Loved By Your Mother

by superglass

Summary:

Harry stretches out like Venus with her lover, growing sleepy in the late afternoon light with a baby growing inside her. Perhaps not literally, not physically. Not exactly.

 

or

 

Harry struggles to come to terms with wanting to have children, and what that means for their relationship. Canon compliant, set a few years into the future.

Notes:

This is a very different style and outlay of work compared to my other fics. It's about a topic— motherhood and baby fever— that I've never really seen discussed in a fic, so I wanted to do it. Lots of people get baby fever, whether they can have children or not. Parenthood and the struggle to get there is a real issue in the LGBT community. Cis gay couples, trans women, lesbians— anyone can deal with it. I don't know if I demonstrated it as well as I wanted to, but I hope it means something to someone regardless.

 

...so busy, he’d just come home from grocery shopping for the house, an affair which is seldom, few and far between his usual errands, and of course putting all of the produce away is the next step, Louis’ cereal and junk food which he tries to buy the healthiest version of but fails as Kellogg’s doesn’t make healthy Cocoa Pops and even if they did it wouldn’t taste very good he knows, putting away his juice — he’d like to start a cleanse again, as he had gotten too used to loading up on carbs after their latest trip to Italy, and subsequently was told by his friend it was a comfort food,  that a large intake of carbs, especially when not hungry, fills an emptiness that he might be experiencing, and that just shook him to his core really— and so many tied up bounds of fresh produce, asparagus and celery and locally grown cabbage and lettuce and spinach and carrots, though he isn’t sure what farms are near their new home, hasn’t had time to drive around much, thought it would be better afterwards to spent his time cleaning the kitchen with lemon-scented organic all-purpose spray, wiping down the white marble countertops until they sparkle in the early afternoon light, and oh!— the living room carpet could use a good vacuuming, so of course he must pull out their old vacuum cleaner leftover from their last house, figure out how to use it, and whip through the whole room in just minutes, only to avoid causing Louis so much displeasure as he watches his football match from the couch and pretends to be doing work, then figures the dining room carpet beneath their table could use a good vacuuming as well, and afterward dusts the mantle where just two weeks ago he’d placed all of their chachki souvenirs and picture frames which mustn’t be very dusty but that’s beside the point, floats back into the kitchen to spend fifteen minutes at the sink, washing up from their breakfast— he’d made a full English, of course, Louis’ favorite on Saturday mornings, but which does cause a full load of dishes in the dishwasher and much scrubbing because he forgot to put butter in the pan before the eggs— and moving on outside, if only to take a breather on the back porch, leaving the sliding door half-open in a silent invitation for Louis to follow him, suggesting they take a dip in the hot tub on such a cool day like today; Louis only calls out from the couch, projecting his voice across the house, “Busy bee!” Busy bee, busy boy, flitting around the house anxiously and cleaning up like he used to, cleaning like he likes, hates to have someone else do it for him when he does have the free time, “Darling, close the door? You’re letting a draft in…” because of course, Louis gets cold easily…

 

It’s on the porch where he stares out of the window and into their large expanse of a backyard, empty now but for stray lawn chairs and a lifeless swimming pool, an overgrown plot of land in the back meant to be used for a garden, and farther back a spread of grass big enough for a field, for a game of football if he gets around to purchasing a new net— or two! of course Louis will need two to play a game—! and alongside it a koi pond, no fish yet, and a slew of white birch trees— his favorite kind of tree, accounting for at least 15% of why he was sold on this house as opposed to the one which is fifteen minutes closer a drive to his mum’s— which stand strong but thin, sturdy but shaking, in such a strange cluster beside the woods surrounding their home.

 

A call comes around two from his mum. Expected, of course. Every few days the call comes, more if they haven’t texted all week— which is only the case when Harry is gone away on tour or busy with press and other complications— and less if Harry is home with nothing to do, in a lonesome strike realizing that he doesn’t have many other friends but for his mum and sister and Louis, and that everyone else seems like just acquaintances, and everyone else seems to only know him through work, just like how when he was young he’d only have friends at school and would come home alone and cry and attempt to fix it through friending people on MySpace or FaceBook but well, that didn’t really work, and anyway he didn’t like the way it felt. No matter, it’s all better now. Now millions of people like him. Now no one knows him. Now, he’s past thirty, and he’s not the biggest hot-shot or the most booked movie star or anything of the sort, and he sure as all hell isn’t in LA where everyone else is, and he sure as hell doesn’t care if his mum and Louis are the only people who check up on him, and he’d much rather not think about it right now—

 

“Have you had time to settle in?...”

 

Mum keeps asking questions like this. 

 

“Yeah, I just— cleaned! I cleaned the whole house, oh it looks lovely now. Um, Cliff will probably muck it all up again soon, but… I tried!”

 

His sister’s voice now: “How’s it like living in the middle of nowhere?”

 

Furrowed brow. A glance over his garden, the wooded part of his backyard. “S’not the middle of nowhere,” defensively, “it’s the countryside. We're only, like, a half hour out of London.” And, “heyy, why are you there? Why wasn’t I invited?”

 

“Girls night in,” Gemma explains, effective in putting a deep frown on Harry’s face. 

 

“Not nice. Don’t I count?”

 

“We’re drinking mimosas!” mum calls out, too loud and making Harry wince. “Gemma made mimosas. You can come if you’d like, darling… How far are you, again?”

 

“Fifty-seven minutes plus traffic,” Harry recites. He told this to her last phone call on Thursday. This is news he doesn’t like delivering. A glance at the birch trees. “That’s alright, mum. I don’t like Gemma’s mimosas. I bet they’re bad.”

 

A gasp from his sister. A laugh from mum. “You’re awful! Hang up on him, mum, c’mon—”

 

It quickly changes tone. A biting sort of commentary that he often hears from Louis— snarky, hitting sharp and swift like a slap in the face:

 

“...Sitting there in his big, posh new mansion, all by him self putting a bad name on my cocktail-making skills— who does he think he is?!” 

 

Joking, of course. Can’t Harry take a joke? The youngest of only two— he should know what it’s like by now, how to get relentlessly teased by an older sibling. Youngest of five rowdy boys for five years and still can't take a joke. Louis is too protective over you , she’d say if she were here. Silly Harry. Emotional Harry. He hangs up with excuses of Louis asking for him, which of course isn’t true, but he wishes it were.

 

...and now the clouds have rolled in. The weatherman lied as he often does. Harry will drag in the lawn chair cushions to the shed and head back inside when it starts to drizzle; he will pass by Louis on the couch and press two, three, four kisses on the top of his head behind the couch, another invitation left unread. Silently moves past the built-in music studio they had specially made for the new house in the English countryside. 

 

Silently moving into the master bathroom now. He’ll clean here, too. Clean clean clean. Then when he’s done he’ll clean himself, filling a bath up to relax. Futile attempt. Half an hour through he hears Louis humming his way up the stairs, into their bedroom.

 

“Babe? We going out to dinner tonight? Are you getting ready?... Oh, you’re in— you are, right? Or did we never set up a reservation?...”

 

Pad pad pad of socked feet. Click click click click of Clifford’s nails on the floorboards behind him. Following like a good doggy. Into the bathroom where Harry is relaxing in his bubble bath…

 

So busy he hadn’t thought of reserving a table. Having his assistant call ahead. Having her get the NDAs together. A private room— their favorite restaurant an hour drive away in the outskirts of London. The chef has loved them ever since they went for the first time in late 2011.

 

“I, um…” Watching Louis watch him, leaning against the frame of the bathroom door, scratching at his beard. Eyes scanning Harry’s naked body beneath the water, but not with much intent other than an idle gaze. Clifford’s paws click across the tiled floors which Harry just cleaned not an hour ago. Click click click. He narrows his eyes. “Um. I never called.”

 

“Never called. Alright.” A little laugh. Louis is still rubbing at his face, avoiding eye contact. He looks so tired, deep circles under his eyes, cheekbones more pronounced than they were a month ago. Pale around his ginger beard. “Should we— want me to make something, then?” 

 

Harry hums, considering it. Clifford is now at the cabinet, tall enough to sniff at Harry’s large array of bottles, makeup and fragrance and skincare, expensive French brands and hand-me-downs from his stylists and makeup artists. Nail polish bottles of every color in the rainbow, plus pastels, plus shimmery, plus multiple shades of black which he lets Louis use on off days, teasing him about looking like Gerard Way or some other emo band leader from the early 2000s Harry used to have a crush on. 

 

Long snout on that dog. Twitching nose, eager to know everything’s scent. So strange how animals work.

 

Watching. Watching. Watching. Louis is talking to him still, proposing dinner suggestions easy enough for a novice to pull together in a pinch, but he can’t possibly pay attention. He must watch… as the dog’s nose knocks over a tiny glass bottle of nail varnish— its color a bright bright crimson red— to the white tile floors. Shattering. Splattering the red paint in a big splotch across the tiles. Clifford startles back, attempts to lean down and sniff it, but Louis is quick-moving enough to grab his collar and tug him back, cursing as he locks him out of the bathroom.

 

“ Fuck !! Stupid fucking mutt, stupid fucking dog, god damnit—!” 

 

Not considering dinner now. Louis is on his knees, using wadded up toilet paper to pick up the shards of glass and toss them in the trash. It dyes the paper red, bleeds through it like a bloody wound until the tips of Louis’ fingers are pink, too. Harry watches from the tub. Unmoving. The nail polish will surely stain the white tiles in an ugly splotch of pink.

 

The busy bee tugs the shower curtain away from the sight of his lover, sinks further into the lukewarm water, and tries to sleep. It’s a TV dinner night. No homemade mimosas or locally grown lettuce and asparagus. A bowl of Cocoa Pops will do. 

 

Or nothing at all.

*

Tuesday’s tea time brings his mum in his living room, Louis home in twenty minutes from work, and a lovely cup of English breakfast, three sugars no milk, in an antique teacup set gifted to him some five or six years ago by a friend. Mum likes her tea with cream. Louis likes his tea Yorkshire, and he’ll like it hot when he gets home, so Harry leaves enough water in the kettle to heat up another mug,

 

and sits down across from his mum. Ongoing conversations like they always have. They moved in from the backyard when it started to get chilly again, and now they warm their hands over the ceramic mugs. Mum is tracing the edge of the Royal Copenhagen pattern alongside the edge of the mug, thin dark blue lines spreading up into miniature flowers. And Harry’s talking.

 

“...a lot of people think that the origin of them— the blue and white porcelain was in, like, China?... but I think, actually, it was Iraq, or Iran... which is really interesting, because then the Danish took it from China, and now it’s like. People call it, you know. Danishware… Weird.”

 

Rambling because there’s nothing else to do. Because he’s run out of talking points. Because he doesn’t want to address the elephant in the room which is making close friends with his own loneliness.

 

“So no more tours for you soon, dear?” A turn in a different direction. Mum sips at her tea after blowing cool air on it. Harry stares at his own, furrows his brow.

 

Blunt questions made to seem casual. He doesn’t like this topic but it’s not as easy to change the subject with his mum than it is with Louis.

 

“Um, not right now…” He sips at his tea. Burns his tongue unpleasantly. Hot hot hot sensation— he can feel the welts form on his tastebuds and he winces, placing the cup down with a harsh clink! And trying to seem unfazed, he continues, “um, you know. I just thought… a bit of a break would do nicely. I haven’t— the last tour was, like. Really big. I mean… too big, I think.”

 

He frowns, looks down at his lap. Blue jeans for a blue boy. “Like, um… I don’t know. Jeff wants me to, but… It’s fine, this. I mean. I paid my dues, you know?”

 

He smiles at his mum, dimpling his cheeks if only to make sure she doesn’t go on worrying about him. That’s the last thing he needs— for her to worry.

 

A shy shrug. Another sip when the tea is cool enough to taste.

 

“What will you do, then?” she asks. “With all your free time. You know I don’t want you going mad in this house. You’ve got to get busy somehow.”

 

“Well, I’ll still make music!” The obvious answer. “Like, Paul and Linda McCartney, with um, Ram !” He doesn’t say that they also had children with them when they made the record, that they settled down and happily started a family after the Beatles. Doesn’t say how much he’d love children, too. But the look on her face is telling enough that she knows what he’s thinking. 

 

He misconstrues her expression for doubt.  “No, really! S’why we got the studio built in. You know, um… They made entire albums, like, by themselves. Out in the countryside. They lived in Scotland, actually, I think… Me and Lou are gonna. Make an album together, I mean. Whenever we find time… to do it…” 

 

Car door slam. Keys at the front door, dog barking, front door opening. He’s still babbling when Louis floats in through the kitchen, kissing his hair and greeting Harry’s mum in passing before settling down at the table next to them, refilling the empty plate they shared between them with more biscuits.

 

That’s when Harry stands up, as soon as Louis sits down next to him. Clockwork.

 

“Isn’t that right, Lou?” bringing him into the conversation if it means his mum would stop giving him that dubious look of hers. He pads over in his slippers to the stove, heating up the kettle again to make Louis’ tea. 

 

“What’s that?” through a mouthful of shortbread biscuits. Without looking Harry can see the stray crumbs he’ll brush away from his mouth shamefully when he thinks, even after a decade of Harry denying it, that his mum would somehow judge him for eating so messily. Habits of growing up chavvy, Louis says. That Harry doesn’t understand what it’s like to be poor. Has never had to steal from Tesco when he was hungry after school or deal with posh kids calling him out for wearing too-small or out of style clothes. Football cleats from two years ago. 90s cargo shorts and hand-me-downs from older cousins. It's all relative.

 

“We’re gonna make a record together sometime,” Harry explains, staring at the tea kettle, willing it to boil already. “You and me.”

 

“Oh, yeah. Like Ram. Or, uh. Or— Ono and Lennon. Or— what’s the other one?”

 

“Sonny and Cher.”

 

“No—! Johnny Cash and June Carter. Ha!” Another crunch of the shortbread cookies. 

 

Harry stays quiet as he pours the tea, the bag already waiting in the mug since he arranged it there an hour ago. He listens to the rhythmic chatter of mum asking Louis about work and waits for the hot water, which he’d left boiling a moment longer than usual because Louis likes hot tea, to turn brown with brewed leaves. Dunks the bag once, twice, three times until it’s finished, and sets it lightly on the edge of the saucer. Then, carefully, he brings it over to set it in front of Louis, earning a warm hand on his waist in exchange.

 

“... thank you, darling, that’s lovely,” and back to the topic of conversation, “but, er, yeah. I mean it’s always tough to manage music especially without those necessary, you know. Repercussions, cuts, whatever. But, erm. We’ve been pretty successful, so far!” Big sip of the tea, still hot. No cringing when it burns his tongue. Chomp chomp on a biscuit. “Perks of being… a small label, I guess. The fans are incredible, really, I mean, they sell the whole show. We’re trying to move out of it, though, you know, expand… the audience…”

 

Harry’s staring at Louis’ mouth when his hand comes to wipe off an excess crumb self-consciously. Eyes trail over his face: scruffy facial hair, upturned nose, lovely blue eyes. They’re staring back.

 

“You alright, babe?” A hand rubbing his arm where it’s cloaked by a fuzzy oversized sweater. The house is too cold.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Mum takes it as a cue to leave, having finished her tea long ago. No time to read the leaves like she and Harry usually take upon themselves to do, acting like they know more about omens and astrology than they really do. She says, “I’ll get out of your hair, I don’t want to overstay…” and ignores Harry’s protests.

 

“But I’m making salmon...! In the broiler, yeah? And, um, I’ve got wine!...” 

 

Ineffective. His mum’s pout shows pity, but she makes an excuse: “Oh, but I haven’t fed the kitties yet, and it’d be such a long drive home all by myself, especially after a glass of wine— you know how I drink.”

 

Harry still frowns as he leads her to the door, watching her pull on her jacket and turn to him and say, “You should go on holiday! It’d be good for you, darling. Hm? A nice long break… Except, not Japan. That’s too far. You won’t go to Japan again.” Just a chatterbox as she digs around in her pockets for car keys. “I’m worried about you, Harry. You’re not busy! ...You’re usually very busy… Oh, where are those keys… did I leave them…? Nope, here they are. Well—” she looks up at him, pointing an accusatory finger in his face. “You promise me you’ll find something to do? And— cleaning doesn’t count, sweetheart.”

 

“Alright.” Maybe it’s a good thing that she’s leaving. One thing Harry might despise more than being left is being told what to do. (Maybe that’s objective.)

 

“Okay? Alright, I’ll be on my merry way, then…” Shouting now, over Harry’s shoulder, voice reverberating through the empty walls of their new-old house. “Bye bye, Louis!”

 

“Byeee, Anne! Great seeing you, love!” even though he saw her last week, and the week before, and—

 

“You, as well, darling!” Turning back to Harry, she gives him a smile and tugs at his cheek when he pouts. “Silly boy. Love you.”

 

“Love you, too, mum.”

 

And out the door she goes.

*

 

One Month Later

 

“I’m, um.” Deep breath. Grounding himself. He uncrosses his legs beneath the table, planting his feet on the stone balcony. But he sounds meek when he says, “I'm gonna, um…”

 

Louis gives him his attention, bright blue eyes glancing up from the menu clutched between his fingertips. Like a dog perking his ears up. 

 

“Yes, honey?”

 

  Or a husband in an old film indulging his ditzy wife.

 

Harry blinks, glances back down to where he was reading the menu. Portugal: a quiet country full of quiet people. In the mountains, everything is silent; no one is around to hear them. They can talk and scream and cry and the only witnesses will be the mountain goats and eucalyptus trees.

 

Harry picked the restaurant, of course, after a long argument at the hotel over it. Louis’ not a big seafood connoisseur. Harry is a pescatarian. Why, pray tell, did they come to this fisherman country again? 

 

Right: the quietness. Quick getaway.

 

He clears his throat, shrugs. “M’gonna start planting the garden next week. When we get back.”

 

A pause. Hesitation must grip Louis in a chokehold, but only for a moment. Because it wasn’t what Harry meant to say, and he knows it. Harry hadn’t even thought about it— starting a garden— other than through meaningless small talk with his mum over the years, empty promises he’d never get around to doing because of time. He’s run out of excuses for it.

 

“That's great!” Louis exclaims. Then: “All by yourself?”

 

Biting his bottom lip, mumbling, “Yeah, probably. I wouldn’t wanna, like, hire someone… to do it… for me…” Even though they do that for everything else, typically. He shakes the thought out of his head. Begone, fame ! Begone, money ! We’re normal now. Settling down. Not rockstars anymore. Not arrogant teenagers. That ship has sailed with everything else: headlines, regular tours, tacky PR stunts… Ten more years and they’ll just turn into the old frumpy gays brought around for comic relief. The RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 1,586 guest judges. 

 

“That sounds fantastic, love. Love to see you doing what you want. No more, erm, restrictions. Excuses, right?” There's another beat of silence. A turn in another direction; this train is a bit off-kilter. Mercurial. The map sent them in the wrong direction: Harry just realized it’s upside down. “I think I’ll get the grilled salmon. It tastes like chicken, right? What are you getting?”

 

“It's a lot of work, you know,” Harry blurts, a frown quickly forming its way onto his face. He tries to school it— he thinks he's quite good at that. Making his face emotionless.

 

Louis’ good at ignoring things. 

 

“What, grilling fish? Don’t think so, babe. You just—”

 

“Maintaining a garden. Or, like. Growing one. You know. From the beginning, 's a lot.”

