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Louis steps back from the van and tilts his head.

“Sorry, Harold,” he says, and he really tries to sound apologetic, even though all he really wants to do is laugh. Sort of like Niall is already doing, holding his side like he’s got a stitch. “I think you’re going to have to cut it down to just two suitcases and a backpack, the third won’t fit.”

“We’re only going to be gone for five days,” Liam says, frowning. “What could you possibly need three suitcases for?”

Harry’s nervous, though he won’t admit it, and when he gets like this he has exactly one coping mechanism: to become as loud and exuberant as possible.

And so:  

“Options, Liam!” Harry shouts, throwing his hands up in frustration. “ Options! What if it rains? What if it gets hot? What if it’s hot, but also chilly in the mornings?” Liam’s looking at Harry with big bewildered eyes, and that just makes Harry’s gestures get even larger, even more frantic. “ And! We don’t even know what the venues look like, what if I clash with the decor? This is important, Liam!”

Niall snorts, and Louis wills himself not to copy him, his lips twitching. “Haz, mate, I hate to break it to you, but I doubt the places we’re playing have any sort of decor beyond ‘four standing walls with only a few holes and a roof on top.’ We’re not exactly headlining at the Hammersmith Apollo.”

“Not yet,” Harry refutes, opening the third suitcase on the ground at his feet and piling into his arms a small mountain of boots and books and… are those candles? “But we won’t get to the Hammersmith Apollo if we don’t treat every gig like it’s just as important as the rest.”

“Haz,” Louis says again, knuckling at Harry’s arm. He’s shaking like a leaf. “It’s gonna be great.”

And at that, Harry’s shoulders slump like Louis drained the stress out of him in one fell swoop. A single lonely boot tumbles from his arms and lands in the dirt. Louis picks it up and gently sets it on top of Liam’s snare drum where it’s wedged inside the back of the van.

Five days, three shows. Harry, Louis, Liam, and Niall have been best friends forever, basically, but they’ve only been a band for six months and they’re already going on tour.

Well. Liam says they can’t call it a tour because all the shows are within an hour of home and they could pretty easily just drive back and forth but no, Liam is wrong, because they were booked in hotel rooms by their manager (Gemma) and they have a stylist (Lottie) and they’ve even been announced on the venue websites and this is the greatest start in the history of rock n’ roll.

Niall takes the matching boot to the one resting on Liam’s snare drum from Harry’s arms and wedges it into a crack by the door, and Liam takes a couple of Harry’s candles and stuffs them in his duffle bag, looking slightly apologetic since his drum kit is what’s keeping Harry’s from bringing his totally unnecessary third suitcase and causing this breakdown in the first place.

(No one is going to tell him that if Harry wasn’t panicking about the suitcase, he’d have found something else to panic about, because apologetic Liam means they’ll probably be able to wheedle out a stop at McDonald’s when they hit the road and he probably won’t even complain about budget.)  

“Why do you need these, anyway?” Liam asks, tucking the sleeves of one of his t-shirts carefully around the glass votive of a bright orange candle.

“Because I like when things smell like home,” Harry tells him, and then goes back to trying to shove three pairs of boots into Niall’s guitar case until Niall screeches at him to stop.

Harry’s mum comes outside to oversee the process of rearranging the precarious piles of instruments and shoes and bags in the back of the van. She takes advantage of their distraction to pull promises out of them  that they will call and check in every single night to reassure the collective parents that they haven’t been mugged and left for dead or trampled in a moshing incident. “And here,” she says, holding something out for Harry, “so you won’t have to pay for lunch.”

“How punk rock are we,” Harry deadpans as he accepts what can only be labeled as a picnic basket, pulling out a juice box as evidence.

“Harry Styles, you be grateful I’m letting you go at all,” Anne says, raising an eyebrow. “You’re only seventeen, I’m well within my rights to drive you there myself.”

“No no, Mum, thank you, you’re amazing, this is wonderful,” Harry says, half dutiful and half horrified. Louis snickers, but pastes on his best innocent look when Anne turns to give him the raised eyebrow as well.

“You’re the best, Anne!” Louis says, running to jump into the driver’s seat as Liam and Niall pile into the back and Harry clambers up beside Louis, fishing for the AUX cord. The van rumbles alive and they pitch forward as they set away.

Van packed, parents reassured, Modern Baseball blasting from the ancient speakers; and so the tour begins.

It’s not even a pub, really, more like a dingy hole in a wall where a couple of people settled years ago and then never left, so someone showed up and started charging them for alcohol on-site. Called The Den, it’s got room for about thirty people if they don’t mind standing through the whole thing and a bar that serves exactly three things: beer, straight whisky, and more beer. Sunlight filters through grimy windows and catches on clouds of dust in the air, and the walls are bare except for the thousands of tiny holes from thousands of games on the single dartboard. There’s a single poster over the bar, and it’s a bikini model next to a 2002 Ferrari, faded with age and water warped on the bottom half.

The stage itself is all of a foot off the ground, and they have to rig up a small crate next to the stage to perch Louis’ keyboard on, since it and Liam’s drums won’t both fit. Louis is ninety percent sure that if he tries to bounce around even a little when they perform, he’ll break the stage clean in half.

Still, it’s a stage, and it’s their name on the door on a little printed piece of paper, officially advertised as the last set of the night. Harry snaps a picture of it with his phone and nearly vibrates with glee as he chooses a filter, making the otherwise unremarkable sheet of paper with One Direction — 1 AM - 2 AM look artsy and cool.

“No, wait,” Louis says, and then after multiple reassurances from the bored-looking manager that their instruments will be safe — “It’s three in the afternoon, I don’t think there’ll be much of a crowd,” he’d said dryly — Louis drags the other three up a few streets and over a few more until-

“Oh, wow,” Harry says, staring in awe up at the already-glowing neon of the The Leadmill, a real music venue where real bands with fans and everything will be playing tonight less than a mile from their own show. Louis nudges Harry with his elbow until he gets the hint, and Harry grins widely as he takes a picture of the Leadmill sign. He edits together a quick collage with the picture of the other bar’s setlist, making it look like they’ll be performing somewhere slightly famous tonight instead of somewhere slightly likely to give them an infection. He posts it to the band Instagram, and almost immediately they get ten whole likes.

Louis feels on top of the goddamn world.

“Can you imagine, lads,” Liam says, still staring up at the Leadmill façade. “Someday we might actually play here, we won’t have to fake a picture to just make it look like we did.”

Niall shivers like he’s got the chills. “Don’t jinx us, Liam. I’d hate to have to kill you.”

They wander for a little while longer, ansty and keyed up and in desperate need of a distraction. It’s nearing four o’clock but The Den’s manager said they weren’t really needed until midnight, and they’d already soundchecked when they set up their instruments. They decide to find the hotel just for something to do, parking the van belching black exhaust out front as Harry runs in to the hotel lobby to grab their keys.

“This is… cozy,” Niall says when the door to their room swings open.

That’s definitely not the word Louis would have used.

