Archive of Our Own

Harry

Harry Styles has come to the conclusion that despite this being his own party, he is undeniably alone.
And his lonely mind also concludes that his barstool is swaying in a way that is all to do with alcohol and nothing to do with the actual functions of a barstool, and he thought there was someone next to him when he say down but, no. This is a party, that he earned and most definitely deserves, and he is entirely alone.

The room is black air and bright spots of light, fluorescent in the dark and lighting faces so they glow with colour. Harry doesn’t actually know for sure where everyone is, because he lost sight of Zayn a while ago, but the barman is still sending him drinks so that’s good. Behind him (and the bar), bodies weave around each other, music pounding in their ears as they’re pressed up against people they’ve never met, laughing because they’re young and drunk and it’s all for hell, anyway.  No one knows him here, he thinks, or if they do they don’t mention it, and that’s great, that’s fine, until one of the mechanics appears and pulls him back to their table. They’ve procured a bottle of champagne from somewhere (most likely smuggled in, but hey, he’s not really arguing because the more he can pour into himself is really the better) and are filling up glass flutes until they hold sparkling liquid gold –like starlight, he thinks drunkenly. Who would’ve thought his inebriated self could wax poetic on champagne.

“This is great, right?” Shouts someone into his ear, and Harry tries to turn and look to see who it was, but there’s too many of them for him to see clearly who it was. They’re right though; he feels invincible here, like it’s just sunk in for the first time.

“WORLD CHAMPIONS!” They all chant, lifting the glasses, and Harry’s laughing and swallowing, lights flashing in his eyes before he’s taking the steps to the dance floor, champagne still in hand.

He’s not a dancer, sure, but that doesn’t stop him trying. The song playing is one he doesn’t know, a generic pop song that no one will know in a few years but there’s a simple bass and an astonishing number of girls around him to dance with.

“Harry Styles?” One of them asks, looking up at him through smoky eyeshadow, and shit because he thought he’d escaped that. He nods though, putting his free hand on her back and pulling her closer. She laughs, once, more of a chuckle really, and Harry thinks if her dress got any shorter there’d be nothing to it. How she actually squeezed herself into that is beyond his intoxicated thinking capacity. “They tell me you’re a racing driver.” She says, leaning up to reach his ear. Her hair tickles the side of his face, and he exhales shakily because he thinks he’s long gone past the point of being ‘a little tipsy’.

“Do they?” He replies, and she looks at him knowingly.

“They say you’re some good.”

Well, that’s relieving. It’s not like he was gifted this championship, but you never really know what people are thinking when you’re the one on the screen. Besides, his mum told him not to read the papers once he got into Formula One, because, as she said, what the eyes don’t see the heart doesn’t grieve after.

“Maybe I am.”

She laughs again, and rests back on her heels, swaying in time to the beat. Harry thinks he can see Zayn –or at least his hair- somewhere else in the mass of bodies, but then again it might not be. His vision is starting to blur anyway.

They’ve been dancing a while (or maybe not) when Harry disentangles himself from the girl with a promise to return, pushing past too many people to reach the bar. He slumps down on a stool, and resists the urge to flop his head on his arms. He’s not that bad, not yet. He just happens to be the kind of guy who gets tired out by alcohol. It’s probably because he doesn’t get that much during race season (which is totally the reason, he’s not in any way an old man trapped in a young guy’s body).

As the barman walks past, Harry opens his mouth to call for another drink, only to look at his left hand and still see his fingers curled around the champagne glass. Well, isn’t that great. He’s also developing short term memory loss (another sign of escalating age).

Shaking his head to himself, he slides off the barstool and wanders back around to the dancers. A new song switches on, and Harry smiles widely because this club did something good, and he kind of really loves Coldplay.

He’s so into the music, and also watching his feet carefully to see if they trip, that he collides with someone without realising they were coming.

“Oh, shit, are you okay?” He gasps out, and the contents of his champagne have stained this guy’s white shirt (it has black dots as well, though) that isn’t really so white anymore if you’re thinking logically, which Harry isn’t because he’s sort of completely drunk.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good.” Says the guy, forcing his eyes away from his own trashed clothing and meeting Harry’s gaze.

Shit fuck what no this is not fucking possible no one has luck this bad.

“I’m really sorry about you’re, uh, shirt.” Harry says, and he’s painfully aware of how his words slur together. There’s a 98.02% probability that he sounds like the world’s greatest fool right now, and fuck it all because no one, absolutely no one, can be unfortunate enough to spill their drink over a Hollywood actor.

“It’s fine.”

Harry’s still having a little trouble breathing because that shirt probably cost more than his house or something, like fuck, he still lives at home, why does this always happen to him?

“Are you alright, mate?” He hears over the sounds of blood rushing in his ears and loud music, and he’s still holding that ridiculous champagne flute.

“If you love me, won’t you let me know.” Harry sings (albeit tunelessly, because he is, after all, hopelessly over his alcohol limit) seriously, and he thinks he’s going to puke but he’s not sure if that’s from too much drink or from the embarrassment. His words are slurring so much he’s not sure he’s able to be understood, but that doesn’t seem to be happening because either Harry’s luck is remarkably poor or God hates him; it’s most likely to be both.

“I will.” Promises the guy, and smiles before walking away. Fucking actors, Harry thinks, threading back through the crowd. There should be a rule or something that they all have to wear yellow shirts just in case people like him walk into the holding champagne. Screw looking good.

“God, Harry, are you okay?” Shouts Zayn, who’s appeared at his side like an incredibly unwanted pet.

“Nope.” He groans. The girl has gone completely, he thinks. He doesn’t blame her. If he were her, he’d leave too.

“Shit, you’re white as a sheet.” Zayn tells him cheerfully, and pulls him back out from the dancers, and then out of the club completely. The night is cool for summer, a breeze chilling the air and ruffling his hair. He should’ve bought a jacket, but maybe the cold will put out the fires of shame.

“What did you do?” Asks Zayn conversationally, lighting up a cigarette. Zayn knows better than to ask Harry if he wants one. Hotshot drivers, it seems, are not allowed those luxuries.

“I spilled my champagne over Louis Tomlinson.” Harry says, and watches Zayn inhale too much smoke and choke. Serves the bastard right. He really needs to invest in a new Race Engineer, but he’s (well, he was, up until this moment. Now, he can fuck right off) kind of attached to this one.

“You did what?” Harry doesn’t know for definite if Zayn is angry, incredulous or mortified. He’s managed to incorporate all of them into three small words.

“I spilled my champagne over Louis Tomlinson.” He repeats, trying to pronounce each word with emphasis but failing because he’s still having issues standing, after all.

Zayn looks at him steadily for a few seconds in which Harry starts to shiver from cold.

“You must be the stupidest bastard I know.” He says, and well, that’s kind of rude, Harry thinks, but also kind of true.

“Won you a championship, though.”

Zayn arches an eyebrow before dragging on his cigarette, and blowing out the smoke into the night. Zayn’s one of the people who doesn’t forget his jacket, although his girlfriend was probably the one who reminded him to bring it.

“I said you were stupid, not that you were a bad driver.”

Harry sighs deeply, and runs a hand through his hair messily. If this gets in the news, his family will never, ever, as in for all of time, stop laughing at him.

“Why does this always happen to me, Zayn?” He asks, scuffing the top of his shoe on the pavement.

“You were cursed as a baby.” Zayn says, and he sounds almost happy. Mentally, Harry crosses Zayn’s name off of his Christmas card list, and then scores in another line, and then blacks it out. He most definitely needs new friends.

He mumbles something that might be “I hope you fall off a cliff” before heaving himself away from a wall. The buildings across the street seem to be shaking in a way that doesn’t look entirely safe, and Harry groans again because not only is he entirely shitfaced, he managed to ruin the shirt of a world famous actor and know he can’t even remember which way is left and which way is right.

“Zayn?” He questions slowly.

“What?” Replies Zayn, with the sigh of the long suffering.

“Can you drive me to the hotel?”

Zayn’s laugh is too mocking to be kind, and Harry draws a bubble around the black mark where Zayn’s name was in his imaginary list.

*

Ow ow fuck ow thinks Harry when he wakes up, and for once it’s not because of hurting himself training but because his head feels like someone’s jammed a metal rod in it and is doing their very best to prise his skull apart. Swinging his legs around to the floor, he pushes the covers away from him and gets to his feet, using the wall for balance. This, he tells himself severely, is why you do not drink. Frankly, he’s had crashes that have been less painful than this.

Grabbing a glass from the cabinet, he runs the water and takes a long sip before moving on to the bathroom. Zayn, the kind, caring person that he is, left some painkillers by the sink, along with a note reading ‘Serves u right for getting smashed, u twat’.

Kind and caring, my ass.

Regardless, Harry swallows down a couple of the painkillers before sloping back to bed, putting the glass on the bedside table and curling back under the sheets.

When he wakes, the sunlight has crept under the protection of his curtains and is flooding through the room. The pain has dimmed since this morning, but whether that’s from the painkillers or from sleep he doesn’t know. He’s supposed to be living the life of the rich and famous now, but all he has is a sore head and a mouth so dry you could start a desert inside it.

“Fuck.” He croaks out, and reaches blindly for the glass of water, taking a long drink until it’s empty. He’s still got the kind of tiredness left over from a long sleep, and his brain connections feel superbly slow so he falls back into his pillows, hand over his eyes. After a few minutes where his body slowly wakes up, he checks his phone to new messages, and he can just guess who they’re from.

Zayn, 10:46

u awake yet?

Zayn, 10:58

get up u lazy arse

Zayn, 12:51

r u still crying about ruining louis tomlinson’s shirt

Oh, sometimes Harry can really hate that guy. There is no way in all of hell that he cried about it. Sure, he was drunk, but not that drunk.

Gemma, 13:03

Heard you met Louis Tomlinson!

Gemma, 13:04

Also heard you spilt your drink on his shirt! Haven’t you learnt at all?

Not only does Harry need new friends, he also needs a new family. Maybe he should move country. One of those little islands. And then he can change his name, and shave off his hair, and no one will know him anymore. If this is going to haunt him all his life- he can already see future parties in his mind’s eye, where someone (Zayn, it will always be Zayn, that goddamned son of a bitch) will go, “Oh, remember the time Harry walked into a superstar actor and trashed his shirt?” and there’ll be a great big resurrection of the entire event plus embellishments, and they’ll all laugh at how clumsy he is and this story will. Never. Be. Forgotten.

There are more messages from other people (most notably, his mother, but that was only to ask when he’d be back home), but it reaches the final straw eventually.

That Irish Bastard, 13:39

heard u had a run in with louis tomlinson ! ha ha u should b more careful !

How many people did Zayn actually tell? He didn’t even know Zayn had Niall’s number (come to that, he doesn’t know how he got it himself); he doesn’t think they’ve actually even spoken. Does word really travel that fast? Also, Harry really needs to change Niall’s name in his contacts. It would be sort of embarrassing if someone were to find his phone and he has a fellow driver listed under the name ‘That Irish Bastard’. It was probably a lot funnier at the time (if he’s honest with himself, he was probably drunk, and he finds everything funny when he’s drunk).

He sends back a violent death threat to Zayn, warns Gemma that if she tells anyone he’ll spread the word of the time she fell in the river at a friend’s wedding and had to go home and begged Harry to tell everyone she was sick. Well, look who has the upper hand now.

Zayn replies promptly, as is to be expected, because Harry’s never actually seen him separated from his phone, and he shakes his head despondently at the screen because he should’ve known you can never count on anybody these days.

Zayn, 14:16

u should think before u open ur mouth, styles. or is that u should watch where ur going?

God, he wants to kill him. Violent, yes, but true. Maybe he can arrange an accident for his precious phone. He’s going to tell him as much, but decides against it in the end and pulls on some new clothes. Last night’s are going to need serious ironing, he thinks, holding them up in their creased glory. He guesses one good thing happened last night. There were no paparazzi around to snap him looking like hell, and for that he praises all the gods he knows and a few he doesn’t. When he’s covered his tired face with sunglasses, he locks his hotel room and goes to find his car.

Driving is where he belongs. It doesn’t even have to be racing, not anymore (although that gives him rushes of joy that you can tell him is adrenaline a thousand times but he still won’t listen). It’s just the feel of a wheel in his hand, the power of the car under him and the smooth purr of the engine. He lives for driving, for racing. It’s just sometimes, when the race season is over and there’s a break, he forgets how good it is to be back in the driving seat. Not that the London traffic is especially wonderful today. In fact, it’s awful, and he spends more time idling in the road than moving anywhere, but he’s out, at least. It’s not like he has a destination anyway. He drives around aimlessly for a while, and finally stops in a car park for a shopping centre. The centre is full of those high end shops that no one can really afford to buy from (well, he could now, theoretically, but it still feels so wasteful. When he first started earning, properly earning from racing, he went and blew it all on things he barely even uses now, and he wishes he’d saved it or something). Nobody stops him, and he’s glad he picked these clothes. Plaid shirt, glasses, worn jeans. None of that really matches up to the idea people have of a racing driver. The Harry Styles everyone thinks they know is the one last night in the club who dances with strange girls and drinks too much until he ends up having an unfortunate encounter with people far, far more famous than him.

And there, in the window of a shop he’s never seen before in his life because the sign is one of those that’s all neutral colours and oozes luxury, is the same white and black shirt Louis Tomlinson was wearing last night. Fate, Harry thinks, or maybe it’s God’s way of paying him back for his colossal disaster of a day so far. Maybe, if it’s the latter, things can only move from here on up.

The shop assistants look at him coldly when he walked in because whilst dressing like he hasn’t seen a paycheque in a while is a good disguise, it doesn’t really work when you’re trying to appear as though you shop in these places all the time. Of course, he could take off the sunglasses, but there’s no saying whether even that would work. Instead, he pretends to browse through the racks and tries to ignore the pointed stares of these women with their impeccable makeup and hair coiled so tightly their scalp must be tingling. Glancing at them, Harry thinks to himself that spending time with them must be like hanging out with statues. Perfect, hateful ice statues. He’s judging, he knows, but still. They judged him first.

He comes across the shirt from the window eventually, and bites his lower lip in thought. It’s not as though finding out the guy’s shirt size was top on his list last night; he’d never even known he was going to do this until, well, he did. He looks at each one for a minute in concentration before selecting the one that he thinks looks most like would fit Louis Tomlinson, and walks to the till.

When the price flashes up on the till, he does his best not to gasp (or choke suddenly, go into cardiac arrest and falling in an ungainly heap on the thick cream carpet) and hands over his card. No one should have so much money they can waste it on a shirt. No one, not even internationally famous actors that even he knows. God, even Zayn knows who Louis Tomlinson is and the last time he watched a film is estimated to be before the birth of Christ.

Bag clutched in hand, Harry climbs back into his car with a wallet that shouldn’t feel lighter (he paid by card, after all), but does. It must be psychological. After a moment of consideration, he brings out his phone and begins to type.

*

Pulling up outside the house of Louis Tomlinson is as dually terrifying and exciting as you would expect it to be. Harry, it s to be confessed, was more of the former than the latter, because what if Louis doesn’t even remember him? What if he thinks Harry’s the world’s largest creep, turning up to his house? He could always flash the ‘But I’m not stalking you, really, look I’m a racing driver I even have a Wikipedia page’ card, but only to sound like a fame obsessed dick. And no one wants that.

There’s a guard at the gate, who looks entirely too serious and too muscular and maybe Harry could jump out the car and outrun him but he looks like the type who carries guns or something so, no.

“Hello, I’m here to see Louis Tomlinson?” He asks with a smile so wide (and scared) that his face might split.

“Name.” It’s not even a question, and Harry can feel his heart slide up to his mouth.

“Harry Styles.” Honestly, he hadn’t thought there would be this much of a fuss. Well, he hadn’t really known what to expect, but this whole security guard thing and the massive iron gate makes him feel like this is somewhere where he most definitely does not belong. It would help maybe, if there was a flicker of recognition in the guard’s eyes at Harry’s name, but there’s nothing. With a wince, he remembers his all too shabby clothes and quickly removes his shades.

The guard murmurs something into a speaker set in the wall, and then a reply comes back with static. Pursing his lips into a thin, disapproving line (don’t ask him how lips can be disapproving when there’s no emotion in this man’s face, but they are), the guard steps back and presses something so the gates open.

Pressing down the pedal and inching the car forward, Harry beams a smile at the guard, who most certainly straight-up glares at him, and carries on until he’s at the front door. Oh God, he thinks suddenly, breathing hitching, what if he’s got family over? What if he’s got a secret boyfriend that no one knows about? Okay, so he told his mum he wouldn’t read the papers, and he doesn’t, but he sees the headlines and he saw the print the day Louis Tomlinson came out and he thought ‘poor bloke, I’d hate having my private life splashed across the news’, carried on and never thought about it again.

Swallowing thickly and inhaling, Harry steps out of the car with shaky legs, shopping bag clutched so tightly in his hand that his knuckles have turned white. So he’s been let in, which means Louis either knows his name, or connected it with him being the guy who ruined his shirt. Either way, shit.

Louis Tomlinson has one of those houses that make people stop and stare. It’s all white brick with large windows and four floors tall, a blue front door that you could push an elephant through and steps that lead up to it. Of course, it’s a beautiful house, but in some ways it’s too beautiful, like he’d be afraid to live in it for fear of dimming it’s shine.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. He repeats his maxim a few times before reaching up and pressing the doorbell quickly (fast enough that he didn’t have time to pull his hand back and flee to the safety of his car). He’s beginning to think this was a terrible kind of idea, and he’s thinking that through when the front door opens.

“Hi!” Says Louis Tomlinson, and Harry’s so terrified right now that he might fall over in a dead faint.

“Uh, hi,” He begins, and he blames his parents for his social awkwardness with people he doesn’t know. Really, how the media got the idea of ‘charm’ he has no fucking idea. “We met last night?”

If Harry didn’t know better, he’d say he saw a flash of a grin surface on Louis’ face before it’s quickly smothered. This isn’t one of his mates though, is it, this is Louis Tomlinson and this kind of stress is not good for the heart.

“Yeah, at the club?” Louis asks, and Harry realises that actually Louis’ quite a bit shorter than him, and maybe that should be a qualification. ‘Once I saw right over Louis Tomlinson’s head’. You’re so unbelievably stupid he thinks to himself, about himself, and then he tells himself to shut up (but in not so polite terms).

“I was, uh, yeah, I’m really sorry about the whole-” He waves his hands about vaguely to somehow convey ‘splashing my champagne over your shirt’, but there’s confusion written all over Louis’ face, and his eyes look like he’s holding in laughter. That’s it, he’s so fucking done with people in general. Maybe he should go become a monk or something. “-shirt thing. So, I, um, bought you a replacement.”

“Oh, thanks.” Says Louis, his mouth falling open slightly. Obviously whatever he thought Harry was here for, it wasn’t this, and he adds ‘Once I surprised Louis Tomlinson’ onto his qualifications, too.

“It’s the same.” Harry says hurriedly, handing the bag over, and Louis smiles at him and shit, because even his eyes light up when he smiles and that should really be impossible.

“Thank you. Really, you didn’t have to.”

“I did.” Harry says uncomfortably, shifting his weight onto the other leg, and if he’s not careful he’ll be putting ‘Once I had an argument with Louis Tomlinson over the necessity of my actions’ on his ever growing list. Instead of replying, however, Louis looks behind him, seems to make a decision, and asks Harry if he’d like a cup of tea. And, well, Harry thinks of his empty hotel room with nothing to do except annoy Zayn, so why not?

Harry sucks in a breath when he enters the house, because this place gets better and better. The outside of the house was beautiful and it’s not let down by the inside; there’s white sofas with artfully placed black and grey cushions, decorative photos and vases of flowers and the kitchen. Harry cooks a bit, and he buys his mum kitchen gadgets for her birthdays and this is probably a chef’s version of heaven. There are pine wood counters circling the room, an oven he could most likely fit inside if he tried and a fridge bigger than his wardrobe. And to top it all off, there’s a goddamned island counter in the middle, because if you have a big enough kitchen why not flaunt it. Like, why are there even island counters in existence? What purpose do they serve? Aesthetical pleasure, snitches his mind, and Harry is not in the mood for even his own bullshit.

“Like it?” Asks Louis, and Harry didn’t know he’d been staring obviously enough for Louis to notice him but he’s holding onto his last straws of dignity and he’s of a mind to keep them.

“It’s a nice place.” Harry says, noncommittal, and Louis smiles like he knows something secret. From the middle of the room (by the damn island), Harry watches Louis cross to the kettle, fill it up and flick the switch, before looking at the bag in his hand and then to Harry.

“I should go put this away.” Louis tells him, and it’s apologetic, and Harry doesn’t really know why but it’s kind of sweet. He nods, and Louis leaves the room, which leaves him at a very loose end.

So instead of doing something normal, like waiting or looking around, Harry fumbles for his phone in his pocket and snaps a picture of the kitchen a, because it’s a gorgeous kitchen, and b, how many people can say they’ve been inside Louis Tomlinson’s house? Well, he knows it’s more of the latter, deep down, but he’s not in to analysing his actions so he lets it go.

To: Zayn, 17:20

Look where I am!

And he sends the picture after, because there’s nothing better than a jealous Zayn, except maybe a sleeping one (because that boy sleeps like the dead, and Harry can never love Perrie more than the time she drew all a certain area of the male anatomy over his face mere minutes before the start of a race).
True to form, a reply buzzes through immediately, and Harry files a reminder in his brain to mock Zayn for his lack of social life.

Zayn, 17:21

how the fck would i know
nice kitchen tho

At least Harry isn’t alone in liking the kitchen, he supposes. It sounds like Zayn just woke up from his inherent anger, but Harry’s not the kind type of friend to leave him alone.

To: Zayn, 17:22

Louis Tomlinson’s kitchen.

And then his phone erupts (metaphorically, because an actually erupting phone would be bizarre and worrying).

Zayn, 17:22

HARRY

Zayn, 17:23

HOW THE FUCK DID U GET THERE

Zayn, 17:23

IF UR LYING

Zayn, 17:24

WHY DID U GO

Zayn, 17:24

HOW DO U EVEN KNOW WHERE HE LIVES

Zayn, 17:24

harry did u stalk louis tomlinson

Zayn Malik there, asking the important questions of life. And no, thinks Harry evasively, it wasn’t stalking in the literal sense. That implies him hiding in bushes to follow him home, and he didn’t. If that kind of information is on the internet, it’s really not his fault (but sometimes he really does love man’s best friend, Google).

To: Zayn, 17:25

No I did not stalk Louis Tomlinson

He doesn’t have any more time to expand upon that, however, because Louis walks back into the kitchen.

“Tea?” He asks, and Harry nods. This is entirely normal he tells himself, slowly. He must invite people into his house all the time. It’s probably a thing. But Harry’s never had a cup of tea with a Hollywood actor before. What do you even say to them? ‘Hi, I saw you in the cinema’. Sounds like a great conversation starter.

Louis brings the mugs over, and Harry wonders why they don’t go into the living room. Although, he’d be worried about sitting on those sofas. They’re just such a pristine shade of white.

“So, you race then?” Asks Louis, leaning against a counter, and Harry relaxes because racing, he can do.

“Yeah. It’s what I love.”

Louis  nods like he understands, and maybe he does. Not with racing, but Harry supposes he must love what he’s doing.

“You any good?” Louis’ raises an eyebrow in challenge, and Harry almost laughs because how is he supposed to answer that?

“I’m alright.” He assents, blowing the steam from the top of his tea before sipping. He’s glad, for once, that someone doesn’t know who he is. It’s a welcome change from a flurry of cameras every time he steps out the door (or maybe that’s just the fans). He loves his job, and he was one of those fans once, one of those people who camped out in Silverstone and couldn’t afford the best tickets but now, it’s different. Sometimes he’s just so tired, and he doesn’t know what to say, because he’s not born to be in front of cameras. He’s a racer, not an actor; and there, he’s jealous of Louis Tomlinson because no one ever has to see him at his worst.

“Maybe I’ll come to one of your races one day.” Says Louis, fingers curled around a mug of robin egg blue. “Cheer you on.”

“Maybe you will.” Harry replies, smiling, and he doesn’t know how talking got this easy, because this is still Louis Tomlinson and that didn’t change because this guy is more famous than Harry will ever be and he’s still so embarrassed over last night.

“I’m sorry about yesterday.” He says, again, because he doesn’t know if his sincerity got across properly the first time he said it and he needs Louis to know that he’s not usually such a twat.

“It’s fine.” Louis says, and then the corners of his mouth tilt up in a smile that bears all too much of a resemblance to Zayn’s when he’s found out some particularly appalling secret of Harry’s (like the time when Harry was drunk –perhaps he should just stop being near Zayn when there’s alcohol- and he foolishly told Zayn that when he was sixteen he accidentally kissed his science teacher and she kissed him back which was weird and it was humiliating horror for the rest of his school life) that strikes fear into his heart.

“Although,” begins Louis, sipping his tea slowly enough that makes Harry want to snatch it out his hands and maybe throw it through a window, “It hit a real low point when you began singing to me.”

“Oh, God.” Harry moans, closing his eyes and shaking his head in denial of the facts. “I hoped I’d imagined that part.”

“No such luck.” Says Louis, and (to Harry’s indescribable relief) begins laughing, which sets him off, and then Harry’s laughing in the kitchen of a film star with said film star and if he’s a little star struck still it’s completely not his fault.

Oh, and when Harry drives out from Louis Tomlinson’s house later on, he one hundred percent does not stick out his tongue at an uptight guard, because that would be horrendously immature, wouldn’t it?

*

When Harry gets back through the door of his hotel room, the first thing he does is lunge for his laptop and switches it on, because he has his priorities in the right order, naturally. The second thing he does is collapse on a bed and let out a sigh of relief that could possibly sprout a tornado somewhere else in the world.

“Did that honestly just happen?” He asks the room, and when it become clear there isn’t going to be a reply, he sits up, rubbing one of his hands across his face and using the other to pull his laptop towards him. He feels exhausted. That’s exactly how he feels. Exhausted and confused. Confausted. Now why wasn’t that a word before?

‘Louis Tomlinson’ he types into Google, and tries his best not to imagine how his internet history of ‘louis tomlinson house’, ‘where does louis tomlinson live london’, and the most definitely not stalkerish ‘directions to louis tomlinson’s house’ must appear on his phone. Instead, he makes an internal memo to clear it as soon as possible, but until then he clicks on to the ‘News’ button on the results page, and begins scanning the articles.
There’s some from last night, detailing how he went out to a bar, but there’s no pictures of any unfortunate bar incident, and somewhere far up in Heaven, Harry Styles’ overworked guardian angel must be taking a well earned day off. Also present are some mentioning his promotional work for his new film (something about secret agents and Paris, as far as Harry can tell), a couple on his charity appeals and even one listing all the reasons as to ‘Why Louis Tomlinson May Be The Most Attractive Star Of This Century!’. There’s a lot of this century left to go yet, Harry thinks dryly, but something in his stomach twinges as he looks through the photos. God knows why he clicked on the article anyway. He’s seen the guy in the flesh, isn’t that enough? What does strike him, though, is how similar he looks in these photos to how he did today, and that’s really unfair because you’re not supposed to find people like that.