 

He came on too strong. He sinks in his seat a bit, meek again, glancing down at his lap, down his shirt to see his own tanned tummy. The menu is useless to him now— the meal he wants, and the sentence he’ll speak to the waiter in perfect Portuguese, is already waiting at the back of his tongue, alongside:

 

“I mean it’s early, yeah? So… So I've gotta dig up the garden first, um. You know, ‘cos the grass grew over the plot where I want it to be… Turn over the dirt. Perhaps…” Looking over the stone balcony, which faces the backside of the restaurant, down the mountain. The red roofs of stucco homes are cloaked with a gauzy fog, but the sun is still beautifully warm on their skin, tanning noses and high foreheads.  “...Oh…! I've got to buy new soil, I think. Um, and seeds I haven't gotten those yet. And I've got to… be home more… to maintain it. To water it and stuff. And… harvest it, too…”

 

Louis’ looking at him, an unreadable expression behind his blue eyes. They’re always narrow, and always Harry is a hair off from what they’re really trying to tell him. There’s no time to continue the conversation: the waiter has dipped, politely, onto their quiet stone balcony. 

 

Harry orders for them. Olá! Podemos ir buscar o salmão... Sim, e os Ameijoas um Bulhao Pato? Obrigado! Charms the waiter, like always.

 

Louis is staring at him when the waiter collects their menus. Harry braces himself for the conversation before it even leaves Louis’ lips.

 

“You sounded too Brazilian there.”

 

Eyes widen. A scoff, a “How would you know?”

 

Louis shrugs, smug. “I just know. Like how Spanish sounds different in Latin America and Spain. Sounds different here. The waiter was smiling at you weird. ‘Cos you sounded Brazilian.”

 

“It’s Brasilian.” Harry corrects just to sound smart, to gain a point in their imaginary game. Banter. Two stubborn mules, headbutting against each other like bulls. 

 

“I said Brazilian.”

 

“No, with an ‘S’. Bet you didn’t know that.” It’s Harry’s turn to be smug, the cat that got the cream. Mutters, hypocritically, “Know-it-all.”

*

Vinho Rosé tastes sweet on his tongue. From a private wine tasting class which they booked a few weeks ahead. NDAs were used, but it’s not like they particularly need them anymore. Everyone knows. A slow discovery. Some day they’ll talk more openly. For now, in Harry Styles’ early thirties, it’s my partner, my spouse, he this…, he that… And Louis— well, no one really asks about Louis’ personal life anymore, not like they used to. He’s in the background now. Harry’s husband: the fresh new music mogul who isn’t a manipulative douchebag. Who keeps his cool behind the wrinkles near his eyes. 

 

He’s so handsome today. Every day. 

 

He keeps looking at his phone.

 

He doesn’t like wine. “It’s just something you’ve got to get into… You get used to it. You, like, mature. With it.” Louis doesn’t want to hear it. “I don’t like the taste. Too bitter. S’like drinking vinegar.” His usual excuse. Then a divergence, a mock solution. “S’there beer in Portugal…?” Quiet voices while the instructor is out of the room. “If you wanted beer we would’ve gone to Germany.” “I don’t want to go to Germany.” “Well, me neither. Drink the wine.” Sliding the glass closer to him on the table.

 

The woman conducting their wine tasting is doing a fabulous job. She speaks perfect English. Harry wins her over within minutes, attentive to what she’s saying, nodding along like a schoolboy eager to learn. 

 

“A good Rosé has gone very much out of style recently,” she’s saying, swirling the wine around in her glass, oxidizing it. Harry and Louis mirror her across the rustic wooden dining table. “You can find Rosé all over the world, of course… this one is very unique, though, in its taste.”

 

“I love a Rosé,” Harry murmurs, more to himself. He looks at his wine— darker pink, like it belongs in a Sangria— then sends a smile up to the instructor. 

 

“Me, as well!” she agrees, pleased. “Love all kinds of Rosé… Do you?” 

 

She’s asking Louis, who looks up from his lap where he was hastily typing at his work iPhone. An issue with one of his artists on the label— he’s texting a manager or producer. Malfunction. Always busy. Always with someone trying to reach him. Harry puts a sharp elbow in his side as petty punishment.

 

“Oh, me? Yeah, yeah. I like it.” Pocketing his phone, at last, in his black slacks— he’s strangely overdressed for an afternoon wine tasting. They look mismatched, with Harry’s loose white linen and Louis’ smart sharp trousers. It never used to look like this. The man with the overgrown curls and the scruffy facial hair can’t be half as rich as the one with the Armani slacks and $8,000 watch who keeps looking down at his latest iPhone. Is he a sugar baby? Harry almost smiles at the thought. 

 

“Tastes like juice,” Louis adds. Buzzing in his pocket. He ignores it, though, and after a minute of the instructor continuing, Harry feels his left hand come to squeeze his thigh. Apologizing. Sorry, darling, it’s not you. You know it’s not you.

 

It does taste like juice. “It’s got a lot of… grapefruit, strawberries. It’s slightly spicy. Can you smell that? Smell it, lean in—” They lean in, dipping their pointy noses inside the thin glasses. “It is quite spicy.”

 

“Almost meaty,” Harry adds, crinkling his eyes up at her. God, he loves this about traveling, about eating and drinking. He misses people, socializing, living in different parts of the world all year long. The staggering of his tours— though they started to wear him down like they did in 2015— leaves him with an itch that he can’t find to scratch at. How could you take this away from someone who’s known this, and only this, since he was seventeen? You can’t— he’s insatiable.

 

He loves new people. New things. The whole lot. The thick of it.

 

“Right!” she chirps happily. “I think, almost, alongside the citrus— the sweetness— perfect with, erm. Oh, you know. A steak, or something. Perhaps an appetizer— something salty— calamari!”

 

“Could go for a steak right now,” Louis says, a hand ghosting across his own stomach, over his white t-shirt. They laugh in unison.

 

“Ohh, so needy,” Harry chastises. “I fed you this morning!” Like an irritated mother.

 

“That was this morning,” Louis says back, winking at him. Another squeeze to his thigh— cheeky this time.

 

The wine tastes just like how the instructor described it. All of them do— how Harry wishes, softly, that he could have become professional in something as uncomplicated as this. But he’s not a homebody, never was. There’s no sifting through endless vineyards for this ex-rockstar, no way! He’s got to keep moving, keep finding more things to keep himself pleased. Big travels, little travels. All of it. He won’t stop until every corner of the world has had his eyes set on it.

 

At the end of the day, the instructor is a saleswoman. She’s trying very hard, too. They can see it in the grin she gives them, in the head nods and the so nice to meet you!’ s. Of course they indulge— they’ve got to make a good impression! They’re the complimentary white gay couple, loaded with cash, always a delight to have around when they’re welcomed. Big grins and big wads of cash. Full tips! Go ahead! Louis yields to Harry’s desires, warm hand on his waist, getting ready to leave. Let’s get all of them! Six expensive bottles they tasted. Should have been enough to get them drunk— but wine-tasting etiquette told them, of course, to not finish the glass they tasted, to politely spit it into a separate glass and not swallow. Everyone does that.

 

On the drive home they’re quiet. Louis in the passenger seat, fiddling with his phone. He spends twenty minutes on a call— “Did you hear from…? Oh, Christ, what’d he say? Well, fuck him too, then! What does that old geezer know? Bet he can’t tell his arse from his elbow, I’ll tell you tha’... What…? No, m’still on holiday with me boy… All right, yeah. I’ll be back by Tuesday. Tuesday, alright? Yeah, I’ll send him an email— lengthy one, at that— don’t worry about it, mate. Yeah, bro. Okay, alright—” and another ten trying to find a playlist for the drive. 

 

He settles on a mix with too many Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young songs, knowing Harry likes them. Knowing Harry made the playlist. It’s to win him over from the passenger seat without having to actually apologize for the lack of attention given to their last day on vacation. 

 

“You liked the wine?” Louis asks arbitrarily, trying to pull them back to half an hour ago. Humming along to our house is a very very very fine house…

 

“Did you know this song is about Joni Mitchell?” Harry says, sidestepping the question to a much more interesting topic. “Graham Nash wrote it for her. They were supposedly— well, I— it’s a very domestic song really. I don’t think they were ever married. Anyway, someone told me this story once… or maybe s’from a documentary… they’d bought a vase together. Like, a- at an antique shop. They lived in Laurel Canyon—! Um, and the whole thing was like, she was in her garden, um. Getting flowers for the vase. And he was at the piano. I- Isn’t that lovely? Like… Sounds like a scene from a book or a poem or something. And he creates like one of the best love songs ever. Well maybe not ever. I don’t know… I…”

 

Louis’ bait was gladly eaten up by Harry. Always a sucker for folksy love songs. I’m going home, I’m going... and two hearts in one home. For domesticity, ever since the first month they knew each other. We should… move in, you and me. Together. Even if, like. The band— doesn’t work out, you know? You and me, we should… Dunno. Boyish grin and a curl beside his ear that Louis tugged on relentlessly in those days. ‘Course we will. Gotta get the U-Haul ready, Harold. They were embarrassingly corny.

 

They still are.

 

“Can’t wait ‘til you grow your garden, darling,” Louis says, a smile in his voice. Harry shoots a glance over to him, leaning his weight on the inside door of Harry’s old 1970s convertible. Handsome grin on his thin face. “What are you gonna grow? Just flowers?”

 

“Um…” He hadn’t thought about it until now. “...Food! Like, tomatoes and stuff. Or. Um, I don’t know. I have to have a chat with my mum about it… Asparagus? We eat quite a lot of asparagus at home…”

“ You eat a lot of asparagus.”

 

“Maybe yams! ...Yum. Yams. Or um, cabbage, perhaps. That’d be simple. I’ve heard those grow really easily. Or— or maybe practical stuff, like onions. People don't grow their own onions, do they? ‘Cos then those are less fun, ‘cos they all kinda sound the same. Oops. I mean taste the same. Hah! I was thinking about the lyrics, sorry…”

 

Sweet Jane by the Velvet Underground. Off of Harry’s playlist. Louis laughing at him— with him— from the passenger seat.

 

The week is remembered, perhaps immortalized, in the way the red-roofed homes look as they roll down mountains. Harry really shouldn’t be trusted in a car in this state— always driving too fast, a bit too reckless— their excitement threatens them. Don’t fall off the side of the mountain, Harry, you silly boy. Harry sticks his tongue out at fear. My lover and I are laughing. We’re happy. And we don’t need you.

 

And he thinks of the seeds he’ll plant in his garden. He thinks of the harvest.

*

“Good birthday week?” Louis asks through a murmur. Initially they weren’t this close in the tub. Initially they sat across from one another, still chewing on food service snacks and sipping— Louis at a beer and Harry at a large glass of one of the wines they bought earlier today. But the bathwater quickly loses its heat, and Louis gets cold easily.

 

Side-by-side in the water, with a warm face in his neck, Harry closes his eyes and smiles. A good birthday week indeed. He’s not had this level of relaxation in what feels like years. Each vacation they go on it seems it drains a little more anxiety out of him, filling him instead with a tranquility that can’t be matched. Might make him go a bit crazy after a while, but for now…

 

Louis feels so nice against his neck, lips pressing there lazily. There’s a hand beneath the water, whose arm is circled around his hip, stroking smooth lines into the outside skin of his thigh. Louis’ fingernails are short, and barely noticeable underwater, but the light touch of them over the base of his belly sends tremors up his spine. 

 

“Hmm?” Louis urges gently. It’s what makes Harry toss his head back.

 

“Mmm…!” He laughs a little, breathless. “Very good birthday week.”

He doesn’t want it to end with tomorrow’s sunrise, but that’s the way these things go. Nothing is forever. 

 

“Good, baby. S’what I want… Want you to have good weeks… good everything,” Louis says, talking nonsense. Foreplay is usually unscripted like this, and still somehow they stay in perfect harmony. “You happy?”

 

Needs reassurance to know he’s doing it perfectly. Up to his own standard. Harry gets it— he asks for the same thing in return, possibly too much.

 

“Very happy,” Harry giggles, turning his face to catch between his lips whichever part of Louis' face is nearest. Lucky him: his earlobe. He nibbles on the flesh gently, sucks it into his mouth, lets it go to say, “Very very happy. Love you…”

 

“Love you,” back, without hesitation. A hand closer to where his cock is resting on his hip beneath the water. If Harry glances down he can see it start to work over him slowly, can watch how it hardens and twitches. Instead he feels. Feels. Feels.

 

“Feels good,” he murmurs. Their old penchant for needy, rough sex has lessened. They’re slightly more mature, now: Harry likes it, on most days, slow like this. Teasing, heartfelt. Juliet, when we made love you used to cry…

 

Kisses on his neck, a hand working more deliberately. “Good…?”

 

“Mmhmmm…” Another sigh.

“That’s it, baby,” Louis whispers, watching his own hand work over Harry in the watery tub. “There y’go.”

 

Harry grows needy when he’s horny, squirming, bucking his hips and letting out strange little squeaks. Sounding mousy. He’ll surprise, often, with a guttural groan when he finally comes, or a sharp bite into a shoulder blade. Then polite again, oh, thankyouthankyou… Shit, oh my god… 

 

He hasn’t come yet. Wants to lengthen the feeling, wants to give some pleasure back. Somehow today feels special, like there’s something waiting for him— them— at the end of it. Good or bad? Harry asks whoever’s listening. No one answers. 

 

They get out of the tub at Harry’s insistence— “Want a nice, long birthday fuck, not a handjob in the hot-tub—” and dry off with plush hotel towels. Perks of their people setting them up with the best of the best: big hotel room, big tub. Good quality towels. In the end, they’re wealthy. In the end: not normal.

 

While waiting for Louis to clean up their mess in the bathroom— which consists of draining the tub of its soapy water, piling their dirty dishes to leave outside the room and taking the last swigs of his beer, clicking off the television and dimming the lights— Harry lay naked on the bed, touching himself, loosening himself up. Teasing Louis as he flits around the room, through their repacked bags for their things. They hadn’t anticipated having sex tonight; early morning, early flight. But things don’t need to go as they’re planned. 

 

Harry loves a body on top of his, loves the weight and the warmth of it, how steady Louis is when he props himself up to kiss him. They’ve made up their minds, silently, and now it’s more deliberate: two fingers, then three, as it’s been a few days since Harry received and he likes to be teased. With kisses, of course. And dirty talk. And quiet conversation in between. 

 

Unscripted. Natural. Things they’ll forget afterwards.

 

“Want me to fuck you, now?”

 

“Mmm…!”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Please, pleaseplease, ” just for a shared giggle. There’s a minute of readjustment, a change of positions. Harry stares at Louis above him as he stretches down his legs which haven’t lost their flexibility despite age, lining himself up, and he doesn’t realize it, doesn’t even have time to consider the words before he says it. They tumble off of his lips like they got shoved on the way out.

 

“I want to have a baby.” Then he's breathless. 

 

Oh. Louis falters for a moment, his tip still pressing against Harry, not even inside yet. Harry thinks, fuck, until he sees a grin stretch slowly across Louis’ face. Because— oh, that hasn't been a topic of conversation in… in… Months? Years? 

 

Louis presses inside.

 

“Darling,” as he sinks in. It makes for a distraction from the stretch. Harry meets his eye again, shy now. “Don’t think that’s biologically possible.” Kiss to Harry’s cheek. “...Yet.”

 

“It’s— I’m—” Stammering now, breathless because Louis starts to move his hips, still slow but good, impossibly good. His hands reach up to pull him closer, looping under Louis’ arms to grasp at his shoulders. Eye contact for earnestness. “I’m— serious. Lou, I’m serious. Wanna have a baby, wanna have—”

 

Louis starts to fuck him. Whether or not it’s a diversion or a sign of his excitement, Harry doesn’t know. He takes it, losing his own composure, and imagines what Louis thought he meant initially. Obviously he was teasing, but the thought of him believing that this was Harry’s final admittal to wanting to become pregnant— so vulnerable, out in the open like that— is enough to make him blush. 

 

And Harry knows it’s not biologically possible. He’s not dumb. He knows, also, the extent of options that they have. Surrogates, adoptions. But as his hands pull Louis closer so that he can rub his lips and scratch his beard along Harry’s bare neck and chest, he thinks of it. Of them. Making a child. Having a child. Being parents.

 

Hips snap against him, and as he buries his face in Louis’ hair, as a pair of lips suck at his nipple, Harry starts to cry with the force of it all. With his emotions running rampant like wild geese. Wings flap in the air. The Iberian sun sets outside their window, and tomorrow they’ll be back home, and Louis will be going into work, and Harry will be a doting housewife. And he cries softly, and powerfully. 

 

“Lou,” he murmurs, fingers digging into his back. Louis knows the voice, and freezes with it. The look in his eyes when he catches Harry’s tear-streaked face makes Harry cry even harder. Sobbing, now. Painful wrecks that tear through his body. 

 

“Oh, fuck! What— why are you— are you crying?” A dumb question. Louis slips out, both left unfinished. Harry brings his hands to cover his face up, sobbing into his palms. But he learned the hard way not to hide his feelings from Louis, so he pulls back, tries to look at his face.

 

A choked sob, sounding ugly and loud through the hotel room. Why is he so emotional, Louis must be wondering. Was it that their trip is ending? Has this been building up for so long? He’s grown nervous, but visibly calm, steady, like he always is. Ropes tying the anchor down. Wipes the tears off of Harry’s cheeks for him, murmurs to him, always so protective over him. Harry thinks, you’d be such a good father, you’d be… And the waterworks come, full blast. Hiccups, tears, shaky voice, heaving chest. “I want… I want—”

 

“What, baby?... C’mon, what’s… Gotta tell me what’s the matter here, babe, please?”

Hiccup. “I wanna be…” A sniffle, calming down, even with tears still leaking out of his eyes. “I’m— so lonely a-at home ... ”

 

There's a pause as he catches his breath, shakily. He blinks stray tears away, and finally…

 

“From what?”

 

And Harry’s never been one for articulating his feelings. He threads his brow, sniffles again.

 

From you . He can't— simply can’t. Louis is good to him— Louis’ been good to him for upwards of fifteen years. He knows by the pull of the tides, magnetically, intuitively, that saying that would only make the situation worse. 

 

So he stammers through an answer. “I just— I'm. Not working anymore. As much as… I used to. And— we’re like… Aren't we…? When we moved I thought—” shifting on the bed, rubbing his nose, anything to avoid direct confrontation— “I’d thought that meant— you know. Getting away. Settling down, finally. I mean, I don't know. ‘Cos like… Don't you want that, too?” Breathes deep, adds, “Kids?” Thinks, it’s the next step. Knows, it's the only thing that can make me happy.  

 

Finally he looks up, gauges his reaction. Louis is so attentive, so careful with each move he makes. The pads of his thumbs are gentle, the skin slightly rough, so that when they collect tears off of the thin skin of Harry’s under-eyes he shies away, just slightly.

 

“Hey, s’okay…” And he expects this, Louis’ gentleness. He’s soft and eager to make things right, to put them back in place. Ever the perfectionist. “I want that. You know I want that.”

 

Harry nods under his touch, blinking down. “Dunno, I just—” he tells his own bare tummy, where his half-hard cock lay. “...Okay.” Blinking. 

 

Observance, attention is a curse. Unfamiliar room. Birds are still chirping in the sunset. Someone’s cigarette smoke filters in from the open balcony— or maybe that’s just what’s left on Louis’ skin. It’s like everyone in the world has their eyes on him when he cries, and they don’t even care, they just stare at him like he’s a daffy subway rider on the busiest train.

 

“Okay,” Harry repeats. Threads his brow through a pout. This has been used to stifle him, and he knows it.

 

Even worse— he’s gone and put a damper on everything. A birthday week that’s left quiet, miserable. Louis props himself up on his palms, but his biceps must grow tired after so long of a time is spent watching Harry’s face from this angle. Like he’s some sort of insane snow globe that can cry on demand. 

 

“Let’s just… go to bed. We’ll sleep on it, yeah?”

 

Sniffle. Nod. “‘Kay.”

 

“You alright, baby?...”

 

Another nod.

“Alright, babe. Okay.”

 

The lamp goes out. It’s too early to fall asleep. Harry stays staring at his hand, at the ring on his middle finger.