Two tiny beds are crammed into a room definitely not big enough for both of them. An ancient TV is on top of a fold-down ironing board straight out of the 1950s, and there’s no door to the bathroom.

“Lads, I think something just crawled over my foot,” Liam says.

“Don’t,” Harry says, holding up a hand. “This is all we could afford, but I’ll have to sleep in the van if I think too hard about what sort of terrible things we might find in here.”

Niall shrieks in surprise when he tosses his bag onto one bed and a cloud of dust puffs out of the bedspread, but otherwise they pretend they don’t see anything wrong at all, singing along to Louis’ iPod dropped into an empty glass to amplify the sound.

“ BUT I KNOWWW,” Harry shouts, wiping down every available surface with a dingy rag he found on the towel rack, “ I NEVERRR TRY.”

Liam and Niall join in on the oh oh oh oh oh s, and Louis twists his hips and bops his head along with them as he unzips his bag, digging out his clothes for tonight’s show. The old Stone Roses shirt is on its last legs but that’s why he loves it, and when he inevitably sweats through it while performing he won’t actually do too much damage. He elbows past Liam to get to the mirror, twitching little strands of hair back into their rightful places. His fringe is a carefully constructed mess, fluffed up exactly how he wants it to show the rainbow roots Lottie dyed into his hair a week ago. He switches out the small studs in his ears for larger ones — more visible from further away — and slicks on a line of eyeliner, smudging at it with his finger so it’s appropriately messy.

“Can someone else have the mirror now?” Niall grouses, but he cackles a laugh when Louis comes at him with the eyeliner, tossing pillows at him and scrambling over the beds.

“If we burn this place down, I think someone might be cross,” Harry warns them serenely, striking a match to light one of his candles and neatly dodging a shoe Niall throws at Louis. Louis laughs and falls back onto the bed, the dust puffing out around him once more, but he just sneezes and otherwise ignores it. Liam is trying to shuffle into the shower without dropping his towel where any of the other boys can see him (which is ridiculous, because Louis has seen Liam naked more times than he could count and only teases him about his too-perfect abs a little ). Niall’s shrugging into his favorite shirt, a maroon button-up with the left sleeve half torn off and held together by safety pins, which had been just another occurrence of Niall stumbling into being completely punk rock by accident, since he admitted once that he only used the safety pins because he hated to throw the shirt away and didn’t know how to sew the sleeve back on.

“What’re you wearing, Haz?” Louis asks, rolling up onto one elbow. Harry’s got five small piles of clothing around him, and he’s rifling through each one thoughtfully.

“Dunno,” he says, holding up a couple of options. “I could go with the Rolling Stones,” he nods at one tattered shirt, “but I could do my Cobain jumper as well. What do you think?”

Louis thinks Harry looks good in quite literally everything, up to and including the things he tries on just for a joke when they hang out at the mall, like the mesh shirt straight out of Queer As Folk and the leather trousers Niall nearly talked him into buying after Louis choked on his drink and made his excuse to leave the shop.

“Bit warm for a jumper,” Liam calls over the sound of the shower.

“Right,” Harry frowns down at his choices. “Hmm.”

Louis laughs at the consternation on Harry’s face and rolls to his feet. “Hey, Ni, you done?” Niall finishes twisting his hair up into a messy wave and nods. “Let’s go grab some food.”

“Chinese?” Harry asks hopefully. “Saw one down the street.”

“Maybe,” Louis says, but he and Harry both know Harry always get what he wants, so he beams as Niall and Louis step back out into the afternoon sunshine. Niall’s white-blonde mop is nearly blinding in the sunlight, the strip of green dyed into the front of his fringe even brighter than it is under the makeshift stage lights they rigged up in Harry’s mum’s garage for band practice.

“Shall we walk?” Niall says, shoving his hands into his pockets. His jeans, like his shirt, are more hole than fabric, his pale thigh and knobbled knees visible through the distressed denim. “Nice day.”

“Yeah, alright.” Harry wasn’t lying, and they can see the sign for the Chinese restaurant from here, and so Louis and Niall take off at an easy pace.

“So,” Niall says brightly, which is never ever a good sign. “Have you told Harry all those new songs are about him yet?”

Louis reaches over and shoves Niall into a wall, ignoring his, “Oi!” of protest. “They are not,” he refutes, which is ridiculous because he told Niall they were, in fact, about Harry, so Niall doesn’t even bother arguing.

“At some point he’s going to catch on that you write a shit ton of love songs for someone who hasn’t dated in about, oh, ever.”

“He thinks I write about other people’s relationships,” Louis says, scuffing the ground with his shoe.

“And those couple of guys you let him know you hooked up with,” Niall adds knowingly.

Louis rubs at his neck, looking everywhere but at Niall. “Thought it might… dunno.”

“Make him jealous?” Niall asks. Louis half-shrugs. “You two are the most ridiculous, I swear.”

“Are not,” Louis refutes automatically as the reach the door to the restaurant and step inside, hit with a wave of hot air and the smell of sweet and sour sauce. “Wait. How is Harry ridiculous?”

Niall rolls his eyes and smiles widely at the girl behind the counter, a bored-looking girl about their age. She’s got a string of earrings up her ear that glint in the light from the heat lamps and she pops a piece of gum between her teeth as Niall rattles off their usual order.

“Fifteen minutes,” she says, and then disappears to a back room as someone in the kitchen starts their food.

“Anyway, I think you should just tell him,” Niall says, continuing the conversation as though it never stopped. “I don’t know what catastrophic scenario you think would happen if Harry knew you liked him, but I guarantee it won’t happen.”

“You don’t know that,” Louis says mulishly, though he knows Niall is, annoyingly, probably still correct. Harry’s far too nice to laugh in Louis’ face or to run away screaming when he hears how Louis has been in love with him for quite literally most of their lives. Still, it’s that tiny bit of apprehension in his stomach that keeps him from saying anything. He’s happy living in pining-filled denial.

Niall just sighs again, gusty and pitying.

“Your order’s ready,” the bored girl at the counter calls a few minutes later, and Niall hops to his feet.

“Thanks!” he says brightly. “Hey, we’re playing a show tonight at The Den, you should come! Gonna be ace.”

The girl lifts one eyebrow infinitesimally, but there’s a tiny hint of a grin at the corner of her mouth because Niall is too damn charming for his own good, and she shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Cool,” Niall grins again. “Bye!”

Louis shakes his head as they exit, laughing. “You wanna talk about being ridiculous?”

“You hush, Tommo,” Niall says, poking Louis with a wrapped set of chopsticks.

Back at the hotel room, Harry’s decided on a sheer floral shirt unbuttoned to the center of his chest and Louis has to swallow a couple of times when he sees the stick-poke tattoo on Harry’s exposed inner arm, the tiny little rose to match the dagger on the same place on Louis’ arm.

Louis hands Harry his szechuan chicken and shovels rice into his mouth so he can’t say a fucking word.

