Archive of Our Own ^beta

White shirt, carefully ironed. Black trousers, perfectly tailored and without a crease in sight. A waistcoat bordering on too tight, accentuating his curves and only slightly limiting his movement. A gold-plated name tag, less to identify him and more to brand him as other. Not one of the patrons, God no. Just a server, there as nothing more than decoration and a means to provide whatever they need.

When he’s not a waiter, he’s whatever else the hotel needs him to be. Today, and most days, he just feels like a failure. 

It’s hard not to feel like one, living in London and trying to get any role in any show he’s remotely suitable for. Every day he wakes up, goes to an audition, films another self-tape, has another callback. And every day, another rejection comes in, every one more painful than the last. So every evening he puts on his silly little work outfit, tries to navigate his way around his tiny flat on the outskirts of the outskirts of the city that he shares with three people he doesn’t really like, and then makes his way to work on a tube full of a hundred other people whose dreams don’t matter. 

Today it’s worse than usual. Just three hours ago he’d woken up after far too little sleep, once again, to yet another rejection. Then, he’d been called by the hotel manager and begged to come in early to help set up for this very important event that just happens to be for Rose Aesthetics. Louis’ exes father’s company, one of the most successful companies in the world, and the reason that Louis hasn’t known peace in the last three years. The company has its claws in everything from makeup to fashion to bloody furniture. It’s kind of hard to get over someone when you can’t escape the reminders of them, little sprinklings of their existence haunting you wherever you go.

Three days after the breakup, Louis had walked past the company’s headquarters on his way to work and had to call in sick. Two months in, he scrolled past an ad on instagram and couldn’t get rid of the pain in his chest for the rest of the day. A year and three months in, one of his housemates came home screaming about her latest unnecessary purchase, a thrifted version of the famous Rose bag, and Louis had locked himself in his bedroom to cry. Countless times in between, some more painful than others, but always an unwelcome reminder. Three years in, this stupid event, and still the pain catches him unawares. No longer bright and sharp like the first time, or the few times it hit harder than usual, but now just a dull ache in the pit of his stomach that makes breathing just that slightest bit difficult.

So he’s struggling a bit as he helps polish glasses in the kitchen, more than aware that in an hour or so he’s going to have to serve Des Styles as if he doesn’t hate the man’s guts.

But it’s fine, Louis tells himself, fingers absentmindedly scrubbing at a stubborn spot on the edge of the glass. It’s fine. It’s just a few hours, a few fake smiles, and hopefully some good tips if he’s lucky, and then he can crawl back onto the tube and stumble his way back home, hoping that Mina isn’t throwing another late-night smoking sesh that will keep him up past his bedtime. 

And he can avoid Des, he’s sure. The man might not even remember him, though given their history it’s quite unlikely. 

He wonders idly if maybe it’s too late to call in sick. He’s done it before to go to an audition; pulled a sickie mid-shift and gotten away with it. He could slip into the back room, smack his cheeks a bit and make himself cry, he’s good at that.

“You’re not getting out of this one,” a voice comes up beside him, the person grabbing a glass and starting to help. “I know that look, and absolutely not.” 

Louis groans, turning to Aaliyah and resting his hip against the steel countertop. She’s technically his boss, despite them both being the same age and having worked here for the same amount of time, but being twenty-five makes them older than more than half the wait staff, which is a horrifying thought. 

Nevertheless, she’s the least annoying of his superiors and she actually came to his one off-west end show a year ago so that makes her his best friend in the city. 

Plus, she puts up with his shit and gives just as much back. 

“What if I drop dead on shift?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Sounds like an awful lot of paperwork that you’d have to fill out…”

The girl laughs, her slicked-back ponytail swinging with the movement. “Babe, I’d drag you out behind the bins and leave you for the binmen to find, you know I hate paperwork.”

Louis heaves a put-upon sigh. “Fine, I guess I’ll live.”

“That’s my boy,” she says, grinning and swapping her glass out for another one. “Anyway, what’s your issue? You usually love doing events, those Tory twats can’t resist slipping a fiver to any pretty boy that smiles at them.”

Louis grimaces. “My ex? The one who moved to New York? His dad owns the company,” he explains, hushing his voice as one of the younger girls slips past them with an arm full of plates. “And he hates me, or he did back then anyway.”

Aaliyah looks at him with wide eyes. “You were dating Harry Styles?” she asks, whisper-screaming the name.

Nodding, Louis puts his last glass down and wipes his hands on his apron. “For like, four years, yeah.”

As a rule, he doesn’t talk about it. Aside from My ex left me and moved to New York, but I kind of told him to so whatever, he keeps his mouth shut, mostly to avoid upsetting himself. 

They didn’t have friends in London. They moved here together after uni and spent the year they had in the city so wrapped up in each other that making friends, or having a social circle, just wasn’t important. Well, the first half of that year. The second was spent planning for Harry to leave him. It meant that Louis had nobody when he left, no friends to fall back on and family so far away that it felt like giving up to go home to them. So he never spoke about it, because he didn’t have to.

“He’s so fit,” Aaliyah whispers, tactless as ever. 

Louis snorts. “Yeah, he is,” he agrees, because as hurt as he still is and probably always will be, he knows Harry is hot, and that a lot of people have always known him as that one billionaire’s hot son. “But, luckily, he’s off being fit on the other side of the world, and I don’t have to worry about bumping into him. Only his twatbag of a father.”

Aaliyah winces, seeming to understand how shitty that must be. “Well, if he says anything to you, let me know and I’ll swap you with one of the girls in the kitchen,” she offers, putting her glass down to pat his shoulder in an uncharacteristic display of physical affection. “And if it gets bad, just remember you’re getting overtime for this.”

Laughing and patting the hand on his shoulder before she drops it, Louis nods. “You always know what to say to get me through,” he compliments with a wink. 

“Just doing my job,” she shoots back, grinning, and then pulls a face when the radio at her hip goes off. “Speaking of,” she says with an eye roll before picking up. “Hello?”

A static-y, irish-lilted voice that Louis instantly recognises as Grace from reception comes through the little black walkie-talkie. “Hi, sorry, some guy just called down asking for someone to tie his bloody tie, and nobody else is free. You got someone down there? I’m not entirely sure it isn’t some sort of joke.”

Aaliyah looks at Louis for a moment, trying not to laugh, and then presses the button to reply, holding the radio to her mouth. “Yeah, I’ll send Louis up,” she says, ignoring Louis’ frantic head shake. “What room?” 

A moment passes. “307,” Grace replies. “He said there’s no rush. Thanks, Liyah.”

“No problem,” she replies before placing the radio back in its holster. 

“Why me?” Louis whines. “It’s probably some kid messing around.”

“If it’s some old man being creepy you’re more likely to kick him in the balls than any of the others,” she says, shrugging. It’s not untrue, Louis supposes. He’s done it before, on one of the girl’s behalf, when a guy got too handsy during dinner. “Plus, he might tip. There’s a lot of Americans in for the gala and you know what they’re like with flashing the cash.”

Louis sighs. “Fine! I’ll go,” he agrees, untying his apron and dumping it in her arms. “If I’m not down in twenty minutes, send security up.”

Aaliyah laughs. “For him? Sure,” she agrees, rolling her eyes and turning her back on him to talk to one of the new girls who is doing a terrible job of loading the dishwasher. 

Louis checks himself over, checking that his uniform is all in place and that he doesn’t have any errant stains that he needs to quickly fix before going up. It’s ridiculous the things that guests will complain about, and Louis really can’t afford to be having any talks with the higher ups. 

Sure that he’s fine and good to go on the clothes front, he quickly fixes his hair in the reflection of the recently-cleaned steel countertop before striding out of the kitchen to face whatever is waiting for him in 307.

Usually sticking to the dining and staff areas of the hotel, Louis often forgets how bloody long the corridors are, and how many rooms there are.

It takes him around ten minutes to make it from the kitchens to the room, thanks to almost getting lost and getting stopped by a Swedish couple in the foyer asking for directions to Victoria Palace Theatre to see Hamilton. When he finally makes it to 307, he knocks quickly, three short raps on the door. The guest may have said there’s no rush, but usually that means get here right now or I’m writing a bad review on Tripadvisor. 

So he knocks quick, and waits patiently as he hears the tell-tale thuds of someone making their way towards the door. 

The door opens, swinging inward and being stopped in its tracks by a firm hand before it hits the wall. Louis looks up, smile plastered on, ready to greet the man who can’t, as an adult, tie his own bloody tie.

The smile falls.

As does Louis’ stomach, hurtling towards the floor like a poorly-made fairground ride. 

No. No. Absolutely fucking not. 

If there’s one bright side to this, it’s that Harry looks as shocked as he does, standing frozen in the doorway like he just opened the door to the ghost of fucking Christmas past. 

Harry Styles. In front of him, and decidedly not in New York, where Louis had sent him off three years ago to achieve the dreams he couldn’t take Louis along to chase. Harry Styles, grown up and filled out, hair reaching his shoulders and shirt half open, revealing ink that wasn’t there the last time Louis traced his fingers over his skin. Harry Styles, slowly taking a step back, fish mouthing like he’s trying to say something.

“Louis,” he finally manages to choke out, and Louis really isn’t ready for the feeling that washes over him upon hearing Harry’s voice for the first time in three years.

It’s horrible. It’s unbearably horrible, and his first instinct is to run away, but he can’t do that, because it’s been three years, and he can’t let Harry know that he’s still this upset. It’s embarrassing.

So, he plasters the smile right back on, and with wobbly legs and a shaky voice, steps forward into the room and tries to sound unaffected when he speaks. “Still can’t tie a tie?” he asks. “Surely you have to wear one for work, right?”

“Oh.” Harry steps back, letting Louis stride past him, and awkwardly shuts the door behind him. “I just don’t wear one. They never said anything.”

“Lucky, I suppose,” Louis says, facing Harry and holding his hand out. “Tie?” 

Harry flounders for a moment, staring at Louis for longer than the smaller man can stand, before crossing the room to grab a tie from the suitcase that lays open on the bed. It’s the same suitcase he’s had since before Louis knew him. He came to uni with all of his clothes rolled up neatly into it. He left Louis with it in hand, closing the door on them. 

There’s a sticker on the handle still that Louis placed there five years ago, a stupid little My Little Pony sticker that one of his sisters had handed to him when he took Harry to meet his family. 

Louis might throw up all over this nice hotel room carpet.

Harry walks the few steps back to him, placing the tie in the hand he’d forgotten was still outstretched. They don’t touch in the exchange, but it’s close enough that it almost feels like they do. Louis takes a deep breath. 

Okay, he can do this. He so can. Tie the tie, leave, fake being sick, go the fuck home. Simple. Good plan. So, so good. No flaws there.

He steps forward, close enough that he doesn’t have to reach far, and awkwardly starts doing up the buttons on Harry’s shirt. He doesn’t really think about how weird it might be because Harry made no moves to do it himself and he can hardly tie a tie over an open shirt, but now that he’s doing it, his fingers brushing against Harry’s chest, it’s definitely a bit fucked. 

This close, he can smell him. The same aftershave he’s always worn, the spearmint toothpaste on his breath as he stares down at Louis in open bewilderment, the natural smell of man that’s always there underneath it all.

Louis gets the shirt done up quickly, fumbling on a few buttons but trying his hardest to remain visibly unaffected. If his breathing is on the borderline hysterical side of rapid then hopefully Harry isn’t noticing it. 

“So, how’s New York?” Louis asks, reaching up to settle the tie around Harry’s neck. 

Harry doesn’t answer for a beat, green eyes still boring into Louis' skin. “It’s busy. Loud.”

“A lot like London, then,” Louis says, taking his sweet time tying the tie as if he isn’t desperate to get out of here.

“Worse.”

Louis doesn’t say anything to that, finishing up the tie and patting it gently. They used to do this every morning, back when Harry was working at the Charles Dickens Museum, before he left. 

He takes a step back now that he’s done, grateful for the chance to breathe air that doesn’t feel entirely taken up by Harry. “I should probably—”

“Do you still have Lilo?” Harry asks suddenly, stepping forward into the space Louis just vacated, closing the distance between them once again.

“Yeah,” Louis breathes. Their cat. His cat, Lilo, a black and white Norwegian forest cat they’d found abandoned in the alley behind their third year flat, is alive and well in Louis’ flat, unbeknownst to the landlord who very specifically stated no pets. “Yeah, she’s great.”

“Good,” Harry says, softly, quietly.

Louis has to leave. “I better get back. Job to do, and all that.”

“Of course, I—” Harry stops, closes his mouth, thinks for a moment, and then seems to change course. “Thank you for the tie,” he says, instead of whatever he was going to say. “And it’s good to see you.”

Louis wishes he could say the same. “No problem,” he says, skirting around Harry and backing up towards the door. “Enjoy the gala, if that’s what you’re here for. Have a safe flight back to New York. Maybe work on learning how to tie a tie.” 

His ex smiles at him, a little amused and a little sad. It looks wrong. Louis doesn’t like it. He slips out of the door before Harry can say anything to him, slamming it closed and speed walking towards the lift as quick as he can without getting fired for running through the hallways.

Thankfully, he makes it into the blissfully empty lift before the tears start. 

“I have to go home,” he says, rounding up on Aaliyah in the hotel’s large function room, interrupting her overseeing the last minute touches to the set up.

Whatever this event is for, it’s a big one. The room is set up for hundreds of dinner guests, the lights glinting off their finest glassware and their most expensive linens brought out to cover the furniture. The Rose Aesthetics branding is everywhere, in the signs flanking the podium set up on the stage, in the rose centerpieces on the tables, stitched onto the fucking cloth napkins. Des has really spared no expense. 

“No can do,” Aaliyah says, turning to face him and freezing when she sees the silent tears running down his face. “Oh, shit. Was it that bad? Do I need to send security up there?”

Louis shakes his head. “It’s Harry,” he says. 

The woman winces, looking around to check no guests are about before guiding him into a chair and kneeling down beside him with a hand on his leg, another uncharacteristic display of comfort. Louis must really look a mess today for her to be so touchy-feely. 

“Listen,” she starts, and Louis immediately knows that he’s not getting out of this. “Too many people have fucked us over today. There’s not enough staff as is, I really can’t let you go. I would, I swear I would, but this event is too big and we won’t get through it understaffed. You can avoid him all you want, okay? You don’t have to talk to him or Des, but I need you in here.” 

“Aaliyah…” Louis tries, though he knows it’s no use. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, giving him a sympathetic smile. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear. Next time you have an audition, let me know and I’ll take over your shift. I’ll even let you have the pay.” 

“What if I can’t avoid him and I just start blubbering on him like a fucking idiot?”

“You won’t,” she promises, squeezing his leg one more time before straightening up. “Go wipe that pretty face clean. You’re an actor, and a good one at that, so act. Twenty minutes till showtime.”

It’s the end.

Louis has known it’s the end ever since Harry’s first call with the American Museum of Natural History six months ago. He knew when they flew out for a week two months ago for Harry to have an interview in person. He knew when they came home and Harry didn’t stop talking about it for long enough to ask Louis how any of his auditions had gone. 

He knows now, standing over Harry’s shoulder as he reads the email detailing everything his new job offer comes with.

Louis can’t go with him. 

It’s not in the cards for them. Maybe, if he’d have landed any roles since leaving uni, it would have been feasible, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Louis doesn’t have a rich daddy who will pay for him to move across the world. Harry’s rich daddy would rather shit in his own hands and clap than pay for Louis to go with him because Louis has never been and will never be good enough, and if Harry has to defy his wishes and run off to be a historian, then he will have to do it without his annoying, unsuccessful boyfriend. 

It hasn’t occurred to him to ask Harry to stay. To turn the offer down and find something closer to home. To choose Louis and London over New York alone. 

He hasn’t thought to ask because he knows that he won’t survive not being chosen. 

He can survive telling him to go. At least then he can pretend that Harry didn’t have any other option. 

“Good healthcare package,” Louis says, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence the unspoken upcoming departure has thrown between them. “That’ll be good.”

As if Des isn’t going to pay for everything he needs anyway.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, taking a deep breath. 

“When does it—”

“Two months,” Harry cuts in. “Two months tomorrow.”

“Ah.”

“I’ll probably have to go over a month or so early, you know, to get set up and stuff,” Harry continues, still firmly facing the computer. 

“Makes sense,” Louis agrees, tearing his eyes away from the email and moving over to the kitchen to flick the kettle on.

Their flat is small, smaller than the spacious home they made for themselves in their third year of uni in York, but still pretty big for London. And in an amazing area, right in the middle of Soho. One of Harry’s father’s many London properties. 

Louis will miss it when he has to leave. He’ll miss the balcony he sits on every morning to drink his tea and watch the world go by. He’ll miss their bedroom, with the walk-in wardrobe filled with Harry’s hoodies that he won’t be able to steal anymore. He’ll miss all the plants that he won’t be able to take with him wherever he goes, because he surely won’t be able to afford a place big enough to keep them all. Here, they overtake every room. 

He’ll miss Harry most of all. 

Arms wrap around his middle, pulling him out of his thoughts. 

“Talk to me,” Harry pleads, pressing a kiss to his neck. 

This is the most intimate they’ve been outside of quick fucks and goodbye kisses in weeks. It feels wrong, somehow, but he can’t push it off now, not when they’re running on borrowed time. 

“It’s nothing,” Louis assures him, sinking back into the hold and sliding his arms over Harry’s, holding him there. 

“We can make it work,” Harry says, bordering on desperate. It seems that they’re talking about it then. “Long distance, loads of people do it.”

Louis sighs, shaking his head. “Not us, H.” 

“But why not?”

Needing space all of a sudden, Louis removes himself from Harry’s hold and steps away, backing himself into the corner of the kitchen, next to the window. Lilo lays sleeping on the windowsill, unaware of the dissolution of everything Louis holds dear. 

“Long distance only works when both people care,” Louis says carefully, watching Harry like he might crack at any moment. 

Harry frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Louis doesn’t want to do this. “Where am I working right now, Harry?” he asks, crossing his arms more as a defence mechanism than out of anger.

“The cafe on Carnaby Street?” Harry answers, as if it’s obvious.

His heart shatters a little more.

“I got fired from there three months ago, Harry.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I did! You walked me to my next interview. You spent the whole journey talking about New York,” Louis says, as calmly as he can. “I literally come home, every day, in a fucking Starbucks uniform. You don’t see me anymore.”

It’s like he can see Harry’s brain turning as he processes that. Processes just how much he’s fucked up. His brow furrows further. “We can work on it,” he promises. Pleads. 

“We,” Louis scoffs. “I’m right here, doing what I’ve always done. Loving you, listening to you, seeing you. I don’t have anything to work on.”

“I will then!” Harry says in a frustrated almost-shout, the cat twitching in her sleep at the rise in volume. 

Louis shakes his head again. “It’s too late, don’t you see? You’re leaving in weeks, we don’t have time to work it out. What happens if you don’t have room in your life for me? You haven’t here, not since you got a glimpse of this dream. It’s not going to magically get better, not with you all the way over there and me, here, trying to make my own life work.”

“Louis…”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to take it. If you leave with the promise of still wanting me, and you break that promise. I’ve already lost you once, here, months ago.” He’s crying now, voice shaking with the effort to hold himself together. “Let it be just the once. Don’t make me hope, only to lose you again and not even get the chance to say a real goodbye.”

“So you’re giving up? Just like that?” Harry asks, meaner than he’s ever heard him sound before. 

They’ve never really fought. Louis doesn’t want to fight now. He’s tired.

“I’m not giving up,” Louis says. “I’m letting you go. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do, Harry. This has never been a conversation. Not ever. You never asked me what we’d do if you got it, you didn’t even tell me you applied until you got the first call. You made that decision, not me, and you don’t get to just decide now that we can work this out, a month before you pack everything up and fuck off to another country.”

“I love you,” Harry says, effectively ignoring anything else Louis has to say. “Is that not enough?”

It should be, Louis thinks. It would have been, if Harry had shown any indication of giving a shit about him for the past six months. He wants it to be.

It would be easy to say yes and put this argument to bed, steal a few kisses and go about their day as if none of this is happening. It would be easy to do that, at first. Until Harry leaves, and they try to make it work, and it all falls apart. Because it will fall apart, Louis has no doubts about that. 

They’ve had a good run. Louis is quite sure that he’ll never love anyone the way he’s loved Harry for the past four years, but no matter what happens now, if they try to make this work, all they’ll have left is resentment.

If Harry packs it all in and stays, he’ll resent Louis for making him make that choice. If Harry leaves, Louis will resent him for not being able to choose him. There are no roads they can take that don’t lead to heartache, so it’s easier for Louis to swerve this car right off the edge of the cliff. At least then, he’s the one behind the wheel.

“It’s not enough,” Louis chokes out on a sob. “I’m sorry, it’s just not. I think you know that too, I think that’s why you’ve been distancing yourself from me, from us.”

“I don’t agree,” Harry says, stubborn as ever. He isn’t crying, which feels fitting. “I just don’t. This isn’t what I want. I thought—“

“You thought that I’d just go along with whatever you wanted to do.”

It’s not always been like that. They used to make decisions together, even silly little things like where to go for dinner or what to watch on Netflix, they never made a decision without talking about it first. It changed, a little, after uni. London was always where they were going to end up, it being the best place for both of their careers, but every decision after that started to skew towards Harry’s choice. Where to live, where to get coffee, where the settee should go. 

What their future looks like.

“No,” Harry denies. “No, that’s not it. I thought that we meant more than this.”

“Because you take me for granted. You thought I’d always be here, waiting for you.” Lilo wakes up, coming to nudge her head against Louis’ arm as if she senses his distress. Louis threads his fingers into her fur, grounding himself. “It’s not fair on me, Harry. I’m worth more than that. If you wanted this to work, you should have thought about it first. I want this for you, I want you to go and achieve your dreams and do whatever you have to do, no matter how far away it is, and we could have worked it out, but you didn’t even think about my place in this until five minutes ago.” 

