Chapter Text
The invitation comes in the mail an hour after he’s meant to be at the studio, so he doesn’t pay it much attention, kicking the little pile of overdue bills and junk mail to the side with his foot and dashing out the door, nearly smashing his guitar case against the doorframe on his way out. It lies there, forgotten and scuffed with a perfect crescent moon, the same pattern as the bottom of Louis’s sneaker, until he gets home later that evening and finally returns the three missed calls from his best friend.
“We’re going,” says her tinny voice down the line, forceful despite the fact that she sounds as tired as Louis knows she is.
“Going where?” Louis asks, scooping up the little pile of mail off the floor just to make sure he isn’t missing anything important — anything that could result in arrest, for example.
“Don’t play dumb,” Perrie says. “We’re going, and I don’t care what you say.”
“Perrie, I genuinely-” he cuts off mid-sentence, eyes finally catching on the electric blue half page of stock paper shuffled in with the rest of his mail. He plucks it out, stomach already sinking at the sight of the familiar logo stamped on the top.
“C’mon, we have to!” Perrie whines. “It’ll be so funny, Lou, think about it. Haven’t you wondered about all those losers we went to high school with? Don’t you want to know what they’re up to now?”
“No, and no,” Louis says, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear and holding the invitation as close to the receiver as he can as he tears it in two. “Nor do I appreciate the reminder that we’ve been out of high school for ten fucking years.”
“Come on,” Perrie says again, drawing out the words so long Louis nearly hangs up on her.
“That’s everything I don’t need right now,” Louis says, dropping the two halves of the invitation in the trash under his kitchen sink. “To see everyone who bullied us in high school flourishing and living their dreams while we’re both wasting away, almost 30-year-old failures? No thanks.”
“We’re not failures,” Perrie says. “Not the worst of our grade, at least, I’m sure of it. C’mon, you think Tom Eggleston amounted to anything more than we did?”
Louis cringes, shaking his head. “What if he did? That’s exactly why I can’t go. If I find out that Tom Eggleston is making more money than me now, I’ll kill myself.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Perrie says. “Last I heard, he was still assistant janitor at Whitfield Middle,” she says, like she’s proving a point.
“Yeah, and he’s probably still making more money than me,” Louis says. “Perrie, I’m a shitty independent musician, and you’re a divorced, unemployed mother of two. We are losers.”
“I am not unemployed!” Perrie squawks. “I’m an author!”
“Your last book — excuse me, your only book sold 76 copies,” Louis says flatly.
“74!” Perrie growls. “If you’re going to insult me, at least fact check your insults first.”
“I’m not going,” Louis says. “I’m not going to the reunion.”
“Yes you are,” Perrie says.
“No, I actually can’t,” Louis says. “I have a gig that night.”
“What night?” Perrie challenges.
Louis hesitates, pulling one half of the invitation back out of the garbage. “The — uh, the 26th?”
“Nope,” Perrie says.
“27th?” Louis asks, but he knows he’s already lost.
“25th,” Perrie says. “Pick me up at 6:00, you’re my ride.”
“Fuck you,” Louis says.
“Love you, too!” Perrie says sweetly. Louis hangs up on her, which he should’ve done the second he heard about the reunion, and then retires to the living room to see just how drunk he can get during a single episode of Criminal Minds while still being able to follow the plot.
He has no idea what Perrie’s talking about, he’s definitely the biggest loser he knows.
-
At 6:07pm on Saturday, the 25th of June, Louis is parked in Perrie’s driveway, watching through her bedroom window as she finishes getting ready. He has half a mind to just turn around and go home out of spite, but before he can work up the courage to do it, she comes whirling out the front door, running as effortlessly on 4-inch heels as Louis’s ever seen a person run, and falls into his passenger seat.
“What the fuck are you wearing?” Perrie asks, glaring at him while she does up her seatbelt. “The idea is to convince people that we’re not losers, Louis, not to make them think we’re homeless.”
“Hey,” Louis says, putting one hand over his chest, like he’s hurt. This is the softest t-shirt he owns, and he’s going to need the comfort tonight; he tells Perrie as much, but she doesn’t look convinced.
“We’re going back to yours,” she sighs, cracking open her window and pulling a cigarette out of her bra. “You need to change.”
“I thought you quit smoking?” Louis asks, but he obeys her orders, driving diligently back in the direction of his own apartment.
“Who told you that, Nikki?” Perrie says.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Louis says.
“Well, don’t tell her she’s wrong,” Perrie says, digging through Louis’s cup holders for a lighter. “The girls think I quit last summer.”
Louis waits until she gets the cigarette lit before he snatches it out of her hands, taking a drag despite her indignant protests. He pulls a face the second the cigarette leaves his lips, and he rolls the window down to cough the smoke outside.
“What is that, menthol?” he chokes, flicking the whole cigarette out the window. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Louis!” Perrie shrieks. “Those are expensive! I’m unemployed, you dick!”
“I thought you were an author?” Louis says. Perrie shrieks again in frustration, and Louis laughs; it’s so rare that he gets the upper hand in his banter with Perrie, but when he manages it, he loves to get as deep under her skin as he can. She’s the one forcing him to go to his stupid high school reunion, anyway, he’ll throw away all the cigarettes he wants to tonight.
“I am an author!” Perrie growls. “I fucking hate you.”
“Love you, too, P,” Louis grins, reaching over to hold her hand. She lets him, remarkably; she knows how much he’s dreading this event, probably, and even though he hasn’t voiced his reasons out loud, he knows that she knows. They’ve been through a lot together, the two of them, but they’ve both been through even more alone, and the unbreakable bond they have now is a result of years of trauma and heartache, years of protecting each other from the world if only to be protected in return. They might be losers, but they’re alive, goddamnit, despite everything.
Perrie spends 45 minutes dressing him up like a doll when they get back to his apartment, and then an extra fifteen minutes berating him about the state of his living space (“for fuck’s sake, Louis, my 6-year-old and 8-year-old daughters keep their room cleaner than this place!”) and by the time she’s done, Louis’s in the tightest pair of jeans he owns, a navy blue dress shirt buttoned right up to his neck, and a pair of clean gray converse. Perrie sculpts his hair into something soft and swoopy and a little too stiff for his liking, but even he must admit, he looks quite nice when she’s finally finished with him.
“You drink and smoke more than anyone I know,” Perrie says, peering at him in the mirror from over his shoulder. “How the fuck have you not aged a day since you turned 22?”
“It’s all the sex I’m not having,” Louis says, forlorn.
“Well, you can get some tonight,” she says, slapping his ass firmly. His jeans are so tight it hardly even bounces.
“My high school reunion is the exact opposite of the place I want to be pulling guys,” Louis says. “Unless you’re taking me to the bar after. Or a club. Or a-”
“I am not taking you anywhere,” Perrie says, “that much I can promise. Now, we’re already late, let’s go.”
Just like that, they’re off again, back in Louis’s car, tracing the familiar route to the country club on the wealthier side of town. They had their senior prom here ten entire years ago, and, come to think of it, they turned up there in this very car, albeit with a few more people along for the ride. Louis’s stomach starts to turn if he thinks about it for too long, so he forces it out of his head; he’s absolutely sure they’re not going to see any of those people tonight, and even if they do, what should he care? It’s been ten years, a whole decade since high school ended, he has no business feeling as bitter as he still feels sometimes.
The thing is, Louis feels like his life just kind of stopped after high school. He tried college, but it wasn’t really for him, especially when Perrie got pregnant at 18 and then decided to marry the guy who did it to her, who she’d only known for about six months prior. He had already been feeling pretty down about life, anyway, and when Perrie’s life went off the rails, he decided to follow her down. Perrie got a second child and a pretty gnarly divorce out of the whole ordeal, and Louis (almost) got several recording contracts, but they all fell through before he could make anything of himself. He’s been indie for a few years now, and Perrie’s been single about as long, and they’ve been sticking it out together, losers in crime, ever since.
Pulling into the parking lot of the country club is surreal; it feels like they’ve gone back in time, and when Louis parks the car, he almost subconsciously reaches up to fix the corsage on his lapel, almost looks over to the passenger seat to check on—
Perrie. It’s Perrie in his passenger seat, platinum blonde hair curled to perfection, like always. Ten years ago, it was bubblegum pink to match her prom dress, to match the lilies she had around her wrist and in her hair. She was always so fucking beautiful, and she still is, even as she turns and gives Louis the stinkiest stink eye he’s ever received, save for maybe one particularly harsh look from Izzy, Perrie’s 6-year-old.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” she asks, fixing her bra through her cocktail dress and checking her lipstick in the visor mirror. “What are we waiting for?”
“You look really nice,” Louis says, reaching over to squeeze her forearm when she jerks her hand away from him. She softens considerably, though, and slides her fingers through his, squeezing tight.
“Thank you for coming,” she says so, so softly, a rare moment of vulnerability. “I know you’d rather not be here tonight, but thank you for coming anyway.”
“Anything for you, Perrie,” Louis says. “You know that.”
Perrie gives him a goofy smile, the one she used to pull from across the classroom in middle school that would always send Louis erupting into a fit of giggles and get them both sent out into the hallway to contain themselves. It still works, remarkably, and Louis keeps laughing even as they climb out of the car, as they cross the parking lot, hand in hand, as they receive their name placards and make their way into the function room.
Right off the bat, it feels as though nothing has changed at all since they graduated. The very same cliques from a decade ago are clustered in small groups around the function room, the very same pairs of eyes that always watched them curiously as they strutted the halls are watching them just as curiously now, and the very same backs of heads that were always turned to ignore them are turning to ignore them now. They don’t have very many fans in this room, the two of them, but that’s not news.
They were the drama kids in high school, the very, very small group of box-dyed, secondhand-clothed, bedazzled-within-and-without kids that walked the hallways like they owned them, sang in the cafeteria like they were in a musical, spent gym class performing monologues under the bleachers and hiding from the coaches. They were all destined for greatness, the whole lot of them, though only some of them really made anything of themselves. Jesy, for example, went on to teach dance at some fancy performing arts academy in New York, and Leigh-Anne moved to London straight out of college to start work in the fashion industry. Jade is cutting hair at her third salon this year somewhere on the outskirts of Whitfield, Niall teaches music at South Whitfield Elementary, and last Louis heard, Liam was just finishing up some off-broadway production of a play no one had ever heard of and was coming back home for a while between gigs. Louis doesn’t know if any of them will be here tonight, but part of him, secretly, hopes they will be. As much as he likes to pretend he left high school in the dirt where it belongs, he does still think of them all often, maybe a little more often than he should, some of them more than others…
Perrie spots Niall and Liam across the room and squeals like there’s no one else around, shoving through the little congregations of old friends to run to them. Louis follows after her quickly, quietly apologizing to the disgruntled people in her wake; most of them look familiar, some of them look terrible, Louis notes with a sick sense of satisfaction.
Louis goes in for hugs as soon as Perrie is finished, and then everything is normal, like nothing ever changed. Liam talked to Leigh-Anne last week, when he was in London with his girlfriend, and she’s doing well. Jade still cuts Niall’s hair, has done since middle school, and apparently she’s recently broken up with her boyfriend and has had quite a string of rebounds. Niall is as much of a gossip as ever, and Liam is as happy to be there as he always was in school, and before Louis knows it, he’s got a martini in his hand and he’s laughing loudly with the people he used to link pinkies with and promise they’d never lose touch, they’d never stop being best friends.
It hurts to feel the empty space beside him and to know that it’s empty, to know why its empty, to know exactly who is missing. He wonders if everyone else is as conscious of the absence as he is, or if he’s the only one still hung up on things a decade past, and he thinks he knows the answer.
As time goes on, he starts to feel a little less terrible about the whole thing, a little less bitter about the fact that they’re here in the first place. He missed these guys, Liam and Niall, and he never would’ve reached out, never would have even noticed, probably, if he hadn’t run into them tonight. Liam’s girlfriend is pregnant, Niall’s going to propose to his girlfriend at the end of the summer. Louis’s never felt so alone and behind in his life, but, as Perrie reminds him with a gentle squeeze to his behind when he’s been quiet for a while, he’s never really alone.
He’s just between boyfriends right now, that’s all. Nevermind that he’s been single for almost a year, and his longest relationship since high school was about six months long. Nevermind that he hasn’t been on a date that he enjoyed in probably two or three years, or that the last time he had sex, it was with the son of a producer Louis would kill to work with, and he didn’t even get a text back after. It’s fine, really, he’s fine, and he’s sure that soon, very soon, his luck is going to turn. It has to turn at some point, anyway, right?
Tonight is not the night, though, apparently, not that Louis ever thought it would be. Just as he’s starting to get truly comfortable again around his old friends, chattering about a record he’s been working on the past few months, Perrie goes stiff as a stone, eyes locking on Louis’s face.
“What?” Louis asks, cutting off mid-sentence. He knows Perrie well enough to feel the air shift with her moods, and right now she’s panicking, looking everywhere except Louis’s eyes.
“I was just reacting to your story,” she says, but she won’t look directly at him, and then suddenly she’s angling her head down, like she’s hiding from someone. “I can’t believe they made you rewrite that song so many times.”
“Yeah, it was a pain,” Louis frowns, looking up at Liam and Niall. Liam looks just as confused as Louis feels, but Niall seems to have caught on to whatever’s got Perrie suddenly talking a mile a minute about editing her terrible novel last year, his wide eyes glued to something over Louis’s shoulder.
Louis, against all his better judgement, turns around. Perrie grabs his hand, digging her nails in hard, but it’s too late, Louis’s already seen it, and his heart is already pressing firm at the tip of his toes, wondering why it can’t seem to sink any lower.
“Ignore him,” Perrie is growling, tugging on Louis’s hand. “Louis, come on.”
Louis swallows hard, turning back to his friends. His heart races back up into his throat, beating so hard it hurts, pumping his blood through his veins like tar.
In high school, Louis was fearless. He was brilliant, he was talented, he was unstoppable. He was everything everyone else wished they could be, and he knew it; he was confident, mischievous, as hot as an 18-year-old kid with box-dyed red hair can be. Now, though, standing in the function room of a country club that used to feel a lot bigger than it does right now, he’s none of those things, he’s nothing, he’s less than nothing. He’s all tar-blood and shaking knees, turning his back to the magnificent light that is Harry Styles, who has just come floating through the door in what is probably, almost definitely a designer suit, with some gorgeous, lanky blonde hanging off his arm like they’re at the Golden Globes instead of a high school reunion.
He tries to ignore him. He takes deep breath after deep breath, trying to focus on what Niall’s saying about one of his students, but it is absolutely impossible to ignore the feeling of Harry Styles, Harry fucking Styles wandering around behind him, making small talk with his former classmates, laughing just loudly enough for the sound to seep under Louis’s buttondown and into his skin, rising goosebumps like a million pricks of a million needles, pain rolling over him in shivering waves.