There’s a folk singer performing at The Den in the set before One Direction, so when they nod — coolly, maturely — at the bartender taking his smoke break at the back door they can hear her guitar, simple strings and a high, sweet voice. The room’s about half-full, every barstool taken but a few rickety tables left empty. A single bright spotlight illuminates a blonde head of hair bent over an acoustic guitar.

“She’s good,” Liam murmurs, impressed. Harry makes a similar noise in the back of his throat, eyes caught on the way the singer’s fingers catch her guitar strings.

Niall pushes a beer in a dirty glass into Louis’ hands and Louis drinks half of it in one go, watching the way Harry can’t look away from the girl on stage. She’s young, wrapped in oversized, flowy layers like a millennial Stevie Nicks. When she finishes her set and nods at the scattered applause, Harry pushes through the sparse crowd and greets her enthusiastically, voice rising over the low rumble of conversation.

“Cool,” Louis says, finishes the last of his beer, and heads backstage. He spends fifteen minutes fidgeting with his hair, applying and re-applying his eyeliner, and unlacing his combat boots so that the laces trail along the floor, gathering dirt and lint as he walks back on stage.

“Harry,” he says, wrapping a hand in the back of Harry’s shirt and pointedly not apologizing for interrupting the conversation he’s still having with the folk singer. Up close, she looks even younger than she did on stage, probably eighteen or nineteen. “C’mon.”

“Oh, sorry, Caro!” Harry apologizes, and Louis makes a face. Already on a nickname basis. Awesome. “Gotta go setup. Are you sticking around?”

Caro, whose hair is dull dishwater blonde when it’s not under the spotlight, smiles at Harry. “Yeah, sure.”

Harry smiles back and Louis hauls him away, bustling him up onto the stage next to Niall. “That was rude, Louis,” he chides, slipping the strap of his bass over one shoulder and adjusting his shirt.

“Well, we do have more important things to do than stand around watching you flirt,” Louis shoots back. He turns away to his keyboard and plays with the pedal, making sure it’s not sticking like it sometimes does. He does a warm-up scale and then turns to Niall, whose mouth looks pinched. Louis doesn’t know how Harry looks, because he’s refusing to glance that way and confirm that he’s probably just watching Caro settle into a booth towards the back, not far from the girl from the Chinese restaurant and her gaggle of friends.

“Hello,” Niall says into the microphone, which screeches with feedback but then settles. “We’re One Direction, thanks for having us.”

Louis’ fingers fidget on the keys, and he can hear the nervous crack in Niall’s voice. This is it; they’ve performed before but this is the kickoff show of their first ever tour. It has to be amazing. It has to be epic.

They launch into the first song without any further preamble; Niall’s lead on this one, then Liam will do the next one, then Harry, then Louis. They’re all decent singers and they like performing wildly different types of music, so they generally agree on two songs each and then figure things out from there. Niall to start is a good choice, though, because his songs tend to be more electric folk than actual punk, like Mumford mixed with The Front Bottoms, which isn’t too startling of a contrast to Caro’s music and hopefully won’t throw anyone off.

It’s a bit chaotic, their sound, and a bit confusing, and it doesn’t always fit perfectly together, but it’s what they like. Besides, refusing to conform to one genre just because it’s expected is so not punk rock.

Louis takes it as a good sign when one of the men at the bar picks his head up off his arms to watch them blearily; they’ve got energy, if nothing else, with Niall and Harry trading riffs and Liam beating the hell out of the drums. Harry leans back against Louis and shouts the lyrics at the ceiling, too far for the microphone to pick him up but close enough to Louis that he feels the words shudder up his spine.

After those first few nerve-wracking minutes, it’s just like jamming in Harry’s mum’s garage. Louis howls out the words to a Green Day cover as Liam and Niall shout harmonies, and Harry’s leading him through that heavy rock song that always makes Louis laugh, yelling I’M HAVING YOUR BABY at the top of their lungs. That one startles the guy at the bar so badly he tips off his stool, but once in the floor he stays there, bobbing his head drunkenly to the beat.

The girl from the Chinese restaurant and her friends get up and dance when Liam starts to sing, or at least the teenage girl approximation of dancing where they clump together and play with their hair and sway back and forth. It’s all going amazingly, it’s going off like a fucking bomb.

And then the bomb implodes.

“This one is called Sweet Creature,” Harry says, pushing his sweaty hair off his forehead. He’s switched instruments with Niall so that he can take lead guitar on this one, picking out the song to slow things down for a little while, Louis’ racing heartbeat following the quiet chords into something more calm.

Harry, as always, sings the first line to Louis, the way he has since the first time he played it for the band. He’d watched Louis bashfully through his eyelashes then, worried about if the song was good enough or even just good, and it’s been a bit of a tradition ever since. Louis always half-turns to acknowledge it, playing the simple melody with his right hand only, finding the keys easily. Harry isn’t bashful anymore; his eyes are warm and bright under the stage light, and Louis can almost pretend this song is for him, that he’s getting the serenade his garage band dreams always promised him.

But then Harry flicks his glance down at his guitar for just a minute, checking his chord change, and then his eyes go out to the audience. He must be able to see Caro in her shadowed booth because his grin twitches up, and Louis’ stomach hits the floor in response.

He turns back to his keyboard and plays the rest of the set looking down at his hands, concentrating on putting his fingers on the right keys.

“That was amazing!” Caro gushes when they clamber off the low stage (to what, Louis notices smugly, is much more enthusiastic applause than Caro herself got). The four of them are sweaty and gross, and the bandana keeping Liam’s fringe back is so soaked it’s black more than red, and they’re gulping water like it’ll save them, but it doesn’t stop her from wrapping first Harry, then Liam and Niall as well, into hugs. “Hi,” she says, turning to Louis, “I’m Carolina. Your cover of Welcome to Paradise was beautiful . A religious experience.”

Louis shakes her hand and then steps back. “Right, thanks. Well lads, back to the hotel?”

“What?” Niall says, nose scrunching. “No, Lou, we should stay.”

“Yeah, Tommo, c’mon,” Liam says, ruffling his hair and looking towards the girls who are lingering by the door. “Let’s hang out for a bit, at least.”

Louis looks at Harry, who shrugs and grins. “It’s tour, mate. We’ve gotta do it right.”

Louis sighs but heads to the bar instead of out the door, ordering a beer and telling the bartender to keep ‘em coming.

Carolina, according to Louis’ bandmates, is amazing.

“She lived in Spain, Lou. How cool is that?”

“She’s totally read, like, every book, I’m pretty sure.”

“You know how, sometimes, people say things are social constructs? Like, time, or gender, or whatever? I never got what that meant, but she explained it to me and now I get it!”

Louis, unaffected by the sheer excitement on Liam’s face, says, “I could’ve explained social constructs to you, Liam.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to ask because I thought I was the only one who didn’t get it, but Caro told me and now I can discuss stuff with you and Harry and Niall!”

“Cool,” Louis says, pulls the musty sheets of the hotel bed he’d shared with Harry last night back over his head, because it’s eleven in the morning and Louis is already done with today.