Harry’s shaking his head. Louis thinks it must be a side effect of growing up rich. Nobody ever tells you no. Nobody ever makes you take responsibility for your actions. Everyone just does what you say, follows your lead.

He’s not going to understand. Louis sees that now.

“I hope it works out for you,” Louis continues when Harry doesn’t say anything. “You’ve worked hard, I’ve seen that, and you really do deserve this. I’ll always be rooting for you. I hope you realise that one day.”

He sees the moment all the fight leaves Harry, the angry tension in his shoulders falling into a sagging defeat. “Can we have the month, at least?” he asks.

Louis should say no. It’s only going to make it hurt more. But he’s an idiot, so he nods sadly, wiping at his face with the sleeve of the stolen hoodie he’s wearing. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “We can have the month.” 

And so they do.

They spend the month wrapped up in each other again, like they used to be. Louis pretends that he doesn’t notice Harry’s things disappearing from the flat bit by bit. Harry pretends he doesn’t hear Louis crying in the bathroom every night. It’s almost perfect. 

Harry leaves early one morning, three weeks and four days after the fight, without saying goodbye.

Louis leaves the next day, with a suitcase full of clothes, a bag of his most essential belongings, one plant in hand and Lilo’s cat carrier under his arm. He moves into the first flatshare he finds advertised on Facebook, not giving a shit if the people who live there are murders or not, and spends three days in his new bedroom choking on his own tears. 

Harry never cried, not as far as Louis saw anyway.

Louis wonders, as he sits and waits for the redness in his face to go down, on the floor of the staff toilet, if that was because he didn’t care. He’d like to think it isn’t, but he knew so little of Harry’s feelings towards the end that it’s impossible to guess. 

They didn’t speak once after. Louis blocked Harry on everything and somehow resisted the temptation to look. Not because he was angry, or because he hated him, but because it would have hurt too much. They weren’t friends before, having fallen in love in a span of a few weeks at the start of uni, and Louis knew that they could not be friends again. So he cut every temptation out of his life, and tried not to think about what Harry might have been doing in New York. Who he might have been doing.

It wasn’t easy, and his mind wandered off on its own path more often than he might have liked, but he never looked. He doesn’t know what Harry has been doing for the past three years but now, being faced with him, he kind of wishes he’d looked.

Because Harry is here, somewhere in this building, living and breathing. 

And what if he’s brought someone with him? What if Louis walks into that room and has to serve his new partner champagne like it means nothing? What if he’s married? 

Christ. Louis can’t do this. It’s been a few months since he’s had a panic attack, the last one completely ruining an audition for him and leaving him hyperventilating in the back alley of a Pret, but if anything was going to trigger one it would be this. Finding out who’s gala this is was bad enough. Seeing Harry has tipped him over the edge.

But if he leaves now, he may as well say goodbye to his job. And his dignity. And any chance of showing Harry that he’s completely fine, and not still completely broken up about it all. Even if that might be a lie, he sort of needs Harry to believe it. 

So he has to do this. He has to get up off of this dirty floor, fix his hair, and get up there. He has to look so unaffected that neither Harry nor Des will take more than one look at him.

Louis is an actor. Whether casting directors think so or not, he knows he’s a good one. So he will do what he does best and act his way through this night so well that they’ll put him up for an Olivier Award. And then he will go home and have a breakdown.

It takes him ten minutes after deciding that to actually get himself up off the floor and ready to go. He’s late by the time he gets to the room, the dinner already started and wine already flowing. It takes all of his willpower not to immediately search for Harry among the crowd, instead slipping artfully into his role and grabbing a bottle of wine from one of the tables, pouring a glass for an old man whose eyes linger on him for just a little bit too long. 

Instead of smacking the man around the back of the head with the bottle like he wants to do, Louis winks at him and moves on to the next. 

There are, at Louis’ best guess, roughly three hundred people in attendance. Maybe more. The only thing he knows for sure is that every person in attendance is worth more than he’ll ever be, and a good number of them probably earn more in an hour than he does in a year. 

He makes it through the rest of the first course and the second without catching a glimpse of either of the Styles men. Aaliyah finds him halfway through the third, appearing beside him and whispering in his ear.

“They’re both at the top table,” she says. 

Louis had guessed as much. “Thanks, babe,” he whispers, giving her a smile. 

Luckily, as understaffed as they are, he doesn’t have to go anywhere near the top table if he doesn’t want to. He stays cosy and unaffected on the complete opposite side of the room, content to try and forget where he is and just who he’s trying to avoid. That is, until Harry finds him.

Towards the end of the fifth and final course, Louis is standing off to the side taking a break from winking at old men and complimenting rich women’s jewellery when Harry Styles strides right up to him, taking him completely by surprise.

He doesn’t flinch. Almost, but not quite. “Can I help you, sir?” Louis asks before Harry can say anything, keeping his tone bored but polite.

Harry’s eyes flash with something all too familiar. Louis really needs to be careful about calling him sir. In the past, it only ever ended one way, and that is definitely not on the cards right now. Once the flash is gone, the look turns sour, almost annoyed. 

“Can we talk?” 

“Unless it’s about wine, or directions to the loos, or there’s a hair in your food, no, not really,” Louis answers. It’s a little bit ruder than intended, but he can’t take it back.

“Louis, please.”

“I’m working,” is all he says, keeping his eyes fixed on Harry’s face so he doesn’t map out every inch of his body. He always did look good in a suit. But, then again, so does Louis, and Harry seems to have no qualms about letting his eyes wander. 

“Just two minutes,” Harry promises. 

Louis shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says. 

There’s a sense of desperation in the way Harry is standing there, fidgeting, looking at Louis like he might physically drag him away just to say whatever he needs to say. 

“Louis, baby,” Harry pleads, breathing the endearment like it’ll do him any favours.

Louis freezes. In the space of about ten milliseconds he feels so many emotions that he might faint. Shock, heartache, anger. The anger is the one that sticks, softly stoked by the pain of hearing Harry utter the one word he knows will make him melt.

It’s a low blow. One that Louis doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve. 

“You have ten seconds to fuck off before I start making a scene,” Louis says, voice low and with the slightest tremble. His hands are shaking, and he wants nothing more than to run away. 

There are two things that Louis can be sure haven’t changed about Harry. One, that he hates not getting his own way. He never minded so much with Louis, but there were times where Louis could see the spoilt brat in him fighting to come out. The second thing he’s sure of is that above anything, Harry hates embarrassing his father. 

Even when doing his best to defy him, choosing his own career path and being in love with Louis, he would never do anything to damage his reputation. 

So, as expected, the promise of a scene is what gets him to give up. Clenching his jaw, Harry shakes his head. “I tried,” he says, cryptic and exhausted, before turning and walking away.

As soon as his back is turned, Louis sags in relief, all of the tension held in his body finally escaping. 

Who does he think he is, walking up and demanding his time and calling him baby as if they’re in any sort of position to be calling each other endearments. Maybe New York turned him into a sociopath or something, because surely this isn’t normal behaviour. 

Louis stands up straight again as someone gestures for a refill, quickly shoving the pieces of himself back together and hoping they’ll hold for a few more hours.

Half an hour later, the dinner is over, the tables are cleared and another round of drinks are poured. Everyone’s just a bit past tipsy, and the low level of constant noise is starting to give Louis a headache.

But he’s surviving. Barely. And Harry hasn’t made any attempt at nearing him since he walked away, though Louis is quite sure he can feel his gaze burning a hole into him.

Des is making some sort of speech that Louis isn’t paying attention to. Something about whichever charity they’re using as a tax break this year, and some bullshit about just how proud he is of all the hard work they’re doing to help others. His best acting performance of the night comes from not outright scoffing at everything the man says.

It’s all going well, and Louis thinks he might just be able to slip away for a while and have a breather, when he finally tunes in to what Des is saying.

“Now, I know we’re not here tonight to talk about Rose Aesthetics, but while I’ve got you all gathered here, there is an announcement I’d like to make,” he says, near enough beaming. 

Louis has a terrible feeling all of a sudden.

Des extends a hand towards the top table. Louis stops breathing. “My son, Harry, who as I’m sure you all know has been living it up in New York for the past three years, has finally decided to come home,” he announces. Louis can’t even bear to follow everyone else’s gaze, his eyes are firmly on Des, silently pleading for him to stop there. “And he will be taking his rightful place at the head of this company. It’s time for me to take a step back, play a few rounds of golf, and leave our legacy in his capable hands.” 

Louis is going to throw up. What the fuck is happening.

“Harry, come say a few words.”

He should look away. He should leave, because whatever is happening right now is certainly too much for him to handle, but he can’t. Louis watches as Harry stands up from the top table, graciously bowing with an awkward smile as everyone claps for him, and makes his way to the podium.

He watches as Des claps Harry on the back, whispers something in his ear, and then takes a step back so Harry can have the floor.

Harry looks good up there, confident and powerful. If the whole thing wasn’t utterly heartbreaking, Louis might actually appreciate the picture he paints. As it stands, as Harry starts to speak, all Louis finds himself able to feel is hurt, and anger.

“Thank you, everyone,” Harry says, loud and clear into the microphone as everyone settles down again. “Really, your warm welcome means a lot to me. I don’t want to go on for too long because this event isn’t about me and I can see that you’re all ready to party, but I just want to say that I’m excited to be seeing a lot of your faces more, and I’m committed to putting my all into this company, just like my father and his father before him.”

Louis does scoff then, a little bit too loud in the silence of the room. He plays it off as a cough, holding his fist to his mouth and shooting apologetic looks at the few people who turn to him. It’s not convincing enough to fool Harry, whose eyes find him even with how far across the room he’s standing. 

“I’ll let you all get on to the champagne,” Harry says, tearing his eyes away from Louis with a clenched jaw. “Thank you, again,” he adds, before stepping back to a smattering of applause. Des comes up to him and whispers in his ear again, the elder’s gaze snapping to Louis.

Great. Des knows he’s here, then.

This can’t end well for him. He wonders if perhaps Des is the kind of man to put a hit on someone. Probably not, because he would have done it at some point during their relationship, but Louis can’t help the tingle of anxiety that runs through him at the thought of it. 

Luckily, he has a momentary escape in the movement that comes now that the speeches are done. Everyone stands, most shuffling off to the bar in the next room to allow for the staff to come in and move the tables around, to make room for the dancefloor. 

Louis checks that Aaliyah doesn’t need him for this, getting a quick nod and a piss off   motion from her, and quickly slips out of the staff entrance, finding himself alone in the hallway that connects the function room to the kitchens. It’s amazing how quickly his head goes quiet when he’s no longer in the same room as the Styles men, untainted air finally filling his lungs. He’s safe in here, for now. 

He doesn’t cry. He really, really wants to, but he doesn’t. He can’t, because the last thing he needs is to walk back out there with a blotchy face.

But really, what the fuck is Harry doing? Taking over the company? Leaving New York and the job he left Louis for, for what? He’s never wanted to take over the company. They had so many conversations about it, there were so many nights where Louis had to talk Harry down after yet another argument with his father about his lack of interest in following in his footsteps. Louis can’t imagine why he’d change his mind now. 

Three years. Three years of fucking heartache, only for it to have meant nothing. And still part of him just feels bad for Harry, because surely this can’t be what he wants.

“Louis.”

Louis jumps where he’s slumped against the wall, turning to find Harry standing there, approaching him like he’s a wounded animal. He is a wounded animal, just one without the strength to lash out.

“You aren’t allowed back here,” he says, as if that means anything to rich people. 

“I was trying to tell you, before,” Harry says, ignoring him. “About this.”

It doesn’t make anything better. “What do you want me to say, Harry? Do you want me to tell you that it’s okay? That I’m happy for you? That I’m proud of you? Literally what the fuck do you want from me?”

Harry seems taken aback at the venom in his tone. He shouldn’t be so surprised, Louis thinks. 

“I don’t want any of that,” he answers. “I don’t know what I want, okay?”

Louis snorts. “Yeah, I can see that.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?“

“What are you doing here, H?” he asks, flinching a little when the nickname slips out. “What happened in the last three years that suddenly made this worth something to you? Because the Harry that walked out on me three years ago would never have pictured himself giving it all up to work for him. I don’t know many things when it comes to you, not anymore, but I do know that.”

“I don’t—“

“Harry, son, let’s stop bothering the staff, shall we?“ Des’ smug, grating voice booms down the hallway. He comes up behind Harry, a hand on his shoulder, and sneers at Louis.

Louis sneers right back. “Des,” he greets, knowing the man loathes being called anything but Mr. Styles by his inferiors. 

“Lucas, is it?” the older man throws back, eyebrow raised. 

Harry turns to give him a look that Louis can’t see. “Father, don’t.”

It makes Louis feel sick, hearing Harry call him father like he deserves the title, or any title at all that isn’t Massive Fucking Dickhead.

Massive Fucking Dickhead speaks up again. “Sorry, Lewis. We won’t bother you any longer.” 

Louis nods his head and holds his arm out towards the door, a gesture that he hopes conveys the message of kindly fuck off. Harry looks between his father and Louis for a moment, seemingly weighing up whether defying Des is worth it to say whatever he was going to say. He makes his decision quickly, gritting his teeth and pushing past his father to leave. Des doesn’t even spare Louis another glance before he follows.

He simply watches them go, suddenly feeling a lot more calm. The calmness comes from deciding then and there that there is no way he is going back in that room.

Aaliyah can kill him if she wants but he can’t do it. He won’t.

He’s going to swap out with one of the kitchen girls and wash pots until his shift is over, like a big boy who totally isn’t terrified of confronting his ex. 

Finally, finally, Louis is free from this hell day.

It’s late, almost one a.m., and between backache, heartache, and pruney fingers, Louis is about ready to drop on the dirty floor of the hotel kitchen and sleep for ten hours. 

Somehow, he refrains. Instead, he takes off his apron, pulls his hoodie on over his uniform, grabs his bag, and makes his way out the back door and onto the well-lit and yet always terrifying streets of London.

“Louis.”

It’s Harry, again, skulking in the shadows like a fucking creep. Louis doesn’t jump this time, but only because he’s too exhausted. A sigh comes instead of a flinch, long and drawn out.

“We have security, you know? They don’t take kindly to whatever it is you’re doing. Stalking, I’d call it.”

“Personally, I’d call it offering to drive you home,” Harry says, walking alongside him as he tries to walk away. 

Louis stops still, frowning, and turns to look at him. “You can’t drive.”

“I can now, actually,” he says, holding up a set of keys. There’s two house keys, a car key, and a silly little I Heart New York key ring. 

He’s grinning, dimples out, and Louis is wholly unprepared to see it. So tired and so emotionally wrecked, one smile might be enough to break him completely.

“And where is this car that you can apparently drive, and have decided to drive in London of all places?” Louis manages to get out, just about holding himself together. 

Harry clicks the button on the fob and lights flash behind him. Louis peeks around him to take a look. He doesn’t know anything at all about cars, having passed his driving test at seventeen and then driven a total of five times since then, but this one is nice. Sleek and black and probably more expensive than anything Louis has ever touched. Obviously. Because Des isn’t going to have his son driving around in a shitty Fiat 500. 

“Have you been drinking?” Louis asks, straightening up and crossing his arms.

He doesn’t know why he’s even considering this. Somehow, getting in a car with Harry seems more appealing than the ten minute walk to the tube station right now, and the horror that comes with getting on the night tube.

Harry shakes his head. “Not a drop,” he promises, hand on heart. Louis’ eyes flicker to the tie he placed around his neck hours ago, loosened now along with a few shirt buttons.

This is a bad idea.

“Okay,” Louis agrees.

Harry grins again. “Get in then.”

So he does, heaving his tired body into the car. It’s nice inside, clean and fresh and full of that new-car smell. Harry slides into the driver's side, slamming the door like he doesn’t care if he breaks it.

“Where to?”

Louis rattles off the address, flushing in embarrassment at having to admit just how far out of the centre he lives now. It feels like he should have more to show for three years than a living wage job at a swanky hotel and a flatshare in fuck knows where. 

He should be something, the way Harry is. 

“Living with anyone?” Harry asks, casually, though there’s a clear probe there.

If Louis were less tired, he’d probably lie and make it sound like he’s in some stable relationship with some great guy who doesn’t want to leave him behind to follow a dream he’s going to give up anyway. 

“Just some flatmates. We don’t really get on,” he says instead, the truth. 

“Tell me about them,” Harry says, starting the car and setting off.

And Louis does. Because it’s easier than saying all the other things he wants to say to Harry, and to stop himself from being lulled to sleep by the low rumble of the car’s engine.

“There’s a girl called Mina. She’s a few years younger, I think, I don’t really know, but she’s always there, playing fortnite or smoking weed, and you know I don’t mind that shit, but the flat is tiny and whatever she smokes stinks.” He pulls a face. Harry makes an amused little noise.

“Anyway, I barely talk to her, but she’s not that bad other than that. The owner of the flat, John, lives there too. He’s forty-something and works in marketing and I don’t really get why he wants strangers living in his flat, but he keeps the rent pretty cheap and he’s only a bit of a dick when he hasn’t had his coffee, so he’s not the worst.”

A drunk person nearly stumbles into the road, but regains balance at the last minute and falls into his friend’s arms instead. Louis stares at him as they drive past, shaking his head. 

“And then there’s Adam.”

“That bad?” Harry asks, readjusting his grip on the steering wheel.

Louis laughs. “Oh, no, he’s my favourite. Proper gym bro. Like, the cupboard full of protein powder type. We’ve had maybe ten real conversations in the last three years and nearly all of them were him trying to fuck me,” he says. “He’s straight, I think, but if we’re in the same room then his eyes are on my arse.”

Louis isn’t going to tell Harry that he actually has sucked Adam’s dick. Twice. Two and a half times, really, but the half time was more of an aborted drunken attempt to suck him off in the kitchen when everyone else was home. 

He’s pretty sure the only reason they haven’t gone further is because somebody is always home and the walls are very, very thin.

But, other than mutual sexual attraction, they have very little in common.

When Louis chances a glance towards his ex, he’s unsurprised to see a frown on his face.

“Doesn’t sound very straight to me,” Harry grumbles. 

“Well, you know me and straight boys,” Louis says, just to twist the knife a little bit more. It’s always been a bit of a thing. During uni, if Harry wasn’t glued to his side on a night out, there would be a line of straight boys trying to buy him a drink. “Can’t keep them away.”

“You’re being careful, though, right?” the other man asks.

If Harry weren’t driving, Louis would probably smack him for the real meaning behind the question. Because to Louis, it sounded a lot like don’t let yourself get hurt. And really, the fucking cheek of him of all people to say that.

“Harry,” Louis says, warning. “Let’s not go there. Not tonight.”

Harry sighs. “I know, I know. It’s not my place.”

“Yeah, it’s really not.”

The silence washes over them. It’s awkward, painfully so, and Louis wishes he could just open his mouth and say something, but all he really has is questions.

Why are you here? Why did you leave New York? Why did you leave me? Why are you driving me home? How many people have you fucked? Have you loved anyone more than you loved me? 

All are questions that won’t go down well in the middle of the night, in a car, speeding through the streets of London. They won’t go down well anywhere, he’s sure, and he will have to ask them one day, if he sees Harry again after this, but not now. He’s too tired now. It’s still too raw. It will probably always be too raw.

They don’t speak for ten minutes, Harry’s eyes firmly on the road and Louis’ anywhere but Harry. 

Harry speaks up again when the silence gets a little too stifling. 

“I’ve moved back into our old flat, in Soho, if you ever want to stop by. A lot of your stuff is still there,” he says.

Another wave of grief hits Louis. God, why can’t Harry just keep his mouth shut.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, me coming over,” Louis says quietly. When he walked away from that flat, he did so thinking that Des would hire someone to throw all of his shit away, repaint the walls, and scrub every trace of their relationship from it. 

The thought of it sitting there, covered in dust and just as they left it for three years, is too much. 

“Why not?” 

Fucking hell. “Because I don’t want to see it, Harry. Why would I? Why would you ? Go live literally anywhere else, your father has much nicer apartments.”

“I like that flat,” Harry answers, as if that’s enough. It’s not, for Louis anyway.

“Yeah, well, I’d rather die than step foot in it again.” It’s a lie, mostly. 

“I can bring your stuff to you…” Harry offers, drawing it out like he realises halfway through that it’s a bad idea.

Louis sighs, bone-tired. “I left it all there for a reason. I don’t want it, I don’t need it, and I don’t have room for it. I live in a box, my room barely fits me, my clothes, and the cat. I don’t need shit that I left behind three years ago, especially not when all of that comes with some really shitty memories.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says. Louis doesn’t know what part he’s apologising for. He’s not going to ask.

“Can we just…not talk? Please?”

It’s Harry’s turn to sigh. “Sure.”

So they don’t. They drive the rest of the way to Louis’ street in silence. This round of quiet manages to be more painful than the last. All Louis can think is that it would be less painful to open the door and roll out of the car and onto the unforgiving pavement. The damage done by doing that would probably be a lot easier to fix than whatever damage this conversation has done to him. 

As they get closer and closer, Louis doesn’t miss the somewhat disgusted look on Harry’s face when he sees the kind of area Louis is living in. He’s not surprised by it. 

Finally, they pull up outside of Louis’ flat, Harry killing the engine and sliding his hands onto his thighs, tapping his fingers awkwardly.

Neither of them move. 

“Thank you…for the lift,” Louis says, picking his bag up from where he’d stuffed it down by his feet and sitting it on his lap, ready to go.

Harry turns to look at him, looking him up and down. “You’re welcome,” he says with a small smile. “I’d say any time, but I’m guessing you don’t plan on ever getting into my car again.”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Louis confirms, allowing himself his own ghost of a smile. 