‘1: His eyes!’ says the article, and goes on to wax poetic on the particular shade of blue they are, and how they “match the sky on a sunny summer’s day”. Praise everything for being a racing driver and (hopefully) never having to know this kind of crap is written about you.
‘2: His cheekbones!’ which are, Harry will admit, quite defined, but then, lots of people have great cheekbones. It’s not as though Louis Tomlinson is the first person in the history of the entire world ever to have developed cheekbones, and Harry doesn’t know exactly why he’s trying to deny Louis’ good looks, he just is.

‘3: His smile!’ cue the image spam of numerous photos of Louis smiling, and there’s that flicker again because he’s seen that in real life and there’s so much more emotion in it, for a practical stranger, then there is in these photos. In fact, the two could be different people; one the public face, the actor with the world at his feet, and the other the stay at home boy who makes tea for people they’ve never met. Harry thinks he knows which one he likes better.

‘4: His bum!’ okay, Harry really needs to get off this webpage before he does something entirely inappropriate like look at those photos, and that would be just plain disgusting now he’s properly spoken to him. It’s just not something you should do, and he presses the button very firmly to close the page.

Most importantly, though, is that Harry is most unquestionably, absolutely, not at all in any way into men. He experimented with that before, when he was young and free (seeing as he’s such an old man now, at the ripe age of twenty three), and decided it was most certainly girls for him. It’s not as if he has an issue with it, because he doesn’t, it’s just his stomach shouldn’t be doing backflips every time he sees a photo of Louis’ face.  You’re not gay  he says to himself, firmly, surely, securely, and repeats it a few times to hear the truth in the words. Not gay, not gay, not gay. And he tells himself this as he opens up the internet again, and carries on as he types in the address, and he’s thinking it as he orders some of Louis’ films and then goes on to read his Wikipedia page (‘Louis William Tomlinson, born 21^st December 1991, is an English actor most famous for films such as The Gap Between Our Lines,...’). This is just background research; he’s skipping the awkward part of a friendship where you don’t really know each other, and getting to the bit where you’re already comfortable enough with yourselves to argue all the time.

“This is a good thing.” Harry says to the empty room, and this time when it doesn’t answer, it’s probably because it’s laughing at him.

*

When Zayn calls round to his hotel the day later, Harry’s buried under his duvet, holding tight to his pillow and watching something so intently on the TV that he doesn’t blink for an entire minute. Actually, he really needs to revoke Zayn’s right to a key to his hotel room, because he barges in all the time like the notion of knocking has never been heard before in his tiny mind (which it probably hasn’t).

“Whatcha watching?” Asks Zayn, but starts laughing before Harry can reply. Rolling his eyes simply because he knows it annoys Zayn, he pauses the film and turns to look at his friend.

“Do you need a drink?” He asks, snidely, and waits decorously for Zayn to finish his fit. When he does, with a cough and a deep inhale of air, Harry wonders if Zayn’s been messing with the heavy stuff, and then wonders why he still keeps him around.

“Watcha watching.” Zayn repeats, weakly, and Harry tries to interrupt him before Zayn starts laughing again. God, he’s supposed to be the one with the bad jokes, not Zayn. That’s not really very hopeful for Zayn’s claim to being drug free.

“If you’re here to be a prick, leave.” Says Harry, trying to inject as much sulkiness into his voice as possible. It’s the kind of thing that makes Zayn want to exit a room faster than the speed of light because, as he once said, “man hormones make me squeamish”. Apparently no such luck this time, however, because Zayn simply flops onto the bed next to him, and looks up at the screen, and back to Harry, and back to the screen again.

“I don’t know if I should laugh, cry, or hit you.” Zayn tells him, as if in deep thought over these options, and Harry spares him his best withering glare.

“Like I said, if you’re going to be a prick, leave.”

“Fine, fine, sorry.” Zayn rushes out, raising his hands in apology. Harry thinks he might shoot him next time he comes over. “It’s just, if you were at his house yesterday, why are you watching his films now?”

“I wanted to see what kind of stuff he’d done.” Harry murmured back into the duvet, and Zayn looks at him solidly for the next few seconds.

“So what’s it about?” He asks, eventually, and Harry’s glad this discussion didn’t go along the trail of ‘feelings’, ‘emotions’, and ‘I know we joke around a lot but you know I’m here for you, right?’ that it could have done. Thank the world for small mercies.

“It’s about the Holocaust.” Harry explains, and because a bigger one would require more effort than he could ever possibly muster, he simply restarts the film.

Zayn looks at him a few more times during the course of the film, and it sets Harry on edge, and this accounts for all of the reasons as to why he cried at the end. Absolutely all of them, because he doesn’t cry at films, he’s not a teenage girl.

“Does that make this the second time you’ve cried over Louis Tomlinson?” Zayn questions, and Harry hates him because his eyes are none too dry either and it’s not Harry’s fault that he’s easily moved or his best friend could get a degree in how to be a world class dick.

“I did not cry over ruining his shirt.” He mutters in response, dabbing his eyes on the duvet because if he got up to get tissue he’d most likely be struck with unexpected leg cramp and fall over.

“You tell yourself that, sunshine.” Says Zayn, and it would sound more cheerful if his voice wasn’t wavering an octave too high, and when Zayn excuses himself and leaves the hotel, Harry would laugh because he just knows he’s probably gone off to sob but he feels too emotionally unstable so he doesn’t.

What annoys him, though, is that later on when he’s trying to sleep, he sees Louis’ face every time he closes his eyes. So okay, this was fine earlier on (well, it wasn’t, but he’s tired so allow him his small mistakes), when he had nothing else to do but miserably go through pages and pages of news about the guy, but now, it’s keeping him from sleeping. And if this turns into a thing, he’ll probably explode. It’s just, he’s starting to agree with the article from earlier, and he can feel himself having a tenuous hold on a ledge overlooking a slippery slope that leads to heartbreak and embarrassment. Still most importantly, Harry is not gay, and this is probably a sign he needs to get laid because he’s pretty sure all this will just float away once he remembers exactly why he likes girls.

And he tries. Oh God, how he tries. He calls up one of his mechanics, Josh, who directs him to the club he’d been at only four days ago (how time flies when you’re in the depths of horrific emotional turmoil), and Harry gets a taxi there. Bonus point for the place, there is still no paparazzi, and he couldn’t be thankful enough because he is no way photogenic and if someone wants to snap pictures of him at least let him smile.

Also, the irony of the club being called GAY is most definitely not lost on him, and he almost laughs before plunging straight back into the depths of questioning life, the universe, and his own sexuality.

Pushing through the doors and reaching the bar, he orders a couple of shots and downs them immediately, because this kind of thing needs liquid courage in his veins. Hopefully there won’t be any rogue superstars rolling around this time to try and trip him up.
Ignoring the barman’s raised eyebrows, Harry pushes off the barstool towards the dancers, scanning the crowd intently. He doesn’t feel nearly drunk enough, and he could go back and order more, but he’s got a terrible inkling that tonight is one of those nights where no matter how much he pours into himself, he’s not going to loosen up.

He finds a girl soon enough, and she wraps eager hands around his neck, twisting to the music of yet another song Harry doesn’t know. It’s dark in here save the flashes of coloured lights, and it’s all a bit too heavy: his eyes struggling to keep up with the bursts of strobe lighting, music pounding too loud, reverberating inside his skull, and this girl’s face only lit up if he concentrates very hard.

“I’m Jade!” She shouts, fighting to be hard above the noise, and Harry nods. She’s pretty enough, dark hair and skin the colour of strong coffee, but her eyes are too knowing, like she can tell exactly what he wants. And what worries him is that exactly four days ago, the idea would probably have turned him on.

“Harry.” He replies, trying to stifle the urge to walk out of the club. No, he instructs himself carefully. You stay there, dance for a bit and take her home. That’s what he does. He’s the play, the party goer; or at least he was (or even, tried to be). It’s like he’s split himself into before Louis, and after Louis, and the Harry he is now isn’t all too comfortable with the Harry he was before. What Harry is thinking now, though, is that he’s either more drunk than he gave himself credit for or his sober mind doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

They stay like that for a few more songs, him with his hands low on her waist, and her with her fingers linked together behind his neck. As another song fades out, Harry leans in to whisper in her ear, but obviously it’s still too loud to try and retain and modicum of privacy so he has to raise his voice.

“Want to go back to mine?” He asks, again, and she smiles, wetting her lips slightly, and nods.

The taxi ride to the hotel is silent, because there’s nothing Harry feels he can say. They both know exactly what’s going on her; this is sex, purely sex, with no attachments or promises. So what can you say to a girl you’re never likely to see again, he wonders, and this whole subject is a lot too morose.

He watches the way her eyes widen ever so slightly as she takes in the hotel, resplendent in the night with the kind of elegance you can only find in these places. To her credit, she doesn’t say anything, and Harry looks down at himself critically. Maybe this is a signal to stop dressing like he’s still living through Saturday jobs and eating toast at 12:00.

When he unlocks the door, the first thing he realises is that he’s still got the DVD of Louis’ film lying on the sofa, and that’s a wrenching reminder as why this is happening at all. Girls, right. It’s happening because Harry likes girls, and he likes sex, and moreover he likes sex with girls. Not boys, and not Louis Tomlinson, renowned actor or no.

“Good film.” Jade notes, and then she’s kissing Harry, kissing him hard, and they’re stumbling to the bed where Harry displays one of his more secret skills (an incredible aptitude for the ability to speedily divulge someone of their clothing).

When Harry wakes up in the morning, there isn’t even a hangover. There is, however, a note on his bedside table in looping writing, thanking him for the night and signed with three x’s. Well, she seemed a nice enough girl.

Stretching his arms out behind him, Harry gets to his feet tentatively, before yawning so widely he can feel his jaw bones hurt. Oh, the price of having little sleep. His phone is lying on the table too, but Harry knows that most of his messages will be from Zayn, his mum, or wrong numbers. As in, no one can ever have had as many wrong number texts as he has had. It must be scientifically impossible to have had that many. A week does not go past without someone texting ‘Helen’ or ‘Mick’, and once he received a wonderfully steamy text from some girl to her boyfriend (he hopes) that enlisted all the ways that she wanted him fuck her senseless when he got home. The awkwardness of his reply of “Hi, this isn’t James, but I hope you two have a great night” has to be felt to be believed.

Actually, the only texts awaiting him come from Zayn, who’s still pestering him for details on Louis’ house because he’s more of a gossip than any woman you could ever find, and one from Niall of all people, asking him if he’s looking forward to next season. Harry doesn’t know why, he’s just suspicious of everything Niall says to him. So, if Niall is extending the figurative olive branch, Harry’s going to continue ignoring it and carry on being the stroppy twelve year old he is at heart.

And because Harry never takes his own advice, he ignores his thoughts from last night and slopes into the kitchen, drops a couple of slices of bread into the toaster and waits for them to be done. When they finally pop out the top of the machine, he hastily puts them onto a plate and wanders into the living room area, slice of toast in one hand and plate in the other. The toast is plain, of course, because Harry finds butter to be a luxury he can do without (translate as: he’s too goddamned lazy to go out and actually buy butter). He flicks on the TV as he walks in, and it’s on some shitty news programme that wants to tell the world all the gossip going on everywhere. All Hail him becoming a racing driver, where you can hide beneath the media radar.

“And lastly,” the presenter says, all bubbly personality with a too wide smile and trained voice, “Heart throb Louis Tomlinson attended the premiere of his new film, September, last night in London. The film, we are told, will feature him as an undercover agent working to stop a spate of apparently random murders. Here’s a scene from the premiere; maybe next time they should have it in secret, because there’s so many people there! And can’t he just rock a suit?” With another smile, the news cuts off and Harry’s is told that the next item is some crappy daytime antiques show that no one really watches.

But in all reality, Harry’s collapsed onto the sofa because he’s never felt more royally screwed. If there’s a god, or a goddess, or a who even knows what up there in the big, white Heaven, they’re most certainly laughing at the fuck up his life is turning into.

“He cannot rock a suit.” Harry tells the presenter of the programme on now, but the guy doesn’t seem to want to talk about Harry’s issues. Harry doesn’t care, and continues to tell him anyway.

“I’m not attracted to him. He’s just another guy.” Warming up to his subject, Harry nods and takes a bite of toast (when his physio, Nick, finds out how badly he’s eating and how little training he’s done he’s going to be thrown to a pack of wild dogs). “In fact, this is probably just a phase. It’s because he’s famous. There have been gay guys who’ve been attracted to women, right?” There’s no reply, of course, but who needs a reply, anyway. “It’s not like he’s even that good looking, anyway.” With another firm nod at the TV, Harry pads back to the kitchen, slotting his plate in the dishwasher (see, fancy hotels have all the gadgets), and from there to his bedroom. After a pause for consideration, he picks up his phone and types the same message to three separate people, and waits for the reply. They all come back at varying points in the day, and Harry can only check them once he’s out of the gym (he felt pretty bad for Nick, after all, having to deal with his laziness).

Gemma, 9:59

What do you mean do I think is Louis Tomlinson attractive? Why do you want to know?

Gemma, 10:00

But for the record, yes.

Mum, 11:32

Of course I do, sweetie.

Perrie, 14:05

harry why are you asking me this

Perrie, 14:05

but if you want a serious answer of fucking course

Perrie, 14:06

louis tomlinson is on my list of people i’m allowed to fuck

Zayn, 14:06

harry why r u asking perrie if ur new boyfriend is hot

Zayn, 14:07

even i think he’s hot

Harry was going to question how Zayn got into this discussion, but then he remembered the lack of secrecy between him and his girlfriend and gives up.

What is more pressing to him at this moment in time is why he still feels as though being attracted to Louis Tomlinson is something entirely different for him than it is for everyone else; because he’s pretty sure they didn’t see his face behind their eyelids when they woke up this morning.

Shit, that sounds so much worse than it should do, he thinks. And he can’t even use the excuse of ‘It sounded better in my head’ because he kind of said it in his head in the first place.

And even that wouldn’t be so incriminating if he hadn’t been thinking throughout the whole of last night with Jade that she had a few too many curves, and her hair was a lot too long and her eyes weren’t blue. The colour of your eyes shouldn’t even be something you think about, he despairs, running a hand shakily through his hair, and resolves to not think about Louis Tomlinson any more, and congratulates himself on coming up with a solution to his dilemma.

He holds out until he gets back to the hotel room, where his new collection of films is lying in wait for him, and he sighs in resignation before putting one on.

He’s got to admit, if he did have to be attracted to someone, at least it’s to someone that everyone else is. Even if it’s turning slightly psychotic and obsessive and even more weird because they are know in the area of knowing each other that isn’t friends, as such, but isn’t acquaintances.

Maybe he needs therapy.

*

“So, Harry, what seems to be the problem? Is it your growing concerns over your blatant crush on film star Louis Tomlinson?” Asks Zayn, sniggering, and easing himself onto the hotel sofa beside Harry.

Harry, for his part, gives Zayn the angriest glare he can muster up at such short notice. He thinks he fails, but it’s the thought that counts.

“I hate you with the fire of a thousand, burning suns.” He says, and Zayn sniggers again.

“I asked for friendly advice, not you being a dick.”

If Zayn sniggers once more time, Harry swears he will push him out the window and then go pour himself a cup of tea.

“Okay, okay.” Zayn says, and sighs with all the effort of one who’s had to deal with too many issues in his beleaguered life. And Harry knows for a fact Zayn is exaggerating because he never does anything he can’t get out of, so the only worries on his poor mind is most likely how many episodes of Doctor Who he can watch before he has to get back to work.

“So what do you need to talk about?” Zayn questions, and Harry sends up a brief prayer before taking the plunge

“I think I might be gay.”

Zayn gives him a look that merges so many emotions at once that Harry isn’t even going to bother trying to unpick them all. In lieu of that, he sits back and waits for Zayn’s words of wisdom (hopefully entailing “stop bothering me with your shit, Harry, I can’t be bothered with your jokes”).

It isn’t.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Responds Zayn, reaching for his glass of water and taking a sip. The problem with Zayn is, you never know when he’s being serious or if he’s joking, but Harry’s internal compass of this is pointing towards ‘joking’.

“I’m serious, Zayn.”

“So am I.”

For a long, eternal minute, they both look at each other silently, Harry with mouth agape and Zayn with pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

Finally, Zayn breaks the silence, with a tentative “So you never thought, you know, you might be...”

“No.” Harry replies shortly, because has everyone he’s ever known thought the same?  Does he just exude an aura of ‘Don’t come near me, I’m stuck in the metaphorical closet of my mind’?

“Oh.” Says Zayn, dragging out the word to three times it’s length, and takes another long sip of water. “I thought, you know. You just didn’t want to tell me.”

“Maybe I didn’t tell you, Zayn, because I’m not gay.” Harry’s words are harsh, and his tone is too, because he likes seeing Zayn squirm for once in his cynical life, but under it he’s torn between a fascinated horror and an urge to laugh harder than he has in years.

“Isn’t that why I’m here? Because you think you might be gay?”

Yeah, Harry still hates him. He’s like a walking, talking lie detector, waiting to pounce on you for any slip up you make.

“Well, I’m not sure. Like, I was straight last week, definitely. You can’t just change your sexuality in a week, can you?” He sounds a lot more confident than he feels, Harry’s pleased to note. In his head, the words just sounded pleading.

“Can I ask what brought this on?” Zayn asks, slowly, like he already knows the answer and is just trying to get Harry to admit it. He could lie, he supposes, and say he’s just not finding women attractive any more (which is true) and omit any mention of a certain actor, but Zayn will catch him out eventually.

“You know what.” He says, and Zayn shakes his head, a smile edging the corners of his lips. That’s a bad sign, Harry thinks sadly, because that kind of smile only appears when Zayn is revelling in Harry’s misery.

“No I don’t.” Replies Zayn happily, and gives him a full on beam. He’s a vampire of sadness, Harry decides viciously, feeding on the misery of others.

“Louis Tomlinson.” He mutters, grudgingly, and wonders to himself if in the future you’ll be able to shoot literal daggers from your eyes, because he’d have Zayn regularly riddled with holes.

“And what about Louis Tomlinson, Harry?” Presses Zayn, and Harry will be damned if Zayn doesn’t sound gleeful.

“I think he’s fit.” Harry whispered, too quiet for Zayn to hear him.

“What was that?” Smiles Zayn. A smile bred in the very depths of Hell.

“I think Louis Tomlinson is really, really, attractive, so much so that I no longer hold an interest in the female genders and to the extent of watching a selection of his films just to look at his face.”

Zayn chokes on the water he was drinking, and when his coughing ends, he looks up at Harry through red eyes, and says in a hoarse, weak voice:

“Mate, you’re so in love with him it’s unbelievable.”

Sighing enough to push out all the air in his body, Harry slumps back into his seat and covers his face with his hands.

*

Harry, for once in a blue moon, sticks to his law, and studiously avoids any association with Louis Tomlinson for the rest of his break. He makes sure the TV is always on some channel that is guaranteed not to be talking about him, hides the films in his suitcase where he doesn’t have to think about them, and does a very good impression of someone who isn’t in the middle of a rather terrible sexuality crisis.

When he arrives at testing in Valencia, Nick greets him off the plane, gathers him up in a hug, and says entirely too loudly “I hear you’re dating Louis Tomlinson!”

Wriggling his way out of Nick’s hold, he’s about to launch into a diatribe on reasons why Nick should never, ever mention that name to him again, Zayn hops off the plane next to him and whistles loudly, whilst Perrie, traitor that she is, nods seriously and tells Nick that they’ve been engaging in wild sex since the start of the break.

“I hate you all so much.” Harry says, looking at each of them severely, and walks off by himself, dragging his suitcase behind him.

“Stop being moody because there aren’t any hot actors here!” Calls Nick, and Harry hears them all laugh. This. This is why he needs new friends.

Ignore it, he advises himself, because it’s a beautiful day with a soft breeze, he’s back doing what he does best and he does, after all, have his first world championship underneath him.

Yes, he thinks, smiling, things are pretty good.

“Harry!” Shouts Josh when he walks into the garage later, now sans suitcase but he’s got sunglasses to make up for it.

“Josh.” He smiles, because Josh is a nice person who hasn’t been around for this whole drama and Harry is just keen to forget it all. “How’s the car looking this year?”

“Good, we hope, but that’s why you’re here. Hoping for championship number two?”

Harry laughs, because he’s a racing driver, he’s always looking to win.

“Of course.” He says, and Josh grins up at him.

“Where’ve you put Zayn?” He asks, and Harry wonders for a second why Josh assumes he should know where Zayn is, but lets it go.

“No idea.” Harry replies, and goes to change into his race suit.

The car is good this year. There’s pace, and it’s smooth. It’s one of those cars drivers dream of getting, because there’s the perfect equilibrium between oversteer and understeer, and you don’t have to wrestle with the car constantly. She’s a good car, and Harry can only hope she’ll lead them to good results. His team are great, they wouldn’t have won last year if they weren’t, but you never know. Horan is still putting in fast laps, but Harry knew it would be stiff competition from him anyway. They fought down to the remaining points last year, and how Harry ended up the victor he’ll never know. It’s probably his stunning good looks and wonderful personality.

“Looking forward to this season?” Niall asks him as they walk to the hotel in the afternoon. It’s irrational, but Harry really hates that Irish bastard. It’s probably sprung from him being his stiffest competition (and almost snatching the championship from his grip). It would make more sense if Niall had done something to him personally, but he hasn’t. Harry looks around pleadingly for Zayn, or Perrie, or even Nick who can give him yet another lecture on how slices of toast are not healthy enough nutrition for a Formula One driver, but there’s no one. Be a man, Harry tells himself, but even grown men don’t engage willingly in conversation with men they don’t like. There’s probably a bible quote or something for that, but Harry can’t think of it.

“Yeah, I think it’ll be good.” Harry replies, and he hopes Niall doesn’t bring up the subject of his as of yet unreplied to messages.

“Don’t think you’ll be so lucky this time, Styles.” Says Niall, laughing, and Harry tries to puzzle something out in his mind. Either Niall is hopelessly oblivious to all Harry’s attempts to rebuff him, or he’s a genuinely nice person. Neither of those sit well with him, because nice people make him uncomfortable- which is most likely why he’s so close with Zayn.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He responds tersely, and even then the smile doesn’t drop of Niall’s face. Some people, he decides, are too happy for their own good.

“Oh, I heard about you and Louis Tomlinson.” Niall says suddenly, and Harry allows himself to groan because yes, his friends really are the most horrible people in the world.

“What about me and Louis Tomlinson?”

“Zayn said you two were together.”

I’m going to slit his throat Harry thinks, and the thought makes him irrationally happy.

“Zayn is full of shit.” He says, and Niall looks at him quickly.

“He seemed pretty sure-”

“I think I would know more about my love life than Zayn would, Niall.”

As Niall digests this, they walk into the hotel, and the rest of the walk is silent except for the exchange of “See you later”s between them.

If Harry finds out that Zayn has told any more people, he will petition Simon to fire him, for Harry’s health. It’s not like they’re going to endanger Harry’s safety over the job security of his race engineer?

“Harry!” Simon calls out tomorrow morning. “Sorry I missed you yesterday.”

Every time Harry talks to Simon, he always feels like something bad is going to happen. It’s just the general kind of feeling he gets from him.

“Simon! How are you?”

“I’m good, I’m good.” Simon tells him, smiling. It’s kind of weird to see Simon smile, even after all this time at the time. It’s as though there’s this out of place feature on his face that just doesn’t belong. “You?”

“Great, thanks.” Harry says, and is about to warn Simon not to listen to Harry’s race engineer because he’s most likely certifiably insane by now when Simon speaks again.

“So I hear.”

“What?” So, it’s kind of a rude reply, but Harry thinks he can be forgiven just this once.

“I’m told you’ve got a boyfriend. Louis Tomlinson, no less.”

Harry doesn’t know if this feeling could be classified as pure, unadulterated fury, or just plain murderous.

“I am not in a relationship with Louis Tomlinson.” He grits out. God, how he wishes he never went to the bar that night. Why couldn’t he just have stayed dancing with that girl?

“Oh.” Says Simon, blinking a couple of times in embarrassment. “Well. Uh, I’ll see you later, then.”

As Simon walks off, Harry hopes with all that he is that he’s gone to find Zayn, and hopefully tear him to shreds in the most literal sense, because you do not just gossip with your boss about your friends.

Perhaps he could set up to run Zayn over on track some time.

*

“First race of the season! Australia, baby!” Laughs Zayn next to him, and Harry shakes his head in confused wonder (Wonfused? Confonder?) because they’ve been here all week, done practice and done qualifying and it’s not like Zayn to become this excited.

“You seem happy.” He observes, and Zayn grins.

“I’ve got a good feeling about today.” He confides, and Harry chuckles because Zayn’s good feelings are usually nothing more than whispers in the dark corners of his mind.

“Have you?”

“Yeah, I do.” Zayn replies, tapping his index finger against his lips. “I have a good feeling for this year, in fact.”

“Does this mean world championships?” Asks Harry, beginning to laugh, and Zayn joins in even though there’s nothing really funny at all.

“It could do, Harry, it could do.”

The garage is bustling when the two make their appearance, and Zayn is quickly sucked into a conversation with Simon (probably regarding race semantics) that he can’t escape from, leaving Harry with no one to talk to. Obviously, he could find Nick, but that would involve over strenuous declarations of love, peppered with the odd lectures on how he isn’t fit enough to keep up with the rest of the grid and one day it will backfire on him and poor old Nick will be the one to scrape up his bloody remains off the track –“Oh, the things I suffer for you, hotshot”-, unless Harry has been unusually lax in his training, and Nick will turn from the doting, caring physio with a precariously balanced quiff everyone knows him to be into a dark creature overrun by primal, animalistic fury.
So yeah, all in all Harry thinks that his own, precious self preservation is at stake here, so he resolves to avoid Nick for the meantime.

The garage isn’t all too fun to hang around at the moment, however, so Harry makes his way back out and onto the pit lane, and hopes one of his fellow drivers has found themselves in the same sorry situation. Unless it’s Horan, of course, because in that case Harry would rather face the wrath of his careworn physio.