 

A trip to Italy in 2020. He remembers being drawn to it in the antique shop— moth to a flame— fawning over it through the glass display case.

 

“Ah…!” As if to say, you’ve found it! A pirate finding his treasure chest. A little kid finding an easter egg full of sweets and chocolate coins.

 

The shop owner was a round, old woman with wild gray hair pinned behind her ears. Golden clips which looked as though they belonged to a duchess in the 13th century. A silk kimono down to her feet, pale green and gold embroidered scenes of cranes in the shallow water. She used a key to open the display case and plucked the ring for Harry to inspect closer.

 

“ È la mia preferita…!” In Harry’s jumbled Italian. He was still learning then. “ Bellissima.”

 

She seemed amused. The edge of her fingertip tapped at the center of the ring lightly, pointing to the scene it displayed. “ Una madre. Un uccello madre e le sue uova. Vedi?” She brought the ring closer. Like a miniature frame, encased inside the gold lining was a tiny micromosaic. Harry was drawn to the color of it— a light blue sky, with light umber and pale butter yellow. A bright vermillion. Sap green. 

 

It captured the picture of a mother bird and her clutch of three eggs. Bending down from the trees to tend to them. Not sitting on them, strangely, as he’d have imagined. They’re not in her nest. Fallen angels? Was the bird a wanderer— not quite the mother at all? Perhaps she found the eggs lying there, all by their lonesome. A clutch of three.

 

The shop owner spoke, but she was unintelligible, even with her gestures. Harry looked at her blankly, helplessly, and quickly asked for the help of his trusty translator. 

 

“She’s asking if you have, uh, any children? Babies,” Allessandro told him, sounding uninterested in the topic of conversation.

 

Harry’s eyes widened. Then, at the little old lady’s interest, he dimpled into a cheesy grin. “No. No.” Shook his head, tilted it to the side. Sad smile. “I don’t.”

 

He bought the ring like it was nothing.

 

How funny— that was so long ago now. 

 

He stares at his wedding ring next to it. They always go together when he picks them from his jewelry box. Nowadays he can’t leave the house like he used to without them. 

 

They do go together, don’t they?

 

Marriage and children. The little voice in his head— apprehension— says they didn’t, when he was a child. They didn’t when Louis was a child. 

 

Perhaps they’re going backwards. Or moving too slow to see a difference. Five minutes ago the key wasn’t even in the ignition. Harry turns it, slowly, slowly, slowly—

 

the car bursts to life. 

*

“Would you like to play house w’me?”

 

The boy— a new neighbor in the house beside Harry’s— is two years older than him at the age of seven. He looks over at Harry, pursing his lips until his baby cheeks go chubbier around his mouth, and shrugs. 

 

“Sure.” 

 

Harry doesn't know who he is, but he knows his age because his mum told him, nudging him across the short grassy knoll between their houses to say hello. Look, dearie, he’s your age! You should go play! Why don't you go ask him to play, hm?

 

He nods his head, and plops down on the grass next to his new friend. Beneath him the grass is damp with leftover morning dew, and usually he’d cry if he felt his bum getting uncomfortably wet and cold like this, but he doesn't have time to. Through the boy’s stretched legs, a medium-sized football rolls Harry’s way, waiting for him to catch it and roll it back over the grass. Harry watches the way the black and white shapes twist as it rolls, looking like a zebra or maybe a chess board— or a cow!— and reaches his hands out, gently pushing it back.

 

“I’m Louis.” It's unexpected, but not unwarranted. Harry replies quickly. 

 

“I'm Harry. Do you like playing house?”

 

“I thought house is a girl game,” Louis says. He blinks at the ball, waiting for it to roll into his outstretched palms again.

 

“My sister plays house w’me.”

 

“Which do you play?”

 

“She’s at a friend’s house now, though. She's having a slumber party.” He pronounces slumber as slubber, and doesn’t find anything wrong with it. “Have you ever had a slumber party?”

 

Louis shrugs. “Only with my cousins.”

 

“Me, too.”

 

“What do you play with house?”

 

“She always makes me be the baby, but I wanna be the mummy.” He catches the football, and beams, pleased at the thought that pops into his head. 

 

“I wanna be the big brother. Could I be the big brother?” Louis asks, crawling over on his muddy knees until he’s sitting beside Harry, blinking wide at him. Harry’s fiddling with the football in his lap, smiling to himself. He’s going to stuff it under his shirt, but he wants it to be a surprise, and he wants to make his new friend laugh when he does.

 

When they stand up, he lifts his shirt— already a size too big for him, so his mum won’t mind if he stretches it out— and shoves the ball so that it sticks to his belly, protruding the fabric of his rugby shirt. He grins, putting his hands on his hips theatrically, and waits for Louis’ reaction.

 

“Wait, c'n I be the dad, actually?”

 

Harry tilts his head curiously. “Yes, you can be the dad.”

 

Louis nods definitively. “Okay. My mummy’s pregnant too.”

 

“She is?” Harry asks, gasping. He's only ever seen pregnant women in the aisles of grocery markets or on television.

 

Louis nods. “Yeah, her belly is huge!” He sticks his arms out as if to say this wide! and laughs. “Guess what?”

 

“What?”

 

“If it's a boy, I get to name it,” he declares proudly. Harry’s mouth gapes incredulously.

 

“Really?”

 

“Yup! I get to name it. I think I'll name it…” Louis curls two fingers over his chin, before pointing his finger up to the sky, his mannerisms like a cartoon. “...Harry!”

 

“Really?!” 

 

“Yes!” Louis exclaims, still grinning wide. “What are you gonna name your baby?” He points a finger to the ball still stuck in Harry’s shirt. Harry looks down at it, feeling it slip against his skin before cradling it closer to himself.

 

“M’gonna name it Anne if 's a girl, ‘cos that's my mummy’s name, and if it’s a boy m’gonna name him… umm… Edward.”

 

“Edward?” Louis asks, frowning.

 

Harry nods. “Yes. Edward is my middle name. Harry Edward Styles.” 

 

“Oh.” A moment of pondering. “Why not Louis?”

 

“Oh. Well I'll make his middle name Louis.”

 

“Okay,” Louis says, nodding his agreement.

 

They play house, but it quickly turns into a makeshift game of footie when the ball falls out from Harry’s shirt and he grows tired of mimicking the way he’s seen his own mother ridicule him. Afterwards, Louis’ mum steps outside on the porch to call him for supper, and they both groan in displeasure. 

 

“One more minute, please?”

 

Harry stares at her belly, which really is quite massive, and wonders if the baby will be boy or girl. They walk to the edge of the yard before stopping, beginning to part ways. Louis turns to him.

 

“I hope the baby my mummy has isn’t a boy,” he says.

 

“Why?”

 

They’re both frowning, endearing wrinkles between their brows. Louis answers:

 

“‘Cos then I’d have two Harrys, and I only want one.”

 

*

 

The sunlight is warm behind his eyelids. 

 

“Baby.”

 

“Mmmph?”

 

“Aww,” Louis coos. “You’re sleepy. C’mon, sleepyhead… time to wake up!”

 

And that’s strange. Harry is usually the one to give wake-up calls, to rip the curtains open for sunlight.

 

He blinks his eyes open. Outside, in their backyard. Spring has just dawned a new, youthful light on everything. In Louis’ thirties, he looks poetic, standing in a light pair of sweatpants in the early afternoon sunlight. Bare, tattooed arm reaching out beside his cocked hip, just to push gently at the hammock where Harry must’ve cuddled himself up after…

 

Tending to their garden. He’d dug it all up this morning whilst Louis went to the studio. Overturned the dirt, added new soil. The grass and moss had become an overgrown part of their plot after years of disuse from the family before, and he’d considered throughout the morning’s work— his back isn’t what it used to be— calling up their landscaper for help. 

 

Still no seeds were planted. He’d ruined his manicure with the force of his hard work. His palms blistered on the rake he used to turn over the dirt for hours. But he’d put his back and bicep muscles to good use. And naturally he grew sleepy quickly, to the low hum of birds chirping and the spring breeze floating through the air. It wasn’t even drizzly! Oh, Hallelujah ! Hopefully the same weather will grace them all summer for a lovely harvest. Wouldn’t that be the dream?

 

He had sighed, taken off his gloves. Tonight he’ll sucker Louis into painting a new sheen of nail polish over his alternating pastels now. The blue and lilac paint is chipped, and Louis always paints them wonderfully, gets every last edge of his nail. Old habits from observing his sisters and mother as he grew up. When Harry does them himself he must take out the bottle of acetone and a Q-tip to clean each bit he messed up, wiping away his mistakes so that the bed of his nails shine. 

 

Just a little nap would tide him over. He’d curled up on the hammock in the warmth of the sun, half-hidden from the shade of their big oak tree. And fell asleep instantly.

 

But he had such a strange dream.

 

“You and I knew each other, like, when we were young.”

 

He screws his face up, blinking up at Louis, who tilts his head curiously. Clearly entertained by a new form of good morning from Harry.

 

“I was— well we were like seven. Or I guess I was younger… We were neighbors, I think...? We were really small, and you… and we played house together. You know, like husband and wife?”

 

Louis just snorts, pushing the hammock again. Light and gentle in his movements, but all the more powerful. Harry feels his tummy swing with the hammock, and remembers alongside it how he hasn’t eaten yet.

 

“I made you Caprese sandwiches. Little slider things,” Louis says, reading his mind, pulling out his phone as he sends a push on the hammock.

 

“You made them?” 

 

“Yes, I made them. What, you don’t believe me?” A pause, scrolling through his emails.  At Harry’s dubious look, he laughs and acquiesces. “Alright, I arranged them. I took them out of the package…” More charming laughter.

 

“Don’t you wanna hear about my dream?” Harry asks.

 

“Yes. Tell me more.”

 

“...Well, that was it, actually.”

 

“Ha! Very eventful. Two toddlers playing house. You were me wife, I presume?”

 

“You presume right.” Harry sits up mid-swing, planting his feet on the grass. Wearing only white socks, he notices. They’ll surely get grass stains if he walks with them through the yard. He squints up at his husband, who looks back at him, and reaches out for a hug. A silent, “Carry me?” in the outstretch of his arms.

 

Louis just laughs and obliges. Not even a huff when Harry attaches himself heavily to his side like a koala; Louis flatters him. It’s a short walk across the yard to their patio, but Louis goes all the way inside, and drops Harry off with a sigh in front of the lunch he ‘made’— which was really a package of pre-made hors d'oeuvres. 

 

“Yum,” Harry says as he pops one into his mouth. Louis kisses his cheek and turns to leave, heading for the studio.

 

“Wait—!” Harry stops him. Throws what he hopes is an irresistible pout over his shoulder, whining. “Don’t you want to eat with me?”

 

Louis shrugs, but pads back anyway. “I already ate before I came home. They catered this event this morning for some new interns, I don’t know. That’s where I got the sliders.”

 

“Talk to me. Give me company.”

 

“Oh-kay…” Blue eyes wandering around the room, a lazy scratch at overgrown stubble. Then the attention is pointed back to Harry’s face. “What do you want to talk about?”

 

“Dunno,” through a shrug.

 

“Have you written lately?”

 

Bad start. Harry chews on the mini-sandwich and stares out the window in thought, humming. “No.”

 

Under a laugh, “Are you going to?” 

 

Harry shrugs again. “Don’t really… want to.” He smiles. “Don’t really need to.”

 

He picks at his chipped nail polish absently. On a self-deprecating sigh, he loses his smile and adds, “I mean… the deal with Columbia is over. Three albums out, that’s it, you know? But... I’ve still gotta, like. Decide. You know, if I wanna stay with them. I’ve gotta decide, success, or… normalcy. Like…” He shakes his head, trying to arrange his thoughts more acutely. Louis watches him like a hawk, presumably trying to fit the same puzzle pieces together on a different board. “Like, if I’m with them, I don’t have a… a life. Or— not the life I want. I get, like. More money, which is nice. Relevancy… which is nice. But I also get, like… I don’t know… Paparazzi. Fan service. Stupid fucking, bullshit stunts, that everyone sees through. And no one knows me. No one knows me…!” he repeats, incredulously. “Which can be,” a little laugh, “actually that can be useful sometimes.” Picking up another sandwich, turning it around in his hands anxiously, “But mostly it’s… just a nuisance, I guess. Just. Not worth it.”

 

Polite nibble on the sandwich. He finally meets Louis’ eye, and finds him tilting his head, watching Harry protectively. 

 

“So… what…?” he says, softly. Gentle. Not a hint of crudeness. “You’re not gonna make music anymore? …Is that it?”

 

Harry shakes his head. “No, I mean… No, that’s not it. I’m just—” Big sigh. “I’m just in a funk, alright?”

 

Louis nods, understanding. “Alright.”

 

“Can we talk about something else?”

 

“Of course.” A pause. What common interests do they have? Harry has a hard time remembering sometimes. Perhaps it’s better that way. “Are the sandwiches good?” Louis asks.

 

Harry hums, takes a bite. Through a polite mouthful, lips smacking, “Very good.”

 

“Great. Made them meself.” Cheeky little grin. 

 

All is forgotten.

 

No more talk about career moves in sight. Harry won’t be going back on tour any time soon. No, he’s staying home. The rockstar is settling down early. The wanderer lost his wanderlust. And funnily enough, there’s nothing to fill the void left over from all of this mess. In his lonesomeness, Harry pities himself. There’s nothing left to say. Work, or don’t work. Work, or have kids. Why not both? he doesn’t dare ask himself.

 

(Why not both? was the question he had for himself back in 2015, when he was in a similar funk. Curled up possessively around Louis, they murmured to each other about everything and nothing. Soon enough, “When we have kids… um, do you think we’d still be working…? Or— we’d have to wait, right? We’d have to settle down…”

 

“Well, yeah,” Louis replied confidently, through a whisper. “I would want them to feel like normal kids. They don’t need to be jet-setted across the globe as infants. That’s… that’d be absurd.”

 

Harry nodded his agreement. “But do you think, like. I don’t know. Obviously we couldn’t do… all of this,” he chuckled, gesturing to the tour bus surrounding them, though they were tucked safely behind the curtain of a bunk, “but we’d still be, like, musicians. Right?”

 

“Sure we would.”

 

“Yeah. I- I think so, too.”

 

“It is our job.” Obviously.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“It’d just be weird to leave them whilst you go on a 200-show world tour for a year and a half, or summat like that.” And a little sardonic laugh tacked on the end for sympathy. The commentary was biting. Unnecessary. That’s right— it was around the time Harry first signed his contract for outside the band. Around the time Louis started to fall in a pit of tacky PR stunts that looked, to Harry, more like smear campaigns than anything. Harry frowned in the dark. 

 

“I wouldn’t leave you alone. I would never.” Dead serious. Then, “You know that. I wouldn’t—”

“ Jesus , Harry, it was a joke. I know you wouldn’t.”

 

Ironic, Harry thinks now, that Louis would ever make the joke in the first place. )

And so I ask myself: ‘Where are your dreams?’ And I shake my head and mutter: ‘How the years go by!’ And I ask myself again: ‘What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived?’

April comes by fast and fleeting, but May sticks around like a splinter in the fleshy part of a foot, like the words left unsaid at the back of his tongue.

 

He’s in a gardening store. Just looking. Browsing the seeds.

 

 Beside him, two men, older, with graying hair, are talking loud enough for him to hear. One must be a worker at the store. He has on a beige vest and a name tag that Harry can’t read from here— he hasn’t got his glasses on.

 

“...Well, you’ll need very fertile soil if you want an abundant harvest this year. I’d recommend a more effective fertilizer— we have some in aisle six, I believe…”

 

“This year? Is there something different about this year?”

 

“Well it’s very strange, actually!” A bright, cheery laugh. Old people sound so funny when they talk, Harry thinks.  Walking on eggshells. “Very uncommon thing. The rainfall pattern or whatever they call it, has changed dramatically this year. Not as much rain!” 

 

“Not as much rain!”

 

“Yes! Absurd, isn’t it? Even in April…”

“Even in London, dear God… I’ll tell you what, mate...” Northern accent. Sheffield. Harry smiles, thumbing over a packet of sunflower seeds, before moving lower on the rack.

 

“What’s that?”

 

Peonies.

 

“It’s that bloody climate change they’re always talking about! I seen the little Swedish girl, still going on… Not so little anymore. Have you seen, on the telly?”

 

“Ohh, I don’t watch the telly.”

 

“Well, she’s been yapping.”

 

“Yeah? I’d believe it.” A hearty sigh. A cough. “You should see the blokes I’ve gotta deal with. At least five customers— all farmers, all gardeners, mind you!— coming in, asking for all our fertilizer and that. Absolutely mad. It’s all we’ve been selling lately.”

 

“‘Cos their crops won’t bloom, or what’s it!”

 

“Like you wouldn’t believe!”

 

“Well. I’ll pick some up, if you’ve got some left. God knows I’d like to have something… When will the harvest be, eh?”

 

“About October if you’re planting them late.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“Shouldn’t be a major problem with those. Are you doing many, or…?” 

 

Harry stops listening. He grabs packets of seeds hastily tossing them in his cart: pink peonies, tomatoes, cabbage and zucchini and peas. 

 

Passes by the thick, heavy bags of fertilizer on the way out. 

 

He won’t need them.

*

“Would you like to hold her, Harry?”

 

“Er— should I?”

 

A polite laugh from his cousin’s wife— what a silly question! Harry was a strange child, everyone knew that— but he was quiet for his age, and despite his arbitrary bursts of loud energy and sudden show-pony actions, he was quite mature around adults.

 

“Why shouldn't you?” she asked. Her baby looked like any other baby Harry had seen before. Chubby, pouty lips, sleepy light eyes. “Everyone should hold a baby, just to know how! Even if they don't plan on having children. It's good practice!”

 

Practice for what? Harry thought. He was twelve years old. He had never even thought about children. 

 

But holding a baby for the first time felt… good. It was different from holding his cat, who was just as chubby but squirmed and meowed too loud if he kept on, and who dug his claws into his skin if he was really upset. It was different from the lifelike dolls he and his sister played with when they were little. It was a firm, heavy weight in his cautious arms. And he was frightened to death that he’d drop her— the baby which he'd only just met.

 

He gazed down at her, sitting back in the chair in his mother's garden which had been used for the picnic with his family, and just stared. And just said, “Hello,” politely to her. She gave him a sleepy, dazed blink away, sucking on her pink lips until they were shiny. Harry bit his own, unsure of what to do except admire the little creature in his arms.

 

With enough support cradling her in his elbow, he pulled one of his hands out from beneath her and stroked down her tummy, where she wore a tiny, pale pink onesie. 

 

And slowly, she grasped at his finger. Tiny fingers with fingernails the size of a grain of rice. They wrapped around his pointer finger loosely, just fitting around it. Resting there, as she sleepily blew raspberries and saliva out of her tiny lips. Harry smiled at her, and just watched. 

 

At fourteen, his mum fractured her ankle, and one night Harry helped her wrap a new bandage around it on the sofa of their living room. Just gently tugging the beige-colored cloth bandage until her ankle was snug inside. One soft hand held it still as he went. And she told him, almost incredulously: “Harry, you could be a nurse, d’you know that? You’re so gentle. I don't think you could hurt a fly, darling…”

 

At fifteen, Harry said to his first ever girlfriend, while getting drunk for the first time, “I'm gonna have children when I'm older. I'm gonna have lots. ‘Cos, like, siblings… need friends. Like I've got Gems. Three or four kids… I think. Yeah, three or four.”

 

At sixteen, under the cloudy stars in the backyard of his step-dad’s bungalow, he told a secret to Louis in their two-person game of Truth or Dare, which dwindled to more truths than anything else: “Okay, so, like… This might be weird… I dunno. Like… I've always really loved kids? Like the idea of them. Having them. I mean kids love me… This sounds weird, I'm not— I mean I always really wanted little siblings growing up, ‘cos my sister would always tease me or like, family members would baby me and stuff… But I always wanted to be… I don't know. To take care of someone like that. S’that weird?”