“I suppose I deserve that.”

“You do,” he agrees. 

“So, no chance of me coming in to see Lilo?” Harry tries his luck. 

Louis admires him for trying. “Not tonight,” he says. Not ever, if he can help it.

“Worth a try.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. Louis still can’t believe how long it is. “Goodnight, Louis.”

“Goodnight, Harry,” he says back, once again overwhelmed with the urge to cry, before getting out of the car so he doesn’t say anything considerably more stupid. 

He doesn’t look back as he runs up to the door but the car doesn’t start again and he feels Harry’s eyes on his back until he’s safely inside and out of sight.

Harry’s presence, however, doesn’t leave him for the rest of the night; not as he brushes his teeth in the messy shared sink, not as he throws his clothes off and drops into bed, disturbing Lilo, not as he falls asleep into dreams of being left all over again.

He’s not free of Harry yet, it seems.

Louis wakes up around midday to an angry ball of fluff meowing in his face, a dehydration headache, and three texts on his phone, the latter being pretty unusual.

With one eye cracked open, one hand fussing Lilo and the other holding his phone, Louis goes through them.

The first is from Aaliyah, telling him off.

Aaliyah <3: don’t think I didn’t notice u sneaking off to the kitchens [eye roll emoji] ur on thin ice bestie. see you tomorrow, hope ur feeling better, get some rest! 

He smiles, not bothering to text back because they never do, and swipes to the next set of messages, two from an unknown number. 

Unknown: I’m really sorry for how everything went down tonight. I thought I’d have a while to figure things out before we’d bump into each other. Thank you, for letting me give you a lift home. And hopefully you’ll accept my apology for pulling some strings to get your new number. Harry x

Unknown: Nice hoodie, by the way. Thought you might slap me if I said that in person. I always wondered if you’d kept that.

Both messages were sent around four a.m., meaning that Harry was up, staring at his phone, figuring out what to say, whilst Louis was having fitful nightmares of the heartbreak he left him with, and not for the first time.

Louis hadn’t even considered that Harry would have noticed that he was wearing his hoodie. Harry had left it folded up neatly on the end of the bed when he’d left, just that; no note. Louis has worn it near-constantly since, to the point where whatever design used to be on the front—some band’s album picture, he thinks—is unrecognisable now. 

Both eyes fully open now, he stops petting Lilo to text back, sending her an apologetic look that goes ignored.

Louis: its a comfortable hoodie.

Louis: also this is just another thing to add to my stalking complaint, so do keep going. 

Before he can think any better of it, he also adds Harry into his contacts, feeling a bit like he’s betraying himself by doing so. 

As he’s doing that, Harry replies.

Stalker: Well if you’re building a case, you might want to add me sending you breakfast via UberEats. Sorry. Should be there in about ten mins x

Louis groans.

Louis: are you taking the piss

Stalker: Nope. The driver is called Dave, apparently. x

Louis: this is very abnormal behaviour, i hope you know that

Stalker: You’re talking to me, so it’s working. x

Louis doesn’t answer that, just to spite him. He gets out of bed, pulls the hoodie back on over his underwear after staring at it and debating it for a good few seconds, and makes his way into the living room/kitchen where Mina is sitting on the settee with a Starbucks in hand and Adam is taking over the kitchen making some sort of hideous protein-packed lunch.

“John out?“ he asks, leaning against the island separating the kitchen from the living space. 

Adam turns absentmindedly to smile at him, earphones in, probably listening to some borderline-misogynistic podcast. Mina is the one who answers him, swirling her iced coffee around as she talks.

“Think he’s gone to bang his new girlfriend. He was muttering something about all these kids cramping his style.”

Louis snorts. They’re hardly kids, but it is kind of weird for any of them to bring people back with how cramped the space is, doubly so for John who is nearly twice their age.

The buzzer rings before he can answer her. “That’s mine,” Louis says with a sigh, double-checking that the hoodie is covering his arse before he goes to answer it.

Dave is a very plain looking middle-aged man on a bike, who grunts at him and hands him a large brown-paper bag and doesn’t even wait around for a thank you before he’s off again. Disgruntled, Louis makes his way back inside, kicking the door shut behind him because the bag is too heavy to hold in one hand.

He dumps the bag on the coffee table and sits down in the armchair that John usually occupies, leaning forward in it to rustle through the bag that Mina is eyeing up with mild interest.

Louis realises, the moment he pulls the first thing he touches out of the bag, that he has to murder Harry.

Mina sits forward, dropping her coffee onto the table and staring at him, her long, faded blue hair falling out of its hastily thrown up bun. “Did you win the lottery and not tell us?”

“No,” Louis answers, frowning at the small pastry bag in his hand and then peeking into the brown bag just to check that he isn’t losing it.

“Then how did you afford to order from there ? I can’t even afford to look at it. Did you get a sugar daddy? No judgement if so, we’ve all been there.”

“Speak for yourself,” Adam pipes up from the kitchen, earphones now dangling around his neck.

“I didn’t order it,” Louis explains, getting everything out of the bag. There’s pastries, muffins, cakes, and then what seems to be two big boxes of hot food. “Crazy ex,” he adds, because that seems about right.

The place Harry ordered from is expensive. Ridiculously expensive. It also used to be Louis’ favourite, back when Harry would take them out for breakfast and could convince Louis to let him actually pay for something more expensive than a McDonalds. 

Deciding he’ll get to killing Harry later, Louis cracks open one of the boxes and nearly moans out loud when he sees the steaming hot eggs benedict inside. In the other box, as he expects, is a full english, his other favourite. 

“Is he planning on killing and eating you in the future?” Mina asks, leaning forward to swipe a muffin without asking. He lets it go.

“Possibly,” Louis answers, taking one of the sets of wooden cutlery stuffed into the bag and digging into the full english, deciding for the time being to just enjoy the food and try not to give a shit about where it came from, or the memories it brings up. Because he’s fucking starving, and he deserves a good meal after living off hotel leftovers and pot noodles since last payday. 

By the time he’s made it through the entire full english and half of the eggs benedict, Mina has polished off a muffin and a croissant, and Adam has made his way to the settee too, though he’s steadfastly ignoring the array of treats in favour of shoving some horrific looking chicken salad in his mouth at an ungodly pace. Louis is full, and not just because Adam is putting him off.

Louis sits back, groaning, and doesn’t miss the way Adam’s gaze slides over his bare legs. 

Quickly, and without thinking too much about it, he pulls out his phone to take a picture of the aftermath of their breakfast/lunch. In the picture is their messy coffee table, complete with half-eaten food and Louis’ socked feet resting on top of it. To the side of the table and clearly in shot are Adam and Mina, still chowing down. 

Mina, all grungy; messy hair and charity shop clothes, and Adam, blonde and tanned and Hercules-level ripped with a mouth full of food and eyes on Louis. 

He sends that picture off to Harry, with a quick text beneath it.

Louis: you’re insane but the food was nice, my flatmates say thanks

Harry texts back in seconds.

Stalker: You’re welcome. Is that Adam? x

Louis rolls his eyes. 

Louis: yep. have a good day, stalker.

Stalker: Have a good day, Louis x

Time goes on. Harry doesn’t stop trying.

There are no more food deliveries, which is almost a shame, but for the next few weeks Louis gets a good morning and a good night text every day without fail, and a hundred texts in between with zero substance. He doesn’t bring anything up, he doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t demand Louis’ time. He just talks. Louis doesn’t always talk back.

Louis goes to work, and comes home, and tries not to think too hard about why he can’t just block the man. 

He has one audition lined up about a week after Harry’s return and for the first time in a long time, it doesn’t feel like an immediate no. A week later, he gets a call, asking him to come back in. A week and three days after that, on his way out of work after a very long morning shift, a rejection. Via email. 

He’ll later blame exhaustion on the fact that the first thing he does is text Harry.

Louis: are you free?

Stalker: I can be. x

Louis: i feel like shit

Stalker: Tell me where, I’ll be there. x

Half an hour later, Louis is tucked away in the corner of a tiny cafe down one of the side streets not far from the hotel, with an untouched cup of tea in front of him and a lot of regrets.

He should really text Harry and tell him not to bother, that he’s fine now and he doesn’t need him. But really, he just doesn’t want to be alone right now.

Anyway, it’s too late, because two minutes into his internal debate, Harry is sitting down in front of him. 

In a suit. Without a tie, but a suit nonetheless. With his hair in a fucking bun. 

He looks good. Tired and concerned, but really, really good. Probably a direct contrast to Louis, who’s once again wearing the hoodie over his uniform, his hair a mess from how much he’s ran his fingers through it in the past half hour.

“Hi,” Louis mumbles, picking up his cold tea and taking a sip just to make it seem like he hasn’t been moping. 

“Hi,” Harry says back, smiling. “You look pretty.”

Louis glares at him. “Very funny, Styles.”

“I’m not—” Harry shakes his head. “Actually, nevermind, I know what you’re like. You’re pretty, you’re always pretty, so take the compliment or don’t, but I’m not lying. So, tell me what’s wrong.”

Sighing, Louis puts the tea down on the table. “It’s silly, like really silly, but I got another rejection for a role that I really thought I had and, I don’t know, it’s just really shitty.”

“There’ll be others, though, right? I mean, you must have the resume for it by now.”

Louis stares at him.

Harry frowns. “What?”

“I haven’t had a single significant role since you left. Not one. I had one silly little thing in a show that ran for like three weeks in one of the smaller, off-west end theatres, and it was fun, but nothing came of it but a few good reviews. Have you not, like, googled me?” 

“I didn’t think it would be a good idea,” Harry answers, shrugging, though his frown is still in place. “You really haven’t booked anything? Like, nothing?”

Great. This is making him feel so much better. “No,” he answers, shaking his head. “They don’t even want me as a swing. I’m so close to just giving up. I hate the hotel and I hate living in London like this and I hate trying my hardest all the time and still not being good enough.”

Louis had just assumed that Harry would know all this, either from googling himself and finding nothing or from his father gloating about how much better off he is without that failure. He hadn’t expected to have to lay it all out for him.

It’s a new kind of traumatising.

“But you’re amazing, Louis.”

“Clearly not,” Louis says, shrugging, fiddling with the mug in front of him to avoid looking at Harry. He’s hungry, stomach churning from being at work since the early morning, but he can’t really afford to buy anything. The cold tea is looking more and more inviting.

“No, you are,” Harry assures him, voice firm. “If they can’t see that, they’re the ones losing out. Do you know how often I’ve wished that I’d filmed you on stage more? Do you know how many times I went to see something on Broadway and thought ‘Oh, Louis could do this role better’? I didn’t even give a shit about theatre until I saw you on stage. Whoever is getting the privilege of seeing you perform and passing on the opportunity to hire you is a fucking idiot.”

Louis doesn’t want to cry again. He very well might, though.

“I wish I could believe that,” Louis says sadly. “But four years of nothing says a lot more than a few good years at uni. Maybe I was good there, yeah, but maybe what was good there is simply okay here. Maybe it’s just never going to be enough. I spend half of my income on vocal training and dance lessons and fucking yoga classes just to keep me at my best and it’s just not enough, I’m bleeding myself dry just to get a no every single time.”

“I know how much this means to you, Lou. I’d hate to see you give up.” Harry attempts to reassure him, leaning forward and placing a hand over his fidgeting one. 

Louis rips his hand away, almost knocking the cup over in the process and startling Harry, who seems to have no clue why Louis might not want his reassurance. 

This was such a bad idea, he realises that now. Nothing good can come of them trying to be friends, not when Louis is still so angry about so many things. He’s been a fool, again, and now he’s too tired to fight off the anger as it comes in waves, spilling over and onto the table between them. 

“You don’t get to lecture me on giving up,” Louis snaps. “You’re here, doesn’t that mean you gave up on your dream? Why do you give a shit if I give up on mine?”

Harry looks somewhat guilty, at least. It does nothing to calm Louis down.

“It’s different,” Harry offers as some sort of shitty explanation.

Louis scoffs. “Yeah, it’s different because you have a choice. I’m sacrificing my comfort and any chance at saving for a future to keep chasing this dream that I’m no closer to achieving. All you had to give up was me, and every little decision you made or hurdle you had to jump over was backed up by your father’s money. No risk, all reward.”

“And I hated every second of it.” Harry throws the words onto Louis’ pile of anger. “I hated it.”

“And even if I believe that, what does it fucking matter, Harry? It just proves my point further. You have a choice, you got your dream and you’ve lost nothing by giving it up, you get to fly home in a private jet, move all your shit into an all-expenses-paid apartment and get handed a company you have no clue how to run. Do you think it’s that easy for me? I don’t want to give up, but when I do it will be with the knowledge that I have to start all over again, find something new and hope I can make it work. Or live like I have been for the last four years, trying to make meals out of nothing and skipping lunch.” Louis gets up, shaking his head at his own stupidity. 

“You’ll never understand. I don’t know why I thought you would,” he adds before walking away, through the half-full cafe of people that are pretending not to watch him leaving after overhearing his outburst.

Harry follows him out and onto the street, as he expected.

“I get it, okay?” he shouts, catching up with Louis’ speed walk down the busy street. “I know I’m a privileged twat and I know I don’t deserve your time, but I do understand.”

Louis walks faster, throwing a look over his shoulder. “Just let it go, Harry.”

“I can’t.”

Would walking into traffic get him out of this? Probably not, Harry would keep him alive somehow out of pure spite and then fucking jump in the ambulance with him just to make some kind of point. 

Louis doesn’t answer him, just keeps walking, swerving past tourists. He doesn’t even know where he’s running to, just that if he keeps going hopefully Harry will give up and leave him alone.

“Louis, come on,” Harry tries again. 

Nope. This isn’t happening. He curses himself for being so weak earlier and asking the other man to meet him, if he had just not done that then he wouldn’t be being chased down Oxford Street by his ex boyfriend during lunch hour. 

Just as he’s about to swerve into the first busy-looking shop that he sees—because Harry wouldn’t dare get himself kicked out of anywhere making a scene—some loud American woman smacks straight into him and sends him flying backwards. 

Right into Harry. Of course.

Harry catches him easily, leaving Louis pressed up against him with Harry’s arm firmly around his waist. Louis, in the shock of it all, steadies himself with a hand on Harry’s chest, unable to ignore the undeniable proof of just how much he’s filled out in three years.

Momentarily, the anger is forgotten. Momentarily, all he can really think about is how nice it is to be touched with familiarity and not just the eager hands of a stranger trying to get himself off or the awkward touch of a friend who doesn’t really enjoy physical affection. Harry’s touch feels like it belongs there, holding him steady. Which is a problem.

“Shit,” he breathes to himself.

“Caught you,” Harry says, grinning. 

Louis slowly pulls himself away, the separation taking more effort than he’d like. Harry lets him go, watching him carefully and looking as if he’s ready to give chase again if Louis makes a run for it. 

“Thanks,” Louis concedes, because he’s not rude. He may be a privileged twat, but he didn’t let him smack face first into the pavement, so…

“You gonna let me talk, now?” Harry asks, eyebrow raised and voice soft. 

And why is it that Harry keeps getting to him when he’s tired?

“Five minutes.” 

Harry’s shoulders sag in relief. “Come to the flat? I know you don’t want to, I know, but mine's closest and I don’t think you want to keep talking in public like this.”

“Fine.” Louis sighs, stomping off in the direction of Soho and not looking to see if Harry follows.

He doesn’t want to do this. He wasn’t really lying when he said he’d rather die than step foot in that flat again, but if he does this then it’s over. Harry can say what he needs to say, Louis can tell him to fuck off, and they can go about their lives. 

Louis can leave London, maybe, and really be done with this. It’s not like there’s anything keeping him here now. 

It’s a seven minute walk to the flat. Louis makes it in five, Harry coming up behind him a few seconds later. Louis is jittery, standing at the bottom of the steps to the building like he can’t even walk up them without permission. It’s embarrassing that even being in Soho is too much for him, let alone being moments away from walking into the flat he left behind with no intention of ever seeing it again.

Mistake after mistake after mistake, that’s his life lately. Harry has stepped back into it and scrambled his brain irreparably.

“Let’s get this over with,” he says. “Chop, chop.”

Harry rolls his eyes, moving past Louis to walk up the stairs and let them in. Louis follows, trying not to look around too much as they make their way up the few flights of stairs to the flat.

Once inside, Harry takes off to the kitchen, calling out as he goes. “Want anything? Tea? Food?”

Louis stands in the hallway, unable to breathe. 

It really is as they left it. It even smells the same, of the vanilla scent diffusers Louis used to leave in every room. They must have stayed here, keeping the place smelling of them, for years.

This isn’t okay. As if in a trance, his feet move him through the flat, taking him to each room, just to see. The spare room is how he left it, with a bunch of his stuff boxed up and sitting on the bed. It’s dusty in there, like Harry’s walked in, seen the boxes, and walked out.

The office is as he expects, filled with Harry’s boring history books and little trinkets from all the museums he used to drag Louis to. The only difference in there is the shiny new computer sitting on the desk, screen protector still on. Louis tries to imagine Harry sitting at it, sending emails and holding Zoom meetings, and fails to conjure an image that doesn’t look entirely wrong. Not when his last memory of Harry in this room is him with a book in hand, ranting about the inaccuracies within it and pacing back and forth, stopping only to give Louis a kiss when he can’t contain his amused giggle any longer. 

The bedroom, which he almost doesn’t stop at, is too much. The bed sheets on the bed are sheets Louis picked out, soft and autumnal with little cartoon woodland creatures dotted all over it. The books on the shelf under the window are Louis’ books, ones he forgot to pack away. Harry hasn’t moved anything, only added his clothes to the wardrobe and cleaned up a little. 

Louis leaves before he starts crying, closing the bedroom door behind him and walking zombie-like into the living area, which is just as untouched as the rest of the flat. 

The only thing wrong here, as with the rest of the flat, is the lack of plants. Harry must have thrown out all the dead ones. The other outlier is Harry himself, standing in the kitchen, bigger and older and not Louis’ anymore.

“I’ll have a tea.”

Harry turns to him, offers him a small smile, and turns back to where he was already spooning two sugars into Louis’ old favourite mug, a souvenir from when they went to see Wicked when they first moved to London.

He doesn’t mention Louis’ little flat tour, which he can only be thankful for.

Not long later, Harry slides Louis’ cup onto the island, along with a plate of custard creams. 

“I don’t really have much else snack wise, but I can cook something if you want,” Harry offers. 

Louis shakes his head, taking a biscuit and dunking it into the tea. “That’ll take a lot longer than the five minutes you have,” he reminds him of the time limit, shoving the soaked biscuit into his mouth. 

Harry sighs. “Okay.”

Too focussed on eating as many of the biscuits he can, Louis makes a go on gesture, leaning against the counter and waiting. If he’s too busy eating custard creams to cry, he might delay his inevitable breakdown.

“I realised I hated it in New York about a month after I left,” Harry starts. Louis almost chokes. “It’s busy, but not in the soft sort of way that London is, and I couldn’t stand it. The Museum itself was fine, but even that didn’t spark any sort of lasting joy. It should have, but it didn’t.” 

Louis manages to swallow successfully. “Then why did you…”

“In the first six months, I booked ten flights home. Then I cancelled every one the night before, because I couldn’t let him be right. He’d told me so many times before I left that I was making a mistake, that I’d hate it and I’d come running back to him for help, and I didn’t want him to win,” Harry explains. He’d never told Louis that Des had said any of that, but it sounds about right. “So I stuck it out, and it got a bit better. I still wasn’t living my best life, but I got used to the city and I made some friends and it was fine. But no matter how many friends I made or things I did, I was so lonely there. It felt like some sort of punishment for fucking everything up.” 

It would have been easier to hear that he had an amazing time and didn’t think of London once, Louis thinks. Because this doesn’t bring him any joy, hearing that Harry spent the whole three years not wanting to be there.

“Three years is a long time to live like that,” Louis says carefully. 

“The longer I was gone, the harder coming back felt. I didn’t want to disrupt your life, I thought you’d have flourished without me and you deserved that, you deserved not to have me fuck that up. I treated you like shit before I left.”

It’s a confirmation of something that Louis didn’t even think about. Harry wanted to come home to him. It wasn’t just London that he was missing, but Louis. 

It does not comfort him to know.

“You could have asked,” he whispers. 

Harry frowns. “What?”

“You could have asked,” Louis says again, louder, braver. “You could have called me at any point in the last three years and I would have taken you back. I would have told you to come home, and work this out. Got you a job here you could love again, I don’t know, just, whatever you needed.”

“You deserved better than that,” Harry says, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to take me back like that, not after I left you and this and us in the most uncaring way I could have. You’re too kind, too forgiving.”

“What are you doing here, now, then? What’s different now?”

Do you still want me? That goes unasked but it’s all Louis can think. 

“Father offered me the company. Practically begged me to take over, actually, and I needed an out that wouldn’t come with him gloating about being right, so I took it,” Harry answers. “It’s not ideal, I don’t want it, but it’s better than New York.”

“How?” Louis asks. Surely a job he doesn’t enjoy but is still passionate about and interested in is better than running a company he’s never wanted to run. “How can it be better?”

Harry shrugs, green eyes soft on his. “You’re here.”

Betraying him, Louis’ heart stutters and then starts pounding, a chorus of wings beating furiously in his chest.

Harry continues, uncaring of his plight. “I didn’t think I’d see you yet. I wasn’t going to seek you out, I told myself that, but I knew that I’d see you eventually. And then you dropped right back into my life, and it felt too much like fate for me to let go.”

It’s not fate. It can’t be. It doesn’t work like that.

Louis gets a sick feeling that it was something much worse than fate that threw them back together again. A feeling that maybe them meeting again was supposed to happen. The pieces fall together for him pretty quickly once the feeling sinks in and takes root.