You couldn’t say the pit lane is barrenly empty, Harry reflects, but it’s certainly devoid of any of his competitors. There’s some of the more wealthy fans drifting about, photographing the garages with high lens cameras, but aside from them there’s no one, not even Bernie Ecclestone and he’s always about. Pushing his sunglasses more firmly onto the bridge of his nose, Harry begins walking down the straight, peering into the other teams’ garages and hoping to spot another driver. As he passes yet another one without seeing a single racer, he wonders if this is some otherworldly, celestial scheme to usurp his confidence. If so, it’s not (it probably is) working.
By the time Harry’s reached the last garage, a gaggle of fans have noticed him and are following him religiously, snapping pictures and murmuring to each other. Honestly, it’s not as though he’s even doing anything interesting; as if they’re really going

to want to look back on photos in the future and go “Oh, there, see, that’s the picture we took when Harry Styles took a long, boring walk down the pitlane and then went back up it again”. Just, no.
In any case, Harry does begin the walk up again, flocked by his unwelcome entourage and hoping the reporters don’t find him because Harry is overwhelmingly terrible at finding excuses and at blatantly ignoring people (hence the discomfited talk with the Irish bastard yesterday).

Sometimes, Harry is quite certain that there is no luck in the world, anywhere, and if there is it’s not for him. Standing a few garages up is a crowd of reporters, angling their cameras into the garages to try and glean what they can off the cars before the season properly gets underway, with presenters speaking excitedly into microphones, smiling broadly. Doing his best to analyse possible escape routes, Harry calculates his chances of getting past them unseen at about 0.00001%, and that’s only if thick fog appears suddenly and blocks him from view.

“Damn.” He mutters, because he’s about to get asked a shit ton of questions about things he can’t answer and why, God, was he ever allowed to leave his garage?

He quickens his pace slightly, because maybe, just maybe, if the media think he’s in a hurry they won’t bother him, when he sees something that makes him stop still in his tracks (and the pitch of the noise behind him doubles).

Like, Harry gets there are bad days, and there are worse nights, but spotting Louis Tomlinson at the first race of the season in the pitlane when he’s desperately trying to avoid over inquisitive reporters has to be off the scale. It would help if the guy didn’t look like he’d just walked off the page of a glossy fashion spread, short sleeve white shirt buttoned up to the top (does this guy actually own any coloured tops?) and tightly fitted blue jeans, hair neatly styled in a small quiff and Harry should really stop right there because he swore to stop thinking about this guy, and if you break promises to yourself it’s a long, downward spiral from there.
Harry’s eyes flick between the media, and Louis, back to the media, then to Louis again. He licks his lips nervously, because he struggles to choose his socks in the morning and this is more pressure than he likes (makes sense, then, that he chose to do something that exists on pressure, knowing the wrong mistake could ruin you). He’s still in the process of deciding when one far sighted reporter shouts loudly and gestures towards him, and that solves it.

“Hi!” Harry calls, striding towards Louis, who appears alone but no doubt has security dotted around as protection. He wonders idly when the last time was that Louis Tomlinson was actually alone, no guards at the door or cameras in every inch of his home.

“Harry?” Says Louis, and he’s smiling again, fuck, because all he ever seems to do is smile and each time it coils a ball of fire in Harry’s stomach.

“Didn’t know you were coming.” Harry says, finally reaching him, and it’s the type of statement that begs an answer.

“Well, you know, I said I’d come by and see you race some day, so here I am.”

Looks like Louis did his research on him after all. There’s a few emotions coming off from that, ranging from the warm fuzzy ones because Louis Tomlinson looked him up, and from there it plummets to what if he thinks I’m a complete prick I have no idea what they say about me in the media oh God.

“I think you promised to cheer me on, as well.” Harry reminds him, solemnly, and he’s glad there’s a functioning part of his brain that’s doing the talking because the thinking part of it has the current view of “Bla bla bla isn’t he pretty ooh look how the light shines on his hair it would probably be really soft to touch I wonder if he’d let me run my fingers through his hair”. Praise everything for the miracle that is his subconscious mouth filter.

“That I did, Harry, that I did.” Louis agrees, looking behind him and raising a hand over his eyes to ward off the glare of the sun. “Looks like you have a few people wanting to talk to you.” He notes, and Harry thinks he can almost detect a hint of amusement in Louis’s voice.
Harry follows Louis’s line of vision, and grimaces when he sees the reporters a few feet away, no doubt reporting on the breaking news that is Harry Styles, having a friend. If this is being broadcast right now, Zayn will be laughing himself right off his chair. Harry hopes wistfully that it hurts.

“I hoped they would leave me alone.” He says in conspiracy, and Louis nods in response. Harry feels like there’s some joke being shared here, but he doesn’t know what it is.

“How are you going to get past them?” Louis asks, and Harry bites his lip because he doesn’t really know. Winging it is more his style than finding a plan and going through with it.

“I hope you’re the type of person who’s a man with a plan.” He says, disconsolate, and Louis smiles in a way that’s sort of a smirk meeting the grin of someone who’s just found out their greatest foe’s untimely death.

“Oh Harry, I always have a plan.”

Louis’s plan, frankly, is terrible.

“You suck at plans.” Harry tells him, and Louis folds his arms over his chest and glares.

“Do I see you coming up with anything else?”

Well, no, but Harry thinks that’s kind of beside the point.
Shrugging, he concedes his defeat, shaking his head in denial of what he’s about to do.

“If they film this, our entire careers and respect will turn to dust.” He warns, but it’s not so much for him as it is for Louis. Harry’s a racing driver, this will be lining tomorrow’s bins as far as he’s concerned, but for Louis, news sticks around a while. So Harry finds it sickeningly lovely that Louis will do this for him.

“It could open me up to an entirely new audience of the young, wild and free?” Tries Louis, squinting his eyes against the morning sun.

“If that’s what helps you sleep at night.” Replies Harry, laughing, and Louis joins in because this is a completely ridiculous solution to a rather ridiculous problem, and Harry could probably just go talk to the media or something but that’s a much too easy way out.

“Ready?” Louis asks him, eyes sparkling, and Harry thinks why do I still want to kiss you before nodding.

Taking in a deep breath, Harry looks towards the group of reporters and then to Louis. Louis meets his eyes quickly, searching for any sign in Harry’s face that he’s backing out, before signalling a small thumb up.

Here goes nothing, Harry thinks, reaches out blindly for Louis’s hand at his side, and they begin to sprint down the pitlane, dodging out the way of lone people before navigating a path around the group of dumbfounded paparazzi.
Harry’s laughing, but it’s more of a wheeze now because the oxygen is having a little trouble getting to all his muscles.

“This is – stupid.” He gasps out, and Louis bursts out laughing in response, so Harry has to slow to keep up with him.

“Are they filming us?” Louis asks, breathless, and Harry sneaks a look behind him, using the hand not currently engaged in holding Louis’s rake through his hair.

“Yeah.” He says apologetically, but Louis just laughs again, picking up the pace, and then falling over his feet and pulling Harry down with him. Louis’s still laughing, little hiccups of laughter, and Harry joins him, sitting on hot tarmac in the run up to his first race as current world champion, shoulder to shoulder with one of the most famous people in the world. Literally rubbing shoulders his mind thinks, awed by it’s own wit, and Harry wills his thoughts to shut the fuck up.

“I think I twisted my ankle.” Louis admits when the laughing has passed, and Harry watches him press gentle fingers on it, testing the area delicately.

“God, I’m sorry.” He says, because Harry likes apologizing even when he doesn’t know quite what for.

“It’s not your fault, twat.” Louis says, shaking his head at him, and Harry would be wounded by the words if it weren’t for the smile on Louis’s face (he guesses he really is a hormonal teenage girl at heart; all he needs now are the posters for his bedroom). “But I don’t think I can run the rest of it.”

Harry looks at the pitlane stretching out in front of him, and back to the flock of reporters who have begun to zoom in on them, sitting on the pitlane where the occupants of that particular garage are most likely ogling from inside.

“Get up.” He orders, quickly, pulling Louis to his feet.

“What’s going on?” Asks Louis, suspiciously, and Harry can’t blame him because he did throw his champagne all over his shirt, after all.

“Absolutely nothing.” Replies Harry serenely, before wrapping on arm around Louis’s waist and using the other to lift up his legs. His mind, once again, is making jokes, this time along the lines of You’re literally sweeping him off his feet. All in all, Harry has come to the conclusion that he needs new friends, family, and a new mind. It’s a wearisome life, sometimes.

“What are you doing?” Louis hisses, as Harry begins to jog down the pitlane with Louis in his arms.

“I’m carrying you. Obviously.” Says Harry, speaking slowly and enunciating each word.

“I can see that.” Replies Louis wryly. “But why?”

“You said you couldn’t walk. I chose the best possible option.”

Louis raises his eyebrows, looking up at Harry, and Harry suddenly has a wall of undiluted want slam into him like a physical wall, this need to lean just that little closer and seal the distance between them. For the first time today, his mind offers up a useful suggestion: If you so much as move your head an inch forward, I swear you’re the stupidest dick alive. So sometimes Harry’s thoughts are in second person. It’s not his fault.
It’s a good warning, though, and Harry continues going forward with even speaking. He thinks, suddenly, that there’s too much to say, and he wonders if Louis feels it, this unfiltered lust in him. He hopes not, because Harry knew they were getting on so well a few minutes ago and if a beautiful friendship is going to wither in front of his very eyes because he’s an emotionally stunted twat who has no control over his feelings, he’ll be damned.

“Here you are.” He announces, putting Louis down a few metres away from their garage. He’s not embarrassed of Louis (quite the opposite, because it’s not many people who get to claim a Hollywood A-Lister as their new friend), but the years of teasing that Zayn could get out of him dropping Louis off, princess style, at their garage has to be seen to be believed. The whole club incident will be raked over for years to come, he knows, and this could overtake that in the long list of things that Harry has done that Zayn has found unconditionally hilarious.

“Are you good to walk?” He asks, and Louis tests a little pressure on his foot, gingerly, before nodding.

“I’m good.” He says, and Harry smiles, beginning to walk forward. When they turn into the garage (Louis, by virtue of the pass around his neck and the fact he’s being personally escorted into the garage by the World Champion –and that he’s Louis Tomlinson, of course- has free admission), a few heads look up at their entry, and most look down again before comically snapping back up. There’s a buzz of whispering around the room, and Harry thinks that Louis might be fighting down a laugh.

“Harry? Where’ve you been, you little son of a-” Shouts Zayn, ambling up to them because Zayn never runs, and even Harry finds it funny how Zayn’s sentence stops abruptly when he spots Louis.

“Louis Tomlinson?” Zayn asks, slowly, and Harry can’t tell if it’s him being asked or Louis himself. Actually, he can’t really tell what the bloody question is.

“That’s me.” Beams Louis, outstretching his hand. “And you are?”

“Zayn Malik, Harry’s race engineer.”

Louis nods, and Harry wonders how many of the cogs in Zayn’s head are beginning to turn before he recovers from his being temporarily star struck.

“I didn’t know you were here today.” Says Zayn. And if it were anyone else, that would be such an innocent question, but Harry knows Zayn better than anyone else (except maybe Perrie, his mum, and of course, the great and revered phone) and that sort of question is one that hold many more, as yet unseen questions.

“I thought I’d swing by, first race of the season and all.” Louis says, smoothly, and Harry admires his skill. He knew Louis was good, obviously, because he does acting for a living, but he didn’t know if Louis would fall into Zayn’s trap of words.

“You know Harry then?” Presses Zayn, and Harry almost laughs at how eager Zayn is to find out everything he can.

“We’ve met once or twice.” Replies Louis, glancing up to Harry at his side. Harry himself is loath to move in case there’s a question Louis can’t answer without incriminating them, and Harry doesn’t know how he’d be useful in that situation except for moral support.

“Oh yeah, in the club, right?”

Harry can feel his cheeks burn with flush, and he’s really re-evaluating his life choices in making Zayn his friend. In fact, they’re not even friends anymore. From this point on, he and Zayn are merely acquaintances.

“Yeah, we ran into each other.” Says Louis, and Harry wishes he was filming this, or something, because this kind of acting is phenomenal.

“So, uh, what’re you doing in Melbourne? You got filming, or something?” Zayn asks, because he’s obviously run out of major questions that he’s can’t get any leads from. Zayn: 0, Louis: 1, Harry thinks. “You know, being an actor and all.” He adds.

“I’m a big fan.” Harry says, and wait.

Fuck.

Why did you have to say that Harry are you actually, impossibly stupid there have been recorded studies of amoebas with a higher intelligence rating than you why why why Jesus Christ there is no possible way to save this maybe you should put yourself in front of one of the cars.

Harry’s eyes bulge slightly when Zayn snickers quietly, because that was entirely unnecessary and this was embarrassing enough to begin with. It was all going perfectly until now, he thinks, and he has decided once and for all there can be no God.

“Would you like an autograph?” Asks Louis, and Harry wishes he could tell if Louis is joking or serious but he doesn’t know him well enough to estimate his moods.

“Only if you won’t be hurt when I flog it on E-Bay.” He responds, mouth twitching, and Louis bursts out laughing so he does too, and lo and behold, the breaking of the metaphorical ice.

“I don’t understand you guys.” Murmurs Zayn, half to them, half to himself, before slipping away to no doubt write this occasion in his diary of Harry’s Most Embarrassing Moments.

“I’ll sign some for you.” Louis promises. “You’ll make a fortune.”

Thanking him gravely, Harry tries not to stare to obviously at Louis’s face but he thinks his memory might be dulling because Louis is so much more astounding here in front of him (more like a fairytale prince come to life, all perfect features and golden aura) than he was in the clips his brain preserved from the two times they met before.
A braver man would take the plunge and say so, but Harry is not that man. He likes to think Louis’s hand rests on his a second longer than it need, though, when Louis wishes him luck for the race, and he’s not alone in this. Although, he’s likely to be most definitely alone. As in, forever. He’s going to die alone, screaming at the postman about the time he convinced himself that Louis Tomlinson was attracted to him.

Harry has to go to the starting grid not long after, and in that time since he and Louis were outside it’s got even hotter. It’s going to be sweltering today, Harry reflects morosely, and he knows just how bad it will be inside his race suit. Louis followed him to their place on the grid (second; Clifford in front, Horan behind, and Harry isn’t so upset about that because Michael is his team mate, after all) and Harry thinks Louis should probably be doing a gridwalk right now or something since he has such good tickets, but he’s not going to broach the subject in case he seems inhospitable. Unless, of course, Louis isn’t leaving because he thinks Harry would be offended, and his mind is having an awful argument with itself that will no doubt crack his mindset for the race.

“Looks like you didn’t escape them after all.” Says Louis suddenly, nodding to something in the distance, and Harry groans because if the media want to shove a load of microphones in his face can’t they do it some other time?

He could go talk to Zayn again about what the race will involve, or fuel use or their tyre strategy, but he’s done that so many times already he’ll probably be repeating ‘two stops, hard then soft’ for the rest of the week in his sleep. Instead, he hopes for the best; that the cameras and the reporters will ignore him and just walk on by.
No such luck, it seems.

“There’s Harry Styles!” Says one of them, a man in a grey suit that looks too hot for the weather. The rest of them follow behind him, speaking into the cameras about how they’re going to try and get a word from the reigning champion. He hopes Liam Payne is there, because he’s one of the only reporters that Harry actually likes. In fact, his favouritism probably shows because he even follows him on Twitter and speaks to him before any of the others. It’s most likely because he grew up with the BBC, he feels a certain sense of loyalty.
Eyes flitting over the crowds in front of him, he singles out Liam and smiles, and Liam takes that as an invitation to barge past the suited man and get to Harry (who hasn’t forgotten Louis’s presence at his side, warm and in close proximity- too close for his brain to really comprehend right now).

“Everything looking good for the race today, Harry?” Asks Liam, tilting the microphone towards Harry, and Harry still has these moments where he forgets what he’s supposed to be saying and he goes blank.

“Yeah, uh, we’re looking to win.” He replies, stringing out the words slowly, and he wishes he could’ve done this some other time because Louis is going to think he’s an absolute idiot right now and there should be a racing driver protection act that saves him from these kinds of situations.

 “Happy with the race setup?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He’s repeating himself worse than a broken record, and if that’s not a sign that he’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic then nothing is.

“You hoping to hold on to your championship title?”

Honestly, some of the questions they ask sometimes are ridiculous. No, he’s hoping to lose the championship. Winning is going out of style. He wishes he could say that, but that’s not the kind of thing you really say in interviews. Perrie would hit him over the head with a tyre if he did.

“Uh-” He manages before Louis bursts out into laughter next to him, and Harry doesn’t know what the joke is but he laughs too because Louis’s laugh is golden and infectious like liquid sunlight.

Liam’s eyebrows are furrowed in concentration, and he’s biting his lower lip, and he looks like the kid at school who’s always too late to get the joke. If Harry wasn’t so busy laughing, he’d feel sorry for him, because Liam probably never signed up to have to cope with this. Harry’s hit by a fresh wave of laughter then, and he claps a hand over his mouth to try and hold it in, body wracking with the force.

“Hoping to- hold on to- title.” Whispers Louis in staccato bursts, before falling under again, clenching a fist over his mouth and laughing noiselessly.
When the storm passes, Harry looks up from damp eyes to see Liam with the same expression on his face, but now there’s some actual worry swirled in with it. Harry feels for him, really he does; if their places were switched, he’d be panicking over the world champion’s sudden insanity, too.

“Yes, I am hoping to hold on to my championship.” He says, as calmly as he can muster, and Liam nods as though in a sort of bemused daze.

“Good luck for the race.” He says dreamily, before moving away. Well, if anything, they’ve spent enough time laughing that the other reporters should’ve moved away.
The flip side is that they just made themselves a (literal) laughing stock on national television.

“I think you’re trying to corrupt my good image.” Harry tells Louis in faux sternness, and Louis opens his eyes comically wide, mouth falling open in a small ‘o’.

“Well I think it’s the other way around, my friend, because as you so aptly pointed out, I have the higher reputation at stake.”

Two can play at this game, Louis.

“But, O good sir, is this not my kingdom? Here, I fear, you are held in less esteem than I.” Harry feels a little smug at Louis’s surprise that he can keep up with his no doubt self assured higher intellect.

“Nevertheless, friend, I feel myself to be known in all the kingdoms; is it not then, logical, that mine is the image to be preserved?”

Harry doesn’t know if he should find this startlingly honest or magnificently vain.

“I fear your image is already irreparably flawed.” He tells Louis, poker faced, and wherever this easy rhythm came from he worships it, and he’s falling into Louis’s eyes and the way his skin glows in the sun.

“Is this a slight upon me, sir?”

“Indeed it is so, my friend. Yet I find it to be only the most honest of truths.”

“You scoundrel!” Louis exclaims, in indignant horror, and Harry thinks he’d very much like to close the distance and kiss him now, and he doesn’t think Louis would pull away, because Louis’s looking up at him and squinting into the glare of the sun and his face is softened by his smile and he’s really rather beautiful.

“I-” Harry begins, and he doesn’t know what he was going to say, but then Zayn pops up to show Harry something about someone else’s strategy and the moment is lost to time. That’s philosophical, he thinks, half paying attention to Zayn and half in the tangent of his own thoughts. Louis excused himself when Zayn came over, and Harry didn’t miss the half glance Louis threw his way as he walked off. He doesn’t know what it meant, exactly, but Harry’s insides were twisted a little more and really, he still shouldn’t be falling for this guy because they’re friends now, and friends do not continue to feel winded every time they look at each other. Although, Harry knows Louis doesn’t get this way about him, and it’s shameful, really, that every time he thinks about Louis the rest of him just shuts down.

“Harry? Harry? You listening?” Asks Zayn, with the special type of sarcasm he withholds to use especially on Harry, and Harry shakes his head quickly to clear his thoughts.

“Huh? I mean, yeah sure.”

Zayn raises an eyebrow at him, and asks experimentally what he was talking about. He’s tapping his foot, Harry notices in trepidation, because that generally bodes ill for him.

“Horan is going to do a three stop.” He recites, dutifully, and Zayn nods, and asks what else he talked about. Shit. Harry thinks that was where he sort of dropped off.

“Clifford’s strategy?” He questions tentatively, and even asking it as a question was a bad mistake because with Zayn, it’s fact or nothing.

Zayn’s face hardens, mouth becoming a thin line and eyes narrowing.

“Perhaps if you listened,” Zayn says, and Harry swallows thickly at the icy emphasis on the last word, “to what I tell you, we might win this race.”

“Yes ma’am.” Harry whispers, too quiet for Zayn to hear, but otherwise pays dutiful attention to everything Zayn tells him from there on.

And from then on it’s a blur of movement and voices, zipping up his racesuit and putting the helmet on, climbing into the car and fitting on the steering wheel. Zayn’s leaning in to tell him something, and Harry’s trying to pay attention, but he can’t really hear him over the beat of his own heart.
Until suddenly, there’s a different voice, on the other side to him.

“Good luck, racing boy.” Says the voice, rough and sweet like grains of sugar. Harry could get drunk on this voice, he thinks.

By the time he’s turned to look, Louis is gone.

Harry concentrates on breathing, in and out, in and out, until his instructions and his own breaths are the only things he can hear, over the throbbing over waiting engines and the bustle of people rushing off track. In and out, in and out.
Well, he was lying about that being the only thing he could hear. Louis’s sentiment is still echoing in his ears, crashing against his mind each time like a wave against rocks.
I’m so far gone he thinks, and he really shouldn’t be bemoaning his love life (or lack thereof) inside his mind mere minutes before the race starts, but shit happens sometimes.

“Harry. You good?” Asks Zayn’s voice on the radio, and Harry almost nods in reply before remembering Zayn can’t see him (or maybe he can, on the screen, but that’s not a certainty, it’s a chance, and Harry doesn’t play with fate –not since she screwed him over so many times before). Where’s Louis? Harry wants to ask, but that’s a lot more desperate then he wants to sound.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He says at last, puffing it out in one breath.

“Okay. We think we should get a better start than Clifford, but you’ll probably have to fight Horan. Remember he fights dirty.”

Yeah, Harry knows. In fact, Zayn knows he knows, so Harry doesn’t get why he’s telling him again.

“Goddamn Irish bastard.” He mumbles into his radio, and Zayn laughs.

“We’re going to win this, Styles.” Zayn tells him, and Harry hums.

The lights go on up above him, glowing red. Car engines buzz into actions around him, loud in their still waiting.
Fucking A list actors Harry thinks, randomly, but when the lights flit to green his foot smashes onto the pedal and Harry remembers anew why he does this; racing is imbued his blood, sewn into him, and he lives and breathes for it.

Zayn was right; they do get a better start than Clifford. Harry passes before the first corner, sliding past on his inside, but he knows when he starts his second lap Horan is behind.

“How far?” Harry asks, and it’s good he and Zayn communicate so easily because explaining his reasoning into longer sentences seems like a lot more bother then he is willing perpetrate.

“A second.” Zayn replies, just as short.

Harry stays ahead for ten laps, but he can feel his tyres losing grip too fast. It’s a wonder they hadn’t fallen off the cliff already, but Harry’s good at preserving them, it’s what he does.

“I need to come in.” He tells Zayn over the radio on the tenth lap, and Zayn affirms.

Harry pulls in on lap eleven, and when he comes back out the pitlane he’s in fourth. It was a clean stop, and fast, so it could’ve been worse, but Harry curses inside his helmet anyway because now he has to get past Irwin and God knows he defends his positions with an almost frightening ferocity.

It takes Harry sixteen laps to finally overtake Irwin, and he feels he can be excused the cheering. The pit crew are probably celebrating inside the garage too.
Maybe Louis is, as well thinks some small, neglected voice in his mind, and if Harry didn’t have such control in the car he’d probably have swerved or something.
Louis most likely isn’t even in their garage, he knows, so that comment was totally unnecessary. Like, he knows Louis likes him, and they’re friends, but that isn’t a reason to hang about in his garage. No, that’s the kind of thing Harry would do if he were Louis, because he’s secretly a teenage girl with a crush.
No, not a crush. Harry does not have a crush, because he isn’t gay. He’s been through this is his mind enough. You are the one that compared his voice to sugar says the voice again, growing louder, and thought how much you wanted to kiss him.
Even his own mind is a traitor, it seems.

When Harry catches up to the second place driver, it’s not Clifford. Actually, it’s Shone, and Harry exhales deeply because Shone is easier to overtake than Clifford, despite what the start of the race may show.

He’s right. It takes only a couple of laps before Shone gives, and then the real chase is on.

I’ll find you, Horan, he thinks almost too sinisterly, taking a corner.

There’s a group of fans to the side of him with a banner, and he can’t read it but he’s pretty sure he saw his name. He’ll keep an eye out for it next lap.

“You’re ten seconds away from him.” Says Zayn, voice crackled through the white noise. “You can do this, Harry.”

Harry thinks the only time Zayn is ever remotely nice to him is when he’s driving, and that’s probably only because that’s the only time Harry could potentially kill himself.
Happy, cheerful thoughts.

This time, Harry pits on the same lap as Horan, and Harry smiles because Horan’s strategy means he’s still planning to do one more stop. Winning is close enough that he can almost taste it, and that Irish bastard is only three seconds ahead of him. Thank God for all the pit stop training his team do nonstop. Really, they probably do more training then Harry does, and guilt twinges in his stomach because he’s actually a very terrible role model. No wonder Nick gives up on him so often.

By the last few laps, it’s become evident that Horan is not, in fact, going to pit again.

“I really hate this Irish bastard.” Harry says, and Zayn replies with feeling. In fact, he can’t even remember who it was that created the nickname in the first place, because they spend a lot of time drunk when they’re on break and if he drinks enough Harry finds sometimes that he can’t really remember anything at all from the night before.

“Harry.” Zayn  says, suddenly.

“What?” He hopes it’s not news of someone crashing, because that would really kind of screw up his race. Heartless, but sadly he is. Or maybe it’s Louis. Why would it be Louis he thinks, crossly, because this whole Louis infatuation (it’s so not an infatuation) needs to cool down before he implodes.

“’m thinking of proposing.”

What?

That was unexpected, in any case, and doesn’t really have anything to do with his race as it stands. He hopes they’re not broadcasting his radio messages right now, because it would really ruin the whole surprise thing.

“I’m really sorry Zayn, but I don’t think this is the right time, for us.” He says, trying to put as much emotion into his voice as possible.
He’s so close to Horan right now he could cry.

“Don’t be a prick, Harry.” Zayn sounds tired, and Harry wonders if he’s been staying awake over this. He thinks that’s kind of stupid, because Harry’s been wanting them to get married since they first got together and if Zayn is really unsure over Perrie’s answer he’s a stupider bastard than Harry gives him credit for.