Ten years. It’s been ten years. Ten fucking years and this is still the effect Harry has on him, this is still the one fucking thing that never fails to unnerve him.
Everyone else is on edge, too, but probably only because Louis is quite visibly about to shake right out of his converse right here in the back corner of the function room. He is so conscious of Harry’s location in the room, tracking the sound of him moving around like a cat tracks prey, like a doctor tracks an illness, like God tracks a sinner.
He feels terrible, if he’s being honest, because this was such a nice evening, and now he’s going to have to leave and never show his face in Whitfield again. It’s just that he can’t, he cannot be in the same room as Harry, especially not now, after all this time, after everything—
He raises his shaking glass to his lips to take the last sip of his martini, excuses already forming in his mouth as to why he has to leave, as if everyone doesn't already know. Sorry, guys, he’ll say, I gotta head out now. I have a meeting tomorrow— I’m expecting company to arrive in the morning— I have to catch a flight to— to— Mars?
Before any of those words get a chance to come out, before the drink has even finished sliding down the back of his throat with all the sweet saccharine of gasoline, someone slides up behind him, warm air rushing over Louis’s shoulder and down his hip as the person sweeps in.
He knows who it is long before he hears the voice, or catches the scent, or sees the hand that extends past him to clap Niall on the shoulder. He can tell by the mere presence, the energy of the body behind him, that he is in grave, mortal danger.
“Niall Horan,” Harry says, dragging Niall in for a hug. Niall goes stiffly, knocks into Louis a little bit on the way, but Louis can’t think straight enough to get his feet to move, to pull himself out of the way. “How are you doing?”
“Good,” Niall says, pulling away with utter shock and mortification written all over his face. “And— um, and yourself?”
“Good, good,” Harry breathes effortlessly, like nothing in the world is wrong. Everything in the world is so, so wrong. “Liam! Good to see you!”
“Always,” Liam agrees, letting himself be pulled in for a hug, as well. He keeps his eyes glued on Louis the whole time, though, as if to tell him that he’s on Louis’s side in this, that he’s only returning Harry’s hug and manly pat on the back to avoid conflict. Louis wonders if it would be different if Harry had gotten here first, had won their old friends back with all his charm and flashiness before Louis got the chance.
Harry turns to Perrie next, and gives her a tight smile, like he remembers her face but can’t think of her name. “How are you, dear?” Harry asks her, with all the charisma of a half-dead grandmother meeting her least favorite grandchild’s new partner.
Perrie doesn’t say anything, just continues staring at Harry like she’d quite enjoy the process of spooning his eyeballs out with the ladle from the bowl of punch on the buffet table, so Harry turns, finally, to the last member of the little group, the one immediately beside him, trembling like the string of a guitar recently plucked, strung high and wildly out of tune.
“Oh,” Harry says, like he wasn’t expecting Louis to be Louis. As if he might have been able to expect anyone else to be standing where Louis is standing. “Hi, um.”
It gets properly awkward then, but still, Harry doesn’t seem nearly as uncomfortable as Louis would like him to be. He counts his bravery on each of the fingers of his left hand and finally turns to look up at Harry, blinking once like he is completely, wholly uninterested in his existence. And Harry’s the one with the Oscar. Sure.
“This is my fiance,” Harry says, gesturing to the girl that’s got her long, spindly fingers laced through Harry’s, her other hand curled around his forearm. “Camille, this is, uh, everyone.”
“So lovely to meet you all,” Camille says, like she means it. She’s French, Louis thinks haughtily. He hates her.
“Niall,” Harry says, pointing to Niall. “And Liam. And, um,” he turns to Perrie once again, like he actually expects any of them to believe that he’s forgotten Perrie’s name.
“Perrie,” Perrie says, nearly spitting her own name at him. “And this is Louis,” she says, before Harry can say it. Louis loves her.
Perrie promptly attaches herself to Louis’s arm, much in the same way Camille is currently plastered to Harry, like convincing Camille that she and Louis are together is going to solve any of the problems with their current situation. Camille doesn’t seem phased or interested in the slightest, despite her pleasant smile.
Louis is going to pass out. Perrie is squeezing his hand so, so tightly, and Louis’s shoulder is pressed up against Harry’s still from when Harry wormed himself into the conversation, and neither of them are moving away, like neither of them will admit defeat. Never, not once in a million years, did Louis think he would ever be in the same room as Harry Styles again, let alone touching shoulders with him and refusing to pull away. He is never, ever, ever coming to another high school reunion.
“You were all friends?” Camille asks cheerfully, like she’s interested in Harry’s past life. Louis can’t help it, can’t suppress the laugh bubbling up in his chest at the sheer lunacy of it all, and then he’s letting out one single, emphatic snort, and suddenly all eyes are on him.
Harry gets appropriately awkward then, finally, and turns to Camille. “Yeah,” he says, swallowing hard. “Remember that band I told you I was in?”
“Oh!” Camille says, like she does remember. Louis wonders if she really does. “I do remember,” she says. “You won that competition!”
Louis is going to vomit. He is going to be sick, right here, right now, he’s absolutely sure of it, so instead of bearing another second of this torture, he presses his empty glass into Perrie’s hand and turns on his heel, dragging his shoulder away from Harry’s with all the force of a storm-powered tidal wave, marching a straight line through the function room and directly out the door.
It’s warm outside, the kind of muggy, balmy warm that usually doesn’t linger like this until the middle of the summer. Louis marches all the way through the parking lot, finds his own car, and collapses into it, putting his head down against the steering wheel for a long few minutes.
The longer he thinks about it, the more sure he becomes that Camille is Camille Rowe, the supermodel, because of course she is. She’s Harry’s fiance. The last Louis heard, Harry was married to some other supermodel, Kendall something-or-other, Louis honestly does not care to know, but he does wonder what went wrong with that marriage.
Part of him suspects he already knows.
He goes out of his way, usually, to stay out of Harry’s life, to not keep tabs on him in any way, shape, or form. It’s hard sometimes, given Harry’s status as a household name in America and most of the other western countries of the world, but he does his best, and usually, up until now, it’s been very effective, and his feelings have seldom been this hurt since the last time he googled Harry’s name just to see what might come up.
Before he can start overthinking too much, someone opens his car door, and Louis flinches. Part of him almost expects to see Harry when he looks up, but it’s not Harry, Harry would never come after him. Ten years, and Harry has never once come after him.
“Get out,” Perrie says, tapping his arm once.
“I’m not fucking going back in there,” he says, jaw clenched.
“You don’t have to,” Perrie says, stooping down a little to give him a look. “But get out and let me drive.”
Louis blinks, and then moves to comply, standing up out of the car like he’s in a daze. He goes around to the passenger side of his own car and gets back in while Perrie sits down behind the wheel, adjusting the seat a little bit because her legs have been longer than his since eighth grade and she’ll never let him forget it, even when he’s so upset over a ten-year-old heartbreak that he thinks he could just melt into the car seat and cease to exist altogether.
They don’t speak while Perrie drives. Louis puts his head back against the headrest and stares up at the ceiling, wondering when exactly he became such a sorry excuse for a man. He thinks Perrie will just take him home, because where else would they go at 10:00 on a Saturday night? Perrie has two kids and a babysitter getting paid hourly, and Louis is too much of a loser to have anywhere else to be. He fails to notice that they’ve been driving much longer than it should take to cover the distance between the country club and Louis’s apartment, and when Perrie finally slows to a stop and puts the car in park, he’s shocked to discover that they’re not at Perrie’s house, either.
They used to come here a lot in high school, and in college during breaks, in smaller and smaller groups as everyone fucked off to live their lives until it was just Louis and Perrie left, the two runts of the litter still stuck somewhere between Whitfield and a great big abyss. It’s just a small cliff that looks out over the town, not nearly as scenic as these spots always are in the movies, but still secluded and private enough that it envelopes Louis in a sense of safety the moment he realizes where they are.
Perrie reaches in front of him to dig through his glove box, and he doesn’t bother asking what she’s looking for. She comes back a moment later with a tupperware she must have known she could be sure to find in there, and without saying a word, they both climb out of the car and up onto the hood, and Louis rests his chin on his knees while he watches Perrie struggle to roll the joint with her French-tipped acrylic nails.
“I’m sorry I made you go,” Perrie says, handing over the messy joint once she’s finished rolling it.
Louis takes it and digs the lighter out of his pocket, taking a long, slow hit and then passing it back over. “It was good to see Liam and Niall.”
“I didn’t think he’d come,” Perrie says, almost under her breath, like she’s mad at herself for not being able to predict the future.
“Neither did I,” Louis says, a translucent cloud of smoke obstructing his view of Whitfield for a moment before dissipating into the air.
Perrie starts choking beside him, and Louis shifts his head to watch her recover, smoke falling from her lips in tiny puffs of clouds. “God, I haven’t smoked in so long,” she says, taking another, slightly more successful hit. “Nikki would be so mad at me right now.”
“Don’t let me corrupt you,” Louis says, snatching the joint back and holding onto it for another few hits in a row.
“Are you okay?” Perrie asks, once Louis can start to feel the smoke going to his head.
Louis doesn’t say anything, just puts the joint back between his lips before he’s ready and breathes in, in, in.
“It’s okay to not be okay,” Perrie says. “It’s okay, Louis.”
“It’s been ten years,” Louis says.
Perrie nods, and Louis breathes out another cloud of smoke. “And are you okay?”
Louis looks over at her, eyes suddenly full of tears. “Why can’t I get over it?”
Perrie coos, moving closer to lay her head on his shoulder. She hugs him around his waist, and Louis buries his face in her hair, joint forgotten between his trembling fingers.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Perrie says, “I’m not over the two of you breaking up, either.” Louis doesn’t say anything, just breathes in deep and forces his budding tears back down into the bottle where they came from. “If there was one couple from our little group of misfits that should have lasted, it was you guys,” Perrie says. “Where did it all go wrong?”
Louis doesn’t answer, picking his head up to take another hit of the joint. It’s working, but it’s working too slow, and he needs to feel better now, needs the burning in his eyes and his stomach and his heart to go away.
“Man, look at us,” Perrie sighs.
“Hm?” Louis hums, looking down at her.
“We’re two washed up 28-year-old drama kids, still living in our hometown, sitting on the hood of the same car you’ve had since high school smoking weed, except I’m a divorced, unemployed mother of two, and you’re, well,” she shrugs.
“And I’m a pathetic fucking loser who can’t even get over his first love, let alone get his career off the ground,” Louis grits out.
Perrie snuggles a little closer to him, probably getting makeup all over his shirt, but he doesn’t care. Sometimes he thinks it’d be nice to just get in his car and send himself hurtling over this cliff, streak across the sky over Whitfield one more time like the burnt out shooting star he was probably always meant to be.
He smokes the rest of the joint himself, because Perrie has kids to go home to, and one of them has got to be able to drive. They sit there for another hour, at least, until Louis has flicked the burnt remains of the joint into the grass next to the car and Perrie has complained about her ass falling asleep for the third time.
“Remember the pact we made in high school?” Perrie asks, sitting up finally and looking over at him.
“When we both swore to never piss our pants again?” Louis frowns.
“No, but that one was good, too,” Perrie says, smiling. “I meant the one where we promised that if neither of us were married by the time we turned 30, we’d marry each other.”
Louis lets out one loud, honking laugh, shaking his head. “Better start planning the wedding, then, because I don’t think either of our sorry asses is getting married in the next two years.”
Perrie laughs brightly, wrapping one arm around his shoulders. “I’d marry you,” she says, laughing again at Louis’s sour expression. “Anyone would be lucky to marry you.”
Louis’s face falls a bit, and Perrie must notice, because she leans in and presses a quick kiss to his cheek.
“C’mon,” she says, sliding off the car and reaching a hand back for him. “It’s cold out. You’re sleeping over mine tonight,” she says.
Louis frowns, taking Perrie’s hand and letting her pull him off the hood of the car, too. “Don’t you think Izzy and Nikki have seen their uncle Louis cry enough in their lives thus far?”
“Honestly, I kinda like it when you cry in front of them,” Perrie admits, shrugging one shoulder. “It teaches them about nontoxic masculinity, which is a lesson they never got from their father.”
Louis laughs, rolling his eyes and climbing back into his own passenger seat while Perrie takes the wheel again. Maybe marrying Perrie wouldn’t even be the worst idea; he loves her girls like they’re his own, and he loves Perrie even more, somehow, and the tax benefits definitely wouldn’t hurt. The closer he gets to thirty, the more appealing it sounds, but there’s still a tiny voice way back in the furthest corner of his mind that always tells him to keep going, to keep trying, not to give up just yet. He doesn’t know what that voice is on about, or if maybe he should just give in and check into the local psych ward, but he likes to think that someday, eventually, his luck has got to turn.
+
There’s a soft knock on the door, but Louis jumps anyway, whirling around and dropping Lottie’s doll, cheeks already pinking. His mom said it was okay to play with Lottie’s toys if he asked nicely first, but Lottie isn’t even home today, and he swears he was going to put it back before she got home from soccer, and it’s not like he was doing anything, anyway, it’s just his Spider-Man toy was lonely and—
“A phone call for you, Mr. Tomlinson,” his mom says, amused. Louis relaxes when he realizes he’s not about to get shouted at for touching other people’s things without permission, eyes falling to the landline that his mom has cradled against her shoulder.
“For me?” Louis asks, sitting up on his knees. “Who is it?”
“A certain young man from south Whitfield,” his mom says, holding the phone out for him to take. “Just say hello.”
Louis takes the phone, eyes wide, and presses it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hi, Louis!” a chipper little voice giggles from down the line. Louis gasps when he realizes who the voice belongs to, lighting up immediately. He’s never had a phone call just for him before; his mom always makes him talk on the phone when Nan calls, but Nan never calls just to speak to him, not like this.
“Harry!” Louis says, beaming up at his mom. “Why are you calling me?”
“I asked my mom if you could come over and play today, and she told me to call you and ask you to ask your mom if you can come over to play today,” Harry says all at once, so loudly it almost hurts Louis’s ear. “And she dialed your number and gave me the phone to speak to you, and your mom answered, but I didn’t want to ask her if you could come over, so could you ask her if you could come over to play today, please?” he says.
Louis gasps, holding the receiver against his shoulder like he sees his mom do all the time when he interrupts her phone calls. “Mom,” he says, very seriously, “could I go over to Harry’s today to play?”
His mom looks entertained, leaning against the doorway to his bedroom, hands resting on the swell of her stomach where Louis’s baby sister is growing. “I don’t see why not,” she says sweetly.
