Archive of Our Own

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

~ Franz Kafka

The truth is: Louis kind of hates Harry. Not all the time. Not at night, when the moon feels low enough to touch and they’re wandering from bar to bar and falling in love with everyone they meet. Girls with sunburnt noses and guys with tattoos laced across their arms, all of these great affairs that start and end in the time it takes to finish a bottle of Corona. Then they’re gone, off to another bar to do it all again and that’s when Louis loves Harry, when they’re walking the streets of Sydney like explorers, discovering rowdy clubs and empty cafes and claiming them all as their own. They’re the first to cartwheel along the still-warm sand of Bondi Beach at 2 a.m. The first to sit on that bench on Campbell Parade watching everyone spilling out of the bars, friends singing as they head towards McDonalds, couples kissing like they’re not going to make it home. The first to find a coffee shop open at 3 a.m., one run by a couple from Dewsbury who take great pride in telling them that they only serve Yorkshire Tea then don’t charge them when Harry says that he feels homesick for the first time in three months.

Louis loves that Harry, the one who makes strangers fall in love with him, but he doesn’t love him at six in the morning when he’s hungover and pissy and Harry won’t shut the fuck up. Louis hates him then, but that’s the eternal curse of the surfer. He’s never been a morning person, but if he wants to catch that first wave before the beach is cluttered with girls in pretty pink bikinis and kids with bodyboards then he needs to be in the water by dawn. So there he and Harry are, sitting on their boards, the dawn light making everything look a little yellow. It’s the sort of yellow he used to imagine as a kid when he drew the sun into the top right hand corner of pictures with a crayon, a yellow he’s never seen in England, even at dawn, and he still can’t quite believe that he’s there, on his board, legs in the blue, blue sea. He used to daydream about this, every summer when he was in Newquay, a beach towel around him as he waited for the rain to pass, he daydreamed about warm water and sun. Now here he is and it would be nice if Harry would just shut up and let them enjoy it, but he’s rambling on about a bar he wants to try while Louis ignores him, hoping that he’ll take the hint. Then they see the beginning of that first wave and Harry shuts up as they paddle towards it. He gets there first, aiming for the middle of it, and Louis loves that Harry as well, the Harry who isn’t scared of anything, whose laugh sounds like he’s running off the edge of a cliff.

+++

They’ve been in Sydney for nearly a month but they still struggle to find the bar Harry was babbling about this morning. It doesn’t help that they’re distracted by the tiki bar a few doors down from their flat, the one Harry loves because it’s so kitsch with wicker chairs and drinks in plastic coconuts. They have too many zombies and Harry becomes besotted with the new waitress so Louis doesn’t know why they leave. But they do and when they finally find the bar and Louis looks up to see the bartender, he’s not saying it’s fate, but whatever it is is enough to make his legs shake as they walk towards him.

He doesn’t know if it’s the three zombies he’s just knocked back or being so far away from home, away from everything he knows and understands and appreciates, but when Louis looks at him, he suddenly doesn’t feel as steady, the hair on the back of his neck bristling like it does every time he walks out of an airport into the sun of a new country. That same dizzying mixture of hope and fear, as though something magical is about to happen. Harry must have noticed him as well, because he stops mid-sentence, eyes wide, as though he’s seen a fresh wave coming towards him. And it isn’t subtle, the way Harry licks his bottom lip then bites down on it, but Louis can’t blame him, he’s trying not to but he’s pretty sure that he’s staring as well. But then the guy’s giving them cause to stare, them and everyone else in the bar. It’s a Wednesday night, so there aren’t many people in there, but every head is turned in his direction as he moves back and forth behind the bar, a bar towel slung over his right shoulder.

Louis hasn’t done this enough to have a type but him he thinks as he takes the guy in, takes in his tattoos and stubble and black-rimmed glasses. He’s tall and lean, like Harry, with narrow hips and black eyelashes that Louis saw as soon as he walked in. His hair is the same black – not dark, like Harry’s, but black, eight-ball black, middle of the night black, What time is it? black. It’s swept across his forehead, the ends of it in his eyes, and Louis just wants to touch it, to crawl over the bar and move it out of his eyes. When he slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he suddenly thinks of the pact he and Harry made the night before they left home, when they were in Louis’ Mum’s kitchen, drunk on warm beer and the promise of never coming back. ‘Don’t you fucking fall in love with anyone,’ Harry warned him, pointing his can of Stella at him, and Louis agreed because he did have a nasty habit of doing that. So they pinkie swore on it – No stopping. Keep moving. – and Louis doesn’t know why he thinks about that then, or maybe he does when he feels his heart sink as Harry gets to the bar first.

‘Two Coronas, mate,’ Harry says with a smile he knows full well is incorrigible and when the guy behind the bar nods and turns to get them out of the fridge, Harry looks at Louis. ‘Why don’t you find us a table?’ he says, licking his bottom lip again, and it startles Louis because he’s never seen Harry go after someone with such purpose. Usually he likes to flirt a little, make them wait a little, but he’s actually fidgeting.

‘Okay,’ Louis says, the tops of his ears burning when Harry takes one of the bottles of beer from the bartender and nods him away with a wink.

He has no right to feel as pissed as he does when he walks away. After all, where Harry doesn’t discriminate and can be found in a corner with anyone as long as they make him laugh and kiss him like they don’t know how to stop, Louis hasn’t shown so much as a passing interest in a guy. Apart from Harry, not that he’d ever notice, too busy laughing at Louis’ protests as he hangs off him and pleads with him to stay for one more drink. And he doesn’t notice how Louis kind of melts into him when he concedes, his lips parting to let Harry’s tongue dip into his mouth when his thank you kiss turns from a playful peck into something deeper. Louis kind of melts into that as well, his hands fisted in the back of Harry’s shirt because he doesn’t know what to do with them, and he doesn’t get it, doesn’t know what it is, just that Harry kisses him when he’s drunk. It’s never more than that, though, never more than a few minutes of sighing softness until their drinks are ready or the DJ plays a song Harry wants to dance to. But it’s happening more and more, as are the quick, desperate wanks in the shower, Louis’ eyes closed and his forehead pressed to the tile as he thinks about the long line of Harry’s back and his red, red mouth, the memory of it on his own making him come with a wretched gasp.

So Louis just sits there and drinks his beer, pretending to be engrossed in a Lady Gaga video on the television as he tries not to look at Harry. But he does and when the guy laughs, his whole face changing so he looks about five years younger, Louis catches himself smiling at the sudden flash of teeth, his tongue behind them, and realises that he isn’t looking at Harry. He tells himself not to stare, but he can’t help it, and while he’s sure that it’s just the dimness of the bar – the drabness of it, with it’s grubby floor and torn vinyl barstools, yellow foam sprouting from each rip – or the zombies again, but the guy is fucking beautiful. And okay, maybe that is the zombies (or the beer Louis’ chugging because he wants an excuse to go back to the bar), but he is beautiful, so beautiful that he doesn’t look like he belongs there, as though he’s a dandelion that’s grown through a crack in concrete, all big and bright and yellow.

When Louis looks up again, they’re gone, a guy in a black tank top behind the bar now and Louis has no idea where he came from, maybe he was there all along and Louis couldn’t see anything other than the other guy, but he finishes his beer and goes because he doesn’t want to be there when they get back, their hair a little messier and their cheeks a little pinker.

He doesn’t think he’ll sleep, but he must because he’s woken up a few hours later by Harry. Louis knew the walls of the flat they’re renting over a café on Curlewis Street were thin, he’d heard Harry in his room, humming to himself as he opened and closed drawers, but he didn’t think much about it because compared to some of the shitholes they’ve stayed in (their ‘bungalow’ in Nihiwatu was actually a hut with no windows) the flat’s practically palatial. But Louis doesn’t realise how thin the walls are until then, until he hears Harry’s deep drawn out groans. He knows that sound, the sound of him coming, and he wants to kill himself because there isn’t anything more painful then hearing someone you’re kindofsortofmaybe in love with being fucked by another bloke.

Louis pulls the sheet over his head, but it doesn’t help. It sounds as if Harry’s in the room with him and it reminds him of that time they went to Glastonbury, the pair of them side by side in their tent, bare arses bobbing as they fucked the girls they met an hour before when they were buying noodles. Louis was drunk and lightheaded at the sound of Harry, the sweet sound he was making distracting him, this ah – ah, ah, ah, ah – as he pinned the girl to his half-open sleeping bag. It made Louis’ hips falter and he almost had to stop, but then he turned to look at Harry as Harry turned to look at him and when Harry smiled at him – loose and blissed out – Louis came so hard, he broke a nail as his fingers dug into the groundsheet. But Harry doesn’t make that sound with guys, Louis’ come to learn – or hear – because he’s not the one in control. He is, of course – he always is – so that’s another time Harry doesn’t shut up, moaning directions and encouragement until Louis’ so hard he’s near tears as he considers the logistics of strangling himself with the wire of his alarm clock. Tonight he’s quiet, though, gasping gibberish as the bed creaks steadily, and Louis can’t bear to listen because something’s different, something’s changed. Whatever the guy from the bar is doing to him, Harry can’t even speak, every breath he takes like his last, and this is it, Louis knows.

This guy is the one.

+++

Louis goes into the living room and turns the television on, his head tipping back onto the sofa as he tries not to replay what he just heard, Harry making sounds that Louis has never heard, tender whimpers and stunned little sobs, the sort of sounds Louis hoped to tease out of him one day. Actually, that isn’t true because he had no idea a person could make sounds like that, sounds of utter, helpless pleasure, like crying and not being able to stop. That’s what Louis wants. Not just to know what it feels like to be inside Harry, but to break him – to own him – to make him whimper No when he means Yes because everything is back to front and he doesn’t know up from down so No means Yes and Yes means I don’t think I can take this and he can’t remember his own name, only Louis’.

He’s about to give into the urge to put his hand in his boxers when he hears footsteps and manages to put a cushion in his lap a second before the living room door swings open. He thinks it’s Harry and smiles, then sits a little straighter when he realises it isn’t.

‘So this isn’t the bathroom?’ the guy says with a frown, standing in the doorway.

Louis shakes his head and hugs the cushion to him as he looks at him. He’s even more beautiful somehow, his glasses gone and his hair ruined, in nothing but a pair of jeans that are only half-buttoned to expose a tan line Louis isn’t supposed to see.

He tells himself to look away, but before he can, the guy points at the television.

‘Are you watching Corrie?’ he says with a silly smile.

Louis turns to look at the television as though he’s never seen it before. He wasn’t watching anything, but he can’t help but smile as the camera pans across the Rovers to settle on Chesney, who’s suddenly old enough to drink in there and Louis doesn’t know when that happened. And that’s when it registers: his accent.

‘What do you know about Corrie?’ Louis asks with an equally silly smile.

He puts a hand to his chest. ‘I’m from Bradford.’

Louis puts his hand up. ‘Doncaster.’