“I think you should.” He says, quietly. Zayn’s answering sigh of relief lets him know the serious message got through, and Harry thinks he’s allowed a little fun because after all, Zayn is a twisted person for springing this on him in the first place.

“Besides, it means I’ll be able to come round your house all the time because Perrie actually cooks, and I won’t have to live in hotels- do I get to pick my room?”

“Harry, you are so not living with us it’s unbelievable.” Now, Harry could get used to the dry, barely covered horror in Zayn’s voice at the idea.

“You wouldn’t leave me to live with my mum forever, would you? Zayn, you couldn’t?” He’s doing his very best to be pleading. If there were cameras showing an inside view of his helmet, you’d find him doing the involuntary puppy eyes to match it, too.

“Yes, I actually would.”

“Oh Zayn, I’m really feeling the love.”

Zayn huffs a sigh, and Harry supposes this is the end of the conversation. He’s not letting it drop, though; as soon as he’s out this car, they’re having a serious talk about the kind of surprise you spring on people when they’re in the middle of a race, because obviously Zayn was asleep for that particular etiquette lesson.

“Zayn?”

“What, Harry.”

“Can I help you choose your beautiful white dress?”

The radio line goes dead faster than Harry has time to blink.

In any case, the image gives him enough material to laugh over for probably the next decade, and maybe a few more years after that.

“He could wear a veil.” Harry murmurs, lips smushed together to keep from laughing.

Before he has time to think, he’s in the DRS zone, and Horan’s ahead of him, and Harry can do this, it’s what he does, so he presses the button and uses the extra power to fly past him, rocketing down the straight with G Force pummelling his body like he’s a rag doll.

The last few laps blend together, mindless driving where all Harry thinks about is the road ahead of him, tarmac disappearing under his tyres quicker than he can see, stay on the racing line, keep on the clean side of the track.

And then there’s a chequered flag waving somewhere to his right, and people are standing up from their seats in the stands, and Harry keeps driving, but slower now because the race is over.

“FIRST RACE OF THE SEASON, HARRY! I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU!”

Harry’s laughing into his helmet, one hand on the steering wheel and one waving to the fans, adrenaline still lacing his veins like a drug.

“Ask her, mate. Ask her.” Harry says, and Zayn goes quiet on the other end.

“I think I will.” He says, and Harry laughs again because this, this is what dreams are made of.

Racing, and winning, and adrenaline highs, and-

And grains of sugar.

He slots the car into it’s first place space, clambering out the car and rising, arms raised, before running towards his team, and pulling the nearest into a hug. Zayn’s there, and he’s not surprised, and he hears a quick “Not so bad for a stupid bastard who’s in love with Louis Tomlinson” before he’s pulling away, and him and Simon are going up the stairs towards the waiting room, past the lines of clapping girls, before they go on the podium. He puts on one of the caps over his sweat damp hair (he was right, he was sweating worse than a pig in the heat, and he’s not in any way remembering the time at school that he told someone that pigs sweating was a ‘little porkward’ because he has cold sweat nightmares over that still), and he’s still laughing because, let’s face it, he knows he’s a bit of a twat sometimes.

“Good race, yeah?” Asks Niall, and Harry stifles the urge to snap.

“Yeah, good race. Bloody fantastic race, really.” He can feel his smile splitting his face, and he’s still on a high. Looking behind him, he sees that at some point Shone got overtaken, because he’s not here and Clifford, of all people, is.

“You were awful on the first lap.” Michael tells him, and Harry winks at him.

“I know you love me really.” He says, and Michael nods, blinking slowly.

“But, I don’t think we’ll work out, Harry. It’s just, the racing. It’s tearing us apart.”

Biting his bottom lip, Harry flutters his eyes at Michael, turning down the corners of his mouth pathetically.

“Don’t say that. This can’t be the end, Michael. Please say this isn’t the end.” Somewhere, he’s vaguely aware of Niall laughing hard behind them, and he can almost imagine the half smile on Simon’s face (half smile because Simon would never fully smile at their theatrics, let alone laugh).

“I’m afraid, Harry, it is. I’m breaking up with you!” Michael says, finishing on a sob, and flees the room.

The rest of them follow more sedately, as they’re fully functional adults who don’t need to sprint about places (Harry knows this is a lie, because he for one is only walking slowly because of Simon’s stern gaze).

After the podium, when Harry’s hair is now damp with champagne too, and he’s clutching his trophy alone because Zayn pilfered the bottle off of him a long time ago, Harry thinks that he could do this forever.

Who needs actors, anyway?

*

It’s just. The next race, Malaysia, Harry isn’t prepared. Not for the race, no; he’s still pumped up from winning Melbourne, running on a high that only success brings. What he isn’t prepared for is the face in the garage that enters just after practice three, ticket hung around his neck and wearing a smile larger than life.

No, Harry was not expecting that.

Seemingly, neither was Zayn (or the rest of the team, for that matter), because the looks of shock on their faces would be hilarious if Harry couldn’t feel it mirrored on his own.

“Harry!” Louis says, as though Harry was the last person he expected to see here. In his own garage.

“Louis?” Says Harry, and he didn’t mean it to come out as a question but well, it did.

“I didn’t see you after Melbourne. So, yeah. Well done.”

That’s the first time Harry thinks he’s ever heard Louis sound out of his depth, and he kind of fucking loves it.

“Thanks.” He smiles, and he thinks Louis’s eyes flicker to his mouth but he can’t be sure.
Harry grins wider, smiling so hard his face muscles hurt.

Zayn shoos them both out the garage eventually, when Harry’s shown Louis around the entire garage, and introduced him to as many people as possible even though he just knows Louis will forget all their names later (he seems like that kind of person).

As they’re walking down the pitlane, Harry feels his phone vibrate in his pocket, and he sighs because sometimes Zayn will learn that he has to let go of Harry eventually. A small smile tugs at his lips, though, because Zayn did propose, asked her at the after party in fact, and they’re so fucking happy Harry could shed tears.
Especially as Perrie, the wonderful person that she is, invited Harry to stay at their house whenever he wanted, and smiled cheerfully at the disgust playing over Zayn’s face. In fact, if she wasn’t in love with his closest friend, Harry would propose to Perrie himself, because not only does she work to undermine Zayn with him, she’s also quite hot (not like Louis, though says the traitorous voice in his mind, and Harry has come to accept that he may or may not be schizophrenic).

Zayn, 17:19

harry can u stop acting like he’s ur boyfriend if u want us to believe ur not in love with him

Scowling, Harry pushes his phone back in his trouser pocket, and looks up to see Louis watching him.

“You okay?” He asks, and that’s good. That’s the kind of thing normal people ask, and he wants this to be normal even though his mind is still reeling from the knowledge that he’s walking down the pitlane with Louis fucking Tomlinson. It’s estimated that 95.3% of teenage girls, and most women, would sell their souls for this. And that adds a certain kind of pressure not to screw it up.

“Yeah, yeah,” Says Louis, shaking his head and smiling (all he ever does is smile, didn’t his parents tell him that that kind of thing can seriously maim people). “But I realised I don’t have your mobile number.”

“Oh.” Says Harry, and pulls out his phone again, opening up contacts. They switch mobiles, Harry tapping away his own into Louis’s contacts, and when he goes to switch it back, Louis’s staring at the screen with his eyebrows drawn in the kind of concentration that could probably move buildings by thought.

“What’s wrong?” He questions, and Louis looks back to him, and Harry thinks he can spot the faint tinge of blush on his cheeks.

“I can’t remember my phone number.” Louis admits, and Harry blinks a few times to try not to laugh, because this is one of the most famous men in the world, he learns lines for a living but he can’t remember a string of numbers.

“Okay, uh, here you go.” He says, and if his voice sounds more strained than usual it’s not his fault, really.

Louis looks from his own phone to Harry’s, trying to commit the numbers to memory, and Harry watches him shamelessly because Louis can’t see him and he’s really kind of beautiful (in an entirely platonical, aesthetical way because Harry isn’t into guys that way).

“Done.” Louis says, reaching out to dab his lips with his tongue, and Harry doesn’t usually look that close to notice that sort of thing. He’s not really in to reading the fine print, if he’s honest.

“So why’d you come, today?” Harry asks, falling into step beside Louis. He’s glad to see that for the first time that he’s seen him, Louis is wearing colour; there’s a thin white t shirt, but over that he’s wearing a denim jacket, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. You look like sin Harry thinks, before trying to cancel out the thought before it carries on to his thoughts.

“Can’t a guy come see his favourite racer?” Louis says, looking up at Harry and pulling an exaggerated pathetic expression.

“Your favourite? You flatter me, Louis.” Replies Harry, and he thinks how much taller he is than Louis. Again.
If he’s not careful, the little ball of warmth in his stomach is going to spread, and he’ll erupt, volcano style.

“I only flatter the prettiest boys.” Says Louis, pouting his lips and Harry just knows he’s going to blush because that’s the kind of thing that happens to him. He’s not going to be killed by lightning, because that’s too likely. He’ll probably fall in a giant washing machine and drown.

There’s a flash behind them, and they both turn to see a man, wearing shorts and a black t shirt stretched over his stomach, holding a large camera up to his face, face half gleeful, half disbelieving. He probably thinks he’s just dug the dirt on Louis Tomlinson Harry thinks, and he wants to laugh because the thought that follows hot on the heels of that one is ‘If only’.

“You alright there, mate?” Harry calls out, and the man snaps his eyes up to look at him, mouth fallen open like he forgot they were there. Or maybe, he just didn’t expect Harry to call him out (it’s not like most people acknowledge the paparazzi anyway; God knows he doesn’t most of the time. He remembers first getting in to Formula One, and suddenly all these people wanted to know his name, take his picture, following his car, and it scared him, frankly. He’s still the same, isn’t he, as the boy from GP2? So why do they suddenly want to know him now?).

“Thanks.” Gasps out the guy, quickly taking another photo of them, before turning and walking away as fast as his legs will let him without breaking into a run.

Shaking his head slightly, Harry turns to look down at Louis, but something’s changed. Nothing dramatic; he doesn’t think most people would notice (but he did, the day he came back from Louis’s house). It’s in his face. Somehow, it’s changed to how it was before they knew the camera was there. There’s a different tilt to his face, like he’s holding himself differently, and his eyes seem a different shade- they were soft, and kind, and blue blue blue like summer skies, but know they’re hard and unforgiving.
Harry’s seen this face in pictures, but not in life. This, he thinks, is Louis’s camera face, the one he puts on show with all the armour up.
It’s not Louis, and Harry still knows which one he prefers.

“You good?” He asks gently, tapping Louis’s arm with his fingers.

“Hmm?” Says Louis, startled out of whatever reverie he was in.

“You good?” Harry repeats. The Louis he’s looking at now is the one he knows, the one who talks to strangers in clubs and lets them in his house.

“’m fine.” Louis says, smiling, and Harry files this away in his knowledge.

When the papers hit the shops the next morning, Harry wakes up to a phone full of messages that he really can’t be bothered to reply to, so he scrolls down until he finds Zayn’s name and checks his.

Zayn, 09:45

harry why is there a pic of u and louis on the front of the sun

Zayn, 09:47

looks very romantic to me hve u finally scored

Zayn, 09:52

this is better thn christmas lol

Harry searches up the newspaper on his laptop, finding the online version of the news story, and he can feel his eyes widening at the headline, and then widen further at the article. Honestly, he’s not sure whether to laugh hysterically until his face turns purple, or cry until his eyes are red. The picture they used on the cover, of course, is the one where Louis looks like he’s going to kiss him, but there are others in it too and Harry can feel his cheeks flushing even though there’s no one here to see him. Although, by now and knowing his luck, probably most people he knows have seen this, and he knows that Gemma is probably still laughing.

Louis Tomlinson: Really does like it fast!

‘Hollywood A-Lister and mega star Louis Tomlinson has been spotted out and about with Formula One driver Harry Styles, reports Katie Ray. Seen at the circuit yesterday, these exclusive pictures show the two looking fairly intimate- is this a sign of a budding relationship? We saw Louis at Harry’s first race of the season in Melbourne cheering him on to victory; it seems that these two are a lot closer than they’ve been letting on! We can only hope these are the first pictures of many to come, what with this couple already making a stir in both the racing and the showbiz world...’

The article goes on to analyse their body language and expressions, and Great, thinks Harry, fucking great. If there’s any possible way to push away your friends quickly, it’s got to be having a nonexistent relationship splashed across the front page.

To: Louis, 10:56

Have you seen The Sun this morning?

Louis, 10:59

Yes! Probably have to make a statement now :)

And thereby crushes the tiny, nurtured hope in Harry’s heart that Louis would reply with something like ‘Perhaps we should make it come true...’ and then, as the bible of High School Musical says, they would be soaring and flying.
Harry does make an official statement though (or kind of, anyway). When he spies a camera and a reporter walking down the pitlane on after practice one at the next race weekend, he makes his way towards them.

“Harry! Got time for a quick word?” Calls out Liam Payne, face lighting up, and Harry nods and this is probably the happiest he’s ever looked whilst willing talking to the media. There’s the usual mundane questions about the plans for the race and for qualifying, what he thinks of the competition this year, and finally the elephant in the room is pointed out.

“So, Harry, there’s been some, ah, speculation recently about you and Louis Tomlinson? Got anything to say about that?” This is it, Harry supposes, sighing out through the corner of his mouth. Please don’t make me sound like an idiot, he thinks, sending up a prayer, before fixing Liam with what he hopes isn’t a too feral smile.

“We’re friends, just friends. I think it got blown up a lot more than it should’ve done.” He says, forcing laughter, and dares Liam with his eyes to argue with him.
Liam, needless to say, doesn’t, and both his and Louis’s statements get about. Somehow, that doesn’t stem the tide of media guesswork, and the cameras following him around become decidedly more pronounced. Harry would find it more funny, really, if he was actually fucking Louis.
Which he isn’t.

Louis turns up to the next race, and the next, and he becomes a familiar presence in Harry’s mind, always there when he wants him to be. He can feel himself falling, holding on to the edge of the cliff with shaking hands, but he’s not hit the bottom yet. Anyway, he thinks, he doesn’t think there is an end to falling for Louis. It’s just something you carry on doing, he guesses, until you can’t anymore.
It’s just; Louis’s texts make Harry smile, and he’s pretty sure everyone in the entire garage knows when Louis’s texted him because he can feel a grin creeping across his face, and Zayn will moan at how pathetically smitten he is, someone else will groan unhappily but Harry flips them off and rereads the text a couple more times because, you know, he might’ve read it wrong the first time. They’re probably not even that interesting to anyone else, he surmises, but Harry wants to know these things, even the ones about how his cat has fallen asleep inside the washing machine or Louis’s knocked over the vase his mum bought him.

Louis, 14:37

Dobby just hissed at me and ran away with my socks :(

To: Louis, 14:38

Why did you name your cat after a house elf, Louis? .x

Louis, 14:43

So he could be inspired by his namesake and do all my work for me

Why don’t you get a cat and call him Kreacher

To: Louis, 14:45

Are you suggesting we buy a pet?

Louis, 14:48

That would be totally inappropriate, Harry ;)

To: Louis, 14:49

Of course, totally inappropriate .x

Zayn, of course, teases him mercilessly, offering to have a pyjama party for him.

“I could braid your hair, if you want.” He says on the plane one day. Perrie’s asleep next to him, and Harry wonders if she’d mind if he threw her fiancé out a plane. “Paint your nails. We can talk about crushes, too!”

“Shut up, Christ.” Harry mutters darkly, but Zayn, the dick, laughs in his face.

“I think Louis Tomlinson is really fit.” He says dreamily, in a high pitched falsetto, and Harry rolls his eyes before placing his head in his hand.

“Maybe if I threw you out this plane the pressure would explode you?” Harry asks thoughtfully, but Zayn doesn’t seem all too concerned by his possible doom.

“You gonna get Louis to be your next Race Engineer, then? You can flirt with each other all race long and then you can go home and cry about how he doesn’t love you?” Nodding smartly, Zayn shuffles in his seat until he’s more comfortable, closes his eyes, and promptly falls asleep. Harry thinks about taking off Perrie’s scarf and strangling Zayn in his sleep.

But aside from Zayn’s blatant jealousy, Harry thinks he’s coping well with the added pressure Louis being there brings.

Until, one day, he isn’t.

Harry’s kind of got accustomed to Louis being there whenever he finishes practice, or before qualifying, or sometimes only on race day. That’s the pattern they have.

But by the time this race day rolls around, there’s no Louis in his garage. There aren’t even any texts from him, and Harry definitely does not keep checking his phone because that would be stupid (okay, well, maybe he does, so shoot him).

“Harry, stopped looking like a smacked arse.” Zayn tells him in the happy voice of one revelling in their best friend’s misery, and Harry stuffs his phone in his bag before turning to his friend.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a bastard?” He says sweetly, and he’s horrified of how thick his voice sounds. Please do not cry Harry that’s so embarrassing why does this always happen you’re a big boy now you can cope on your own.

“’m told it frequently, mate.” Nods Zayn, before looking at him sharply and pursing his lips. If Zayn tries to talk about emotions, Harry promises he might try and dig a hole through the floor of the garage.

“You okay?” Is all Zayn asks, but it sounds like this question might lead to other questions like an endless cycle of mortification.

“Fine, I’m fine Zayn.” Harry says hurriedly, and smiles a bit too fiercely when Perrie comes up to them, clenching his teeth together.

“Missing someone?” Asks Perrie, lightly, and Harry wonders if he’s this obvious to everyone.

“Nope.” He says (he’s lying, but everyone lies so it’s okay).

“Well, I thought you might want to know that a certain Louis Tomlinson is in America. Started filming his new movie last week.”

“Oh.” Harry replies, in a small voice, and Zayn sighs heavily before extending his arm in a lopsided attempt at a hug.

“Zayn.” Says Harry, looking at his friend’s arm, and then his face, and back to his arm again.

“Yeah?”

“Are you trying to give me a hug?”

Zayn looks at his own arm in confusion for a second before slowly lowering it and knitting his eyebrows.

“No idea where that came from, mate.”

And for them, that marks the end of the discussion.
For Harry, it’s not so easy to forget.

Why didn’t he tell me? He asks himself for approximately the 104^th time since Perrie’s announcement, standing next to Zayn before the start of the race. Like, he knows that he’s sulking (he’s most surely sulking, and it’s shameful), and he knows that Louis isn’t required by law to tell him if he’s going to be here or not, but Harry kind of began to rely on his encouragement (and maybe just his being there was enough).

“Harry?” Says Zayn, peering at him and waving a hand in front of Harry’s face. “You still with us?”

“I fucking hate actors.” Harry says, and he intended it to sound thoughtful, but it comes out exactly as whiny as his thoughts are and he watches Zayn fight his inner urge to pet Harry’s head and laugh shamelessly.

“I’m sure he forgot to tell you, Harry.” Zayn tells him, and it sounds as though he tried to make it as condescending as possible (but Harry knows that is what Zayn believes to be his sympathetic tone, it’s just Zayn has no sympathy in his body).

“Forgot, my ass.” He mumbles, and Harry reiterates his original sentiment in his head again because it’s really very true. He really does fucking hate actors.

“Maybe if you told him how you feel-”

“I don’t feel anything for him.” Replies Harry, haughtily, and walks off towards the car. As he sits in the car, waiting to do the warm up lap, he thinks to himself that he hopes Louis’s house burns down in the middle of the night. And takes him with it.

The race is going fine, really. The race is fine, and he’s fine, and the car is fine.
Okay, well maybe he isn’t fine, but he’s very good at lying to himself.

Qualifying didn’t go too well yesterday, so he started from fifth, but he’s working his way up again, passing Summers neatly so he’s in first with just under half the race to go. They’ve got the fastest car, he knows, and that’s great because that should mean, theoretically, that the rest of this race is cruising.
Cruising, however, leaves him with a lot of time to think. It’s strange, really, because he knows most people would presume that when you’re racing at top speed you only ever think of the car, but as long as you’re not really doing anything overly spectacular, you zone out a bit.
And of course, his thoughts lead straight back to Louis.

So whilst Harry’s in the throes of puzzling out exactly why Louis chose not to tell Harry not to expect him at the race, he concentrates a little too hard on sulking and not enough on driving, misses the driving line around the corner and drives off into the gravel, coming to a stop at the wall. One of his tyres is rolling merrily away from the car, and the front wing has detached from the main body, and Harry thinks he’s allowed to slam his wheel down on the car as he clambers out.

“What the fuck was that, Harry?” Says Zayn’s voice over the radio, and Harry doesn’t blame him because he’s so fucking angry at himself (at Louis) that he wants to scream. There’s a crowd of fans near where he crashed (naturally), shouting his name, but Harry’s not in the mood to smile nicely and waves so he turns his back.

“Lost control of the car.” He replies tightly, beginning the walk back to the garage where there’ll be a lecture waiting on the tip of Simon’s tongue, an angry tirade from Zayn and the look of disappointment from all the mechanics that spend their entire time making sure his car runs as well as it should.

Fucking actors he thinks. He also thinks he should text Louis, later, when he’s calmed down enough to think straight, ask him how the filming is going. Not whilst he’s still angry, obviously, because he doubts a barrage of furious messages will help along their friendship.

He thinks of texting Louis, but thinks that ultimately the guy’s a prick and doesn’t.

*

By the time break has rolled around, Louis’s back to texting Harry as frequently as before, and because Harry is a self confessed pushover he lets him back in immediately.

“You need some self respect.” He tells his reflection in the morning, stern faced, as he brushes his hair, but even his reflection seems to want Louis back in his life.

He’s back home with his mum, and he’s happy. Sleepy little villages in Cheshire, he can do, because they’re just a relief after weeks of hotels and plane flights and (Louis) media. Besides, as he said before, his mum likes cooking, and Harry is not opposed to spending the majority of his break having his mother look after him.

“How’s the racing going?” She asks when he sits down to breakfast, and Harry narrows his eyes at her because he knows full well that she’s been watching each season religiously since he started karting at the tender age of seven.

“You probably know more than I do.” He replies, and reaches over to kiss her cheek because his mother actually made him pancakes. “I think I love you.” He adds, pulling on to his plate, and she laughs, before faking hurt.

“You think? I didn’t send you off to all those races you could think you love me.”

Harry smirks at her through a mouthful of pancake, and he’d continue his sentence but his sister arrives in the room, and with that kind of expression on his face he’s not going to ignore her (because, well, even Zayn is scared of Gemma; the other girls in her year took after school ballet, and she took up clay pigeon shooting- she still keeps the rifles in the attic).

“Harry.” Gemma says, and Harry almost chokes on his pancake.

“Gemma?” He’s famous now. He should be beyond this kind of fear.

“Why is there a bunch of paparazzi outside our front door?”

Harry’s saved from answering by his mum emitting some sort of strangled whine, getting up from the table and going to peek through the curtains of the living room. Harry stares at the yellow paint on the kitchen wall as if it’s suddenly become ten times more interesting.

“How did you find out?” He asks, timidly, and Gemma practically looms at him.

“I opened my curtains, Harry. And they were there. Taking pictures. Of me. In my underwear.”

Harry doesn’t laugh, because that would be rude. No, he sort of snorts, and then wheezes when Gemma’s voice appears by his ear like some whispering premonition of malevolence.

“If this gets out, Harry, I’ll break both your legs and use the bones as knives before skinning you alive.”

You see this, he believes, is why he cannot talk to people normally.

“They’re definitely there, alright.” His mum says, breezing back through the door, and Harry would say she sounds amused, but that is most definitely not the kind of emotion you should be feeling in this situation.

“What do they want?” He asks, finishing off his pancakes because not even his apparent and imminent death through the hand of his sister can put him off his breakfast.

“Most likely to speak about your not-boyfriend.” Gemma pipes up snidely from near the fridge. “When I saw them they were shouting something about whether you were dating.”

“Unf.” Groans Harry, thumping his head on the table. “Why does this happen to me?”

“You’re horrendously unlucky. Most likely swapped at birth.” Harry has a sense of de ja vu that he’s heard something similar than this before, that night at the club where he most certainly did not spill champagne over Louis Tomlinson’s shirt.

“Maybe you should go speak to them.” Offers his mum, and Harry thinks back to his decision to find himself a new family. He seconds it, and passes the motion.

There’s no arguing with either of them, though, so he slopes out to the front door, closes his eyes briefly, before opening it to bright flashes of light and an onslaught of questions.

“HARRY!”

“Are you and Louis Tomlinson dating?”

“What can you disclose about the relationship?”

“Is he any good in bed?”

Fuck, Harry thinks. Maybe I should go grab a shot of alcohol before taking this on.

“Uh.” He says, brilliantly, and the babble of reporters die down so quickly it’s almost laughable, if their eyes weren’t all pinned on his face. “I deem that there is an acute possibility that the majority of you have arrived here through a misguided premise, as there is no amorous connection between myself and Louis Tomlinson. For my part, we are purely friends. I hope this vindication is appropriate for your purpose.”

Smiling at them happily, Harry backs out through the door and closes it, and walks back into the kitchen on shaky legs.

“How did it go?” They both ask in unison, and Harry jumps because that’s more than a little freaky.

“I used my extended vocabulary.” He tells them, and begins laughing and doesn’t stop until Gemma hits him around the head with a dishcloth.

“Well, I still say you should’ve got his autograph. Could’ve earned a few if you’d signed it as well.” She says thoughtfully, and Harry gapes at how easily his sister would use him for money (he admires her very much, sometimes).

Harry makes the most of his holiday, after that. Or he does for the next two days, anyway, because then his inner hormonal teenager takes over.

Louis, 09:23

Back home! Feels like I’ve been gone ages- just slept off the jetlag!

No, Harry is not running to Louis. He’s at home, this is his time off, and he doesn’t need this. Type back a mature reply, he wills himself.
He’s made his goodbyes an hour later, driving down from Holmes Chapel to London, with Gemma’s warning to get that autograph still ringing in his eyes. He bets they’re both laughing at him right now, and he’s mind more if he wasn’t so ashamed of himself.

When he pulls into the turn off for Louis’s house (why does he have to live in goddamn Primrose Hill does he have to flash the cash), the same guard is standing in the same place, with the same expression of disdain. Harry wonders idly if maybe he’s a very realistic robot.

“Name.” The guy says, exactly like before.

Harry shakes his head at him, head tilted to one side.

“Pepper.” He tells him. “My name is Pepper Oni.”

The guard murmurs it into the speaker like last time, and Harry hopes Louis’s awake enough to realise his joke.

Anyway, the gates open, and the guard steps aside to let him through. Harry thinks there may or may not be a slight tilt up of his lips, and he counts that as a victory in the war of releasing this man’s inner human.