Louis presses the phone back to his ear, smiling down at the carpet. “She said yes!”
“Yes!” Harry shouts, and then there’s a rustling noise like Harry is pressing his phone to his own shoulder. “Mom, he said that she said yes,” Louis hears him say, voice muffled. Harry’s mom says something in the background, too quietly for Louis to hear, and then Harry’s back. “My mom says to tell your mom that you can come over whenever she can drive you, and that you can stay for dinner if you want, or my mom can drive you home before dinner,” he says.
Louis blinks, pressing the phone to his shoulder again to relay the message to his mother. “Do you want to stay for dinner?” his mom asks, and Louis nods so quickly his brain rattles around in his head. Harry’s mom makes the best spaghetti in the world. “Then, yeah, that’s fine.”
“What’s your mom making for dinner?” Louis asks into the phone, holding one finger up to his mother as if to tell her to wait for the answer.
Harry asks, muffled again, what his mother is making for dinner, and then breathes loudly into the phone. “She says spaghetti.”
“Yes,” Louis hisses. “I’m in.”
“Yes!” Harry cheers loudly.
“Okay,” Louis says, standing up off the floor. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay,” Harry says. “I’m excited.”
“Me too,” Louis says breathlessly. “Okay, love you, bye.”
“Love you, too,” Harry says. “Bye!”
Louis hangs up the phone, handing it back to his mother proudly.
“Did you tell him that you love him?” she asks, laughing, taking the phone back and tucking it under her arm.
“Yes,” Louis says. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say when you hang up the phone?”
“Not necessarily,” his mom says. “You don’t always have to tell people you love them, but you should tell them if you do,” she says.
“Oh,” Louis frowns, nodding once.
“Did he say it back?” his mom asks, laughing like some part of this is very, very entertaining for her.
“Yeah,” Louis says, “he did.”
“That’s so cute,” his mom hums, laying a hand over her heart. “You love each other.”
“Is that okay?” Louis asks, confused as to why his mother is still laughing about it.
“It’s perfectly okay,” his mom says. “I’d hope you two love each other, with all the time you spend together.”
“Why’s it so funny?” Louis asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
“It just makes me happy to see you do grown up things, like talking on the phone,” his mom says, ruffling his hair and then smoothing it out again immediately. “You’re growing up pretty fast, little guy.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have another baby soon,” Louis says, poking her stomach gently. “So you won’t have to be so sad when I’m all grown up.”
“You’ll always be my baby, Lou,” she says, bending forward to drop a kiss to his forehead. “You, and Lottie, and Felicite, too, when she arrives. Now, go put Lottie’s doll back where you found it and then get your shoes on, I’ve got to run to the grocery store after I drop you at Harry’s house and we’re losing daylight.”
Louis grins, rushing past her and down the hall to Lottie’s room to deposit the toy back into her toybox. He still has to hold his mom’s hand on the stairs, but he’s finally learned how to do up his velcro shoes by himself, and then they’re off to Harry’s house, Louis’s favorite place in the world, aside from his own house.
+
The thing about Harry and Louis is that they’ve always been next to each other, in every sense. Louis was born first by a little more than a month, but even as embryos, they were sure friends before either of them was even a person yet. Harry’s mom and Louis’s mom were childhood best friends, too, grew up in houses right next door to each other, lived their entire lives in sync, even got married in the same month and moved to the same medium-sized town in western Massachusetts just a couple of streets apart. They got pregnant around the same time, too, and though that part wasn’t exactly planned, everything that came after it was.
Louis met Harry for the first time at two months old, when Harry was still a crinkly, cranky little newborn with round, glassy eyes and sparse, downy hair. Louis wasn’t much better himself, at that point, but at least he had the bodily awareness to focus his big blue eyes on the camera in the picture that they now both have framed in their houses. They’ve been having playdates at least weekly ever since, and despite the pressure to be best friends right off the bat, they’ve been absolutely inseparable for longer than either of them can remember.
Luckily, Louis lives just inside the jurisdiction to put him at South Whitfield Elementary, the same elementary school as his best and only friend, Harry. They were in the same kindergarten class last year, as per the request of both of their mothers, and they’re in the same first grade class this year, too. Harry’s name always happens to come right before Louis’s on the attendance sheet, as well, so they always get sat next to each other in class, at least for the first few days. Last year, Harry’s sit-upon got moved halfway across the room because Louis wouldn’t stop tugging at his curls and distracting him during lessons, but Harry had cried so much in his new place in the room that they let him move back before the end of the day, anyway.
This year, they’ve got real desks, because they’re big kids now. First grade is in a whole different wing of the school, and there’s a lot of familiar faces scattered about the room, but there’s also a few Louis has only ever seen in the bus lines or at recess, and some he’s never seen before at all. There’s one girl, in particular, who Louis is sure he’s never seen before, but she’s got on a white dress with purple watercolor butterflies all over and a pink velvet scrunchie in her wild, frizzy hair, and something about her is so intriguing that Louis can’t help but get up before class starts to go say hello to her.
“Hi,” he says, hovering close to her desk before she’s even all the way in her seat. The girl flinches a little, but she doesn’t look scared, cocking her head at him confusedly.
“Hi,” she says back, somehow smiling and frowning at the same time.
“I’m Louis,” Louis says, showing the girl all of his teeth. “I like your dress.”
“Thanks,” the girl says, her smile turning a little more genuine. “I’m Perrie, and my mom picked it out for me.”
“My mom picked out my outfit, too,” Louis says, looking down at his blue jeans and plaid shirt.
“Cool,” Perrie says.
“That’s my friend, Harry,” Louis says, pointing to where Harry’s watching him, bug-eyed, from a desk one row and two spots away. Perrie turns around and gives Harry a little wave, which Harry returns with reddened cheeks. “You can play with us at recess, if you want to,” Louis says, shrugging one shoulder.
“Cool,” Perrie says again, looking back up at him. “I’m new, I don’t have any friends yet.”
“Can you run fast?” Louis asks.
“Pretty fast,” Perrie says. “Faster than my sister, but she’s little.”
“If you’re fast enough, we can get to the swings before anyone else, and then we don’t have to wait in line,” Louis says. “Harry and me love the swings.”
“How about the monkey bars?” Perrie asks.
Louis flushes a little, glancing over at Harry. He doesn’t want to admit that neither of them have ever been able to get all the way across. “Swings are better,” he shrugs.
“Alright,” Perrie says. “Deal.”
“Cool,” Louis grins, and then the teacher asks everyone in gentle voice to find their seats and take out a pencil, so Louis scurries back to his desk and digs his pencil box out of his backpack.
“Do you know her?” Harry whispers, while they’re supposed to be tracing their names onto the blank, wide-lined nametags on each of their desks.
“I do now,” Louis whispers back. “Her name’s Perrie, she’s gonna play on the swings with us later.”
Harry doesn’t say anything to that, so Louis forgets about it, writing his name as carefully as he can and then standing the name tag up on the front of his desk, so his teacher can see.
“Beautiful penmanship, Lewis,” the teacher says, shuffling over with a warm smile to press a small golden star sticker on the top corner of Louis’s name tag.
“It’s Lou-ee,” Harry says, before Louis can say it himself.
“Oh, my apologies, Louis,” the teacher says, giving him another gold star for her mistake. Louis beams at Harry, and Harry grins back proudly, like he’s done something heroic. The teacher moves to look at Harry’s name tag, next, and she frowns, tilting her head.
“Harry,” she reads, and Harry nods quickly, looking up to show her all of his teeth. “Your R’s are backwards, dear,” she says, laying his nametag flat again and using the eraser end of Harry’s pencil to wipe the two middle letters of his name away. “Try again.”
Harry goes as red as fruit punch and scrambles for his pencil back, quickly drawing two shaky, but correctly oriented letter R’s in the middle of his nametag.
“Beautiful,” the teacher says, standing his name tag up and pressing a gold star onto the corner of it, like she did for Louis. She moves on after that, meandering around the rest of the classroom, and Louis giggles, kicking out at Harry’s chair.
“Harry backwards R’s,” he teases quietly. “That’s your name now.”
Harry smiles, but he doesn’t look up at Louis again for the rest of class, his cheeks stained red for most of the morning.
+
For as long as Louis and Harry have been friends, neither of them have ever really had another friend, at least not any quite as strong or as important as their friendship with each other. Louis made friends with this boy at soccer camp last summer, but that boy went to North Elementary, and they lost touch after camp ended, anyway. Harry, on the other hand, doesn’t seem terribly interested in being friends with anyone except Louis, which is fine with Louis, of course, but it would be nice if Harry would stop hiding behind him and staring at the girl in the butterfly dress like she’s some kind of dog with big, scary teeth.
Other kids don’t typically like Louis or Harry very much, and it’s very rare that someone else agrees to play with either of them, let alone both of them, so Louis would really appreciate it if Harry would stop blowing this for them. Perrie looks nervous, watching Harry as unsurely as he’s watching her, and then she looks up at Louis.
“Is he okay?” she whispers, eyes flickering back to Louis. “He hasn’t said anything.”
“He’s just shy,” Louis says, stepping to the side and pulling Harry out from behind him, forcing him to stand next to him, instead. “Stop being weird,” he breathes, and Harry flushes.
“Hey, Harry,” Perrie says, lighting up like she has an idea. “What’s your favorite animal?”
“My favorite animal?” Harry repeats, looking at Louis as if Louis will answer for him. Louis nudges him, so Harry looks back at Perrie, blinking once. “Cats, maybe. Or fish.”
“Cool!” Perrie says, looking at Louis. “And yours?”
“Lions,” Louis says, curling his fingers into claws. “Because they’re tough.”
“Mine’s angler fishes,” Perrie says. “Let’s pretend to be our favorite animals!”
“What’s an angler fish?” Harry asks, frowning at Perrie.
Perrie scoffs, looking at Louis, but Louis doesn’t know, either, so he just shrugs and shakes his head. “It’s a fish with a reading light on his head,” Perrie says, hooking one finger like a drooping unicorn horn on her forehead. “It’s got these big, sharp teeth and its eyes don’t work, so it just follows the light from its head around to find things to eat.”
“How’s it follow the light if its eyes don’t work?” Harry asks.
“I don’t know,” Perrie says. “Maybe it’s magic.”
“Magic?” Harry says. “A magic fish?”
“Maybe,” Perrie says again. “Stranger things have happened.”
Before Harry can say anything to that, someone brushes up behind Louis, almost knocking him off balance in their effort to get past him. Louis looks up just in time to see a pair of hands shoving Harry hard enough to send him tumbling to the ground, wood chips erupting around him like a cloud from a cartoon bomb.
“‘Sup, bozo?” an ugly voice laughs, as Harry picks his head up off the ground, wood chips all stuck in his curls. The bully gets a foot around his ankle as he tries to stand up, knocking him back onto the ground again, and Louis curls his hands into fists at his sides.
“Bug off, Parker,” Louis says in his toughest voice. “Don’t you have boogers to eat, or something?”
“Your mom eats boogers,” Parker sneers, but he lumbers off, leaving Louis to pick Harry up off the ground and start brushing the wood chips out of his hair.
“Who the heck is that?” Perrie asks, her voice dark. “And why is he so rotten?”
Louis shrugs, tweaking Harry’s curls about to distract him, to make him smile, to keep him from releasing the flustered tears in his eyes. It works, it always works, and as Harry pulls himself together, Louis turns back to Perrie.
“Parker King,” Louis says. “He’s a bully.”
“He’s the worst person in the world,” Harry says, still sniffling a little and brushing the wood chips off his corduroy pants.
“Why’s he so mean?” Perrie asks again.
“My mom says he’s got bees in his brain,” Louis says gravely.
“Bees?” Perrie frowns.
“Bees,” Louis confirms. “Angry bees. They buzz around inside his head and sting him all over, and they make him so angry he’s got to take it out on other people,” he says.
“Well, that’s no excuse to be so rotten,” Perrie says. “He should get the bees out some other way.”
Louis just shrugs again, picking a couple of wood chips off of Harry’s back, and before either of them can stop it, Perrie’s marching away, right over to where Parker King is picking a new victim by the jungle gym. It’s one of those kids that Louis has seen around before but never spoken to, and he’s blissfully unaware of the hand Parker King is about to knot in the back of his shirt to send him toppling over the other side of the jungle gym. Louis winces as it happens, but Parker doesn’t even get time to laugh about what he’s done before Perrie’s tapping him firmly on the shoulder, one hand propped primly on her purple butterflied hip.
“Hey,” she says, “Parker King.”
Parker turns on her like a storm cloud, towering over her at nearly four and a half feet tall.
“Take your bees and get lost,” Perrie says.
Parker’s face twists into a frown, and he laughs condescendingly. “What?”
“Leave that kid alone,” Perrie says, pointing to the fluffy haired boy picking himself up out of the wood chips, already brushing tears off his cheeks. “He did nothing to you.”
“Make me,” Parker King says, snarling right in Perrie’s face. Perrie snarls right back, but her little button nose and smattering of freckles have nothing on Parker’s ugly, ruddy-cheeked mug. “Stupid girl,” he tuts, making to turn away as if he hasn’t just made the biggest mistake of his short life.
Perrie lunges at him, launching herself up onto his back and getting her legs locked around his waist, hands in his hair. Parker King starts screaming immediately, like a baby, trying to shake Perrie off while she clings on like a girl on a bull ride, shouting in his ear for him to apologize.
The teachers break it up within seconds, but Perrie comes away with a handful of Parker King’s ugly sandy brown hair, and Parker King comes away adequately de-crowned.
Perrie gets yelled at a little, but she gets off easy; the teachers know what a pain Parker King is and, honestly, Perrie only did what everyone else wishes they could do. Perrie looks like some tough knuckled, heroic princess warrior striding back to where Louis and Harry are staring, slack jawed, hearts racing.
The closer she gets, Louis can see that her eyes are swimming with tears, but everyone’s looking at her now, and if they see her cry, she’ll lose every bit of the power she just gained. He takes her hand and leads her away from the rest of the playground, nodding for Harry to follow, too, and the three of them curl up under the slide no one ever plays on at the far side of the playground.
“You,” Louis says, thumbing away the first and only tear that drips from Perrie’s eye, “are the coolest person I’ve ever met.”
“The coolest,” Harry breathes, like he’s absolutely in awe.
Perrie sniffles and smiles, finally opening her clenched fist and letting the handful of Parker King’s hair float away in the slight September breeze. “Are you okay, Harry?” she asks, brushing the rest of the hair out from between her fingers and reaching out to tug gently on one of Harry’s curls, the way she’s seen Louis do probably a hundred times in the four or so hours they’ve known each other.