 

“It's not weird at all, Harry.” That was, thus far, the most serious Harry ever heard Louis be.

 

In the backyard of his step-dad’s bungalow, Harry turned on his side, surely getting grass stains on his favorite hot pink sweatshirt, and smiled at his new best mate. 

 

“It's not?”

 

Spending time with Louis felt different than other boys. It felt like finding something he was meant to find, something that was waiting for him. 

 

Louis turned on his side to face him back. “Not at all.” A little smile tugged at his lips. “Careful what you wish for though. Me little siblings are brats... Takes a lot to take care’a them sometimes. ‘Specially when me mum’s at work or something.”

 

“What does your mum do?”

 

“She's a midwife. You know, delivers babies and stuff. Hey, maybe that's what you can do if singing doesn't work out!”

 

Harry laughed loud and hard, and the tension in his shoulders was lost. And he told Louis his secret, and he was just so happy. Relieved. 

 

That felt good. It felt good that he could trust someone who wasn't his mum or sister. It felt good knowing Louis had a soft spot in his heart for family. Felt even better two months later when he told his second secret— that he likes boys. And days later when he finally admitted that he liked Louis. It was silly, perhaps, for Harry to fall asleep smiling, because he was dreaming about what would happen if the band didn't work out.

 

Louis and him would move in together regardless— of course. They made those arrangements already. But what would they do?

 

So many possibilities in the city of Manchester. Harry could go back to college and study law. Or he could study nursing. Or music, something in sound production or engineering. In his free time he could pursue music by uploading his own covers to YouTube until he broke out with a viral video and got a record deal— wouldn't that be nice.

 

Louis would do college, too, maybe. Become a teacher or own a shop in the city. Run a makeshift football club at the nearby field in his free time. Soon it would be filled with kids who loved the sport as much as Louis did. Louis would come home with stories of them: “Should have seen the goalie, Haz, she’s really improving! I’m not much for goalie-ing anyway, but— shit! She’s really good for her age!” 

 

And maybe a few years after that, they’d move away from the city, to just outside. And have a few kids. Put them through school and clubs and college.

 

Normalcy. Insignificance. No one would know them.

 

Harry still wonders. Has been through enough therapy sessions throughout the years to try to get rid of the thoughts of how much he regrets fame. But they always come back.

*

 

 

 

“You know how, um. The fans. They, like, make these jokes that I’m— well,  they say I look like a, um—” he giggles thinking about it, “like, a MILF?”

 

Louis turns his head away from the football match, his eyes taking a second longer to follow. “You were on Twitter?”

 

As if he didn’t hear the question at all.

 

“Yeah. Well— no. Someone was telling me.”

 

Louis hums. A sip from his beer. Drag from the cigarette he’s having. Harry usually doesn’t let him smoke inside, but this week’s been stressful, and he doesn’t want to make things worse…

 

“Yeah,” Louis replies absently, turning his attention back to the telly. “Yeah, they think you’re a MILF. I seen some people make accounts for it…”

 

Harry hums. The game is boring— a replay of an old match. Portugal vs. Spain. Ronaldo scores, they win, game over. It drones on, though.

 

“D’you think it’s ‘cos of my tits?” Harry wonders aloud, looking down at himself. No shirt for a cozy day indoors. But he’d felt pretty enough this morning to throw on a silk robe, his name embroidered in gold thread on the breast. “Or, like, my hair? I’ve got quite… some people were saying my hair’s like Princess Di now! Ha! Like… if she was brunette, obviously...” He giggles. Playing with the undone sash of the robe. “Or maybe, s’like… my aura. Maybe I’ve got a MILF-y aura…” No response, so he nudges his toe into Louis’ belly from where he’s sitting across the couch. “What do you think?”

 

“Defo your tits,” Louis replies crudely, still with a slight air of disinterest. It punches a laugh out of Harry, sounding squawky and unbecoming.

 

“That’s—! That’s what I thought, too!” Dimpling further now, giddy with what little attention he’s being given. Intoxicated. He pulls his knees back and rolls over until he can lean on the cushions, kneeling back on his heels beside Louis. “I’m old enough now, too! When we, like… Become parents,” apprehensive now that he let it out, eyes flitting around the room, “you know, whenever that is… they're gonna love it! Oh, Harry Styles, like… a hot mum.” Giggles again.

 

“What, want me to cover ‘ Stacy’s Mom’ or summat like that?” Louis asks noncommittally. But he has a smile on his face when he puts out the end of his cigarette into a pile of ashes. His hand comes to tug at Harry’s waist, pulling him closer. 

 

Harry, of course, takes it as an invitation to straddle his lap, with a quick sidestep to mute the television on the way.

 

“Mm,” Louis hums, looking up at him. Hazy eyes. “You smell good today. What’s that?”

 

“What do you think?”

 

Louis smiles. “Gucci.” Funny. That’s all he is, now, after everything has washed away. A little brand ambassador. A name. “Well, s’good. Different.”

 

“It's new…!”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Louis presses a chaste kiss to the center of Harry’s chest, between his ribs. Where his heart is beating. Fragile thing, that. It makes Harry’s breath cut off, if only for a moment.

 

“What do you want?” Louis’ whispering. Then there it is. They’re flung easily into foreplay. Naturally.

 

They didn't expect to have sex, but Harry’s already naked beneath the pink silk robe. Free range for Louis' hands to wander until they grip the backs of his thighs. Harry leans down to kiss him, but it's such a hassle to crane his neck like that. Easier to do this instead…

 

Hold his hand on the back of his head and guide his lips to his pecs as if they’re cleavage. A hickey forms on the top of his chest, beneath a swallow: a juvenile form of endearment. Teenagers making out in the passenger seat. But Louis’ lips quickly move further down, suckling around his nipple until Harry sighs.

 

“That’s it…” Harry whispers, as if to himself. Grinds his hips down, gasps when Louis’ teeth nip at his skin. “Fuck, yeah…”

 

Usually it's quiet when Louis’ mouth is occupied. Just diligent noises of sucking or licking. But— something’s different. Harry feels it when he lets the robe slip off his shoulders, fully exposing his chest to the cool air, and digs his fingers into the nape of Louis’ neck.

 

A wet pop! before Louis moves to his other nipple. The skin around the left is left covered in a thin sheen of saliva, skin dark brown and bruised by teeth. His fingers replace Louis’ mouth, tweaking before grabbing the base of his pec and pushing it further against his chest, squeezing the flesh.

 

“Oh— fuck , fuck!”

 

Louis’ mouth works harder. Harry slips a hand down his own body, jacks himself off quickly, already so close— so sensitive, just with this.

 

He’s lost in the sensation, imagining they’re bigger. Imagining that if he were pregnant, they’d be full, Louis’d be sucking with the purpose of gaining something. Fruit for his labor. Harry squeezes his eyes shut, and holds Louis’ head suffocatingly close to his chest, and pretends.

 

“Suck my tits, suck my-  tits—!”

 

Grinding down now, writhing in his lap. He comes minutes later with a groan, deep from the back of his throat, and finally his fingers loosen their deathgrip on Louis’ hair,

 

and he just slumps slightly backward, palm sticky with come. He looks down at himself, then up to his husband’s pink face, and without further thinking, he brings his fingers up to Louis’ lips. Drags them over the swollen, fleshy bit of his bottom lip, until his mouth opens again. Louis’ just staring up at him as he sticks his fingers in his mouth, circling his lips around them. Eyes blue and critical, like they’re trying to say something through a single glance. Looking through Harry instead.

 

But he makes no noise as he licks up the rest of Harry’s come. Just observing.

 

Harry shrinks under his gaze, fingers slipping out, cock falling soft against his hip. “What?” he asks, self-conscious.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

An embarrassed little laugh. “Wh-” Hah! “What do you mean?”

 

But he knows what he means. He isn’t dumb. He knows Louis sees it like it’s glaring, an inconsistency in the algorithm of their normal lives. 

 

The fever runs him hot and dry like a desert. No water in sight. He starves, he aches, hands digging into the sand with the hopes of finding release. But there’s nothing there. The fever runs hot and cold and hot— mostly hot. It makes him sweat when Louis is home. It makes him let out choked, ugly sobs when he’s alone. It forces him away from any semblance of humanity— he can’t work like this. He’s just so sad.

 

Louis must see him. 

 

He must see the books Harry lets peek out from under the dresser. 

 

Where’s the Mother?: A 101 In Adopting Children 

 

The Gay Dads’ Guide to Parenting

 

Other Mother: How To Tell Your Child You’re Transgender

 

FAMILY PRIDE: The Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood

 

Or the tabs of articles, essays, videos he not-so-subtly leaves open on their shared computer. The women’s health magazines left sprawling over the bathroom tiles, as casual as he can make them. As natural as possible. 

 

But he doesn’t.

 

He shakes his head, says, “Nothing, nothing,” and leans up to kiss him. He pulls back, gives a warm smile and a tug at Harry’s nipple, and says, eyes on his chest as if entranced,“They're gonna be sore tomorrow, aren't they?”

 

Cocksucking ensues, because Harry always feels a need to be good, to reciprocate, to be of service. But it’s still quiet. He catches Louis’ eyes glancing at the television, which is still silently moving with pictures of football players scoring, multiple times as Harry swallows around his cock. The disinterest isn’t sexy like it might've been if it were purposeful. It’s not part of any kink, any scene they make up to make one or either of them more desperate. It’s just… disappointing. So he closes his eyes to drown out the thought— that his husband is getting tired of him. His throat and jaw and tongue work like a second nature, like muscle memory. Head bobbing up, down, up, down. Down again, as far as he can go, to smell the scent between his legs, then up and off to splutter and catch his breath. Drooling over the tip. Making it good. 

 

He closes his eyes and pretends. And pretends he isn’t pretending. 

 

And…

 

The sun feels so warm on his face. A raft on tepid water; he sees red where his eyelids try to block out the sunlight. Asleep, until he hears his voice.

 

“Babe.” Just a gentle, raspy little noise. He hums back.

 

“Gonna get burnt, baby. Why don't you come out for a bit, hm? Let's get you something to eat.” The sun blinds his face now, harsh and brute. He turns his head away, eyes slipping shut again. “C’mon. Got to keep the baby well-fed, mm?”

 

His eyes spring open. The baby. He's not eaten well today! Oh— what if his baby is malnourished?! He can't have that, certainly not. Risk the health of the lovely boy or girl growing inside him? He'd have to be a psychopath.

 

Somehow he’s out of the water and by Louis’ side in mere seconds. Always clinging on to him for support from his own clumsy limbs, but he rests his weight now more heavily. 

 

Their faces are close. Louis smiles at him, all warm and syrupy, eyes going squinty from the sunlight and all of the glee he gives Harry. Then a hand on his lower hip. 

 

“Look so pretty, baby,” he's saying. “I’ve got the prettiest wife, don't I?”

 

That's strange. Different. There's not a hint of humor or condescension in Louis’ voice; he’s serious. Calling Harry his wife. His pretty wife. 

 

His pretty, pregnant wife.

 

She’s glowing— of course, her skin is lovely, clear and free of spots. Glossy in the best places: her high cheekbones and the tip of her strong nose. Powder-like softness at her T-zone. Lips soft and plump, cheeks pink. She’s gained a bit of weight around her jaw now that she's eating for the baby. Craving, of course, all of the foods which she calls “complex carbohydrates.”

 

Louis doesn't mind. He indulges her. Perfect husband. Best husband.

 

Rubbing her back now, pulling her closer. Her bump taps at his flat stomach, keeping a short distance between them. Six inches. Dances at a Catholic high school. Immaculate conception.

 

“Look at that,” Louis whispers, awe rounding the edge of his voice shakily. To her stomach: “S’getting bigger.”

 

He cracks a grin, all sharp teeth and lovely thin lips. Their eyes meet when Louis trails his hands up, holding them just over her bikini top. “These are, too.”

 

They giggle into each other’s mouths, and she’s still not speaking. Like she's mute. Unconscious. Drifting through this dreamlike scene like she's not even really here in the first place.

 

A ghost.

 

Louis kisses her neck, face warm there as he goes, brushing his beard along her soft skin. She sighs wistfully, wraps her arms around him, rolling her head back. In her periphery, she sees their garden.

 

It's lush, green and beautiful. Something out of an old Renaissance painting. Green foliage spilling over the sides of white marble flower pots. Carnations and peonies and chrysanthemums, plump and ripe tomatoes growing up the vines. A bouquet of orchids; a lemon tree like the one they have in their LA home, the one they have in their Italy home, with heavy ripened fruit hanging from each branch, weighing them down like they’re threatening to drop off.

 

She feels heavy. When she stands up straight, she feels her stomach like a new, unusual weight on her that she can't shake off. And what is that painful crimp in her neck? From laying out on the water for too long… Oh, she's such a fool, she reprimands herself. Got to be more on top of these things. She’s got a child on the way, after all. A child inside of her.

 

“Do you want to hold it?” she's asking now. The voice doesn't sound like hers, though. She sounds almost American, perhaps softer than that. Voice high and light and airy, miles away from the raspy grumble he usually emits. When Louis glances up at her, he breaks into another earth-shattering, award-winning smile.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, baby. You want me to hold it?”

 

She finds herself nodding shyly. “Want you. Do what you normally do…?”

 

He hums; this is routine, then. As if out of body, she watches Louis drag their lawn chair over the slabs of pristine white marble surrounding their pool, setting it in front of the path to their garden. He pats his lap gingerly, knowing she won't sit there, of course— she's too heavy. Insecure about her weight now. Even when

 

he lets her rest her upper body on him, back to his front, head rolling until her cheek presses into his firm bicep. The biceps that hold her up, that pin her down. She kisses the skin she finds, just beneath the sleeve of the old footie jersey Louis wears on his days off from work.

 

They're still half-sitting up, resting against the lawn chair, so when Louis’ gentle hands find her waist, just beneath the bump, and raise it just slightly up and away from her lower back, it makes a world of difference. Instantly her limbs turn to jelly, relaxing back into his grasp, gasping out soft ahhh’ s like this is just what she needed. 

 

“Here as well, please,” she asks politely when he lets her belly go again, replacing the weight of it on her lower back. She'll really need a chiropractor after she gives birth; her back’s never been worse.

 

For now it's fine to bring Louis hands up to her pecs— her. Her breasts, fuller now than ever before. Not her own when she looks down and observes them from this angle. They are quite big. And so is her tummy. Louis was right. She must be…

 

On her second trimester. How perfect. How startlingly soon. She won't know what to do with herself when she does actually have the child. It seems unfathomable: obtaining the fruit she works so easily for, without fret. This is the easy part— the hard bit comes afterwards. When Eve eats the apple.

 

“Feel better?” when Louis holds her sore breasts in his gentle, warm hands. Nose in her neck, breathing in. This is the best, Harry thinks, and nods against him.

 

“Yes,” she replies, a small voice. When her head lolls to the side, eyelids droopy and slow like honey and molasses, she lets her gaze rest on the outermost edge of the garden, just where it tapers off into the freshly mown lawn.

 

As she stares lazily, Louis’ hands now moving to massage her back where he can, she blinks over, eyes never straying. Until: a flash of green. Quick, flitting. 

 

Then, over the white marble, she sees it. A garden snake the color of grass and algae. Slithering over the stone, closer to the edge of the garden. It will eat the field mice that burrow into the dirt. It will slide over the rocks and the growing plants and dig its home into the soft land. Harry watches it turn into their garden, feeling helpless. Boneless as he rests his weight on Louis.

 

“Lou…” Still with that high voice. Different body. Different life. “Lou, there's a snake…”

 

Louis just hums. Ignoring his pleas. Content to lay here in the sun.

 

“Lou, look. Snake. Going in my garden.”

 

His breathing grows harsh, chest rising in panic. He can't even move— it must be fake. The snake— it's only a garden snake, he reminds himself, to no avail— slides over the marble. Disappears behind the stone and into the greenery, blending in with the leaves of his plants.

 

Out of sight. Out of mind.

*

The sound of his lover laughing might be the cure to everything. The be-all-end-all. Even the seemingly impossible. Even the ache that burrows its way deeply into Harry’s chest for hibernation. It chews at his insides slowly, sleepily, but it gets quiet when they’re like this: when they are in love.

 

Harry forgets about a lot of things when he is comfortable. This, of course, is comfort: lying in bed against a warm body, rewatching something he’s seen fifty times before because of the nostalgia, and the comfort that arises with it. And the laughter.

 

The show is an easy pick because it’s Louis’ favorite type of humor: crude, unabashed. Vehemently British.

 

—Yes, yes I completely agree. Positive energy takes work. In the last six months, I’ve excelled. I take all the negative emotions and just bottle them and bury them, and they never come out. I’ve basically never been better!

 

Louis honks out a laugh, and pinches Harry in the side. “She’s like you!” Another laugh. Harry smiles against his bare chest, nipping at the skin as payback. 

 

—It’s about… opening yourself up to the people who want to love you.

 

—And she’s wide open lately!

 

In his chest something shifts. He ignores it, the beating of his own heart. Tries to focus instead on the rhythmic massage of Louis’ fingertips in his hair. Stroke down slowly, twist the locks around his fingers once, twice, then let go, and drag the nails back up. Then down again. A pleased sigh. This is the best. Nothing’s wrong at all.

 

Harry loves his time spent with Louis. Especially after a long week of Louis being busy. It makes for good Friday night meals— homemade pizza!— and even better Friday night sex. Harry has had his fill. And nothing else should be expected of the night. 

 

Except,

 

Louis came inside him tonight. And it felt amazing— Harry forgot how fucking good it felt. For months they hadn’t gone raw, both complaining about the hassle of having to clean up afterwards. It was much easier to wear a condom when they were tired and lazy and all they had to do was strip it off to fall asleep. A shower felt better in the morning. But tonight they’d gone far enough that Louis forgot to slip one on.

 

“Don’t—” Harry had giggled breathlessly, “Are you trying to get me pregnant, Lou?” 

 

They had laughed about it, Harry giggling with delight for longer than necessary.

 

“Yeah, gonna— gonna knock you up, babe.” A dirty swipe of his cock over Harry’s hole. “Gonna fill you up.”

 

Louis always sticks to his word. Loyalty. All of the assertiveness and determination of the strongest Capricorn. The same level-headed, over-protective man Harry fell in love with fifteen years ago.

 

He’s naked beneath the sheets. If he reaches behind him he can feel Louis’ come where it trickles out— but he doesn’t want to think of it like that. In his mind it stays inside.

 

The tone of the episode changes harshly. A swerve of lanes. The sister has a miscarriage in the bathroom. Refuses to go to a hospital. Harry tries to look away from the screen, tries to think of it lightheartedly. But he can feel the way Louis reacts, a slight stiffening beneath him before he relaxes again.

 

— Just— get your hands off my miscarriage. It’s mine… It’s mine. 

 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tears drop onto Louis’ chest, making the hair at the center of it stick down. Just soft tears. Nothing, really.

 

Until Louis pauses the episode. Just then. Letting it sink in.

 

He’s seen this show so many times before that it shouldn’t matter. 

 

But he goes rigid, breath knocked out of him when Louis runs a hand down his arm, squeezing his skin comfortingly.

 

“She—” he hiccups, voice going breathy and insecure in Louis’ silence. As if he’s waiting for an explanation. “That’s so sad. Um… that’s—”

 

A little cough. He sits up, wipes his face with the heels of his palms. Louis watches him from the headboard, a wary little wrinkle between his brow. 

 

“She should have— have kept her baby. Th- She really. Deserved. A baby.” Another frustrated swipe at his leaky eyes. He’s staring hard at the carpet, then at his hands, anything if it means not looking back at Louis. 

