches out to touch her arm. “Thank you. This is so – I really appreciate it.”

Niall grins. “It was mostly Harry’s idea,” she says. “All I did was tell him how I thought Zayn was struggling to finalize anything without you.”

“You realise you just credited Harry with a good idea,” Liam jokes, mostly to lighten the moment.

“Excuse me, Liam,” Harry says, his tone clearly mock-offended. He steps forward and takes Liam's hand into his. More seriously, tone much softer, he adds, “Thought you might not want to, I dunno. Put a lot of love into something just for it to be pulled out of reach when you're already in a vulnerable state.”

The again goes unspoken. Liam's heart pounds in his chest.

"It could've come back, though," says Liam. "When I most needed it but least expected it. It might not've been gone forever."

"I'm guessing you're talking in metaphor," Niall says, pushing her chair back, jarring Liam out of the intense eyelock he and Harry have got going on.

Harry soundly ignores Niall. "It's possible that it wouldn't ever leave you again," he says, insistently. "Not unless you wanted it to go."

The thing is, Liam wants to believe him.

The thing is, Liam does.

"I never got over you, you know?" he blurts. Except that's not entirely true, is it. "I mean, I did, but I didn't." He frowns. "Right now it feels like I didn't."

"Harry, I’m going to go wait in the hall," says Niall, quietly. "Liam, see you soon."

"Liam," Harry says. He moves impossibly closer to Liam, leaning over Liam's bedside. His hand hovers for a moment, before he settles it on Liam's cheek, big thumb stroking over the stubble Liam's been growing off and on since he got hurt. "Liam, are you sure?"

"I tried," says Liam. "I tried so hard, but I couldn't stop. I can't remember if I ever stopped."

"Same," Harry says. "Me too. Liam, I'm so in love with you. I'm so fucking glad I found you again."

"I love you too," Liam says. Harry's thumb keeps running over and over his cheek, so he brings his hand up slowly, flattens it over Harry's to still him. "I'm in love with you, too."

Harry gives Liam a long, searching look. He's so close that Liam can feel his breath, impossibly warm against his cheek. They're frozen like that for an instant and then Harry is crowding forward.

Kissing Harry after twelve years of not kissing Harry doesn't feel like coming home. The initial press of Harry's lips, dry and chapped against Liam's own, is familiar in that Liam's been aggressively trying to hold onto those memories for the past month, but that passes as soon as Harry makes a quiet noise and angles his head a little so that he can lick forward, running his tongue gently across the seam of Liam's lips until Liam parts them.

Liam used to lick his lips after he'd kissed Harry goodbye, to try and taste him. He used to fantasize about being able to kiss Harry, maybe curled up together under Harry's duvet during one of their sleepovers, shirtless and warm, mouth open and tongue slick.

Harry doesn't taste like anything special. A bit minty, like he's recently chewed some gum. For all intents and purposes, it's a regular kiss.

But it's Harry, and Liam has been waiting – consciously or not – for a kiss like this from Harry for at least fifteen years. Harry's hand is firm on Liam's cheek, and his mouth is firm on Liam's lips. He kisses sloppy, but Liam likes it sloppy, a little too wet and a little too fast. It's not exactly frantic, but Liam can feel the weight of the years they've been apart driving how deep Harry pushes his tongue, how carefully he cradles the back of Liam's head with his other hand, how, when they finally break apart for air, Harry's cheeks are damp and he's smiling brilliantly.

"Niall's waiting," he says, instead of anything insightful or romantic, but he presses in for another kiss instead of taking his leave, moving his hand from Liam's cheek and moving it slowly, carefully down Liam's chest until it's resting just above his heart. This kiss is quicker, but somehow more intense, more desperate.

"Best not keep her waiting," Liam murmurs against Harry's lips even though he doesn't want him to go.

"But I love you," Harry says, pouting as he draws away. "I don't want to say goodbye now that we're in love again."

"You say that like it's a new development," Liam teases, and Harry grins, as big as Liam's ever seen him grin before. "Go. It's fine. I'll see you tomorrow."

"And the day after that," Harry promises. "And the day after that, and the one after that, and the one after that, until you're sick of me."

"Never," says Liam, and Harry kisses him one last time.

Liam closes his eyes so he doesn't have to watch Harry go.

It's so, so ridiculously good to see Zayn again, in a way that Liam doesn't have to verbalise because he can just exchange a look with her and she knows. It feels like coming home, in the way that kissing Harry for the first time in years did not, and it's reassuring to know that she's ultimately doing okay, despite the stress she's clearly under. It's almost even better to have a computer at his fingertips, even though it takes him about ten times as long to type anything as it did before his accident.