Harry leans into Louis’s side a little, like he’s uncomfortable with being touched by anyone that isn’t him, but he nods. “Thank you,” he says quietly. “I can’t believe you stood up to Parker King.”
“No one has ever stood up to Parker King,” Louis says. “Last year, I saw him make his own mom cry.”
“He’s just a rotten 6-year-old kid,” Perrie says. “He’s not so scary if you don’t let him be scary.”
“I heard he’s 7,” Louis whispers conspiratorially. “He had to do kindergarten twice.”
Perrie purses her lips, looking down. “I feel sorry for him.”
“Sorry?” Louis scoffs. “You just said he’s a rotten kid, and you’re right.”
“I feel sorry for him, too,” Harry says. “It must be awful having all those bees in your head and not knowing what to do about them.”
Perrie nods, and Louis falls quiet, thinking about it for a moment. Harry and Perrie are right, he guesses, but it doesn’t make him hate Parker King’s guts any less.
Suddenly, a round, fluffy head peeks around the slide, and Harry and Louis jump. Perrie just smiles warmly, and Louis recognizes the new face as the kid Perrie just saved from certain death.
“Hi,” the kid says, crouching down next to the slide. “Can I sit with you guys?”
“Of course,” Perrie says, scooting over closer to Harry to make room for the new kid. Harry presses imperceptibly closer to Louis, but he doesn’t try to hide, which seems like a big development. “I’m Perrie,” Perrie says, extending her hand to the new boy like a grown up.
“I’m Niall,” the boy says, shaking her hand eagerly. “Thanks for fighting Parker for me. I wish you’d been a couple seconds earlier, but still, that was really nice of you,” he says.
“Someone had to do it,” Perrie shrugs. “I wish I hadn’t ripped his hair, because that wasn’t very nice, but he made me so angry. Anyway, Niall, these are my friends, Louis, and Harry.”
Niall waves hello, beaming at each of them in turn. Niall seems comprised entirely of smiles and sunlight, and Louis decides he likes him already. “Do you guys like soccer?” Niall asks. “My cousin got soccer goals in his backyard for his birthday last week, and he said I could bring friends over sometime and play with them,” he says.
“I love soccer!” Louis says, happily returning the high-five Niall offers.
“Soccer is cool,” Harry agrees; he’s terrible at soccer, Louis knows, but Niall seems like the type that’ll go easy on him, like Louis does when he talks him into playing.
“I’ve never played,” Perrie says, “but it sounds fun.”
Recess ends before they can talk about very much else, and as they all line up to go back inside the school with their classes, Harry tugs on the sleeve of Louis’s shirt and beckons him close.
“I’m not very good at soccer,” he says, panicked. “If we go to Niall’s cousin’s house—”
“It’ll be fine,” Louis grins. “We’re 6, Harry, and I’m almost sure Niall’s cousin isn’t a FIFA world champion,” he says.
Harry nods, relaxing quickly. “Okay,” he says. “I feel better.”
“Good,” Louis says, poking his finger into the dimple that forms in Harry’s cheek when he smiles and then turning back around, following the leader back into the school and all the way down the hall to the first grade wing.
+
At the end of the school day, they form 7 long lines in the courtyard, each headed by a teacher holding a sign with a different letter on. Last year, in kindergarten, the teachers led each of their students to the proper bus line, but now that they’re first graders, they’re trusted enough to find their own bus line — like real grown ups.
Louis and Harry are both on C bus, even though they live a few streets apart; Whitfield is shaped weird, which makes the bus routes weird, which means that each of the seven buses cross routes at least once or twice as they snake all over town, delivering kids to school in the morning and then back home in the afternoon. Neither Perrie or Niall are on C bus; Perrie is on G bus, because she lives way out on the outskirts of town, and Niall is on B bus, because he lives pretty close to school, but not close enough to be on the tight circular route of A bus.
Louis plops down in the grass while they wait for the bus, and Harry falls into place between him, folding his legs under himself while Louis splays open wide, like he’s relaxing on a beach.
“First day of first grade,” Louis says happily, “and we made two new friends.”
“You made two new friends,” Harry says. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Well, they’re still your friends, too, aren’t they?” Louis says. “You’re my best friend, so any friends either of us makes becomes the other’s friend automatically, I think.”
“What’s a best friend?” Harry frowns.
“It’s the friend you like the best out of all your friends,” Louis says. “It just means I like you best.”
Harry nods, but his eyes are wet, suddenly, and Louis frowns. “Um, what happens if you decide that, um, you like Perrie or Niall better than me?” Harry asks quietly, hardly looking up at him.
“That’ll never happen,” Louis says decisively.
“But what if it does?” Harry presses. “How do you know it won’t happen?”
“Because you’re special,” Louis says, reaching for Harry’s hand and squeezing it. “Perrie’s really cool and tough and awesome, but she’s a girl, and my mom says that girls have cooties, so we obviously can’t get too close to her. Niall seems cool, too, but we don’t really know him very well yet, and besides, you’ve got better hair, and you hug me way more, so,” he shrugs, like that’s that.
Harry smiles, but his eyes are still wet. “What are cooties?” he asks. “And why is my hair better than Niall’s?”
“Mom just said that girls have cooties and you shouldn’t kiss them, but I don’t want to kiss Perrie, anyway,” Louis says. “I guess maybe cooties are just what makes girls different from boys?”
“I thought that was penises?” Harry frowns.
“What’s a penis?” Louis says.
“I don’t really know,” Harry says. “Gemma says that boys have them and girls don’t.”
“So boys have penises, and girls have cooties? That’s the difference?” Louis says.
“That sounds right,” Harry nods. “And what about my hair?” he asks, smiling. He’s just fishing for compliments, at this point, but he’s had kind of a tough day, so Louis decides to appease him.
“It’s soft, and it’s curly, and it feels good when I put my face in it,” Louis says, leaning forward to nuzzle into Harry’s hair, as if to prove his point. Harry giggles, hugging Louis around the waist while he’s got him so close and trapping him in, until Louis hugs him back.
“You’re my best friend, too,” Harry says into his chest. “You’re my best everything.”
Louis grins, petting affectionately at Harry’s hair. “We’ll always be best friends. Best everythings.”
“Always?” Harry asks, looking up at him.
Louis pokes his nose, smiling when Harry smiles. “Always.”
-
The first thing that registers in Louis’s brain as he starts to wake up is warm, milk-scented air on his face, and he scrunches his nose up, peeking one eye open to catch the source. It’s Izzy, of course, kneeling on the floor beside the couch with her nose just about touching Louis’s, watching him sleep.
“Enjoying the view, milk breath?” Louis mumbles, nudging her face away with his own face and then moving back to rub at his eyes.
“Good morning!” Izzy squeals, clambering up on top of him and worming herself under his blanket. “Mommy said I couldn’t cuddle you until you woke up.”
“Makes sense,” Louis says, wrapping his arms around Izzy and settling down on his back. Izzy’s toes are freezing when she worms them between Louis’s thighs, but he doesn’t complain, just tucks the blanket around her and holds her a little tighter.
“You smell bad,” Izzy says, from where she’s got her whole face nuzzled in close under Louis’s chin.
“Thanks, babes,” Louis says, jamming a finger in her armpit just to hear her laugh.
“Izzy,” Perrie’s voice says, and Louis looks over the back of the couch to find Perrie peeking out from the doorway to the kitchen. “I told you to leave him alone.”
Izzy pouts, sitting up a little to look down at Louis. “You’re sad?” she asks knowingly.
“Who said I’m sad?” Louis scoffs.
“Mommy said you had a sad night, and that’s why you slept over,” Izzy says.
“Hey, Izzy, maybe don’t pester people about whether they’re sad or not,” Perrie says, “it’s not very good manners.” She disappears back into the kitchen, then, and Izzy cuddles back into Louis’s chest.
“Why are you sad, Uncle Louis?” Izzy whispers, like she doesn’t want her mom to hear how deeply she cares. Louis could cry.
“I’m not actually very sad at the present moment,” Louis says. “I don’t know, Iz.”
Izzy hums, nodding wisely. “Just sad at life?”
Louis smiles, flattening one hand on Izzy’s back and drumming his fingers down her spine. “Maybe.”
“Mommy gets sad at life sometimes, too,” Izzy says.
“Yeah,” Louis says. “It happens.”
“Don’t worry,” Izzy says, “Mommy and NIkki are making pancakes to cheer you up!”
There’s a small crash from the kitchen, and then Nikki’s voice shouts, “You ruined the surprise, stupid!”
“Hey!” Perrie shouts back. “Don’t use that word!”
“Way to go, stupid!” Louis shouts, grinning when Izzy laughs.
“Louis!” Perrie shrieks, but Louis doesn’t pay her any attention, too busy pulling faces to keep Izzy laughing.
They’re called into the kitchen after a few more minutes for breakfast, and Louis gets the seat of honor right between his two darling nieces, both of them arguing about whose idea it was to make Louis a special don’t-be-so-sad breakfast. At the end of the day, Louis knows it was Perrie’s idea, because she hasn’t taken her eyes off of him since they sat down, probably because she thinks he’s going to shatter the moment she looks away.
Louis hates that this isn’t the first get-your-shit-together breakfast Perrie’s had to make for him recently, and he hates that it won’t be the last. That being said, it’s a lovely breakfast, and Louis is never happier than he is when he’s spending time with Perrie’s girls. None of Louis’s actual sisters have had any children for him to spoil yet, so Izzy and Nikki are all he’s got, but he’s perfectly happy with that. The girls haven’t had an easy go of it by any stretch of the imagination, Perrie included, but Perrie works so, so hard to make sure her daughters are happy and healthy and cared for. Louis is so in awe of all of them, does whatever he can to make their lives easier, but if he’s honest, Perrie never needed him for any of that; she’s been in full control of her own life since first grade, and when Louis’s not totally and completely amazed by her, he’s achingly, pitifully jealous.
He can’t stop thinking about what Izzy said earlier: you’re sad at life. It’s such a stupidly simple way to say it, but it could not be any more accurate. Izzy said Perrie gets that way too, sometimes, but Louis finds that hard to believe; Perrie has had it rougher than anyone Louis knows, but she also somehow exists at the top of the food chain in every respect in her life, despite how many times she’s been knocked to rock bottom. She climbs back up each and every time, stronger than ever.
When she got pregnant with Nikki, Louis figured her life was over, she’d never be anything but a mother for as long as she lived. Louis couldn’t have been more wrong, though; she was still Perrie, pregnancy and wedding and birth and child-raising and another pregnancy and birth and divorce and single-mothering and working-momming and book-writing and book-flopping and — Louis can hardly even keep track of all the things Perrie’s done, but she’s rocked every single one of them, even the ones that totally sucked.
Louis, on the other hand, feels like he’s been steadily falling to pieces since the day he was born. He can’t get out of his own way, especially lately, and he’s beginning to grow really, really fucking sick of it.
“Right,” Perrie says, bringing Louis out of his head with a single clap of her hands. “Girls, you have soccer in half an hour. Go change, get your bags together, and find yourselves at the front door in fifteen minutes or less.”
The girls are gone before Louis can blink, racing each other through the hallway of Perrie’s single-story ranch, both of them trying to beat each other to their shared bedroom.
“I’ll get out of your hair, as well,” Louis says, picking himself up from the kitchen table and collecting the breakfast dishes. “Unless you want me to bring the girls to soccer for you on my way home.”
“I would massively appreciate that,” Perrie says, crowding him at the sink. “Put those dishes down. I need to talk to you.”
Louis complies, already flushing like he’s about to be scolded for something. He turns sheepishly to face Perrie, but instead of laying into him, she lays her head on his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his waist.
“I love you,” Perrie says, as Louis hooks his arms over her shoulders. “And so does Nikki, and so does Izzy. I’m absolutely sure that any one of us would lay down our lives for you at any given moment.”
Louis grins, pressing a kiss into Perrie’s hair, her pristine curls from last night pulled back into a messy bun. “Likewise, darling.”
“I need you to know that you are welcome in this house all the time, Louis, you know? No matter what happens, in your life or mine, my door is always open to you. When I said last night that I would marry you, I meant that, because nothing better has ever happened to me in my life than the day I met you in the first grade.”
Louis squeezes her tight, digging his face into her neck. “Perrie,” he sighs. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so fucking gay, but then I remember that, even if I was straight, no man on Earth could ever be good enough for you, least of all me,” he says.
“Damn right,” Perrie says, pulling away and smacking a kiss right on Louis’s mouth. “Now, please, go brush your teeth, and I’ll tell the girls you’re taking them to camp.”
Louis laughs, breathing one hot breath into Perrie’s face and scampering away before she can murder him for it. He closes himself in Perrie’s bathroom and digs out the toothbrush she keeps for him under the sink, and sets about making himself just presentable enough for drop-off at soccer camp.
By the time he comes back to the living room, the girls are waiting by the door like ill-trained marines, bouncing on their toes with their soccer bags slung over their shoulders.
“Ready?” Louis hums. “Off to Uncle Louis’s car!”
The girls shriek and stampede the front door, barely stopping long enough to give Perrie a goodbye kiss each before they’re shoving each other down the driveway and wrestling into the backseat of Louis’s car. Perrie sends Louis off with a kiss to the cheek and a slap on the ass, and Louis’s still smiling when he gets into the car, making sure both girls have their seatbelts done up before he even turns the car on.
It’s about a ten minute drive from Perrie’s house to South Elementary, and he earns himself one kiss from both girls before they tumble back out of the car, frolicking across the field to where the coaches and all the other kids are starting their warm ups. Louis turns the radio down low and folds his arms on the steering wheel for a minute or two, resting his chin on his arms and watching Izzy’s sloppy toe touches, Nikki’s over-excited high knees.
He gets back to thinking about what Izzy said earlier again, about being sad at life. He misses childhood, when being sad was way too hard a task when the whole world was made of magic and there was nothing, really, to worry about. The kids out on the field start passing balls back and forth, and Louis follows them lazily with his eyes, almost feeling the tingle in his own toes every time a tiny cleat makes contact with a child-sized soccer ball.
About five minutes into practice, Nikki takes a ball straight to the face, and Louis has half a mind to jump out of the car and run to her, but the other half of him just wants to observe, to see what she’ll do.
She goes to the coach first, hand on her reddened cheek, clearly holding back tears. The coach coos at her for a minute, touches her face a little to make sure nothing’s broken, and then leaves her alone to make her own decision, whether she’ll sit out on the bench to recover or shake it off and get back on the field. Nikki sits down in the grass for just a few minutes, breathing slowly, and then picks herself back up, running back to her partner like nothing happened at all.
Louis feels a lot of things, watching her, but most of all, he envies her. He wants to drag her off the field, sit her down and make her explain how she did that, how she took that ball to the face and barely shed a tear before she got back up and ran headlong back into the line of fire.