 

Because Louis knows he’s not talking about the character from the show. He sees through the facade like it’s made of clean glass. Fifteen years of knowing Harry— of course he would.

 

And Harry just sinks forward into himself. Curls up. Insecure. Shameful. He covers his palms over his face and silently, he tries to push the tears back into his skull. They fall and fall and fall and he can’t do anything about them.

 

Louis’ beside him in mere seconds— no hesitation from the loveliest husband in the world. The best husband. Harry chose well— not that there was much thought behind the process. He can’t think of anyone else being the father of his kids.

 

Not when Louis wraps his arms around him, tucking him into his shoulder. Whispering, “It’s okay, baby. That’s alright.” 

 

And, softly, as Harry sobs, “Let it out.” 

 

And without a hint of humor or condescension, “Me little baby. You’re mine. You know that?” 

 

Harry knows. And now there’s not a moment in sight where he can think of himself as a parent. How can someone so sad bring up a child, without putting his own hardships on them? Harry would be a fool. He’d be a horrible parent. He’d mess it all up before it even started. No book or scholarly article or recommended Youtube video could make him a better fit for the parent of an orphaned child. He doesn’t know the first thing. He doesn’t deserve it.

 

And now he’s smaller than life. His body isn’t a body anymore; it’s something for Louis to hold and whisper into. Harry is smaller than life when he curls his body around itself as far as he can go. Shrivels like a dead flower. Curls up, frail, like one touch could send him into a pile of dust. Sand being washed away with the tide. 

 

He lets himself be babied because there’s nothing else to do. And it’s better to listen to Louis’ voice when he’s like this. Always so gentle. Soft. Protective.

 

“ Thank you,” he whimpers. Later. As they try to fall asleep. Face dry now. Eyes wide awake.

 

Lights out. Louis whispers, “For what?” like he doesn’t already know.

 

“For—” Sniffle. “For, um.”

 

A pregnant pause. The room is dead silent. In the countryside— not even the distant sound of motorcycles, trains or city traffic. Not even the sound of church bells that Harry would hear growing up. Just crickets, and cool breeze in the tree branches, and nothingness. 

 

And Louis saying, with a tinge of apprehension, “Harry. D’you want to talk about it?”

 

Harry just shakes his head. If he weren’t so fragile, perhaps Louis would force them to sit down and actually have the conversation. But Louis’ tired. And Harry’s ill.

 

“We can— in the morning. I want to. In the morning, alright, darling?” 

 

No response from Harry. He pretends he’s asleep. That this was a dream. Mothers don’t cry. They don’t. They don’t. They don’t.

 

“Goodnight.”

*

The good thing about Harry is that he always wakes up on the right side of the bed.

 

Morning sunshine bleeds through sheer white curtains and over their tanned skin. Still naked from the night before. Not cold anymore. The room will soon be filled with the sound of morning sex. But for now—

 

He glances over his shoulder at the sleeping body behind him. Face half-tucked into the pillow, not knowing he’s being admired, Louis is handsome as ever. Age looks good on him— in the happy lines by his eyes, in the sharpness of his facial hair. Grey hairs find their way wisping through the mousy mop on his head. Harry would play with them if he had enough energy to turn over. 

 

Crying left him sated and lazy. Empty. It drained him until he’s lifeless and floaty like a balloon.

 

Louis shifts behind him. Pressing his nose into the sheets, Harry smiles goofily to himself. Louis has morning wood. A great feat he doesn’t often get to enjoy when Louis is out the door before him, on his way to the short trip to London and his office. Or when he’s away in Los Angeles or Berlin.

 

He didn’t shower the night before— how disgusting. He should berate himself for it, but when he grinds back with enough purpose to feel something, it just can’t get better. Louis wakes up slowly, with a groan. With a hand in a deathgrip on Harry’s hip, digging crescent moons into his laurels.

 

“ Fuck,” he hisses when he drags the tip of his cock up against Harry’s hole, just to tease. But it slips in easily, just the tip, leaves them both breathless. “You’re loose. Oh—”

 

And still wet. A dream.

 

They fuck on their sides, rocking back and forth in a dirty rhythm. And when Harry lets it out, no one can really blame him.

 

Just a whisper. A whimper in the sweet morning air. The smell of hay wafts in from the open window where the fresh damp grass waits outside. A songbird chirps. And Harry’s whispering, like he’s a kinky twenty-year-old again, “ Daddy, daddy, please…”

 

It’s just soft enough for Louis to hear. And fuck harder with snaps of his hips. And bite down gently at Harry’s earlobe, playing along. “Yeah?” 

 

The smell of sex is dirty in their white bedroom but pales miserably in comparison to the mouth on his husband. Words that shouldn’t be spoken if not in Harry’s ear, quietly. Teasingly. Just to get him to come.

 

“You need it, don’t you? Need it so bad. Need something,” a snap of his hips, punching a squeak out of Harry, “to fill up your cunt. Yeah?”

 

Harry nods, whines. More, more. He lets it all wash over him, but it doesn’t cleanse him.

 

Louis comes inside again. An addiction. Like something may happen if he keeps doing it. Harry reaches behind to keep him there even after he came, clenching down and sighing happily. Delighted. Yes, he’s gotten his fill.

 

Soft pants into the air. He’s gotten his fill.

 

His hand grips Louis’ wrist and drags it over himself. And he only gives it a fleeting thought before he says it.

 

“They’re getting bigger.” In a whisper.

 

There’s a confused frown in Louis’ voice when he murmurs, “What are?”

 

And Harry holds the palm of his hand over his pec. Then— dragging it downward, over his tummy, its soft, barely-there swell where he’s gained a bit of weight in the past few months— he adds, whimpering, mewling, “This as well.”

 

Don’t you think so?

 

Louis doesn’t respond. That is, until he slips out, abrupt, unceremonious. Leaving Harry cold, alone in bed.

 

“Wh—”

 

“Harry,” comes on an exasperated sigh, as Louis sits on the edge of the bed, back turned. “I think something’s wrong.”

 

He said that. Harry could laugh at the bluntness. He stays emotionless, though. Expression plain, eyes limpid as he looks over his shoulder.

 

“You know I— I just want you to be happy. But you’re in this house all day, with nothing to do…” And Harry’s mind is screaming at him. What do you think? What do you think I should do?  “And— it’s not healthy. You need to—”

 

Offer a solution, he dares him. To a stubborn mule who doesn’t take suggestions. Go ahead.

 

“I don’t know,” Louis falters, midway through his sentence. He shakes his head, frustrated. Trying not to lose his temper as he grabs a suit from their closet. Harry doesn’t stare at the back of his naked body. No. He strokes his own stomach, as if under a spell. Scratching it comfortingly. Blunt ends of pastel pink fingernails dragging up over the butterfly, then back down. It soothes his quiet anger. Relaxes his muscles.

 

“I want you to be happy,” Louis repeats. The wealthiest man is a pauper at times compared to the man with the satisfied mind.

 

All Louis wants is to keep Harry satisfied. How could he cure this? Harry wonders. Is it worth curing?

 

And then Louis says, a towel slung over his shoulder, “But you’re being fucking weird, lately.”

 

Scathing.

 

Harry sits up, finally looks at him.

 

“Don’t—! Don’t fucking do that,” he warns. Voice rising easily, quickly. Louis isn’t fazed. He expected an argument, then.

 

“What, you think it’s normal, what you’ve been doing?” Louis’ voice stays calm. Harry follows him into the bathroom, watching him start to brush his teeth. Skips right over shaving. “‘Cos I’m not home all the time anymore, you’ve made yourself into some kind of housewife. You’re not a housewife, Harry.” Muffled now, as he sticks the toothbrush in his mouth, “You have a job. You have a life. You’re choosing not to live it.” Quick brush, brush brush, then spit. Brush again. His teeth must be clean as can be. Wash out all the dirt. 

 

But Harry stands naked, covered in grime. Sweat. Come. Confusion.

 

He can’t even look in the mirror anymore. It’s not what he wants to see.

 

He stares at the back of Louis’ head. He has nothing to say

 

because Louis’ right. And Harry hates him. And he’s right. And Harry hates that he knows him.

 

He turns to leave. No quickies in the shower on a glorious Saturday morning. Louis must be getting off to work soon. 

 

Harry grabs his fluffy dressing gown and wraps it around himself. Doesn’t care if he stinks like sex or that his hair is greasy. He pads in his slippers down to the kitchen.

 

Only makes breakfast for one. Tea for one. 

 

When Louis comes down he ignores him dutifully. Except, of course, for brief little glances when he isn’t looking, just to see the irritation on his face when he realizes he’ll have to stop for a coffee run before work. Because his housewife didn’t make any extra.

 

Of course he still grumbles “I love you, too,” before Louis leaves. Of course he keeps his cheek open for the warm press of soft dry lips as a farewell, as a see you tonight. Of course they’re still married at the end of the day, and of course that’s all Harry will ever want. To be married to Louis. 

On a summery day like today, with the slight breeze brushing the willow trees outside his home and birds chirping into the syrupy-sweet air, it’s unusually settled. The air is low and calm and strangely dry, and in the earliness of the day Harry hasn’t yet taken to playing soft background music as he does his chores. There’s no storm today; Harry checked on the telly this morning, knowing he’d be alone all day and having grown bored before he could even reach his morning cup of tea. The weather report was often somber, but today the television man had beamed at his imaginary audience and said, “Clear skies! Go for a picnic in a meadow, open your windows, take your pooch out on a walk! Seventy degrees with only a five percent chance of rain!”

 

Why it still felt so gloomy, so dark and mysteriously quiet, he didn’t know. Everything seems as though it’s wilted; he himself feels meek and dull, despite his attempts at cheering himself up. He’d chosen a yellow jumper today. Made yellow eggs for breakfast. Saw in some women’s magazine his mum left around last month that yellow is supposed to bring you up when you’re down— THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLOR…! The type of magazines women read when they ought not to do anything after birthing their children— all by her lonesome, unable to do much but nurse her infant and dream of ways to get her body back to the way it was before all of this. Postpartum-whatever. Harry’s seen— and indulged in, as well— too many articles about it in the same types of magazines.

Babeeee. 

Yeeeessss??

 

Tell me how it goes. okay ?

 

I will.

 

Remember you don't have to do anything you don't want to do.

 

Don't let them fuck anything up. Keep your head uo

 

*up

 

Always so corny. But Harry smiles at his phone regardless.

Wish I could be there. Love you xx 

 

Love you too :) .xxxxx <33

 

<33 

Also don’t make dinner I’ll pick something up on the way home !

 

Ooooo. Okay.

:D

His phone screen is cracked at the top. Better to get a new one altogether. He traces it with his finger where it runs over Louis’ contact name— which isn’t his name at all. Just a pink heart emoji.

 

On his hand, his wedding ring glimmers on his ring finger. He clicks his phone off with the press of a button, then waits until the screen goes black before pushing away from the desk. The days still feel unreal, as if he’s unconsciously wandering through them, and he hasn’t yet found something to pass the time. 

 

“Perhaps crocheting,” Louis teased him a few nights ago. “ You could use a new ugly cardigan, hm? Isn’t that right?” 

 

Harry frowned into his bite of strawberry ice cream from the carton, and shook his head. “That’s a grandma hobby, Lou. I’m too young for that.”

 

“You’re in your thirties.”

 

“Well, you are, too! Why don’t you make a cardigan?”

 

“You know,” Louis had said, tone changing into something more genuine as he nosed into Harry’s neck behind the couch. “ I can very clearly picture you sitting in a rocking chair, all old and gray, crocheting a blanket or summat for our grandkids. Best to start learning how to now, don't you think?” 

 

A breath on the back of his neck. Louis knows what wistful daydreams occur when he’s not home. He’s the worst.

 

Harry paused, blinking down at his spoon stabbing cold ice cream. “ You’ve got issues,” he said. “ Don’t manipulate me into being a housewife.”

 

Funny little joke. Payback. Louis giggled into his neck and kissed his hair, and later that night before bed, Harry had given in, promising Louis that he would find something special, even if it wasn’t… knitting. 

 

When he was younger he’d romanticize a life like this. Living a quiet life, providing and caring for a family he calls his own. Perhaps it’s because they’re not quite there yet— there’s still a few miles left in this race— but it doesn’t feel like he’s done much for it at all. 

 

Soon, he thinks. Soon it’ll all fall into place. He’s just making simple adjustments, adaptations. Everything will change when they bring their baby home. If it ever happens. If they ever actually adopt a child.

 

Whether that’s this year, or next year, or the year after...

 

He steps outside onto their porch and watches from a fair distance at a neighborhood boy, who can’t be more than nine years old, barrelling down the dirt road on his bike. It’s a bumpy path, Harry knew from the moment they rolled in with their U-haul seven months ago. Strikingly different from the city, and even different from the little old river town he grew up in. It feels like a holiday home, the kind which wraps you up in its beauty initially but only leaves you missing home after a few days too long.

 

Harry misses home. But what is home? For a wanderer, there’s no home at all. For Harry, it’s Louis.

 

He wraps his arms around himself and leans against the wooden pole on the front porch, staring out at the expanse of their yard. Today he shall water the plants, as it’s in good weather and they haven’t gotten rain in a week (!).

 

He should make dinner, too, just as a rebellion for whatever Louis said in his text. Or perhaps bake a pie to set out on the kitchen table. Cherries from the farmer’s market near town for which he borrowed the car to visit. 

 

But for now, as he watches the young boy struggle over a rock on the road and continue pumping the gears of his bike, Harry settles himself into a breathtaking nostalgia, thinking of everything that’s led him up to this point.

*

 

“It’s gonna be a bit difficult to get out of your, uh. Current, you know— the current perception the public has of you. We could, in the next year or two, do a whole… rebranding thing. You’re good at rebranding, eh?”

 

Harry shares a laugh with his producer fakely, tucking the phone into his shoulder. “Yeah, I’ve, uh, done it a few times, haven’t I?”

 

“So it’ll be easy, then! Man, but you really blew it out of the water with that pop music you were making, though. People loved that. You’re good at making, you know, radio music.”

 

He stares at his and Louis’ laundry, still spinning in the dryer but quietly coming down. And he shrugs, though no one can see him. “I guess.” Evasive. Low, dry voice. 

 

“But, uh. Yeah! So, what were you thinking of doing, then?”

 

A ding! lets him know the dryer is finished. He pops open the door, scooping the fresh, clean, still-warm whites into an empty basket, then pulls it to rest on his hip, maneuvering the cell phone under his ear again. “Um… I dunno. I’ve felt this need in the past few years to I guess… not be very… I dunno. To do a bunch of different stuff, I guess? I mean, have a ton of different inspirations on each album. S’just kinda like what people expect. Not that I regret it— I’m really happy with the stuff I’ve made, and. Yeah. I think I’d just like to have a sound of my own, kind of?”

 

A bit out of breath now that he’s at the top of the stairs, he makes the trudge to the master bedroom. 

 

“So one specific sound? Like, a ‘you’ sound?”

 

“Yeah, I guess… Whatever that is. I don't really—” he gives a self-deprecating laugh— “I don't really know what that is, to be honest.”

 

He dumps the whites onto the freshly made bed, then sets to folding them carefully. 

 

“You know, I was thinking. Just ‘cos… I’m a performer? Naturally, I mean. It’d be cool if, like. Half of the show was these… slow songs, like ballads, like… me songs, you know, just super… vulnerable, and like, the other half— or maybe this would come first, whatever— the other half would be the fun songs! Or the rock songs, the ones people can dance to or, uh, feel happy about...!”

 

“Yeah, that makes total sense, Harry. Well, you know— don’t go on worrying too much about performing. The key is to make the music you wanna make, right? So focus on the… artistry. Like, no corporate bullshit, this time!” He smiles at that.  “You’re like, um, Bob Dylan! You know, hide out for a few years. Never see the light of day. Then come back super great with great music, like, a riveting you know storyline about your ex-wife or some shit— um, don’t do a born-again thing, though, that wouldn’t sell well with your gay fans…”

 

Harry laughs, eyes crinkling down at the pair of white briefs he folds.

 

“Yeah, ‘course.”

 

“Alright, well! Are you getting back in the studio anytime soon? You’re still in the UK, right? Weren’t you at— what’s it— Peter Gabriel’s studio, huh?”

 

“Yeah, for Fine Line, I was. We’ve got— me and my, uh, partner have a studio in our house, so I’ve been using that.”

 

“You’ve been writing!”

 

He winces. “Um, not really.” Awkward, insecure laugh. “Uh, I’ve been… mostly just listening, really. But I will…! I want to, to write. So… yeah…!”

 

“Alright, well, take your time, man. Whatever you put out’s gonna be gold, so don’t worry too much, you know, about the logistics of it all. Just let it all flow. Man, I swear— everyone stopped treating music like it’s an art form. It still is!...”

 

“Yeah. Yeah.” He licks his lips, finishing the last of the small batch of folded laundry, setting it in front of him. “Yeah, I’m gonna start writing, I think, soon.”

 

Soon. 

*

“Wouldn’t we be great… great parents?”

 

2012. The words are so quiet. Murmured between the sheets of a hotel room bed somewhere in America. Harry’s not sure if Louis’ still awake even— there’s no telling by just the sound of his breaths in the dark, which stays low and steady throughout the night. Louis doesn’t snore like Harry does— he doesn’t fall asleep as easily either.

 

You’re like a baby were the words whispered after a show on the X-factor tour just a year earlier. All the boys had been bouncing with adrenaline, their first tour, and God knows how much they love performing. But Harry— the baby of the group, the youngest who still has chubby cheeks and hasn’t lost that extra skin around his waist just yet— fell quickly sleepy once they got in the car. Curling a thick fluffy scarf around his neck like it was a pillow, and yet still found warmth and comfort in resting his head on Louis’ shoulder. Just for the hands in his hair of course. And the soft murmurs of fall asleep right in me arms. Little baby…

 

So it’s not what he expects when Louis replies, completely serious: “‘Course. We’d be fabulous parents.”

 

He expects Jesus, Haz, already thinking about children? Louis’ usual sarcasm, his sometimes insufferable, unrelenting cheek. Only shacked you up a few months ago. Can’t go thinking about kids just yet. An obvious answer. Duh.

 

“Kids love us,” Louis adds, voice light in the dark room. Harry stares ahead, smiling, fiddling with Louis’ fingers where he’s got an arm slung over his shoulders. Little spoon. Little baby.

 

“I love kids.” Harry means it. Maybe it’s silly, but his cheeks burn after, and he smiles to no one in particular. “Kids are… they’re so fun. Like, so special. I’d love…”

 

Bites his lip, trails off. He doesn’t need to share this much, not right now at least. Louis is quiet, though, listening attentively. He’s always got an ear for Harry, no matter how much Harry may doubt that anyone would want to listen to what he’s got to say.

 

Youngest son. Talked over at the table. Blabbers on and on when he gets the chance to speak. Is a brat when he doesn’t get attention; hates the attention he gets when it’s not what he wants. Silly boy, silly mundane hobbies— someone’s got to indulge him.

 

“I need t’take you to me mum’s house again,” Louis’ saying. “You’d go fuckin’ mad around her kids. All of’m. They’re wild about you, too— they were the last time. Remember that? They didn’t want you to leave...”

 

That was December. About a year of their official relationship— but it was always hard to count anniversaries when you fall in love with your best friend. Harry thinks of an ice skating rink in Louis’ city, and every single Tomlinson he could count on ten fingers tagging along, but they stayed apart for most of it. Talking quietly as they skated. Louis’ hand in Harry’s, claims of you’ll fall on your arse if you don’t hold me hand, so just hold it.

 

Everything is remembered alongside their first flat. Unlocking the door to their first place felt like walking through heaven’s gates. It was completely furnished with sofas and large cupboards he felt would fall apart if he laid a finger on them. Not a speck of dust laid on the surfaces of the countertops and coffee tables. The walls on one side were floor-length windows, overlooking the cobblestone steps of the courtyard. Bigger and better than anything he could have dreamed of living in, where he was from in his river-town.