Harry sits behind Liam as Zayn walks him through the code she and Niall put together, as she shows him the graphic she's done up and the cobbled-together twenty-minute demo they've made. Niall plays it for Liam, and it's good, so good to see the stuff Liam and Zayn have been brainstorming for years put into a playable form. It's almost good enough to distract Liam from the way Harry is clearly worried about something, preoccupied and fidgeting in his seat.

Liam focuses as best he can and asks Zayn questions about the endings she's considered, and about nuances they didn't cover in the endless brainstorming sessions they've had in the years they've worked together. He clicks through the code and makes a few careful changes and nearly accidentally lets the laptop fall from his lap when Zayn shows him that she's made him into a literal actual NPC. But as much as Liam focuses as they cobble together an ending that everyone's happy with, he can't stop noticing the way that Harry's got something serious on his mind.

So maybe he fakes starting to nod off when they've all but got the plot kinks worked out. He lets Harry say that he's going to get Liam to bed, and he lets Zayn kiss him goodbye on the cheek, and he watches the way that she unconsciously angles her body towards Niall as they leave the room.

"Okay, so what's going on?" Liam asks, once they're gone and Harry is wheeling Liam's chair over to his bedside.

"Is it that obvious?" Harry asks, and he sighs. Instead of helping lift Liam into his bed, he pulls the chair he always uses over in front of Liam and sits so that he and Liam are pressed knee-to-knee. "Okay. There's a problem."

"You still love me, right?" Liam asks, anxiously.

Harry immediately reaches across and takes Liam's hands in his. "Always, Liam. Honestly."

Okay. Liam takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Is it the, like. Doctor-patient thing?"

Harry looks up at Liam, startled. "How did you know?"

"I've been worried about your colleagues talking about us behind your back for, like, days now," Liam confesses. "But until yesterday any rumours would be unfounded."

"Yeah," Harry says, sighing. "The thing is, Liam, I'm still in training. A relationship with a patient – these things do happen, but like. It's really, really frowned upon. It might keep me from becoming a full doctor if my supervisors don’t like it. Which they won’t."

"Okay," Liam says. He tries for sounding brave, even if he doesn't totally feel it. "We've waited this long. We can wait longer."

"I don't want to wait anymore," Harry says imploringly, voice low. His eyes are wide and glistening. "But I want to be your doctor. I want to be sure of your recovery."

"You still technically have access to my files if you're not my primary physician, right?" Liam asks.

"Yeah, but I just –" Harry sighs. "There are a lot of really good doctors here, but I don't want to let you go."

"I want you to be safe," Liam says. He squeezes Harry's hands. "But I want to be selfish, too."

"Me too," Harry says. He tugs one of his hands free so he can scrub the back of it across his eyes. "I feel the same."

"Maybe," says Liam. "I mean, I won't be ready for outpatient therapy until I’m at least able to move around on my own at least a little, right?"

"Yeah," says Harry, taking a deep, shuddery breath. "I'd guess a week or two more, at least."

"Let someone else take me on," Liam says. "Be honest that we have history and so there's maybe a conflict of interest. And check up on me when you're technically off every day? To reassure yourself."

"Are you sure?" Harry asks.

"I just want you here with me," Liam says, quietly. "I love you. I can wait if that's what you want, but I'd rather just be with you. I just. I want to hold you. I want you to hold me. You can help me unofficially, like when I get out of here and stuff, if you want, but for now – I just want to be with you, as best I can."

Harry nods. "Okay," he says. "I'll talk to Amira first thing tomorrow. Try to switch you for one of hers. She'll understand, and she's really, really good."

"Good," Liam says, and then: "Can – can we get into bed?"

Harry looks up at Liam. "Do you mean…?"

"I want you to help me in," Liam says. "And then I want you to climb in too. I want to be close to you right now."

"I won't be able to stay," Harry warns him. "I'll have to go before someone else comes in."

"I'm hoping we'll have the rest of our lives for you to stay," Liam confesses. He immediately wonders if it's too much, too fast, but Harry's nodding like that makes sense, and then he's helping Liam into his bed and crawling in behind him.

"I'll have you know," Harry says, resting a gentle hand on Liam's side. "Generally I'm the little spoon. This is just during your recovery, Payno."

Liam laughs, and his ribs hardly even hurt from it. "Of course you're the little spoon," he says. "You always were when we were kids."