‘I love this country. I fly ten thousand miles to meet someone who lives down the road from me,’ he chuckles, padding over and sitting next to Louis on the sofa. He sits back, a hand on his stomach, and Louis’ fingers dig into the cushion as he thinks about lifting his hand and kissing the skin underneath. His mouth waters at the thought and when he looks at the guy’s jeans, Louis’ fingers dig a little deeper into the cushion as he thinks about undoing the rest of the buttons. He’s never gone down on a guy before – not even Harry – but his dick gets a little harder at the thought of taking him in his mouth and sucking him slow and deep, as deep as he can.

‘We met a couple from Dewsbury,’ Louis stutters out and he sounds like a mad man. He’s surprised the guy even responds, but he turns to him with a grin.

‘Nick and Patricia?’

Louis turns towards him. ‘Yes!’

‘Did they tell you about the Yorkshire Tea?’

‘Yes!’

‘Did they charge you?’

‘No.’

He shakes his head and smiles. ‘I don’t know how they make any money.’

‘They’re so sweet.’

‘I go there every Sunday for lunch. Nick makes the best Yorkshire puddings.’

‘Oh man,’ Louis sighs. ‘I miss my mum’s roast dinners.’

‘Me, too. And her bread and butter pudding.’

‘Don’t,’ Louis sighs. ‘The tea made me homesick enough.’

He starts playing with the fringe on the cushion then because that isn’t true. The tea made Harry homesick not him, but Louis doesn’t want to say his name.

It starts then.

+++

Louis makes three cups of tea the next morning and as he looks down at them on the kitchen counter, he asks himself what he’s doing. But he tells himself that it’s just tea as he carries two of them to Harry’s room. The door’s ajar, which he clocked on his way to the kitchen. It’s still dark, but the curtains are open so Louis can see that they’re asleep, Zayn face up and Harry face down, both of them naked, but not indecent, the sheet covering anything that will make Louis spill the tea. He walks in carefully, stepping over their kicked off shoes and the jeans Louis was contemplating unbuttoning on the sofa a couple of hours before, and heads for Harry’s side of the bed.

‘Haz,’ he says. Harry grunts and it manages to sound like What? and Fuck off, all at once as Louis puts the mug on the bedside table. ‘You don’t have to come out if you don’t want to.’

Harry mutters something that sounds like I wanna then holds up his arm, fingers splayed, which Louis assumes means that he wants five more minutes.

The guy from the bar stirs then, inching one eye open to look at Louis.

‘What time is it?’

‘Five-thirty,’ Louis says, walking around to his side of the bed to give him the tea.

‘Why the fuck are you awake at five-thirty in the morning?’ He looks stunned then looks even more bewildered when Louis hands him the mug. ‘You made me tea?’

‘Yorkshire,’ Louis tells him, sliding his hands into the pockets of his shorts.

He sits up and takes it with a sleepy smile, the sheet shifting a little lower as he does. Louis tries not to look at his tan line and his skin stretched tight over his hipbones, but he does, of course, because this is what Louis does now, apparently, leer at strangers. And he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, he doesn’t even know his name, but he hasn’t slept thinking about that tan line, about running the tip of his tongue along it and God help him, he’s going to hell. Not for the licking thing (although, thinking about it, the Christians aren’t really on board with dudes licking one another so probably) but because he can hear that Harry’s fallen asleep again and he’s glad.

‘Come with us,’ Louis says before his brain registers what a monumentally stupid idea that is. Why the fuck does he want to third wheel it?

He’ll back flip off a cliff into Bondi Bay after an hour.

‘Where?’ the guy asks, sipping his tea and Louis’ an idiot. He’s a fucking idiot.

‘To the beach.’

He frowns, then it registers. ‘You’re surfers.’

He nods and Louis nods back. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Nearly a month.’

‘You come straight here?’

‘Nah. We’ve been travelling around for a while. We spent, like, three weeks in Indonesia then we hit the Gold Coast and came here last month.’

‘You here much longer?’ he asks, looking at him for a beat too long. Louis tells himself that it’s because he’s tired, but it still makes his voice shake a little.

‘Just another week or so.’ Louis shrugs. ‘Then we’re heading to New Zealand.’

‘So you’re not sticking around for Christmas Day on Bondi Beach?’

‘I can’t think of anything more hideous.’

He chuckles, his eyelashes batting groggily as he takes another sip of tea.

‘Do you surf?’

He smirks and shakes his head. ‘Not my thing.’

‘How come?’

‘Not a big fan of the sea.’

Louis tilts his head at him. ‘You live on Bondi Beach and you don’t like the sea?’

‘I’m Bondi Beach adjacent.’ He smiles, his eyes a little brighter. ‘I can’t actually see it.’

‘How did you even end up here?’

‘A guy.’

‘What happened?’

‘You ask a lot of questions for five-thirty in the morning.’

Louis presses his lips together, the tops of his ears burning as he swallows back the string of questions he already has lined up on his tongue. What’s your name? he almost blurts out, as though he’s in an exam and the teacher has just told him to put his pen down but he hasn’t finished writing his answer. That’s all he really wants to know, what he’s been thinking about all night in-between thoughts about licking his tan line, and he should have asked that first. Why didn’t he ask that first?

The guy shrugs again. ‘We were travelling. He was ready to go home. I wasn’t.’

 No stopping. Keep moving, Louis thinks and, as if on cue, Harry rolls over.

‘What time is it?’ he asks, rubbing his nose with his fingers.

Louis checks his watch. ‘Five thirty-seven.’

‘I’ll be down in a sec.’

It takes Louis a moment too long to take the hint, his cheeks flushing when Harry has to nod at the door. He feels like an idiot, then more of an idiot when he gets back to the kitchen and spills his tea down the front of his t-shirt. He has to go to his room to change but when he’s heading back to the living room, he hears Harry as he approaches his room. The door’s still ajar but Louis can’t see much as he passes, just bare feet and the sheet in a pile on the floor at the end of the bed like a discarded wedding dress. But he can hear Harry, hears a deep drawn out groan that makes Louis stop dead. Then he hears it and turns his face away because Louis wanted him to tell him, not to hear it like that, but Harry whimpers, ‘Fuck me, Zayn’ and there it is, at last: his name.

+++

Louis’ out there by himself for almost an hour before he looks over and sees Harry carving through the waves a little further up the beach. He should paddle over there, he knows, apologise for leaving him, but he’s enjoying the quiet and the warm rush of water over his feet as he watches the sky get bluer and bluer. So he stays out there until the umbrellas start opening outside the Pavilion and the long stretch of sand is interrupted with towels as the hardcore sun worshippers claim their favourite spots. Then the surf lessons start and that’s his cue to move up to the south end of the beach. Harry must think the same thing because as Louis reaches for his towel, he runs over.

‘You alright?’ he says, breathless and dripping.

Louis takes a long chug from his bottle of water then hands it to him. ‘Sorry for leaving you, mate,’ he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘It’s gonna rain tomorrow, apparently, and I didn’t want to miss it.’

‘No worries.’ Harry drains the bottle, then shakes his head. ‘I’m glad you didn’t wait for me. I’m a dick. I should have told you to go.’

‘S’alright.’ Louis shrugs, trying not to think about what he saw through the gap in the door, the sheet, the pale soles of their feet, their toes curled. ‘You alright, though?’

‘Fucking knackered.’

Harry drops the empty water bottle into a bin as they walk towards the south end of the beach, the leg rope attached to the tail of his board slapping against his calf as he does. Usually, Louis would make a crude joke about what he was up to and tell him that he didn’t have any sympathy for him, but he can’t because Harry sounds ruined and he can’t bear the sound of his voice, can’t bear the thought of why he sounds like that. Louis sees the stubble rash around his mouth then and it turns his heart inside out.

‘Don’t get mad,’ Harry says, turning to look at him and Louis holds his breath.

‘What?’

‘I know we promised, but I wanna see Zayn again.’

Louis looks out at the horizon, at the puff of clouds in the distance. He doesn’t even know what he says, but it must be something positive because Harry brightens.

‘It’s just sex, I promise. I haven’t forgotten: No stopping. Keep moving,’ he says, tucking his board under his arm and running towards the sea.

+++

Louis doesn’t know how this happened. He’s been saving up for this trip for years and dreaming about it for longer. He’s stacked shelves and cleaned offices and sold his car and he’s sitting in on a Thursday night, eating pizza and watching an episode of Hawaii Five-O (of all things, just to stick the knife in a little more) because he can’t bear to watch Harry and Zayn flirting. So he makes sure he goes to bed early and falls asleep with his headphones on. He wakes with a start and when he lifts his head off the pillow one of his earbuds pops out. He holds his breath, but before he wedges it back in his ear, he realises that he can’t hear anything, the flat still. He relaxes a little, then relaxes a little more when he hears Harry snoring gently in his room. The sound of it is enough to send him off to sleep again, but then he hears it – the television – and he knows it’s Zayn.

Louis rolls onto his back and rubs his face with his hands. He shouldn’t go in there, but of course he does, tip toeing past Harry’s bedroom and into the living room to find Zayn sitting on the sofa eating a plate of toast. He’s in nothing but a pair of jeans again and Louis should be used to it – he’s seen him undressed more than dressed at this point – but this is what happens when Louis likes someone, really likes someone, he can never remember what they look like the next day, just the way they made him feel when they smiled or laughed at one of his jokes. The morning after he met Harry, all Louis could remember was curls and dimples, so until he stepped into the doorway of the living room, Zayn was just a blur of eyelashes and cheekbones. He doesn’t even remember his tattoos so he stands there for a moment, as though he’s looking at them for the first time, his chin trembling at the thought of licking each one.

But then Zayn points at the television. ‘When did Chesney have a fucking kid?’

‘Ages ago,’ Louis says with a sigh, sitting next to him on the sofa and taking a slice of toast from his plate. Zayn doesn’t flinch and he shouldn’t because it’s just toast.

Just toast.

+++

Louis doesn’t sleep again that night, his mind swinging back and forth – back and forth, back and forth – between Harry and Zayn while he traces the lines across his palms with his finger sure that he’s coming apart at the seams. Then he hears them, hears the bed first, then that first breathy moan that Harry tries to hold in and can’t and he’s hard in a heartbeat. He tries to ignore it, tries to roll over and pull the sheet over his head, but then Harry whimpers and his hand is on his erection before he can tell himself to go have a cold shower. They probably don’t even know what time it is, they’ve just woken up to the sound of the rain and too much space between them, Harry murmuring sweetly as Zayn rolls him onto his stomach. Louis’ never wanted someone like that before, never reached for someone and known that they want him. He always has to kiss and cajole and reassure and the thought of it, of slow, wordless sex and deep sleepy kisses has him coming with a sudden, stuttered splash under the sheet.

When he wipes his sticky hand, he’s disgusted with himself, his head swimming as he asks himself what he’s doing. But then he hears Harry coming, or trying not to, choking on his breath like Zayn’s holding his head under water and Louis’ hand is on his cock again. He’s still hard or hard again, he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care as he listens to Harry, to his breathless, tender pleas. ‘I can’t,’ he tries to whisper, but Louis hears him. ‘Please. I don’t want to wake, Lou.’ That has him running for the edge again, so when Zayn ignores him and does something to make Harry gasp and say Zayn’s name through his teeth as though he’s punched him in the stomach, Louis comes again.