 

Harry of course loved the kitchen most. He could have gasped the moment he laid his eyes on it. It was large, much bigger than his mum’s kitchen back at home or the one they were given at the X-Factor house. A white marble countertop wrapped around it, matching the birchwood cabinets and the cream-colored French windows. There was an island in the center of it all, and two sinks— one for washing hands, and one for the dishes. A modern, steel black stove-top; black and white checkered backsplash.

 

On the morning they moved in, Louis hopped to sit on the counter, hanging his legs so that his heels hit the cabinets underneath with every swing. Harry had glanced at him, gave a reproachful shake of his head.

 

“What?” 

 

“It’s a brand new apartment, and you’re already getting it dirty.” He smiled to show he wasn’t really upset, and looked around at the kitchen again. “Isn’t it lovely?”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Louis pull out his Blackberry from the pocket of his cardigan. “Sure is. You can make me fantastic eggs every morning with that fancy stove.”

 

Harry grinned and swatted Lou’s knee, which was just within reach of him. In response, he scrunched up his face and poked Harry’s belly with the tip of his toes. Harry grabbed at his ankle and playfully squeezed it before dropping it back down and stepping out of the territory of his legs. Louis just laughed and went back to whatever was so interesting about his phone as Harry stared in amazement at the kitchen, thinking of all the dishes he could cook, all the tea he could brew, just for the two of them. 

 

“You’re the only person I know who cares so much about a kitchen. Except me mum, maybe,” Louis said, switching off his phone. “Wanna make me some tea?”

*

 

Harry’s at the stove, surely adding too much soy sauce to a pan of fried rice, when Louis walks in the front door.

 

“Ah, I told you on the text I’d bring home food!” he chastises from a room away, surely smelling the saltiness of his dinner wafting through the house. Harry furrows his brow, placing the glass bottle of soy sauce on the counter, ignoring him. On another night he’d be ecstatic, or at least pleasantly delighted for Louis’ presence. Tonight he feels strange, out of body. He hears the soft pad of Louis’ feet into the kitchen, knowing that kicking his shoes off is his first step in unwinding from a long day, and hears his voice grow louder as he comes. “Smells fuckin’ delicious, though.”

 

Arms wrap around him, a nose brushing the back of his neck, and he tries to relax into the warmth. “Mm.” 

 

“Actually this is great, because I never picked up food.”

 

A soft exhale, masked as a laugh, leaves Harry’s lips. He knew that would be the case, anyway— they’ve had too many petty arguments in the past twenty years of living together to act like it doesn’t happen. Louis makes empty promises sometimes, not out of malicious intent of course, just white lies that Harry’s gotten used to weeding out. 

 

“Missed you today,” Louis says, lips still trailing over Harry’s neck and shoulders through the fabric of his tee.

 

“Missed you, too,” he whispers. It’s true. Harry spent most of this afternoon missing Louis, missing the Louis he met when he was sixteen. He misses Louis still, even with him right behind him. 

 

Quietly, perhaps a bit coldly, Harry breaks free of his grasp to grab the veggies he’d cut earlier, trying his hardest not to cry over his rice. He’s not even sure why he’s so upset— was it the prospect of having to wait for children? Was it the thought that they might not ever be parents? Or was it just his own nostalgia, his own ache, filling him to the brim with a silent melancholia. 

 

Later, over dinner, Louis asks, “What’s wrong?”  and Harry can’t find the words to say. They’re eating at the counter even though there’s less space; every time they sit at their dining table, which was made for six people, Harry imagines the seats being filled by little kids on either side of themselves, has had hundreds-too-many daydreams of staring at the other end, starry-eyed and beaming, while their children chatter happily and pass their food around. 

 

“Did it go badly? The, er, call? With the producer?”

 

“I just—” he starts, but the words get backed up in his throat. He clears it, stabbing at his food, a pout finding its way onto his lips before he purses them. He’s being childish. He sits up straight. Looks at his lap, then at Louis, and says, “It was fine, the call. It was good. I’m being dumb.”

 

Louis molds his face into a soft smile, but it looks so natural Harry can believe it’s for him. Louis’ palm warms his waist, and he’s pulled closer until his head can fall to Louis’ shoulder. Kisses in his curls. Harry’s insecurity always brings out Louis’ protective side, his family-oriented side, and it makes Harry’s eyes go blurry to think about how wonderful of a father Louis would be.

 

“You’re not dumb. You wanna tell me what happened?”

 

Harry breathes in deeply the scent of smoke and cologne on his undershirt and nods. “It was just about, um. Future stuff? We talked about my sound and everything. I just didn’t say, um. I forgot to say…”

 

“...Hmm?”

 

He lifts his head, wiping the wetness from his under eyes. Forks his rice and eats a spoonful loudly. Shrugs. “It’s just, I don’t anticipate… Putting out a big record… for a while. You know?”

 

He twists his fork around in his food for a moment, pouting. 

 

“Not anything… mind-blowing, anyway. I mean, not as big as the last few. I don’t want… the streams, or anything.” He sighs, unsure of how to word the thoughts that have been flying around in his head for months. “I just want to be gone long enough for people to just… forget about me.”

 

And then it’s silent. Louis doesn’t say anything, knows better than to contradict when it’s about this subject. He just nods. 

That night, Harry listens to Louis snore softly against the back of his neck, and stares in the deep blue light at a pair of dress shoes Louis left laying around after an event last month. Neither of them have cleaned the room since a month after they moved in. Harry thinks maybe he’s going through something, that he needs to address it to himself, that he needs to fix it. But he can’t find the motivation to do so. 

 

He dreams, like most nights though he seldom remembers them in the mornings, about being crowded by friends and family, smiling faces he recognizes, and looking down in his arms to a new one. 

It’s a week later when he decides to do it. He’s finished all the reruns of his show on television, and the weather report says nothing interesting; the news is a sugar-coated rundown of wars and terrorists, and he’s finished his book. He wanders around the house until he sees it: a leatherbound, empty notebook he was gifted by his mum last Christmas, sitting lonesome on his shelf, disguised as a book. He hasn’t written in it yet. . 

 

It’s big and thick, the papers rough-cut and softly frayed at the edges. It seems worn in despite never being used before, kind of like the big old mansion they moved into had the ghost of some other family in it, evident in the hardwood floors that grew worn with footsteps before they even stepped their own. In the already decorated nurseries, vintage wallpapers in pink and blue and pale yellow— sufficient for any child. But it was empty at the end of the day, devoid of real life. Hopeful for something new. 

 

He brings it to his desk, and opens it to a fresh, lined page. He stares at it blankly for a long moment, wondering why he decided to open it in the first place, and picks up a ballpoint pen, writing his first words— consequently, his first entry.

*

“I’ve just been… really confused lately.” He furrowed his brow, staring at the sheer curtains that overlooked the neverending traffic of the city of Los Angeles. Then he glanced back at his therapist, and shrugged. Looked down at himself, fixing the buttons of his shirt so it covered a bit more of his chest. Better to be at least a little bit modest. He didn’t want her to start calling him a slutty man-whore like she must have seen in the headlines these past few years.

 

That’s awful— don’t think of yourself that way.

 

“Dunno, s’like… I don’t… I hate the way… people perceive me? I know, you probably hear that all day long, but s’like… so wrong. It’s all just… really wrong. You know?”

 

His therapist was older than his mum, and looked it, too. The fine wrinkles around her lips and eyes were kind, though, and indicated sageness.

 

“I do hear that a lot. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less true. You’re right,” she said, “people do perceive you wrongly. I think anyone can sympathize with that.”

 

He nodded. Shrugged again. Played with his rings.  Then pushed his long, long, long hair out of his face.

 

2015.

 

“S’just that… I don’t know. Maybe, ‘cos I grew up with women? All around me I mean, mostly women. I never really… I mean,” he laughed, “I joked about this at the— um, at the Manchester show, in front of thousands of,” he coughed, cleared his throat, lost his smile, “in front of thousands of people— I’ve never really been. Like, masculine. Not how some people... Really want. Or expect, I guess.”

 

He looked at the ceiling to stave off pesky tears. “S’just so confusing. I’m just— all of my favorite people are women. Inspirations. Like… Patti Smith, Shania Twain, Stevie Nicks and um… Joni Mitchell, you know, Cher. I mean, I fucking love all of them. I want to… like, be them. Can you imagine, waking up looking just like young Cher. I mean…!” 

 

He chuckled, wiping at his eyes. “Fuck, I sound so gay.” In the silence, he added, “Sorry. Been in WeHo too long, I—”

 

“You don’t need to apologize.” Was all she said for a moment. She smiled softly, then opened her mouth, calculating her word choice. “Harry— pardon me if this is overstepping, and it might be— it doesn’t sound necessarily ‘gay’ to me, that you like to be perceived in an overtly feminine way. What I mean to say is that— I think your femininity goes beyond mannerisms or enjoyment of… Cher. You are feminine, inherently— as you. As a person. That doesn’t necessarily emasculate you. Unless— you want it to, of course.”

 

He paused, breathless for a long moment. Staring back at the sheer curtains. The walls painted pale turquoise, white accents everywhere. A dark teal velvet couch he sat straight in. Straighter. Straightened his back.

 

“Yeah, maybe overstepping… a little,” he responded quietly, when he had the feeling in his tongue to do so.

 

“You’re right,” she agreed, nodding solemnly. “I apologize.”

 

He didn’t know where it came from when he opened his mouth and blurted, “Sometimes I just want to get blackout drunk, you know, to where I don’t remember it in the morning, and just tell my b— my, um. Partner. Everything. I want to tell them everything, but without having to… think about it or remember what I said, or how they reacted. I want to tell them how— how badly I just want to leave it all. I mean, they know that. But not the reason why, you know?”

 

She didn’t know either. Or— maybe she did. Her job was to read between the lines, he supposed.

 

He shrugged again. “I don’t know. I don’t want to commit suicide, by the way—” his eyes went wide, cautious to ward the thought away. “Please, don’t prescribe me with like, Lexapro or something, I swear I’m fine, like I just— I think about— like, getting away from it all. Or, if I could sleep for like twenty years and wake up forty years old, and like, bald or something— I mean, that would be pretty funny.”

 

She didn’t laugh. Just said, “I’m a therapist, I can’t prescribe medication to my clients.”

 

“Oh. Okay.”

 

Twenty minutes of silence ensued.

 

“Well, looks like our time is just about done, Harry.”

 

He shot up from the couch instantly. “Alright, um— it was great, like. Talking to you.” He gave her a firm, steady handshake— anything to make up for how unstable he seemed just then. 

 

“You as well.”

 

“Great. I’ll— I’ll just write you a check now.” He reached into the handbag he brought with him, found his checkbook, and scribbled it out. He ripped it out perhaps too hastily, eager to leave.

 

Before he was able to, however, his name was called. 

 

He turned his head in the stale corridor, briefly checking the time on his phone and seeing the notification that his driver was outside, and looked up to meet eyes with his therapist.

 

She said, “You don’t have to listen to me, of course. But I think it would be beneficial— for yourself, and your, um, confusion… if you began to write things down. In a diary. Not on your phone or anything like that. I understand you’re a musician… but maybe, separate from that, just a book for your thoughts… reflections, things like that. Just a suggestion.”

 

He just said, “It was lovely meeting you,” and hoped that she wouldn't begin telling people all of his secrets and self-deprecation, even with the NDA she signed beforehand.

 

The drive to his empty Los Angeles home was gruesome.

*

June 26th.

It was a few days we had off between tours. Maybe I was supposed to be somewhere the week before— getting photographed in Los Angeles or something. But for two days I’d been at my mum’s house with Louis, who had spent the week with his family off from work. We met up there. I can’t remember much about the weekend other than that mum wasn’t home for some of it, and that’s why we had to be there— to feed the cats. 

 

I was sitting in the garden, on my third tangerine of the afternoon. Vitamin C. I remember it was part of a diet I was trying, detox from being on the road so much, not breathing clean air. And no one was home. Just me and Lou.

 

I remember how good the fresh air felt. Like I was a wet towel being wrung of water so long and now I was finally strewn over the clothesline. New beginnings. Something like that.

 

Peeling my third orange when the soft flapping of Louis’ sandals grew nearer. He sat next to me. 

 

—Weird spot, he said. It was all he said.

 

I didn’t look up. Just hummed a question. 

 

—You’re sitting in the middle of the garden, Louis explained.

 

— Yeah…

 

And we shared a sigh. Louis leaned back in the sun, soaking it up. The tangerine was taking an awful long time to peel. Its orange skin littered the mown grass beneath my legs, in only small increments my short nails were able to peel off. Thin flesh not wanting to peel away from the ripened fruit, too attached for that. I kept picking at it, instead of handing it over to Louis to try, like I would with the stuck cap of a waterbottle or a bag of crisps. Kept picking at it with my thumbnail, painted a dark red that day, something I’d have to remove before our next appearance on Monday. 

 

—I like your hair like that.

 

Maybe he said that. Maybe it would have been kinder to look up when he said that. But I was selfish. And I had so much on my mind, then. And I got compliments all day long and I didn’t know what to do with them. And I often didn’t believe them. And I didn’t know. 

 

—Darling. 

 

I looked up at him.

 

—Hm?

 

Louis just tilted his head and smiled. Patient with me. The dark circles under his eyes stayed though sleeping at home felt better than a bunk in the bus driving through the middle of nowhere. Running on empty. 

 

—Your hair. 

 

I reached my hand up slowly, slow like honey, slow like the sun was melting me in a pot. My hair might’ve been in a bun or a plait, or tied with one of those scarves I’d wear. I managed a small smile, but it took time to spread across my face. To meet my eyes.

 

—Oh, I said. Thank you. 

 

Went back to the orange. Ten little slices laid out on the clean grass. Perfect proportion. I dug my fingers into the soft, stringy, dry part of the fruit and pulled it apart, halving it. Reached blindly for Louis’ hand— knowing the palm would be open already, its silent invitation—and pressed the half into his hand, lingered just a moment to feel his warm skin. Then pulled back. Took a chunk of fruit and popped it into my mouth, feeling the citrus burst on my tongue. 

 

Mum was right— the mandarins were perfectly sweet this time of year, having come all the way from China. And in my periphery I watched Louis chew the same small segment of tangerine, mirroring me. 

 

It reminded me of the times I’d pretend to be asleep, drifting off against his chest, but would really be listening to our heartbeats. Waiting for them to fall at the same time. Same time. Clockwork. It’s how I used to convince myself— that we were in love. Forever. It was one of the only tangible things I held onto.

 

I met his gaze as we fell on our last section of the fruit. Chewing it at the same time. Tasting it at the same moment. Blue eyes crinkled and sparkled like the sky with the sun, and I just tilted my head and observed the man I love. Can’t think of a life without this simplicity. We were still chewing, swallowing, smiling. Just a small moment until we fell into conversation like we always do. Something about what Louis was just watching on TV, the call he took from his mum, or the text he got from one of the boys. I never had much to say except in response. 

 

It’s strange. Because sometimes I look at my life and see all of this. So much that people dream of. Fame and leisure and pleasures that some people will never experience. Just… privilege. But all I wanted from the first moment I fell in love was to do without it. I never needed it. I could live without it. It wouldn’t kill me.

 

But I breathe in the fresh air of the countryside now, and I realize that the last fifteen years can’t ever be undone, and that I’ll never be the same person I was at sixteen. 

 

I know what I want. And I can’t help but think... 

 

It was the words Irving told me when I signed in 2015. He’d been generous. Making amends for me. He wanted success, and he got it. (He’s still getting it, maybe. I don’t pay attention to charts anymore.) I remember being twenty-one and sitting in his office, some big chair, Jeff next to me. And I was being told:

 

—You won’t even have to work hard for this, Harry. I’ll tell you that. Once we knock this first year out of the ballpark— once you get out of the band, I’m telling you, you won’t have to work a day in your life. You’ll get everything you want, he said. You’ll have everything you want.

 

He was just saying it. I remember how hopeful Jeff was for me. And I remember being happy, of course, pleased with the concept. Some kind of fairytale ending at the end of the road. As if the sidewalk stopped at some point. Just dropped off into heaven. 

 

It didn’t. It hasn’t. That’s okay. I know what he meant, anyway: just had it misconstrued. I know there’s no possibility of having what I want, but it’s nice to live in the fantasy that it may happen. At some point.

*

Are you jogging ?

 

Yes

Do you need me? 

 

No

Are you running by the market ?

 

I can if you want me to.

 

There’s no milk left :(

I can just order it on my phone

 

I’ll pick some up. In town 

 

Thank youuu :)

Come quick I want my brekkie !

Just kidding take your time !!

 

Hahahahaha

He walks the last mile with a gallon of milk hanging from two fingers, his phone in the other. By the time he’s standing in the front hall, without time to unplug his earbuds or toe out of his sneakers, he’s got Louis attached to him, kissing and nipping at his neck like he does when he wants a quickie.

 

“Fuck,” he grumbles into Harry’s neck. “You look so good after a jog… fuck, did you go into the shop like this?”

 

“I— yeah,” Harry mumbles, nodding. “I mean, you wanted milk…”

 

“Not anymore.” He kisses Harry on the lips now, heady and wet licks into his mouth. “Fuck. All sweaty… fuck—”

 

And he drops to his knees. Harry’s a bit startled— it’s seldom they have quickies unless it’s twenty minutes before one of them is due to go onstage, which is only if they’re in the same city at the same time on tour— unlikely. 

 

Still holding the milk, Harry stands goofily with his stance bow-legged in the hallway as Louis tugs down the waistband of his running shorts, murmuring praise along the way.

 

“Fuck, your legs. How have you got such fantastic legs?” Thigh kisses. Just beside the tiger tattoo. The skin is hairy there, hairy everywhere now. Harry hasn’t shaved in a while. His happy trail gets attention next when Louis presses kisses to the base of his cock, nose tucked just above, inhaling his scent where he’s hottest.

 

His skin shines with sweat all down his tummy, and he watches incredulously as Louis licks at it.

 

“Uh, should I—” He stammers, cock growing slightly but it’s uncomfortably cool in the air-conditioned hallway. “Can I put the milk down…”

 

Louis pulls back, laughing raspily and taking the gallon of milk from his hand, placing it next to him on the floor.

 

“Gonna suck you off now,” he says. “Y’gonna come down my throat, okay, baby?”

 

Harry chokes on his breath. “O-okay.” 

 

“Then I’ll let you have breakfast,” he finishes, grinning sharply before swallowing Harry’s cock to the base.

 

Harry doesn’t come down his throat, doesn’t make noise the whole time. After a while, he needily tugs at Louis’ hair and brings him up, and he just flips backwards so that he can brace himself against the wall and jut his hips back. It gives Louis no choice but to fuck him. 

 

Louis does, without complaint.

 

“Fuck, look at you…” Tracing his thumb around where he’s still hot, sweaty, dipping the tip of his thumb inside just a moment. Then he spits down on his hole. Oh, the glory of hasty, rough sex. Harry prepares himself for the first push inside, knowing he’s just open enough from this morning’s shower but tight enough for it to burn with a stretch.

 

“C’mon baby, does it feel good?” as Louis fucks into him, their bodies moving sweatily against the wall. “C’mon, baby, c’mon—”

 

“Mm! Feels so f-fucking good!”

 

Harry just loses it. Pretends he’s drunk on sex, on cock, and pretends he can’t think. He waters this down to one thing— getting fucked. 

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yes, yes, yes…!” His deep drawl sounds so silly now. “Fuck, fuck me!”

 

So Louis does.