He’d stayed at the bar for as long as he could possibly stand last night, nursing a couple of beers and getting the kind of angry drunk that just makes his stomach hurt, then gave up and went to wait in the van until his stupid bandmates got tired of thinking with their dicks. He and Harry, who had shared more beds throughout their decade of friendship than could possibly be counted, had claimed the bed closest to the door in the wonderful pre-gig time Louis is privately referring to as BC (Before Carolina). When they stumbled into the hotel room at somewhere near two a.m., though, Louis threw back the covers and curled up into a ball with his back to Harry, ignoring the confused, slightly hurt look on his face.

Which was ruined, of course, when he woke up curled around Harry like usual anyway, curls tickling his face. It was ruined further when Harry rolled over and smiled at Louis like everything was right in the world, and then said, “Carolina knows a cool place we can go for breakfast, you in?”

So no, Louis thinks this day can go on without him. There’s no gig tonight, they’re not leaving for Birmingham until the morning, and Niall isn’t even there to act as a Carolina buffer because the girl from the restaurant — Arden, apparently — had succumbed enough to Niall’s charms to agree to a brunch date, and they were doubling with Liam and one of her friends.

“Nah, mate,” Louis had said, pulling the sheets back up around his ears. “You go. Still sleepy.”

So Harry went and had breakfast with Carolina, and then he texted and asked if Louis wanted to join them out at the park and Louis pretended not to see it, but then Niall and Liam had come back to the hotel room and laid on Louis until he agreed to get up and, as Niall put it, “quit moping, you’re giving me indigestion.”

“Yeah, get up,” Liam chimed in, “I want you to explain gender politics, I think I can understand it now.”

Louis groaned and swiped at them with his pillow, which didn’t deter them all, and then got up and, for Niall’s sake, quit moping.

It’s not his fault he’s been around Harry so long that Harry just considers him a part of the landscape, always there but easily looked over. Carolina is new and shiny and apparently reads books, what the fuck ever .

“Right,” he’d said. “Gender politics. Liam, what do you know about toxic masculinity?”

Harry and Carolina eventually reappear just as Niall is starting to ask about dinner, bearing cheap pizza and beer.

“Hello friends!” Carolina trills, passing a bottle to each of them and sitting cross-legged on the foot of Harry and Louis’ bed. “How was your day? Anything magical happen?”

“Louis explained how men wearing pink and being able to cry in public subverts typical constructs of masculinity that trap men as well as women in a cruel system that demands perfection,” Liam rattles off, then beams when Louis nods in approval.

“Nice!” Carolina says, turning to Louis, who is leaning against Niall’s pillows as far away from her in the tiny room that he can get, clicking aimlessly on his well-beaten laptop, fingers picking at the band stickers layered on the lid. “That’s cool that you’re so interested in stuff like that, Louis.”

“I’m in a punk band,” Louis says dismissively. “I have to know the norms I’m destroying.”

“Is that what punk is to you, then?” she asks. She tilts her head, watching him with intelligent eyes. “Subverting norms?”

“Punk is anger put to good use,” Louis says, still clicking randomly at the Google homepage rather than looking at Carolina and the way she and Harry are sharing a napkin to wipe the pizza grease from their fingers. “It’s looking around at the world and deciding you don’t like it or its constructs or its norms, and yelling about it at the top of your lungs. Sticking it to the man, whether that ‘man’ is government or corporations or an actual person in power.”

Harry makes a noise, and Louis looks away from where he’d been using his mouse to trace the Google doodle over and over. Harry is chewing slowly, his brow furrowed in thought. It’s one of Louis’ favorite expressions, the one that says he’s crafting a sentence that is sure to spark some sort of debate that may never definitively end.

“Dunno,” he says finally, when he’s swallowed his bite and finished his thinking. “I think punk is about protest. Embracing things that society disagrees with, deconstructing things like racism and homophobia. Anger is a part of it, but it’s not all there is to it.”

“What else is there, then?” Carolina asks. She sounds like a therapist, pulling answers out of them until they say something revealing. Liam and Niall are demolishing their own pizza slices and watching like spectators at a tennis match.

“Love,” Harry shrugs. “I think love is the most important part of punk rock.”

Louis snorts. “Love is for country singers and Elvis, not punk.”

“Oh yeah?” Harry challenges, brows drawn together. He grabs Louis’ iPod and scrolls until he finds a song, selects it. Billie Joe Armstrong starts singing about Adie taking him away, and then Harry switches to you are my peach, you are my plum, and then do you ever get the feeling that you want to hold me? Do it now, 'cause I want everyone to see.

“Alright, alright,” Louis grumps, taking a bite of pizza. “Yes, you’ve proved there are punk love songs. Still, it’s hard to stick it to the man when you’re singing about fluffy feelings. Seems like it’s pulling away from the main message.”

“But isn’t it just like what you’re always saying, Lou?” Harry says, leaning forward, nearly earnest. “That society doesn’t want us to be happy with ourselves, because then it can’t sell us things. So the most punk rock thing you can do is love yourself how you are, and then love someone else for how they are too. Loving someone and letting yourself be loved is sticking it to the man.”

For a long moment, Harry and Louis just look at each other. Like there’s a string tied between them and they can’t move or it’ll break; or, no, like the space between them is lined with glass and any wrong move will slice, slice their feet to ribbons.

“Yeah,” Louis says. His mouth feels cottony and strange. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“See,” Harry says. “Love is the most punk rock thing there is.”

Louis feels better the next morning. He wakes up with Harry curled around him, breath puffing against the back of his neck. The band gets lunch and haphazardly shoves their things back in bags, chattering away as they pack up the van and hit the road to Birmingham.

They stop by the hotel first this time, having learned their lesson in Sheffield about setting up too early and letting themselves get jittery. This hotel is similarly dingy but slightly cleaner, and it was cheap enough they sprung for two rooms with an adjoining door, which Liam props open so he and Niall can hear Harry’s music playing from his laptop.

“Dude!” Niall shouts from the bathroom. “Free lotion and soap!”

“Score!” Harry says, rushing into the bathroom to ooh and ah over the Sunset Tide scented bath products. Louis huffs a laugh and strips off the t-shirt he slept in, stuffing it back in his duffel and pulling out a stretched-out sleeveless vest that he’s pretty sure used to be Harry’s, a row of colored safety pins holding the bottom hem together. He smudges his eyeliner back on and fluffs his hair into place, then falls across the single bed, arms spread wide. Harry comes out of the bathroom smelling like acetone and whatever the fuck Sunset Tide is supposed to be, sees Louis, and falls on the bed across him.

“Oof,” Louis groans, but obligingly shifts when Harry directs him to, until Harry is settled with his head on Louis stomach. He hands a bottle of red nail polish to Louis to hold and unscrews the lid, tapping the excess back into the bottle. He paints his nails, not really bothering to keep the color even or to keep the color only on his nails, and hums along to the Ramones spewing from his overworked laptop speakers. Louis uses his free hand to run through Harry’s curls, untangling a couple and twisting one stubborn ringlet around his finger.