It’s too much. He has to get out, not waiting to catch his breath as he kicks back the sheet. It’s raining hard by the time he gets to the beach, the sun struggling to do much more than lift the sky from black to grey. The water is rough, waves whipping back and forth, so he dumps his board and runs out into it. He swims as fast and as far as he can, going deeper and deeper and deeper until he has to come up for air. When he does, the cold rain on his cheeks is such a relief that it brings tears to his eyes. So he just kind of bobs there, looking back at the shoreline as he wonders how he got there.

He doesn’t know how he got there.

+++

Louis goes to the bar that night. He’s lost his mind, he knows – he’s lost his fucking mind – because there’s no happy ending here. No good can come of this. But it’s like he’s an alcoholic who’s convinced himself that he can have one drink, that he might as well finish the bottle, that he won’t drink tomorrow, that he can stop whenever he wants.

No good can come of this.

It’s Friday night and Louis doesn’t know how he forgot that, how he doesn’t even know what day of the week it is any more, but he’s startled by how cluttered the bar is. The crowd’s different as well, mostly blokes who kind of look like he and Harry, laid back and the right side of untidy with hair that could probably do with a cut. Louis can’t even see Zayn it’s so busy, his heart hysterical as they approach the bar, sure that Zayn won’t see them, either, not through all the guys queuing around it. But he forgot what a pushy little shit Harry is, so in a few seconds he’s wriggled his way through them and is leaning over the bar to grin at Zayn. Louis is standing behind Harry so he still can’t see him, but then the guy standing next to Harry moves and there Zayn is and seeing him is like the first time he saw the Chrysler Building. He’ll never forget it, how the cab swung around the back of the Silvercup Studios and the Manhattan skyline came into view, the Chrysler Building in the middle of it all, glinting in the sun like a new fifty-pence coin. That’s who Zayn is, Louis realises then, he’s the Chrysler Building and Harry’s the Empire State Building and he’s standing between them, unsure which to look at first.

Zayn smiles and Louis knows that it isn’t for him, but he’s looking at him.

He’s definitely looking at him.

‘How did you know, Lou?’ he asks, clapping his hands and his smile is even bigger, all bright eyes and teeth, the pink of his tongue behind them. ‘Did you smell it?’

Louis doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, but he’s not even listening because he’s Lou. He doesn’t know when he became Lou, but he’s Lou, and his heart.

Zayn turns to get a couple of Coronas out of the fridge. He opens them and hands one to Harry with a secret smile that feels like a door slamming shut, but then he turns to Louis with a slightly different smile and it’s like a window opening. Zayn hands him the beer and Louis sees that he has something else in his other hand. It’s a Tupperware dish and he peels the lid off like he doesn’t have a care in the world, like there isn’t a barful of people waiting to be served. But then no one seems bothered, everyone happily chatting and sipping their drinks as Born to Run plays on the jukebox.

‘Holy shit!’ Louis says when Zayn holds out the dish.

‘Bread and butter pudding courtesy of Nick and Patricia.’ He puts it on the bar between them. ‘They sent me off with it earlier. It’s almost as good as my mum’s.’

‘Did they charge you?’

‘Course not,’ he scoffs, grabbing a couple of white plastic forks from under the bar. He hands Louis one then flicks at a raisin with the other. ‘I hope you like raisins.’

‘Love them,’ Louis says, stabbing at it.

‘The Devil's testicles.’

‘No. That’s olives.’

‘Them, too,’ Zayn mutters, forking some bread and butter pudding into his mouth. Someone says his name and he points at Harry. ‘Don’t let him eat it all.’

When he wanders off to the other end of the bar to serve someone, Louis looks up to find Harry watching him carefully.

‘What?’ Louis asks, his mouth full.

Harry looks down the bar at Zayn then back at him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ Louis says, trying to sound nonchalant which is virtually impossible when you’re trying to swallow a mouthful of bread and butter pudding.

‘When did you two start,’ he pauses to look back at Zayn, ‘start whatever this is?’

‘We’re friends.’

‘Friends? Zayn and I aren’t even friends and he came in my mouth this morning.’

It’s so crude that Louis’ stomach lurches and when it does, he realises that was for his benefit, Harry’s way of keeping him in his place for catching him off guard.

‘It’s nothing. I just, he just,’ he picks at a raisin with the fork, ‘He and I we just-’

‘That isn’t even a sentence, Louis. You’re just muttering random words. Jesus.’ When Louis looks up Harry’s frowning. ‘Is that what I sound like when I mumble?’

‘I don’t know. I just. Zayn is, like, you know? And I, you know?’

Harry stares at him. ‘Are you having a stroke?’

‘No. I. Wait. What?’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ The crease between Harry’s eyebrows deepens, then it smoothes as he stands a straighter, his eyes wide. ‘Do you like Zayn?’

Louis stabs at the bread and butter pudding with the fork. ‘I. We. You know?’

‘You do, don’t you?’

‘Yeah. I think.’ He pushes the Tupperware dish away from him. ‘I don’t know.’

When he lifts his chin to look at Harry, he’s clearly stunned.

‘Have you ever even? I mean with a guy, have you ever even?’

Only with you, Louis almost says, but the fact that Harry’s asking means that it doesn’t count, that Louis was right, it was just something he did when he was drunk. So he shrugs because he doesn’t want Harry to think it meant more than that.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he says and he doesn’t know where it comes from, but it’s enough to make Harry stop and blink at him.

‘Okay,’ he says as though Louis’ just snatched one of his toys out of his hands.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘No. It’s cool. Have at it.’ He shrugs. ‘We’re just fucking.’

That doesn’t make him feel any better, but when Harry downs the rest of his beer and puts the empty bottle on the bar, his jaw clenched, Louis wonders if he’s trying to make him feel better.

‘This is weird,’ he mutters, hoping that his face doesn’t look as flushed as it feels as he finishes his beer as well. ‘Can we just forget I said anything?’

‘It’s not weird.’ Harry shrugs again. ‘I don’t care.’

Clearly he does.

‘Okay. Let’s talk about something else, then. So,’ Louis’ nods. ‘Syria.’

Harry doesn’t take the hint. ‘It’s just that we promised, you know?’

‘Promised what?’

‘No stopping. Keep moving.’

‘What about that girl in Nihiwatu?’

‘We shagged for, like, two weeks.’

‘That’s a long-term relationship for you, Harry.’

‘Yeah, but she didn’t bring me bread and butter pudding.’

He nods at the Tupperware dish and Louis rolls his eyes.

‘You’re making out like I want to marry him, or something.’

‘It’s you, Lou. You’re Mr Relationship. You’ve slept with, like, five girls your entire life.’

‘Six, actually,’ he says, lifting his chin defiantly.

It is five but he’d never give Harry the satisfaction.

‘Fine. Six.’

‘Why are we even talking about this?’ Louis puts his empty beer bottle on the bar next to Harry’s and holds his hands up. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing. I know you, Louis. You’re falling for him.’

‘I’m not falling for him.’

‘You are.’

‘I’m not, Harry.’

‘You are. I know you, Louis. You’re fucking done for. You can’t even look at me.’

Louis makes a point of looking at him, right in the eye. ‘It’s nothing, Haz.’

‘My flight to New Zealand is booked and paid for.’ He jabs at the bar with his finger. ‘December 23^rd I’ll be on Muriwai Beach, with or without you.’

‘Haz,’ Louis calls after him, but he’s gone.

+++

Ten minutes later, Harry’s leaning against the pool table snogging some bloke like he’s about to go off to war. Louis can’t watch and when he turns away, it surprises him how much it stings. He’d put that down to guilt – maybe even a little shame at admitting that he might kindofsortofmaybe like Zayn – but it’s the same sting Louis feels every time he sees Harry kissing someone and he doesn’t get it because he’s thought of nothing but Zayn since he met him, yet there he is, his heart aching and his nerves tightening at the thought that this other guy might be the one. That this guy might be the one who’s enough to make Harry stay still or worse, to make him fall. Fall and fall.

Then Louis looks down the bar at Zayn who’s nodding and singing along to Mr Brightside as he pours a row of shots and he wonders if that will ever go away, if wanting Harry is his perpetual state and anyone else he meets will just be a distraction until Harry decides that he’s had enough of wandering and wants to settle down. To sleep in the same bed for more than two nights in a row and hang his clothes in a wardrobe, one wardrobe, in one room, in one house, somewhere near water with a fire pit in the garden and photographs of them with sunburnt noses, their tongues out and their hair stiff with sea salt, cluttering the walls. But then Zayn looks up, as though he knows Louis’ staring at him, and when he smiles, Louis’ heart flips over. Then all he can think about is Zayn, of persuading him to come to the beach one morning and paddling out, his mouth to Zayn’s ear as they sit on his board, watching the sun come up, telling him not to be scared, that it’s only water, as Zayn holds on a little too tight.

Louis can’t help but smile back, but when Zayn turns to put the bottle of tequila on the shelf behind the bar, Louis looks over his shoulder at Harry, who’s still against the pool table, and when the guy slides his hands into the back pockets of Harry’s jeans, Louis’ heart flips back. He has to go then, because it’s as if his heart has two sides – a coin with Harry on one side and Zayn on the other – and no good will come of this.

So Louis heads back to the flat, too scared to say goodbye to Zayn in case he makes it worse, and is woken up a couple hours later by Harry. He makes no effort to be quiet this time, but it’s easier to ignore because it’s all theatrics, porn star moaning and headboard banging that’s clearly for his benefit. He even leaves his bedroom door open so Louis gets a lovely view of the guy’s arse as he pads off to the living room to sleep on the sofa. He can’t sleep, though, his brain turning over and over as he thinks about Zayn and if Harry’s right, if he is done for. It should reassure him that Harry knows him so well, but it makes it worse somehow. This would be much easier if he didn’t, if he wasn’t paying attention and Louis could write him off as a selfish, restless asshole who only cares about his next wave and his next shag. But that isn’t Harry. Dear, sweet Harry who lies on top of him and sings Henry the 8th I am, I am until he laughs when he’s in a bad mood and plaits Louis’ hair when they’re watching a film and sold everything he had to follow him around the world on this trip but cried his eyes out when he said goodbye to his mother at the airport. Harry who’d let Louis have Zayn even though he likes him because he knows it’ll make him happy and he’ll do anything to make Louis happy.

He has to get out of the flat, off the sofa that still has Zayn’s toast crumbs on it, away from the sound of Harry trying to fuck Zayn out of him. He heads for the beach, but the water is too still to surf, so he paddles out and sits on his board, listening for the swell as he waits for the sun to come up. He’s the only one out there and it’s just what he needs, the whole ocean to himself. He looks out at the horizon and thinks that he could keep going, just lie on his board and paddle and paddle until he’s far enough away that there’s enough space between him and Harry – and Zayn – that his head clears and he can think straight. But there isn’t enough space, an ocean wouldn’t be enough, a country, a fucking continent, because Louis would just take them with him, under his skin, tucked into some secret pocket in his heart. So when he sees that first wave, he heads straight for it, like Harry would, and every one after that, gliding through each one, arms out, like he’s flying.