“Des part-owns one of the hotels off Oxford Street, right? The Cumberland?” 

Harry frowns. “Yeah?”

Fuck. Fucking shithead. Oh, Louis is going to kill him and enjoy every minute of his jail time for doing so.

“He organised that event in my hotel for a reason, Harry.” 

“No,” Harry denies, frown permanently etched into his forehead. “Why? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” Louis says with a bitter laugh. “I wasn’t even supposed to be working that event, I was supposed to be in the restaurant. But of course, of course, he needed you to see that you coming home wouldn’t change anything for us. He needed you to see that I’m a fucking failure. God, I knew he wouldn’t just leave me alone, I fucking knew it.” 

“Even if that’s true, what does it matter? I don’t see you like that.”

Harry is so unfortunately dense. “You think he’s just going to let you do what you want? He’s probably got a pretty little heiress lined up for you already.”

“I’m a big boy, Louis. I can do what I want.”

Louis doesn’t agree with that. He’s here, after all, because he was too scared to be wrong in his father’s eyes. “I don’t want this,” Louis says, though it’s a lie. “I can’t get mixed up in all his crazy shit again, it was hard enough before. He’s never going to magically approve of me, not when he wants you with a girl who can give him cute little rich grandkids.” 

“So that’s it?” Harry asks, dejected. “You’re not even going to give me a chance?”

“I never said I was, Harry. I’ve let you say what you needed to say, and I believe you, but I don’t think that’s enough for me. We can be friends, okay? I don’t know if you understand what it’s been like for me, trying and failing to get over you for three years. I can’t go through it all again.”

He’s scared of letting his guard down only to realise that maybe they don’t have anything in common anymore, and maybe they’re just chasing something that worked years ago but can’t now. He barely survived one breakup, there’s no use going for two.

And, Harry clearly doesn’t know what he wants. Louis can’t be a part of that again, not when it ended so badly last time.

“Friends?” Harry asks with a scoff, like it's impossible. Once again, he’s picking and choosing which parts of Louis’ words to listen to.

“Or not.” Louis shrugs, taking a quick swig of his tea and sliding the mug back over to Harry. “It’s up to you. I’m gonna go, okay? I don’t think I can be here right now. It’s been a rough day and I don’t think this conversation is going to get any less painful. Text me, if you want to be friends.”

“Do you at least want a—”

“I have legs,” Louis interrupts. “I can walk to the tube station perfectly fine on my own.” 

Harry looks put out and exhausted in his own right. It’s best that they end this here and get some space, nothing good can come out of them spending any more time together today. Louis needs his bed, his cat, and a good long cry. Harry needs some time to think, by the looks of it.

“I’ll text you,” Harry says instead, nodding. “Thank you for coming here and listening, I know it’s not easy. It wasn’t for me either.”

Louis smiles, a little sadly. “Thank you for the tea, and the custard creams, and dropping whatever you dropped to come and see me.”

“Any time.”

With one last look around the space and a moment of mourning for not getting a chance to step out onto the balcony again, Louis lets himself out of the flat. 

He gets a text five minutes later, as a rare flash of signal hits while he sits on the tube home.

Stalker: I can do friends, for now x

Louis allows himself a small smile. For now. 

It strikes him how easily he’ll take any scrap of Harry in his life, even though it hurts, even though he just turned down the chance to have him back for real. 

He doesn’t actually think that friendship will work, only delay the inevitable fallout or coming together that will ultimately end in flames, but he selfishly can’t let go now that Harry is home. He’s had nobody in this city for so long, nobody that would drop everything for him or chase him down Oxford Street just to talk to him, and maybe all he needs to stick this out is to not be alone anymore.

Louis: for now

Hopefully for now lasts longer than it feels like it might.

It’s October. 

Harry came home at the beginning of August. They agreed to be friends at the start of September. Somehow, they’ve made it to October, and nothing has really changed.

Between endless text threads and silly little pictures they send each other throughout the day, they meet up in person three times. Always in public, always somewhere with an easy out. All three times it just borders on awkward.

The first time, they go to another cafe. Harry buys Louis more food than he can eat and they spend an hour edging around conversation. Harry smiles twice. Louis smiles once and almost cries twice for no real reason at all. After that meetup, he spends three hours staring at his phone with a whole this isn’t working text written out and ready to send. 

The second time, they meet up entirely by accident, bumping into each other in the middle of Victoria station. Louis laughs and asks if Harry is stalking him again, Harry winks and offers to treat him to a Starbucks. It’s easier this time. Still awkward, especially when their hands accidentally brush reaching for a napkin and Louis almost spills pumpkin spice latte all down the front of himself. But it’s better. Almost a friendship.

The third time, they go to the cinema together. Harry pays, obviously, because London cinema prices are so extortionate that Louis hasn’t even seen a new release in three years. They go on a Friday after work, because for once their schedules align, and it turns out to be a bad idea because not even five minutes into the film, Louis is fast asleep. Curled up on the reclining chair with his head pillowed on Harry’s arm, he sleeps through the entire film. Harry gently nudges him awake while the credits roll, soft fingers running through his hair.

“Mmm, no,” Louis grumbles, turning his face into the warm fabric beneath him. 

The warm fabric moves, shaking with the deep laugh he hears above him. “Come on, sweetheart. Time to wake up.”

And oh, he realises. It’s Harry, calling him sweetheart and gently stroking him awake. Slowly, he comes around, lifting his head and opening his eyes to look around. The credits are rolling and the lights are up, but nobody is in to kick them out just yet. 

“There you are,” Harry says softly, fondly. 

“I’m so sorry,” Louis apologises, flushing pink. He’s never been so thankful that he doesn’t snore in his life. “I’ll pay you back for the ticket, I’m sorry.”

Harry shakes his head. “Don’t be silly. I enjoyed the film, you got some rest. Sounds like a win to me. There’s another showing in an hour if you want to stick around and actually watch the film? We could go get dinner first.” 

Louis realises then that he’s actually holding Harry’s arm on the arm rest between them. He lets go quickly, awkwardly moving to fiddle with the strings on his hoodie. “No, it’s okay,” he says. “It’s probably not a good idea, and I don’t want to waste any more of your time.”

“It’s not a waste,” Harry assures him.

“But it’s too much to ask.”

“It’s not. I’m offering.”

“You’re really stubborn, you know that?“ Louis asks.

“We’ve always had that in common,” Harry answers, smiling and getting up out of the chair before offering a hand to pull Louis out. “Come on, I’ll even let you pick somewhere cheap.”

Louis sighs, taking the hand against his better judgment and letting Harry pull him up. 

“I could go for a burger,” he concedes.

Harry grins. “A burger it is, then.”

So they do. They go to the closest restaurant that sells burgers and Harry spends the whole meal more focused on watching Louis eat than he is eating himself. Louis spends the whole meal thinking about how the two-hour nap he took on Harry’s arm is actually the best sleep he’s had in a long time. 

When the meal is finished, Harry goes onto his phone and books them two tickets for the next showing of the film they just watched. Louis tries to point out that it’s pointless for Harry to see it again, and he’s perfectly capable of going alone, but Harry just rolls his eyes and drags them back to the cinema. He pretends not to be as pleased as he is but he spends the entire film awake this time, glad that Harry’s sitting next to him and not somewhere else with someone who isn’t him.

As good as their friend date is, Louis still cries when he gets home. 

And cries and cries and cries.

It continues like that. 

They text. They meet. They pretend it’s not weird. Louis goes home and cries. Not every time, but near enough.

Harry doesn’t talk about work, ever, but Louis can tell that working at the company is draining him. Louis doesn’t mention how close he is to never attending another audition, or ever tell Harry that the only reason he’s not hopping on the first train back to Doncaster and never looking back is because Harry is here, in London. 

Things outside of Harry are just as tense.

John sits Louis and the others down one early November morning and tells them that he’s really, really sorry, but they have three months to find somewhere else to live. He’s ready to settle down, he says, and as much as he’d love to, he can’t do that with three twenty-somethings taking up all the space in his flat. 

Mina packs up and leaves with her shit that night, saying she’s going to live with her girlfriend in Reading. A girlfriend that none of them knew about, of course, but it checks out. Even though they weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination, Louis feels a sense of mourning when she goes. 

Louis has nowhere else to go. It’s an easy decision, to live out the last three months in the shitty flat with Adam and John, get as much time with Harry as he can, and then leave London for good. He has no savings to put down as a deposit, and John really has been giving them an easy ride with the bills. He wouldn’t be able to afford to live anywhere else, not within fifty miles of the city. 

He doesn’t tell Harry. Because Harry will try and fix it.

Auditions seem pointless but Louis keeps going to them anyway, no longer surprised when he gets cut or simply never hears back from them. It doesn’t hurt any less but it is what it is.

All in all, Louis isn’t doing well.

By mid-November, Harry seems to notice.

Louis hides it better; or he thinks he does, at least.

Stalker: Do you fancy dropping by the office? I have something for you x

Louis groans, burying his face back into his pillow. 

It’s midday. He doesn’t have work today, or any auditions, or anything at all to do or anywhere he needs to be. His plan had been to lay in bed all day and do nothing at all, except maybe watch a few episodes of some shitty reality show and have some alone time with his severely neglected sex toys. The dream day.

But now, Harry. Ruining his life and his plans once again.

Louis could say no but he knows the moment he reads the message that he won’t. The fact that he wants to see Harry more than he wants a day to himself after not having one for months is actually concerning but he doesn’t want to unpack that right now.

Louis: i suppose i can drop by

Stalker: Great! Just say your name at the front desk and they’ll let you in x

An hour later, Louis walks into the Rose Aesthetics headquarters, feeling like a traitor to himself for even considering it.

A pretty woman at the front desk smiles at him, smiles wider when he tells her his name, hands him a sleek little visitor's badge and tells him to go right on up. In the lift, he smirks to himself at the thought of the look on Des’ face if he saw Louis treated so well in his building.

All the way to Harry’s office people are nice to him, smiling at him and directing him happily when he asks where to go. It’s weird, he thinks, how light the whole space feels. He can’t imagine it being like that under Des, but maybe it’s only Louis that the man is cruel to.

Harry’s in a call when Louis gets to his office, phone held to his ear and chatting away. He notices Louis standing in the doorway immediately and grins, beckoning him in with a finger. Louis complies, walking in and sitting carefully on the plush chair facing the desk. 

It’s fancy in here. Sleek and modern and sterile and Harry sits at the helm of it all in his big leather desk chair, hot and powerful.

With his hair in a fucking bun again, which is slowly but surely becoming Louis’ weakness because of the way it highlights his jawline and the rest of his stupidly perfect face. 

“Yeah, I get you. Listen, something important has come up and I need to move the three o’clock meeting to tomorrow, does that work for you?” 

Christ, even his voice is hot like this, all rough and demanding. It brings up too many memories. 

He really should have stayed at home and fucked himself.

Harry smiles at him again, rolling his eyes playfully at the phone. “Alright, bye,” he says, ending the call and all but throwing the phone down onto the desk. “Hi, you look pretty,” he says to Louis, attention fully on him.

It’s how Harry greets him every time now, with some sort of compliment. Louis both hates it and loves it.

“I quite literally rolled out of bed and got on the tube,” Louis says, deadpan. It’s half a lie, he did make some effort, fixed his messy hair in the mirror and pulled on his favourite jumper. 

“And you always look pretty,” Harry throws back. “Did you find the building alright?” 

“It’s kind of hard to miss, given the huge fucking billboard attached to it and the rose bushes outside.”

Harry smirks. “Hey, I water those bushes myself.”

“No you don’t. You nearly killed my plants when I had to go home alone for the weekend that one time.”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

Louis laughs, shaking his head. “So, what did you drag me out of bed for? I don’t drag myself out for nothing, you know?”

“Oh, I know.” Harry smiles, opening one of the desk drawers and rooting around in it for a moment before pulling out an envelope and holding it out for Louis to take.

Louis frowns, taking it from Harry’s hand. “What’s this?”

“A gift. One I forgot about.”

Confused, Louis opens the envelope carefully, peeking inside. It’s tickets, he thinks. He pulls them out, looking at them properly. Oh.

“Wicked?” Louis asks, breathless. 

“For tonight. I booked them a while ago and completely forgot about them until I got an email about it earlier. They’ve been in my drawer for months.”

“Oh,” Louis says, still staring at them. They’re good seats. Really good seats. “For me?”

Harry laughs. “Of course for you. Who else?”

Louis looks up. Harry is watching him intently. “When did you book them?”

Shrugging, Harry looks almost embarrassed. “Longer ago than I’d like to admit, right now.”

“When you came home?”

Harry pauses, shaking his head minutely. “Before that,” he admits. “It was…a split second decision. I was going to get them to you somehow, as an apology. They still are that, but also I know how much that show means to you and I want you to enjoy it. There’s two. You can take whoever you want. There’s still time if you want to get your mum down here, maybe? I can book her train tickets and a hotel right now. Or Lottie. Whoever you want.”

Louis misses his mum. A lot. But he’ll be going home soon enough and he’ll never have to miss her again, and Wicked is their thing, Louis and Harry’s. 

And Harry bought him these tickets before he even knew if Louis would ever talk to him again. It’s so much to process and for the hundredth time in the last few months, Louis might cry.

“Will you come with me?” Louis asks, being brave. “If you’re busy, or you don’t want to, it’s okay,” he adds, just to be sure.

It’s sweet, the way Harry actually looks shocked at this, as if Louis hasn’t been actively choosing to spend time with him for the past two months. As if Louis isn’t already going against everything he said and allowing himself to fall for him over and over again.

“Are you sure?” Harry asks.

Louis smiles. “Very sure. Are you sure that you want me to have this?” he asks, waving the tickets in the air. “I can’t give you what you want from me. Maybe you could give these tickets to someone who can.”

Harry frowns. “This isn’t about that. None of this is. I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give me. You’re giving me everything just by giving me your time and if there’s ever a time where you can’t offer me that anymore, I’ll let you go. In the meantime, I’m good to just be here with you.”

It’s the right answer. It also really fucking hurts. He wishes, more than anything, that he had the guts to either deal with his issues and just be with Harry, or to cut this off for good. This limbo they’ve created and locked themselves in is fine, for now, but is slowly becoming more and more suffocating.

But Louis still cannot trust that Harry means what he says. As much as he wants to.

“Okay,” Louis whispers, nodding to himself. “Okay. Thank you, for these and for everything. I won’t fall asleep on you tonight, I promise.”

“I believe you,” Harry promises. “Remember when we went to see it the first time?”

Louis laughs. He does, very well. “When I kicked you for nearly falling asleep and then sobbed on you all the way through the interval and the second half?”

“And then spent weeks trying to get me to do duets with you, knowing full well I can’t sing any of those parts.”

Louis snickers. He’d successfully gotten him to sing as long as you’re mine one time, during a very drunken karaoke night at a theatre bar, but had ended up singing both parts halfway through while Harry swayed in the background. 

While Harry is a born and bred Fiyero in personality and looks, he does not have the acting chops or the singing ability. Louis doesn’t quite have the range for Elphaba, or the right gender, but he’s always resonated with her. Wicked was his first and worst rejection, the one that almost made him give up completely so early on. He’s sent a few tapes in since then, for the ensemble, but never heard anything back. It hasn’t stopped him loving the show.

“I still think we should have gone as them for Halloween,” Louis says, laughing. Their couples costumes were legendary in uni.

Harry smirks, leaning back in his chair. “Ah, but the body paint agreement,” he points out.

Louis flushes. Body paint and being unable to part from each other for five minutes, even in public, do not go well. So they agreed that any costumes they chose had to be paintless, lest one of them end up with a green mouth.

He does not need the images that flash through his head. 

“The body paint agreement,” Louis agrees. “Probably not the safest conversation topic,” he jokes.

“Definitely not.” Harry coughs, shaking his head as if to clear thoughts away. “Anyway, yeah, Wicked tonight…”

“Do you want me to meet you there?” Louis asks.

“No, no. I’ll pick you up.”

Louis agrees too easily. “Okay,” he says, smiling. “I’ll try and dress nice, if I can find anything nice that isn’t my work uniform.”

“You’ll look beautiful whatever you wear,” Harry says.

“Such a charmer,” Louis says with a laugh. He disagrees with Harry’s statement but he’s going to try his best anyway. Because this feels like a date, more so than any of their other outings so far, and as much as he isn’t ready for that, he can’t not treat it as such.

Louis stays with Harry for a while longer, not ready to leave just yet, sitting in his chair and watching him work. People come in and out of the office to talk to him and not one of them seems surprised by Louis’ presence, greeting him with smiles and talking to Harry about important, confidential stuff as if he’s not there. Louis wonders if Harry’s spoken about him to some of them at all. It sure seems like it, with some of the politely interested looks he gets.

Eventually, he drags himself out of the chair and takes his leave, ready to go home and spend the next few hours panicking in front of his rickety, overstuffed wardrobe.

Three hours. It takes Louis three hours to get ready. Adam walks in on his breakdown halfway through, standing in the doorway and eyeing up his half-naked frame.

“You’re making a right racket, you know?” he asks, raising an eyebrow when Louis turns to glare at him.

“I have no clothes,” Louis hisses. “How is it that I have no clothes? I’m literally surrounded by clothes.”

“You could always go wherever you’re going as you are,” Adam offers, winking. “Certainly works for me.” 

Louis throws a rolled up pair of jeans at him. “Piss off, pervert.”

Adam laughs. “Alright, alright. If your date doesn’t work out, knock on my door, princess,” he jokes—Louis thinks—before walking off.

“It’s not a date!” Louis shouts after him, before going back to his debating.

He has plenty of clothes for auditions; leggings and vests and oversized t-shirts and fucking leotards. Then there’s his work clothes, perfectly tailored shirts and trousers, which would work well enough for anyone who isn’t Harry, who’s already seen him in his work clothes. 

Then there’s his going clubbing to get fucked clothes. Which, while mostly unused but always effective, are not entirely suitable for the theatre. Maybe if he mixes-and-matches a little. 

In the end, he goes for half-slutty, half-classy. 

Five minutes before Harry’s due to arrive, Louis is eyeing himself up in the mirror, scrutinising every inch of himself.

He’s wearing his work trousers because they’re smart and the things they do for his arse are undeniable. Instead of his usual white shirt, however, is an almost-sheer black blouse. It’s womenswear, he’s pretty sure, but he got it on sale and it does sinful things to his waist and leaves his neck and collarbones free, the paleness of his skin striking against all the black. He’ll probably freeze to death but he’ll die looking his hottest.

His face, which is flushed with anxiety and anticipation, is dusted with the lightest covering of powder. Eyes rimmed with eyeliner, a smattering of highlight on his eyelids and cheekbones and a quick swipe of lipgloss. Something for himself, to make him feel pretty.

Harry has never seen him in makeup off the stage. Louis had started wearing it, very occasionally, post-breakup.

Hopefully he doesn’t mind it. 

The doorbell rings. Louis sighs, rearranging his hair and hoping it doesn’t look too bad, before spraying himself with another dusting of his sweet-scented perfume and pulling his black ankle boots on. Hopefully he remembers how to walk in them, the slight heel unfamiliar after years of not wearing them.

When he gets to the door, Adam has already opened it and is standing in the doorway, chatting away with Harry like they’re best friends.

“Yeah, I’m actually a personal trainer,” Adam is saying. Louis didn’t know that. “Do you work out?”

Harry hums. “I run, mostly,” he says. “Every morning.”

“You look like you lift, too. How much?”

“Not as much as you, I’m sure.”

Louis can’t contain his laugh, startling both men from where he’d snuck up behind Adam. “Done comparing muscles or shall I leave you boys be and come back down later?”

Adam turns to him, leaving room for Harry to look past him and see him too. Both men openly ogle him, open mouthed and wide eyed. Louis flushes deeper under their gazes.

“Jesus, princess,” Adam breathes out like a prayer.

Harry’s eyes flicker momentarily to the other man, death in his glare, and then back to Louis, softening with awe. “You look amazing, Louis,” he says softly. “Ready?” He holds out a hand for Louis to take.

Louis sees it for what it is. A claim. Smirking, he takes it, letting Harry guide him past Adam and out onto the doorstep. 

“My offer still stands,” Adam says, holding onto the door. “Just knock,” he winks, closing the door and leaving them alone.

Harry doesn’t let go of his hand. “What was that about?” he asks, glaring at the closed door.

“Adam is very generous,” Louis answers. “And very insistent about getting into my bed. Or getting me in his, which would probably work out better actually because his bed is a lot bigger and mine squeaks quite badly.”

“I don’t like him.”

Louis laughs. “You were best buds a minute ago.”

“Yeah, well, not anymore.” Harry is still glaring at the door.

Louis laughs again, letting go of his hand to touch his face gently. With his boots on, they’re almost the same height. “There’s no need to be jealous, Harry,” Louis tells him, patting his cheek gently, turning his face to look at him instead of the door. “I’m here, aren’t I? And he’s got a massive dick, so…I could be in there, happily, but I’m not.”

Harry’s gaze on his face is hot and all-consuming. “How are you so breathtakingly beautiful that you just told me you’ve seen another guy's cock and all I can think about is how pretty you are?” he asks, laughing at the absurdity of it.

“I’ve seen plenty, darling,” Louis teases, dropping his hand and walking down the steps to the street. “Come on, or we’ll be late.”

Harry groans, following him down like a lost puppy and rushing to open the car door for him. 

In the car, Louis lets his anxiety wash over him and settle to a careful thrum. He can do this. They’ve crossed a line already, flirting and touching and acknowledging that they still feel something. Louis can survive a few hours of this, even if it hurts in the end, even if it’s a terrible fucking idea. 

Ten minutes later, as they’re driving through London, Harry frowns.