“Excited for tonight?” Harry asks. They’re cutting one of the covers — Liam drew the short straw so it was his choice of Kanye’s Heartless gone from the setlist — and adding in one of their newer original songs for the first time. Louis only finished polishing it into an actual song a few weeks ago, but they’d practiced nearly non-stop before leaving for the tour and had it pretty much down pat.

“Yeah,” Louis says. “I am, yeah. Think it’s gonna be great.”

Harry, finished painting his own nails, reaches for Louis’ hand and starts on his next. He sticks his tongue out between his teeth and concentrates on smoothing the varnish evenly over Louis’ nails, careful in a way he isn’t with himself.

Joey Ramone belts his heart out from Harry’s laptop: hey, little girl, I want to be your boyfriend,

sweet little girl, I want to be your boyfriend. Niall and Liam’s bickering floats to them over the music, and the smell of Harry’s shampoo and Harry’s fingernail polish and Harry fills Louis up to the brim, until he feels like he’s going to spill over, and until he feels like it might be okay if he did.

Do you love me babe?

What can I say?

Because I want to be your boyfriend.

Louis isn’t even sure what this bar’s name is, but it’s bigger than the last one and there’s already a healthy crowd when they arrive at eight o’clock, lugging the separate pieces of Liam’s drum set up to the makeshift stage.

“Good to see you guys,” says the manager, a friendly-looking guy named Tom, who shakes Louis’ hand like he’s an adult. Louis decides he likes Tom. But then Tom says, “And your entourage is already here, we set them up by the stage.”

Louis turns just in time to see Harry sweeping Carolina up into a hug, like they didn’t just see each other yesterday. Arden and her friends are there too, all of them trying and failing not to smile at Niall’s effusive welcome, his arm flung over Liam’s shoulders.

“What the fuck,” Louis says.

“Dunno, mate,” Tom says affably.

“Lou, look!” Harry calls. Louis squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and then turns around, trying to force his face into something approaching welcoming. Harry’s got his arm thrown over Carolina’s shoulder, smiling widely as Louis makes his way to them. “I asked Caro if she could come tonight as well, and she didn’t have anything else to do! Isn’t that sick?”

“I’m a free bird, I go where I want,” Carolina says mystically, waving a vague hand through the air, then laughs. “Nah, actually I just had a few days off work, and when Harry mentioned you lot were doing a week tour, I thought I’d play groupie.”

“ So sick,” Harry repeats.

“Sick,” Louis repeats. He thumbs over his shoulder at the pile of instrument cases on stage. “Gonna go get things started.”

They’re the only gig tonight at Tom’s bar, so there’s no rush to set up so someone else can perform. Still, Louis determinedly unpacks his keys and all the cords, untangling knots of black wire and plugging in his pedals. He ignores Harry’s loud cackle from Carolina’s booth.

Niall joins him eventually, unwinding the cords for the microphones with practiced movements.

“It’s not what you think,” he says.

“I don’t care,” Louis says.

Liam assembles his drumkit in mere minutes, spinning his stool once to make sure he can move how he likes, tucking his extra sticks in the pockets of his Dickeys trousers. His fringe is already drooping a little over the front of his bandana, so Louis digs a tin of pomade out of his backpack and twists Liam’s hair back, smiling a little when Liam thanks him.

“Go get Harry,” is all he says, tucking the pomade back in the zipper pocket of his bag and running his warm-up scales on his keyboard.

Harry’s got the first song tonight. He straps his bass over his shoulder and turns to Louis with a wide, excited smile. “Hey, can I try something?” he asks. Louis adjusts his fringe, shrugging. “I think it would be cool if, like, we bantered a bit on stage? Talked a bit more, you know what I mean? Or introduced the songs with more than just saying the name.”

Louis rubs at the corner of his mouth. It’s a good idea, because the four of them can talk shit about just about anything, and they thrive on attention so it’s not like they’ll clam up with an audience. Plus, that’s what gigs are for, right? Figuring out what they like and don’t like, testing new waters?

“Yeah, alright,” Louis says, grinning a bit when Harry bounces on his toes.

“Awesome,” Harry says. “It was just, it was so cool when Carolina did that, you know? When she explained the inspiration for her songs and stuff while she was performing. And we can actually have conversations, chat a bit between ourselves, since there’s four of us.”

Cool.

“Mhm,” Louis says. “Go warn Niall and Liam.”

The crowd is definitely larger than their first gig, though that may be aided by it being a Thursday night instead of a Tuesday, and the bar being able to hold more people in general. Harry actually has to ask Niall to hit a discordant chord on his guitar to grab the majority of the group’s attention, but then he smiles wide and their attention is easily held.

“H’lo,” Harry says, “We’re One Direction, and we’d like to play some songs for you.”

One of Arden’s friends whoops, and Carolina yells, “Get it!”

Harry’s grin widens until he’s all dimples, and he says, “I’m Harry, this is Niall to m’ left on guitar.” Niall nods and does another decisive chord. “Liam on drums.” Liam crashes a blow on the cymbals then catches them, the sound muffling immediately. “And finally we’ve got the talented fingers of Louis on the keys.”

Arden’s friends catcall again, and Louis finds himself turning to shoot Harry a helpless, bemused smile. “Are you quite done?” he asks. It’s only after the ripple of laughter from the crowd that he realizes the microphone picked him up. Harry’s grin is now so wide it looks painful.

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Harry laughs, “Louis says get to the music, and so to the music we will get.” He thumbs an easy E chord on his bass and says, “This first song is one you might recognize. This is Toxic.”

There’s nothing quite as obscene as Harry singing I need a hit, baby give me it with his head thrown back, throat bared to the room. Louis gets a fair bit of tunnel vision and plays only by rote, his fingers dancing across keys he doesn’t remember hitting the moment the note fades. It’s a great start, followed up by Liam’s favorite, a bass-heavy song called Strip That Down.

Harry keeps up the conversation between songs, working the little space they have on stage, chatting with his bandmates and keeping every eye glued to him. He’s in a wide-necked, thin jumper, nearly threadbare in the elbows and splattered with a bit of paint from some long ago art project. It keeps slipping down on his chest, showing his collarbones and the sweat glistening in the hollow of his throat. He lifts the hem at one point to wipe his face and this time a middle-aged woman at the bar is the one who whoops, starting a round of cheers that have Harry blushing madly.

“Oh, hush,” he laughs, running his thumb along the edge of his bass. “If you wanted that sort of show, you’d have to pay us a lot more.”

Louis’s stomach is still heavy and weird from knowing Carolina is here, only a few feet away, watching Harry with the same sort of adoration he himself feels deep in his chest. He knows, he knows, that Harry’s going to pull him aside when their set is done, is going to ask if Louis can stay at the bar a little longer so Harry can have the privacy of the hotel room. She did come all this way to see him, after all.

But.

Despite the achy nausea that creeps into Louis’ joints, he can’t help but think this is the best show they’ve ever done. The crowd likes their originals more than their covers — a rarity in the world of bands just trying to hit their stride — and the hopeful tip jar they left up at the bar has at least a couple of tenners stuffed inside, if not more. Something has just clicked.