As he curls into another, he looks back to the beach and sees someone watching him. He thinks it’s Harry and waits for him to come out and join in, but when he doesn’t, he looks back again and realises it’s Zayn and falls off his board. It’s not the most elegant dismount, but when he gets back on and starts paddling toward him, he doesn’t care.

When his feet finally find sand, he tries not to run and fails.

‘Hey,’ he says, out of breath, when he gets to him.

Zayn smiles, slow and little clumsy. ‘Hey.’

‘What you doing out here?’ he asks with an equally clumsy smile, smoothing his hair back with his hand. ‘I thought you and the sea didn’t get along?’

‘As long as it keeps a safe distance, we’re cool.’

Louis chuckles, standing his board up and wrapping his arm around it.

‘What you doing up so early?’

Zayn shrugs. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

He looks at him a beat too long and he isn’t tired this time, Louis knows. They just kind of look at each other, seagulls wheeling over their heads like paper planes as the tide reaches out to touch their feet then pulls back before it does.

Zayn says it first. ‘This isn’t in my head, is it?’

Louis stares at him, his fingers curling around his board as his heart flips over.

He shakes his head and Zayn frowns.

‘This should be weird,’ he says, his voice a little lower. ‘Why isn’t this weird?’

‘I don’t know.’

And he doesn’t. All he knows is that he wants Zayn to kiss him and when he does Louis knows that Harry’s right: he’s done for. Fucking done for.

+++

When he gets back to the flat, Harry’s board is propped up in the hall. Louis hears him before he sees him, hears him clattering around in the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors and shoving drawers shut. That’s nothing new, every time he kicks the fridge door shut or drags the coffee table closer to him, Louis reminds him that he needs their security deposit back to pay for his flight to New Zealand. But this isn’t his usual heavy handness, so Louis edges into the kitchen, unsure what he’s about to be confronted with.

Harry doesn’t look up, the skin between his eyebrows pinched as he digs a knife into the tub of margarine and scrapes some across a piece of toast. Louis’ about to ask him if he’s okay when he sees that his wet suit on. It’s open, the top half hanging around his waist to reveal his tanned back and the freckles that bubbled to the surface of his shoulders a week after they got to Nihiwatu. His hair is dry and for a second, Louis thinks that he’s just grabbing something to eat before he goes out, but then he remembers that it’s almost 9 a.m. on a Saturday so there’s no point going out now. The beach was already filling up when he left and even the south end will be busy with weekend surfers trying to forget about their Monday morning meetings and the school run for a few hours. Then Harry throws the knife into the sink and when he bites into the toast and walks past him as though he isn’t even there, Louis knows that he’s already been out. That he saw them, him and Zayn.

‘Haz,’ he calls after him, but Harry kicks his bedroom door shut.

Louis knows him well enough to leave it, but after a few hours of pacing around his bedroom, he can’t take it, and goes in. Harry is face down on his bed, still in his wetsuit, and tells him to fuck off, but Louis ignores him and crawls on top of him. Harry tries to shake him off, but can’t as Louis puts his nose in his hair and starts singing Henry the 8th I am, I am. He doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t try to shake him off, either, so they just sort of lie there, listening to the people sitting outside the café downstairs laughing and eating brunch.

‘I’m sorry,’ Louis says with a sigh. ‘But do you know how many people I’ve had to watch you kiss and I’ve never asked you to choose. Never.’

Harry doesn’t say anything for a while and Louis doesn’t think he’s going to, but then he sighs as well. ‘Just don’t fall in love with him, okay?’

+++

Things are okay after that. Not okay, but better. They surf all day and Harry’s Harry, happy and playful and fearless as he paddles towards waves so big that all Louis can see is a wall of blue. But Harry never flinches, jumping to his feet and staring into the face of each wave, arms out, like he’s looking it in the eye as it slants cleanly across him. Then he’s gone and it’s fucking beautiful, as though the ocean has swallowed him up, showing him all of its secrets, and each time Harry emerges, he smiles as though he’ll never tell.

Louis wants it to be like that forever, just the two of them and the ocean. He thought he’d hate it, Bondi, with its tourist tat and hipsters who are more concerned with what they’re wearing than sniffing the wind and obsessively checking the tides. He wanted to head north of the harbour to Fairy Bower or Dee Why Point where the proper surfers hung out, but they’d done that in Nihiwatu and on the Gold Coast and Harry missed the city. He missed bookshops and chocolate cream frappuccinos and seeing different people every day, so Louis relented. But when the sun goes down and they’ve washed the saltwater out of their hair – as much of it as they can, anyway – and they’re working their way down the bars on Curlewis Street, Louis wants that as well. He wants to try tamagoyaki and to throw up after too many Jägerbombs. And he wants Zayn, steady, quiet, beautiful Zayn who makes him want to lie in bed forever, kissing and talking and giggling about the shit jobs they’ve had as they’re lulled to sleep by the sound of the sea, close enough to smell but far enough away that Zayn can’t see it.

They talk about everything, everything but Harry, and Louis knows they should, but he doesn’t want to ruin it. Harry’s already there, though – he’ll always be there, the fly in their ointment, a bug trapped in amber – so while it’s fine during the day, the evenings are awkward. Louis tells himself that they’re not hiding anything, just trying to be subtle and not rub it in Harry’s face, but he knows that’s bullshit, that he and Zayn are just sticking their fingers in their ears and saying, lalalalala because they don’t want to acknowledge the huge Harry-shaped elephant in the middle of the room. But they try and it works for a while. It helps that Zayn works most nights so Louis can still go out with Harry and get drunk like he always does and muck about like he always does and pretend not to care when Harry pulls like he always does. That helps as well – when Harry pulls – because he doesn’t notice when Louis sneaks out while he’s in his room, the bed threatening to give way under the weight of whoever he’s with.

Harry isn’t stupid, though, so Louis should know, when they’re in the tiki bar and he gets back from the bathroom to find Harry gone that something’s wrong. But Harry’s been chatting up the waitress all night so Louis assumes that he’s off somewhere with her, untying her coconut bra with a wicked smile as her grass skirt rustles. Or maybe it’s the promise of getting to see Zayn a few hours earlier than he thought he would that has him dismissing Harry’s sudden absence as he hurries up Curlewis Street towards Zayn’s bar, but when he gets there and sees Harry, his heart skids into his ribs.

They’re not even looking at each other – Zayn behind the bar, serving someone, while Harry sits at a table sipping at a bottle of Corona. Except they are, Harry looking up at him between each sip as Zayn looks over to Harry’s table while he waits for the Guinness he’s pouring to settle, and it’s nothing. They keep missing one another – Harry looking up as Zayn looks down – and there’s something kind of sad about it – kind of tragic – and Louis suddenly doesn’t know what he’s doing, why he’s doing it to them, but then Zayn smiles and his heart shoots up then falls again, like a dud firework, as he questions whether the smile is for him. When he doesn’t smile back, Zayn holds up a bottle of Corona with a wink and Louis’ heart soars again, high and loud and bright.

+++

That night, when Harry is in his room with the waitress from the tiki bar, Louis sneaks out and meets Zayn at his flat. It’s actually a studio, a tiny, surprisingly tidy room over the bar that has become Louis’ port in a storm. It’s only been a week, but he already knows every corner, knows to flush the toilet twice and to prop the window open with a can of baked beans when he opens it otherwise it’ll slam shut again. And he knows Zayn’s big, white bed, he knows the smell of his sheets and even has a favourite pillow and that’s the real betrayal, he knows. Not trying to hide it from Harry, but those little things. The secrets they tell one another and plans they make without him.

They haven’t had sex yet, though, they haven’t done anything other than kiss, like a couple of nervous teenagers. Louis doesn’t know why because he wants Zayn, wants him so much it makes him shake sometimes. He wanks off to the thought of him every morning in the shower, to the thought of his fingers and tanned, flat stomach. But just before he comes, Harry’s there, mouth on his neck like a fucking vampire, and that’s when he comes with a reluctant grunt, Harry’s name on his tongue. So that night, when he and Zayn are kissing, kissing until Louis’ back is melting into the sheets, and he feels Zayn’s fingers slip under the elastic of his underwear, Louis stops him and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but all he can think is that he wants Harry to be his first.

+++

When Louis’ leaving Zayn’s flat the next morning, he takes one last look at Zayn who’s sleeping so sweetly that he wants to crawl back into his bed and pull the sheet over them, but as he contemplates it, he feels the stab of something in his stomach. He feels guilty, he realises, when he closes the door behind him and tugs his Vans on. He doesn’t know for what. He’s not cheating on Harry, he knows, but it feels like he is. But then he thinks of Harry, sitting in the bar, watching Zayn between sips of beer, and Louis has never seen him like that before, like he doesn’t know what to do, and that’s what he feels, he realises, like he’s in the way. Like he’s the fly in the ointment.

His limbs are a little heavier as he walks back to their flat, each step more difficult than the last. It’s just gone five o’clock and he loves and hates this time of the morning. He loves the promise of it, of the waves picking up and the sun beginning it’s slow creep up the sky, but he also hates how unsettling it is, that uneasy point between night and day when anything can happen. But it feels kind of fitting as he thinks about Harry, about what he’s going to say to him, because they can’t keep ignoring it. They can’t keep pretending that the car the three of them are in isn’t about to careen off a fucking cliff.

That’s what he’s thinking about as he toes his Vans off again and opens the front door. He tip toes down the hall towards the bathroom to grab his wetsuit from the shower rail, but as he reaches for the handle, the door swings open and there’s Harry.

Louis almost drops his shoes.

‘Sorry, did I wake you up?’ Harry says with a yawn, rubbing his eyes. But then he stops and Louis knows that he sees it, sees that he’s wearing the same shirt he wore the night before, which is now creased from being on the floor next to Zayn’s bed, sees Louis’ red cheeks and his fingers curled around his Vans.

That’s it then. The door slamming and drawer shoving resumes and Louis tries to talk to him, but he locks his bedroom door (Louis didn’t even know his door had a lock) and even if he didn’t, he has no idea what he’d say because he knows that they’re way beyond the point of cups of tea and Henry the 8th I am, I am.

That night Harry goes out without him and Louis finds him in a bar they’ve never been to on O’Donnell Street drunk off his arse. Drunker than their first night in Nihiwatu, where the beer was only £1.50 a bottle. He was so sick the next day, Louis was sure they’d have to go home and when Louis finally teases him out of the bar and back to their flat, he thinks the same the thing, that it’s over, that they have to go home because Harry won’t look at him, his eyes heavy and sad. So sad.

‘Nearly there, mate,’ Louis tells him as he struggles to hold him up and get his door keys out of the pocket of his shorts at the same time. He does eventually and as soon as he does, they’re tumbling through the door. Louis thinks he’s falling, but as soon as they’re through it, Harry grabs him and pushes him into it. The shock of it knocks the air right out of him, but before he catches his breath, Harry’s mouth is on his. It takes a moment too long to realise what’s happening, then another to realise that he’s kissing him back. And he doesn’t even know he’s doing it, his tongue curling around Harry’s as though he’s singing along to his favourite song on the radio with his car window open.