“Pepperoni?” Louis asks when he opens the door (which, incidentally, was so soon after Harry knocked first that he nearly punched Louis in the face).

“You need a new security guard, I think.” Harry says, following Louis into the kitchen. Louis moves to put the kettle on without even asking Harry, and Harry wonders how Louis got to know him so well. Time flies when you’re having fun, kids he thinks, jumping backwards onto the island counter.

“Get down from there.” Louis orders him, but it’s not really an order because it has a shocking lack of conviction.

“Actually, it would make more sense for me to be getting up from here, really, because I’m lower down sitting now than I am standing up.”

“I’ve missed you.” Louis says, standing in front of him, and Harry has one of those romance novel moments where time hangs suspended because he didn’t say ‘I missed your stupidity’ or ‘I missed your jokes’. No, he said ‘I’ve missed you’ and that’s an entirely different thing, and maybe the moment wasn’t standing still for everyone else because Louis’s stepped closer to him in the time it’s taken his thoughts to rush through his head, and Harry thinks he could put ‘Looked straight into Louis Tomlinson’s eyes whilst sat on his island counter’ on that list of qualifications.

“I’m going to kiss you, if that’s alright.” Murmurs Louis, and Harry’s close enough to count each individual eyelash.

“That’s more than alright.” He replies, and he really needs to stop talking and then that doesn’t matter anymore because Louis silences him anyway.

Kissing Louis is different to how he thought it would be, but that’s because this is the first time they’ve kissed and that’s always strange because you don’t know each other and you’re both standing on the edge. Louis’s hands flutter on Harry’s neck, and Harry should probably use his own to keep his precarious balance but he places them on Louis’s hips instead.
Louis pulls away suddenly, and Harry opens his eyes because well, that’s not really supposed to happen.

“I wanted our first kiss to be sweet.” He says, and Harry’s kind of confused by that until Louis kisses him again, and this is definitely different because it’s heat heat heat, burning him with touches. Louis bites on Harry’s lower lip, and it’s not exactly hard, but it’s not gentle by a long shot. He thinks he might make some sort of whining noise at the back of his throat but he can’t be sure because he doesn’t know himself where he ends and Louis starts.
Louis tastes like tea, and sugar (exactly as Harry hoped he would, really) and something indefinable that’s kind of exotic but also familiar.
Harry pulls away this time, but that’s because he might die of lack of oxygen and it would probably haunt Louis for a while that he was responsible for Harry’s death.

“We’re not having sex in the kitchen.” Louis tells him, and Harry sighs because he sounds kind of immovable on this point. “No. I put food on this counter.” Harry’s sure he could come up with a list of reasons as to why the island counter could be put to better use if it was for sex than for food, but he thinks it might shatter the moment.

And then Harry’s being pulled along a hallway, and up a flight of stairs, and down another corridor and into a room that’s dominated by a large bed with beech wood bedframe and posts, and white sheets that look soft enough to lose yourself in. He doesn’t really pay much attention to the room after that because Louis’s kissing him again, and it’s still heat heat heat, fumbling Harry’s shirt over his head and dropping it on the floor.

“Why do you have to wear so many fucking clothes?” Louis asks him, and Harry would point out how unfair that is because he’s not wearing any more items of clothing than Louis is, but then Louis’s licking his way into Harry’s mouth again so he doesn’t bother attempting a reply.

The way that Louis’s tongue writhes against his own is really all kinds of unholy.

Shuffling backwards until his calves bang against the bedframe, Harry performs a self admittedly contortionist move where he manages to pull both him and Louis onto the bed so they’re both kneeling, and Harry could laugh because this is an almost prayer like position and considering what they’re about to do, very out of place.
Breaking away to wrestle Louis’s top over his head, Harry pauses before throwing it down, the material clutched in his hand.

“Louis.” He says, and Louis looks up from where he was busy dotting warm kisses down the slope of Harry’s shoulder.

“What?” Louis’s voice has got all husky, and Harry’s a liar if he said his stomach didn’t twist.

“Your shirt.” The t-shirt in question is forget me not blue, and decorated with white cartoon clouds (who have small, smiling faces).

“It was a present.” Louis says, taking the shirt off Harry himself and pushing it over the edge, then reclaiming Harry’s lips, hands framing his face. Harry’s got his own fingers curled inside Louis’s belt loops, holding him close and he could scream because there’s not enough goddamned friction, but then Harry’s being pushed onto his back, Louis resting on his forearms and centimetres from his face.

“Waited so long for this.” Louis tells him suddenly, and Harry thinks well Goddamn and blow me over because either he misread the signals as friendly or Louis is very good at hiding his emotions.
Which, you know, would make sense, what with him being an actor.

Harry’s pushed down so he’s lying on his back, breathing embarrassingly erratic, and shifts so that Louis can shift between his open legs. And there, that’s the kind of friction Harry was looking for, as Louis moves himself so his forearms frame Harry’s head and the crotches of their jeans rub against each other shamelessly.

Leaning his head up to cross the small distance between them, Harry tries to fall back into the kiss, but Louis touches their lips together, once, before moving back, tugging Harry’s jeans down over his waist until they’re pooled around his ankles. Harry, the helpful boy he is, kicks them off the bed, and stares up at Louis who’s now straddling his waist.

“Who’s wearing too many clothes now?” He asks, and he wonders where his brain to mouth filter went. Gone with the fucking wind.

“Stop talking.” Says Louis, leaning down to press kisses into Harry’s bare torso, starting at his neck and moving down, breath warm over his skin. Keep breathing his mind offers up, helpfully, and Harry tries that. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. It’s not so hard (or it shouldn’t be, but Louis’s just sucked a lovebite into Harry’s hip and is swiping it over with his tongue, and that must count as an exceptional circumstance). His thoughts have become worryingly slow, just a circle of ‘Louis heat Louis Louis what stop heat’ and he’d be more ashamed but really, he isn’t.
And then, in the time that Harry takes to blink, Louis’s lips are suddenly mouthing over the black stretch of Harry’s boxers, warm air blown on to his erection from Louis’s mouth, and Harry can admit that Louis is very, very good at this.

“Louis.” He mutters, though he’s not really what for, and Louis’s eyes flick up to meet Harry’s, and the sight nearly has Harry passing out because Louis’s still got his mouth on Harry’s cock, moving his lips over, and Harry fists his hands in the bed sheets, holding so tight you can see the white of his knuckles.

Too soon (but probably not, because Harry was in a very real danger of coming in his boxers), Louis’s mouth is replaced with cool air as he sits up and just looks at Harry speculatively, irises a bright, thin ring around dilated pupils, and Harry is pretty damn sure that for the homosexual horizontal tango you both need your clothes off.

Harry reaches his arms up to help pull off Louis’s grey jeans, and he bites his lower lip for a moment because he looks like he might’ve been sewn into them, and that’s going to prove a real issue.
They do come off though, easier than he expected they would, and Louis’s eyes look a lot darker like this; more of a sapphire than an aquamarine (God, his mum needs to stop watching those shitty jewellery channels).

Louis leans over him, stretching his body and muscles tightening, and Harry wants to touch and mark and claim but his thoughts are still sluggish so he stays lying.

He watches Louis peel off Harry’s boxers, lifting his hips ever so slightly off the mattress, and then his own, and Harry thinks he forgets to breathe for a moment because this is happening and if Louis weren’t watching him he’d have to pinch himself because yes, he really is that sad. And yeah, Louis’s kind of really fucking beautiful, cheeks flushed red with lust and golden skinned, like some kind of God.

“Fuck, God, Louis-” Harry moans suddenly, because Louis is seemingly a past master of surprise, trailing sloppy kisses down Harry’s chest again, dipping lower so they reach his navel.

“Don’t blaspheme.” Louis says lightly, before deepthroating Harry without a single word of warning.

And because Harry pays attention to what he’s told, this time it’s only a strangled murmur that leaves his lips. Like before, Louis looks up at Harry as his mouth bobs up and down, slick and wet and hot –and it’s a fully fledged, fucking pornstar moan that he drops when Louis’s tongue dabs at the slit before sliding thickly back down to the base-, and the eye contact is a bit too much, Harry’s hips bucking up and leaving the mattress before he has time to stop himself. Louis, though, lets him, even though it’s impossibly bad manners to just fuck someone’s mouth, lying placidly as Harry jerks.

Harry tries (sort of) to warn Louis, but his vocal chords don’t seem to be in particularly good working order. He does manage a whisper of something that may or may not be an attempt at Louis’s name, before he spills hot and fast down Louis’s throat. For once, Harry is glad that his cheeks turn red easily, because otherwise Louis would know he flushed dully.

When Louis takes his mouth off (and the movement Louis’s tongue makes swallowing him down should definitely not be going straight to his cock) and moves back up to kiss him, Harry thinks he can taste something bitter and salty, and that’s probably him. He thinks again that he should’ve tried to warn him a bit earlier, but there you go.

“You’re eager.” Louis says lowly, of Harry’s already stiffening erection.

“Racing driver. Got good stamina.” Harry replies brokenly, finding Louis’s mouth and sucking on his lower lip. If they’re not careful, Harry knows that their lips will be all kinds of bitten and bruised (he’s not really in the mood for being careful). Louis knots his fingers into Harry’s hair again, and Harry’s find themselves at the nape of Louis’s neck. Louis’s hair is no longer styled, but flopping down carelessly over his forehead. Harry likes the idea that he did this to him.

“How good?” Louis asks, pulling away from Harry again, and if this doesn’t go somewhere soon Harry will no doubt resort to screaming and crying.

“Why don’t you find out?” He mumbles in reply, arching his back as Louis slides back down his body (and is painstakingly careful to rub over Harry’s erection) before moving off Harry’s body entirely, and reaching over to the bedside table.

“Is this your first time?” Asks Louis suddenly, hand stilling from where it was rustling in the drawer. Harry, of course, knows better than to make some smart ass remark about whether he looks like a virgin, because he knows that that is not the question at hand.

“First for a while.” He replies instead, and Louis nods like Harry’s answer told him a lot of things it didn’t tell Harry. Louis locates the lube and the condom, bringing the packets over and sitting on his haunches.

Then Harry carries on watching him, as Louis glosses his fingers, sitting between Harry’s thighs and looking at Harry for confirmation. Nodding slightly, Harry closes his eyes again as Louis’s index finger spreads him apart, and it’s still heat and it’s still not gentle but that’s great, that’s really great because Harry thinks he prefers fire. It’s still painful, too tight and intrusive, but Louis adds another finger, stretching him open and hitting a bundle of nerves that makes him whimper. Louis adds a third finger, drawing them in and out, and Harry closes his eyes, trying his very best (Scout’s honour) to calm his breathing. There’s a loss of contact suddenly, Louis withdrawing his fingers, and Harry whines in the back of his throat.

“You desperate?” Louis asks, and that’s probably an insult but probably true, and Harry can hear how jagged Louis’s voice is, like shards of glass, so he isn’t one to talk.

“Louis.” He says in reply, and it’s not a question (it’s more of a plea) but Louis nods anyway, rolling on the condom and coats it, fist pumping over his cock, and Harry can freely admit that yeah, he is kind of desperate. Louis seems to realise this, lining himself up with Harry and pushing inside gently, and despite it this is definitely not soft or tender (but that doesn’t stop Harry wrapping his legs around Louis’s back).

He thinks he might moan then, the noise working it’s way up out of his throat without his control, and he’s clutching the white cotton sheets under him like he’s afraid of floating away. Louis times his thrusts (it seems) with the beats of Harry’s heart, forcing in and dragging back out before going back.

“Harry.” Murmurs Louis, and Harry’s eyes fly open, and Louis’s face is there and his eyes are dark and his skin is flushed and the room is growing darker with the approaching evening because they were too wrapped up in each other to switch the light on, and Harry unclenches one hand and moves it up to the back of Louis’s head, fingers fisting in his hair in a way that’s guaranteed to make tangles, and pulls him down for a kiss that’s too messy and desperate to be sweet.

“Need you, Lou.” He says against Louis’s lips, and he’ll think about how the nickname slipped out later because now is not the time.

“God, Harry, you can’t just-” Starts Louis, but he never finishes the sentence and Harry doesn’t really mind what he’s not allowed to do. He feels like he might explode soon, and he opens his mouth to say so but Louis beats him to it.

“’m close, Harry.” Louis says, and Harry shakes out a breath because Louis’s still pushing in to him and he kisses Louis’s shoulder, opening his mouth to mark him, then Louis makes a moan that sounds like it came from the pit of his stomach and Harry’s seeing stars and blackness behind closed eyes, biting down without realising, splattering both their chests with sticky white, and slumping against the bed just as Louis falls on top of him.

“Did you just bite me?” Louis asks, and Harry hums sleepily because he didn’t mean to but he kind of did.

When Louis pulls out of him, Harry hisses through his teeth, breathing in sharply before exhaling, and realises sadly he’s probably going to be walking funnily for weeks. Actually pipes up his mind, assuming this is not a one off, you could be walking funnily for a lot longer than a few weeks. Whenever his thoughts began circling properly again, Harry doesn’t know, but he wishes his inner self didn’t enjoy being a smart ass.

“We should clean up.” Louis says, and Harry can see the value of this point considering the state of both themselves and the sheets, but he’s kind of comfortable here.

“Yeah.” He replies, drowsily, and he feels the mattress dip and rise and Louis moves off, and sinks back down a minute later as Louis passes him some tissue.

“Thanks.” He says, and Louis smiles sweetly and it’s the first thing since Harry walked in here today that’s been gentle. Louis’s cheeks are pink now, coming down from his high, and his eyes are brightening up again. Dropping the tissue in the wastepaper basket and pulling on his boxers from where they were laying on the carpet, Louis pads back over to the bed, head pillowed on Harry’s chest, sighs against his skin, and Harry drops a kiss on the top of Louis’s head because it feels like something he should do. After that, Harry wraps one arm loosely around Louis’s body, closes his eyes and lets himself fall (into sleep, of course, because something else would be entirely too much for him to cope with at this precise moment in time).

*

When Harry wakes the next morning, it’s early enough for only the pale kind of sunlight that’s like paint with too much water, and because Harry isn’t overly fond of this kind of waking time, he falls back on his face and tries to fall asleep.
And then, he sits back up again and blinks because yeah, this isn’t his bed, because his room at home is small and squashed and it’s all a mismatch of colours that his teenage self had decided was artistic.
The point is, this bed has soft white sheet and fluffy pillows and it even has posts.

Dabbing his lips with his tongue, Harry looks to his left, and he stares, and he looks at himself, and he’s pretty sure he didn’t even drink last night so his memories aren’t really supposed to take this long to load.

He waits for a few more seconds, head propped up on his knees, until it hits him, and the whole Just shut up and go to sleep idea flies out the window.

“So that happened, then.” He whispers into the room. It’s the kind of bedroom you see in those ‘Dream House’ magazines; cream carpet of thick pile that’s deep enough to sink your feet into, ivory painted walls with beech wood skirting boards that matches the bedframe and on the wall to his right is a large, rectangular window that’s flooding in all the light, and the view is sort of wonderful (and Harry failed his art classes).

Harry looks back to Louis next to him, and he thinks they fell asleep curled up last night so one of them is a restless sleeper. Louis’s hair is tousled from sleep and standing up in different ways, nose buried in his pillow, and Harry can freely admit he’s beautiful, fucking stunning, so he stares.

“Fuck off and stop looking at me like that.” Says Louis, and Harry nearly drops off the bed because he didn’t know Louis was awake. He feels a bit like he’s in some terrible film where the girl gazes adoringly at the object of his affections, but Harry is a man with self pride, so he rolls out of bed and sets about finding his scattered clothes.
He’s walking gingerly and probably waddling, but Louis doesn’t mention it. Actually, when Harry’s got all his clothes on again, Louis’s fast asleep.

“Terrible.” Harry says, and lets himself out the room.

Of course, he could leave now, but that makes the whole thing kind of one night stand-ish and that would give off the wrong impression. So, in lieu of that, Harry chooses to poke about the fridge, rifle in cupboards and see what there is in Louis’s kitchen that can actually be used in making food instead of tea.

“We so almost had kitchen sex.” He sighs mournfully, looking at the island counter, and shakes his head. There’s a small wireless radio on one of the counters, and Harry switches it on. It’s tuned to some station playing (shitty) pop songs by people Harry doesn’t know, so he fiddles around with the dial until he reaches one that doesn’t seem all too bad.

Destiny he thinks, grabbing the ingredients out the cupboard, and begins mixing, singing along to the song on the radio, spinning around with a mixing bowl in his arms.
It’s 07:37, apparently, and he’s really a lot too happy for this to be the morning.
Pouring the first of the batter into the frying pan, Harry takes the wooden spoon out of the bowl, and because he’s a secret child, licks it clean before using it as a microphone.

“Oh, your hair is beautiful, oh, tonight-”

“Morning.” Says a voice right by his ear, and Harry jumps enough that he nearly drops the spoon (reflexes, though, keep it in his hand).

“Morning.” He replies, as normally as he can. Louis’s got on an oversized navy t-shirt with little anchors over it, and sweats, and Harry wants to know how many people actually see him like this, because he doesn’t think it’s many.

“What are you doing?” Asks Louis curiously, and Harry raises an eyebrow because he thought it was pretty self explanatory.

“Pancakes,” He says, pointing the spoon towards the frying pan, “And Blondie.” Pointing it towards the radio.

“Ah, I should’ve guessed.” Louis nods, serious expression on face, looking past Harry to sniff hungrily at the food.

Harry keeps the radio as he cooks, putting the pancakes on a plate in the oven on a low temperature to stop them going cold, and Louis sets out cutlery for them both on the island counter and another plate.

“This is likely the most cooking that’s ever been done in this kitchen.”  Louis says, considering with his head tilted to the side, and Harry chuckles, flipping the last pancake over and taking Louis’s hand, lifting their arms and twirling Louis around.

“Unless, of course, you count tea.” Harry offers, but Louis smiles crookedly and curls his arms around Harry’s waist, leaning up to speak softly in his ear.

“I only make tea for the pretty boys.”

“Should I feel valued?” Harry asks, and Louis laughs, standing up on his toes to peck him softly on the lips.

“Harry.” He says, and Harry squints in confusion.

“Yeah?”

“The pancake is on fire.”

After the chorus of ‘shit shit fuck this wasn’t supposed to happen I swear for God’s sake’, the fire is put out through Louis’s useful input of a cupful of water over the frying pan.

“Well, that’s one way of doing it, I guess.” Harry says, coughing on the smoke, and Louis takes the plate of pancakes out the oven, shifting half on to the other plate and drizzling lemon juice and sprinkling sugar over them.

“You mean you don’t use maple syrup?” Asks Harry, decorating his top one with a very bad picture of a smiling face that kind of looks like it’s being forced to smile through tears.

“There’s flour on your nose.” Louis tells him instead of giving a proper answer.

“It’s a fashion.” Harry replies.

As they eat, the radio plays quietly in the background (forgotten, Harry thinks, through the unwanted drama of burning pancakes). The presenter is saying something about texting in for announcements and reads out a few before the opening bars of the next song starts playing.

“Oh.” He goes, involuntarily, and Louis looks at him sideways.

“What’s wrong?” Asks Louis, tapping Harry’s calf with his foot and forking another bite of pancake into his mouth.

“Don’t you remember the song?” Harry knows you shouldn’t really answer a question with another question, but Zayn has brought him up to be an awkward little shit and he likes to live up to that reputation.

“Should I?” Well, Louis doesn’t have to do the same. Harry feels like this entire conversation is held entirely through questions. Quietly, and ignoring Louis’s suspicious looks, he waits until the chorus starts until he speaks again.

“If you love me, won’t you let me know?” He sings, aiming for loud, slurred, and horribly off tune. Realization spreads across Louis’s face with the speed of a sandstorm, and he begins laughing again, hand holding his fork shaking too much to reach it to his mouth.

“Was a long and dark December, when the banks became cathedrals and-”

“Stop, Harry, please.” Louis begs, wheezing, and Harry takes pity and stops his best impression at drunken singing. But God, if that’s how he really sounded that night he doesn’t wonder that Louis ran for the hills.

As Harry slides the plates and cutlery in the dishwasher, Louis switches the radio back to the station it was on originally, telling Harry that his music taste is perfectly acceptable, but as Harry straightens up, Louis murmurs into his ear “Won’t you let me know?”

Really, Harry insists, he’s not falling. That isn’t what he does. They haven’t even been a couple (if that’s what they are, but he has his doubts) for a full day. You don’t love people that quickly, he tells himself, and most of his mind agrees except that small voice at the back who says that Harry’s been falling for a lot longer than a day.

*

Louis’s waiting for Harry when he walks into the garage on the Thursday, and that’s strange because they established that if Louis was flying over it would be for the race only. Not that he minds, obviously, because he can’t really stop the smile stretching his face.

“You’re gone in the head, Harry.” Zayn mutters next to him, and Harry puts an arm around his shoulders and squeezes, blinking pitifully at him.

“Are you sad you’re not my favourite anymore, Zayn?” He asks, and Zayn tries to squirm free from Harry’s grip.

“I don’t want to be your favourite, you clingy bastard.” Says Zayn, pulling his hand off him eventually and loping off, most probably to find someone he could talk to without having to deal with the turbulent times of Harry Styles, racer extraordinaire.

“You came early.” Harry says when he’s managed to cross the room in a roundabout style without looking like he was heading deliberately for Louis.

“I, young Harry, never come early.” Replies Louis, raising his eyebrows, and Harry groans and slaps a hand over his eyes.

“Was that really necessary?”

Louis just smirks, the self satisfied prick, and Harry wants to take his hand or something but they’re in a room full of people so, no.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?” Asks Louis quietly with a small smile, and Harry shouldn’t have to answer because Louis already knows, but he sort of wants to.

“Happier than if I’d been gifted all the awards in the world.” He says as seriously as he can manage, and Louis’s eyes are bright blue like no colour you can find.

“Exactly as you should feel.” Louis asserts, nodding, then looking around the garage and sighing softly.

“Where’d your smile go, Princess?” He questions, and mimicking Louis when he sticks his tongue out at him.

“You got the fan signings today?”

Harry nods and combs his fingers through his fringe before shaking his whole hair out.

“You do that when you’re nervous.” Louis says, and then looks down at himself as though that wasn’t really supposed to slip out (but it did).

“Do what?”

“Play with your hair, genius.”

“You do wound me.” Harry says, clutching at his heart in exaggerated offense. “You stab my heart with your cruel, cruel words.”

“Harry, your heart is on the other side.” Louis tells him, lifting up Harry’s fingers and moving them slightly off centre to the left. “Feel your heartbeat now?”

“Racer, not a scientist.” Harry points out, and then one of the mechanics wants to talk to him about one of the fittings on the car, and when that conversation is over Simon has some news about upcoming promotion days and by that time, the gates have opened to admit the fans.

“’m sorry.” He says to Louis, who’s hiding out in the hidden part of their garage because you know, he’s not really supposed to be here at all.

“It’s okay.” Louis says like it’s not really okay at all, and Harry goes to the signing with a frown on his face and nearly pokes himself in the eye with the lid of the marker pen.

By the end of the weekend, Harry’s back in the lead of the championship, and he thinks that has more to do with his self motivation than Louis. Naturally.

Although, Louis turns up to Harry’s next race, and the next, and Harry’s kind of unofficially moved into Louis’s flat, but that’s all sideline from the racing. The racing, Harry believes, is purely his own. It’s just, he’s happier now; really, really, happy, almost blissful, and that might make him a better driver. He doesn’t know, because he never studied psychology, but if it is it’s showing. Simon is enthralled, and Michael is disconsolate because he believes his championship hopes have just flown out the window and Zayn. Well, Zayn is suspicious, but he’s a naturally reticent person with an alarming cynical mind.

Zayn, 08:32

something u wanna tell me, harry

To: Zayn, 09:13

Not really. What did you have in mind?

Zayn, 09:16

i think ur not telling me something
believe me i know these things, harry

To: Zayn, 09:17

I slept with Perrie.

Zayn, 09:19

i need new friends
ur a prick

Harry can put him off as well as his meagre acting abilities will let him, but he’s going to sniff them out soon. Well, Harry doesn’t really understand why they’re hiding at all (he thinks Louis explained it, but he was kind of half asleep and he’s found it’s surprisingly easy to convince people you’re listening if you hum occasionally).
Or at least, he didn’t understand until they had a PR day at the technology centre, and there were a few extra reporters poking about here and there than normal but they put that down to Harry’s sudden rise in profile.
When Harry stood up to answer questions, he was suddenly barraged with questions on his love life, especially regarding Louis Tomlinson, and he was reminded of the morning in Homles Chapel where there was a small sea of them waiting on his doorstep so they could wait for his word.

“Quiet, quiet.” Calls out Simon from somewhere to Harry’s right, and Harry praises the stars that Simon’s voice is so automatically authoritarian because he doubts many people have such instant control over the room.

Harry motions to one of the men in the crowd, who’s purple and white striped shirt isn’t really doing him any favours but at least it makes him stand out.

“Harry, do you have any plans to leave the team in the near future- or the sport?” Well that was unexpected Harry thinks, blinking rapidly and trying to find a way to answer that question that doesn’t involve the phrase ‘fucking stupid’.

“Uh, no, I don’t have any plans like that.” He says, coughing and then forcing a laugh. If the tension in this room mounts much more, Harry has an idea that you’d be able to cut it with a butter knife. In the crowd, he spots Liam Payne from the BBC, and gestures to him with a smile because Liam will actually ask him questions about sport, which is why he’s his favourite member of the media.

“Who do you think is your biggest competition this year, and who do you think could be a rising star?”

Thank you, Liam Payne.

“This year, I’d still have to say Niall Horan,” he starts, searching out Liam’s eyes in the crowd, “And for rising star... Gotta go with Michael, here, haven’t we?”

“Oh yes, we have!” Calls Michael from his seat, leaning forward to air high-five Harry.

The next choice in reporter isn’t so great. It’s a petite ice blonde with stiletto heels and Harry should’ve really guessed she’s not a Formula One reporter but who can begrudge him his small piece of hope.

“What can you tell us about the increasing rumours that you and Louis Tomlinson are a couple?”

Harry laughs for a second to make it believable, before going on to reassure the woman that he and Louis are close friends. He specifically omits the part where he says there’s no romantic connection, because Harry Styles is not a liar and he won’t give in to that.

“Harry! Why do you think there’s such a big fuss about you two?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know- must be our unbelievable good looks.” That raises a laugh, and Harry hopes he can bluff his way out of this entire interview.

“Do you think there’s a possibility for the two of you in the future?”

“I don’t know, is there?” He asks back, and he thinks if he has to cope with this much more his head might explode. The paparazzi are scribbling down everything he says as he speaks, and Harry wonders why this means so much to them when it’s not even their relationship.