Harry and Louis spend three minutes between Slow Hands and Sweet Creature teasing each other; god knows how it started but it ends with Harry making a pun about the proficiency of Louis’ own slow hands that has Niall doubling over in laughter and Louis stuttering for some kind of answer besides the one rattling around in his head, because the only thing his brain can churn out right now is for him to shout WOULD YOU LIKE A GO?

That, he knows, would be spectacularly stupid.  

The crowd is small but enthusiastic, cheering and singing along to the familiar covers. A few people get up to dance with Arden and her friends halfway through the set, and a guy in a nearby booth keeps catching Louis’ eye and smiling widely. The energy is catching, making Louis play better, making him sing louder.  

But finally, it’s the last song, Louis’ turn with the lead mic, and he finds himself oddly hesitant, all of a sudden.

“This, erm,” he says, playing a quiet arpeggio. “This is our last song of the night.” A few people boo good-naturedly, and Louis hears Harry chuckle. “I know, I know, I wish we could stay too. But, um, this last one is…” He takes a deep breath and flicks a glance at Niall, who is drinking deeply from a water bottle but still somehow conveying to Louis that he’s doing the right thing. “It’s very special to me, and very, um. Meaningful, I suppose. And I’m glad we get to play it for you all tonight.”

Even you, he thinks at Carolina, who is still watching them on stage with what can only be called delight, as though everything they’re doing has made her incandescently happy. And maybe that’s true; in the past few days Louis isn’t sure he’s ever seen her be anything less than wildly content. For a folk singer, it’s an odd disposition to have.

But, for the first time, Louis is glad she’s here for this. Maybe if she hears, maybe if she understands, she’ll see why Louis can’t smile and be her friend. Maybe she’ll hear what Louis can’t bring himself to say.  

“This song is called Strong.”

Niall strums out the echoing first guitar line, with Louis’ hands on the keys following him to deepen the sound. This is the first song they’ve done proper boyband style, with each of them taking a solo verse or bridge and joining together on the chorus, but it’s what fits the song best. Harry’s voice jumps off against Liam’s, a strong burst of harmony in the chorus. Louis pours everything into his lines, there’s nothing I’m running from, and maybe that’s a lie, maybe he lied to himself as he penned these very words, but -

Harry’s back presses against Louis’ on the tiny stage and it feels like a reassurance, somehow; not from Harry, because he doesn’t know who these words are for, thinks Louis was inspired by a story or a film, by imaginary feelings felt by imaginary people. Still, the hot line of him at Louis’ back tells him that something must be right, that Louis has done something right.

Niall takes the fade-out bridge, just his voice echoing out over the room, and the rightness of it all solidifies. This song, this band, this fucking tour; it’s all exactly what was meant to happen. Louis was meant to feel this fierce, resounding joy thrum through him like a bass line brought to life by Harry’s fingers.

It’s fitting, too, that Harry has the last line, that they can crash into the ending with wailing guitar and chasing keys and a thundering one-two punch of bass and drums and then it stops, on a dime, so Harry can ask:

Is it so wrong that you make me strong?

The applause tonight drowns out the hard beat of Louis’ heart. He lets Harry wrap an exuberant arm around his shoulders and they take an awkward, unwieldy bow, their grins like matching sparks in a dark room.

The high of performing doesn’t last long, but Louis didn’t expect it to. Harry joins Carolina at her booth as soon as he’s changed from his sweat-drenched jumper to a tight black t-shirt. Louis makes his way to the bar and orders a pint, nodding at Tom when he drops one off for him. Louis takes a long sip and exhales heavily.

“That was a great show,” someone says, and Louis turns to see the guy who kept catching his eye during the set. He’s very nice-looking up close, broad-shouldered and friendly, a row of black studs up his ear and the flash of a tongue ring when he talks. “Fuckin’ sick, actually.”

“Yeah? Cheers, mate,” Louis says, surprised by the praise. He shoves his sweaty fringe off his forehead, aware that his vest is sticking to him in unpleasant places. It’s too hot in here to worry about his hair falling perfectly into place, even though he knows his rainbow roots must be a wild, wet riot on the side of his head now instead of hidden away. The guy’s eyes follow Louis’ hand through his hair and he looks a bit hungry, though, so Louis assumes that means it must not look that bad after all.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

Louis tosses back the last of his pint and nods. “Sure.”

Louis thinks he says his name is Trevor, but in all honesty exhaustion and alcohol are dragging his interest away, towards Harry in the booth, towards Carolina beside him. Trevor tries valiantly to recapture his attention, sliding a warm palm against Louis’ waist and leaning close. “Where are you staying?” he asks.

“Hotel ‘round the corner,” Louis answers. This could be where he invites Trevor back to his room before Harry can take Carolina there instead, to hang a sock on the door like the worst sort of cliche. But he makes the mistake of looking over and seeing Harry, who’s finally noticed someone else has Louis’ attention, and is climbing his way out of the booth.

“Yeah?” Trevor’s asking as Harry gets close enough to hear. “Want to get out of here?”

“No,” Harry says, and Louis startles. Harry looks startled too, like he didn’t mean to say that. “I mean,” he says, “Lou, we gotta pack up the equipment, and work out a percentage with Tom.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Louis says. He probably wasn’t going to go anywhere with Trevor anyway, but he tries to be appropriately apologetic when he pats Trevor’s arm and says, “Sorry. Duty calls, eh?”

“Yeah, of course,” Trevor says, and he shoots a look at Harry like he’s trying to puzzle something out. “I won’t keep you.”

Harry watches Trevor’s back with narrowed eyes as he walks away, and mutters, “Douche,” under his breath before turning to Louis. “Did you want to go with him?”

“No,” Louis says, “I’m beat, to be honest. Let’s pack the van and head out.” He tips his head back and empties the last of his second beer.

Harry looks satisfied when Louis meets his eyes again. “Yeah,” he says, then gives Louis a quiet, just-for-him grin. “Let’s count our tip jar first, though. Bet we made enough money to buy something pretty.”

“Yeah?” Louis teases, tugging at one of Harry’s curls. “Like what, princess, need a gown for the ball?”

“Yes, I do,” Harry says primly, and scrunches his nose to keep from laughing along with Louis as they meet Tom at the bar to talk payment.

One more day of rest, then their last show. They’ll pack up the van again and set off for Liverpool, where they’ll stay Friday night and then perform at a little back-alley bar just around the corner from the famous Cavern Club. The presence of greatness will be looming once more, but this time Louis thinks they can handle the pressure. They’ve gotten progressively better even in just the last week; the final show is sure to be a smash.

With that happy thought in mind, Louis lets himself drift to full wakefulness. He’s got an arm and a leg thrown across Harry, who is still sleeping deeply. Louis feels the pull to press a kiss to Harry’s bare chest, just inches from his mouth, but resists by rolling away and heading for the shower.

It’s bad enough his crush on Harry has raged so far out of his control for so long; he definitely doesn’t want to do something outside the limits of Harry’s consent just because Louis can’t fight his own urges.