Louis’ first instinct should be to stop, but it’s so nice, all warm and soft and familiar. And just like that, they’re in a shitty pub in Manchester again, drunk on 2 for a £5 Carling and making a list of all the places they want to go, Louis writing each one around the edge of that beer mat he still carries with him everywhere. And he misses that Harry, the Harry that could charm them into any pub when they were fifteen and only had enough money for a couple of pints and their bus fare home. The Harry who told them they could afford to travel wherever they wanted and got them jobs cleaning offices, then got them sacked when they did more swivel chair racing than cleaning. The Harry who kisses him like he doesn’t know how to stop.

It isn’t like that with Zayn. With Zayn it’s still so new, each touch of their tongues a surprise. Louis knows his flat, but he doesn’t know Zayn yet, he doesn’t know him like he knows Harry. He doesn’t know his skin, know his scars and how he got each one. That’s knowing someone, Louis thinks – really knowing someone – knowing all the things that have hurt them. The things that have left a mark. So perhaps Louis kisses him for a few seconds longer than he should before he pushes him away, but if it wasn’t so hard then he wouldn’t even be there, with tears in his eyes, like he’s being torn in two.

Harry comes straight back though, his tongue in Louis’ mouth before he can tell himself to turn his face away. He doesn’t let Louis push him away this time, his palms pressed to the door on either side of his head. Louis tries again, bringing his hands up and putting them on Harry’s chest, but he digs his hips into Louis, holding him in place.

‘No,’ Louis gasps, managing to peel his mouth away, but Harry takes his face in his hands and presses his forehead to Louis’.

‘Have you fucked him?’ he says and Louis doesn’t know if he’s angry or sad, but he sounds kind of broken, his voice tremoring as he digs his fingers into Louis’ cheeks.

Louis tries to move his head, but can’t. ‘Harry, don’t.’

‘Please. I have to know. It’s driving me mad.’

He tries to kiss him again, but when he does, Louis manages to press his hands to his chest and push. He feels Harry’s heart hammering against his palm as he does and it’s almost enough to make him reach for him again, but he can’t breathe.

He can’t breathe.

Harry stumbles back and Louis resists the urge to catch him as he falls back against the wall and charges down the hall. But Harry grabs his arm before he gets to his room and spins him around. Then he’s on him again, pinning Louis to his bedroom door.

‘Tell me, Lou,’ he hisses, his eyes wet. ‘I have to know. I’m going out of my mind.’

‘No! Okay?’ Louis hisses back, shoving him again. ‘We’ve just kissed.’

Saying it out loud makes his cheeks burn and he feels so stupid as he thinks of all the guys that Harry’s fucked, like a kid who wants to play football with the older boys. He waits for Harry to laugh at him, but it makes him more angry somehow.

‘I fucking knew it, Louis.’

‘Knew what?’

‘You’re in love with him.’

‘How can I be in love with him when we haven’t even slept together yet?’

‘If you didn’t love him you would’ve fucked him by now. What are you waiting for?’

‘I dunno,’ Louis says with a defensive shrug as he realises that he’s still holding his door keys and puts them in his pocket. ‘We just met, like, two weeks ago.’

‘So what do you do, then?’ Harry asks, crossing his arms. ‘If you’re not fucking.’

‘I dunno. Talk.’

‘Talk?’

‘Yes. Talk.’

‘About what?’

‘I dunno,’ he says, and he could tell Harry what they talk about, when they’re in Zayn’s bed, Louis’ cheek pressed to his chest listening to his heart as though it’s a shell and he’s listening to the sea. How they made a list of all the places they’ve never been, the things they want to see – Angel Falls and Kyoto and Angkor – but Louis doesn’t want to. He wants to lock it all in a box and hide it somewhere Harry will never find it because that’s theirs. Harry knows Zayn in a way Louis doesn’t and he knows Zayn in a way Harry doesn’t and that’s the way he wants to keep it. So all he says is, ‘Stuff.’

Harry is undeterred. ‘What kind of stuff?’

‘I dunno. Normal stuff. Books and films and home.’

Harry tilts his head at that. ‘Home?’

‘Yeah.’ Louis blushes, not sure what he said. ‘Stupid shit like Mum’s roast dinner.’

Harry walks away and Louis watches him go, his lips parted, still unsure what he’s said. Then he hears Harry banging around in his room and by the time his brain registers and he goes after him, Harry’s lifting his open suitcase off the floor.

Louis’ heart stops. ‘What are you doing?’

He ignores him, dumping the suitcase onto the bed and shoving everything that’s spilling out of it back in.

‘Harry, what are you doing?’ Louis asks again and he knows exactly what he’s doing, it’s obvious what he’s doing, but he can’t be. He wouldn’t.

‘I’m going,’ he says, reaching down to pick a towel from the floor.

Louis’s heart starts again, twice as fast. ‘Going where?’

‘New Zealand.’ He throws the towel into the suitcase. ‘I’ll change my flight in the morning.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I knew you’d do this.’

‘Do what?’

‘Fall in love with someone and leave me.’

Louis holds his arms out. ‘I’m right here, Haz.’

‘No you’re not,’ he says, snatching a t-shirt from the chair in the corner of the room. ‘You’re with him, talking about your mum’s roast dinner.’

Louis can’t catch his breath, as though he’s wiped out and can’t find his way back to the surface, the water pulling him in deeper and deeper as he asks himself how this happened. How something as innocuous as a roast dinner has Harry packing his bags.

‘Harry, why are you freaking out?’

He stops and looks at him. ‘Do you think about him when you’re with me?’

‘What?’

‘When you’re with me do you think, I wish he’d fuck off so I can see Zayn?’

Louis feels it like a slap. ‘Never.’ He steps forward. ‘I would never think that.’

But Harry isn’t listening. ‘You’re a fucking liar, Lou.’ He shakes his head as he reaches down to pick up a pair of jeans. ‘You think I don’t know about all of your secret text messages and your bullshit excuses about needing to go to the laundrette.’

‘I did go to the laundrette.’

‘Yeah.’ Harry throws the jeans in his suitcase. ‘To meet him!’

‘So what?’ He tries to sound nonchalant, his cheeks stinging. It sounds awful when he says it like that. ‘We washed our fucking clothes, Harry.’

When Louis steps back again, Harry lunges forward, pointing at him. ‘Why haven’t you fucked him yet? We’re leaving in two days. What are you waiting for?’

Louis puts his hand in his hair and pulls. ‘I dunno.’

‘You do know!’

‘I don’t!’

‘You’re scared, Lou!’ Harry tells him and he’s livid – fucking livid – his cheeks red and his hand shaking as he points at him again. ‘I know you. You’re fucking scared. You’re scared that if you sleep with him you’ll fall in love with him!’

Louis makes himself look at him. ‘I’m not in love with him.’

That isn’t what Harry said and they both know it.

‘Okay.’ Harry crosses his arms. ‘Have you booked your ticket to New Zealand?’

Louis rolls his eyes and sighs. He knew he was going to bring that up.

‘I told you, Haz! I need my deposit back on this place to pay for the ticket.’

‘Okay. Come on then.’

Harry pushes past him out of the bedroom and when Louis follows he’s walking towards the living room. He snatches his laptop off the sofa and holds it up.

‘We’ll book it now. I’ll put it on my credit card and you can pay me back.’

Louis turns his face away and Harry laughs. ‘I knew it. You’re fucking staying.’

‘I’m not.’ Louis rubs his face with his hands. ‘I swear.’

Harry throws the laptop on the sofa with another bitter laugh. It bounces off and lands on the rug with an ominous CRACK that makes Louis’ nerves jump up.

‘You’ve asked him to come to New Zealand, haven’t you?’

Louis’ nerves jump up even further and he wants to be sick. He can feel Harry staring at him and he can’t look at him, the tops of his ears burning as he contemplates crawling under the dining table and hiding because it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Louis was going to take him to Brown Sugar for pancakes and tell him carefully.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

‘I would never.’ Louis stops to suck in a breath, his jaw juddering. ‘We were just talking about it and he said that he’d never been and he’s always wanted to go and-’

‘You fucking did, didn’t you? You fucking asked him to come.’

‘No. Not like that.’ Louis hears the crack in his voice he has to cover his face with his hands again because he can’t look at him. ‘Just for, like, a week. Just for New Year’s.’

‘Why are you doing this to me?’

Louis can’t take it. It’s like being punched in the chest, over and over.

‘I’m not trying to hurt you, Harry.’

‘I would never do this to you! I gave up everything for this. I deferred my university place and used the money my granddad left me, the money Mum wanted me to put towards a flat, to pay for this! And for what? For you dump me three months in?’

‘I’m not dumping you. It’s a week, Harry.’ He holds up a finger. ‘A week.’

‘Forget it, Lou,’ Harry says, shoving past him out of the living room, making sure he barges him with his shoulder this time. ‘Stay. Be happy. Be in love. God fucking bless.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Louis says, following him into the bathroom as Harry indiscriminately grabs at bottles of shampoo and sun cream. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me, too.’

‘Harry, please,’ Louis calls after him as he marches back into his bedroom. When he follows him in, Harry’s standing by the bed, furiously chewing on his lip. ‘What do you want from me, Harry?’ Louis holds his arms out. ‘What? You want me to choose?’

Harry throws the bottles into the suitcase. ‘No I don’t want you to choose.’

‘Are you sure? Cos it sounds like you do.’

‘I wouldn’t dare, 'cos you’d never choose me. Never!’

Something in Louis buckles then, like a shelf suddenly giving way under the weight of too many books.

‘Fuck you, you fucking asshole!’ he spits, lunging at him and shoving him with both hands. Harry stumbles back and when he catches himself, Louis feels a tear skid down his cheek but doesn’t catch it in time. ‘I will always choose you, Harry, and if you think that I wouldn’t, that I wouldn’t follow you off a fucking cliff, then fuck you!’ He points at him. ‘But you fucking do, Harry! You know that if you asked, I’d choose you, even though Zayn’s the first person I’ve met since you who makes me feel like this. I’d choose traipsing after you from bar to bar while you fall in love with everyone but me!’

Harry stares at him, his chest heaving.

‘You’re the only person I’ve ever loved, Lou.’

Louis wants to punch him in the face. Why? he almost says, balling his hands into fists before he can give into the urge to grab the front of his shirt and shake him. Why now? But it’s just like Harry, paddling out for that last wave as the sun’s going down.

‘Jesus fucking Christ, Harry.’ Louis presses his right fist to his mouth.

‘I should have told you.’ He puts his hand to his chest. ‘But I thought you knew, Lou. I didn’t think I had to say it out loud, but I should have and it’s too late.’

‘It’s not too late,’ Louis says, and he doesn’t know how he finds the breath or the strength to lift his chin to look at him, but he does.

‘It is.’ Harry shakes his head. ‘I see the way you look at him.’

‘I see the way you look at him.’ Harry doesn’t deny it and when he looks away, it hurts so much that Louis has to as well. ‘If I’d known. You said-’ Louis stops to put a his hand in his hair again. ‘I would never, Haz.’ He shakes his head. ‘If I knew.’