“How do you know how big he is?”

“Would it make you feel any better if I said you really don’t want to know the answer to that?”

Harry huffs. “No, not at all.”

Louis snorts. “I sucked him off a few times, platonically,” he confesses, watching Harry’s side profile carefully.

As expected, his jaw clenches, along with his hands tightening on the steering wheel. It shouldn’t give Louis such a thrill but it does , thinking about those hands wrapped around his neck or moving him around like he’s nothing. This really is a bad idea. 

“Okay,” Harry says, calm and even. Louis can tell he hates it.

“He’s very…gentle,” Louis adds, carefully. “I had to take care of myself, both times. After.”

If they were normal, that would be a cruel thing to say. If they were normal, that would be seen as rubbing it in. But they aren’t, and Louis knows Harry, and he watches as the man untenses, nodding. “Good, that’s good.” 

Louis knows the thought process well. He can acknowledge that Harry has probably fucked other people in their time apart but knowing that is a different thing, and furthermore, he’d feel a lot worse about it if he knew that Harry had fucked them the way he fucked Louis, hard and fast and rough. So knowing that Louis has done something with Adam is not great, but fine, because Louis hadn’t begged for his cum and then came untouched just from the thrill of it, like he did with Harry so many times.

These thoughts are perhaps not the best thoughts to be having if he doesn’t want to sit through his favourite musical thinking about hopping on his ex boyfriends cock, but he’s the one who dressed like this, he’s the one who’s set himself up to have Harry’s hungry gaze on him all night. 

If they get through this night without crossing any more unspoken boundaries, it may well be a miracle.

As it turns out, the moment they step into the Apollo Victoria theatre, Louis goes full musical theatre fanboy and whatever sexual tension may be present takes a backseat.

It’s been years since he stepped foot in a theatre to watch a show and the excitement that comes with every part of it feels like a new feeling. Stepping through the green foyer, Louis clings on to Harry’s arm so he doesn’t get swept away in the crowd of people making their way through. He eyes up the merch stand, still selling the mug they bought forever ago, and decides then and there that he needs to break into Harry’s apartment to get his own back. A replacement just won’t do. 

Moving on from the merchandise before Harry can somehow try and buy him the whole lot, they make their way through to the auditorium, Harry handing over their tickets to be checked before they’re waved through. It takes Louis’ breath away. As it always has, ever since he was little and didn’t realise how much his mum had to save to take him to see his first musical. 

There’s just something about it that he’ll never get over, the thrum of excitement and low-level hum of noise as everyone waits for the show to begin. The sudden quiet when the lights get low and the music stops. From any part of the theatre, it’s magic. From the seats Harry chose, dead centre and a few rows from the front, Louis feels like he’s ascending. He holds on to Harry for the whole first act, allowing himself to cry and laugh and feel, and he feels the way Harry’s gaze is on him more than it is the stage but he can’t quite find it in himself to care.

During the interval they stay sitting in their seats as most filter out to get refreshments. Louis, thankful for his incredibly waterproof eyeliner, wipes at his eyes.

“I forgot how much that song gets to you,” Harry teases, using the hand that isn’t stuck in Louis’ grip to help wipe a tear away. 

Louis pouts, turning to face Harry properly. “I’m not too blotchy, am I?”

Harry smiles. “Not at all. Are you having a good time?”

“The best,” Louis affirms. He really is. “I haven’t been to a show in so long, partly because it’s way too expensive and partly because I thought it might hurt too much to see other people doing what I want to do, but, I don’t know, it doesn’t feel sad at all.”

“This will happen for you, you know?” Harry says, looking far too sincere. “And I’ll be at stage door with all the stagey fangirls, begging for a picture.” 

Louis laughs at the picture that paints, an absurd dream of Louis having people waiting for him and Harry being among them. “You’re funny,” Louis tells him. “Can you imagine? I‘m pretty sure that any roles I do get will be the kind where I have to run out of stage door early so that I don’t get in the way of the real stars.”

Harry shakes his head, serious. “I don’t believe that anyone can see you on stage and not fall completely in love with you.”

Louis doesn’t point out that there are numerous people who have seen him perform and consequently rejected him so that statement, while lovely and heart-shattering, doesn’t really track. 

“If you were this much of a charmer in New York, I worry about all of the broken hearts you left behind,” Louis says instead, moving the conversation away from himself. And right into far more dangerous territory, but Louis is not known for thinking things through lately.

“There are none,” Harry says quickly. “None that I know of, or encouraged, anyway.” 

“So you didn’t…?” Louis asks, wondering why he never asked before.

“Oh, I did.” Harry smirks, bringing Louis’ hand to his lips and kissing it gently. “Little things, without strings,” he says into the skin before bringing their hands back down to the armrest. “Nothing satisfying.”

Good, Louis thinks. That’s good. They’re on the same page, in this, at least. Even though it shouldn’t matter because Louis is still sure that this can’t happen, not without some sort of change that doesn’t seem possible right now. But still, deep down, part of him hopes, and that hope feels brighter with the information that he isn’t competing with anyone. Harry hasn’t loved anyone since he loved him. Even if those feelings don’t remain it’s still, somehow, a comfort.

“Me too,” Louis confesses. “It’s all been pretty unsatisfying for me, too. Both life and sex.”

“And now?”

“I’m not fucking anyone, if that’s what you’re asking,” Louis answers with a quick look around to make sure nobody is currently close enough to hear them. The coast is clear, thankfully. “It’s been a while, actually.”

Harry nods. “And life?”

“Better in some ways, much worse in others,” Louis confesses. “And not up for discussion, not tonight. I want to forget all of that tonight. Is that okay?”

“We can forget other things tonight, if you want,” Harry offers. “Like boundaries.”

Louis’ heart skips a beat. He knew this would happen. They’re both idiots, walking along the edge of something, and neither of them planned for this, he knows that, but Louis also can’t pretend that he hasn’t thought about it. 

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Louis asks.

Harry shrugs. “I can’t think very clearly about anything around you.”

“I feel that,” Louis huffs out with a laugh. “I’ll let you know after the show. How about that? Think you can keep it in your pants that long?“

“I wouldn’t dream of trying to drag you out of Wicked, sweetheart,” Harry answers, pressing another kiss to his hand. “And you can say no, and we’ll never speak of it again.” 

“I know.” Louis smiles. “Now shush, it’ll be back on in a minute.”

Harry mimes zipping up his lips and throwing away the key, sending Louis a wink as he does so. Louis rolls his eyes, leaning into his side as people start to file back into their row. 

Louis just about manages to hold it together through the rest of the show. He doesn’t full out sob, which is a win, but does shed a few tears. When everyone stands and claps for the bows, Louis allows himself one moment of longing. He allows himself to feel the pain that comes with experiencing that moment from the wrong side, knowing that he’s going to give up on his dream soon enough. Harry, either sensing his upset or just wanting to touch him, slides an arm around his waist and squeezes him gently, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

It helps. A lot. No matter the intentions.

They make their way out after that, Louis once again clinging to Harry to keep close to him in the crowd. 

Just as they’re about to walk out of the doors, Louis feels a tap on his shoulder and whirls around to find a woman standing there, smiling. 

“Hi, I’m sorry, you’re Louis Tomlinson, right?” she asks.

“Uh, yes…” Louis responds, confused. Harry stands close behind him, still holding his hand. 

The woman grins. “I’m sorry, again, I just couldn’t pass up the chance to talk to you in person. I’m Melissa,” she says, holding her hand out to shake. Louis takes it, shaking awkwardly, still entirely confused. “Sorry,” she says, dropping his hand. “I’m such a scatterbrain! I work under the casting director here at Wicked, and we were literally just talking about you this morning.”

“Oh,” Louis breathes out. “You were?”

“Yes! We’re starting to cast again very soon and your name came up from your previous tapes. I saw you in the show last year, at the Young Vic? And I just thought you were amazing. I was going to try and snap you up, but I was so sure that you’d have a hundred other offers, and I couldn’t find any agent information.”

Louis’ heart is beating so fast that he might actually pass out. Harry squeezes his hand encouragingly. “Oh, I-I don’t have an agent. Just me,” he says. 

“Well, just you, give me a call in the next week and we’ll talk about getting you in, if you’re free?” She hands him a card. He takes it with a shaking hand.

“I’m free,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, really,” she says, grinning. “It was fate bumping into you, I’m sure, I don’t usually actually come and see the show. I have to run—bloody trains—but seriously, call us?”

“I will,” he promises, still in some sort of shock.

“Good, thank you, I’m sorry for interrupting! Have a nice night!” She runs off with a wave, over to a woman and a child who she immediately starts chatting with excitedly as they leave, looking back at him once.

“What the fuck just happened?” Louis asks as soon as she’s out of earshot, turning to Harry who is beaming beside him. “That didn’t have anything to do with you, did it?”

“No!” Harry exclaims, clearly offended. Louis believes him instantly. “That’s all you, being brilliant.”

It sinks in then, what just happened. It’s not enough to get him too excited, he’s been burned before, many times, but it’s something. Something is a whole lot more than he’s had in months. 

Something is good. Great, even. 

“I think I’m in shock,” Louis says with a laugh. “I’ve never been asked to audition before.”

“Which is a crime, if you ask me,” Harry replies. They finally file out of the theatre together and make their way to Harry’s car. Louis is still somewhat out of it, replaying the conversation in his head to make sure he didn’t read it wrong.

Harry ushers him into the car before getting in himself and turning the heater on immediately. Louis hadn’t even realised he was cold until the warm air hits him.

Fond, Harry smiles at him for a long moment before starting the car and pulling out.

Five minutes later, stuck in traffic, Louis turns to Harry suddenly. 

“We should go to your flat,” he says.

Frowning, Harry turns to him. “Why?”

“My bed squeaks.”

If it were possible, Louis would have the image of Harry’s face in this moment framed on his bedroom wall. Shocked and equally hungry, Harry smirks. 

“Presumptuous, sweetheart,” Harry says, voice dark and teasing.

“Is it?” Louis asks, light and innocent.

Logically, Louis knows this is a terrible idea. It can’t end well for either of them and could potentially jeopardise whatever this friendship is, but Louis, idiot that he is, just wants Harry. For a few hours, or a night, or however long he can have him until everything comes crumbling down. 

It’s not just that it’s been a while and he’s unbelievably pent up. He’s pent up because every quick, meaningless fuck he’s had for the past three years hasn’t been with Harry. Harry was his first and his last that meant anything at all and maybe that’s not healthy, and more reason to not do this, but Louis can’t think of any real reason why not. He could go home and let Adam fuck him and it would be fine, maybe even great, but he knows he’d spend the whole time wishing it was Harry, so why not have the real thing when it’s being offered to him so freely. It’s all going to blow up anyway, he can feel that in the way he still can’t look at Harry without wanting to cry, so why not go out with a bang? 

“Are you sure about this?” Harry asks, big hand on Louis’ thigh. Light from the streetlights set off the silver on his stupid expensive rings and Louis suddenly can’t think of anything but those fingers everywhere.

Louis takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says, so close to a whine that he flushes in embarrassment.

Harry smirks, squeezing the thigh in his grip, eyes glinting when Louis’ legs spread of their own accord. “Okay, beautiful. You’re clean?”

Louis nods. “I got tested after the last time. They always wore condoms, obviously, but, you know…”

“I know. Me too,” Harry says, turning his attention away from Louis when the traffic starts moving again. His hand stays firm on Louis’ leg. “Want to talk about rules?”

“No rules,” Louis answers quickly. “I just want you. Whatever you want.”

The hand on his thigh leaves, taking Louis’ hand instead and bringing it up to Harry’s lips to press a kiss to it. “Whatever I want?“ Harry asks, eyes still on the road. Louis nods, making a breathy noise of affirmation that can’t quite pass for a word. “Okay,” he says, dropping Louis’ hand to his crotch and holding it there. “Get me hard, and then we’ll talk about what I want.”

This is what he wanted. Harry, telling him what to do. He does as he’s told, eagerly rubbing his hand along the already half-hard cock hiding beneath the expensive feeling fabric, body turned completely in the chair to watch the other man as he does. 

“I thought about you, you know? Most times,” Louis says, too honest and probably too much for whatever this is.

“Not all?” Harry asks, voice rough already from Louis’ hand. 

Louis smirks. “There was one guy who was very good with his mouth,” he confesses. “Ate me out for nearly an hour and didn’t ask for anything in return. It was a little hard to think about anything else.”

The clench of Harry’s jaw tastes like victory. “You’re trying to piss me off,” Harry accuses, still refusing to look at him for even a second.

“Is it working?” Louis really hopes it is. 

“I forgot how much of a brat you are,” Harry answers.

Louis laughs. “No, you didn’t.”

Harry smiles, finally turning to look at him as they stop at a traffic light. “Do you remember your safe word, beautiful?”

He does. It’s Glinda, which is fitting. And fuck, Louis is so turned on at even just the thought of needing one. He knows this won’t go too far tonight, they’re both too desperate and careful to really push it, but even just the thought of it is bliss, and he’s sure Harry won’t object to being a little bit mean.

“Yes, sir,” Louis says, trying and failing to hide his triumphant smirk. 

Harry’s eyes light up, just a little, just enough for Louis to notice. “Good,” he says, not quite the praise Louis craves. “Keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told until we get home and maybe, maybe, I’ll fuck you. Okay?”

Delighted, Louis nods. He does as he’s told once again, keeping quiet as he strokes Harry to full hardness through his trousers as the man ignores him. It’s almost embarrassing how quickly it gets to Louis, having him squirming in his seat while Harry remains unaffected and silent.

It takes them twenty minutes to pull up outside Harry’s flat. It should have taken them less, Louis thinks, but he was far too distracted to notice if it was traffic or Harry purposefully driving the long way round.

Harry kills the engine, pushing Louis’ hand away and getting out of the car without saying a word, slamming the door behind him. Seconds later, Louis’ door is swung open.

“Out,” Harry says firmly.

Louis climbs out quickly, wobbling a little when he stands thanks to his stupid heels and his desperation. Harry steadies him with a hand on his arm, cracking a small smile. Louis wants him to kiss him. He doesn’t, of course, instead pulling him out of the way so he can shut the door and then leaving him in the street to stalk off towards the building. Louis follows after a beat, not wanting to seem too eager, though that moment has clearly passed.

By the time Louis makes it up all the stairs, Harry is already in the flat, door left wide open. Carefully, Louis closes and locks the door behind him and takes his boots off finally before heading into the flat in search of his elusive ex. 

He doesn’t have to look very far. Harry’s in the kitchen, lit only by the streetlights filtering through the curtains, leaning against the counter.

Louis steps in. “Am I allowed to talk now?” he asks, a little whiny because he knows it works. 

“Come here,” Harry says instead of an answer.

It takes four steps to reach him. Louis opens his mouth to speak, only to have Harry shutting him up with a kiss, shoving him hard against the counter but kissing him surprisingly softly. Quick and desperate but still tender and real and it only takes a second for Louis’ brain to catch up and for him to melt into it, body sagging in relief.

Three years have passed since a kiss felt this right. While expected, the realisation that they’re utterly and completely fucked after this hits hard. He pushes it away, letting Harry’s touch wash over him for the moment.

Pulling away slightly, hands on Louis’ face, Harry groans. “I could kiss you all night,” he confesses. “But you got me so fucking hard.”

Louis laughs, more of a breathy giggle than anything. “You told me to,” he points out.

“And you just did it, didn’t you? I missed that, you doing whatever I say and enjoying it like the little slut you are.” Harry punctuates the sentence with a kiss, this one harsher than before. 

“Yes,” Louis gasps into Harry’s mouth.

“Yes, who?” 

Louis whines. “Yes, sir.”

“Good boy,” Harry praises, finally, before shoving Louis to his knees.

The floor is cold, and probably dirty if Harry is still as shit at remembering to mop it as he used to be, but Louis barely has a moment to think about that, not with Harry unbuttoning his trousers and pulling himself out. Louis would kneel in much worse to have Harry’s cock in his face.

Harry holds his cock in one hand, big even against his long fingers, and opens Louis’ mouth up with the thumb of his other, pressing it in and forcing it open. 

“Think you can still take it?” he asks, pressing his thumb against Louis’ tongue as he strokes himself. 

Louis nods, more turned on than he has been in forever, looking up at the other man like he’s praying to a deity. 

“Pinch me if you need to stop,” Harry instructs, on the edge of tender, before slowly edging his cock past Louis’ lips. 

On his knees in near enough the same spot that he ended their relationship, Louis takes Harry’s cock until he’s crying from gagging on it, spit dripping down his chin, and not entirely able to breathe but loving every second of it. Harry fucks his face, hands fisted in his hair and praising him as much as he’s calling him a fucking whore.

It’s heaven. The kind of heaven he’d resigned himself to never feeling again because no matter how hard he’s looked, nobody has ever treated him the way he needs to be treated. Nobody has ever taken him in the way Harry does.

Louis doesn’t come in his pants but only because Harry tells him not to and he won’t, can’t disobey him.

Harry doesn’t come in his mouth, or at all, instead pulling out not long before he would have, causing Louis to whine at the loss even as he gasps for air, trying to catch his breath. 

Untangling his hands from Louis’ hair, Harry helps him up from his knees and wipes at his eyes in a momentary break from the roughness. 

The break doesn’t last long. Which is good because Louis might not last much longer, still thinking of the feeling of Harry deep in his throat.

“Where do you want it?” Harry asks, pressing him into the counter again. “In here, where anyone in the opposite building can look through the crack in the curtains and see you getting fucked?”

Louis whimpers. It’s tempting. 

“The bedroom,” he pleads instead, because he’s a masochist in more ways than one.

Harry’s shock is momentary and quickly masked. Then, he’s clasping Louis’ wrist and dragging him to the bedroom. The first thing Louis notices about the room as he’s shoved onto the bed is that it’s clean. Which is unusual for Harry, who will leave the place a mess in the process of getting ready and not bother to pick a single thing up, which means that either he’s different now—unlikely—or he actually made sure to clean, just in case. 

It’s not like Louis can blame him, not when he dressed this way hoping Harry would be the one undressing him at the end of the night.

And Harry does undress him, peeling his clothes off painfully slowly while remaining fully dressed himself, his hard cock tucked back into his unbuttoned trousers. Louis lets him, moving his body to make it easier but otherwise staying silent and unmoving, watching Harry intently. He wants more. He wants Harry to undress too, so that he can really take a look at the ways the man has changed over the years.

Harry doesn’t give him that. Not yet. What he gives him instead is his face pushed into the bed and two lubed fingers pressing into him, just on the edge of painful. Neither of them have time for waiting, it seems, and Louis is completely fine with that, content with a little bit of pain. Or a lot, a lot of the time.

The other man doesn’t speak as he hastily fucks him open with his fingers, letting Louis’ moans alone fill the room. 

“Can I go bare?” Harry asks, quiet and rough.

“Please,” Louis pleads, half muffled by the sheets.

Harry groans, pleased. “On your hands and knees. Now,” he commands, pulling his fingers out and leaving Louis whining at the emptiness once again.

Louis does as he’s told, weakly forcing himself up onto his hands and knees. He’s somewhat disappointed, wanting to see Harry more than he wants to fuck in a position he’s always enjoyed, but he doesn’t say anything. He hears the lube being opened and closed again, and then Harry’s quiet groan as he strokes himself, and then feels Harry’s sure hands on him as he feeds his cock into his half-prepped hole. 

It burns. In a good way; the kind of way he’s always too scared to ask other people for. 

“Hit me,” Louis begs, pushing back onto Harry and unabashedly moaning at just how right it feels. “Just once, please.”

Harry does, a hand coming down on his right cheek. Hard, but not as hard as he can, as he has before. It’s hard enough to immediately leave a mark that Harry gently caresses as if awed as he fucks into him, not wasting any time going slow.

“Thank you.” Louis isn’t sure if he’s thanking Harry for the slap or for fucking him or for coming home.

Harry doesn’t hit him again, which Louis expected and isn’t at all mad about. He loves it, always has with Harry, but whatever this is, is good enough for him. Harry, fucking into him roughly and gripping him like he’s trying to bruise him up for a week. Harry, whispering praises more than anything. Harry, inside him, marking him up and taking him like they haven’t gone three years without touching each other like this.

The way they’re fucking now is reminiscent of their final month together. Softer than usual but with an air of desperation; a silent acknowledgement of their impending doom.

Louis tries and fails not to think about it. Harry fucks him harder, like he knows. Like he feels it too.

After five minutes on his knees, Harry grants him the mercy of changing positions. He slips out with a frenzied air, grabbing Louis like a doll and flipping him so he’s lying down on his back across the bed before sliding between his legs and getting right back inside him.

Harry is fully dressed still, Louis sees now. That won’t do, he thinks, breaking the unspoken rules a little to reach up and unbutton Harry’s shirt with shaky fingers. 

“Naughty,” Harry chastises. There’s a slight edge of panic there that Louis doesn’t notice.

Louis doesn’t give a shit, not when he pushes the shirt open and finds pure muscle underneath. Harry was strong before, strong enough to pick him up and throw him around, but he was never this toned. And the ink, so much more of it now, stands against the sweat-slicked skin like a fucking masterpiece. 

“Christ,” Louis breathes out. “How did you get hotter?”

Harry laughs, breaking character. “I could ask you the same,” he says. Then, after pausing for a moment like he’s thinking about something, he takes Louis’ hand and guides it to his chest, to a small ‘L’ over his heart. “This one’s for you,” he says, deep and rough and too honest.

“Yeah?” Louis asks quietly.

“Every person I fucked asked about it,” he says, leaving Louis’ hand there to put his back on his waist, guided to the right spot by the red finger marks against the pale skin. “I told them. Every single one of them. About you. It’s how they all knew that it wouldn’t be anything more.”