Liam’s got the adjoining door between their rooms thrown open again when Louis exits the bathroom, toweling off his hair. He hears Harry’s laugh from Niall and Liam’s room and heads through the doorway automatically, though his smile sours when he sees Carolina there with his bandmates.

“Good morning,” she says brightly. “I brought breakfast.”

Louis nods and takes a seat next to Liam, who’s thumbing the bassline from Longview on Harry’s guitar almost absentmindedly. Louis shoves at Liam until he’s got his legs outstretched so Louis can use his lower thigh as a pillow, and Liam ruffles his hair.

“Tommo, have I mentioned how sick this hair is?” Liam asks, sliding Louis’ fringe back. “Because it’s fuckin’ ace.”

“Thanks, Payno,” Louis yawns. “Lottie’ll have to do yours when we get home, eh?”

“Oh, would she?” Liam says, perking up. Louis snorts.

“Of course she would, we’re her guinea pigs.”

“Sweet.”

“Why don’t you have color in your hair, Harold?” Carolina asks. Louis rolls his eyes at the nickname — his nickname, he calls Harry that — and turns to see what Harry will say.

“Oh, um. Dunno,” he says, and this time it’s Niall who scoffs.

“Please,” he laughs. “Harry’s so protective of his hair that I’m decently sure he’s got it insured.”

“I hear his hair’s insured for $10,000,” Liam says, and Louis barks out a laugh.

“I hear he does car commercials… in Japan.”

“Uh, no, we’re stopping that right now,” Harry says. “If I am anyone, I am Karen.” He grabs at his chest, adopting a thoughtful look. “It’s sixty-eight degrees and there’s a… thirty percent chance it’s already raining.”

Louis throws a pillow at him, laughing. “Oh yeah? So does that mean I get to be Regina instead? I do only want to lose five pounds.”

“I don’t think my father, the inventor of Toaster Strudel, would be too happy to hear about this,” Liam says.

“Why do I have to be Lindsay Lohan?” Niall cries. “Can I be Janice?”

“I think,” Carolina says, bringing the room to a halt. She turns back to Harry with a sly grin, “that you are all trying to distract me from the original topic. Harry, you should let me dye your hair.”

“I-” Harry says, then stops. “Well. I don’t know.”

Niall is nodding, though. “You should, Haz! We’ll pick an awesome color, don’t worry.”

“We could redo mine, too, while we’re at it,” Liam says, poking sadly at the faded streak of red through his fringe.

“Lou?” Harry asks.

The thing is, and what everyone is carefully tiptoeing around, is that Louis has been angling for Harry to dye his hair for years. He’d dyed his whole head bright red back when they were thirteen, and even though there was still half a bottle left when he was finished, Harry was so hesitant that Louis didn’t push. He’s asked, though, several times since then if Harry wants to try something new, maybe let Lottie give it a go. He’d always said no.

Just another thing Carolina set in motion just by showing up, it seems. Just like Louis’ brand new uncontrollable jealousy when it comes to Harry’s attention on other people, and the best music they’ve ever played together.  

“Yeah, H,” Louis says. “I think you should do it.”

Harry looks at Louis for a long few seconds, then turns back to Carolina. “Okay, guess I’m doing this,” he says faintly. “What’s first?”

She pulls a couple of plastic bottles from her purse and grins. “I knew you’d say yes, so I came prepared.” She sends Harry to the shower to wet his hair and sets up a dyeing station at the little sink, pulling on plastic gloves and uncapping a bottle of bleach.

“I feel like Sandy in Grease,” Harry says when he’s out of the shower, towel wrapped around his shoulders as Carolina tilts his head back and forth, as though trying to plan her attack. “When Frenchie’s piercing her ears, you know?”

“ Beauty school dropout,” Liam sings, and Harry laughs.

“That’s not you, is it?” he asks Carolina.

“Well, I didn’t drop out of beauty school,” she says, grinning, “but that’s because I never went, so maybe that’s worse.”

Harry laughs again and drops his head forward, inhaling deeply. “Okay,” he says, sounding like he’s reassuring himself. “Let’s do this. I’m ready to be a Pink Lady.”

Liam and Niall make weak excuses to get Louis out of the room, saying they want to see the finished product but not the process, closing the adjoining door between the hotel rooms. Harry and Carolina’s laughter floats through the door to them, but their words are muffled.

“Jesus,” Louis says, falling back onto the bed. “This is it, then, isn’t it. This is how it goes.”

“Look at that, Ni, he’s just as dramatic as you said he’d be,” Liam says. “Budge up, you great moping moron.”

“S’not very nice,” Louis mumbles. “My heart’s been broken.”

It actually feels a little numb, not broken, novacaine over the hurts and the aches. The bad thing about going numb, though, is that it doesn’t last, the pain poking at the edges and trying to find a way through.

“He’s not wrong, though,” Niall says, taking the space on Louis’ other side. “You are being a mite dramatic. It’s not like she asked him for a wedding.”

“I’ve been asking him to dye his hair for years, Nialler,” Louis points out. “Literal years. And she walks in and it’s like, yeah, of course! No second thoughts at all.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Niall swears, sounding grumpy. “It’s not a fucking metaphor, it’s just a bottle of hair dye.”

“Everything’s a metaphor,” Louis grumbles. “He loves her and I will always be the best friend.”

“He waited to say yes until you told him to,” Liam says.

“See above: forever best friend.”

“I swear to god,” Niall grumps again. “I’m going to lock the two of you in a room for the rest of eternity, which is how long it would take for you both to pull your heads out of your asses.”

Louis doesn’t say anything. Niall always says it like that; like it’s both he and Harry that are being unreasonable, that it’s on both of them, which is strange. Harry’s just the object of Louis’ long-term pining, it’s not his fault.

Niall lets him stew in the quiet for a while, and then he says, “Can you do one thing, for me?” Louis turns his head to meet his eyes, and nods. “When you get a moment, ask Harry what made him write Sweet Creature.”

Before Louis can reply, there’s a knock on the adjoining door and Louis sits up, the blood rushing to his head from lying down so long.

“Ready?” Carolina calls through the door. Louis, abruptly, realizes that he doesn’t exactly trust Carolina with Harry’s hair. What if she fucked it up? Harry loves his hair, uses all sorts of special oils and treatments on it, and if she messed that up-

He doesn’t even get a chance to formulate an end to that threat because the door is swinging open.

Niall lets out a whistle, which Liam echoes. Louis stands, then feels funny and sits down again. His heart seems to have split in half and migrated to the soles of his feet.

Harry’s curls are still there, bouncy and wild and brunette as ever, except for a single, perfectly curling, rose gold ringlet.

“Holy shit,” Louis says.

Harry lights up like a goddamn firework.

It’s too hopeful to think that Carolina won’t follow them to Liverpool too, but at least Louis has the guarantee that she’ll have to find her own way there since she can’t fit in the van with all their stuff. Niall barely fits, and they were only able to make room for him because he’d threatened to leave the band if they made him take a train to the last gig of his first ever tour.