Harry can hear the distant whir of cartoons playing on the telly in the kitchen. Big empty house, nothing but the two of them breathing in the hallway, Harry’s cheek pressing into the wall and Louis’ nose stuck in the back of his sweaty curls. Licking at the sweat pooling at the back of his neck and down into the dip of his shoulders. He’s glistening with it. They both are, now.

 

Harry knows Louis’ about to come when his thrusts get staggered, and he breathes more heavily, and his voice becomes frantic as he moans dirtily into Harry’s ear. Harry reaches back, clutching at Louis’ lower back and begging, “Come in me, Lou, come in my— please fucking come in me, breed me please, please— come on baby— yes, yes yesyes oh— my god—”

 

He comes into the palm of his hand, hoping none of it gets on the wall. They stay for a moment, catching their breaths, before Louis pulls out, and reaches down to tug Harry’s shorts back up.

 

Then—

 

Then he just grabs the milk, and kisses Harry’s cheekbone, and flees to the kitchen without a word.

Harry makes sure not to sob too loudly in the shower when he cleans himself out. 

And he pretends everything is normal by the time he comes back down to the kitchen to fix lunch for the two of them. 

*

July 7th.

I was in the Caribbean having written half of the first record. It was always warm on those beaches— the sun never strayed far even at night. The moon was his lover. And I liked to watch them interact. So in the mornings if I woke early enough— or if I didn't go to sleep at all— I'd stir from bed and sit up in bed, or go to the window or the balcony or the deck downstairs, and just watch the sunrise over the blue sea. Yellows and oranges and purples over sparkling blue water. You'd expect, next, that a mermaid would slide up on a rock, singing a solemn song for her lost, lonesome love. 

 

Neverland was in Jamaica, I thought one morning, out on the deck. Before the sun awoke from the little sleep it stole. But I wasn't a Lost Boy. I wasn't anything. I knew, as certain as I knew the sun would rise soon, that we had to go back home soon. And that more would be expected of me. And that, according to every music exec and producer and manager and PR person I talked to, I still had years until I could finally step away. “Unless you want to tank your career,” they'd say. Because of course nothing could be more important than that. Not even my own family.

 

It was an odd morning because I'd been eager to get out of bed so early, when often I'd only sit up to watch the sunrise through the sheer curtains, the open window across from our bed. I woke early, naturally, with a few hours of rest tucked under my belt, with a warm body strewn over my back. I slipped out quietly. No socks or shoes to keep silent as I moved throughout the hotel suite like a mouse. 

 

Maybe I was sleepwalking— it felt as if I was being pulled by some magnificent, otherworldly thing toward the ocean. Just another stray tide. Seaweed and plastic and dead jellyfish left too long to dry on shore. A mermaid— I’d often joke back then, even after I cut my long hair— who needs the sea to feel better again. Get rid of those legs that never helped me walk so far on my own.

 

Everything moved too fast. Maybe I was coming off of something. I couldn't remember much of the night before, but it didn't matter. Because at once I was at the shoreline, only dressed in a thin pair of swim trunks, staring out at the sea. Letting the freezing cold water lick at my skin. The wind blew droplets of it at my bare chest, my face. Spitting at me, trying to shoo me away.

 

I kept going. I waded through the water. Didn't even register how cold it was in the early morning— I went waist deep, shoved my hands into the waves, and felt with my fingers, searching for nothing. Just feeling it out. It raised gooseflesh on my skin— the hairs on the back of my neck stood tall, though I wasn't sure if it was from fear or iciness. 

 

I went under for a moment, just to feel it everywhere. Let it overtake me. At that moment, I wasn't me anymore. I was something else. I opened my mouth, and I tasted the saltiness on my tongue. I tasted the saltiness like I’d tasted the sweat that dripped down a man’s arm, like I tasted the tongue he’d stuck in my mouth afterwards. I tasted the Earth like I'd never known it. We've never met before.

 

I'm a worshiper, I think. And not because I became one. It was never some strange coping mechanism, some weird celebrity thing. I never looked at a stadium full of fans and felt as though I didn't deserve their attention, as though they served me in some way, wrongfully so. It's just that I feel too much. And I want to give so much like it's what I was made to do. I want to live for someone else, I want to let someone else be happy for me. Because of me.

 

Narcissism and selflessness match— they fight to the death. 

*

“Your garden looks lovely, by the way.”

 

It’s muffled slightly over a morning cigarette on the balcony. Harry looks over at his husband and grins.

 

“Yeah? You think so?”

 

Louis nods, tapping out his ashes and watching them float in the air on their way down to his soles. He smiles up, warmly. “Looks great. I’ve noticed how you’ve been working on it— erm, you know, like watering it and shit.”

 

Harry snorts. “'...and shit.'”

 

“Well, you know. Trimming it, whatever. What else do you do?”

 

“I dunno.” He shrugs, playing with his rings as he stares over at their backyard from the balcony. The garden does look quite nice from here, with the lawn freshly mowed around it. Flowers line the perimeter of it. Bushes of milkweed to attract butterflies. Plenty of brightly colored flowers to attract bees and hummingbirds as well. “I pull out all the weeds, too.”

 

“Pulling out the weeds.”

 

“Mmh…”

 

“You're so diligent.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“On top of things.” He takes a drag from his cigarette, wearing a soft smile, eyes still glittering even though the grey smoke clouds around his lips like a filter. He pats his lap where he’s sitting on the cast iron chair of their balcony. Silent in his invitation for Harry to sit there.

 

“C’mere,” Louis says.

 

Harry complies, of course, noticing the cigarette is almost out anyway. He feels softer like this, warmth spreading through Harry’s body like it always does when they touch. He presses his face into his neck, inhaling the scent of his day-old shampoo.

 

“I love you,” he whispers into Louis’ neck, his legs slipping off of his lap. His body is much too big to cling on like a koala without falling splat on the ground. Louis’ hand comes to hold the backs of his thighs, tugging him closer. Securing him in his lap.

 

“I love you too, my baby.”

 

He sighs happily, nuzzles his face further. Making sure his facial hair rubs up against Louis’ neck because he knows he likes it. “...You do?”

 

Silly boy. “‘Course I do. Love you the most.” 

 

Harry looks up, grinning into the morning sunlight. He lets Louis comb his hair out of his face with blunt, calloused fingertips, leaning into his touch like a pleased kitten. 

 

“Love you the most...er,” Harry mumbles back, letting his head relax on Louis' shoulder again. 

 

This is all he needs.

*

July 18th.

—Are you feeling ill?

 

I'd asked the question nervously, pushing his greasy fringe out of the way to press my palm into his forehead. As I dreaded, he was burning up. My mouth opened, a little coo fell out. Ohhh nooo. My lover caught a cold— and immediately I started to think of solutions. First practical: medicine and a long hot bath and a good night’s sleep as we had enough time on holiday break. Then daydreams: spooning him to keep him warm, wrapping blankets around us, feeding him chicken noodle soup, drinking tea and watching telly all afternoon. 

 

But:

 

—I'm fine, Harry, he had said, brushing me off of his shoulder with a harsh shrug.

 

—Lou, you're burning up.

 

He set his jaw, looking down at the plate of toad in the hole I made him. Tracing the edge of his ceramic plate with a stiff finger. 

 

I was pushy.

 

—Let’s just stay home then.

 

We were supposed to go to a friend’s for a quiet dinner. Even within the band we were too mature for our ages. Somewhere at a college in America, students our age were throwing parties and enjoying their youths with their friends, new experiences. Louis and I were perpetually quieted, unless we were by ourselves. 

 

—I’m not fucking sick, Harry.

 

I raised my eyebrows dubiously. Combed his hair back with my fingers. He smacked my hand away.

 

—Could you quit it?

 

—Quit what?

 

—Fuckin’... 

 

He didn’t say anything else. Just muttered, standing up from the table.

 

—I’m gonna go take a shower, was all he said.

 

But within two hours he was running a fever. I checked by cornering him on the bed, sitting on his hips with all of my weight where I would usually just hover. Stuck a thermometer in his mouth, letting him thrash for a second before he gave in begrudgingly. 

 

—You are sick, I said. I was right. Look!

 

Thrusted the thermometer into his view, too close. 38 degrees. 101 Fahrenheit. He looked like he was ready to bite my finger off. But he stayed silent.

 

—Alright, I’m gonna call them and tell them we can’t go. Alright? Just stay in bed, I’ll make… soup! I’ll make you soup, just stay here. Okay? 

 

Met with silence, I bounced off his lap, cheerily hopping down the stairs as I called up our friends. I wasn’t in the mood to socialize, anyway. This was a much better task for me.

 

That’s all it was: a task. Something for me to do, to service him with. Like how I’ll do our laundry when the cleaning service is on holiday or make dinner if I find an interesting recipe from mum. 

 

I ran quickly to the shop to get soup; when I came back, I saw he’d followed my orders: he was still in bed, lazily clicking through the channels with no real intention of stopping and watching anything. Landing on a show about the psychology of serial killers. I climbed in beside him with a smile, kissing his forehead just to see if the heat radiating off his forehead cooled down. Let my lips linger for just a second— he was just as hot.

 

—How are you feeling, honey?

 

Handing him the soup. He took it reluctantly, grumbling.

 

—Aw, my poor grumpy baby, I cooed.

 

I kissed his forehead again, then swept his clean hair down to cover it, kissing down his cheek and on his ear, strange spots.

 

—Harry, y’gonna get sick if you don’t quit it.

 

—Mmm? Y’so pessimistic. Just wanna take care of my baabyyy~

 

That pissed him off. He splashed slightly at the soup with his spoon, brow furrowed.

 

—Can you fucking stop? You’re not a mum. Fucking hell. Stop fucking— smothering me, will you? Just leave it alone, Christ’s sake.

 

I frowned deeply, pulling back. Blamed it on him being ill, being bad-tempered. 

 

It’s just funny. I don’t know.  I like being spoiled, being indulged in. But there’s also an inherent infatuation I have with doing that to someone else. Just… taking care of someone. Having it be my only responsibility. 

 

I just want to forget about myself so bad sometimes. I just want to help someone. I want to be revered, but not in the way that I am. Not for something as artificial as looks or accolades. I want to be revered in the way that old paintings are. To be cherished in the way someone is when they see their family after months of not. I want to be loved, and to give love, as a part of me. Inside me, inside you, him, them. Like it’s the only thing I can do. 

*

Do you have your mum’s recipe for that chicken tikka masala ?

 

Not with me. I think I know how to make it, though

Do we have everything in the pantry?

 

I don’t have the recipe

 

We should have everything. Maybe not yoghurt. Check if we have yoghurt.

 

Everything else is in the house I think

 

A little thought bubble shows up on his phone, then disappears. Harry types out:

 

I’m gonna call you.

Harry is all the way in Los Angeles, is the thing. For a photo shoot and some business stuff, and to attend a wedding he was invited to. It’s God knows what time in the morning, and he’s up with jetlag in a spare bedroom in a friend’s house. Phone ringing dully into the morning air.

 

“Hello?”

 

“You’ve got to cut the chicken breasts up first, then marinate them. Cut them into cubes. Then put them all in one bowl.”

 

“Yeah… I think I overestimated my cooking abilities with this one,” Louis’ voice rings through the phone. It sounds distant, like he placed it somewhere and can’t use his hands.

 

“You can do it. It’s not that hard… I’ve made it many times on a whim.” He pauses, chipping at one of his painted nails. “Just— don’t use those shit pre-made spices in the pantry. It’s shit. I’ve got all the spices in the drawer, you can mix them together. It’ll taste better.”

 

“Alright. I’ll… do that.” Preoccupied again. Harry assumes he’s mixing whatever ingredients he was able to find. Or chopping the chicken.

 

“How was your day?” he asks. 

 

“Good, good. Erm. Did you sleep well?”

 

“Horribly. You can cut them a bit rough, s’ how I do it when I make it. Like… big-ish cubes. Like. I don’t know. Medium sized. Don’t make them too small, though, they’ve got to fit on the skewers.”

 

“What skewers?”

 

“I roast mine beforehand. Cook the chicken.”

 

“I wasn’t told to preheat the oven.”

 

“Oh!... Preheat the oven… for roasting, please.”

 

Louis laughs. “Why are you saying please? S’not like you’re gonna be eating it.”

 

“It sounded rude.” He smiles. Louis called him— texted him, whatever— because he needed him. Even for something as small as this. And it feels good to hear his tired voice over the phone. Asking. Thanking him.

 

“Alright… I cut down the sizes ‘cos it’s just me… and it looks like shit…” he starts an hour and a half later, still on the call, while Harry is up out of bed and applying moisturizer to his dry skin, “but it tastes alright, so how ‘bout that.”

 

“Good!” Harry praises. “That’s great, honey! Send me a picture, I wanna see.”

 

“You’re gonna laugh,” says Louis through a chuckle.

 

“Probably. We have naan bread near the stove by the way, it’s fresh. I got it whenever… Whenever we had… when I made that dip. You remember?”

 

“Oh, yeah.”

 

A pause, a swoop as the picture shows up on Harry’s screen. It’s funny— it’s not a picture, but a selfie, with Louis’ arm held out so he could snap a picture of his self-deprecating face next to a kitchen dish nearly overflowing with bright orange tikka masala and warmed-up naan bread. It doesn’t look like how Harry makes it for guests, with herbs and perfect presentation, but it’ll do. He just grins and says, “Oh, it looks good, babe! ...It looks lovely, honeybun!” And he laughs a little. “I’d eat it!”

 

“You would?” 

 

“Mhmmm,” Harry hums. Smiling at his phone. From thousands of miles away, he made that tikka masala. And that just makes him giggle. 

 

“Thank you for the recipe. Or— your mum.”

 

“S’my recipe.”

 

“Right, yeah. Thank you, baby.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Harry chirps. Then, upon cleaning up his own makeup and skincare and toiletries, he reminds, “Don’t forget to wash your dishes!”

A small thought for the notebook today. Seconds after the call ends and he’s digging through his suitcase for the journal and a trusty pen.

I am a mother, and a wife, and a husband. My husband calls me and asks me how to cook tikka masala. Life is that simple— even without the labels. One day my kids will do the same. For shepherd’s pie or fajitas or fish and chips. And I will pick up the phone and recite it all to them. And they will thank me for the recipe, a new way of saying ‘I love you.’

 

I am happy.

*

For a few years as a young adolescent, Harry lived above a bar. It was a quiet bar. A local pub. Run by a couple who were a decade or so older than his mum, and who didn't ever move around much unless it was Tuesday nights after supper. Those were the nights where Harry would do homework with the slow methodical thud of distant music below him. It didn't bother him so much as pique his interest— but he only ever got the courage to go downstairs by himself once.

Harry slipped into the bar without thinking. No one was around on Tuesday nights— perhaps that’s why they did it.

 

Their names were Jim and Alain. Harry didn’t know they were a couple until it was revealed to him years later, snuck into a joke his dad told at a Christmas dinner. Remember those two fruits your mother lived above while you were in secondary? I do! That was funny, that. She moved out of there quick, huh! Ha!!!

 

“No kids allowed in the pub!” was called out in good nature, with a loud laugh tacked onto the end. Harry froze on the spot, hand clutching the side of the bar, looking as if he were ready to dive beneath it to conceal himself.

 

He didn’t though. Just stared, wide-eyed, as one of the two men, Jim, laughed heartily, and just said, “Where’d you come from?”

 

Alain said, “That’s Anne’s kid!”

 

“Anne’s kid!”

 

“Yeesss, lovely Anne! Does she know you’re here, darling?”

 

“I hope she didn’t call for you to quiet our music…” said Jim. “It’s our one day of dancing! You’ll let us?”

 

Harry just froze up. He opened his mouth, said nothing. Just gave a little shrug. “I was just sick of doing homework…”

 

They laughed again, and suddenly the air of the pub was thick and smelled of sweetness and beer and food and good company. Harry sat on the last stool of the bar and stared at the two men as they danced, separately, removed from one another, on the hardwood floors of the pub. He watched the way their loafers made the old floors go creaky and funny-sounding. 

 

It was around 11pm when Harry got sleepy again, leaning his weight on the lip of the bar. Now, Jim and Alain were also sitting, relaxing and nodding their heads to the music.

 

It was Alain who taught Harry about the song. “D’you know this one? Oh… I’m sure your mum or dad does… it’s a lovely tune… Here, just listen…”

 

And Harry did. 

 

The song was slower, a honey-sweet singing voice overlaying it. Quiet voice, then sweet harmonies. Bongo drums and easy, blithe percussion. It sounded like a lullaby, something strummed on a guitar on a warm beach in Jamaica to put a baby to sleep.

 

“It’s about… at first, the Bible… Moses being found, you know? Does mum take you to church?”

 

“Yes,” Harry said quietly.

 

“Well… this is about if Moses was found and loved? If every child was born… and just given so much love and perfection… and they grew up in a perfect, Utopian childhood… If, erm, you know… every child was born at the right time. There was never… an unwelcomed child. All of them are, you know. Perfect…!” And Jim was smiling at Alain, Harry remembered. And Harry had no clue what he was talking about, but he listened. He was a polite listener, a good listener. His mum taught him that well.

 

“Every child is perfect… born at a perfect time. It’s who raises the child that changes them. Do you know that? If Moses was never found and raised, well. Well, we wouldn’t have the Book of Exodus! And, and same thing with Miriam. You know. It all… It all depends on something so crucial… and…”

 

The song still had a minute left. They listened in silence. And when it was finished Harry had grown so sleepy that Jim and Alain had to close up the empty bar earlier and return him home, upstairs, to a surprised mum in her dressing gown and sleep mask. Harry had gotten in trouble of course, for sneaking out without telling her, but it was alright. It was alright when Harry fell asleep that night, and woke up with the song still stuck in his head. Present, lingering. Like the smell of rain after a storm.

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

A strum on the guitar sends a thrum of vibrations through him. He plays one, two, three chords, then presses the spacebar on his laptop again.

 

It’s a Stevie Wonder performance from decades ago that filters out from the speakers. Harry wants to learn it by ear, just to prove he can, just to be more original. He rearranges his fingers and tries his hardest to play along. Humming, eyes focused on the screen. Melody coming out in garbled chords when his fingers slip, a squeaky, acoustic noise the neck of the guitar makes when he moves his hand down to new notes.

 

He stops playing just to listen for a moment, to bask in the music. Maybe if he listens enough he’ll memorize it all over again, like how he did with his iPod and half-broken earbuds back in 2010. Curled up in his bathroom tub, singing into the mirror with bad breath control and not enough confidence. Diaphragm is too tight. Throat sounds froggy.

 

It’s all loosened a bit now. He’s grown tremendously as a musician and a person, he knows. This is how he’ll show people that.

 

How he hopes to show people that. 

 

He doesn’t register Louis calling his name until the youtube video finishes. His husband’s voice sounds loud, frustrated. When he calls out, “Harry,” throughout the walls of their house.

 

“What?” Harry shouts back.

 

“Come here.” Firm. Insistent.

 

“Why?”

 

“Just c’mere.”

 

“Nooo, you come here,” Harry whines. “I’m working.”

 

Without a reply, he explains himself. “I talked to the producer, and he agreed how good it’d be for me to come back with this— listen to this,” sounding less enthused in his low voice, “m’gonna cover Stevie Wonder!”

 

Still nothing. Maybe the slight padding of Louis’ feet as he climbs up the steps. If that.

 

“ Isn’t She Lovely!” Harry continues, still projecting his voice as he fiddles around with his laptop. Trying to pull up a recording of his voice he made earlier, to show Louis his progress. “Right? Like, fifteen or whatever years later! They’re all gonna see how much I’ve improved…! And like…  Isn’t that cool? You know, that song kinda got me famous. I mean… It led to getting me famous. Not— I don’t know. It’s cool, right? Bringing it back. It was my idea.”