“Are you gay?” Shouts out someone from the back, and Harry decides not to answer that.

“Have you ever had sex with a man?” Harry thinks it’s probably a good idea to ignore that too.

The babble of noise has increased in volume steadily since the first question about him and Louis, and it’s almost deafening now, people tripping over their words in their hurry to ask him their question.

“I, uh, think that’s it for the questions today.” Harry says, stepping back to his seat and sinking in to it thankfully. And this is what the questions are like when nobody is even sure they’re a couple.

“You’re all fucking stupid! They’re not a couple!” Someone says loudly, and then there’s a figurative battle of words and Harry wants this day to be over so he can go home.

“Long day?” Asks Louis when Harry walks in, and Harry produces some kind of groan that hopefully counts as a response before pulling out a box of cupcakes he bought from the shop on the way back.

“Nick is going to kill you.” Louis says to him, but he’s eyeing them himself.

“I’ll die happy.” Harry decides, pushing the box towards Louis, who looks at them for a split second before choosing one with pink icing which he begins licking off.

“No, say it’s not true.” Pleads Harry, watching Louis who stops mid action.

“Say what’s not true?”

“That you- eat the icing and the cake separate.”

Louis smiles at Harry, who’s holding a half eaten cupcake in his hand, and carries on licking off the icing.

“I can eat my cupcakes how I want, hotshot.” He says haughtily, and Harry sighs deeply, taking another bite of cupcake.

“Maybe I can try and cure you.” He says hopefully, but Louis fixes him with a stare that withers the hope from inside his very soul.

“Try and I’ll break your legs, strap you to a table and push you in a river.”

“I’m dating a psychopath.” Harry says to the remainder of the cupcake, and Louis laughs from across the kitchen.

Of course, Harry thinks that the most note-worthy part of that day was that they almost had kitchen sex (with the almost being Louis changing his mind split second and dragging Harry to the living room, because the fact that they sit there is obviously not as much of a deterrent as to where they eat).

Aside from the obvious issues of engaging in a covert relationship, Harry thinks he’s doing pretty well. He’s keeping up with his training, he’s driving better than he was this time last year, and his (secret) boyfriend flies out with him to see him race.
Yeah, Harry feels pretty good about all that.

When he calls his mum after a day of photoshoots and filming for adverts, she thinks she’s noticed a difference.

“You sound happy today.” She tells him, and Harry wants to tell her. He wants to tell her everything, suddenly, because this is his mum and he shouldn’t have to lie, but doesn’t.

“I’m leading the championship, mum. Of course I’m happy.”

His mum makes a noise on the other end of the line like she disagrees, and Harry wills her not to looks too deep because if anyone knows him far too well, it’s his mum.

“You still know I’m here if you need me, right? Even when you’re off flying the world?”

“Mum.” He says, because this conversation really should not be happening.

“You’ve grown up too fast.” His mum says, and Harry wonders if this is true. It’s not like he hated his childhood; but he was racing for most of it, never went to parties because there was always something else. That’s just how it is with racing; you pour yourself into it and everything else takes the backseat.

“I made it, though. Didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.” She replies, laughing, but her laugh sounds a little sad and faraway. “Bye, Harry.”

“Bye, mum.”

When they’re falling asleep later that night, Harry breathing into Louis’s neck (he smells like coconut shower gel, that vague Louis smell that’s so many different things at once and sex, and Harry thinks he could be drunk on it), Louis twists around so they’re face to face.

“You miss her.” He says, and it sounds like a sudden accusation.

“What?”

“Your mum. You miss her.”

“Oh.” Harry replies, because he doesn’t really know how to answer something like that. Louis, though, clearly has an idea of how he wants this conversation to go.

“You should go home more often.” Presses Louis, and Harry swiftly understands what Louis is trying to infer without actually saying it.

“You know I would rather be here than anywhere else, right?” His mind feels like it’s having a lot of trouble trying to both keep awake and process this entire discussion, and he wishes Louis had brought it up in the morning when his thoughts aren’t blown circuits.

“I just, I don’t want to be keeping you from your family.” Louis says, and he won’t meet Harry’s eyes.

“You’re part of my family.” Harry tells him, fiercely, and Louis looks up at that.

“When I do go back home, Louis, you’re coming with me.”

He thinks Louis’s answering kiss might be enough to take that as a yes, or at least hope for a yes, and Harry sinks in to sleep with the satisfied mind of one who has done something worthwhile.

*

By the time Harry’s third to last race has come about, Louis’s been summoned to America to promote the film he’d been filming earlier in the year.

“What’s it about?” Harry asked him, before he went, and Louis grimaced.

“Really? You don’t think I’ll hear this question enough on chat shows?”

Harry pulled Louis towards him on the sofa that Harry was still a little afraid of sitting on, but Louis flat out laughed at him when Harry said he’d rather stay sitting on the floor so he’s making the best of a bad set of options. Placing Louis down between Harry’s legs, he leans Louis back until he’s resting on Harry, Louis’s head on Harry’s chest.

“It’s different with me, because I’m much more important.”

Louis snorts, and Harry reaches a hand up to cover his face.

“Get off me.” Louis says, voice muffled by the palm of Harry’s hand and his own hands batting uselessly at Harry. Taking pity on him, Harry removes his hand cautiously, tilting his head down to try his best to get a look at Louis.

“That’s what you get for insulting my superiority.”

“Do you want me to tell you or not?”

Stifling his inner response of Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Harry shuffles himself so he’s more comfortable and proceeds to listen with as much devotion as he can.

“It’s basically a film that deals with the issues of being gay in the 1960’s, and how hard that time was. Well, obviously, there’s a more prominent story going on, but yeah, that’s the backstory. I’m this closeted guy who falls in love with another closeted guy in America and then it’s good until someone finds out and then there’s drama because people were really shocked by that kind of thing and we leave the country and sail to England and try to live through discrimination, and. Yeah, they go back to America in the end, like years on, and it shows how much things changed.”

“You really need to work on your explanations.” Harry says severely, and Louis twists around and sticks out his tongue.

“Maybe I had to strip it down for your poor mind.” He replies, raised eyebrows, and Harry leans forward to kiss his cheek.

“I’ll let you tell yourself that, sunshine.” As Louis glares at him for Harry’s continuing to shower him with unwanted nicknames, Harry disentangles himself from Louis and moves from the sofa, citing his need to probably go train before Nick finds out and finds the best, slowest and most painful way to kill him.

“I wish him luck.” Murmurs Louis, reaching for his copy of The Great Gatsby and smiling at Harry when Harry flips him off.

*

So when Harry’s finished his warm up lap on the third to last race of this season, sitting on pole and also sitting at the top of the championship standings, he’s still feeling pretty good even though Louis’s not here to see him race. He’d got a text from him earlier though, promising to watch it on TV if he could, and Harry smiled at the phone screen for about 30 seconds until another text came through from Louis, telling Harry to stop smiling.
Harry thinks he surrounds himself with people who may possibly have psychic abilities.

The low rumble of his engine, and everyone else’s engine, is all he can hear, and the lights flash on, red. Here goes, Harry thinks, and slams his foot down as soon as they flicker to green.
It’s not the best start he’s ever had, but it’s not the worst either, not by a long shot, so Harry’s okay with that. What isn’t so good is that Horan’s right up his backside, looking for a way to overtake, and Harry wonders if maybe he can outstrip him.
He can’t. That he has a faster car is acknowledged, yes, but Horan’s close enough that Harry is unwillingly giving him a tow, and Harry is reminded of actually why he dislikes him so much. It’s because he really is an Irish bastard.

“I can’t lose him.” He tells Zayn over the radio after a while of defending himself against Horan’s overtaking manoeuvres, and he can almost sense the sigh that Zayn lets out.

“Okay, we’ll bring you in this lap.”

Unfortunately for them, Horan also comes in this lap, and then it’s a battle of the pitstops that Harry wins by a fraction and nearly loses on the corner.

“Careful, Harry.” Cautions Zayn, and Harry remembers just in time that sometimes they play clips of the radio messages and ‘Shut your fucking face, Malik, you goddamned prick’ is not really the sort of reply that would help his image.

“Will do.” He grits out instead, and he just knows that Horan is within a second of him. If we get to the DRS zone we’ll lose it Harry thinks in some trepidation, and speeds up as much as he can, taking the corners faster and braking later.

“What are you doing?”Hisses Zayn’s voice, and Harry thinks of how when his first radio messages used to come through, he’d jump in his seat because it felt like there was some malevolent, disembodied voice floating around him.

“Losing him.” Harry replies, nearly locking up on the corner, and he wonders if Louis’s watching, and he redoubles his desire to lose Horan.
In the next few laps, Harry begins to pull away, and every time they reach the zone Horan’s just not close enough to overtake him. C’mon this isn’t hard you can keep this up Harry tells himself, but he’s been racing in high gears for so long that his arms are starting to ache and it’s not a soft ache either.

“He’s four seconds behind now Harry, you can slow down.” Zayn tells him, but Harry doesn’t think he could slow down now if he tried.

“He’ll catch us up again if I slow down.” He says, and there’s no reply so he guesses Zayn must’ve seen the logic in that. So much for being a stupid bastard after all.

There are fourteen laps left, and Harry’s pitted twice and he’s still in the lead. If he can maintain this win, he thinks this could possibly be one of his best races, and he wishes again that Louis was here to watch him. He’d have liked to have seen him after the race, bent down to hug him with champagne still in his hair, but that’s not important right now. What is important is winning.

Except, his arms are starting to hurt more, and it’s almost painful now to turn the wheel.

“Harry, slow down.” Zayn says again, and Harry thinks maybe he should listen to him.

“I don’t think I can.” He replies carefully, taking another corner. Horan’s still an ever present blot on the view in his wing mirrors, and Harry wonders if his arms could become stiff enough that he won’t be able to move them for another week.

“What do you mean?”

“If I slow down, we could lose the place. So, I’m not slowing down.” He doesn’t mention the part where his arms have begun to hurt whenever he moves them.

Thirteen laps to go. Lucky number thirteen.

“If you go any faster you’ll drive right out of the circuit.” Mutter Zayn over the radio, and Harry chuckles at the image.

Harry’s earlier though of knowing a psychic person is proved correct later that lap.

There’s a corner, and Harry takes it fast, too fast, and is sent hurtling across a gravel trap, folding his arms across his chest like they teach you but you never expect to use because you won’t crash, and something hits the side of his head and it’s black.

“Harry?” Comes Zayn’s voice frantically in his radio, but Harry doesn’t hear it, and he doesn’t see the men lifting him out the car, and doesn’t feel it when he’s placed on a stretcher and taken off track.
He doesn’t even know when he’s airlifted to hospital by helicopter, or when he lands, or when he’s taken in for surgery, and not even after that when he’s lying in a private hospital room.
You see, all Harry knows is the black.

*

Louis

Despite his promise, Louis hadn’t been able to watch Harry’s race. He’d been called out to do a magazine interview at the last moment, one of those ones that take place in hotels and the journalist takes down everything you say.

Halfway through, the question Louis’s been expecting all along pops up.

“So, there’s been a lot of speculation about your private life in the papers recently- care to comment on that?”

You’re a nosy prick for a living, how about you comment on that Louis thinks, but doesn’t say (his agent and publicist would probably sink down through the floor, grab his ankle on the way down and burn his soul in the fires of Hell).

“I like to keep my private life private, thanks.” He says tightly, and the smile’s dropped right off his face. The reporter doesn’t seem to care, however, pressing forward again, and Louis wonders how long this will take. Checking his watch surreptitiously, he sees that Harry’s race should’ve just ended, and he wondered if he won. He hopes so, because Harry started on pole and Louis knows that he’s so close to his second championship.

“What about racing driver Harry Styles? There’s been a lot said about whether you two are hiding something.” Louis thinks sometimes that the paparazzi want him and Harry to be together more than they want to be together, and usually that would make him laugh but he’s tired today, burnt right out, and all he wants is to go back to his hotel and find his recording of Harry’s race and watch it in peace.

“People talk a lot about things they don’t know about.” He says cryptically, and the reporter senses that that’s the end of that particular conversation.

When the interview closes up and they’ve taken a few photos of Louis to put with the article, he looks at his watch again and frowns. By the time it takes to get back to the hotel, the race will be long finished and he’s going to be late in congratulating Harry.
If he didn’t love his job so much, aside from all the PR, he’d quit and go work in an office.

Stumbling through the door of his hotel with his schedule for tomorrow clamped in his mouth, his coat in one hand and his keycard in the other, he sinks onto the bed and wonders if he could fall asleep right here.
You’re forgetting something his mind warns him, and Louis rubs a hand over his eyes. Really, he’d love nothing more than to just drift into sleep right here, but it probably wouldn’t be all that restful anyway.

Reaching over for the remote, he pauses for a moment in consideration and snatches his personal phone over too. He took his work mobile out with him today, because if receives gets a message and can’t answer it immediately he gets really uncomfortable. So, hence the leaving of it in the hotel room.

Switching the TV on and flicking to the recordings (the beauty of staying in high class hotels, he supposes, is that it’s like living at home, but not), he presses play on the race and begins to fast forward through all the commentary. Not that he has any specific dislike towards the presenters; it’s just that he really kind of wants to go to bed. He presses play again when Harry’s face pops up on screen, and it’s some pre-recorded clip of an interview. Still, Louis watches it anyway because it’s Harry, and there’s no one here to judge him. What Louis really admires about Harry, he thinks, is that he’s exactly the same on camera as he is off. Himself, he puts all his shields up, and it shows when he sees pictures of himself. The one they got of him and Harry that day, that was a one off, a slip up, but watching Harry here it’s like the same person. Same slow voice (see, the thing with Harry is, it takes him so long to get all his words out), same smile, same same same.

After Harry’s interview finishes, Louis goes back to fast forwarding, skipping through all the build up and reaching the start of the race. He’s got his eyes on Harry’s car (so does the commentator, apparently; “We can see Styles waiting, a lot depends on his start) and he sees his car lurch forward, still in the lead, and the second place car (Horan, Harry’s told him, although he usually calls him ‘That Irish Bastard’) do the same, but undeniably better.

“C’mon, Harry.” Louis murmurs, staring intently at the television, before sitting up and remembering that this race is recorded and everything he’s watching has already happened.

It’s tight, Louis can see, even to his pathetically untrained eye. The other car is constantly swerving around Harry, attempting overtake after overtake, and Louis drums his fingers on his thigh.

At about lap eighteen, Louis watches Harry pull into the pitlane, but Horan follows straight in. Louis’s seen Harry’s team at work, and he knows they’re fast, but so is the other crew and to him, Harry only just edges it out on time.

I should check my phone, he thinks suddenly, but he doesn’t know, really, if he should. There’s doubtless to be messages from Harry whether he won or lost, and Louis knows he’s watching a recording but, still. He wants to see Harry cross the line, not just read it on a phone screen. Resolutely, he puts the phone back down on the duvet and concentrates on watching the race just in time to see Harry take the corner wide.

He thinks Harry begins to speed up on this lap, because the times under the list of names show Harry pulling ahead. Well done, hotshot.

A recording image comes up telling the viewers it’s Harry’s radio.

“What are you doing?” Asks Zayn’s voice, and it sounds different on television.

“Losing him.” Replies Harry’s voice, distorted through radio interference and speed.

Louis has an idea that Zayn isn’t too happy with what Harry’s doing, but personally Louis thinks Harry would carry on doing what he’s doing whether he had Zayn’s approval or not.

For a while, Louis sits cross legged on his bed and watches the race, fingers tapping out the same pattern over and over on his race. He watches with the absorption of someone who’s doing their best to understand something very new, and he thought he might be at better grips with it since he’s been in attendance at most races this season, but seemingly not.

Just over halfway through, one of the midfield cars runs right into the back of another, sending them both spinning off into the tyre wall. Louis flinches almost instinctively, because that’s got to seriously hurt, and then he watches one of them gesticulate angrily toward the other.

“There’ll be a penalty for that, I should think.” Comments on of the presenters, and Louis tries to will the camera to turn back to Harry. As if in accordance with his wishes, the screen shows Harry’s car again, now a full four seconds ahead of Horan.

They play another radio clip, where Zayn asks Harry to slow down. Harry tells Zayn if he slows down, Horan will catch up, and one of the commentators jokes about how Harry could be finding himself in the doghouse if he isn’t careful.

“You’re a dick.” Louis tells the commentator, and in reply the guy points out how fast Harry took that corner.

“Amazing driving from Styles today, isn’t it?” He says, and Louis nods in approval.

“Sure, it’s amazing, but he’ll make a mistake if he doesn’t watch out.” Replies his counterpart, laughing.

“You’re a dick, too.” Says Louis, but the commentators begin talking about one of the overtakes in the midfield and the topic of Harry drops.

By the time it reaches thirteen laps to go, Louis’s almost achingly tired, rubbing at his right temple and stifling a yawn. It’s just gone midnight, according to his clock, and Louis wonders how tired he’ll be tomorrow because of this.

It’s become common knowledge between the presenters that this is some of the best driving skills Harry’s displayed, and any critics who say that Harry Styles won his championship purely through having the best car has been silenced.

“He shouldn’t be able to keep this up.” Says one of them (Louis’s forgotten which was the one to first say something).

About halfway through the lap, Louis looks down at his jeans and blinks heavily. Not much longer left, he thinks comfortingly, and then there’s a chorus of shouting coming from the television and Louis’s head snaps up, eyes wide, because that’s Harry’s car flying across the screen, Harry’s car that hits the barrier, and it’s Harry in the car who’s lying unmoving.

Louis thinks he may stop breathing for a second, or maybe time stands still.

“That was a big one.” States the one of the commentators, and Louis wonders how they find anything to say.

“He’s not moving.” Says the other in reply to an unasked question, and Louis’s fingers are still playing that pattern on his legs, but faster now.

He watches Harry be lifted out the car onto a stretcher, and put into an ambulance and driver away. The rest of the race carries on, subdued, Louis sitting cross legged on a hotel bed, heart in his mouth.

Niall Horan crosses the line in first, but there’s a noticeable lack of cheering from the stands.

“We’ve had word that Harry Styles is still unconscious and has been airlifted to hospital.” One of the presenters says gravely.

Louis looks down at his hands that are still now, and back towards the screen. He lifts the remote up firmly, turns the TV off, and runs to the bathroom before throwing up.

*

When Louis walks back into the main part of his hotel suite on shaky legs, he heads straight for his phone. He has to type in his password three times.

There’s a flood of messages waiting, from his sisters and his mum, from people he doesn’t even know.

‘Sorry to hear about the news. Will be thinking of friends and family.’ Says one. He’s not dead, though, Louis thinks, and then sits up straight as though stung.
Louis doesn’t know the news. He’s just watched a recording of the race.
He doesn’t know anything that’s happened in the hours since.

Sifting down through the messages, he finds a name that sticks out.

Harry, 15:42

They’re sending me out onto the grid now... Love you!

Louis’s almost sick again, because that’s just unfair, and it’s like rubbing salt on an open wound. There are more messages though, and not in Harry’s voice.

Harry. 17:03

hi, this is zayn. harry’s in hospital if u didn’t know, and he’s still unconscious. doctors say they won’t know how severe injury is until he wakes up.

The rest of the messages are the hospital address and directions of how to get there.

Louis stands up, pockets his phone and grabs his jacket before stepping outside his hotel room.

He calls his agent at the airport whilst he’s waiting for his plane, and he’s glad it’s such a godforsaken time because he really couldn’t cope with having to wear a smile as things stand.

“You’re where?” Lou asks, positively screaming at him by the end of the two word sentence, and Louis purses his lips.

“At the airport.”

“Why? You better have a good reason for this, Tomlinson, or I swear to-”

“Harry’s in hospital.” He says, and he calls on all his apparent acting ability to sound calm. He thinks it works, but Lou’s been his agent since he started and he never knows if he fools her or not anymore.
He hears Lou suck in a breath, and then expel it, and he thinks he has her attention.

“I’ll shift your appearances and interviews. The most I can get you is a month, okay?” She sounds as though she’s given up with him, because it’s her favourite thing to tell people what a bitch he is, but it’s times like these that Louis wants to jump down the phone line and kiss her on the cheek.

“I love you, Lou.” He says softly, and she sighs again.

“I don’t think I’m the one you should be saying that to.” Lou says, before hanging up on him.

I’m not in love. Louis shakes his head in visual denial, because it’s not true. They haven’t even known each other that long. It’s probably an emotional impossibility for Louis to love him.
Why else are you boarding a plane in the middle of the night to see him? Asks a voice in his mind, the side of his thoughts that rarely speaks up, and Louis tries to squash it.

“I’m too tired for this.” He tells the woman selling tickets, who promptly drops her book in shock.

On the plane over to Abu Dhabi, Louis has a lot of time for thinking. It’s a 24 hour flight, and he could scream with how long it’s taking, holding his phone in restless hands and checking it (pointlessly) even when he knows there’s been no vibrations to miss.

“Excuse me, are you Louis Tomlinson?” Asks this woman across the aisle from him, blonde hair in wild ringlets. She had the kind of southern American accent you hear on cartoon shows, and she looked almost as tired as Louis felt.
Almost.

“Yeah, I am.” He says, because he doesn’t think he has the energy to try and deny it today. For a brief few seconds, he wonders how she knew, because his face is wan and drawn and he’s been looking down at his phone ever since he got on the plane- which was, he sees, unlocking it to check the time, three hours ago.

“I heard your friend’s in hospital.” The woman says, nodding earnestly, and Louis wants to know when she can ask for the autograph, or the picture, and he can go back to staring at the phone as if by will alone it will spring to life. “Is he any better? Harry?”

“I- uh, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Louis replies, and the woman makes a sympathetic sort of clucking sound before looking down at her nails.

“Once I lost someone I loved in a car crash.” She reveals, tapping the fingers of her left hand on top of those of the right. “But he didn’t know.”

“Oh.” Louis replies, because he doesn’t really know what you say to that because really, the second sentence doesn’t make sense to him. What didn’t he know?
He could probably work it out if he’d had some sleep, and maybe wasn’t constantly on the verge of throwing up again or even worse, crying, but that’s not how life is playing right now.

“So, when you see him, just tell him.”

“I will.” Murmurs Louis, and the woman turns back to her book. They don’t speak again for the rest of the flight, because Louis’s still staring at his phone and trying to somehow telepathically communicate with Harry, and he thinks the woman is lost in her own thoughts because Louis doesn’t see her turn many pages.

“Goodbye.” Says Louis as they walk off the plane, legs stiff after sitting so long and minds slow with lack of stimulation.

“You remember what I said, right? And take care.”  With that, she walks off, carrying a small handbag, and Louis rubs the heel of his hand against his eyes. He thinks this must be the second morning since he last slept, properly slept (not dozes on an airplane or naps between interviews) and that’s probably not a good sign. Louis Tomlinson, passes out from fatigue he thinks, and he can see the headlines in his mind’s eye.

He signals a taxi, giving directions to the hospital, and leans back into his seat. For the duration of the journey, he’s staring out the window, but he’s not seeing anything except the flickering image of the crash, Harry’s body propelled forward like a ragdoll and lying still, and Louis feels his heart pick up speed again.

When they reach the hospital, Louis realises suddenly he doesn’t even know what floor Harry is on.

“I’m here to see Harry Styles.” He says to the man at reception, because Louis doesn’t even know what language they speak in Abu Dhabi but he hopes this guy knows English.

“Name, please.”

“Louis Tomlinson.” If there’s any recognition, the man doesn’t showing, merely reaching for a list and scanning the names.

“Floor three, room sixteen.” The man tells him, and Louis wants to ask him if he knows anything about Harry’s status but he walks to the lifts instead.

There’s a group of people in there with him, and Louis lowers his head, staring at the floor. He clenches and unclenches his fists a few times for lack of anything better to do, feeling the empty stares of everyone else in this carriage float over him.

When the doors open on floor three onto white linoleum and robin egg blue walls, Louis walks each step carefully, counting the breaths he takes until he’s standing in front of the door with a little square on it reading ‘16’.

A man in a wheelchair is wheeled past by a male nurse, muttering in a language Louis doesn’t understand, and he realises he’s been standing here blankly. Just knock on the door he tells himself, and nearly says it out loud. His heart is hammering for no apparent reason at all, and Louis remembers everything he’s seen on hospital programmes, the heart monitors and the blood and the pale faces and the shouting and he’s going to be sick again, he can feel it, but this isn’t some actor on a programme, this is Harry, it’s Harry lying in there and that’s not scary, is it?

Reaching a fist up, Louis taps gently on the door, too gently, he thinks, for anyone to hear it, but it opens anyway.

“Louis.” Says Zayn, and Louis looks behind him to see the rest of the room.

It’s small and square with white walls and white floor, but Louis doesn’t notice that until later. In the middle of the room, there’s a hospital bed; one of the wheeled ones with thin mattresses and metal frames. Lying on the bed is Harry, half covered by a blanket (almost as though he’d kicked it off in the night, but Louis knows that isn’t true) and wearing a hospital gown. He’s hooked up to a heart monitor that’s providing a steady beat, loud in the silence of too many thoughts. There’s a couple of chairs to the side of the bed, and Louis wonders how long Zayn’s been here, alone, before his mind slides to more important things.

“How is he?”

Zayn grimaces, throwing a glance back over his shoulder, and shakes his head slowly.

“They won’t know until wakes up. If he wakes up.” Zayn tags the last bit on the end, and Louis feels the ground sway beneath him and is unreasonably furious at his words.

“When he wakes up. When.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Louis follows Zayn into room sixteen that’s like a bubble of white, sitting down on the edge of one of the chairs. It’s hard backed and wooden, and not in any way comfortable, but Louis thinks this might be better, constantly reminded that this isn’t going to be easy.

“Do you, uh, just-”

“’pparently it helps him to hear voices.”

Clearing his throat, Louis looks at Harry’s form, still enough to create the illusion of sleep. There aren’t even any marks on him, no bruises or cuts save the stitched up scar that’s healing on the left side of Harry’s head, just above the temple.
He realises that he has nothing to say.

“Hi, Harry.” Louis says softly, the monitor still a beeping background noise. “How you doing?”

Nothing, no flutter of the eyelashes or the movement of a hand. That’s what would happen on television, or in films, but it’s not happening now. Not today, not for him.

“How’d it happen?” Louis asks Zayn, then, because his mind is blank of things to say. It’s like there’s his Harry, the one who smiles and laughs and kisses and comments on the way Louis eats cupcakes and the shirts he wears, and then there’s this Harry, who’s motionless and expressionless and resolutely silent.

“We don’t know, really. Think he lost control of the car on the corner, and when he hit the barrier some of the suspension snapped off and hit him.”