He doesn’t know why he can’t be like that, so fearless and resilient. He wishes he could take a soccer ball to the face and jump up smiling, but he can’t, he takes each ball and buries it somewhere deep within himself, weighing him down, making it harder and harder to keep getting up. He feels like he’s been taking balls to the face for a decade, one after the other, end to end, and pretty soon, he’s sure, one of these balls is just going to take him out for good.
-
His first thought when he gets home is that he’s been robbed, but on second thought, no, this mess is definitely actually his own doing. It looks like a bomb went off, for fuck’s sake; this is probably half the reason he’s so depressed, he tells himself, because his apartment looks like something they’d set up in a laboratory to put a rat in and see how long it took to go completely insane.
His bedroom is probably the worst of it, but that’s mostly Perrie’s doing. There are clothes strewn about like trees after a storm from her many, many attempts at dressing him up in something halfway decent last night, and Louis decides that, like Nikki picking herself up and getting back on the field, he needs to take some responsibility for his life and get his shit in order.
He starts in the bedroom, then, sorting all of his clothes into piles and filling his hamper to the brim. He brings it down to the basement when he’s finished and starts a load of laundry, and while it washes, he treks back upstairs to finish putting away everything that didn’t need to be washed. After that, he sorts through and organizes his bedside table, straightens the sheets on his bed, even opens the curtains over the window that look out on the parking lot, and once he’s done, one of those little child-size soccer balls that he’s been keeping lodged inside his chest seems to have been removed.
That seems to set the ball rolling, and now that he’s started cleaning up, he can’t stop. He moves to the living room, clears away all the clutter lying about, washes all the dishes and brushes all the crumbs out from between the couch cushions. The kitchen is an absolute tragedy; he’s pretty sure the last time anything in this apartment got properly cleaned was last summer, after his last breakdown, when Perrie came over and deep cleaned his entire life just to help him out a little.
It takes him several hours to clean the entire kitchen, but even when he’s finished with that, he can’t stop. He breaks out the actual cleaning supplies, shit he didn’t even know he had, like tile cleaner, damnit, he owes Perrie his life, and scrubs his entire apartment from top to bottom, including the sinks and the toilet and even the bottom part under the burners on the stove, where all the burnt crumbs collect when he attempts to cook. He cleans out his refrigerator, sorts through the pile of mail next to his front door, even vacuums the entire apartment, and when he finally stops to take a breath, the whole place is just about sparkling, and it’s gone dark outside.
He’s so proud of himself that he feels the need to text Perrie pictures. Maybe she’ll be proud of him, too, maybe she’ll show the girls, maybe Nikki, in particular, will be proud of him, and then Louis will finally feel like he’s done something worth anything. He hunts around for his phone for a bit, only to realize he’s left it in the car all day long, and he jogs outside to retrieve it.
There’s a few notifications on his lockscreen, but Louis doesn’t pay them much attention, running right back to his apartment to snap pictures for Perrie. There’s a text from a number he doesn’t have saved when he opens iMessage, but he doesn’t bother with that, either, finding Perrie’s text thread and tapping it open.
Look what I did!!!! he sends, along with four or five pictures of his pristine apartment. See!! I’m good!! I’m totally fine !!! I cleaned up my apartment, I can clean up my life.. This whole ‘living’ thing is my BITCH !!!!!
He waits a few minutes to see if Perrie will respond, but she’s probably very busy being a mother and a person who doesn’t exist solely for encouraging Louis, so she doesn’t text back right away. Louis decides to click over to his other unread text message while he waits, opening the new thread and frowning at the length of the message.
Hey Louis, I got your number from Niall, I hope that’s okay. If it’s not okay, just know that he really didn’t want to give it to me in the first place, but I kinda forced him.
You don’t have to answer this text if you don’t want to. I’ll totally understand. But… I’d really love to get the chance to talk to you at some point. If you want to text, that’s fine, or if I can buy you a drink, that would be even better.
I felt awful after you rushed out of the reunion last night. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Let me know if you’re free tonight, or any point in the next week, or whenever. It was nice to see you, even if it was brief. x Harry
Louis’s heart drops so violently he’s pretty sure it lands in his downstairs neighbor’s apartment, and suddenly his hands are shaking so hard he can’t even read the message through a second time. He drags himself to the kitchen and sits down at the table, putting the phone down flat just to read it again.
Hey Louis, I got your number from Niall, I hope that’s okay. If it’s—
He whines quietly, scrubbing his hands over his face and then through his hair, clammy fingers taking a few strands with them on their way. He feels like he’s going to be sick, and the first thing he thinks to do is to tap back to his text thread with Perrie to type out a follow up:
Nvm.
He spends the next ten minutes or so with his head in his hands, trying to force himself to breathe. He doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t know what to say, he needs to go down to the basement to get his laundry but he doesn’t trust himself not to just swan dive down the stairs, at this point, and fuck, fuck, he’s going to throw up—
His phone buzzes loudly on the table, and Louis nearly swats it across the kitchen with how hard he jumps. His stomach drops like he’s on a roller coaster, but it’s just Perrie calling, and Louis does his best to collect himself at least a little bit before he answers.
“Perrie?”
“Hey,” Perrie says, like nothing in the world is wrong. “Your apartment looks great.”
“Thanks,” Louis breathes, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m about to vomit all over it.”
“What happened?” Perrie asks.
Louis swallows, and then swallows again, and then tries to speak but has to swallow one more time. “Harry texted me.”
Perrie is silent for a long few seconds, and then a door slams somewhere on her end. “What?”
“Niall gave him my number,” Louis says, “and he texted me to ask me to get a drink with him.”
“Niall Horan will never walk again,” Perrie says, voice low.
“What the fuck do I do,” Louis says, rubbing at his face.
“What do you wanna do?” Perrie asks.
“Die,” Louis says immediately.
“Louis,” Perrie chides.
“Sorry, uh, pass away?” Louis tries.
“Louis.”
“I don’t know what I wanna do,” Louis whines. “I really don’t wanna get a drink with him, or talk to him at all,” he says.
“Then don’t answer,” Perrie says. “And I’ll call Niall and tell him where to put his head.”
Louis is quiet for a minute, pressing his fingers so hard against his left eye that he starts to see shapes. “Perrie…”
“Don’t fucking tell me you’re considering going out with him,” Perrie says quickly.
“I can’t just not answer the text, can I?” Louis says.
“Are you fucking insane?” Perrie says.
“I don’t know!” Louis cries. “Maybe!”
“Louis William Tomlinson,” Perrie says firmly, “sit the fuck down for a second and think about what you’re doing.”
Louis sighs, chewing at his lip for a long moment. “I can’t go,” he says, voice quiet, resigned.
“And why not?” asks Perrie, expectantly.
“Because I’m weak,” Louis says, “and he’s manipulative, and he’s only doing this to feel better about himself, and it’s not about me at all.”
“Exactly,” Perrie says.
“He’s about to get married for the second fucking time,” Louis adds.
“Yeah!” Perrie says.
“He broke my heart and shattered every single one of my dreams in the same night,” Louis says. “He’s a sack of dog shit and doesn’t deserve my time or energy.
“Mhm!” Perrie hums.
Louis’s quiet for another minute, finally getting his breathing back under control. “Should I post his number online?” he asks eventually, quietly.
“Probably,” Perrie says gravely.
Louis smiles, wiping at some of the moisture that’s somehow gathered in his eyes and taking a deep, slow breath. “Thank you, Perrie,” he mumbles.
“Forever and always, darling,” Perrie says sweetly.
“I think I need to go to bed,” Louis says.
“It’s 7pm,” Perrie says.
“Yeah,” Louis scoffs, “and your daughter woke me up at the ass crack of dawn this morning with her milk breath.”
“She woke you up at 9:30,” Perrie says, unimpressed.
“Exactly!” Louis says.
“Whatever,” Perrie sighs. “Goodnight, loser, I love you.”
“Are you gonna call Niall now?” Louis asks.
“I am absolutely going to call Niall now,” Perrie confirms.
Louis laughs, shaking his head. “Go easy on him,” he pleads. “He’s soft.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Perrie says, and then the line clicks dead.
Louis sits there for a little while longer, reads Harry’s text approximately two hundred more times, and then jams his thumb so hard against the lock button that his nail almost breaks until the phone turns all the way off.
He leaves it on the kitchen table and shuffles to his squeaky clean bathroom, having himself a nice, long, hot shower. His laundry can sit in the dryer until tomorrow, he guesses, because suddenly, he’s so exhausted that the idea of doing anything besides going to bed right now makes him want to die.
Something about peeling back his neatly tucked sheets and climbing into his cold, empty bed while he’s still warm and soft from the shower hits him somewhere deep in his chest, just hard enough to break his heart all over again.
He curls up on his side and sobs into his pillow, pulling the covers right up and over his head. Now that the dam is broken, he can’t contain it, and it all comes rushing out at once, everything he’s been holding in since last night, when he turned around and saw Harry fucking Styles come striding into the function room, as regal and elegant as the Harry that Louis knew never was. It hurts, it hurts so fucking bad, even after all this time, to look at that Harry, that pompous, arrogant, self-obsessed, vindictive, manipulative Harry and know that deep, deep down, there’s got to be a shred of the old Harry somewhere in there, the Harry that used to cry at the mere thought of not being Louis’s favorite person, that used to do everything in his power to make Louis happy, to make Louis proud.
Louis hopes Harry’s proud of himself now, because Louis sure as hell isn’t.
+
It’s weird, being the smallest ones in the school again, especially since the school itself is bigger, too, not perfectly tailored to fit tiny bodies, the way South Elementary School was. The desks are bigger, the chairs are higher, the hallways are longer, and there are so many people everywhere Louis looks, tall lockers that loom way up high over his head, teachers with mean faces and an empty stretch of blacktop where there should be a playground.
Whitfield Middle School is a scary, heartless place, and despite all the growing Louis, Harry, Niall and Perrie have done in the past four years, fifth grade seems like it’s going to be the ultimate test of their will to live.
Within the first week, Louis’s already picked out all the things he loves about middle school, and all the things he hates, helpfully listed as follows: he loves that he gets to see Liam, Niall’s used-to-be cousin every single day in classes, he loves that he is finally officially a Big Kid, and he loves that they get to get up and move from classroom to classroom during the day now, as each class is held in a different room of the school. He hates that he’s the smallest kid in the building, and he hates that Perrie’s already made three new friends, girls, in the week that they’ve been here, and he especially hates that everything is changing.
Perrie decided, independently of Louis and the others, that they needed some more girls in their little band of misfits, because everyone except Perrie was a boy and a girl needs girls, apparently, to talk about stuff that they can’t talk about with boys. Whitfield Middle hosts all the graduates from both South and North Elementary, which means that fifth grade brings a whole new half of a population to their grade, and Perrie has truly chosen the cream of the crop to join their circle.
Liam was the first proper addition, of course, from North Elementary. They’ve been friends with him as long as they’ve been friends with Niall, because they used to be step-cousins before Liam’s mom divorced Niall’s uncle, but they still get to see each other all the time. There’s also Jade, who comes to school every day in the most outlandish outfits she can get past her mom, Jesy, who has more hair on her head than Perrie has freckles on her face and whose energy level gives even Louis a run for his money, and Leigh-Anne, who seems much too cool for any of them, until she gets started talking on and on about musical theater.
In accordance to Louis’s promise all those years ago in first grade, Louis and Harry are still the very best of friends, and the others know very well not to do anything to disturb that. They still ride the bus home together every single day, but now that they’re older and more responsible, they’re allowed to decide where they go after school, and so they trade off every day of the week getting off the bus together at one of their houses to do their homework and mess around until dinner. It’s become a routine, even though it’s only the first week of middle school, but like everything else in Louis and Harry’s friendship, it’s destined to last forever.
Recess, as always, is everyone’s favorite time of the day. It’s shorter now than it was in elementary school, and next year it’ll be even shorter, and in seventh grade, it goes away altogether, so they enjoy every minute of it, kicking a soccer ball back and forth between their little group in the grass beside the blacktop.
The girls are off somewhere else, jumping rope or collecting worms or something, but that’s alright, because Liam has called a top-secret meeting of the boys and they’re all huddled as close as can be while still being able to kick the soccer ball around.
“I think,” Liam says, voice hushed very slightly, “I have a problem.”
“What’s wrong?” Niall asks, kicking the ball toward Louis without taking his eyes off of Liam. He misses spectacularly, and Liam waits while Louis jogs away to get the ball.
“I think I have a crush on someone,” Liam says, looking genuinely pained about it. “My sister said it would happen someday soon, and that I should tell her when it does happen, but I don’t really know how to tell.”
“My sister says it’s like having bugs in your stomach, or something,” Harry says, looking horrified on Liam’s behalf. “Is it horrible?”
“Kinda,” Liam says. “It’s like, whenever she talks to me, my face gets all hot and I forget how to be a person.”
“You should ask her out,” Louis says, kicking the ball over to Harry. “Or at least see if she likes you back, first.”
“Maybe we could help you find out!” Niall says. “Who is she?”
“I can’t tell you,” Liam hisses, his face going red very quickly.
“Why not?” Niall pouts.
“You’ll make fun of me,” Liam says, looking down.
“No we won’t,” Louis says gently.
“Tell us!” Harry says. “If you tell yours, I’ll tell you mine.”
“You have a crush on someone, too?” Niall asks.
Harry goes even redder than Liam, looking over at Louis. “Uh, no.”
“See? Harry was gonna trick me into telling,” Liam says. “I’m not telling you who it is, so bug off.”
“I wasn’t gonna trick you,” Harry mumbles, but no one’s listening to him anymore.
“Well, then, how are we supposed to help you?” Louis says, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I don’t know!” Liam groans. “I don’t want to have a crush!”
“But you do,” Niall says, “and think, Liam, you could have a girlfriend. No one in the fifth grade has a girlfriend! You could be the first kid in the fifth grade to have a girlfriend!”
“Or I could be the first kid in the fifth grade to be rejected by a girl,” Liam says.
“Nah,” Louis says. “I heard Robby Jenkins got rejected by Katie Barnett on Wednesday.”
“Good,” Harry sniffs, “she can do better.”
“See?” Niall says. “You’ve got nothing to lose, Li.”
Liam flushes again, glancing over at something, or someone, on the blacktop. Louis tries to follow his gaze, but Liam snaps his eyes back to the ground before Louis can figure out who he’s looking at.
“Just ask her out,” Louis says, accepting a pass from Niall and kicking the ball back to Liam. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Okay, fine,” Liam says. “I’ll ask her out.”