“This is it, lads,” Louis says as they pull onto the M6. “The big finale.”

They get to Liverpool in the early evening, checking into their hotel, where once again they’re split into two rooms instead of crammed into one. Harry and Louis set their stuff on their bed and fall back onto the mattress almost in unison, giggling tiredly.

“I think we might be sleep deprived,” Louis says drowsily. He flops onto his side and curls up against the heat of Harry’s skin.

“I think,” Harry starts but then yawns so widely his jaw pops. That sets Louis off giggling again, and he’s still smiling when he falls into a doze, his forehead against Harry’s ribs.

When they wake it’s fully dark outside, and there’s a bag of cold Thai takeaway on a table by the door with a note from Liam. We were hungry and you two looked too cute to wake up. Don’t worry, we only took about 50 pictures. Louis snorts and hands the note to Harry, digging out a container of pra ram.

There’s no TV here but the silence isn’t unbearable, the sounds of scraping and chewing comforting. It hasn’t been just the two of them together in days, not when they’re both awake and there’s no Carolina between them.

It’s almost midnight and the food has been wiped out when Louis remembers.

“Hey, Niall told me to ask you something,” Louis says.

“What?”

“He told me to ask about what made you write Sweet Creature.”

Whatever reaction Louis expected, this wasn’t it; Harry freezes, his eyes going wide and — guilty?

“Oh, uh. Well. I took the idea from your writing style, I guess,” he says, vague.

“My writing style,” Louis echoes.

“Yeah, you know, where you use sort of fictionalized love stories to imagine something in real life.”

“So you wrote about a made-up relationship?”

“Not really,” Harry hedges. “It’s, well. It was more of me being hopeful than anything else.”

“Hopeful,” Louis’ useless mouth repeats again. “You’re… hoping for the kind of relationship you wrote about, then?”

“There’s… a particular future I want for myself,” Harry says slowly. “And Sweet Creature is sort of, it’s the realization of that future. So, if everything in my life was how I wanted it to be, in my perfect world, I would be living out the words of the song.”

“What’s stopping you?” Louis asks softly. Harry laughs, but not happily — it sounds self-deprecating.

“I used to think it was my own fear,” he says, looking up at Louis through his lashes, “but now I think the person I had in mind doesn’t even think of me that way, so it was all for naught.”

“Well,” Louis says indignantly, “then they’re a moron, whoever they are. Anyone would be lucky to be with you.”

Harry laughs again, and this one sounds sad. “Yeah,” he says. “I wish it was that easy.”

Louis has a hard time falling asleep, after that. He tosses and turns, finding himself staring at Harry for long minutes. A strip of moonlight through a crack in the curtains falls across his face, his parted lips, the single pink curl.

It doesn’t make sense, what Harry said. Louis can’t make it all fit.

There’s someone out there who Harry likes — loves, perhaps — and who he dreams of a future with. They’re out there in the world unaware that Harry feels this way, and showing so little interest in him in return that Harry has written it off as a lost cause, a future that will never happen.

Louis wants to find them, whoever they are, and shake them until they see sense.

Louis, to his own surprise, finds himself spending the next morning thinking about Carolina.

She’s obviously not the Sweet Creature subject, since Harry wrote that months ago, but maybe she could be. Maybe Harry just needs help taking that last step, breaking fully away from the fantasy that has kept him hooked for so long.

Louis pulls her off to the side after they finish setting up that night. She’s still dishwater blonde and too cheerful to be tolerable, but she might be Harry’s saving grace, and Louis can’t let jealousy be what keeps Harry from potential happiness. So, he tugs up every last bit of courage and says, “If you’re waiting for my blessing, you have it.”

Carolina tilts her head, looking confused. “Your blessing?”

“Harry likes you,” Louis says bluntly. “I want him to be happy more than I want to dislike you, and I think this could be what it takes to do that.”

Carolina looks at him like he has simultaneously answered her questions and made everything more unclear. “I… appreciate that,” she says slowly, and Louis can see the similarity there between her and Harry, the careful way they choose their words sometimes. “But I don’t agree.”

“With what part?” Louis asks, taken aback.

“With the part where you said I could be what makes him happy,” Carolina says, patting Louis’ arm. “That’s never been my job. Someone else has had that locked down for a long, long time.”

The tour finale is, in a word, electric.

There’s not a single note missed, a single chord dropped. Harmonies fall together easier than breathing. Louis’ fingers fit to the keys like they were created for each other.

“We’re so glad to be here with you lovely people,” Harry tells the crowd, who respond in kind. “Now let’s fucking party.”

They’re booked for a set that’s twice as long as the previous two, but the time flies. They have room to fit everything in comfortably, the covers and the original songs, Harry’s banter back and forth with his bandmates, the crowd response, the breaks for water and to check the setlist.

“Our friend Louis here wrote that song,” Harry says when they finish Strong, eyes bright under the lights. “Isn’t it beautiful? I think whoever he sings it to must feel like the luckiest person on earth.”

Something’s building in Louis’ gut as they crash through the second half of the setlist. Something that started years ago, the first time Harry smiled at Louis and the resulting flip in his stomach made him go oh, okay. Something that built and built and grew and spread, that infiltrated his very veins until he was writing love songs to a boy who had been in his life as long as he could remember. It built until it crested, early this morning in a random hotel room over noodles, hearing Harry describe a perfect future with someone who-

Someone who he thought didn’t want him back.

Punk rock is about anger, except when it’s not; except when it’s about love, and the love is more rebellious than any anger could ever hope to be. Love crashes over Louis like a wave and he’s drowning, drowning on stage with his back pressed to Harry’s.

The final song tonight is called Home and Louis wrote it ages back, a companion piece to Sweet Creature written before it ever existed. It’s upbeat and hopeful and proud and loud, crashing guitar and dancing bass and thudding keys and thundering drums. Liam breaks a stick and tosses it into the crowd, where two people fight over it. Niall rips his shirt over his head and roars at the crowd, leaping off the stage in an ill-advised stage dive, though somehow they don’t drop him.  

Harry sings baby we could be enough and that’s the moment it zings through Louis, as real and true as though Harry confirmed it.

He’s in love with Harry, and Harry loves him back.

Harry loves him back.

I’ll make this feel like home.

Louis is Sweet Creature; he’s the future Harry wants.

Harry holds the final bass note and Louis grabs him by the front of the flannel shirt, hauling him in and kissing him. For a second, Harry is too surprised to do anything; then, like ice cracking under sunlight, he throws his arms around Louis and kisses back.

There are deafening cheers from the audience, including one voice whooping loudly that sounds suspiciously like Carolina, and another that sounds like Niall saying, “Oh thank god, finally.”

Louis kisses Harry fiercely and Harry kisses Louis achingly, sweet and sharp in equal measures. When they break away it’s only to catch their breath, and they press their foreheads together, grinning like loons.

“Way to stick it to the man, Lou,” Harry says.

“Shut up, Sandy,” Louis says, and kisses him again.