‘You couldn’t help it,’ Harry says with a shrug, putting his hands on his hips. ‘And the fucked up thing is: I get it. I did exactly the same thing when I was with him, the texts, the bullshit excuses. Every time I went out to buy milk or to go to the cash point, I was with him. I couldn’t stop it. I had to see him, even if it was for, like, ten minutes. We didn’t talk, though, we just-’ He stops and starts playing with his bottom lip, his cheeks a little redder. ‘I’ve never lied to you before, Lou, but I lied about that and I’m sorry.’

‘What are you trying to say, Harry?’ Louis holds his breath.

‘I’m saying that I get it.’ He lets go of his lip and lifts his eyelashes to look at him. ‘I love you, Lou. You’re the reason I always get two mugs out of the cupboard when I make tea and the one I look back at when I head towards a wave. If you ever left me, my heart would fucking stop, I swear. ‘Cos when we’re seventy, it’s you and me, Lou, walking along Blackpool Promenade in the pissing rain, looking out at the sea and talking about that time you wiped out in Newquay and nearly knocked yourself out.’

Harry laughs suddenly and his whole face changes so he looks like Harry again, the Harry who’s never met a wave he’s afraid of but runs out of the bathroom if there’s a spider in the sink. The Harry he met at that wedding when they were ten years old, Harry in his too-big suit stealing plates of cake off the tables then skidding across the dance floor on his knees when the DJ played Don't Stop Me Now. The Harry who passed Kerry Cunningham that note in Year 9 asking if she liked Louis then told him what to wear on their first date. The Harry who smuggled that bottle of Bacardi from his parents’ drinks cabinet, which they drank at the park, on the swings. The Harry who told him that he didn’t have to go to university if he didn’t want to and he didn’t have to marry Kerry Cunningham if he didn’t want to or take that shitty job in that call centre if he didn’t want to. They climbed their first fence together and smoked their first cigarette together and rode their first wave together, back when the summers were longer and louder and hotter. But then Harry shakes his head and he’s gone again.

‘But I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for him and I’m sorry.’ Harry laughs again and it makes Louis’ chin tremble. ‘It’s the first thing I’ve done without you in eight years, Lou.’

Louis laughs as well and Harry’s chin trembles this time. ‘That’s exactly how I feel.’

They look at each other and Louis’ surprised how relaxed he feels – how relieved – even though the floor doesn’t feel as steady under his feet as it did five minutes ago.

‘What we gonna do, Haz?’

‘There’s only one thing we can do,’ Harry says, taking his phone out of his pocket.

+++

Fifteen minutes later, Zayn knocks. Harry still hasn’t told Louis why he called him so he can’t tell Zayn why when he asks, just tells him to come in with a weary shrug. They find Harry in his room, pacing back and forth. His room is always a mess, but after their argument it looks like a bomb’s gone off in Hollister. There are clothes everywhere, the suitcase still open on the bed, so Zayn looks bewildered when he follows Louis in.

‘You alright, Harry?’ he asks carefully, looking around at it all.

He ignores him. ‘Kiss him,’ he says, pointing at Louis.

Zayn goes from bewildered to Are you having a stroke? ‘What?’

Harry points at Louis again. ‘Kiss him.’

Zayn turns to Louis, who’s just as stunned by what Harry is saying, and when he doesn’t laugh or offer an explanation, Zayn turns back to Harry and holds his hands up.

‘I don’t know what I’ve walked in on, but I think you need to-’

Harry doesn’t let him finish and hooks a finger into one of the belt loops on Louis shorts and tugs him towards him. Louis gasps when their mouths collide, his hands coming up to grab the back of his shirt to steady himself as Harry’s tongue darts into his open mouth. That makes him gasp again, and when he does, Zayn shoves Harry.

‘The fuck?’ he spits and it’s so possessive that Louis can’t catch his breath as Harry staggers back. He almost falls onto the bed, but steadies himself. When he does, he grins, quick and wicked, and he looks like Harry again, his eyes bright as he licks his lips and reaches for Zayn this time. He does it with both hands, his fingers curling around the collar of Zayn’s black shirt as he pulls him to him. He presses his mouth to Zayn’s and Louis’ heart gets stuck in his throat as he watches them. But then Zayn shoves him again and Harry laughs, his eyes even brighter, but he doesn’t let go of his collar.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Zayn,’ he breathes, lifting his chin, and Louis knows exactly what he’s talking about. Louis knows that look. He hates that look. It’s the look that crosses Zayn’s face every time Harry steps into his sight line. Zayn’s whole face changes and Harry’s face changes and when they look at one another it’s like they’re talking, having whole conversations in a language Louis doesn’t understand. Even yesterday, Louis only said Harry’s name in passing but he saw the flicker of that look cross Zayn’s face and it was like he wasn’t in the room any more. Do you miss him? Louis almost asked, but he didn’t because he already knew. And he wasn’t mad, he couldn’t be, because if anyone got it, it was him. He knows what it’s like to love Harry Styles. Darling Harry, wild as a wave. He’s always the one that got away. The one to leave a scar. The one that guys like Zayn think about in ten years when they’re married to guys like Louis.

The one.

‘I know you remember,’ Harry says, licking his lips again.

As soon as he does Louis sees Zayn let go of whatever he’s holding onto, his hands shaking and his eyelids heavy as he dips his head and kisses Harry with a sudden and uncontainable passion that has them stepping on each other’s toes. Louis can’t help but stare, his heart still in his throat, because he’s never kissed anyone like that. It’s the sort of passion people ruin their marriages for, that they get tattoos to remember, and it hurts to look at because he wants to taste it, to get between them and feel the burn of it on his lips. Then they pull apart and when Harry reaches for him he is, sandwiched between them as Harry takes his face in his hands and kisses him. And it isn’t like he kissed Zayn, breathless and biting, his hands creasing the collar of Zayn’s shirt. Harry kisses him like he’s saying, I know this mouth, I know this face, and Louis can only curl his fingers around his wrists and hold on as he kisses him back. But then he feels Zayn’s mouth on his neck and Louis starts shaking, his bitten down nails digging into Harry’s wrists as Harry peels his mouth away. Louis doesn’t have time to open his eyes again before Zayn’s tongue dips into his mouth and the shock of it makes his nails dig into Harry’s wrists so hard they must draw blood as his head tips back onto Zayn’s shoulder.

Louis doesn’t know what happens after that, everything a mess of mouths and breath as he tries to keep up. He knows that he has one hand fisted in the front of Harry’s shirt and the other fisted in Zayn’s and it kind of feels like being pulled under by a wave and trying to hold onto his board. He can’t breathe, twisting and twisting, looking for daylight, for a glimpse of the surface. But he must let go of Harry’s shirt because he feels his skin, hot and tight under his palm, and the bat bat bat of Harry’s heart under it, like a bird trying to get out of a cage. Then his t-shirt is off as well, Louis gasping for air when it’s tugged over his head before Harry’s mouth is on him.

If Zayn wasn’t behind him, Louis’ sure he’d collapse to the floor into a boneless heap, but he is there, his hand under Louis’ chin, tugging his head back onto his shoulder and licking his way back into his mouth. He tries to kiss him back but can’t, his breath catching in his throat when he feels Harry’s hands on the button of his shorts.

‘Harry, stop,’ Louis manages to gasp, Zayn letting go of his neck so that he can look down at him. Harry’s on his knees, his eyes wide and his hair everywhere, and he looks so sweet, like Louis’ just woken him up with a cup of tea to tell him it’s time to go out and catch their first wave, that Louis doesn’t know why he wants him to stop.

‘I’ve never,’ he breathes, his hands reaching down for Harry’s shoulders.

Harry knows that, but it feels like that night in Nihiwatu when Harry got blind drunk on £1.50 beers. Louis caught him trying to climb onto the thatched roof of the bar, but he was too high up to grab, so Louis pleaded with him to be careful as Harry stood with his arms out, looking down at the swimming pool. He didn’t listen of course – he never does – and told everyone watching that he was a golden god before he jumped into the pool. Louis’ whole life flashed before him when he did. Not his life, but their life – the wedding, the bottle of Bacardi, that first fence they climbed that Louis ripped his jeans on – but Louis likes to think that those things flashed before Harry as well, that he thought before he jumped. So maybe that’s what he’s trying to tell Harry: to be careful.

Harry must get that because he stands up and kisses Louis again, kisses him like he’s saying, I know. It’s a little slower after that, Harry kissing him with a patience he didn’t think him capable of as the three of them undress quietly. Louis’ cheeks flush when his shorts pool around his ankles and he takes his erection in his hand, but Harry isn’t looking at him, he’s watching Zayn, utterly rapt. Louis’ never seen Harry look at anyone like that, with such awe. He’s actually staring, his lips wet and his hands stilling as if he suddenly doesn’t know what to do with them. Zayn must see it, too, because the corner of his mouth tips up as he reaches for Harry’s belt, tugging it through the loops of his jeans and throwing it across the room. Louis turns to watch it hit the chest of drawers with a CLANG and when he looks back at them they’re kissing deeply, Zayn’s hand slipping into the front of Harry’s jeans. Harry gasps and his hips jerk when it does, but Zayn doesn’t stop, the black denim stretching over his knuckles as he strokes him until Harry is shivering and biting down on his bottom lip.

‘Get on the bed,’ Zayn tells him, pulling his hand out and reaching for the suitcase. He picks it up and throws it, clothes tumbling out of it as it lands on the floor at the end of the bed, on top of the pair of white shorts Harry wore to the beach yesterday.

‘You, too.’

Zayn gestures at Louis, but as Louis watches Harry climb onto the bed in nothing but a pair of jeans, his ridiculous black skinny jeans that always seem to end up tangled up with his washing somehow, the ones that are falling apart, the tears across the knees held together with black tape, Louis feels the punch of his heart as he realises, this is it. This is all he wanted when they were driving along the Gold Coast in their battered yellow jeep that they bought for, like, eight-hundred bucks from that guy with the eagle tattoo who warned them that it wouldn’t make it past Lennox Head. But it did, Harry in the passenger seat, his feet out the window as they sang along to Bryan Adams. It’s all he thinks about every morning when he brings Harry a cup of tea in bed or, at night, when Harry’s looking at some guy he’s just met the way Louis wants him to look at him. But this is it, Louis realises, this is the way he wants Harry to look at him, like he’s seen it all but it still isn’t enough. So when his brain finally registers and he climbs onto the bed in front of him, Louis reaches for his face and kisses him this time.

When Harry kisses him back, his tongue slow and warm in his mouth, he doesn’t know how he hears Zayn say, ‘Come on’ because they’ve never kissed like that – with such abandon – and Louis doesn’t want to stop because it feels like the first time they’ve done it. But that’s what Harry does, he makes everything – every day, every night, every wave – feel brand new. He makes Louis feel brand new, makes him feel like they’ll live forever. So Zayn has to take him by the hips and pull him away from Harry, Louis sighing reluctantly as Harry’s tongue slips from his mouth, his hands reaching out for his elbows and clinging on just a little as Zayn tugs him back. Louis looks over his shoulder as he does to see Zayn sitting up on the bed, his back against the headboard, and it’s fucking obscene, Zayn naked except for his black-rimmed glasses, his legs open.