The other three cheer, high fiving each other like they’ve won some sort of game. Liam keeps blushing on and off all throughout recess, especially when the girls come running over to show them what they’ve been drawing with chalk on the blacktop. Louis keeps an eye on Liam, wondering what he’s feeling, why his cheeks go cherry red randomly like it’s something inside of him that’s got him so squirmy and embarrassed.
Louis’s never had a crush before, he doesn’t think, but he’s so curious to know what it feels like. He doesn’t think he’d like it, if it’s anything like what Liam is going through; Liam looks so uncomfortable, so pained by whatever he keeps thinking about. Louis doesn’t ever want to have to be that ashamed, especially not of liking someone. He thinks that should be special, something to be proud of, to celebrate. But what does he know?
+
They don’t have to wait very long to find out who Liam has been crushing on.
It all happens very fast; they’re sitting at the lunch table, chatting about some commercial Jade saw on television yesterday, and out of the corner of Louis’s eye, Liam pulls a scrap of notebook paper out of his backpack and writes something on it before folding up small. He gets up sharply, gaining the attention of the entire eight-person lunch table, and walks two chairs down, to where Leigh-Anne is sitting on the corner, next to Niall and across from Jesy. He puts the note down in front of her and then walks back to his own chair, sitting down with a horrible scraping sound of his chair against the tile floor.
No one says a word. Leigh-Anne picks up the note, her frown softening as she reads it over, and then she leans down to dig a pen out of her bag where it’s resting at her feet under the table. She makes a quick mark on the note and folds it back up, handing it over to Niall, who hands it to Harry, who hands it to Liam.
Liam opens the note, hands trembling, and after the longest four seconds of Louis’s life, grins the biggest grin Louis’s ever seen on him.
All the boys start cheering immediately, putting two and two together and realizing that Liam and Leigh-Anne have just begun what will surely be a whirlwind, passionate romance from two chairs apart in the Whitfield Middle School cafeteria. The girls huddle around Leigh-Anne immediately, asking what on Earth is going on and why the boys are all cheering, and Liam tucks the note carefully in his shirt pocket.
Just like that, Liam has a girlfriend, and he is automatically the coolest person at the table.
Lunch ends a few minutes later, and as they all get up from the table to head to their next classes, Leigh-Anne lingers by the corner of the table, waiting for Liam to approach. She grabs onto his hand when he gets close enough, and then the two of them break away from the group, heading for the stairwell with their hands locked between them.
“Young love,” Perrie sighs dramatically, leaning back into Louis’s chest and faux-fainting. “How adorable!”
“I can’t believe Liam is the first one of us to get a girlfriend,” Niall grumbles, hiking his backpack up higher on his shoulders.
“I can absolutely believe that Leigh-Anne is the first one of us to get a boyfriend,” Jade says, voice tinged with melancholy as she looks down at herself, and then toward Jesy, and finally toward Perrie. “She’s so pretty.”
“We’re pretty, too,” Perrie says, linking her arms with Jade and Jesy and skipping out of the cafeteria. Louis smiles watching them, glancing over at Harry to find that Harry is already watching him.
As they head down the hall toward their next classes, Harry stays firmly at Louis’s side, the back of his hand bumping against the back of Louis’s hand every now again. Louis looks up at him each time it happens, but each time, Harry is staring firmly ahead, not seeming to know or care that his knuckles keep brushing Louis’s, or that Louis is fighting a very strange urge to latch on.
Maybe it’s just that the image of Liam and Leigh-Anne holding hands is so fresh in his memory, so prevalent in his thoughts, but he could swear that he really wants to hold Harry’s hand right now. He doesn’t get the chance, though, because before Louis is ready, his math classroom comes up on his left, and Harry bumps his hand one more time.
“See you on the bus,” Harry says, shooting him a tight smile and then disappearing into the crowd of hurrying fifth graders.
Louis thinks about it for the rest of the day. He feels weird about it, but he can’t stop imagining it; Harry’s fingers are a little bigger and a little longer than his own, so if they held hands, Harry’s fingers would probably wrap all the way around Louis’s. If they laced their fingers, though, Louis would be able to rub his thumb over the back of Harry’s hand, to feel his veins and bones through his skin, and Harry would still probably be able to cover most of Louis’s hand with his own. He’s never held Harry’s hand, not on purpose, not without the intention of leading him somewhere or pulling him back from something, but now that he’s started imagining it, he feels like he won’t rest until he makes it happen. He feels like an absolute creep just for thinking it, but he can’t imagine anything nicer than the soft flesh of Harry’s palm against the soft flesh of his own.
Louis gets to the bus first, picks a seat near the back, and shoves his earbuds in. He slides down enough that he can rest his knees on the back of the seat in front of him and turns on the loudest music he can find in his iPod, hoping that maybe Harry will just get on the bus and say nothing and he can keep fighting these weird, creepy thoughts in private until he gets all the way home.
They’re still the only two in their friend group on this bus, which is kind of nice, in a way. They’re still best friends, of course, but their other friends have wormed their way into almost every other aspect of their lives, and having the short bus ride to and from school, just the two of them, is a lovely way to bookend their time together.
When Harry gets on the bus, he sits down beside Louis as wordlessly as Louis hoped he would, but, like he can read Louis’s mind, he bumps Louis’s hand with his own several times as he sets about slipping his backpack off and putting it on the floor. Louis figures Harry must want his attention, so he takes out one earbud, looking up at him.
Harry snatches the earbud out of his hand, pressing extra close to Louis’s side so that he can loop the earbud around his head. Louis’s got the right earbud in his right ear, and when Harry puts the left one in his left ear, it forces their heads very close together, until they’re pressed together from head to knee, both sitting curled up on the plush vinyl bus seat.
It’s making Louis’s heart race, inexplicably, to be so close to Harry. The bus pulls away from the curb after a few minutes, and Louis becomes very aware of his left hand, sandwiched between his left thigh and Harry’s right thigh. Harry’s got both his hands resting on his stomach, so Louis pulls his own hand out from between their legs, resting a loose fist on the edge of his own hip and keeping a discrete eye on Harry’s hands.
He waits for the bus to go over the bump at the end of the school driveway, and uses it as an excuse to pretend to jump, reaching out to grab the closest thing, which just so happens to be Harry’s hand, for leverage. Harry doesn’t flinch, seems almost like he was expecting it; he turns his hand over at lightning speed and catches Louis’s hand in his own, jamming both of their hands back down between their thighs, where Louis’s hand was earlier, so that no one can see the way Louis clings to him, fingers slotting together exactly the way Louis pictured they would.
Louis turns to direct his smile out the window, and Harry doesn’t react visibly at all, but Louis can feel how quick his pulse is, how hard he’s squeezing Louis’s hand, like he’s afraid Louis’s going to let go. They don’t say a word about it, or at all, but they keep their hands laced together for the entirety of the bus ride. When the bus pulls up in front of Harry’s driveway, Harry gets up and walks away like nothing happened at all, but as the bus pulls away again, he shoots Louis a pleased, mischievous grin through the window, like they’ve just pulled off something very sneaky and naughty.
Louis’s heart races the entire way to his own bus stop, and then for a few hours after that, his hand tingling where Harry’s skin touched his own.
-
Louis wakes up the following morning with what can only be described as an emotional hangover; his head is pounding, his eyes are sore and swollen from crying, and his entire body is aching like he had his muscles tensed up all night long which, he supposes, he probably did.
He had dream after dream about Harry, about their childhood, about their adulthood, about losing him, finding him, and then losing him again. It’s probably pretty pathetic that one text has the ability to send him into such an all-consuming tailspin, but here he is, still spinning a little bit, even as he pries himself out of bed and heads for the kitchen.
The first thing he does is turn his phone back on. The next thing he does is put the phone into the freezer, because he can’t actually bear to look at it just yet. He goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth and combs his hair, and then heads back to the kitchen to make himself a tea, and then, only when he’s got two pieces of white bread popped down into the toaster, he takes his chilly phone out of the freezer.
The amount of notifications that pop up all at once make him a little weak in the knees, so he sinks down to the floor, leaning back against the fridge and carefully selecting the first notification. His phone pulls up a text thread with Niall, which was blank before the few texts Niall sent him last night.
Niall: i’m so sorry
Niall: he wouldn’t stop asking
Niall: and i thought maybe it’d be kinda nice for you two to talk things out
Niall: but i’m so stupid i’m so sorry
Niall: i hope you’re not mad at me
Niall: i’m so sorry
Niall: can i buy you a drink
Niall: or like, a car?
Louis frowns, backing out of the thread and opening up his thread with Perrie, instead, where there’s a new message waiting, too.
Perrie: So um, I might’ve fucked up…...Niall was still with Harry and Liam when I called him and I didn’t give him a chance to like tell me that before I laid into him so uhh now Harry knows that you’ve seen the text and that we’re pissed about it so uhhhh haha oopsie!!! Call me when you wake up so I know you haven’t killed yourself!!!!
Louis sighs, letting his head thud back against the fridge once, twice, three times. He backs out of that thread, too, and finds that the last message waiting is from the number he doesn’t have saved, the one that started this whole mess.
???: I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any emotional stress. Or, well, more emotional stress than I’m sure I’ve already caused you in the past…
I won’t be expecting any kind of reply from you. I’m really, genuinely sorry, and I hope you’re doing okay. In the least sarcastic tone you can imagine, have a nice life, Louis. You deserve better. x Harry
Louis hates him. He fucking hates him so much, hates the way he texts in paragraphs with perfect grammar, like he’s emailing a fucking lawyer instead of texting the guy into whose chest he’s been slowly twisting a dagger for ten. Fucking. Years.
But— fuck, he can’t believe he’s even thinking this, but he misses Harry so fucking much. He’s been thinking a lot about childhood in the past 48 hours, and for him, there is no childhood to remember that doesn’t include Harry. He’s never known life without Harry; for eighteen years, Harry was the other half of him, always beside him, always the first person Louis thought of when he woke up in the morning, and the last thing he thought of before he fell asleep. It’s hard to break habits like that, impossible, even, or if it is possible, Louis still hasn’t been able to figure it out.
Before the reunion, Louis thought that the last time he’d seen Harry would be the last time he ever saw him, in person at least. Seeing him in the flesh, though, ten entire years later, has thrown him for more of a loop than he ever could’ve imagined. He feels like an addict, and he’s been ten years sober, but the other night, he got a taste of that sweet torture in his veins and now there’s an opening, right here in his trembling hand, to try it again, and at the end of the day, he thinks they all knew that he was never strong enough to resist Harry Styles. After everything they’ve been through, or maybe especially because of everything they’ve been through, he cannot turn him down.
He types out eight different responses, but none of them feel right. After half an hour of typing and deleting and typing and rephrasing and deleting and typing, he closes his eyes and hits send, waiting until he hears the little swoop noise to pry his eyes back open, looking at the little blue bubble at the bottom of the screen.
Maybe we could get a drink sometime.
It’s hardly the least creative message he’s ever sent, but it gets the point across. Maybe. Maybe they can get a drink. Maybe they can talk. Maybe they can work things out, learn to smile around each other again, figure out a way to not be strangers anymore. Or maybe they can’t. Only time will tell.
He puts his phone back in the freezer and pops his toast down for another few seconds, because by now it’s ice cold and Louis’s not even hungry, but he’s going to force himself to eat anyway. He puts his tea in the microwave and butters his toast and eats it and then he drinks his tea and then he goes to his bedroom to get dressed, folding his pajamas neatly into his dresser, and then gently sits down on his bed, picks up his pillow, and screams into it for approximately fifteen minutes.
When he’s done, he goes back to the freezer to check his phone, finding a single message waiting for him.
???: Tonight at 8? Pomona’s?
Louis resists the urge to smash his phone off his face, holding his breath while he types out his reply.
See you then.
He calls Perrie the second the message is sent, finding himself back on the kitchen floor, but on his back this time, spread eagle and staring up at the ceiling.
“Louis?” Perrie answers on the first ring, despite the fact that it’s 9am; sometimes Louis forgets that Perrie has two small children, and that it’s their summer vacation, and that usually the entire household is up and ready to go at 7am no matter what the day’s activities entail.
Louis groans long and low into the phone, closing his eyes. “Come over at four. Bring the girls.”
“What?” Perrie asks. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Louis says. “I need you to help turn me into the hottest piece of ass that Harry Styles ever let go of.”
“Louis,” Perrie says, her voice dark. “What did you do?”
Louis laughs loudly, picking his head up just to thunk it back against the tile floor. “I don’t know!” he shouts, still laughing manically, tears building in his eyes.
“You absolute fucking mess,” Perrie says. “Louis—”
“Please help me!” Louis shrieks. “Perrie!”
“Of course I’ll help you, asshat,” Perrie says. “We’ll be there, but I’m instructing the girls that they are not to be happy about it!”
“I love you,” Louis says.
“I love you too, you disaster,” Perrie says, and then she hangs up on him. Louis figures he deserves that much.
-
Louis spends the rest of the morning being anxious and, quite frankly, disastrous, pacing around the apartment and trying to distract himself. He talks himself out of going, and then talks himself back into it, over and over and over until he thinks he might just save himself the trouble and throw himself out the window, but there’s a chance that that won’t fully kill him, and Perrie will have to finish the job when she gets here.
Eventually, he plants himself on the couch with his guitar, his notebook open on the coffee table in front of him. It’s been so long since he’s been able to write a song, especially anything he’s actually proud of, but right now, he’s got so many thoughts inside his head, all of them bumping around, fighting each other for his attention, he needs to get them all out somehow.
Before he knows it, he’s got three pages of his notebook filled to the margins, guitar abandoned on the floor, and someone is ringing his doorbell like they’re trying to choke it to death. He checks his phone for the time, and then rushes to the intercom, holding the button down to silence the noise.
“You’re early,” he says, frowning at the speaker.
“Something tells me we’re gonna need all the time we can get,” Perrie says. “Let us in, we have pizza.”
Louis rolls his eyes, buzzing them in and then returning to the couch. He closes his notebook and stashes it under the couch cushion, replacing his guitar on the stand in the corner, and before he’s ready, Perrie and the girls come storming into the apartment.
“Way to go, stupid!” Nikki says before they’re even all the way in the door, like she can’t wait to say it.
“Nikki, don’t say that word,” Perrie says. “You’re right, but don’t say it.”
“Pizza, please,” Louis says, taking the box from Perrie’s hand and plopping down on the couch again. Perrie sits down in the armchair next to the couch, and the girls crowd right in around Louis, waiting patiently for him to hand them each a slice of pizza.
“Uncle Louis,” Izzy says, once they’re all munching happily. “Who’s Harry?”
Louis looks up at Perrie, but Perrie won’t meet his eyes, staring down at her pizza like it’s the most interesting thing she’s ever seen in her life.
“Um,” Louis says, looking down at his pizza, too. “Harry is someone that I used to love very, very much.”