Louis would cry at that, if he’d heard it any other time. Now, though, he’s so deeply turned on at having that sort of claim over the man that he can’t really think about anything else. He moans, throwing his head back against the sheets.

Harry is over him in a millisecond, crushing him with his weight in the most perfect way and biting marks into his neck that he’ll definitely be worried about tomorrow.

It’s all too much in the best way. Louis won’t last much longer. It’s a miracle he lasted beyond having Harry’s cock in his mouth.

“Harry,” Louis prays, nails digging into the flesh of the other man’s arms as he’s pounded further and further up the bed. No sir right now, only Harry, his Harry, who tattooed his initial over his heart and then fucked other people anyway instead of coming home. His Harry, who’s too good to him but still not enough for him to let go. 

His Harry, who he still loves more than anything.

“I know,” Harry breathes into his neck. “I know, sweetheart.”

“Kiss me,” Louis demands, though it’s weak and whimpered and more of a plea.

“Ask nicely,” Harry says, half scolding, half amused, his smile pressed into Louis’ skin. “I thought you were a good little slut.”

Louis groans because being called a slut will always be his weakness and because he can’t wait another second. “Please, Harry,” he begs, hoping Harry won’t ask for more.

He doesn’t. His lips are on his before the words have any real chance to settle in the air, kissing him fiercely, all tongues and spit and teeth and it’s not easy to kiss with the way their bodies are moving but they do anyway, drinking each other in like they know they won’t get another chance.

It doesn’t take long for Louis to come, not when he’s been hard since getting Harry hard in the car. He comes between their bodies, gasping Harry’s name into his mouth.

Harry follows not long after, a hand round Louis’ neck and his whispered claim hanging in the air around them. Mine, mine, mine.

They collapse together after, heavy breaths filling the silence in the room. They’re sticky and gross and Louis might just cry. Does, in fact, allow himself a few tears when Harry gets up to get a flannel. By the time he comes back, the tears are wiped away and he has to try very hard not to let any more slip as Harry gently wipes him down, both of them silent in the face of such tenderness.

When he’s done, he finally strips off before climbing back into the bed and pulling the duvet over them both. Without asking for permission, he reaches out and gently pulls Louis towards him, tucking him into his embrace like it’s normal.

Louis should object. He should get up and get dressed and get the fuck out of here. But they’re fucked anyway. This isn’t going to magically undo itself just because he walked away, so why not sink into the warmth of the other man and allow himself a few more hours of sweet delusion. 

“I’m not letting you leave,” Harry says quietly, as if reading his thoughts. “Aftercare and all that.”

“That’s a shitty excuse,” Louis replies, though he’s actively snuggling in and getting himself comfortable. “We hardly did anything hard.”

Harry frowns. Louis feels it even with his eyes closed. “Hey, aftercare is important in all sex and we did enough that I’m not just going to let you go and hop in a taxi. I’m not a dick, Louis.”

He’s right, Louis supposes. “Alright, alright. I’m not going anywhere, anyway.”

“Good,” Harry replies, arms tightening around him. “Was it okay for you? Did I hurt you? Do you need anything?”

Louis groans. He’d forgotten how bloody attentive the man is. “It was wonderful. You didn’t hurt me any more than I wanted. No, just sleep, and maybe a cup of tea in the morning.”

Harry hums happily. “Okay, good.”

“Was it good for you? Do you need anything?”

Harry scoffs. “Of course, and all I needed was to hear that you’re okay.”

Okay is probably not quite the word to describe him. He’s okay in the sense that the sex was amazing and that anything that happened was very much welcomed. He’s not okay in the sense that he doesn’t want this nice little bubble they’re curled up in to burst. 

“Can we sleep?” he asks, yawning.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, pressing his lips to the top of Louis’ head and making it all so much worse.

Louis, emotionally drained and fucked out, falls asleep almost immediately after deciding that he needs to before he opens his stupid mouth and says something damning.

More damning than fucking your ex and falling asleep in his arms already is, anyway.

The first thing Louis sees when he wakes up is the bloody ‘L’ tattoo, dark against Harry’s skin and more breathtaking of a discovery than it was last night in the throes of passion. 

The second thing he sees, when he tears his eyes away from the man’s chest and looks up sleepily, is the green abyss of Harry’s eyes staring right back at him.

“Morning,” Harry says, soft with fondness but rough with sleep. 

Louis immediately moves out of the man’s too-comfortable embrace, sitting up and stretching, putting all of his years of acting into trying to seem unbothered. Trying not to let slip just how much he wants to jump out of the window. “Good morning,” he says, not too cheery. “What time is it?”

There’s a movement behind him that must be Harry finding his phone to check. “Half eleven,” he answers.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” 

“Probably.”

“Are you…going?” Louis asks, looking over his shoulder.

It’s a bad idea because Harry looks really good like this. Too good, with one arm stretched behind his head and the duvet sinfully low on his torso. Harry shrugs, running his eyes down Louis’ body. “I have a meeting at three,” he says. “I have time.”

Louis doesn’t think that’s how jobs work but he doesn’t really have much idea of how it works when you essentially own the company. 

“Time to make me brunch,” Louis says, ignoring the way Harry is looking at him and getting up to pull his clothes on. 

“No morning sex?” Harry asks in the kind of way where Louis is pretty sure he isn’t joking.

“It’s nearly afternoon,” Louis points out. “And no. This can’t happen again.”

“Is it really again if it’s within the same twenty-four hours? I’d call that the same session, personally. We’ve had plenty of all night, all morning fucks.”

“Harry,” Louis warns. 

“I’m just saying!”

And it kind of hurts, the way he’s being so lighthearted about all of this. Like it’s not tearing him apart the way it is Louis. 

“You know what,” Louis says, buttoning up his last shirt button and tucking it into his trousers. “I’ll get lunch from McDonalds or something on the way home.”

Harry sits up then, finally realising he’s not fucking around. “No, wait, I’m sorry. I’ll make you something.”

Louis sighs. “No, I really think it’s best if I leave. This was—”

“Don’t say it was a bad idea,” Harry snaps, interrupting him. “You know it wasn’t. You loved it, I loved it. How can that be bad?”

“Harry,” Louis says again, less of a warning and more of a sigh this time. “I’m going to go, okay? You should go to work.”

“Please just let me cook for you? Please?”

He can’t. This is one thing he can’t give in on. He has to stay strong, say no, and get the fuck out. 

If he stays, Harry will undoubtedly try to talk him into something. Whether that be rekindling their relationship or just fucking casually. And Louis is weak, weaker now after having a taste of what he’s missed. He can’t make those sort of decisions like this, or think clearly at all.

So he has to go. He tells Harry as much. “I can’t,” he stresses. “It’s best if I go now and we talk another time, when our heads are a little clearer. I’m really grateful for everything, for the show and the sex. Really, it was a great night. Thank you.”

He’s sort of hovering in the bedroom doorway now, ready to run. 

Harry doesn’t look happy at all, and Louis does feel bad about it but nowhere near bad enough to stay. “You’re welcome,” is all he says.

Louis nods, awkwardly patting his clothes to make sure he has his phone and his keys and the card the woman had handed him in the theatre last night. When he’s sure it’s all present, he looks at Harry one last time, eyes lingering a little too long on his tattoos—the ‘L’ and all the other new ones he doesn’t know the story behind—before walking away. Quickly. So quick that he grabs his boots and doesn’t put them on until he’s out of the flat, not wanting to tempt himself by spending any second longer inside.

Ten minutes later, in the queue for food at the closest Mcdonalds, Louis realises he forgot the mug he intended to steal.

“Not a date, huh?”

Louis groans. He’d hoped Adam wouldn’t be home but it seems if one thing goes wrong then everything has to go wrong and here he is, lounging on the sofa in his boxers with his stupid abs on display and a smug smile on his face as he takes in Louis’ bedragled form.

“Piss off,” Louis snaps, pulling his boots off with haste because walking around London in heels the morning after getting fucked is hell. 

“Ooh, touchy,” Adam teases. In typical man fashion, he’s taking up the whole sofa, leaving Louis to have no other option than to fall into the armchair and pray that John isn’t around to kick him out of it. “Didn’t end well, I take it?”

“Can it ever end well, fucking your ex?” 

“Not if you’re still in love with him.”

Louis huffs because he can’t really deny it. “Yeah, well, it’s all done now.”

“You’re leaving when the lease is up here anyway, right?”

Louis nods. “I don’t really have a choice. I have a call with a casting director next week, maybe, but I doubt anything will come of it so yeah, I’ll just go back up north. It’s shitty but I’ll be free of Harry, at least.”

“You don’t really want that though, do you?” Adam asks, eyebrow raised, and if Louis knew he were so chatty maybe they would have spoken more. Or not, if all he’s going to say is uncomfortable truths.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Louis says with a sigh, exhausted. “What I want only exists in an ideal world, where I can afford to stay here and Harry isn’t tied down by his father’s wants and needs. It doesn’t work in this world, where I don’t have any jobs going, can barely scrape by working at the hotel, and Harry’s father hates me so much that no matter what happens, we can’t be together while Harry is under his thumb.”

“Damn.” Adam frowns. “That really sucks, mate.”

Ah, so perhaps not so eloquent after all. 

“Mate, now? No longer a princess?”

Adam laughs, the gentle movement still managing to shake the sofa. “I don’t put my fingers in other people's pies. You’re good at sucking dick, and I’d love to shag you, but you’re off limits if you’re hung up over someone else.”

“Fair enough,” Louis agrees. He doesn’t think that however long they have left in this flat is long enough for him to get over Harry enough to be able to even think about touching someone else, let alone anything more.

He’s back at square one in the grieving process, thrown right back to where he was when he woke up alone in the Soho flat, knowing Harry was already halfway to his new home halfway across the world. It’s a fresh wound again now. It has been since he came back, really, but now it’s bleeding non-stop and he can’t find a plaster big enough to cover it. 

Except this wound can’t heal with the luxury of space. Not this time. Not until he leaves. 

All he can hope for is that he doesn’t bleed out before that time comes.

Harry doesn’t text, or call, for the next few days. Which is for the best, probably. Or so he tells himself. He can’t forget about him, or what they did, either way. Not with the dark, possessive lovebites all over his neck that he spends forever each morning covering up.

Louis goes to work, tells half-lies to Aaliyah about his mental state, avoids any part of London where Harry could possibly be, and then comes home and actually talks to Adam, who turns out to be a surprisingly good friend now that he’s not trying to fuck him. 

On the Tuesday after The Incident, Louis sits in the break room after work and tries to get up the courage to call Melissa from Wicked, the card clenched in his shaking hand.

He’s been sitting here for an hour now, on the edge of a panic attack. It doesn’t seem worth it to call when it’s only going to end in another rejection. And he knows, logically, that those thoughts are just due to the years of ‘No’s’, because Melissa wanted him to call her, which means something. Even if it goes nowhere, it means something.

“Just bloody call her,” Aaliyah snaps, walking in and flopping down at the table he’s sitting at. 

Louis regrets telling her about it. She’s been pestering him since. “What if I can’t?” he whines.

“Do your fingers work? Can you tap that number into your phone and hit call? Then, my friend, I’m afraid you can. So get it done before I do it for you.”

“I hate you,” Louis groans. “What if nothing comes of it?”

Aaliyah rolls her eyes. “What if something does come of it? Surely that’s worth the risk.”

Sighing, Louis taps the number into the phone. He knows she’s right, as annoyed as he is by that. He has to try. 

He thinks, briefly, before hitting call, that maybe he doesn’t want to try because if it works out he has to stay. Staying means facing Harry. Staying means he can’t just pretend none of this exists. 

The phone rings for a few seconds before someone picks up. Each second feels like torture, with Aaliyah staring at him with her pretty brown eyes.

“Hello?” a voice calls from the other end, familiar beyond the warping of the phone line.

“Hi! It’s Louis. Tomlinson, that is.” Great, he’s already fucking this up. Aaliyah is laughing at him, silently, a hand over her mouth and her shoulders shaking. He throws the nearest thing at her, a used napkin. 

“Louis! Hi, sorry, I’m on my break and wasn’t expecting a call!”

“Oh, sorry I’ll—“

“No!” she almost screams, voice light but slightly panicked. “No need, it’s good. I’m glad you called, really. I was talking about you with Hannah and she really wants you in, as soon as you can. Are you free this week at all?”

Louis thinks for a moment, as much as he can through the rush of noise in his head. He has work tomorrow, he knows that much, but it’s a later shift. His morning should be free.

“I could do tomorrow morning?“ he offers, silently cursing himself for not giving himself more time.

“Perfect! That works really well actually. I can text you the details and what you need to bring, save making you rush to jot stuff down.”

“Oh, thank you.” Louis is so bad at this. He understands now why he doesn’t get bloody hired. “I’ll see you then?”

“We’re both really looking forward to it,” she assures him, sounding entirely genuine. “You’re a lifesaver, truly. See you tomorrow!”

“See you,” he says, both of them putting the phone down at the same time right after. Louis drops his phone onto the slightly sticky table and slumps back into his chair in relief.

“That didn’t sound too bad,” Aaliyah points out.

“I have so much work to do,” Louis groans. “I stopped going to singing lessons last month and I haven’t been to yoga in two weeks because all I’ve wanted to do outside of work is spend time with Harry. What if I can’t perform?”

“Don’t be silly. You’ll be fine.”

Louis huffs, not quite sure if he believes that. A text comes through and he opens it without thinking, sure it’ll be from Melissa. It’s not, of course. It’s Harry, with his perfect timing.

Stalker: Can we talk?

“Do you think I’d go down for killing this man or would his dad just straight up take me out?” he asks, glaring at the phone. Aaliyah stretches across into his personal space to have a look at the screen before sitting back with a laugh.

“Absolutely, he would have you sniped before you could even finish the deed. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got some sort of private investigator on your back constantly. That’s all rich people do, I’m pretty sure.”

It’s something he’d thought about once or twice so it wouldn’t actually surprise him if that were the case. He knows for a fact that during their relationship, Des had his and his entire family's background checked. It’s why he disapproved so badly, because there’s not a single remarkable thing about his family other than a bit of debt and a lack of higher education down the line.

But if he is still keeping tabs on him, it’s not like there’s anything to see. Other than him spending time with Harry, which will surely piss him off a little. Or a lot.

Louis pushes the thought away. He doesn’t need anything else to worry about, not with Harry’s text laying frozen on his phone and demanding to be answered.

Louis: not today. i have the wicked audition tomorrow.

Stalker: The day after tomorrow? 

God. Can this man not take a hint?

Louis: idk maybe

Stalker: Figure it out and let me know. Good luck with your audition, you’re going to do amazing.

“I hate him.”

“I’m sure,” Aaliyah says, with no ounce of sympathy in her tone. “You have to talk to him eventually, you know?”

“I know. I do, I just don’t really know what I’m supposed to say to him. Having sex was a really bad idea and I don’t think we can be friends now that we’ve crossed that line, and I know that he wants more but it’s just not possible.” Louis sighs, dropping his phone to the table. He should really go home, he’s been here far too long. “I don’t think I trust him, you know? There’s this fear that even if I look past his dad being a psychopath, even if that wasn’t an issue, he could still just up and leave me. Or do what he did last time and act like I barely exist for months because something else is more important.”

“You can tell him that. Tell him that it won’t work and you can’t do that to yourself,” Aaliyah says kindly. “There’s no obligation to be with him. Just, for yourself, at least talk to him and get your closure.”

Louis sighs. “You’re right. I’m sorry, you didn’t take your break to be my therapist.”

She shakes her head. “It’s fine, really, I’m not even on break. I’m just hiding from the kids for five minutes.”

The kids being their colleagues who are only a few years younger than them. Louis laughs. “Alright, I’ll let you get on with that. I need to get the fuck out of this building and go piss off my housemates with my vocal warmups,” he says, grabbing his phone and his bag and getting up. “See you tomorrow? You might have to prepare yourself to give me emotional support if I bomb this audition.”

“You won’t,” she replies, no other frilly words of support needed. 

He leaves her with a smile. With Aaliyah and Adam as his unlikely almost-friends, maybe, even without Harry, he isn’t so alone in London after all. 

The building he turns up to the next morning, a few streets away from the Apollo Victoria theatre, is tucked away and as nondescript as the rest of the buildings in this little area. He’s about ten minutes early, clad in boring, comfortable clothes that he can move in, as instructed. He hasn’t brought anything else with him, other than his phone tucked into his pocket and a bit of cash in his jacket that’s been there for months. 

Standing on the street awkwardly, he waits until it feels like it’s not too early before he steps up onto the small step and presses the buzzer.

Within seconds, he’s let in. 

The inside of the building is quite a lot like every other building he’s been in for these things. As he walks through to the room he was directed to, he walks past a dance studio with shiny floors and a wall of mirrors and a meeting room with a bunch of neatly pushed in chairs around a large table. 

His one and only in-person Wicked audition was a long time ago, an open call somewhere in the middle of London with hundreds of other hopeful newly-graduated actors. It was hell and he’d been sent away sooner than he’d care to admit. It had killed his confidence pretty severely but Harry was still around for that one, when they were freshly moved in and still good, and he’d held Louis as he’d cried and told him over and over again that it would work for him. 

And here he is, four years later, with one non-uni acting job on his resume.

It’s hard not to worry about that as he climbs up a flight of stairs and finds the room he’s looking for, a big open room, the door propped open, where Melissa sits at a table filled with papers next to another non-threatening looking woman who must be Hannah, the casting director. They’re talking quietly when he walks in, stopping when he knocks on the door.

“Hi, I’m a few minutes early,” he calls, trying not to sound as awkward as he feels.

“Oh, don’t worry about it!” Melissa says, grinning, as Hannah gets up to greet Louis, shaking his hand across the table.

“Hannah Preston,” she introduces herself. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m sorry we haven’t met before. Your tapes were all wonderful.”

She sits back down, fiddling with the sheets in front of her, and Louis wonders if it would be rude to ask why, if his tapes were so good, he never heard back. It would be, he decides pretty quickly.

Before he speaks again, she holds up something. It’s his headshot. “This is quite outdated, yes?”

“Oh,” Louis stutters, flushing. “Yes, I haven’t been able to afford to update it for a few years now.”

He hasn’t changed all that much but the differences stand out more to him now that he’s looking at it from her point of view. The boy in the picture is softer, rounder, just a little bit too fresh. 

It’s not like Louis is old now. He still looks young, still soft, but there’s definitely something that doesn’t quite link him to the picture Hannah is holding.

That boy never lost anything. That boy thought he had a brighter future.

“It’s okay,” she says, taking him out of his musings. “We’ll get you a new one if this goes well,” she adds with a wink. “Now, you got the stuff Melissa sent through?”

Louis nods. She’d sent links to two songs, a small dance piece, and a monologue. He’d worked on them until John very kindly knocked on his door and asked him to be quiet, and then even after that he’d sat in bed, running over each line in his head until he’d conked out. It’s out of his comfort zone, doing pieces chosen by someone else, but he’s determined to at least try and get this right.

“Some of it is sort of…out of my comfort zone,” he admits. “But I’m prepared to give it a go anyway, of course!”

Hannah nods. “Of course. There’s no pressure, we just want to see how you do with it. I see you didn’t bring anything with you, do you need the lyrics?”

Louis shakes his head. He’s got all of it perfectly memorised. That’s one good thing to come out of years of failed auditions, he’s got a pretty good memory from the amount of times he switched things up thinking maybe it was his song choice or the scenes he acted that were the problem. 

“I’m good,” he answers. 

“Whenever you’re ready then,” she says, leaning back in her seat and gesturing for him to take the floor. Melissa, beside her, gives him an encouraging smile. “If you’re warmed up, we can start with one of the songs?”

Louis nods, taking a step back and taking a deep breath once he’s steady. And then he does what he does best. 

He performs.

The first song is easy enough. It’s a slow one from a musical he’s never seen or listened to, deep and tender and emotional, and it comes almost too easily. Acting, for him, always comes from somewhere true and real, so he lets the ache he feels slip into the words as they glide from his mouth smoothly. No tears fall, thankfully, but he remains on that sweet edge of almost too emotional for the whole song, perfectly fitting with how he feels it should be sung.

Hannah and Melissa look pleased when he finishes, whispering to each other before gesturing for him to continue when he’s ready. Louis slips into the second song with more confidence. This one he’s more familiar with, having performed it in uni once or twice, so he doesn’t think too much as he sings, dancing around as the song requires. 

He slips up once, stumbling over a note, but he brushes it off and keeps going. His heart pounds for the rest of the song anyway, the anxiety he always feels threatening to take over.

It doesn’t take over, in the end. Because Louis doesn’t let it. He gets through the song, and then the small bit of choreography set to music that plays way too loudly in the small space, and then his monologue without once letting the anxiety win. He doesn’t ace every part of it, he messes up here and there. Small things that the women probably, hopefully, don’t even notice, but each time he carries on regardless. 

By the time he’s done he’s exhausted and more than a little bit sweaty, his jacket laying in a heap on the floor. 

Melissa grabs him a chair and places it across from the table and he gratefully sinks into it and calms his breathing as the women look through some of the papers in front of them.

“How available are you?” Hannah asks, looking up at him over one of the papers.

Louis gulps. “I work at a hotel but they’re pretty good with letting me swap shifts around and choose when I work,” he answers, still somewhat out of breath.

She nods, putting the papers down and sharing a look with Melissa. Louis isn’t sure how he feels about it, dread creeping back in. He doesn’t want another rejection, not now.

“Listen,” she starts. Great, Louis thinks, a listen is never good. “Our next Elphaba is quite small, height wise. She’s amazing, a real star, so we really don’t mind, but it does mean that proportionally, we need someone who will be taller than her but not too tall, and who will look good opposite her.”

Louis stares at her, mind completely blank. What.

“We really think that could be you, Louis,” Melissa butts in. 