The sight of him makes Louis’ heart hiccup as he looks at Zayn’s skin, at his tattoos and coffee-coloured nipples, his tongue flicking out to lick his bottom lip as he wonders if they taste like coffee as well. But then he feels Zayn’s erection press into the small of his back and he can’t help but lift his hips and rub against him, which makes Zayn groan blissfully and pull him closer so that Louis’ sitting on the bed between his legs. Louis’ instinct is to lie back and he gasps again when he feels Zayn’s nipples against his shoulderblades. But before he can catch his breath, Zayn’s hand curls around his neck, pulling Louis back so his head is on his shoulder.

Then they’re kissing again, Louis’ eyelashes stuttering shut when their tongues touch. Louis’ hips rise of the bed again when they do and he wonders if Harry notices, if he notices how Louis raises his arms to grab at Zayn’s hair and his back arches, because he doesn’t kiss Zayn the way he kisses Harry. Harry’s Harry, the only constant in his life, which is a strange thing to call someone who can’t even commit to a coffee shop for more than a week, but he is. Harry’s the tattoo he’ll never need to get, the song he’ll never forget the words of. But Zayn, Zayn’s like a butterfly that’s landed on Louis’ finger and he’s so scared that if he moves, he’ll be gone. So if every kiss with Harry feels like their first then every kiss with Zayn feels like it might be their last.

So Louis holds on with both hands and kisses Zayn like he’s trying to keep him in place, and he thinks that he could do that forever if he had to, sit there with Zayn’s tongue in his mouth and his hands on his stomach, his fingers drawing small circles that are making Louis’ muscles clench. But then Louis feels Harry’s hand on him and his whole body jerks as he pulls his mouth away to look at him. He’s kneeling between Louis’ legs on the bed watching he and Zayn kiss, his hand curled around the base of Louis’ erection. He leans down and before Louis can register what’s happening, Harry’s tongue laps at the tip and it feels so good that he’s pretty sure his heart stops.

Louis’ had a blow job before – several, actually, from five different women, thankyouverymuch (six if Harry asks) – but when Harry starts going down on him he laughs – actually laughs – because he’s heard women say that before, say that only a woman knows what a woman wants but Jesus, Mary and Joseph Harry knows what he wants. Louis was coming as soon as he touched him, as soon as he felt the curl of Harry’s fingers and that first slow swipe of his tongue, so he doesn’t know how he manages to hold on for so long. But Harry’s so good that he actually gets the space time continuum to slow down for long enough for Louis to enjoy it. He doesn’t even know if the space time continuum can slow down, but if anyone can make it slow down, it’s Harry Styles.

‘Good, isn’t he?’ Zayn says into his ear, reading Louis’ mind as he goes limp against him. His head is so heavy that not letting it tip back onto Zayn’s shoulder again is the hardest thing he’s ever done, but he wants to look at Harry, to watch his head bobbing up and down between his legs and feel the tickle of his curls on his inner thighs. Then he sees a hand in Harry’s hair and he’s so fucking out of it that Louis thinks it’s his, but then he hears Zayn telling Harry to suck him and he realises that it’s Zayn.

‘Lift your hips,’ Zayn says into his ear, using both of his hands to hold Harry’s head still. Louis doesn’t think, just does it, as though he’s been woken up in the middle of the night and told that there’s a fire. His cock slides over Harry’s tongue and when Harry sucks him in deeper, it feels so good that Louis has to stop and let himself feel it for a moment because that feels brand new as well, like the first time anyone has touched him like that – wanted him like that – and Louis never wants to forget how that feels.

Zayn tells him to keep going. ‘It’s okay, he can take it,’ he breathes into his ear, so Louis lifts his hips a little higher and suddenly Harry’s smooth, wet mouth is tighter and hotter and when he opens his eyes to look at Harry, his head is down and his ass in the air so all Louis can see is skin, this endless stretch of tanned skin from his shoulders down his back that stops abruptly at the waist of his jeans. They’re undone and gaping at the back so Louis can see the curve of his ass and Zayn must be thinking the same thing because his right hand skims down Harry’s back then disappears into the back of his jeans. He doesn’t mean to, but that makes Louis thrust his hips up again and Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Harry gags and Louis is undone. He tries to draw his hips back, but he’s coming, on Harry’s tongue then in a messy stripe across his lips and chin. Louis’ mortified, his cheeks burning, but Harry is unfazed, licking his lips before taking Louis in his mouth again and sucking one last spurt out of him. It makes Louis cry out and he doesn’t realise that his hands are still in Zayn’s hair until he starts pulling at it. He tells himself to stop – that he must be hurting him – but then Zayn’s are under his knees and as his hips tilt forward suddenly, he has to hold on.

Louis doesn’t know how Zayn knows to do that, how he knows that Harry isn’t stopping, his fingers curled around the top of Louis’ cock as he licks a slow stripe under it, from the head to the base. Louis’ already shaking, but when Harry takes his balls in his mouth every bone in his body shivers. His back arches against Zayn when Harry’s mouth moves lower and when his tongue laps at his perineum the shock of it, of the sudden spark of pleasure shooting right through him, makes Louis jerk away from him. He whimpers, trying to close his knees, but can’t, and Zayn’s mouth is on his ear again. ‘Do you want to stop?’ he whispers, kissing the shell of his ear. ‘We can stop.’

Louis’ hands are in Harry’s hair now, and he doesn’t know when that happened, but when he opens his eyes, they’re fisted in his curls, his knuckles white, as Harry lifts his chin to look at Louis with a frown.

‘Do you want me to stop?’

Louis sucks in a breath. ‘What are you doing?’

Harry doesn’t tell him, just dips his head and does it again. He does it more slowly this time, hands on Louis’ ass, parting his cheeks as he drags his tongue from his perineum down, down. When he stops, Louis’ toes curl before Harry even touches him, then he does – Harry moving his tongue in slow, wet circles – and Louis moves his hips towards him this time. Zayn kisses his ear when he does, his right hand moving down Louis’ stomach. That makes his toes curl as well, his hips bucking when Zayn’s fingers curl around him. He starts stroking him with slow, even strokes, his thumb sweeping over his head, then his whole palm, wetting it on the glaze of pre-come – or post-come, Louis doesn’t even know any more – before stroking him again. His strokes are quicker and easier and in time with Harry’s tongue as Harry works it around and around and around, Louis’ whole body limp until Harry dips the tip of it into him and he goes rigid. Harry stops, obviously waiting for Louis to stop him, and when he doesn’t, he does it again, his tongue stiffer and Louis doesn’t know how he knows to move his hips, but he does and it makes Harry groan and curl his arms around Louis’ thighs.

Harry pulls him into him, the tip of his nose nudging Louis’ perineum and it makes him shudder as his ass brushes against the creased sheets as he moves away from Zayn. But before Louis can reach back from him, Zayn grabs his wrist and pulls it behind his back. Louis’ brain can’t focus on the two things at once, on Harry’s tongue dipping into him and whatever Zayn wants him to do with his hand, but then he feels the heat of Zayn’s erection against his palm and curls his fingers around it.

It’s not that Louis’ ever imagined this, but he’s thought about them separately (a lot, like a lot a lot). He’s almost wanked himself blind playing out various scenarios and in each of them he’s in command. He’s the one holding Zayn down as the tip of his tongue dips into the curve of his collarbones, the one grabbing Harry’s hair and fucking his mouth. He imagined licking away their sweat and sucking heart-coloured bruises onto their necks, but in the end, Louis is utterly useless, his jaw slack and his eyes closed as he tries not to pass out. He can’t even move his hand; Zayn has to do it before him, his hand curled over Louis’, moving it up and down his erection while he pants into Louis’ neck until he quivers and comes over his knuckles with a gasp. It’s enough to make Louis come again, but then Harry eases a finger into him and his hips bounce on the bed.

‘Harry, fuck,’ Louis spits out as Harry lifts his head and tells Zayn to get the lube out of the drawer of the bedside table. Louis turns his head to watch him, his nerves tightening suddenly when Zayn finds it and hands the tube to Harry. Harry gasps, looking down at his hand as Louis tightens around his finger, then lifts his chin to look at him.

‘Do you want me to stop?’

Louis frowns. ‘What are you gonna do?’

‘Just this once,’ he breathes, licking his lips. ‘Wanna be your first.’

They look at each other for a long moment, their chests rising and falling at the same time as though they’d found some sort of rhythm, a needle finding the groove of a record, and Louis nods because he’d do anything for Harry. Anything.

Harry leans down and kisses him slowly, but when Louis kisses him back, it becomes a little deeper – a little more breathless – so when Harry finally sits back on his heels, his cheeks are red. He can’t get his jeans off and Louis’ never seen him like that, all fingers and thumbs, as Zayn puts his hands under Louis’ armpits and pulls him back into his lap. Louis feels his chest against his back again, feels the steady bang of his heart, and he isn’t scared any more. He is, but it’s good scared. The way he feels every time he walks out of an airport into the sun of a new country. But when Harry flips the lid on the lube, he still tenses, and Harry leans down to press another kiss to his mouth.

‘I’m just gonna use my fingers.’ He kisses him again. ‘Until you’re ready.’

Louis nods, his hands reaching down for the sheet to steady himself as Zayn tucks his knees under Louis’ and parts his legs so Harry can kneel between them. Louis’ heart starts banging as he does, Harry’s eyebrows meeting as he rubs some of the lube into his fingers. Then he puts his hand between his legs and Louis sucks in a breath.

‘Relax,’ Zayn whispers, kissing his cheek, and Louis tries to, but when he feels Harry’s finger pushing into him, his instinct is pull his hips back. Zayn tells him it’s okay, hands on his hips, holding Louis in place as Harry eases his finger deeper into him. Louis can feel the scratch of his nail and that shouldn’t feel as good as it does, but the sudden, sharp pain is like a lighthouse in the fog of everything else he’s feeling – the heat of Zayn’s breath on his neck, the welcome softness of the cotton sheet in his fists, the metal springs of the mattress nipping at his heels as he digs his heels in – and it’s as if it focuses him until all he can think about is Harry and his finger and how he wants more of it. All of it.

He says Harry’s name through his teeth when he feels his knuckle and says it again when Harry eases his hand back and inches into him again. Then that’s all he’s saying – Harry’s name – over and over as he starts moving it in and out of him. It feels so good, much better than he expected, much better than when his girlfriends have done it in the past, and Louis can feel something in him giving way to Harry. It kind of feels like he’s melting, like every muscle in his body is softening like ice cream on a warm day, and he doesn’t know how many fingers Harry has in him now, but it’s enough to make Harry lift his chin and ask Zayn to pass him a condom.

That makes Louis tense again, which only sucks Harry’s fingers in deeper, so when he pulls his hand away, Louis lets his head fall back onto Zayn’s shoulder and sighs. It sounds like he’s deflating – feels like he’s empty – and he doesn’t know how long he’s gone for, but it only feels like a second before he feels Harry between his legs, the soft hair on his thighs brushing against the damp insides of Louis’. When he opens his eyes, Harry is there, nose almost touching his own as he grabs the headboard with one hand and holds his erection with the other as he eases into Louis. He does it slowly, but doesn’t stop when Louis starts to shudder, just presses his mouth to his for a second then keeps going as Zayn breathes into his ear, telling Louis how well he’s doing, how beautiful he looks. ‘Like that pink beach on Komodo,’ Zayn whispers and Louis smiles, thinking of how they added it to the list of places they wanted to go last week, and Louis doesn’t know how it’s possible, but he feels as close to Zayn in that moment as he does to Harry. He might never be able to explain this, explain how he can want two people at once, but in that moment it makes absolute, irrefutable sense.