“Like how you love Mommy?” Izzy asks.
“No,” Louis says, looking over at Perrie again. “More like… more like how Mommy used to love Daddy.”
Izzy and Nikki share a glance, and then no one speaks for a very long minute.
“You don’t love him anymore, though?” Nikki asks.
“Girls,” Perrie says quietly, firmly. “Don’t pry, it’s not polite.”
“It’s not that I don’t love him anymore,” Louis says, staring down at the floor. “Like, I think I will always love him, because for the first 18 years of my life I only knew what it was like to exist next to him, and for the past 10 years I’ve been kinda floundering without him and trying to learn how to live without him, but it’s really hard,” he says softly.
No one says anything for another few minutes. Perrie is as still as a statue, determinedly not meeting Louis’s eyes.
“Izzy,” Louis says, glancing down at the wide-eyed six-year-old beside him, “can you imagine if Nikki randomly decided one day that she never wanted to talk to you again, and that she wanted to find someone else to be her sister? Someone that was completely different from you in every sense? If she spent her whole life growing up with you, next to you, loving you, and then she all of a sudden just decided to change her life completely, walking away from every direction the two of you were planning to go?” he asks.
Izzy’s eyes fill up with tears, and she looks across Louis’s lap at Nikki, who also looks appropriately horrified. “I would never do that,” Nikki says firmly.
“Good,” Louis says, reaching down to squeeze each of their hands. “I hope nothing like that ever happens to you.”
“Harry did that to you?” Izzy asks.
“Yeah,” Louis mumbles. “He decided he didn’t love me the same way I loved him, and that he cared less about me than he did about himself, and he left me forever,” he says. “But it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen him, and he’s finally decided he wants to see me again.”
“But why do you want to see him?” Nikki asks, nose scrunched up.
“Well,” Louis sighs, “I don’t really know.”
“Because,” Perrie finally pipes up, “Harry is a very rotten person, and he knows that, but he doesn’t want to believe it, so he thinks that seeing Uncle Louis again will fix what he did to him. But tell me, girls, do you think it’s going to fix anything?” Perrie says, eyes finally locked on Louis now that Louis can’t bring himself to look up at her anymore.
“I don’t think it’ll fix anything,” Nikki says, “unless Harry decides he loves Uncle Louis again.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Louis says quickly. “And I don’t want that to happen. I’m not going to let him trick me into anything again.”
“Again?” Nikki says curiously.
“Y’know what, girls,” Louis says, laughing awkwardly, “I don’t know if we need to be having this conversation right now.”
“All you need to know,” Perrie says, “is that Uncle Louis is a very sweet, caring, good hearted person, and anyone who could decide they don’t love him to bits probably doesn’t have a heart in them in the first place.”
Louis smiles sadly, dropping his eyes. He wants to believe that that’s true, that Harry’s a heartless, soulless, evil person, but he knows that he’ll never be able to believe that. He knows that Harry has a heart, because he’s seen it, he’s lived in it, made a home in it, and that’s what makes this so much harder. He still doesn’t know why exactly he was evicted, and he probably never will, but he’ll never stop wondering about it. Maybe he can use tonight as an excuse to corner Harry, grill him about the whole thing, and finally find out where it all went wrong. That’s the thing that’s had him fucked up for all this time, isn’t it? Louis has never even been able to figure out what happened, what he did that drove Harry away so quickly and permanently. He had given up hope years ago that Harry would ever come back into his life, but now, here he is. What’s Louis going to do with this one, precious chance?
-
It’s a good thing Perrie came over so early, because they spend hours, the four of them, digging through Louis’s closet to find the absolute best outfit he owns. All of his hard work from the other day is decimated, and his room is a disaster again within minutes, and Louis hasn’t been clothes shopping in over a year and nothing fits him quite right and Louis’s just about to break down and beg the girls to take him to the mall when finally, by some miracle, Izzy comes crawling out of the very back of Louis’s closet with a light wash denim jacket that Louis forgot he even had draped over her shoulders, yelling about having found treasure.
It is, as it turns out, treasure. Within minutes of the find, Perrie has pulled together the perfect outfit, and then she ushers the girls out of the room and closes the door behind herself to let Louis try it on.
It’s simple, but it’s perfect. A pair of worn, but still tight black jeans, a white t-shirt with a black Vans logo in the center, and the denim jacket that Izzy dug out, the sleeves rolled just below his elbows, to show off all of his tattoos. As soon as he’s dressed, he struts out to the living room, walking the hallway like a runway.
The girls cheer, and Perrie pretends to faint, and for just a few minutes, Louis isn’t quite so nervous anymore. Whatever happens, he’s still going to be Louis, and Perrie is still going to be his best friend, and the girls are always going to be his favorite people under the age of ten that have ever existed.
Once Louis has been primped and perfected, Perrie forces the last two slices of pizza down his throat, because “I will not let you get drunk with Harry Styles tonight, Louis, I will not,” and then, just after 7:00, Louis begins the process of kicking them out so that he can finish mentally preparing in peace for what’s about to happen.
He almost makes it, too, until Izzy takes a running jump into his arms on their way out the door, and nuzzles close to Louis’s ear.
“If Harry never loves you again,” Izzy whispers, her breath hot and inexplicably sticky against Louis’s neck, “it’s okay, because I’ll love you forever and ever, Uncle Louis.”
Something inside Louis snaps, just like that, and he presses his face into Izzy’s tiny shoulder, sobbing once.
“Isabella!” Perrie growls, sounding mortified. “What did you do!”
“I love you, Izzy,” Louis says, holding her for a second longer before lowering her gently onto her feet. She’s got teary eyes, too, when she looks up at him, but it’s probably mostly from the shock of seeing an adult cry. “I’ll love you forever and ever, too.”
Izzy grins and hugs him once more, pressing a kiss to his tear stained cheek and then running off out the door. Perrie hesitates, like she isn’t sure if she should be responsible for putting Louis back together right now, but Louis just hugs her one more time, too, and then waves them off down the hallway.
He spends the last half hour of his free time getting himself in check, squeezing out his last few tears and then vowing to put his emotions away in a locked box for the rest of the evening. He feels like he’s going to be sick by the time he has to leave, but he will not, he will not be sick over Harry Styles. Not again, anyway.
He spends about ten minutes standing by the front door of his apartment, keys in his hand, shoes tied and wallet in his pocket, staring into the middle distance. He can’t go, there’s no way he can do this. He can’t believe he thought he could do this. Fuck it, he thinks, Harry Styles can sit in that bar all night long, if he wants to, Louis is not showing up.
But then again, he figures, he’d be doing to Harry exactly what Harry did to him 10 years ago. It’s almost appealing enough to make Louis kick off his shoes, but at the end of the day, he can’t stomach the idea of standing someone up, even Harry.
He takes a deep breath, holds it, and opens his front door, steps through the opening, and locks it behind himself. There’s no turning back now.
+
For the last quarter of fifth grade, students are given the opportunity to try out every elective that Whitfield Middle School has to offer, and by the end of the year, they’re supposed to have found the elective that they’ll be joining once they enter the sixth grade. It’s an exciting few weeks, a nice way to shake up the same old schedule that they’ve been stuck in since September, and a really good excuse to spend time goofing off with one’s friends.
They get a week of each of the six different electives to choose from: sports, drama, chorus, woodshop, home ec, and computers. It’s the best six weeks of the fifth grade, by anyone’s standards, and by the time registration comes around at the end of May, most of their little friend group knows exactly which elective they’ll be picking up next year.
Liam and Leigh-Anne, suddenly the token couple of the class of 2009, are both taking home ec, because Leigh-Anne wants to learn how to sew, and Liam wants to be a feminist, or something. Niall’s doing chorus, because he’s already in the marching band, too, which is an outside club, and he wants to be a fully rounded musician by the time he graduates 8th grade. Jesy, Jade and Perrie are all joining drama, mostly so that they’ll have an in with the after-school drama club; Jade has a dream of being the designated makeup and costume artist, Jesy wants to participate in as many musicals as she can, and Perrie just loves the idea of all the attention being on a stage would grant her.
Before the six weeks of electives began, Louis and Harry made a pact to choose the same elective, because that seems like something best friends should do, right? It would guarantee them at least one class together, and that seems like the most important thing to either of them right now. Louis’s heard that sixth grade is a very busy period of one’s life and, more than anything, he’s just worried he’s going to be missing out on precious Harry Time.
“So,” Louis says, plopping his lunchbox down on the lunch table and sitting down in the chair across from Harry. “Registration is next week.”
“Yeah,” Harry says, picking up his school-bought bagel pizza and nibbling at the edge.
“Have you thought about which elective you want to pick?” Louis asks, but it’s really more of a formality than anything; he’s absolutely sure that they both want to do drama. The drama week was the most fun by miles, and Louis knows Harry enjoyed himself just as much as Louis did.
“Um,” Harry says, staring down at his bagel pizza for a moment. “I think I wanna do chorus.”
“Yeah! Me too—” Louis starts, but he frowns when Harry’s words register in his head. Chorus? “Chorus?” he says, cocking his head at Harry.
“It was really fun,” Harry shrugs. “I was thinking we should do that, y’know, because it sounds easy and we get to sing, and stuff.”
“That’s so lame,” Louis says, without thinking. Hurt flashes across Harry’s face, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came. “I mean, c’mon, no one goes to the chorus concerts! We should do drama, for sure. Everyone comes to the plays, and think about how much fun it’ll be!”
“Drama? Really?” Harry says. “I don’t know…”
“Harry, c’mon, we have to do drama,” Louis says. “Everyone’s doing drama!”
“No,” Harry says. “Niall’s doing chorus, and Liam and Leigh-Anne are doing home ec.”
“Yeah, but, everyone else,” Louis says. “It’ll be so fun,” he whines, “please?”
“I really want to do chorus, Lou,” Harry says quietly, like he’s afraid of disappointing Louis. Louis, as it turns out, is thoroughly disappointed.
“You can sing in drama, too, y’know!” Louis says. “They put on a musical and a regular play every year, so, like, it’s essentially the same thing.”
“I don’t want to do acting, though,” Harry says, scrunching up his nose. “Why can’t we do chorus, and you can join the after-school drama club?”
“No one joins the after-school club if they’re not in drama class, Harry,” Louis says. “It’s, like, a rule.”
“Is it?” Harry frowns.
“Well, not officially, maybe, but still, no one does it,” Louis says.
“I don’t know,” Harry says, looking down. “I’d prefer to sing in the chorus.”
“Fine, then,” Louis says, trying not to be annoyed. “I’m doing drama, though.”
Harry looks up quickly, hurt settling in his eyes this time. “You’d do it without me?”
“Well, I’m not doing chorus, so,” he shrugs. “It’s not like we have to do the same thing, anyway.”
“Yes, we do have to do the same thing!” Harry argues. “We’ve always done the same thing, we’re best friends, it’s what we do!”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Louis says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not doing chorus.”
Harry looks like he’s going to cry, dropping his bagel pizza onto his tray and fleeing the table. Louis feels like part of him just got up and went with him, the part of him that had any sort of an appetite, apparently, because by the time everyone else makes it over to the table, he hasn’t even unzipped his lunchbox.
“Where’s Harry?” Niall asks, sitting down in the seat next to Harry’s empty chair.
“Bathroom, I think,” Louis says, but his voice sounds hollow. Perrie sits down next to Louis, and the rest of the table fills in slowly, but Harry never comes back for his bagel pizza.
They’ve never fought before, Louis and Harry, in all the years they’ve been friends. They’ve disagreed about things, sure, argued about what movie to watch or which Power Ranger is cooler, but they’ve never fought to the extent that Harry runs off, or that Louis spends an entire lunch period staring at the clock, waiting for him to come back.
When lunch ends, Harry’s tray of food is still abandoned, so Louis picks it up and clears it for him. His stomach growls all the way through his next class, lamenting the neglect of his turkey and cheese sandwich, but he can hardly think about anything except Harry, how upset he looked when he decided he couldn’t even sit at the same table as Louis for another second. He doesn’t see Harry again for the rest of the day, which is typical for the way their schedules work out, but at the end of the day, when Louis picks out a seat on the bus and waits for Harry to join him so they can talk about this, Harry doesn’t show. Louis waits until the bus starts moving to sit up, panicked, searching for Harry in the sea of heads, and his heart sinks when he spots Harry’s curly head three seats in front of him, staring determinedly out the window.
There’s no way Harry didn’t see him, and there’s no way Harry wouldn’t also be looking around like a lonesome toddler in the supermarket if he thought Louis might have missed the bus. Harry didn’t sit with him intentionally, because Louis hurt his feelings, and now he’s going to ignore Louis until Louis gives him what he wants.
Well, Louis thinks, two can play at that game. He sinks back down in his seat and does his very, very best not to cry for the rest of the bus ride home, and when the bus stops outside of Harry’s house, Louis looks down, and doesn’t wait for Harry to wave like he usually does. He doesn’t look to see if Harry even looks up at him as the bus drives away, so he definitely doesn’t see the tears streaming down Harry’s cheeks as he trudges up his driveway.
+
Harry doesn’t talk to him for the entire week leading up to registration. It’s the longest week of Louis’s life.
Louis thinks a few times about caving, about signing up for chorus and seeing if he can join the after-school drama club as an outsider, even though he’s pretty sure no one’s ever done it. At the end of the day, though, Harry is acting like a baby, and Louis is not going to cater to it. So what if they do different things? So what if they have slightly different interests? Louis’s willing to put it all behind them if Harry is, but first Harry’s got to stop running from him in the hallways, missing the bus so that his mom has to drive him to school, and eating lunch in the library.
They have the same registration slot, since their names are so close to each other in the alphabet. Registration goes on all day long on Monday, and everyone meets with one of the five guidance counselors for fifteen minutes to get their schedules for next year all squared away. Louis’s slot isn’t until 2:15, one of the last slots of the day, and he’s only a few kids away from Harry in the line, watching Harry’s leg jiggle anxiously as he waits to speak with one of the counselors in the cafeteria.
The actual registration process isn’t very complicated at all; the counselor asks him how this year went, how he liked his classes, if he thought anything was too hard or too easy, and which elective he’d like to be placed into next year. He tells her that everything was good, his classes were boring but he learned a lot, and he would like to take drama class, please.
As he gets up to walk away from the table, he sees Harry a few tables down, finishing up his own session. Louis slows down a little so that when Harry gets up, they’ll be forced to walk together back to where the teachers are handing out hall passes to go back to class, and maybe they can finally talk about this. Harry gets up at just the right time, steps on Louis a little bit as he backs away from the table and then, upon seeing who he just stepped on, bursts into tears.