“I can’t play Fiyero,” Louis says, dumbfounded. All he’s ever been told is that guys like him are better off sticking to one type of role. Gay, annoying, best-friend types. And sure, nearly all of his roles in uni were straight, but that didn’t stop his coursemates from telling him to lower his expectations.

Fiyero is not a role he’d ever have auditioned for. Ever. He’s too pretty, too gay. Which is fine for every other musical theatre actor, but not him, he’s always told himself.

“You can,” Hannah says gently. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine, but you can. You just did. It’s acting, you’re an actor. If you can get on that stage and sing your little heart out and pretend to be some suave lovable rogue type for two hours and forty-five minutes, then you’re set. And we’re very sure that you’re capable of it, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“I…” Louis doesn’t even know what to say. This isn’t how he thought this was going. “Are you sure?”

“More than sure.” She starts gathering things up, stacking them into a pile. “We have a few months until the cast changeover, we can get you in with the girls and work on your chemistry and whatever else you’re worried about. Whatever you need, we can sort it.”

Melissa nods beside her, agreeing with her. “Kiki, our Elphie, is wonderful. Really funny, a proper powerhouse, and lovely to boot. I think you’d really get along.”

Louis still feels like this must be a set up, somehow. Because surely this can’t be happening. 

“Okay,” he says tentatively, watching the women carefully like they’re about to jump up and tell him he’s being filmed. “Okay, I want this. I think. I might be in shock, actually.”

Hannah laughs, kind and sympathetic but still amused. “Okay, how about you give us a call in a few days with your decision? And then if it’s a yes, which we really hope it will be, we’ll get you back in to talk contracts and schedules,” she offers.

Louis nods, grateful for the chance to step away and think about it.

“We’ll do that then,” she says with a grin, smacking the table lightly as a sort of let’s get moving gesture. “We won’t keep you any longer, alright? Go and clear your head. Thank you for coming in today, and learning all that last minute.”

“Thank you ,” he says quickly, suddenly feeling quite rude for not saying it earlier. “For giving me a chance. I’ll think about it properly, I promise.”

“That’s all we can ask,” Melissa says, Hannah nodding in agreement.

Louis gets up from the chair, wincing a little at the tinge of soreness in his legs, and grabs his jacket from the floor, pulling it on. 

“I’ll call,” he promises again, giving each of the women another handshake which they return with matching smiles. 

“Have a nice day, Louis,” Hannah says, a twinkle in her eye.

Louis nods, returning the sentiment.

Still somewhat bewildered, he leaves the building with somehow much more to think about than when he went in. Like Did that really happen? And Am I dead? And Where the fuck am I going to live if I say yes to this and still have to be here in three months time?

One part of his brain, the one that’s always firing at all cylinders, is thinking about Harry, and how, above all else, he just really wants to see him right now. To tell him about this.

Louis does something he rarely ever does. Something Aaliyah will probably straight up murder him for.

He calls in sick. An hour before his shift, from right outside the audition building, he calls up the manager one rung above his friend—so that she can’t immediately scream at him—and tells him that he won’t be making it into work and he’s really, really sorry.

Then, he does something else stupid and very reckless, and hops in a taxi to Soho.

It’s lunchtime. Harry shouldn’t even be home, he runs a whole company after all, but when Louis presses the buzzer in his state of not thinking clearly, Harry’s voice comes through.

“Hello?”

“It’s Louis,” he says.

The door unlatches. Louis lets himself in, taking the stairs quicker than his legs want him to, and comes face to face with Harry when he makes it up to the flat, the man waiting for him in the doorway. He’s halfway dressed, like he’s getting ready to go somewhere, his stupid shirt untucked and unbuttoned.

Louis shouldn’t be here. 

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, genuine concern on his face.

Louis pushes past him into the flat. Harry follows him in, shutting the door behind himself. 

In the kitchen, again, Louis stops, taking a deep breath. “They want me to play Fiyero.”

Harry freezes in the doorway. “What?“ he asks.

“They want me to play Fiyero,” Louis says again. For a moment, he’s worried that Harry might laugh at him.

He doesn’t. He grins, all happy and proud. “That’s amazing, Louis! I told you, didn’t I?” Even his voice is proud, the concern from before gone completely.

“Me , Harry,” Louis stresses again. “I’m not—what if I can’t? It’s a big role, one that I don’t even fit the type for. What if I can’t sell it and I embarrass myself on that stage and never work again?”

“Louis, I’ve seen you perform a whole Shakespeare piece, from memory, while absolutely off your tits on vodka and still manage to make everyone cry,” Harry points out. “And you hate Shakespeare. Not being able to sell it is not something you need to be worrying about. They could call you up right now for any role in that show and you’d pull it off with ten minutes of rehearsal time and a prayer.”

“I don’t know about that,” Louis replies, allowing himself to smile a little bit at Harry’s passionate defence of his talents. 

“I do,” Harry says, firm and sincere. “You have to take this. Don’t think about anything else, just do what you do best and you’ll see that you needn’t have worried at all.”

Louis sags a bit, too tired to keep putting himself down. “God, Harry, they really want me to be in Wicked. Of all things, that’s going to be my first real job.” 

It’s all he’s ever dreamed of. It’s all they ever dreamed of, together.

Harry comes into his space, tentatively and without forcing anything, and Louis doesn’t really think before falling into him, arms tight around his middle and face buried into his chest. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” Harry says, wrapping his arms around Louis and pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “So, so proud.”

“How sad is it that the first thing I thought about was telling you?” he asks, not lifting his head from where he’s pressed it. “Not Aaliyah or even my mum for fuck’s sake. Just you.”

Fingers slide through his hair. He worries, for a moment, about Harry being disgusted by the partially dried sweat crusting it up. 

“I don’t think that’s sad,” Harry admits quietly. “You’re all I think about, always.”

“We’re pathetic,” Louis mumbles, ignoring the way his heart clenches at the thought of Harry thinking about him at all.

Harry’s laugh shakes them both. “Yeah, I think we are.”

Though he doesn’t want to, not at all, Louis carefully pulls himself out of Harry’s hold, taking a few steps back to give them both some space. The taller man lets him, as he always does, smiling at him like this isn’t painful for them both. 

Fiddling with the sleeves of his jacket, Louis takes a deep breath. “Do you want to talk about it, then?” He doesn’t want to. Not really. Not ever, if he can help it. But it has to be done. 

Harry shakes his head. “Not today. Today is about you, not us,” he answers. A buzz comes from the kitchen side, Harry’s phone lighting up with a notification. “Shit. I have to go in a minute, actually, I have this stupid meeting. Will you stay? I’ll bring some wine home, cook for you. A celebration. No strings, I promise.”

It’s stay here and wait and be fed by Harry’s cooking—which he has missed, deeply—or go home and be alone. So, even though it’s another bad idea to add to the never ending list of bad ideas they’ve already had, Louis nods.

“I’ll stay.”

“Thank you,” Harry says sincerely, hastily doing his shirt buttons up and tucking it into the waistband of his trousers.

Louis watches his every movement, his traitorous mind flickering back to Harry’s hands on him, moving just as expertly. There are still bruises on his hips in the shape of Harry’s fingers, fading but there , and his marks all over his neck, covered in makeup but peeking through thanks to his earlier sweating. It’s been less than a week since they fucked and Louis doesn’t want to be thinking about it but he is.

He pushes the thoughts away as best as he can. “I think you should wear a tie with that,” he blurts out, not really meaning to. 

Harry raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

Louis, the fool, nods. “Yeah. Go grab one.”

It takes him a minute or so to go and find one somewhere in his wardrobe before he’s back in the kitchen, placing it around his neck and crowding into Louis’ space again. 

On autopilot, Louis reaches up and starts to tie it, noting how soft the fabric feels underneath his fingers. He clears his throat before he speaks, daring to look up and make eye contact with Harry’s intense—always intense—gaze. “I’m going to have to try teaching you again,” he says teasingly, calling back to a time, back in uni, that he’d tried to get Harry to do it. “Do you know how embarrassing this is for you?”

Harry grins, unphased. “I don’t think it’s ever going to happen for me.”

“If you can learn to tie subby little twinks to bedposts then I’m quite sure you can learn to tie a tie,” Louis points out.

“Nah,” Harry says, shaking his head, stupid grin still in place. “I think my subconscious knows that if I never learn, subby little twinks will do it for me.”

Louis swats him on the chest, tightening the tie just a little too tight. “Dickhead,” he says, a little too fond. 

Harry scrunches his nose at him. Louis has to try very hard not to surge up and kiss the man, which is a very big problem that will need to be addressed eventually. 

“Get gone,” he says quickly, patting Harry’s chest awkwardly. “Don’t want to be late for your mysterious business stuff.”

“It’s not that interesting, I promise,” Harry assures him, stepping away to grab his phone and his keys from the side. “Uh, feel free to use whatever you want, make yourself at home and all that.” He pauses, cringing a little. Louis almost feels bad for him. “Take a nap, actually, you look exhausted.”

“I will. I am.”

“Good, good. I won’t be long, I don’t think. If you’re still asleep, I’ll leave you be and wake you up for dinner?” 

Louis nods, watching as Harry makes his way closer and closer to the door. “That works for me.”

“Okay, okay. I’m really sorry to leave, this is important or I’d just cancel but I need you to know that I’d rather be here celebrating you, and I’ll make it up to—”

“Harry,” Louis stops him, unable to contain his smile. “I know. Piss off.” 

“Pissing off,” Harry affirms with a salute, smiling back, before he actually, finally, leaves. Leaving Louis all alone in what was once their home.

It should feel weirder than it does for him to drag himself to the bathroom, steal a towel, strip his clothes off and have a shower. It should feel weird for him to wander into the bedroom afterwards with said towel wrapped around him in search of something to wear. It’s a little bit weird, picking out one of Harry’s old vintage t-shirts and pulling it on along with a pair of his own underwear he miraculously finds fallen between two drawers in the wardrobe. 

It doesn’t feel weird at all when he curls up under the sheets, on Harry’s side of the bed, and closes his eyes. In fact, it feels perfectly normal. He’s asleep before he can register just how fucking terrible that is.

Pizza. Harry’s making homemade pizza. The smell of it lures Louis out of his frazzled dreams and back into the land of the living, back into Harry’s bed. Their bed. No, Louis thinks, Harry’s bed. 

It’s dark when he opens his eyes, still dark even when his vision has adjusted. Even if he couldn’t tell by the darkness, Louis feels the hours and hours of sleep in every fibre of his body. It’s an effort to drag himself out of the warmth and comfort of the bed and pad his way out of the room, along the hallway and into the kitchen/lounge. Where Harry is standing at the island, chopping up some leafy shit for what he hopes is a salad and not to go on top of Louis’ precious pizza. 

“What’s the time?” he asks, rubbing his eyes. He’s not even entirely sure where he left his phone, or he’d check himself.

In the bathroom, maybe.

Something clatters. Louis drops his hand and refocuses his gaze on Harry, who’s pretty blatantly looking him up and down. Frowning, Louis follows his eyes and looks down, flushing when he sees his bare thighs. “Sorry,” he apologises, looking back up at a slightly more composed Harry. “My clothes were too gross to put back on after my shower. Is it okay that I took a shower? I know you said to make myself at home but, like, I used the last of your shampoo and that was kind of rude of me, but I really missed that shower. I mean, the water pressure, wow.” Oh god, he’s rambling. “Mine is not like that. It’s really bad actually, and always cold, and—”

“Louis,” Harry stops him. When did they both get this awkward around each other? Was it the sex, or was it like that before and they were just too fucked up to realise? “You can use my shower whenever, okay? And it’s half five.”

Louis nods. About what he expected. 

“And you look pretty,” Harry adds with a grin. “Sorry, didn’t get my compliment in earlier because you looked so stressed when you turned up here.” 

“You’re so annoying, you know that, right?” Louis asks, coming closer to the island and leaning over it to get a closer look at Harry’s preparations. 

“I know,”Harry answers, grinning. “Want some?” he asks, holding out a piece of raw kale. 

“If you put that anywhere near me I’ll bite your finger off,” Louis answers, deadpan. 

Harry only grins wider. “That’s what I like to hear. I got worried that maybe your hunky personal trainer housemate might have rubbed off on you.”

Louis huffs a laugh. “Oh, he tried.”

“Well I’m glad he failed.” Harry pours what he just chopped into a bowl. “Don’t worry, this is for me. There’s chips in the air fryer for you.”

“Chips and pizza? No need to spoil me,” Louis jokes. 

“There’s always a need,” Harry shoots back. “Especially today.” He moves around the kitchen, checking on stuff. Louis watches him, admiring the way his shirt stretches across his shoulders. “Do you want to eat on the balcony? I’ve put the heater on out there so it shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Oh, yeah, that would be lovely. Can I borrow a jumper?”

Harry’s back is to him. “Take whatever you need. There’s some of your socks in the sock drawer, those big fluffy warm ones you always wore.”

Louis had always wondered if he’d left those. As Harry starts dishing the dinner up, Louis runs off back to the bedroom to quickly layer up. He finds the socks easily, pulling them on and sighing in relief at the immediate warmth they provide. Rifling through Harry’s jumper drawer, he grins when he finds an old uni one that he used to steal quite often and quickly pulls that on too, over the top of the stolen tee. 

His legs will have to remain bare because there is no way any of Harry’s joggers will be comfortable and his own leggings are still just a little too stinky for him to feel comfortable pulling them over his clean legs and sitting next to Harry in them. If he freezes to death because of his choices then so be it.

When he makes his way back through, Harry is just bringing the last of the food out onto the balcony. Louis follows him out, having to fight to hold back a moan at the spread laid out on the coffee table. “Christ,” Louis says, throwing himself down onto the balcony sofa in the spot closest to the heater. “I really have missed your cooking.”

“I’ve missed cooking for other people,” Harry admits. “Now, eat up,” he demands, sitting down next to Louis and handing him a warmed plate. “Wine?”

Louis nods. “Please.”

Harry pours them both a glass of red, the bottle looking intimidatingly expensive and not at all like the cheap shit Louis usually buys. It tastes expensive, Louis realises as he takes a sip. When he asks how much it cost, Harry only smirks at him. It shouldn’t be so hot but it is, unfortunately.

They get through both the food and the wine pretty quickly, talking quietly between bites and sips about Louis’ plans if—when— he accepts this role. When it becomes clear that Louis really has no clue what he’s going to do, the conversation moves on to lighter things, like how Christmas is in a month and decorations are starting to creep up around London.

By the time the food is finished and the bottle is nearly empty, Louis is tucked into Harry’s side, near enough in his lap, because the man had all but dragged him there the second he saw him start to shiver. 

Even with the cold, neither of them make an effort to move inside.

“I’m stuffed,” Louis whines lightheartedly. “How am I supposed to go back to ready meals now? I’m going to need you to make me a freezer full of food to get me through.”

“Enjoyed it, then?” Harry teases with a laugh.

“Obviously.”

“I’ll cook for you whenever,” Harry promises. “We should go inside before your legs fall off.”

“I don’t want to,” Louis says. It is cold, but the heater is doing wonders and being close to Harry is doing more. “I’m fine, really.”

Harry doesn’t seem convinced by that. He pulls Louis into his lap fully, his warm hands starting to rub at Louis’ cold legs. “If you want to stay out here, you’re going to have to put up with this,” Harry tells him, his stupid big distracting hands not letting up. “Can’t have anything happening to these wonderful legs before you even step foot on that stage, can we?“

“No funny business,” Louis warns, sinking into Harry’s body even as he says it, resting his cheek on his shoulder. 

“No funny business,” Harry agrees. “Just keeping you warm, sweetheart.”

Louis smiles at the endearment. Even though he shouldn’t, even though he should tell him to stop being so lovely all the time. 

Harry speaks again before Louis can, voice low. “I know that I said we wouldn’t talk about it tonight, and I mean that, but can I say something? Something you don’t have to respond to.”

“Hmm?“ Louis hums, inquisitive and a little bit sleepy. 

“It’s a lot, so, just hear me out, okay?” 

Louis isn’t so sleepy anymore, worried that Harry might say something he won’t want to hear. “Okay,” he agrees, some of the anxiety leaking into his voice. 

“I agree, that us having sex was a bad idea,” Harry starts. Louis isn’t going to freeze anymore, not with the way his heart is aggressively pounding. “I loved it, really, and I don’t regret it, but I can see that it was a bad idea because all I’ve wanted to do this whole time is prove to you that I’m in this, that I’m present and committed and I’m not going anywhere. I never wanted you to think that I just wanted to fuck you and be done with it, or that us having sex could fix everything, and if I did make you feel that then I am so sorry.”

Louis forgets, all the time, that this Harry isn’t quite the Harry he loved back then. It’s evident now in the way that his Harry, the other one, the one who walked out of their flat without saying goodbye, would never have even thought to apologise.

He was kind, and good, and he rarely ever fucked up, not until the end, but he also never really thought that he was wrong. Louis could tell that, even in the silliest little arguments they had. Harry always had to be right. He always had to win.

And now here this Harry is, blowing his mind by apologising. 

“It’s okay,” Louis says quietly. It is, as much as it’s not. They both chose to do it. They both fucked up. 

“It’s not,” Harry says, one hand still rubbing Louis’ legs while the other holds Louis in place, wrapped around his waist and resting on his hip. “I need you to know that I’m really trying. Even if you don’t want me anymore, even if we can’t work this out, I’m still going to be better than he was. For you, and for the you that I walked out on. You deserve that, even if I’m only ever going to be your friend, I’ll be the best fucking friend you’ve ever had.”

“Is it not annoying having to wait for me to make a decision?” Louis asks, a fear that he didn’t really realise he had until right now.

“I’ve waited three years to have you back,” Harry says quickly. “I’ll wait nine more if that’s what it takes. Until you tell me you’re done, and that this won’t happen, I’m not going to go anywhere. And even then, like I said, best friend you’ve ever had. I’m sticking around this time.”

Harry had said this to him, in fewer words, last week when he’d given him the tickets. Louis had been unsure then if he had meant them but now he feels just how much he does and it’s not as scary as he thought it would be.

“I believe you,” Louis admits, to himself and to Harry. “I’m trying, too. To keep believing you, and to trust you. But it’s bigger than just us, you understand that, right?”

“I do,” Harry assures him but doesn’t say anything further. Louis isn’t sure what that means for them. If Harry knows that Des is a big part of the reason they can’t move forward, does he care enough to do anything about it?

That, Louis isn’t sure of. 

“Good,” is all Louis says in return. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, apologising again. “I said we wouldn’t talk about it on your day and here we are, talking about it.”

“I think it’s pretty inevitable for us,” Louis replies with a laugh. “I don’t think we’re very good at ignoring the big fat elephant in the room that is us still being in love with each other.”

Harry hums in agreement, chuckling a little to himself. “I really am, you know?”

“What?”

“Still in love with you,” Harry elaborates. “Pretty madly, actually.”

“Oh.” 

“Don’t say it back,” Harry says quickly. “I don’t need you to. Just, when it’s all okay, if this can work, tell me then. I just want you to know going forward, that I love you and that every decision I make is made with that in mind.”

“Okay,” Louis agrees. “I’ll try and remember that.”

“Thank you,” Harry says, pressing a kiss to his head. “Stay here tonight? I’ll take the guest bedroom.”

“Okay.” Louis isn’t worried that they’ll cross the line again, not after Harry’s heartfelt apology.

It’s not that late. He could get home pretty easily and it wouldn’t be an issue, but it’s dark, and it’s cold, and it’s been a really long day, and all Louis wants is to stay with Harry for as long as he can get away with. 

Even though he’s sat in his lap. Even though Harry’s hands are all over him, comforting and possessive at the same time. Even though they know that they are in love with each other, that those feelings have never faded, right now feels like the first time that Louis can say they are friends. Beyond the feelings, beyond everything else, they are friends now. And he wants to be in Harry’s presence, as friends or as anything else.

So he stays. They head back inside and watch TV for a while, curling up on opposite ends of the sofa but still touching, Louis’ feet in Harry’s lap. And then, when Louis is falling asleep because wine always makes him sleepy, Harry gently shakes him awake and guides him to bed before heading to the guest room to sleep.

The last thing Louis thinks before succumbing to sleep is that for the first time in a long time, everything might just be working out for him. 

After that day, Louis’ life becomes somewhat of a whirlwind of good. Which, after four years of nothing very good at all, is a lot to take in at first.

He calls Hannah up the day after the audition and agrees to play Fiyero, with Harry grinning and cheering him on while making him breakfast in the background. After that, it’s only a few days before Louis is in the office signing contracts and agreeing to rehearsal schedules. Which is the moment where it really sinks in that this is real.

Everything beyond that is sort of what he’d imagined life would be like when he moved to London all those years ago, fresh out of uni and actually hopeful that everything would work out. 

Aaliyah accepts his notice at work with the promise that she’ll be there on his opening night, even if she can’t afford the tickets. Louis cries and promises to get her one, free of charge. 

He starts rehearsals the second week of December and it’s hard, especially because he still has two weeks of his notice left to work at the hotel so he hardly gets a second during the day to rest, but it’s so worth it. The rest of the cast are wonderful and welcoming and don’t for one second show any signs of doubting him the way he doubts himself and it takes no time at all for Louis to suddenly have friends, plural. 

Kiki, the new Elphaba and the woman he’ll have to pretend to love every night, is an angel. An angel who offers him her spare room the first time he mentions that he’s looking for somewhere. She insists, actually, saying that she and her wife were looking for a housemate anyway. So he packs up all of his stuff a few days before Christmas, says goodbye to John and a surprisingly upset Adam and lets Harry help him move into Kiki’s place. In Soho. A two minute walk away from Harry. 