Harry fucks him slow and deep – so deep – while Zayn wills him on, telling him not to stop as he lifts his chin to lick the sweat from Harry’s top lip. Then they’re kissing, deep and as desperate, Harry’s hips stilling as Zayn puts a hand in his hair and licks around his mouth. When he bites Harry’s bottom lip, Louis wonders if that’s him, if Zayn’s tasting him, and when Harry comes, hips stuttering, it makes Louis come as well, and it’s almost violent, like being knocked out with a single punch. BOOM then stars.

Louis’ eyes are out of focus so all he can see is white – the ceiling, he assumes – as he gasps for breath, then he feels Harry easing out of him and almost grabs his hips to stop him, but when he opens his eyes, he’s still kissing Zayn, hands in his hair now as he climbs over Louis’ leg to get to him.

‘Lie down,’ Zayn growls when he does, but doesn’t wait, putting his hands under Harry’s knees. Then Harry is on his back in the middle of the bed and Louis tells himself to move out of the way so Zayn can crawl towards him.

‘Fuck me, please,’ Harry breathes, rising off the bed to wrap his arms around Zayn’s neck and snatch another kiss when he kneels on the mattress between his legs.

‘I’m so hard,’ Zayn pants against his mouth, Harry shivering as Zayn takes the condom off him and kisses him. ‘I’m gonna come as soon as I get in you, babe.’

Louis’ cheeks flush when he says it – babe – and Harry’s chest does the same, the skin between the swallows tattooed under his collarbones suddenly red as he kisses him again. Louis tells himself not to stare, but Harry’s fucking glowing, like he’s just come out of the sea, his skin wet and his curls matted to his forehead as he clings to Zayn. And Zayn looks just as delicious, the muscles in his back tensing and releasing as he pulls Harry into his lap and kisses him. Louis’ gaze skids down his back, following a bead of sweat as it rolls from Zayn’s hair down the nape of his neck and between the crease of his back. Louis can’t help catching it with his tongue and he doesn’t even realise he’s done it until Zayn stops and twists around to look at him.

‘Come here,’ he breathes, eyes half-closed as he cups the back of Louis neck and pulls him up into a kiss. When he pulls away, he guides Louis towards Harry, then they’re kissing, Harry’s hands on his face as Zayn moves from between them.

They stop to watch, Harry licking Louis’ cheek as Zayn reaches into the drawer to get another condom. ‘I want you to watch,’ Harry says into his ear, teeth nipping at his earlobe. ‘Watch everything he does, 'cos you’re gonna do it to me after.’

Louis’ hands shake at the thought, and he can’t remember the last time he shook like that. Ten minutes before when Harry was inside him, probably, and maybe the memory of it is what makes him shake like that as Harry lies down in front of him. He barely has a second to take it all – take him all in – before Zayn is next to him, rubbing some lube into his fingers, and Louis moves so that he can kneel in front of Harry. He gestures at Harry to lift his knees and when Harry does, Zayn moves between them and turns his cheek to look at Louis.

‘Watch,’ he tells Louis, and he does, his lips parting as he watches Zayn’s index finger disappear into Harry. Harry makes the most delicious noise as it does and when he says Zayn’s name it’s weak and drawn out, the way his voice sounds the morning after he drinks too much and Louis will never be able to hear it again without thinking of this moment, the three of them on the same bed, gasping for the same air.

Harry makes the noise again when Zayn begins to work his finger into him, his face getting pinker and his eyelids heavier. Zayn is fisting his hard on with his other hand, his hair sticking to his forehead with the effort of not letting himself come. Louis doesn’t know how he hasn’t, and realises then that he didn’t see him come the last time – the first time – only heard him and he wants more than anything to see it.

To see Zayn come undone.

‘Give me your hand,’ he pants, letting go of his erection. When Louis does, Zayn reaches for the lube and squeezes some onto his fingers. ‘Rub it in.’

It’s colder than Louis expected and he doesn’t know whether it’s meant to or if he’s just excited, but it makes his fingers tingle as he rubs it into them. But then he hears Harry sigh as Zayn eases his finger out of him and Louis can’t catch his breath again as Zayn moves and gestures at him to kneel between Harry’s legs. Louis does, his hand shaking a little as he moves it down, suddenly forgetting which finger he should be using when Harry lifts his head off the mattress to watch him.

‘Just your index finger,’ Zayn whispers into his ear, behind him now, one hand rubbing circles over his stomach, making Louis’ cock twitch. ‘That’s it.’

Zayn kisses his shoulder and Louis takes the hint, pressing the tip of his finger against Harry’s entrance. His hand shakes again when it does, but as he inches it inside him, Harry makes that sound again and Louis stops to watch him, to watch his eyes close as he says Louis’ name and he’s never said his name like that. Never.

‘Slow, slow,’ Zayn tells him as he pushes in a little deeper and oh God, it feels good, Harry hot and tight. So tight. ‘Just move it in and out slowly. Yeah, like that.’

Harry starts panting, his eyelids wet with sweat, and it makes Louis pant as well, pant so hard he can’t focus on what he’s doing, so Zayn takes his wrist and turns Louis’ hand, guiding him in even deeper. As soon as he does, Harry whimpers, and Louis stops, sure that he’s hurt him, but he licks his lips and gasps Louis’ name again.

‘Do you feel that?’ Zayn says, kissing his ear. Louis nods. ‘That’s his perineum. Do this.’ Zayn hooks his finger then chuckles when Louis does it and Harry bucks off the bed, his hands grabbing at the sheet under him. ‘He likes that.’

Clearly.

‘Fucking do it again,’ Harry pants, his eyelashes fluttering open to look at him. Louis obliges and Harry’s whole body shudders. ‘Now, Zayn. Now. Please.’

Zayn kisses Louis ear. ‘Shall we make him wait a bit longer?’

Louis blushes, then nods with a silly smile when Zayn kisses his ear again.

‘Take your finger out.’ Zayn squeezes a little more lube onto them and waits for Louis to rub it in. ‘Now put two in.’ He holds up his index and middle fingers. ‘Slowly, though.’ When he does, Zayn nods and watches him. ‘Now do this.’

He opens his fingers and when Louis does as he’s told, scissoring his fingers open, Harry arches off the bed and says, ‘Fuck!’ his chin jutting up towards the ceiling. When he falls back, Louis holds his breath and starts to work his fingers in and out – slowly, slowly – until Harry is muttering nonsense and rocking his hips back and forth.

‘Stop. Watch,’ Zayn says, putting his hand on Louis’. He stops but Harry doesn’t and continues rocking his hips, his eyes closed and his mouth open as he fucks himself with Louis’ fingers. Louis is rapt, his lips parted as Zayn kisses his ear. ‘Now he’s ready.’

Zayn reaches for the condom and when he tears into it, Louis reluctantly pulls his hand back and moves out of the way so Zayn can take his place between Harry’s legs.

‘Oh God yeah,’ Harry breathes when he opens his eyes to find Zayn putting on the condom. He starts fisting his cock and Louis wants to do it for him but he wouldn’t dare touch him, not when Zayn’s looking at him like that, his eyes on Harry as though he’s the only thing he can see as he rubs some lube into his erection.

‘I’m not gonna last, babe,’ Zayn warns him, his voice suddenly weaker.

‘I don’t fucking care. I just need you in me.’

‘Get a condom on,’ Zayn tells Louis as he angles himself between Harry’s legs.

Zayn leans forward, pressing his palms to the bed so they’re on either side of Harry’s head, and stops to lick his lips and look down at him before he thrusts his hips forward and it’s magnificent, how he doesn’t hesitate, just fucks into him with one, swift thrust, that it makes Louis’s hands shake so much it take a couple of goes to get the condom wrapper open. When he does, he manages to roll it over his erection and copies Zayn, rubbing some lube into himself, and oh God, that definitely tingles.

‘Fucking look at me,’ Zayn says and Louis knows that he’s not talking to him, but he still looks, looks at Zayn’s wet bottom lip and the glass pearl of sweat about to drip from his chin. When he draws his hips back and thrusts into Harry again, it falls onto his lips and when Harry licks them, Zayn cups his face with his right hand, his thumb sweeping across Harry’s mouth. The second time he does it, Harry doesn’t let him, taking this thumb between his lips and sucking. When he does, Louis doesn’t know how Zayn doesn’t lose it, but it’s Harry who comes as Zayn pulls back and slams into him again. He opens his mouth but doesn’t make a sound, his toes curling as Zayn does it again, so hard that Harry shifts up the bed a little. And that makes Zayn come, his whole body shuddering mid-thrust, before he collapses on top of him with a long sigh. They lie there for a moment, tangled up and panting, and Louis wonders if they know he’s still there, but then Zayn sits back on his heels and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.

‘Come on, Lou,’ he breathes, inching back, and Louis hesitates for a moment.

‘It’s okay,’ Harry tells him, licking his lips. ‘Come on.’

Louis takes a breath and moves between his legs. The sheet is warm under his knees from Zayn, and it makes his heart stutter a little as he takes his cock in his hand and eases into him, as slowly as he can. Harry’s eyelashes bat shut as he does, or maybe Louis’ do, he isn’t sure any more, he just knows that he’s tight, deliciously, blissfully tight. But it’s easier than he expected, not like it is with a girl, but better because it’s Harry and he knows that one day he’s going to be a little shit about this. He’s going to tease Louis, bite his neck and say, Do you remember how nervous you were? while Zayn nudges him and tells him to leave him alone. Louis doesn’t think he can feel any closer to Harry then he already does, but he does then. And it’s nothing to do with being inside him and everything to do with being inside him, all at once, this just another way of rooting Harry Styles into his life. Of embroidering him into every memory he has.

Then there’s Zayn, who’s willing him on and kissing his shoulders and the back of his neck, and Louis didn’t think he could love anyone as much as he loves Harry, but he loves Zayn, he knows then, in a different way. When Harry touches Louis it’s new and familiar, all at once. He’s seen Harry naked, kissed him, fallen asleep next to him. So when Harry touches him it’s wonderful, but it isn’t a surprise. It’s natural, as though it’s just the next phase of their relationship. But when Zayn touches him, it’s a shock. He’s unpredictable and it’s been a long time since Louis was surprised by someone. He knows Harry but he wants to know Zayn and it’s like the two halves of his life coming together – his past and his future – and there he is, right in the middle of them.

+++

Louis wakes up on his birthday in a hut near Muriwai Beach. He’s still between them, the three of them under the same cheap sheet and their heads on the same pillow. And as he looks for Harry’s eyes under his froth of curls and adjusts to the weight of Zayn’s leg hooked over his hip, pinning him to the bed, Louis knows that he promised that they’d keep moving, but maybe they can stay still. Just for a little while.