“What a twat.” Whispers Louis, looking back at Harry. He still can’t link them up somehow, how his Harry came to be here, but he knows it happens because the proof is lying in front of him.

Louis spends the first day at the hospital in an uncomfortable chair by Harry’s bedside, empty minded with too many thoughts, as the steady noise of a mechanical heartbeat works it’s way into familiarity.

The second day, Louis wakes in the same chair, by the same bedside, and it’s 4:28 AM. Zayn’s snoring softly next to him, and Harry, as ever, is the same. For a brief moment, in that time between awake and asleep, Louis hoped to himself that he’d been woken by some movement of Harry’s, some sign to him. Obviously, it wasn’t to be, and Louis closed his eyes and drifted back into sleep.
When he next wakes, it’s 11:02 AM, and Louis’s back is stiff with the long night. He’s still tired, because he hasn’t yet worked off his jet lag (or fatigue), but he’s willing to forgo that in exchange for a cup of coffee from the cafe the floor below.

Settling back down, paper cup steaming in his hands, Louis looks at Harry as though he was seeing him all over again. He looked different today, to Louis, in the light of a new day and a night of sleep.

“Hello again.” Louis says, and this time around, Harry’s silence doesn’t feel like foreboding. It feels instead as though Louis’s just not hearing his voice out loud, but he can imagine Harry’s replies in his head (he knows him well enough by now, he hopes).

“I’ve got coffee today. Hope you don’t mind my breaking from the tea tradition.” Taking a sip of the said tea, Louis scrunches up his nose and sighs deeply as the warmth spreads down to his stomach before reaching out to the rest of his body.

“Sorry I can’t give you any. The doctors’ probably won’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“What’s not a very good idea?” Asks someone, and Louis jumps violently in his side, coffee sloshing inside his cup (but, seeing as he’s got such incredibly skilled reflexes, loses none of it).

“Huh?” He replies, intelligently, and the man at the door steps in further, walking towards Louis. He’s got an accent, but his English seems to be perfect enough to be almost native, and for that Louis can only be grateful.

“Doctor El-Amin. I’ve been looking after Harry.”

“Oh.” Louis says, faintly, taking the doctor’s outstretched hand and shaking it limply. Pull yourself together he commands himself, wrapping his hands more firmly around the paper cup.

“So what was the bad idea?”

“Just, uh, nothing. Don’t worry.” Louis says, flustered, because he has no idea what do say in this situation and honestly, he’s never felt so more out of his depth.
Being with Harry, he can do.
Falling, irresolutely falling for Harry, he can do.
Losing Harry, he can’t.

“I’m just here to check up on him.” Dr El-Amin tells him, smiling, and Louis nods and shuffles back in his chair, watching as Harry has his pulse taken and responses checked.

Louis speaks up again as the doctor leaves the room with a friendly “I’ll be along again later”.

“When do you think he’ll wake up?” At least I sound like a fully functioning, capable adult this time.

“We do not know, I’m afraid. Head injuries are very different depending on each person and how serious the injuries themselves are. If he is to wake, we cannot tell until then how this will affect him.”

“Okay.” Louis murmurs, standing up to place his cup in the bin. He stands by the door for a while after, alone in the white room with the amplified beating of Harry’s heart telling Louis that he’s still here.
There’s no ‘if’ about it, he says to himself (almost brutally). He’ll wake up. He’ll definitely wake up.

The third day, Louis wakes with hair mussed by two nights in a hospital room chair and one on a plane, and the state his clothes are in has to be seen to be believed.

“Look what shirt I wore, Harry.” He tells the man on the bed, who’s chest rises and falls with each breath; such a small movement Louis never noticed it until he looked for it. “It’s the one with the happy clouds.”

Louis thinks if Harry was here, he’d be laughing at him.
For some reason, the thought makes Louis want to cry.

“I need to get out.” He mumbles, scribbling a quick note to Zayn saying he’s gone out.

Fuck. Louis, in his haste to get out the hotel, never even bought a change of clothes. Let’s just hope no one recognises me here.

As Louis steps outside the main doors to the hospital, with hair combed through by rushing fingers and shirt hurriedly smoothed down, it’s to a greeting of camera flashes and shouting.

“Louis!”

“How’s Harry?”

“Has he woken up?”

“Are you two dating?”

The last begins a storm of furious, eager questions regarding their relationship, and Louis decides that today is the day that he’s had enough. Pushing through the crowd of reporters who flock in on him with cameras and microphones, begging for his word, Louis thinks of Harry, lying immovable in a hospital bed in room sixteen, floor three, and then of these people, who don’t really care whether he wakes up or not but only who he kissed.
And for Louis, that’s enough to make him hate them.

“Did you two ever sleep together?” That one is enough to make Louis turn around, and he does so fast enough that most of them don’t recognise it and walk forward a few more steps.

“Harry Styles is lying up there.” He tells the journalist, a woman with hastily applied lipstick in bright pink. It’s smudged on her lower lip. “He’s not awake. We don’t know when he’ll wake up, and if all you want to know is whether we’re more than friends then I hope to God I never see you again.”

The woman is writing down everything he’s saying as though he speaks in gold.

Shaking his head, Louis walks away from the group who, luckily, don’t dare follow him. He walks until his feet hurt, walking in a straight line down tidy streets, and then he doesn’t know where he is anymore but there’s only one way back.

On his left side, across the road, is a stretch of shops, ordered and neat, and Louis think of what you see people do in films, and TV. Whenever you see people in hospital, they’re surrounded by practical flower displays, with more food than could feed an army, with piles of gifts and cards from people they’ve never spoken to in years.

Louis thinks of Harry’s empty hospital room with it’s drab walls, and his mouth straightens into a line.

He crosses the road with the intention of looking for a florist, but the fourth shop he looks in to catches his eye. It’s small, and cluttered with shelves that are in turn cluttered with oddments, the type you never go looking for but just find.

Louis thinks Harry is sort of like an oddment, so he goes in.

It’s darker in the shop than in the bright sun outside, and Louis squints for a second as his eyes adjust. He can’t see anyone here, not at the moment, so he wanders around, peering at the selection, sometimes lifting one up for a better look.
Nothing catches his eye that screams Harry, and Louis doesn’t feel that proud of his intuition.

There’s a voice behind him, and Louis jumps for the second time today, but this time he hasn’t got any coffee to worry about spilling.

“May I –ah- help you?”

“How did you know I was English?” Louis replies in confusion, because by all rights they should expect a local.

“I see your clothes. You have English look.” The man tells him, and Louis nods.

“I’m looking for something for someone.”

“A gift?”

Louis nods, coming out from behind the safety of the shelves. The shopkeeper is wearing the usual clothes of the people here, long and probably too warm for this weather, but at least he speaks English- albeit slowly and carefully.

“For someone I- someone I care very much about.” Choosing the option of It’s probably best he doesn’t know the real circumstances of your relationship because you never know when the paps will burst through the door and declare the biggest headline of this year, Louis walks towards the till where the man is shuffling about with his back to Louis.

“Chains. These show different virtues and good wishes.”

The shopkeeper has produced a slanted wooden stand, on which lie a row of necklaces. There’s about twenty in total, Louis thinks, either in gold or silver.
Louis thinks this is the kind of oddment that matches up to Harry.

“They’re beautiful.” He says to the man, leaning down to look closely at each one.

“For someone you love.” The shopkeeper emphasizes, and Louis feels his head swim. It’s a lot too early for love, he thinks, but he stays by the necklaces anyway.

There are almost too many designs, from stars to lilies, butterflies to intricate metalwork.

Breathing out heavily through pursed lips, Louis rubs the pads of his fingers over his temples. The shop smells of must and subtle spices, and how that came to be Louis will never know, but obviously he’s been buying the wrong type of air freshener all along.

Louis has a necklace like these, at home. It was a present from his mum when he got his first acting part; a bird in flight, the chain attached to the tip of it’s wings. He still has it, in a draw at home, and he wears it when he feels like he’s in need of some extra luck when trying for a part, or sometimes just to wear because he genuinely likes it.
He was wearing it when he first met Harry that night, Louis realises with a start.

“This one.” He tells the man, lifting the charm from the rest.

“Happiness, luck and peace.” Replies the shopkeeper, putting the necklace in a small bag as Louis hands over the change (despite his inability to bring clothes, he did remember his wallet).

The sun is too bright when he steps outside the shop, too overwhelming. On the walk back, organza bag in his pocket in case any of the paparazzi happen to notice him holding it, he wonders how Harry is, whether he woke up whilst Louis was out. Somehow, Louis hopes he’d know if Harry was awake, like he’d feel it.
If Harry was here, he’d tell Louis that he’s full of shit, and then pull him in to kiss him.

He’s right though, the press are still there, jostling each other at the doors of the hospital. Louis almost slips by them unnoticed, but it’s hard to remain inconspicuous with this kind of shirt.

“Where’ve you been, Louis?”

“Any change?”

Louis shuts the door before he can hear any more questions, and makes his way back to floor three, room sixteen.

He questions for a second whether the man at the desk will recognise him, but decides that in the end he doesn’t care.

When Louis walks back in to Harry’s room, Zayn’s sitting in the ‘other’ chair. He thinks he must’ve been speaking, because his mouth is half open, and he should walk out or something and give them some privacy, but he doesn’t.

“I’ve been out.” He announces instead, plumping back down in his chair. Louis doesn’t really know if he’s talking to Harry, Zayn or himself, but he doesn’t mind. “And I got you a present.”

That last is definitely to Harry.

Pulling the bag out of his pocket, he extricates the chain from inside and uncurls it, holding it out in front of him as if he expects Harry to wake up and take it from him.

“Where’d you get that?” Asks Zayn, reaching out his index finger to tilt the little charm towards him.

“Some shop. Didn’t look at the name, actually.”

Louis looks at Harry’s face for a while longer, necklace lying in his lap. Harry is pale, paler than normal, mouth parted and eyes closed. He could be sleeping he thinks, yet again, and lifts up the necklace.

“I got you a present.” He repeats, extending his own hand to open Harry’s fingers. When his hand lies palm up, Louis places the necklaces inside, wrapping the chain around Harry’s thumb so he won’t lose it when he wakes.

“It’s a crane.” Louis tells him. “An origami crane. It’s supposed to mean happiness, luck and peace, and I guess you need all of that you can get.”

Zayn snorts next to him, and Louis sticks his tongue out at him before carrying on.

“I have one kind of like it at home, except it’s a real bird. Well, obviously it’s not a real bird, because it’s silver, but you know what I mean. So yeah, I thought you should have one too.”

And Louis doesn’t really know what brought that speech on, but he hopes it got through to Harry in some way, if what they’re saying really is making a difference.

They all stay in silence after that, long after it’s started to turn dark, until Harry’s phone begins to ring. Well, Louis doesn’t know it’s Harry’s phone at first, because even though they unofficially began living together Louis never actually heard Harry receive a phone call.

“Who’s phone is that?” He asked, irrationally checking his own even though his own ringtone is some crappy pop song that he barely even knows but used to like.

“Harry’s.” Says Zayn shortly, and Louis begins to laugh because really, Harry’s just such a sap.

Zayn gives him a silent look that clearly tells Louis either Zayn now holds him in regard as mad or psychotic, or both, and then Louis covers his hand with his mouth because it’s getting a little hard to hold in.

While Zayn talks on Harry’s phone to whoever’s calling, Louis calms himself down with measured breathing, closing his eyes on the inhale and opening them again on the exhale. When he opens them, he can see Harry’s face, eyelashes dark against his cheeks, and he thinks that might be soothing him more than the breathing exercise.

“Harry’s mum and sister, they’re at the airport. I’ll go pick them up.” Zayn says, by way of explanation, snagging his jacket off the edge of his chair on the way out.
Personally, Louis thinks Zayn is more alienated by Harry like this than he is; either that or he’s too afraid to stay in the room, scared something will happen and at the same time scared nothing will change.

“You have Violet Hill as your ringtone, you softie.” Louis murmurs, leaning forward (and scooting his chair nearer) so he can speak right by Harry’s ear, resting his chin on the edge of the mattress.

Bending down to fiddle with his phone, Louis picks it up and places it on the bed, resting it next to Harry before pressing play.

“Was a long and dark December.” Sings Louis softly, quiet enough that even alone in the room only Harry can hear him. “From the rooftops I remember there was snow, white snow.”

Louis likes to think Harry can hear him, on some level, because this is their song now, and this is Louis, baring his soul. He finishes the first verse, and his throat feels so tight-

“If you love me, won’t you let me know.”

-that the chorus is sung out strangled, more of a harsh whisper than a song. But still he said it, and that, he thinks, is a step forward in the right direction.

His voice picks up again through the second voice, and when he sings the line again, his voice doesn’t waver. In fact, it’s stronger throughout, but never louder than the murmur he’s maintaining in Harry’s ear, soft and gentle.

“So if you love me, won’t you let me know. If you love me won’t you let me know.”

“Won’t you let me know.” He whispers, face close enough to Harry that he’s breathing over the shell of his ear. This isn’t in the song; the song has clicked off, and finished, and Louis feels like someone should say something back.

“This is me. Letting you know.” Louis says, and he doesn’t want to move, not ever, because leaning back would break the spell, shatter the moment that they’ve trapped themselves in.

By now, Louis’s become so accustomed to the beating of the heart monitor that he barely registers it’s monotonous reply, too used to the rise and fall of Harry’s chest to see it as any sort of reply.
He likes to believe though, that Harry can hear him, even if Louis’s thinking now that he should’ve let him know before.

*

Harry

The first thing Harry is aware of when he wakes is a robotic blip sound, the noises spaced out far enough to be a heartbeat. He wonders groggily what kind of crap Louis’s watching on TV, why it’s so loud and most importantly why his body aches like he’s just took on a boxer in a ring and lost miserably.
He wants to ask all these questions, really, but his mouth doesn’t want to work with him.

“Ugh.” He mumbles instead, opening one eye a crack, and then opening both. “er’m I?”

“Harry!” Someone says to the right of him, and it sounds like his mum, and she sounds relieved and happy and scared all at once which is probably some sort of major linguistic achievement.

“er’m I?” Harry repeats, louder this time, and his mum’s face comes into focus above him.

“Sorry, love, I didn’t catch that.”

Harry feels like he might scream, because his mouth is working separately to his thoughts, he’s in a strange room on an uncomfortable bed and he can feel that beating noise drumming on his skull.

“Louis.” He says, like that answers all the questions.

One of the other voices in the room says something in reply, and Harry doesn’t quite catch what because he’s really very tired so he falls back asleep.

The next time Harry wakes up, everything feels sharper then last time, like he’s seeing in high definition. He can see the room properly now, how the shade of white of the walls is actually a different tone to that of the ceiling (who even knows why), that he feels heavy and light at the same time and he thinks all of his brain responses are working normally.
Which kind of begs the question, why is he in a hospital?

Like, he knows he’s in one. Not a ward, obviously, because this room is too small to even dream about fitting anyone else in here, but that beeping sound he clicked the first time he woke up, well, Harry knows that’s a heart monitor without even having to twist his head around and look. On top of that, he’s wearing a hospital gown (oh the undying shame), and is lying in a hospital bed. So he’s got two options; he’s having an incredibly vivid and morbid dream, or he’s in hospital.

“Mmf.” He says, like his mouth hasn’t been in use that often of late. His tongue feels heavy inside his mouth, like it’s forgotten all the movements it needs to talk, and he tries to stay the rising panic by trying again.

“er’m I?”

Someone murmurs something in the back of the room, and someone else replies louder, but not clearly enough for Harry to catch them. Don’t just leave me out, he thinks, irritably, and he doesn’t know how he found time to be irritable but it seems he has.

“Harry? You okay?” Says a voice that’s rough like unrefined sugar or burnt caramel, and Harry thinks that’s the best kind of sound to fall asleep in (actually, he can feel his eyes fluttering closed as he thinks). “No, don’t you dare fall asleep on me.”

“Lou-is.” Harry mumbles, drawing out the word and face turned, buried into his pillow, opening one eye a crack to find Louis’s looking back at him.

“If you go to sleep now, I swear to God I will cut up your Rolling Stones shirt with my scissors.” Louis says like that’s the most normal kind of conversation in the world, but Harry opens both eyes fully because Louis’s face is of a man who can, and the man who can is a man who would.

“Oo- woo-nt dare.” He replies anyway, and watches Louis narrow his eyes and smile.

“But you know I would.” Louis tells him, before reaching out his right hand and putting it to the back of Harry’s neck, pulling Harry closer into a tight hug.

“Don’t scare me like that again.” Harry hears whispered into his hair, and he wants to rub Louis’s back softly or something because he doesn’t know what he did but it must’ve been pretty bad. He can’t, though, because his limbs feel like they’re made of brick or something equally as immovable.

“Okay, okay, enough of the love.” Zayn shouts into the resulting silence, waving his arms into Harry’s face when he and Louis pull apart. “First things first, you ever pull something like that again and I’ll see to it that you’re slowly, and intimately, murdered, Secondly, God I missed you.”

And then, seeing as Zayn has an almost childish fear of showing weakness (emotion), he nods curtly at them both before leaving the room, only to pop back in a second after.

“By the way, your mum and Gemma should be back in the morning. They’re staying at the hotel.”

Nodding at them once more, Zayn exits the room again, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket.

“Night?” Harry asks in confusion, and Louis smiles with a hint of tiredness, Harry notices with guilt. He’s awake because of me, he thinks, and he worries his lower lip with his teeth.

“Yeah. ‘Bout-” Louis pauses to check the time on his phone, before looking up to Harry again. Ocean eyes like summer skies, Harry says in his thoughts, and he doesn’t know if that’s already written or if he’s made something new. “-3 in the morning.”

“Oh. Where am I?” He asks slowly, making sure he does get every syllable pronounced this time.

Louis looks at him sharply before replying, and Harry wants to know what he’s missed.

“Private hospital in Abu Dhabi. Do you remember anything at all?”

Mutely, Harry shakes his head, teeth still grazing over his bottom lip. He feels suddenly like the bed he’s lying on has been pulled out from under him, and he’s sort of afraid of what he might hear.

“You were in a crash. Thirteen laps to go; you were going too fast and you misjudged a corner. Ran right into the barrier, and a piece of the –uh, the- suspension broke off and hit you right-” Louis reaches up his hand, index finger outstretched, to touch a place near to Harry’s temple that’s sort of sore. “-there. Doctors had to operate.”

“Oh.” Harry repeats, because it’s sort of like the memories you have of your child; fuzzy and indistinct, like you watched them on film instead of actually living through them. He remembers his arms hurting, and needing to keep ahead, and skidding across the gravel trap and then nothing, after that.

“Bet that Irish bas-ard won.” He murmurs, and Louis chuckles.

“That should be the least of your worries.” He tells Harry, who’s trying not to concentrate on how Louis’s finger is still on that point, thumb gently resting on Harry’s jaw and his other fingers on Harry’s hair.

Lifting his own hand, maybe to feel the scar for himself, to find a silver chain wrapped loosely around it.

“Wass this?” Harry asks, because he knows Louis’s the only one who’d think to buy a sick person a necklace. Also, the whole words are incredibly hard to get out thing is beginning to drag. Like, a lot.

“It’s a present. For you.”

“I can- see- that. Iss on- my- hand.” Harry lifts the chain closer to his face to see it better, and there’s a small charm that had been hidden in his palm, a little origami bird, wings held high and holding the chain between them.

“I think iss beautiful.”

He feels, rather than hears, Louis sigh beside him, because his hand loses it’s steady pressure for the briefest of moments.

“It’s just, I have one like it at home, but it’s not origami, ‘cause it’s a real bird, but I thought it’d be nice to. You know. Match.”

“Oor ram-lin.” Harry says to Louis, sweetly, lifting the hand not weighted by a necklace to Louis’s head, drawing him in for a chaste kiss. “Thank oo.”

Then Harry falls back asleep without another word of warning.

It’s a lot harder, apparently, to pull yourself out of a coma (even a partly-medical induced one) than they show on TV. The speech thing continues for a while, and Harry’s only ever awake for a few minutes at a time.
He likes to think it’s getting better though, when he can finally say all his letters again. To his eternal disappointment, even when he fully regained movement of his arms and legs (after a couple of weeks of blood, sweat and tears), Louis ruled hospital sex entirely out of the equation, which Harry was more than upset about.
But aside from that, he’s viewing all progress as good news.

“You know, I’m finding the lying here idly thing to be a bit bullshit.” Harry says after what he’s deemed far too long in bed. Zayn had to leave the hospital to go help the team break in the third driver (after Harry forced him to admit that Zayn most definitely prefers him).

“Why’d you say that?” Louis replies, looking up from his book. Harry called him out on that the first time, and asked if he was really such boring company, and Louis smiled, saccharine, assuring Harry’s statement and giving a whole load of reasons as to why, exactly, he was so boring.

“I’m a lot better now. I think I should be allowed to go. Mum and Gemma left, you know, what with them having nine to five’s. It’s only right that I should go too.”

Louis sighs like the long-suffering man he believes himself to be, and puts his book down. When he speaks, he says every word slowly like Harry’s an exceedingly backwards kid. Which he isn’t (mostly).

“But Harry, Anne and Gemma weren’t sick, because they don’t go around crashing their cars.”

“You’re such a dick.” Harry tells him, smiling broadly and-

“I love you.” Louis says, and that’s not the sort of reply Harry’s used to receiving after insulting someone, but it’s one he’s more than willing to take.

“What?” Harry says blankly, and Louis sighs.

“I’m not saying it again. This isn’t some shitty romantic film, you know.”

“Well, it’s about time someone said it.” Harry replies, pulling Louis to him by his hand and pressing his lips to his, until Louis wriggles out of Harry’s grasp.

“That’s not the sort of reply I expect.” Harry’s told sternly, and he smiles wide enough that his face might break.

“Oh Louis, light of my life, my reason to be, I do adore thee-”

“Much better.” Says Louis, who allows Harry to kiss him again.

When Louis’s settled back in his chair and napping quietly after Harry’s finished with being prodded and poked by a group of open mouthed doctors who have finally convinced themselves that actually, Harry’s fine, he’s more than fine if he’s honest, but they didn’t seem to want to take his word for it.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Harry murmurs sleepily to Louis, who doesn’t reply (seeing, of course, that he’s asleep). “Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
Really, Harry was one of the only kids who listened in English class, and it would totally be worth it right now if the said object of his affections wasn’t currently sleeping across from him. He might recite it some other time, because intelligence is sexy and he knows that him reading Shakespeare would definitely lead to kitchen sex.

He’s not sure, but he thinks he’s developing a slightly unhealthy obsession with having kitchen sex.

“I don’t really remember the rest, as it stands.” He confesses to Louis, who inhales a little deeper, and Harry takes that to be a reply. “I got the last couple of lines though.” Clearing his throat, Harry looks up to the whiter than the white walls ceiling, and thinks of all the different times he’s seen Louis, flicking through them like a photo album; the dark, blurred lights of the club, in the pitlane at Malaysia, in Louis’s kitchen, red cheeked and dark eyed in the evening as he rests on his forearms above Harry, sparkling in the sunlight and now, by Harry’s bedside, keeping vigil even when everyone else left.

“So long as men can breathe, and eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

The constant beeping of the machine behind Harry that reminds him that he’s here, he’s alive, is his lullaby tonight, drowsy despite his own words.

“G’night, Louis.”

*

Harry takes the plane back to England a few weeks after waking up, much to his doctor’s chagrin, but Harry Styles was an unstoppable force of nature when he chose to be.

On the plane journey, Harry sat next to Louis, by the window because he likes to look down on the Earth (“Look, Louis, we’re like Gods”. “No, Harry, we’re men in a metal bird”. “Always the romanticist.”) as they flew overhead.
Anne had come back for the last week, and fussed over Harry –quite needlessly, in his opinion, because it’s not like Louis’s entirely incapable. Well, he is, sort of, but only Harry has the privilege of pointing that fact out.
Gemma, for her part, is still mildly in shock at the fact that Louis Tomlinson is now considered a close friend of the family. Louis, being the gentleman that he is, offered her the autograph she wanted so very much, and Harry received a look from Gemma that promised pain when he was strong enough to withstand it. Harry’s kind of glad he’s got Louis to protect him, really.

Holmes Chapel is still the ever-sleepy village it always was, with it’s little houses and the kind of secrets you only find in these sorts of places, like those hidden pathways and hideouts.

“I think I like it here.” Louis tells him thoughtfully (and quietly) in the car that Harry isn’t trusted to drive, and Harry grins.

“Feel like moving in?” He asks, and he’s glad for the privacy that his mum and sister’s chatter offers them. Feeling daring, he slides his hand across the car seat to rest on Louis’s, skating the tips of his fingers across the back of Louis’s hand before turning it over, palm up, and linking them.

“I could get used to it.” There’s a small, almost unnoticeable intake of breath when Harry pressed his own palm against Louis’s, and it’s the kind of reaction that he didn’t notice before, when he thought Louis was the permanent actor, always in role and carved from stone.

“Must be lots of places for sale.” He remarks conversationally, and Louis turns his head to look at Harry out the corner of his eye, as if to check to seriousness of this talk. Obviously he finds some answers in the lines of Harry’s face, because he replies promptly.

“There must be. Out of the way place like this. Great privacy.”

“Just the type for an actor and his racing driver boyfriend to move in to.”

Louis swallows, and looks at Harry unblinkingly. Harry wonders for a second whether pinching himself would ruin the moment, before deciding it most definitely would.

“Just the type.” Louis whispers, and Harry leans forward to press his forehead against Louis’s own, before capturing his lips in a kiss that stuns him a little with it’s passion.
He’s wearing the crane necklace around his neck, hanging out over his shirt, and Louis tugs on it, pulling him closer, and holding on it when he establishes that Harry actually can’t move any closer, because he’s got a seat belt on. Still, Harry decides that they’re most definitely having car sex before the week is out.

Harry swipes his tongue across Louis’s lips, which open easily, and Harry’s tongue goes forth and explores Louis’s mouth with a fascination he can’t quite shake. Louis reaches forward his other hand (the one that isn’t clutching Harry’s necklace) to Harry’s thigh, and Harry wonders just exactly how far this is going to go. Not that he minds.

“I knew it! Hand over your money!” Screams Gemma suddenly from the passenger seat, crowing, and Harry’s mum neatly swerves the car in shock, and all in all it’s an effective mood breaker.

So, that dealt with telling Harry’s family about the whole ‘My friend you know Louis Tomlinson the famous actor you know him well really he’s not my friend he’s a lot more than that you could say boyfriend I prefer the term soulmate’ thing. Louis doesn’t fare as well, as he has to call up his mum (which Harry forces him to do, sitting him down on Harry’s bed and placing the phone in his hand).