Which is fine, great even, because he and Harry are better than ever. It’s so much easier between them now, their little chat having broken down whatever walls were stuck between them and opened up the chance for a real friendship. Sure, a friendship that is a little too touchy and a lot codependent, but a friendship nonetheless.

Between rehearsals and hotel shifts and Harry’s endless meetings, they spend as much time together as they can. Harry gets reintroduced to Lilo too, finally, and whenever Harry comes over she’s on him in seconds, purring away. Louis thinks she must be too much like him, in that sense. 

On Christmas eve, Louis’ twenty-sixth birthday, Harry lures him out of bed at half seven with promises of breakfast and a good cup of tea and waits until they’re halfway out of London to tell him that he’s driving him home. To Doncaster. For Christmas, and his birthday.

Louis cries when he tells him. Then again when they pass the first sign that has Doncaster on it. Then again when he hugs his mum for the first time in years, though he’s not alone in his tears that time. 

It’s the best birthday and Christmas he’s had in a long time; with one of his sisters attached to him at all times, his mum’s cooking, and Harry, by his side, smiling. Harry, who brought so many gifts for everyone that he graciously added Louis’ name to. Harry, who gifts him too many things. Nothing expensive, or overly romantic, but all things that show just how much Harry listens to him now. New trainers because he busted his old ones in rehearsal, a voucher to a massage place near the theatre, a gift card to his new favourite place to get lunch. And many other little thoughtful things. Louis cries, again, because he’s overwhelmed by it all.

Before they leave the day after boxing day, his mum pulls him aside.

“You’re coming up every six months from now on,” she says, stern but soft. “Show or no show, you’re finding time to come home.”

Louis laughs at how serious she’s being, even as the guilt of staying away for so long claws at him like it has since he arrived. “I will. I promise.”

“And we’re all coming down for your opening night. Harry’s already booked everything.”

Of course he has. Louis smiles, nodding. “I would have gotten you down myself, mum.”

“I know you would but I don’t think he would have let you,” she points out. “He told me everything, you know? Louis, love, you could have told me. You could have come home.”

Louis isn’t going to cry. “I know,” he says. “I know I could have, I promise it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. I thought if I came home then I would never go back, and as stupid as it was I wasn’t ready to give up. And it hurt so much, the way it ended, that I couldn’t even begin to talk about it beyond sending out a quick text to everyone who needed to know.”

They’ve avoided talking about it the entire stay. Nobody’s brought it up, or questioned Harry’s presence, at all. Louis had guessed that it was Harry’s doing. But of course his mum wouldn’t have let him leave without telling him he’s an idiot.

“If there’s ever a next time, you come to me, okay?”

Louis nods. “I will,” he promises, adding to all the other promises he intends to keep.

“Though, if you ask me, I don’t think there will be a next time,” she says, grinning. “That man loves you, Lou. Enough to not only do all of this but to do it solely for you, not to win any points or get any further with you. He just wants to make you smile and if the past few days are any indication, then he does, all the bloody time. Do you trust him not to hurt you again? If you tell me you don’t then I’ll let it go. I’m on your side above anything else, but I really wish you could see what I see when I look at you both.”

“I do trust him,” he says. He almost wishes that he didn’t because the alternative is scary, giving his heart over to him again, but Harry has had his heart in his hands since he came back to London, and at this point there’s nothing he can do about it but trust that the man won’t break it again. “I don’t know if I want to but I do. I just don’t know if I’m ready to do anything about it yet.”

“Take your time, darling. He’ll wait for you.”

Louis hopes he does. He tells his mum as such and she hugs him tight, silently promising him that it’s all going to be okay and that if it’s not, she’ll always have him. 

They leave not long after that exchange, making the drive back to London in the dark. Louis stays in a state of half-awake, half-asleep for the entire drive, listening to Harry quietly mumble-singing along to the radio.

Life is all go again once they’re settled back in the city, the peace and quiet of the holiday a thing of the past once rehearsals start back up. It’s easier now that he no longer has to work any shifts at the hotel but it’s still hard, all long days and things to do between learning lines and blocking. 

Louis and Harry spend New Year's Eve alone together in Harry’s flat, drinking and flicking between TV channels to laugh at each terrible, cheesy attempt to celebrate with washed-up stars and clearly exhausted presenters. For the actual countdown, they ditch the shows to head out to the balcony to shout with the rest of the city. When the clock strikes twelve and the sky lights up, Louis turns his back on it all to kiss Harry instead.

He doesn’t regret it at all. They still don’t talk about it, after that, but somehow that works for them. Neither of them seem to mind, anymore.

Until it all comes to a head. 

Louis’ first show is on the sixteenth of January. It’s a Monday, and Harry has work, so Louis spends the morning with his mum, showing her his favourite place to get breakfast and unloading his last minute worries onto her. She does her best to reassure him that it’ll all be okay, hugs him tight, and then heads back to the hotel to free Lottie from babysitting the kids. 

At midday, with hours to kill, Louis heads towards the Rose Aesthetics building in hopes of spending lunch with Harry before he has to head to the theatre early.

He doesn’t get far.

A few streets away, Louis hears his name called and whips around to find fucking Des Styles calling him from the back of a car that’s pulled up to the curb, still running. 

Louis freezes.

“We need to have a little chat,” Des says, like some sort of Mafia boss. 

“I see where your son gets his stalking tendencies from,” Louis jokes, trying to remain unphased. Inside, he’s shitting himself just a little bit. “I’m good, though, thanks for the offer. Places to be and all that, I’m sure you understand.”

Des doesn’t look like he understands. He rolls his eyes, impatient. “Get in the car, Louis.” Ah, so he does know his name. 

“I’d really rather not.”

“I’m not asking.”

And here’s the thing, Louis isn’t really scared of Des. The man may be a billionaire with some sort of God complex, but he’s the kind of man that throws money at problems to make them go away, and that really isn’t that scary to Louis. But, at the end of the day, he is a man. And men are scary and unpredictable.

So, like the fool he is, he gets into the car. 

“I really don’t appreciate this,” he says as he looks around at the interior of the car. It’s fancy, of course, not quite a limousine but not quite a car. 

Des doesn’t say anything, just gives him a look that Louis is pretty sure says I don’t really want to be talking to you either and hands him something. A photo, Louis realises looking down at it. Or a stack of photos, actually. 

All of them of Harry. With a woman. One of them at a restaurant, her hand over Harry’s. Another of them walking through Primrose Hill, close, talking animatedly. Then one after the other of similar things. In each one, they look comfortable, perhaps a bit too friendly. In each one, she is a vision. Thin and blonde and rich, her wealth evident in each photo from the way she holds herself and the things she wears. She looks like every other rich girl in London.

“That’s Claudia Prince,” Des says, answering the question he didn’t get to ask. “Her mother is a fashion designer and her father owns half of the city. Lovely girl, actually, great education, already running a few of her own things...”

“What’s that got to do with me?” Louis asks.

He knows what Des is doing. He’s surprised he hadn’t tried earlier. Harry has been all over him for four months, and clearly Des knows that, so why now? The older man seems frustrated by Louis’ lack of reaction, failing to conceal his annoyance.

“I’ve heard they’re quite serious,” he tries. 

Louis almost laughs in his face. It takes a lot of effort not to. The pictures worry him, a tiny bit, poking at the insecure part of his brain that is just waiting for Harry to change his mind. The rational part of his mind, however, is not convinced at all. Harry spends every waking minute either with him or talking to him in some way and any time that he’s not, he’s at work. If he’s had time to conduct an entire relationship while doing all of that, for seemingly no reason at all, then Louis would be very impressed.

“Serious pals, I’m sure,” Louis replies, dropping the pictures onto the seat separating them. “Is that all you’ve got? Because, really, I kind of expected worse. It’s a bit disappointing, actually.”

Des is really not having it. 

“Watch your tone,” he snaps. Louis suppresses a flinch, just barely. “You’re either a good liar or you’re a bigger fool than I thought. It must hurt you, surely, to see him with someone more fitting? Someone who can uphold our legacy in ways that you just can’t. It’s a shame, really, but if you’re not going to take the hint then I’ll tell you straight. You need to get out of his life, now, so he stops wasting his time with you and moves on to something real .”

“And what if I don’t?” Louis asks, ignoring the rest of the bullshit spewing from the man’s mouth. “Do you think he’ll just let me walk away from him? He loves me, Des. I love him. Does money really rot your brain so much that you can’t even begin to fathom that love means something?”

“It’s your first show tonight, correct?” Des asks, smug and mean.

Louis doesn’t like that tone one bit. “Yes, and I really need to go actual—”

“It would be a shame if, after this role, you go back to being unable to get hired anywhere,” Des interrupts. “I’m sure the hotel would take you back, of course, or you could go back to working in Starbucks like you did years ago, but it would be quite the step back, wouldn’t it?”

Louis’ confidence levels in this conversation have dropped immensely. He doesn’t seem to be winning anymore.

“I’m sure I’ll find something,” he says, carefully, eyes firmly on the man.

“Not if I make sure that you can’t, sweetheart.” 

The endearment is dripping in hatred, not at all like the soft way that Harry says it. Louis wants to tear it from his memory before it can stick there and ruin the word forever.

“You have no power over that,” Louis says, though it comes out unsure. He feels sick, like he might actually throw up everywhere, and that’s the last thing he needs right now.

“I do, actually,” he says. “It’s amazing how far a few donations can get you. I really don’t care much for theatre myself but, you know, I’m always happy to aid a cause, especially if doing so takes care of annoying little problems for me.” Des grins and Louis almost flinches at just how evil he manages to make it look. “I thought, at first, that it would be enough to just assure you didn’t do well enough to go with him. I got him that job in New York before he’d even finished his studies. I was waiting for you to be out of the picture before I planted the seeds for him and got him to apply but you stuck around, so something had to be done. After, well, I had to make sure he didn’t come back for you.”

Louis hates him. He hates him so much that if he knew he could get away with it, he’d throw himself across the space between them and claw his fucking eyes out. But he can’t get away with it, because Des is bigger and stronger and powerful enough to end his life without even touching him.

“You’re sick,” he says instead. “Do you think he’ll stick around once he finds out? What happens to your legacy if he won’t continue it?”

“He won’t find out,” Des says, unphased. “Because you’re going to keep your mouth shut and stay away from him. That, or kiss your career goodbye before it even has a chance to start.”

Louis can’t think. “Fuck you,” he spits, before getting out of the car, slamming the door as hard as he can, and walking as fast as he can to get away from him.

He doesn’t know what just happened, or what to do, but he knows that his feet are taking him towards Rose Aesthetics anyway; needing to see Harry, at whatever cost.

Harry’s in a meeting when Louis gets there, in one of the big conference rooms right next to his office.

Louis should just wait—would, if he were thinking clearly—but he doesn’t, barging in while Harry is talking and causing every head to turn to him. He knows a few of them, in passing, from coming to the office at least once a week for the past month and a bit, and they don’t seem all that surprised to see that it’s him. Only concerned, which he’s sure is down to him fighting back tears.

“I need to talk to you,” he says, eyes firmly on Harry.

Harry nods, frowning. “Okay. Everybody out.” 

Nobody questions him, quickly gathering their things and filing past Louis with their heads down, like they’re trying not to spook him. Louis does think, briefly, that it would have been easier for Harry to leave, and for them to talk somewhere else, but maybe Harry senses that this is not a conversation that will allow either of them to go about their days normally afterwards. 

Harry comes closer to him when the last person leaves, shutting the door behind them. “What’s wrong?” he asks, reaching out to take his hand or touch him.

Louis doesn’t know because he pulls back, taking a step away from him. “Your father,” is all Louis can manage to say, barely holding himself together.

It’s almost funny how quickly Harry’s face goes from concerned to angry. “What has he done? Did he hurt you?” he asks, frantic, looking Louis over.

“Not physically,” Louis answers quickly. “He, uh, tried to convince me that you’re seeing someone else.”

“I’m not,” Harry says firmly. “I swear, Louis, I’m not.”

Louis believes him. Maybe he’s stupid, but he does. “There were pictures,” he says anyway. “Of you and some woman out for dinners and walks. It looks like he’s having you followed all the bloody time.” Louis scoffs. “She’s pretty,” he adds because the little insecure part of his brain wins, for a moment.

Harry frowns. “Claudia?” he asks. Louis nods. “Oh, Louis, that’s really not what you think. We went to secondary school together, in Kensington. She’s helping me with something.”

“I know,” Louis says. “Or, I know that you aren’t fucking her or seeing her or whatever. But he doesn’t know that, or he does and he’s using it against me anyway.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“It’s not just that,” Louis says, shaking his head. “He’s—oh god, he’s actually going to kill me for running straight to you—he’s fucking threatening to ruin my whole career if I don’t back off.”

Harry’s anger triples. “I won’t let that happen,” he promises through gritted teeth.

Louis doesn’t feel reassured by it. “It has been happening, Harry. He’s been blocking me from getting roles since I dared to step foot into London with you. He can do whatever he wants and nobody is ever going to stop him. What am I supposed to do? Give up?”

“I can fix it.” Harry takes a step closer again, this time managing to grab his hand and pull against his heart. “I swear, I will.”

Louis shakes his head. “I don’t know if you can. I don’t want to ask you to choose between me and him, he’s your father, I shouldn’t have to do that, but I’m asking you to either stick up for me and for yourself and put an end to this or let me go. Do you think he’ll stop at my career? Because I’d give it up for you, you know. I actually would. But he won’t . If I let him take everything away from me and stick by your side he’ll just find something else to make me leave. Break me down with little hints at you cheating until I believe it. Threaten my family. Fuck knows what else, but I can’t wait around to see. I can’t make that choice.”

Harry takes the hand he’s holding and presses a kiss to it. “I made my choice the moment I came home to you, Louis. I will sort this. I’m not going to let him hurt you, in any way, ever again.”

Louis is crying now, unable to hold it in any longer. He’s not sure what the tears are even really for; anger, frustration, fear? He doesn’t know. Harry wipes them away. “I swear,” he promises, again. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Go and be amazing on that stage and don’t let him get to you.”

“If you can’t fix this, don’t come,” Louis says, a fresh wave of tears falling. “I can’t see you there, only to have to say goodbye after. I can’t do it.”

To Louis’ surprise, Harry looks like he might cry at the thought of that. “I’ll be there,” he swears. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Certainly not for him.” 

Louis, for all the trust he has in Harry now, doesn’t know if he believes him in this. He feels like he’s asking for too much. That he’s not worth it, like he wasn’t before.

Instead of voicing that, and upsetting himself further, he does something bold and stupid instead. He kisses Harry, soft and slow and heartbreaking.

A goodbye, just in case. 

Harry kisses him back, still holding his hand. When they break apart only a few moments later, Harry is crying. Real tears. 

Louis is both fascinated and horrified by it. He wipes them away with shaking fingers, Harry smiling sadly at him as he does. “You’re crying like you aren’t sure that you can fix this,” Louis says, quietly.

Harry shakes his head. “I’m crying because I love you, and I’ve hurt you, and all I’ve ever done is hurt you, even when I didn’t mean to. I don’t deserve it but I hope you’ll give me a chance to make up for that.”

“We’ll see, tonight,” Louis whispers, dropping his hand and leaning up to press one more kiss to Harry’s lips.

“I’ll be there.”

“I won’t blame you if you aren’t,” he confesses. He can’t hate Harry for anything anymore. “It just won’t be meant to be. I meant what I said when we broke up. I’ll always be rooting for you, no matter what.”

Harry shakes his head. “I’ll be there, Louis,” he says again, no trace of him being tired of assuring him, watery green eyes boring into his. “And you’re going to shine like you were always supposed to. Like you always have, in my eyes.”

Louis just nods, because if he speaks he’ll crack and break and cry until he can’t perform through the headache he’ll give himself. 

“Go,” Harry says, gently. “I have six hours to sort this and I bet I’ll need every one of them. I love you, don’t worry. Please, just go and get yourself ready and I’ll see you after. At stage door, like I promised.” 

He nods again. Harry kisses him one last time, firm, before ushering him out of the door and to the lift. At the lift, he kisses his forehead, then his cheek, then nudges him into it, letting him go.

Louis presses the button for the ground floor before he can chicken out, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch the doors close on the man he loves.

The hours leading up to the show aren’t easy.

Luckily, they’re busy enough that he doesn’t really have time to think for long enough to let everything weigh him down. Kiki is just as nervous about their first performance as he is and they stick together throughout warm-ups and last minute run throughs, clinging to each other. She comes to him while he’s getting ready, already painted green.

They sit for a while before she has to go back and finish getting dressed, and Louis finds himself so glad that it’s her he’s doing this with. If anyone were going to be his Elphaba, of course it’s a tiny lesbian with a heart of gold. They fit perfectly. Not just because they’re both disgusted by having to kiss each other.

She asks him, before she leaves, if his man is coming. Louis nods, hoping he’s right.

Once the show starts, Louis completely turns all the other shit off and becomes Fiyero. He doesn’t think about Harry, or Des, or the fact that his mum and his sisters and Aaliyah and even Adam are in the audience, watching him. He doesn’t think about anything but his lines and the notes he needs to hit and the steps he has to take. 

Every moment spent off stage, he tries his hardest not to allow anything else to creep back in. He doesn’t check his phone, or head to the wings to take a peek into the audience. He just waits until he has to be on again and shuts his brain off as best as he can. 

He thinks he does an okay job, playing Fiyero. He knows he has when, at the end when it’s his turn to take his bow alone, he gets the applause he’s always dreamed of.

Beaming, he blows Kiki a kiss as she takes her well-deserved bow to thunderous applause and hoots. She winks at him, both of them crying just a little more than is appropriate.

Half an hour later, in Harry’s hoodie, sweaty and gross and with his hair still styled, he walks out of stage door behind Kiki to find people there, waiting for them. People who want pictures and autographs and to just talk to him for a minute, to tell him he did an amazing job. It’s not something he experienced the last time he was on stage. That show was so small that nobody really cared enough to wait. Here, it’s crazy. 

He takes his time with each person, listening to them and thanking them, laughing with Kiki and some of the other cast who come out as he does so. 

By the time the last person is gone, they’ve been out there for half an hour and Louis is tired.

That exhaustion flies away when Kiki grins at him. “You won’t be coming home tonight, I take it?” she asks, nodding her head towards something behind him.

Louis turns, heart stopping when he sees Harry standing there, waiting. 

“Yeah, go ahead without me. I’ll text you,” he says to Kiki, giving her a quick hug before she heads off for the tube station with Fay, the girl who plays Glinda. 

Once he’s sure they’re off safe and his heart has stopped pounding, Louis turns back to Harry, who’s smiling at him now.

“I saw your mum and the girls off to their hotel,” he says. “She couldn’t stop crying. I took some videos for you of her during the bows. I thought you’d like them.”

“You were here?” he asks, breath hitching. 

“I told you I would be,” Harry answers, grinning. “You were wonderful up there, sweetheart. Best I’ve ever seen.”

They’re standing too far apart. Louis wants to step closer but he’s scared, still so scared, that this isn’t real. That something still has to go wrong.

“What happened? With your dad?”

“It’s done,” Harry says, his mood not souring in the slightest. “I’ve been looking into things since I started and there’s so much he’s been doing wrong. Offshore accounts, tax dodging, putting money into businesses and hands that he shouldn’t be putting money into. Stuff that could cost him everything, if I were to let it slip. I let him know that I know and have the proof, and that there are other people that do too, so if he ever dares to even think about communicating with you or harming you or your career or your family in any way, I’ll end it all.”

“Oh,” Louis says, in shock. “You’ve been doing all that for months?”

Harry nods. “I knew he had to be hiding something. I also told him that I’m leaving. I won’t have anything to do with that shitheap, he can have it back.”

“What’re you going to do? What about the flat?”

Harry laughs then, smug. “The flat belonged to the business. I simply signed it over to myself. I can live off what I already have for as long as I need, but Claudia, the woman I was meeting up with?” Louis nods. “She was helping me apply for a masters. I’m really shit with those things, and I didn’t want my father to find out, but I got in at UCL. I think I might want to teach, after, if I don’t fuck it up.”

Louis stares at him, floored. He’s been planning all of this for months. Shutting his father up, leaving the company, securing his future. All without telling Louis anything. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.

“I didn’t want you to get caught up in it if something went wrong,” Harry says, stepping closer until he’s in Louis’ space. “And I kind of wanted to see your face when I dropped it all on you at once,” he adds, teasingly. 

“You’re so annoying,” Louis tells him, lighthearted. “Can I still call you sir, after you become a teacher?”

Harry smirks, reaching out and pulling him close with his hands on his waist under his hoodie. “Planning on being around then?”

“If you’ll have me,” Louis answers, wrapping his arms around Harry’s neck. 

“Of course,” Harry says, quickly pressing his lips to the tip of his nose, chilly in the January air. “If you’ll have me.”

“I guess I can extend your contract for a little longer,” Louis answers, grinning.

“I wasn’t aware I signed anything.”

“Oh, yeah, about seven and a half years ago. Unfortunately, we never officially ended it because one of us decided to leave without saying goodbye so it seems like you’re still stuck with me,” he says, holding on tighter. “Will be for a while, I reckon.”

“What a shame,” Harry says, doing a terrible job of acting distraught. “How long do you think until I’ll be forgiven for the whole not saying goodbye thing?”

Louis pouts, thinking. “Until you put a ring on it, I’d say.”

Harry laughs. “Okay, deal.”

“But I get to bring it up in arguments, and you have to grovel every time,” Louis adds quickly. 

Nodding seriously, Harry agrees. “Of course, of course. Do I not get any points for having your initial over my heart? That’s quite romantic, don’t you think?”

“I’ll have to think about that one,” Louis offers, breaking and giggling a little.

“I love you,” Harry says, earnestly. “So fucking much.”

Louis isn’t going to cry. He doesn’t need to, this time. 

“I love you too.”