"Okay, hold on," Harry says, and he manoeuvres the two of them until he can kiss Liam, long and slow and soundly, moving his lips in a way that have Liam's dick stirring in the trackies he's taken to wearing for the ease of changing lately.

Harry is as intent about kissing as he is about everything else, framing Liam's face with his hands, moving his lips slow and assuredly, stroking Liam's growing hair back with his fingertips as he licks deeper in. Liam meets him midway, resting a hand heavy on Harry's side and letting his eyes flutter shut as he sucks Harry's lower lip into his mouth.

"Love you," he murmurs into the kiss. And again, when Harry starts tracing the scars down Liam's side with careful fingers, and again when Harry tells him he wants to get him off so bad, but that he's scared of hurting Liam even more.

"When you get out," Harry promises. "When you're more healed up." Liam mumbles his assent, and Harry laughs. "Are you falling asleep?"

"Yeah," Liam says. "Don't want to stop kissing, though."

"What was it you said?" Harry asks. "I'm hoping we'll have the rest of our lives to not stop kissing."

"Fine," Liam says. He pouts, but he can't help laughing through it, elated and exhausted and so, so in love.

Harry kisses him, quick little pecks at his mouth until Liam's stopped laughing and is breathless instead, and then deep, slow kisses till Liam's warm and half-asleep and happy.

"Giving up a patient," Harry murmurs, when he sits up to climb out of the bed.

"Gaining a boyfriend, though," Liam says. He's pretty sure that's what's happening, even if they haven't discussed it yet.

If the way Harry gives up trying to leave and slumps back into Liam's narrow hospital bed, winding his arms over Liam's side and tugging him in careful and close is any indication, Liam's hit the nail on the head.

Liam is almost completely asleep the next night when the door to his room snicks open, light from the hallway flooding in. It closes before he can mumble his dismay, and then there’s footsteps drawing close.

“All sorted,” Harry whispers. He hovers at the edge of Liam’s bed for a long moment before climbing into the space Liam’s left between himself and the edge, out of a completely unfounded sense of hope that Harry would come by.

Harry moves as if to curl his head against Liam’s chest, but he jerks it away, abruptly, and rests it on the pillow instead. “Did you forget about my ribs?” Liam asks, amused.

“I remembered them in time,” Harry says. He slips a hand down over Liam’s belly, just under his shirt. The scarring on Liam’s torso is minimal, but Harry finds the ridges of Liam’s healing skin anyway and traces over it with soft, gentle strokes of his fingertips. “Amira’s taking you on,” he adds. “I had to explain why, which means I’ll never live it down, but because I bowed out before we entered into a proper relationship, she’s not going to officially report it.”

“Good,” Liam says. He lets his eyes drift closed again, but he smiles. “Proper relationship.”

“Like the sound of that, do you?” Harry asks, and he leans in to brush a kiss across Liam’s lips. He lies back down, and is quiet long enough that Liam has very nearly fallen back asleep, before Harry speaks up again. “Told my mum.”

“About us?” Liam asks. He forces his eyes open so that he can look at Harry. It’s dark, but there’s a little moonlight coming through the window. It’s just enough that Liam can see Harry’s eyelashes against his cheek.

“Yeah,” Harry says, and he shifts around for a moment, reaching for something, before he produces his phone. “She sent me all these pictures of us as kids.”

“Let’s see them,” Liam says, resigning himself to being awake for a little while longer.

“Yeah?” Harry asks. “It won’t bring up, you know. Bad memories?”

“Better now,” Liam says, smiling, and Harry kisses him again, long and slow, a hand pushed through the long and curling side of Liam’s hair, mouth moving gently against Liam’s.

“Me too,” says Harry, when Liam finally pulls back. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he brings out his phone.

There’s ten pictures, all told. One is a picture of the two of them as little kids: Liam six and Harry five, sitting on the see-saw in Harry’s backyard. Harry is grinning at the camera. Liam’s knees are scraped up and he’s a little pale – it must’ve been one of his bad kidney days – but he’s holding on tight and his toes are barely scraping the ground. The next is them at Harry’s seventh birthday party: Harry’s got frosting on his nose, and Liam has a dark purple stain on his shirt from spilt Ribena. There’s pictures from Christmas parties and Easter egg hunts and one from the holiday Harry spent with Liam’s family, camping in the Lake District. They’ve got sausages on sticks they were heating up in the campfire, and they’re dirty and sticky-looking, and they’ve got their arms around each other and huge smiles on their faces. There’s pictures of them playing Candyland just one week before everything fell apart, and pictures of Liam pulling Harry’s hair back while Harry smiles placidly at the camera, and pictures of them sleeping, curled up in the same sleeping back on Harry’s living room floor, sun just peeping up through the windows behind them.