“You know, I had so many other ideas for what we could be doing on this bed.” Sighs Louis, pressing the dial button, and Harry leans in closer.

“Who says we can’t do them too?” He whispers right into Louis’s ear, who looks at Harry with one eyebrow raised.

“Are we really having this conversation when I’m calling my mother?”

“I’m just saying, there’s no reason why calling your mother means we can’t put the more interesting ideas to use.”
Harry is very sure he can detect a hint of blush over Louis’s cheekbones, and he kisses the cheek nearest to him before Louis starts speaking.

“Mum? Hi. It’s about Harry. Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. No, wait, don’t put them on, I need to speak to you. So, uh, it’s basically, me and Harry have sort of been dating for a few months. No, this isn’t a joke. Yes, I’m serious. I do, really I do. More than anything. Kind of, yeah. No, of course I won’t. Don’t you dare say anything  to them, you’re such a gossip-.Tell them I love them, and I’ll call them later. Love you, bye.”

Louis makes a show of hiding his face in his hands, and then of placing the phone down on the bedside table.

“That bad, yeah?” Harry asks sympathetically.

“I’m not sure whether she a) thought I was telling the truth, b) thought it was a joke or c) was having some sort of hallucinogenic trip.”

“She’ll be fine with it, one day.” Harry says confidently, and Louis nods.

“You.” Louis says, moving his head forward so that there’s only an inch of space left between them. “Should not be allowed to say those sorts of things.”

“Really?” Harry asks, voice husky and too deep, but he thinks he’s excused because Louis rubs the heel of his hand right over the crotch of Harry’s jeans.

“I’m going to prove it to you.” Louis says, bring up his hand and placing one either side of Harry’s face and kissing him in a way that’s all fire and heat and hot summer nights.
So, they find time to put the rest of Louis’s ideas to use, and Harry thinks afterwards when he’s sated and tired and almost embarrassingly in love that maybe Louis has the better ideas out of the two of them, although his may have been the more sensible overall.

Harry shows Louis around his home, his drowsy little village in England, from the corner shop to his old school. It’s a Monday, and during school hours, so there’s nobody around.

“Like a ghost town.” Louis grins, staring at Harry in a way that’s probably designed to creep him out but this is Louis so Harry’s the kind of boy who still finds that attractive.

“You’re aware you’re leering at me by the school gate. Right by a classroom window.” He informs Louis, who sticks his tongue out at Harry.

“Shame. If you hadn’t mentioned it I was gonna blow you.” Louis tells him blithely before skipping out of Harry’s reach until they round a corner, and then Harry pins Louis up against the wall, tangling his hands in Louis’s hair and having his wicked way.

Harry also takes Louis to the karting track where he spent most of his time. The instructor remembers Harry, and the awed, proud smile on his face that reads ‘I finally found someone worthwhile, who made it’ had to be seen to be believed.

Louis demands to race Harry around the track, fitting himself inside the kart and putting on the helmet.
To his eternal surprise, Harry finds Louis to not be as awful as he expected, and was considering letting him win when Louis bashes into him, pushing him into the side and allowing Louis to overtake.

“That cheating bastard.” Harry says wonderingly, before turning back out into the track, trying to speed up to reach Louis again. With a flash of remembrance, he realises this is the first time he’s raced since the accident. It’s not like he’d expect it to be, honestly; he thought there’s be fear and hesitation, but there’s still the same burning urge to win, only tempered now by experience.

“Looks like I win.” Louis says, smugly, removing his helmet to reveal static caramel hair.

“The award for biggest cheat?” Asks Harry, patting down Louis’s hair in an attempt to tame it. His own, to his satisfaction, is still perfectly fine.

“That wasn’t cheating. That was using my initiative.” Replies Louis, dodging out of the pathway of Harry’s hand and smoothing down his hair himself. “You made it out of the wall, didn’t you? Therefore I classify a racing incident.”

Louis sounds so proud of the use of the racing terminology that Harry can feel the corners of his mouth curl up in a smile before he can stop it.

“If that was an accident, I’m a fish.”

“Looks like you’re a fish, then.” Louis retorts, crossing his arms over his chest but smiling. Harry thinks Louis’s smile is one of the prettiest things in the world, the way it seems to light up everything around him (like Louis is a sun). In fact, he’s sure that one day artists will beg to paint Louis’s smile like this, his real, honest smile.
Harry thinks he might want to keep it for himself.

“That does mean you kissed a fish, sweetheart.”

Louis sighs at him through his nose, moulding his face into a carefully constructed frown and tutting.

“Call me one more ridiculous nickname-”

“Whatever you say, honey.” Grins Harry, pinching Louis’s cheek and cooing like Louis’s the most adorable thing he’s ever seen (which, you know, he is, but Louis doesn’t have to know that).

“That’s the worst.”

“Don’t frown so, sugarplum.”

Looking at him in horror, Louis reaches up his hand to clap it over Harry’s mouth, and how Louis’s eyes can look amused, terrified and furious all at once is a feat beyond his imagination.

“Not in front of the man, sweetie.” Is all Louis says, and if that sentence isn’t a barely masked threat then Harry doesn’t know what is.
Later on, Louis threatens to pour his cup of boiling tea over Harry if he doesn’t promise to never use that name ever again, and Harry recognises the same glint in his eye when Louis said he’d cut up Harry’s shirt so he agrees, trying to stretch out the inevitable as Louis steps forward, tea held aloft.

“Good choice.” Louis says serenely after Harry’s mutter ‘Yes, yes, okay, I promise’, bending down to kiss the top of Harry’s head. Why Harry still gets butterflies whenever Louis kisses him is some kind of heavenly, complex mystery far out of his rationing.

The next day Harry and Louis fly out to Brazil to see the last race of the season, and Harry may or may not be sulking because if Horan wins then Harry won’t win the championship.

“There’s still a chance.” Louis offers up hopefully in the hotel room, and Harry gives him his best ‘withering’ glance.

“He’s the best on the grid. We all know he’s going to win.”

Louis sighs, pulling down Harry on the bed next to him so Harry’s head is resting on Louis’s lap and Louis can thread his fingers through Harry’s hair.

“Positive thinking is said to do wonders.”

Harry snorts, eyes closed and letting the feel of Louis’s fingers and voice overwhelm him, lacing his fingers over his stomach.

“Positive thinking is for people who have nothing to lose.”

Louis stops then, and tugs on a curl thoughtfully.

“And what do you have to lose, Styles?” Harry thinks it’s a joke question at first, because obviously Louis’s referring to the championship, but then he registers the tight sound of Louis’s voice.

“You. I could lose you.” He replies, and Louis leans over to kiss Harry’s forehead gently, before sitting up and resuming his carding through Harry’s hair. It’s likely that his hair will be all kinds of static after, but Harry likes to feel Louis’s nails scrape softly across his scalp before running through his hair. In some ways, it’s very soothing.

“I thought I was going to lose you. In the hospital.” Remarks Louis conversationally, like this is the kind of declaration he makes often, and Harry opens his eyes, looking up at Louis’s face. Louis isn’t looking at him though; his face is closed off, staring right ahead of him, and Harry wonders if he’s seeing that hospital room again.

“You were just so. So still. And I was thinking, I’m always going to come second to the racing. I guess this is what you get for falling in love with a racing driver.” Louis laughs, short and sharp and humourless, and Harry flinches as though the sound is a falling of jagged rocks.

“I would quit. If you asked me to.” Harry says, and he blinks at his unknown honesty. He wonders how long the thought had been lurking around in his mind; could he give up what’s in his blood, his mind, for his heart? It seems he can.

“You know I would never ask that.” Louis replies, but his voice is softer now, like a comforting blanket.

“But I would, if you wanted it.” I’d do anything, if you wanted it, Harry thinks, and it’s scary, really, how hard and fast he’s fallen. He’s pretty sure other people don’t love like this, prepare to give up everything at a single command, and he’s pretty sure no one has even been in love as much as he has. Oh, the ideas of the young; that they are the only to ever have loved, or lost, and it is inconceivable to them that they are not the first. And by the time we have our wisdom, the young will not listen.
His mind’s voice doesn’t want to flow with Harry’s feelings, or the beating of his heart that now only he can hear –no longer amplified by a machine- and he disagrees with the voice. Harry’s loved before this, of course, fallen in and out of love as the days wove on, and that was the kind of love everyone else settles for. But Louis, he’s different, Harry knows, and he still makes Harry’s heart flutter with a look.

“That’s all I need to know.” Louis says quietly, and Harry’s content.

Despite Louis’s encouragement, Harry doesn’t win the championship this year. In fact he watches from his garage as that Irish bastard does, speeding across the line to roars from the crowd, fist pumping excitedly.

“I’m sorry.” Louis tells him, and Harry wants to wrap his arms around Louis’s waist and kiss him senseless, right there and then.
He doesn’t, of course, because he’s still in the garage that isn’t his anymore, it belongs to the third driver (a fast kid by the name of Calum Hood who nearly toppled over when he saw Louis Tomlinson lounging in his garage and had to grab Michael for support) and there are always eyes.

“Don’t be. Always got next year.” Harry says, and he finds himself believing it.

When he sees Horan at the after party, having disentangled himself from Louis who’s now smoothly mingling with the ‘racing people’ and probably finding out all of Harry’s secrets that he can, Harry smiles civilly and shakes his hand.

“Well done.” He says as warmly as possible, but it sounds like ice even to his own ears. Niall’s hilariously drunk, and he reminds Harry a lot of the night at the club not so long ago.

“Don’t sound so happy, mate.” Niall laughs drunkenly, red faced, and Harry winces because he hoped he had escaped notice.

“I will when I’m champion next year, Horan.”

“Niall. ‘m name’s Niall.” Harry’s told, and he nods, because he thinks of Louis and his smile and how Harry would do anything for him and how Louis wants him to get over this whole ‘feud’.

“Harry.” He says, and that Irish bastard –Niall, he corrects himself sternly- laughs again for no apparent reason, looking at something over Harry’s shoulder.

“Is that Louis Tomlinson?” Niall asks, peering intently. Harry turns his head, picking out Louis in the crowd, and turns back to Niall.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “It is.”

“Mate,” Niall begins, nodding so hard his head looks like it might detach from his neck, “You’re so smitten with him.”

Harry envies Niall’s ability to keep his words precise even as absolutely shitfaced as he is.

He spots Niall a few more times over the evening, when the lights dim and faces blur into each other. His team have procured their own, celebratory, bottle of champagne and are currently cheering on Niall’s success by the bar.

As Harry watches Niall down his glass of champagne, Harry thinks of meeting Louis, and of all the chances. All the things that led to it, from winning the championship to going to the club to his teams’ bringing the champagne, going to dance and then to the bar, and lastly walking in to Louis. If any of it had been a second out, none of this would’ve happened.

“I love you.” Harry shouts into Louis’s ear, confident that the music will cover him. Louis looks up at him, questions written in his eyes, but he smiles widely and toasts and imaginary glass of champagne to Harry.

*

After the necessary celebrations are complete, Harry returns to Holmes Chapel with Louis in tow, and this time he isn’t afraid to hold his hand in the car.

“So what were you saying about that house?” Teases Louis, winking lewdly at Harry who covers his eyes with his hand and chuckles despite himself.

“Oh my darling Louis, would you do me the incredible honour of buying a house with me?” He asks, voice quivering, and Louis gasps in mock surprise.

“I thought you would never ask, my beautiful angel!” Louis says, raising a shaking hand to his mouth before letting out a sob.

“How you became an actor I will never know.” Harry says, looking at Louis through narrowed eyes.

“You love my acting.” Louis states, dropping his voice tone and making it flirty (Louis likes to make everything flirty, but Harry likes Louis so he doesn’t mind).

“You’re ridiculous.” Harry tells him, and Louis hums in agreement before leaning over to kiss him, and Harry wonders how something so familiar can still make his heart beat faster.

“Actually, you’re both disgusting.” Comments Gemma from the driver’s seat, and Harry flips her off before concentrating on Louis again.

The thing is, Harry just loves Louis, loves him so much that he’s swept away by it sometimes.

He realises this more than ever one night at home, when his mum’s possible boyfriend Robin comes over and brings his guitar.

“Do any of you play?” He asks blithely, apparently unfazed by the Hollywood superstar sitting on the sofa who’s currently holding an armful of Harry Styles (who, coincidentally, has managed to drape himself over said Hollywood film star so his head rests nicely on his chest).

“I do.” Louis says, and Harry lifts his head enough to raise his eyebrows at Louis. Harry thought there couldn’t be much that he didn’t know about Louis by now, but obviously he was wrong.

Later, when they’re a few drinks in and Harry’s in that fairly happy, slightly buzzing state, Louis has the guitar pushed in to his hands by an eager Robin who has obviously had enough of hearing Harry’s voice whenever he comes over.

“What’re you going to sing?” Slurs Gemma, who’s’ had a lot more than Harry and is now sitting cross legged by Harry’s legs, holding a glass and hiccupping occasionally. Drunk Gemma, Harry decided long ago, is the nicest possible Gemma.

“Hmm.” Deliberates Louis, strumming some of the strings experimentally. “I think I can choose one.”

No, Harry thinks, He wouldn’t dare. But Louis starts up the chords, voice soft and quiet like he’s afraid to make a mistake, and that is undeniably Violet Hill, and Harry’s supposed to be the romantic here.
He steals Louis’s thunder at the end, joining in with him for the last few lines.

“I took my love down to Violet Hill, there we sat in the snow.” He sings, just as quietly as Louis so as not to cover up his voice (which, Harry admits, is all kinds of beautiful). Louis never stirs to even look at Harry, simply carrying on with the strumming and soft singing. “All that time she was silent still, so if you love me, won’t you let me know.”

Gemma whoops loudly when they finish, raising her glass up and cheering before downing the contents. Robin, on the other hand, looks like he might cry from happiness at finding someone who has an actual talent, and Harry’s mum is looking at Harry with an emotion that he can’t describe.

Harry tells Louis over and over again that night, pressing the words into Louis’s skin, murmuring it in his ear, his hair, and the curve of his shoulder and the jut of his collarbone.

“I love you too.” Laughs Louis, breathless, and Harry knows, he knows it all and he thinks that it’s so obvious it must be written across his face, tattooed in ink.

So the next day, when Harry is walking Louis around the park, he takes his hand suddenly, linking their fingers ad holding on tight.

“What are you doing?” Hisses Louis, looking around and trying to pull his hand free.

“Showing the world.” Harry tells him, and Louis looks at him in consternation for the briefest of a moment before nodding almost imperceptibly. They walk around the rest of the day like that, joined at the hand, and Harry’s so happy he thinks his feet might leave the ground and he’ll spend the rest of his life floating two inches above it.

When the papers hit the shops the day after, it’s splashed with headline photos of Louis and Harry together, looking, frankly, too happy and obviously in love, and those paps have got so sneaky these days that Harry never noticed them at all.
It’s Louis’s genuine face in the pictures, the one he reserves especially for Harry, and he doesn’t really know how he feels about that becoming a public image but still, Harry’s the only one who gets to see that face every day, at its best and its worst. Louis belongs in front of the cameras, it’s where he shines, but Harry also thinks he belongs in his arms and he glows there too.

Zayn’s having a field day, sending a new picture message every time he sees a different headline or article, and Harry can just imagine him sitting at home and laughing to himself.

Louis’s on the phone to his publicist, arguing his case that no, he didn’t need to consult him because this is his own decision. As Louis closes the phone, Harry places his hands on Louis’s waist, looking down on him and smiling.

“There’s going to be a media frenzy.” Louis tells him, as though Harry didn’t know already that that was going to happen. He humours him though, nodding gravely before stealing a kiss.

“I think we can cope.” He says calmly, because Louis is there and warm and oh so pretty and Harry loves him more than he thought it was possible to love and he doesn’t have to lie about that anymore.

So no, Harry didn’t win the championship that year; he watched from the sidelines as his greatest rival did, but instead of another title he found something (someone) possibly more important, and if his own self one year ago could hear him say that he’d choke on his drink.
But, Harry does win the championship next year, and he blows a kiss to Louis from the podium, hoisting the trophy as the other two drivers pour champagne over him until it runs in rivulets down his face and into his eyes.
He doesn’t get an after party that year, though, because he and Louis have to fly to London for the premiere of Louis’s latest film the next day and Harry has to practise not falling over his feet and perfecting his camera face.

They buy their house too, a little out of the way from Holmes Chapel, right on the edge and set far back. They took the furniture from Louis’s house and fitted it in where they could, because this house is smaller and obviously, as Harry pointed out magnanimously, Louis’s things were much more elegant than his own.

“You sure you want to get the same kitchen stuff?” Louis asked him in surprise, eyebrows furrowed, and Harry nodded as innocently as he could.

“Thought you hated the island.” Louis murmured, but went back to telling the delivery men what they could and couldn’t take.

One of the things that Harry most loves about the new house is the privacy. Not that he doesn’t love his mum (not so much his sister), but things hit an all time low when she popped back suddenly during work because she was sure she left the oven off, and she hadn’t got any reply from Harry’s mobile (because it was on silent) so drove back helter skelter to check the house wasn’t on fire.
But really, Harry should be thanking all the stars above that they were pre-coidas, not mid-coidas, because that would’ve left a kind of scar his mum didn’t really deserve. Still, finding her son shirtless on the couch with his tongue down his boyfriend’s throat is probably not what she wanted to see. What really hurt Harry was that after all that, the oven wasn’t even on, and the mood was irreparably broken.

Still, when the house is fixed up and fully furnished in a way that still smells of new paint and objects, Harry declares it’s time to christen it properly.

“And how to you propose to do that?” Louis asks, raising an eyebrow and leaning up against the fridge. Harry does not notice that Louis is wearing the white spotted shirt (although he guesses that Louis probably wore it just because he knew Harry would see), he does not.

“Well...” He begins, pulling Louis to him and trailing a finger along the inside of his forearm.

Louis looks like he knows exactly where this is going.

“I was kinda hoping for kitchen sex.” Harry says hopefully, blinking down at Louis in an attempt at seduction.

Sighing, Louis raises both his eyebrows this time.  “I thought I said no sex in the kitchen?” He asks, and Harry frowns because that tone is a tone that declares kitchen sex off the menu for all time.

“You can allow me hope.” Harry replies, before leaning closer. “I like your shirt.” He whispers in to Louis’s ear, and Louis groans like what he’s about to do goes against all his rules, and pushes in to Harry, walking him backwards until his back hits the edge of the island.

“Is this the only reason you wanted the counter?” Louis says, fingers scrabbling with Harry’s belt, and Harry nods, tongue wetting his lips.

“Kitchen sex isn’t something you can just leave out, Louis.”

Louis has got Harry’s belt undone, and Harry steps out of his jeans quickly, pushing them away from them with his foot before hoisting himself up on to the counter. He thinks it’s most definitely a divine omen that the island is large enough for this, and if that wasn’t a sign as to why kitchen sex is a good idea then there isn’t one.

“I won’t be able to eat in here again.” Louis says despondently, lifting his shirt off over his head and dropping it behind him, before wriggling his way out of his jeans. Harry is shameless, so he watches, but continues the conversation.

“Does that mean more kitchen sex?”

He thinks the only reply he’s getting is Louis’s snort, but once Louis has got himself on to the counter and has busied himself with taking off Harry’s shirt, Louis speaks again.

“This is all your fault, Styles. Fuck you.”

Harry doesn’t think Louis sounds like he means it overly much, so he grins.

“That’s the general idea.” He comments, and Louis is still laughing when Harry pulls him down to kiss him again.

When Louis decides that air is ultimately more important, he pulls off slightly, breathing shallowly and looking down at Harry like he’s suddenly realised something very important.

“What?” Harry asks uncomfortably, because Louis should, by all accounts, be looking like he’s having issue stringing words together.

“How prepared were you for kitchen sex?” Louis asks, and if that’s not a fucking weird question then Harry doesn’t know what is.

“What?” He repeats, because his vocabulary is evidently not as extensive as previously thought, and Louis smiles, looking down at Harry until the (metaphorical) light bulb flashes to life above his head.

“Oh.” Harry says, and sighs because if one of them leaves now, Louis will come up with a list of reasons as to why this should be continued in the bathroom. “You’re not going anywhere.” He tells Louis, who raises his eyebrows.

“I  know I’m many things, Harry, but a magician is not one of them.”

“Well,” Harry says, drawing out the word. “I’m not entirely opposed to bareback kitchen sex.”

Louis makes a noise that manages to tell Harry that he’s ruining him (and his kitchen) but slides off Harry’s boxers anyway, and then his own.

“You’re such a terrible influence.” Louis says, and Harry decides not to tell him about how they’re definitely having car sex too. “Can’t you just want to fuck in beds like everyone else?”

“No.” Harry replies, but anything he’s going to say is cut off by Louis pushing his fingers in front of Harry’s face and commanding him to suck. Harry does so, because Louis should know what he’s doing, but he poses the question to him with his eyes.

“I’m not going in dry, Harry. I’m not all that cruel, you know. You’re supposed to be the one who thinks I’m all things lovely.” Louis says, withdrawing his fingers, and Harry laughs.

“I’ll boost your ego later, Louis. Right now I’d-”

The way that Louis keeps interrupting him, it’s a wonder he bothers trying to say anything at all. Louis has his index finger in him, stretching him out, and Harry thinks that the only bad thing about kitchen sex is no sheets to hold on to. In lieu of that, he reaches forward to clutch helplessly at Louis’s hair (the owner of who looks up at Harry, smiles sweetly, and adds another finger.

“Oh- fuck. Louis, fuck.”

“That’s the general idea.” Louis says absently, and Harry blinks for a few seconds because Louis just mocked him and it’s really not fair.

“Stop repeating me.”

“As if I’d ever be so horrible.” Louis responds, pulling out his fingers all together and meeting Harry’s eyes. “You know, I think I’m starting to like kitchen sex.”

Harry was going to ask why, but then Louis’s head dropped down to somewhere it probably shouldn’t and this time it’s a tongue, not a finger, that’s pushing him open, reaching forward to jab at his prostate, and Harry submerges back into meaningless moans and whimpers.

If Louis’s tongue wasn’t otherwise engaged, he’d probably laugh at him for falling apart.

“God, Louis.” He gets out, hands pattering uselessly at the top of Louis’s head. He thinks that he should probably pay some attention to his poor, neglected cock, but he knows that Louis likes it better when he doesn’t touch himself, batting his hands away every time he tries. Harry doesn’t question it. It’s probably a control thing.

He thinks he can feel his back begin to slide away from the top of the counter, and he doesn’t even know how Louis managed to fit himself on here too (although half of Harry’s head is floating in the air without support), so he moves his hands to grip the edges of the island firmly, long fingers curling around the edges and stopping himself from falling right off.

Louis draws out, mouth and chin shiny with spit, and Harry wonders whether Louis can hear his heart pick up pace because it’s beating that loudly. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen, or ever will see, anyone as beautiful as Louis, and sometimes this makes him want to cuddle Louis and never let go, and sometimes it makes him horny (well, a lot of the time. Forgive him).

“Louis.” He says, voice grating over the syllables, and Louis nods, pulling Harry in for a sticky, quick kiss that, in Harry’s opinion, is over a lot too soon. Harry watches Louis wipe the saliva off his face, before spitting in to his hand and rubbing it up and down his cock, covering it liberally.

“This is probably gonna hurt.” Louis says, red cheeked, and Harry nods.

“S’alright.” He says, shuffling about on the counter, and Louis moves forward, guiding his spit-slick cock into him.

Well, Louis was right, it does hurt, but Harry’s a man and he can most definitely take it. Men, though, probably aren’t used to this kind of burn.

“Next time,” he grunts out as Louis eases himself in slowly, careful to watch Harry’s face for a sign that it’s too much. “I’m coming prepared.”

“Who says there’s a next time?” Asks Louis, buried to the hilt, and kissing Harry in a way that isn’t sloppy, or messy, but careful and neat like most of their kisses aren’t.

“There’s always a next time for kitchen sex.” Harry says, wincing when Louis draws out a little before thrusting shallowly. Harry wraps his legs across Louis’s torso, encouraging him to keep going, and when Louis hits the nerve endings the pain is wiped out altogether.

Despite Louis’s whole ‘control’ thing, he doesn’t seem to be keeping it up much better than Harry, issuing a stream of curses and noises that definitely aren’t words at all. Pulling Harry’s lips into a bruising kiss, his thrusts lose their pace, pushing in and out unevenly and shifting the angle so each thrust hits Harry’s prostate.

Harry comes first, hard enough for his vision to black out like his mind is made of blown circuits, covering them both in stripes of white. Louis comes a minute after, gasping Harry’s name into his skin.

“This is why I wanted kitchen sex.” Harry says thoughtfully, fingertips drawing patterns on the skin of Louis’s back.

“One off.” Louis tells him, picking himself up and pulling out of Harry slowly so that a dribble of come follows with him, and Louis sighs. “The counter is ruined for me.”

“We don’t use it anyway.” Harry tells him, pulling Louis back to rest on Harry’s chest and kissing him softly, a simple press of lips on lips.

“You don’t know that.” Louis says, before: “We’re not sleeping here.”

“Of course we’re not.” Harry says, sitting up and pushing Louis off him. “But we’re still having kitchen sex again.”

*

“A man got in contact with me about a film idea recently.” Louis tells him as Harry tries to work his way into his suit that yes, makes him look amazing (which sounds a lot more vain than he ever wanted to admit) but is harder to get in to than the world’s most secure bank vault.

“Oh yeah?”

Louis rolls his eyes at Harry’s feigned interest, tugging on his hair to pull Harry’s attention fully back on to him.

“He seemed to think there was a film in how we met.”

Harry sucks in a breath too sharply and ends up in a coughing fit and choking cross breed, resorting to leaning on Louis’s shoulder to keep him from toppling over.

“In us?”

“Films based on real life romances are all the rage.” Louis says, stepping up on his toes to kiss Harry, who was breathless as it was and that was of no help.

“Keep that up and this suit is not staying on.” Harry says, and Louis chuckles because Harry knows that Louis is a terrible tease and he falls for it probably a lot more than he should and well he knows it.

“We’ve got cameras to face, love.” Louis remarks happily, taking Harry’s hand and pulling him along behind him.

Harry doesn’t fit in front of the cameras like Louis does, but he stays in Louis’s glow, content to watch him shine at what he does, and yes, the love is written in his eyes nowadays, evident for everyone to see because Harry looks at Louis like he’s seeing him for the first time every time. But Louis looks at Harry as though he can’t quite believe his eyes, so that’s enough for him, at least.

Harry Styles, racer extraordinaire, looks at Louis Tomlinson and all he knows is that he’s not alone anymore.