“I’m sorry,” Harry sobs, hunching forward to slam his face against Louis’s chest. Louis holds him awkwardly, shocked by the outburst. “I picked chorus. I was going to pick drama to be with you, I really was, but then she asked and I said chorus and now we won’t see each other at all next year and—”
“Harry,” Louis says, petting soothingly at his back. “Dude, it’s fine. Listen, I’m not mad, okay? And you shouldn’t be upset, either. We both picked different things, right? We both decided to take different classes. We’re still best friends, you know? We’ll still see each other on the bus, and at lunch, and we might even have another class together, you never know,” he says.
“Really?” Harry sniffles, looking up at him. “We’re still best friends?”
“Of course we’re still best friends,” Louis grins. “We had a fight, that doesn’t mean we aren’t friends anymore. Nothing’s ever gonna make me stop being your best friend, Harry, nothing in the whole world,” he says.
Harry smiles, wiping the tears away from his cheeks and nodding once. “Will you come to my chorus concerts?” he asks shyly.
“Every single one of them,” Louis says. “Will you come to my plays?”
“Obviously,” Harry says. “Maybe this will be kinda fun.”
“Of course it’ll be fun,” Louis says, accepting his hall pass from the teacher at the door to the cafeteria happily. “Hey, wanna come over after school today and practice our singing and acting?”
“I’ll have to ask my mom,” Harry says, but he’s already beaming.
“Cool,” Louis says, and when they part ways at the end of the hallway to go back to their separate classes, it doesn’t even feel like the end of the world.
-
Louis would like to say that walking into Pomona’s is like a blast from the past, like all the memories come rushing back at once, but that’s not true. He and Perrie still come here all the time, when they’re really desperate for a night out but they can’t go too far from home. There’s still a stage for live music at the back, and Louis still plays on it sometimes when he manages to put together a halfway decent set list, and all the best memories he has of this place have been long buried by the more recent ones.
He doesn’t see Harry anywhere, which means that Harry’s even later than he is, which is fine. He doesn’t want to get a table, because he doesn’t know if Harry will want to get a table, so he just finds a seat at the bar and sits down. He doesn’t even really know what Harry’s intentions are for tonight, if they’re just going to have a shallow, awkward catching up, or if they’re going to finally talk about everything that’s happened since high school. Louis doesn’t know which conversation he’s dreading more.
He orders a rum and Coke, puts a straw in it, and then stares at it until finally, only about five minutes later, someone touches his shoulder.
“Hey,” Harry says, leaning close so that Louis can hear him over the steady ruckus of the bar. “Wanna grab a table?”
That settles that, then. Louis slides off his stool and follows Harry through the bar, sitting down at the table Harry picks out and putting his untouched drink down in front of himself, letting it remain untouched while Harry gets settled across from him.
Louis could definitely have a crisis right now. He could definitely freak out about the fact that Harry is, well, Harry, and that he’s sitting right there, at the same table as Louis, and that Louis is the sole object of his attention for the first time since probably middle school. He decides not to, though, and instead he just looks at Harry’s nervous smile, and his eyes, which are the same eyes that Louis’s looked at since he was born, the same eyes he fell in love with a long time ago, and the same eyes he never actually fell out of love with.
That thought probably isn’t a new development to him, but it definitely is an inconvenient thought to be having right now, when he’s so determined to not let Harry get under his skin tonight. Harry’s eyes have always been one of Louis’s favorite parts of him, and right now they’re locked on him, like Harry’s afraid that if he looks away, Louis will evaporate. Louis knows the feeling well.
“So,” Harry says, leaning his elbows on the table, still watching Louis closely. He’s got this anxious, awkward smile on his face, and he swallows hard before he speaks again. “Um. How have you been?”
This fucking sucks. This actually fucking blows, Louis thinks, and he already regrets coming here tonight, already wants to just go home and continue being a loser in peace.
At the same time, though, Harry’s nervous twitching and lopsided smile because he’s chewing the inside of his lip and the way he keeps blinking every two seconds like his eyes are gonna dry out from how hard he’s staring Louis down… It’s all so very, well, Harry, in a way Louis wasn’t expecting. He’s sort of been building Harry up in his head the past ten years, equating him with the way the media has always portrayed him. He thought Harry would be aloof, reserved, mysterious, the way he always is whenever Louis is forced to see him in an interview or something somewhere, but he’s not like that at all, now, and Louis is a little caught off guard. He feels a little bad for assuming Harry would be an entirely different person now, but then he catches himself feeling bad and pinches himself for it under the table, because they’re two minutes in and he promised Perrie he wouldn’t let himself get tricked tonight.
“Uh,” Louis says, bobbing his head sideways in an awkward nod. “Alright, I guess.”
“What have you been up to?” Harry asks. “Y’know, like, since high school?”
Fucking losing at everything, Louis thinks, but outwardly, he smiles tightly. This is Harry, after all, and Louis shouldn’t have to pretend around him. “Honestly,” he says, “not much. I tried to go to college after— well, y’know, but it wasn’t for me. I dropped out before the first semester ended,” he says.
“Why’d you drop out?” Harry frowns, shoulders sinking a little.
“Mostly because Perrie was dropping out,” Louis says. “I never really felt like it was right for me, anyway, but then when Perrie decided to drop, I figured, hey, y’know, at least I won’t be the only college dropout in town,” he laughs awkwardly.
“Why did Perrie drop out?” Harry asks, like it’s an interrogation, or something.
“She got pregnant in, like, November of freshman year, and then freaked out, dropped out of school, and married the guy who did it to her. So, I dropped out and tried to do the music thing full-time, and every time Mom tried to say anything to me, I was just like, ‘hey, Mom, at least I didn’t get pregnant,’” he jokes.
Harry smiles, finally, the first genuine smile Louis’s seen on him in—well, years.
“Perrie had a kid?” Harry asks, voice a little softer.
“Yeah, two girls,” Louis says, grinning at the thought of them. “Nikki and Izzy. I love them to death,” he says.
“Is Perrie still with her husband, then?” Harry asks.
“No,” Louis sighs. “They split up a few years ago. It was pretty messy,” he says.
Harry nods knowingly, and Louis frowns, but Harry catches himself quickly. “Divorce usually is,” he says. Louis feels it like a knife to the gut, remembering that Harry’s divorced, too, but Harry doesn’t give him a chance to ask about it. “I bet Perrie’s an incredible mom,” he says. “She was always taking care of us, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, she’s the best there is,” Louis says. “She’s the best person I’ve ever known.”
Harry’s smile turns a little sour, and Louis looks down. It’s quiet for a terrible, awful moment, and then Harry says, “So, you said you were trying the music thing?”
“Yeah,” Louis says, picking up his drink and chewing at the straw just for something to do. “I mean, you should know I always wanted to do the music thing, in high school,” he says. Harry flushes, but Louis pretends not to notice. “Then when I dropped out, I recorded a few demos and tried to sell them. I’ve sold a few over the years, even had a couple of my songs place on the charts over the years, but I’ve never really been able to make it on my own. Still, though, I just can’t give up. I have no idea what else to do other than music at this point,” he admits.
“That’s rough,” Harry says, and then a waitress comes over to get him a drink, giving Louis a moment alone with his thoughts. He almost expects Harry to offer him something, like a gig, or some kind of deal, if only to make a little bit of peace. When Harry tunes back in, though, he clearly has no intention of doing anything like that. Louis’s both relieved and a little bit annoyed; he’d say no, obviously, if Harry tried to offer him something, but still, the empty gesture would be kinda nice.
“This is weird, isn’t it?” Harry says after a few minutes, leaning back in his chair.
“What’s weird?” Louis says.
“The fact that I have no idea what to say to you right now,” Harry says, and Louis knows what he means, really, he does, but it still rubs him completely the wrong way.
“I can think of a couple things you could say to me,” he says without thinking, and Harry’s face falls at about the same speed as his own heart.
“What?” Harry squeaks.
“How about ‘I’m sorry’? How about ‘I feel like an asshole for what I did to you’? Or can you not say those things because they aren’t true?” Louis says, voice suddenly filled with unexpected venom. He really didn’t plan on yelling at Harry this early on in the evening, but now that he’s started, it feels right, and he kinda likes the horrified look on Harry’s face.
“Y’know,” Louis continues. “For a second, there, I thought maybe you hadn’t changed.”
“I haven’t,” Harry says, voice so strangled it barely comes out.
“Don’t make me fucking laugh,” Louis says.
“Louis,” Harry says, rubbing at his face a little. “I… look, I know I owe you an explanation, okay? And I promise I have one. Just— please, don’t chew me out before you give me a chance to explain everything,” he says.
“Go ahead and explain, then,” Louis says, crossing his arms over his chest. They’re both silent as the waitress returns, dropping off Harry’s drink and scurrying away immediately, like she can sense the tension in the air, doesn’t even need to ask if they want to order any food because she already knows the answer. “Go on,” Louis says again, once she’s gone.
“Right here?” Harry asks. “Right now?”
“Right here, right now,” Louis says. “When else?”
“Well, I—” Harry fidgets, looking around. “I was kind of hoping we could meet again, y’know, after this,” he admits.
And that, that throws Louis off his game. “What?”
“You’re my best friend, Louis,” Harry says, barely above a whisper. Even if he was yelling, Louis wouldn’t be able to believe his ears. “And I know it’s been a while, but you’re still the person I consider my best friend,” Harry says.
Louis blinks, and then blinks again. “I honestly cannot say the same, Harry,” he says.
“I know,” Harry says, rubbing at his face again like he’s trying to distract himself. Louis knows him so well, well enough to know that Harry’s trying not to cry right now, and he can’t believe that this is where the evening has taken them. “I know you think I’m a complete dickhead. I’ve wanted to reach out to you so many times, Louis, but I didn’t know how, because I knew it was gonna go like this. I knew you were gonna be pissed at me, and you have every right to be, but, please, just know that I never forgot about you. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by in the past ten years that I haven’t thought about you,” he says.
“Bullshit,” Louis spits. “Bull. Shit.”
“Fuck,” Harry breathes. “I wasn’t gonna tell you this because I didn’t know how you’d react, but I was at your mom’s funeral, Louis. I hid because I didn’t want to make it about me, but I was there,” he says. Louis feels like the breath has been punched out of him, and he blinks again, mind racing. “I would’ve gone to Fizzy’s funeral, too, but I didn’t find out until days after. I felt so fucking awful, and I sent so many flowers to her, and to you,” he says softly.
Louis feels a breath away from shattering, suddenly, remembering the bouquets of flowers that showed up at his door for weeks after his sister’s funeral. “That was you?” he asks, voice breaking.
“Yeah,” Harry says, hanging his head for a second. “I never wanted to take credit for it, because I never wanted it to be about me, but please, Louis, can’t you see I haven’t ever stopped thinking about you and your family?” he says.
“What else did you do?” Louis asks, mind racing. His eyes are wet, and his head feels full of static. “What else have you done that you weren’t going to take credit for?”
“Um,” Harry says, eyes widening.
“Tell me,” Louis growls, “or I’ll walk out right now.”
“Okay, okay,” Harry says quickly. “Um, well, I bought a couple of your demos over the years, through my label, and gave them to other artists for you,” he says.
Louis groans, scrubbing his hands down his face. “You’re the one that got my songs on the radio?” he asks, devastated.
“Yeah,” Harry says, looking impossibly guilty.
“What else?” Louis demands, trying to think of other shady things that have happened over the years. “You… did you tell Perrie that her husband was cheating on her?”
Harry goes scarlet, nodding at the table.
“What the fuck!” Louis all but yells, digging his nails into his own thigh. “How did you even— nevermind, tell me more,” he says.
Harry looks so upset, screwing his eyes shut and turning his face away from Louis. “Um,” he breathes, “I donated some money to the fundraiser that Lottie started for Fizzy, and I got some of my fashion friends to look at the clothes Phoebe and Daisy designed last summer, but they’ve yet to say anything about it to me. Uh, I bought a bunch of tickets for the show you did a couple months ago in Hartford and sold them for less than face value to give you the revenue and get more people in the door,” he says, talking quickly like he’s trying to rattle them all off and get them off his chest.
Louis regrets asking, can’t bear to hear another word out of Harry’s mouth. He stands up so fast he almost knocks his chair over, not sparing Harry even one more glance as he all but runs from the table.
“Wait!” Harry calls, getting up to chase after him. He catches Louis by the wrist, and Louis whirls around, glaring at him. “This is why I didn’t fucking tell you,” Harry says through clenched teeth.
Louis shoves him, successfully breaking out of Harry’s grip. “Leave me alone,” he spits. “Just— get out of my life. You wanted so badly to get out of my life, just fucking get out!”
Harry looks more hurt than Louis’s ever seen him, eyes full of tears, right there in the middle of Pomona’s. Louis’s gonna do something stupid, like cry, and he can’t be here another minute.
He storms all the way out the door, all the way to his car, and then races home. He’s never been so fucking mad in his entire life, never felt so pathetic and useless and horrible about himself. Harry didn’t just leave him high and dry, no, he lingered in his life, making good things happen just to give Louis a taste of happiness before he yanked it away again. Here Louis thought it was the universe showing him kindness, throwing him a bone every now and again, but no, no, it was fucking Harry, Harry and his stupid fame and his stupid money and his stupid fucking eyes and Louis hates him, he hates him, he’s never hated anyone so fucking much—
He tears his jacket off and hurls it across the living room, a bit of the tension easing out of his body when it takes out the lamp standing next to the couch. He goes for his shoes, next, taking them both off and humming them at the wall, addicted to the way they crash to the floor. He turns around and grabs the ceramic catch-all bowl full of keys and chapstick and whatever else he digs out of his pockets at the end of the day and hurls that against the opposite wall, tears welling up in his eyes as he listens to it shatter.
He spends the next half hour or so completely trashing his apartment, tearing the cushions off the couch and beating the hell out of the doorway to the kitchen. He’s completely fucking sober, too, which is probably making this so much more painful than it could be, so once he’s done breaking everything worth breaking, he stumbles to the kitchen, upending a bottle of tequila right into his mouth. It burns like fucking acid going down, but at least it gives a physical sensation to the way his chest is aching, so he drinks again, and again, until he’s sucked down half the bottle and he’s choking on the aftertaste.
Remarkably, he doesn’t start crying until he’s made it to his bedroom, which isn’t quite as trashed as the living room, but is still quite a disaster from Perrie’s visit earlier. Fucking hell, he thinks, he should’ve listened to her, should have never responded to Harry’s text in the first place, should have just fucking blocked his number and been done with it.
He falls asleep like that before long, with the mostly empty tequila bottle in his hand, still fully dressed, on top of his covers. His phone buzzes in his pocket a couple times throughout the night, but he doesn’t even feel it, probably wouldn’t care even if he did.