The last picture on Harry’s phone is when they were thirteen and fourteen, getting ready for their first double date. Harry is wearing a posh button-down shirt and nice trousers, and Liam, who apparently wasn’t able to hide the sullenness on his face, has on a clean t-shirt and his dress trousers, because Harry had made him change from trackies. They’d got ready together and walked over to Harry’s girlfriend’s house to pick up her and the friend she’d found for Liam to go out with for a film.

Harry had made out with that girl for half the film, Liam remembers, while Liam had sat there, ignoring the girl he was with, trying not to cry. He and Harry had been kissing hello and goodbye for almost a year by that point, but Liam had only recently finally let himself acknowledge that he wanted it to be more than that. He’d spent the entire film fantasising about what he would do if he were in the girl’s place.

It’s weird, looking at the photograph and how young they are in it, remembering how much he wanted Harry back then even though they were basically just kids. Knowing who Harry’s grown into. Knowing that he can finally, finally have what he’s always wanted.

“I was in love with you in that picture,” Liam says, pointing at the way he’s glaring at the camera and determinedly not looking at Harry in his nice date clothes. Sullen about the date. Unable to articulate to anyone just how much he wanted the date to be just the two of them. Unable to articulate just how beautiful he thought Harry looked in those clothes anyway. “Went home from the movie that night and got off thinking about blowing you on that sticky floor.”

“Wait,” says Harry. He sounds surprised, but Liam doesn’t know why. He hasn’t made a secret about how long he’s wanted Harry. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Liam says, laughing a little. “It was a revelatory time for me.”

“Oh,” Harry says. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he laughs, sharp and abrupt. “God, Liam.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re so much.” Harry puts the phone to the side and rests his hand on Liam’s belly. He just leaves it, heavy and warm, sitting there, but he strokes at the hair just above Liam’s navel with his thumb, slowly, mesmerizingly. “I’d nearly forgot – well. I’m just. I’m really glad I found you again, you know?”

“You’ve got a way with words,” Liam teases. He puts his hand on top of Harry’s. “I am too, though.”

Even in the dark, Liam can see the way Harry’s lips quirk up at the edges. “When you’re all better,” he says. “We’re going to write down every single fantasy we had about each other when we were younger and we’re going to go through with them all.”

“I like that plan,” says Liam. He runs his hand up and down Harry’s forearm, wrapping his fingers around Harry’s wrist when he comes back to it. Wickedly, he adds, “Think I want to start with riding you. Or you riding me. Either way, really.”

“Liam,” Harry says. There’s a warning note in his voice, which Liam soundly ignores.

“Naughty blowjobs in the cinema,” he adds. “I guess we can’t really do everything I wanted to in school anymore, though.”

“You would never have said anything like this when we were kids,” Harry says, propping himself up on one elbow.

“I was so paranoid you’d guess that I was in big gay love with you if I did,” Liam says, and then they’re kissing again, sloppy and fast and wet. Harry’s hand is still warm on Liam’s stomach, thumb still stroking back and forth tantalisingly. It’s everything Liam can do to keep from pushing it lower, to where his cock is hardening in his pants.

“I want so much,” Harry breathes, punctuating his words with kisses along Liam’s jawline. “But I don’t want to accidentally hurt you.”

“If you’re careful–” Liam tugs on Harry’s arm until Harry is hovering half-over him, kissing around the mostly-healed cuts on the side of Liam’s head and following the forming scars down his body.

“But if you respond,” Harry says, wrenching his mouth away from Liam’s arm. “Jerk your hips and get hurt again.”

“You’re a doctor,” Liam says. “Surely you know ways around that.”

When Harry rises up to meet Liam’s gaze square on, his pupils are blown wide, wider than just the dark of the room could account for, and he's blinking rapidly. “Are you sure?” he asks.

In response, Liam moves his hand from Harry’s wrist and reaches down to cup Harry's cock. It’s large, and half-hard, and Harry exhales sharply when Liam presses his hand against it. “Don’t want to jar my wrist,” Liam says, and Harry nods, stretching out on his side right next to Liam.

“You, too,” he says, reaching over and slipping his hand under the waistband of Liam’s pants. He wraps his hand loosely around Liam’s dick. “Keep still,” he says, and starts moving his hand in long, slow pulls, twisting around the head of Liam’s cock.

In turn, Liam presses the heel of his hand against Harry’s cock, letting Harry hump against it in tiny, abortive thrusts of his hips. “That’s it,” Liam says. He doesn’t want to jerk Harry off proper in case his wrist isn’t up to it, but this is nice. Harry’s cock is hard and warm against Liam’s hand, and his hand is moving, rough and slick with Liam’s precome over his dick. When he leans in to kiss Liam, caging him against the bed in a way that handily makes it much more difficult for Liam to even try rolling his hips up into Harry’s grip, it just gets better.

Liam doesn’t last long. Harry starts talking mindlessly, love yous and I can’t believes and fuck, fuck, Liams whispered against Liam’s lips as Liam presses his hand firmer against the front of Harry’s cock and runs his thumb over the slit of it. Harry’s hand falls slack on Liam’s dick as he gets closer, but his kisses grow more frantic, and that’s enough – Harry, pressed as tight against Liam as either of them dare, their hands wedged under each other’s clothes so they can get off, illicitly, in a hospital bed while Harry mumbles declarations of love into Liam’s skin – it’s enough to have Liam spilling over Harry’s hand and pooling on his stomach.

Harry follows soon after, the front of his boxers growing wet as he jerks against Liam’s hand, his words grown incoherent and beautiful.

He manages to collapse to Liam’s side when he’s done. “Wow,” he says, eventually. “That was – ”

“Unexpected?” Liam suggests, but Harry shakes his head.

“I mean, yeah,” Harry says. He closes his eyes and spreads his hand – now damp with Liam’s come – across Liam’s stomach. It’s a little gross, but Liam doesn’t really mind. “But mostly – that was - Liam.”

“Yeah, love?”

Harry presses a sweaty kiss to the t-shirt covering Liam’s shoulder. “I’m just so excited for the future now,” he says. “Not that I wasn’t before, but. It’s different now.”

“No, I know what you mean,” Liam says. He’s going to need to wipe off the mess on his stomach before the nurses come by in the morning. Harry’s going to need to slip out, because even though Liam isn’t his patient anymore, they probably shouldn’t get caught like this.

But those are just tiny little minor concerns. He’s got Harry, and hopefully for the long term. He’s recovering as well as can be expected, and when he makes it back to work, he’ll likely have a place on a production team for a game that he helped dream up waiting for him. He’ll be able to see Loki again, and walk on the streets instead of being stuck in a fucking hospital bed, but most importantly, he’ll be able to walk down the streets holding Harry’s hand. If everything goes well, and he hopes that it does, he’ll get to see Harry become a fully-credentialed doctor, and more.

Harry stays cuddled next to Liam for a very long time.

Harry isn't there when Liam starts walking unassisted in the therapy pool, or when he's strong enough to sit up and swing himself into his chair with minimal assistance, or when he gets his exit MRIs and his outpatient sessions are scheduled.

But he's there when Liam takes his first steps on dry land again, hovering close as Liam uses his rolling walker to walk to Harry's car.

He's there when Liam unlocks his flat and greets Loki for the first time in two and a half months. He's there in Liam's kitchen making a quick dinner omelette, and he's there tumbling Liam into bed and carefully wanking him off, one hand pressed firm against Liam's uninjured hip to keep him from jerking too harshly and throwing anything out of whack. He's there, squirming and loud and breathless when Liam returns the favour, slow and deliberate so as not to jar his wrists.

He's there, idling in his car as Liam walks himself to the door of his office building on his first day back to work, and again when Liam comes out of the first game production meeting he's able to attend that evening, ready to take Liam out on their first real dinner date ever. He's there when Liam remembers the accident for real for the first time, shaking and trying not to hyperventilate or cry, and he's there the first time Liam is able to walk unassisted but for a hand resting carefully on the wall.

Harry's there, along with Zayn and Niall, and Louis and Selena, and Eleanor and Sophia, and Nicola and Ruth and Liam's parents, and Aiden and Matt from work, and Taylor from Harry's foundations programme and her wife, Karlie, and Ed and Greg from uni, and the half of Little Mix that Zayn managed to bring along as well, watching Liam blow the candles out of the cake he baked for Liam's twenty-ninth birthday, and he's still there, holding Liam's hand and waving as everyone files out at the end of the night.

"We've got a lot of cleaning up to do," Harry says, distastefully, when they're all alone again.

"We can save it till the morning," Liam tells him, and pulls Harry in for a kiss.