 

Smiling to himself, all proud now. He’s getting back in the game. He’s gonna release his record quietly. He’s gonna do it happily. And he’ll keep doing it, even when him and Louis get proper married, wedding papers and all, even when there’s kids surrounding them and hanging off of their arms and backs all day, even when he’s old and grey. This is who he is. A musician. And— at home— a mother.

 

“I’m really excited to record it,” he says, quieter now, mostly to himself. Just shyly shrugging. “I dunno, ‘s such a great song, and like… I think people will really like it. You know?”

 

“Harry.”

 

Angry now. 

 

Harry blinks up to where Louis is standing in the doorway. Just standing. Jaw tight and locked, the face he makes when he’s trying his hardest not to yell, not to lose his cool. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there, watching Harry sit on the couch with narrow eyes. 

 

“What?...” Harry asks, sitting up straight, pulling at his lip. “S’everything okay?”

 

Louis walks further into the room, and tosses something onto the coffee table. Careless, with disgust, like one might toss a tissue in the bin after using it. 

 

Then he just sits down across from Harry. Face going red with having to hold back all of his words. He’s seething, though, Harry can see it in his icy blue gaze from three feet away.

 

“I think you’ve actually gone mad,” Louis murmurs. Doesn’t meet Harry’s eyes. He says it again, a revelation, “Oh my god!”

 

And Harry realizes. The book he tossed onto the antique coffee table— his journal. Half-filled with written memories, with long tangents of everything Harry wants, everything he’s feeling that he’s too afraid to say. Pages filled with his hatred for the life they’ve built for themselves, disdain for the fact that he can’t leave it. He can’t start over. Pages scribbled out, filled to the brim with black ink. Some are blank but for the dates he saved. Some are left untouched.

 

He opens his mouth to speak.

 

“You—”

 

“I honestly don’t know what to tell you,” Louis says, words filled with venom but quiet, calm. 

 

Harry stares at the journal. 

 

Louis stares at him.

 

“All of this. It’s just— fucking overwhelming. You’re obsessed. Can’t go a single day without— without ‘when we have kids… when we’re parents…’” 

 

Harry just blinks. Makes his face go emotionless. He’s not listening.

 

But he is. He absolutely is.

 

When Louis says, 

 

“Can’t even have sex without fucking thinking about it! You haven’t fucked me in months, Harry, you’re always fucking— caught up in this fantasy you think’s gonna become real. It’s not real.”

 

Harry looks up, face gone hot now.

 

“You don't get it— you don't— how could you possibly understand—?” he starts to shout.

 

“Oh, fuck off.” Louis is cold, standing up now, grabbing the journal before Harry can reach it. And he starts to walk away, pacing. “I know what it fucking means. You just don't fucking listen to me, that’s it— ‘cos you don't— you don't fucking care about me! Most successful I've ever been on me own, and the second you're off of it, you want to drag me back with you—”

 

Of course Harry follows him, voice loud again, contradictory.

 

“That's not it!—”

 

“Well it sure looks like that, doesn't it? Fucking unbelievable. Unbelievable how— how selfish you can be, d’you know that?” 

 

Harry goes quiet again, trembling as his feet smack against the cold stairs. In the stairwell they pass, quickly, fleetingly, photos of their families. And Harry just can’t look.

 

“You don't even think about me sometimes! You just think— oh, Louis'll be on board with it. ‘He wants everything I want.’ I fucking— f— I can't,” and he sounds so exhausted, so frustrated, he pushes his palms into his eyes before pulling back with a renewed anger. Turning around to look up at Harry where he stands, halfway down the stairs, shocked. “How long were you— fucking doing this?” he shakes the journal in the air like it’s his fist. “Writing down everything you remember?! Were you trying to convince yourself? What the fuck?!”

 

Harry sits down on the stairs, feeling the angry tears start to well in his eyes. He turns his face away, towards the white ceiling littered with chipped paint, and presses his hands to his face to conceal them.

 

“Why can’t you just fucking talk to me?!”

 

“I— t- tried to!...”

 

He doesn’t want to cry.

 

“I tried to- to tell you…!”

 

So he doesn’t. He stops himself. Presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, sucks in a deep deep breath, cleansing. Restart. Off and on again. Hands still pressed to his face, but tilted down now, into the floor. He’d melt if he could.

 

“If you wanna go be a single fucking parent, go right ahead! My fucking pleasure watching you ruin your whole life you’ve built on someone else’s kid.” 

 

“ Leave me alone !!”  He curls in on himself, sheltering his body from the icy wind. “Just— go away…” he begs quietly now, having lost the energy to fight where he would usually be stubborn and brute.

 

There's the jingling of keys within seconds. Louis doesn't leave. Not unless he has to.

 

That's why it's so strange when Harry lifts his head to watch him slip on a pair of  shoes from the hallway. And disappear down the hall.

 

Of course he follows him. Not asking just yet— maybe he's just going outside . For a smoke. A cigarette break. To stand in the garden.

 

But the car keys jingle angrily between his fingers; no space left for farewell. He's ready to go. He doesn't turn his head when he tells Harry, 

 

“I made time for you. I give you everything. Everything I can give, I give to you. I can’t fucking give you this. I’m sorry, alright!” He pauses, shrugs a jacket on top of his hoodie. And he just leaves.

 

Harry watches, mouth agape. And it’s silent.

 

Silent. And he makes all the noise he wants with angry, ugly sobs. Wracking through his whole body on the stairs. Shaking with it. He cries ugly, loud. The whole world must hear him.

 

His hands and face are soaking with saltiness, like being pulled out from the sea. He’s on shore after drowning. The water is stuck in his throat, in his lungs. He breathes it and coughs it, splutters, cries out. 

 

“ I’m s-sorry…!”

And he’s quiet again.

*

It’s a day later and Louis still isn’t home. Harry knows he probably stayed at a friend’s house— or maybe visited his sisters for the weekend. 

 

In any case, Harry is alone. He left his phone somewhere upstairs and still refuses to go look for it. He fell asleep on the couch and stayed there for most of the morning— got up at 1pm to stuff his face full of the junk food he could find in the kitchen, then felt sleepy enough to take another nap in the afternoon, like a baby after its feeding. 

 

Starts drinking around 3pm when he drowsily remembers their wine in the cellar. Racks of it. Cooled by the low temperature there. 

 

There’s lots of wine to choose from. Harry chooses a Rosé. A dark bottle of Port. A Vinho Verde. Carries them upstairs and just drinks, straight from the lip of the bottle, stops bothering with pouring it into a glass after spilling it on the first try.

 

He’s good and wine-drunk and happy again by 4pm. Still thirsty. But less so. Halfway through the Vinho now, he decides to go for a walk. Scope out the countryside a bit more. He remembers a farm nearby, one with sheep they use to make wool, and trudges up the dirt path to see it.

 

The hills are large and green in the distance, covered by a cloak of white fog. The sun is out, though, which makes him smile. It’s August, and he’s warm. And the sheep are out. 

 

There’s a grassy patch near the wooden fence to sit in when he gets there. He finishes the wine to cool himself off, then plops down, leaning back and watching the ewes and their lambs as they frolic in the grassy meadow. Wonders for a long time what life would be like if he were a lamb. And then gets sad thinking about Silence of the Lambs. And wonders why things die. And remembers he’s a pescatarian. Thinks of a juicy burger he watched Louis eat last week, the grease running down his fingers and into his plate of chips. He wonders where Louis is. Gets worried for just a moment if he cheated on him, if he’s been cheating on him— but sees the ring on his finger and looks up to the sky and thanks God, if there is one. The bottle is cold again on his skin.

And he gets sleepy, so he closes his eyes as the sun starts to set. Just a quiet little nap. He’ll get up in a moment…

“Harry?”

It’s dark now.

“What the fuck are you doing on the side of the road?!”

He blinks his eyes open to the grass and pebbles and dirt beneath his head.

“Why weren’t you— why didn’t you answer your phone? Are you alright? Jesus fuck— are you—?”

He sits up. Squints at his husband, blinded suddenly by the headlights of his car. He doesn’t say anything. Wipes at his mouth and the bits of dirt on his cheek. Shakes his hair out. Louis crouches beside him, pushing his hair back and out of his face, their hands meeting.

 

“Thank god,” Louis murmurs, kissing the dirt off his forehead, “Thank fucking god, I thought you fucking—” But he won’t dare utter the words. That Harry would have taken his own life on the side of the road next to the sheep and their lambs. In broad daylight. “Baby. Are you alright?”

Harry looks up at him, big doe eyes. And he just starts to cry again, tears welling up in some mix of relief and the same melancholia he’s bottled for a year. Painful, much-needed sobbing. He doesn’t close in on himself, though. He latches on to Louis’ front, pulling him closer like he needs to be here, with Harry, tethered to him. Like he can’t ever leave. He doesn’t say anything— neither do, for a while. Louis might be crying too, if his sniffling is any telling.

“I’m sorry,” Harry whimpers into the cloth of Louis’ jumper, which smells overwhelmingly of Louis, of cigarette smoke and stale beer and cologne and sweat, day-old and like home. “I’m— I’m sorry…! Pl-ease don’t— don’t leave me…!”

 

“I’m not leaving,” sounding choked up. Pulling back to make it earnest, to speak the words into Harry’s lips with blue eyes burning in the darkness like the white heat of a flame. “I’m never leaving. Alright? ...Never.”

 

“I love y-ou s-o much!!....” 

 

Harry’s pulled back into his embrace again. His knees dig into the hard pebbles and sharp bits of dried hay on the side of the road. He just holds on for dear life, and sobs his tears until he runs dry.

“I love you. I love you, my baby… You know that… You know I love you. You’re mine. I love you...”

*

One Year Later.

“Lou?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you wash my back, please?”

“Yeah. Yeah, one sec… Cliff’s on top of me, I’ve got to…”

“No rush.”

“Yeah. Oh, look at that! Hair’s getting so long…! Looks much longer now that ‘s wet. Hm?”

“Mm… I don’t know if I like it… I have to see… If I like it. If I wanna keep it.”

“Mm. Well, you do whatever you like. I should put a little plait in it afterwards on the top so ‘s all wa-a-vy… Do you want me to get in the tub, or?”

“I don’t know, you might get wet…”

“Never been an issue before. Ha! Kidding. Gimme a second… Alright, ready.

“Ready?”

“Yeah. God, you have such a lovely back. Have I told you that?”

“Ma-a-aybe. Mm. That feels good, though.”

“Yeah? Like a bit of a massage, don’t you.”

“I haven’t seen my masseuse in months…”

“Mhm. Alright, hand me the soap? … Thank you… There we go. What are we doing today?”

“Mmm… I’ve got to take care of some stuff… outside, then…. Um, gonna call mum, then… make lunch, and… tidy up a bit. I’ve got to call Alessandro later, to plan something. For later… like a few months. Um, the Met Gala, or the Grammys or something. We’ve got to find a thing to wear…” 

“Ahh. That’s good.”

“Yeah. I don’t know… What about you?”

“Absolutely nothing. In’t that great?”

“Yeah…!”

“Do you want your hair as well? Or do you want to do that yourself? ……...Hm?”

“You can do my hair as well. Just the, um. Shampoo, please. Thank you.”

“Perfect. There we go…….All done. All clean. You happy, baby?”

“...Yes. Thank you.”

“‘Course. I love you. You know that?”

“...Yes…” 

“You sureee?”

“Ye-e-es. I love you too… Kissy, please.”

“Love you more. Muah. Ah! Look at that, I’m all wet now. Here, lemme get you a towel… There we go! All better.”

“...All better.”

*

So busy this morning, he hadn’t had time to do his usual chores.

 

He’s so busy being content. Lounging in the garden, basking in the sun of an early June. The sky is beautiful and clear, and the air is fragrant with his peonies. They’ve grown back! Oh, what a blessing not having to go through the trouble of replanting. So have the birch trees. Everything is green and grown and pleasant and beautiful. Lush greenery, bushes and flowers. And here Harry is in the middle of it, napping in a hammock shirtless, soaking it all up. 

 

A book is open in his lap. Quite a boring read, he doesn’t plan on finishing it. It was used to help him grow sleepy. But now he’s awake, lulled to consciousness with the distant sound of the television Louis’ watching, and the smell of sweet sugary breezes, and the sight of their sunny garden on a June afternoon. Something out of a Joni Mitchell song.

 

He looks down at his own tattooed tummy, at where the laurels hug his hips up to the line of his waist. There are stretch marks there if he squints— or maybe not. He traces the lines on his hips regardless, running the pads of his fingers over his tummy, up to the butterfly, back down to the soft line of downy hair before his shorts start.

 

Then his attention turns to his hand. Right at the fourth finger— there it is. His wedding ring. He smiles, and gets up from the hammock, letting it swing in the air until it stills again. 

 

Decides to pick some of his fresh peonies on the way. There are an abundance of them since he bought so many seeds last year and had nothing to do with them. Their pretty pink fists of flowers knock together, tied by the hair clip he takes out of his own curls to bind them together. This will do nicely in a vase, he thinks. 

 

The back door was left open, so he decides to stroll inside now. Humming as he goes. Everything is growing in his garden, and he’s just happy. Just happy. Maybe a little sad, but happy. And isn’t that great? It’s no utopia. Not at all. But he’s alright. Just content.

 

And Louis is inside, watching an old football game on the television, muttering to himself while sipping at a bottle of beer. 

 

“Lou, do you know where that vase your mum gave me is? ...Remember the one? It was like, blue? With these little carvings on the side…”

 

Louis’ head pops up over the back of the couch, curiosity piqued. He scrunches his face up in thought.

 

“It was like an oriental pattern…? D’you know what I’m talking about?”

 

Just padding through the first floor in his bare feet, trying to remember where he stored this vase for safekeeping. Of course Louis is no help— just a vessel for Harry to ask unanswered, mundane questions to. 

 

“I know the one, but I’ve got no clue where it is,” says Louis.

 

It’s in a cabinet in the dining room.

 

“Ah! Found it.”

 

Harry brings it to the kitchen table, where Louis can watch him from the couch, and arranges the peonies prettily inside. It would look much nicer with Baby’s Breath, too, and perhaps some pink roses sprung throughout the bouquet, but… This is good, too. And it looks wonderful with the pale blue and red of the vase.

 

“There we go! D’you like them?”

 

Louis mutes the telly so there’s no background noise, and leans back with his arms over the back of the couch. His beer is finished now, and the game has turned to commercials. He’s smiling over at Harry and saying, “Bring them here, lemme see.”

 

So Harry does. Shy now, smiling at his work. Growing these peonies wasn’t hard, but that they turned out so nice gave Harry a pleasant sense of pride that swelled in his chest and made his cheeks pink. He sits just beside Louis, their thighs touching as Harry places the vase on the coffee table. 

 

“They’re beautiful, darling!” Louis praises, running a warm palm down Harry’s back. “Very nice.”

 

“Thank you…”

 

Louis looks at him with this funny expression, strange eyes like he knows something Harry doesn’t. Just observing Harry, as Harry observes the flowers, fingers twitching before arranging them again. Moving the peonies just a hair so that they look nicer, before returning his timid hands to his lap again. Then he just sits. All weird, funny. Not uncomfortable. Just odd.

 

“I like them.” He whispers it, to fill the air up.

 

“Me, too.”

 

Then they’re quiet again. The commercial is something stupid now, for a fast food ad. Neither of them are watching it, though. 

 

Harry sighs quietly. Not exasperated, not exhausted. With relief more than anything. Content, sitting on the couch, rubbing his nose free of allergies that make his eyes go puffy.

 

Louis’ hand is warm and comfortable on the dip of his bare waist, and there’s that. The fact that they’re connected, always. Harry feels it even when he’s not around, which is nice too.

 

Louis just rubs his lower back comfortingly.

 

“C’mere,” he murmurs.

 

Harry looks up at him, wide eyes. Then dimpling into a smile. “M’already here.”

 

A handsome grin back. “I mean in me lap. Come sit in me lap, baby.”

 

With a nod, Harry clambers on up, moving his bare, hairy legs so they can bracket Louis’ hips. He sits back, smiling all coy and bashful again now that he’s the object of Louis’ attention, not the football game or the peonies which his big body pushes out of Louis’ view.

 

“Hi,” he mumbles, smiling wide.

 

Two hands on his hips now, rubbing up and down. “Hi.” 

 

Then he’s being funny again, giving Harry that look again. And Harry just can’t take it. He breaks out into a grin, saying,

 

“What? What’s that look for?”

 

Louis shrugs. Tilts his head to the side. “Just love you. Like this. Love you everyday.”

 

That makes Harry grin again, giggle again, and lean down to kiss Louis’ face. 

 

“Love you, too.”

 

“I’ve got something to show you,” Louis says next. Harry perks up, and it’s his turn to tilt his head with that childlike curiosity. 

 

“What?”

 

Louis holds him closer by the hips, then reaches forward, searching behind Harry on the coffee table, out of Harry’s view. And, aha! There it is, leaning back once more so Harry can see him fiddle with an orange envelope, secured by a little metal tab. Harry scrunches his nose, wondering what on earth it could be. Something he ordered? No, it’d be too thin. A lease for a car? Bills to pay? News from their labels?

 

No, no, no. Louis looks eager, though, when his finger comes to rip at the top.

 

“Alright, so. It’s something… I’ve got to explain. Basically…”

 

And he slides the white papers inside the envelope out, holding them lightly in his hands for Harry to peer at.

 

“Basically, they’ve approved us, but that’s only like, step zero in the process. ‘Cos we’ve got to go there and then they’ve got to come here, and ‘s this whole big thing, I don’t know how to explain it. ‘S really complicated.”

 

Harry’s heart starts to pump loud, loud, loud, thumping in his chest with anxiety. He doesn’t blink at the papers Louis holds. Just stares wide-eyed. Then at Louis’ face.

 

“For what?” 

 

Louis smiles again. “For, erm. Adoption. You know… I always told you like… the process was super long and like, harrowing, erm. Well. I’m ready, now. If you are. Only if you are, ‘cos I can go back on this,” he nods at the papers, the adoption papers, Harry might faint, “this is really early on. So… you let me know.”

 

Harry’s quiet for a long moment, like the breath got sucked out of him with a vacuum. He watches Louis carefully, the line of his mouth, waiting for it to quirk up like it would if this was a joke.

It’s been a year. Harry’s baby fever— if that’s what he called it— has been forced down into nothing, by his own hand. Flattened and pressed down into the ground, buried beneath layers of dirt and rocks like it’s dead. Buried alive. Grass grew overtop it— a garden, even— but its heart still beats like it learned to breathe. 

 

He hasn’t said a word in just as long. Kept to himself. He let it all go with murmurs to himself that it was just a phase, maybe even less than that. Busied himself with work— releasing an EP, visiting events, indulging in the photoshoots and the interviews and anything else to keep his mind off of it. Like he used to. Work is better than nothing. 

 

Home again, sitting in Louis’ lap. He blinks, lips parting. And doesn’t say anything.

That makes Louis nervous, visibly. He starts to look away, eyes flitting to the papers, as if thinking that maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all. And his lips pinch forward, pursed into what looks like a grimace, and his brow furrows. That’s not good, Harry thinks. He’s got to say something.

 

“I want to,” he breathes.

 

Blue eyes meet his— marvelous. Connected once more. Sharing this moment like they’re thinking the same thing again. And there’s his smile— that’s good, too. 

 

“Yeah?”

 

Nodding, smile spreading onto his face as wide as it can go. “I want to, I want to…!”

 

“We will, then, baby, we’ll do it,” Louis assures, tugging Harry down by the neck to kiss him. 

 

But Harry’s just so delighted. He can’t let it go to waste.

 

So he indulges in the thrill of it all. Not worrying about what Louis might think— he doesn’t have to anymore. His patience made its case. They’re ready now.

 

And he cries out, “Oh my god…!” As if it’s just been building up for so long, and he can finally release it all.

 

“You're gonna be a dad! Lou !!! Aaaaaa!!!”

 

He's just so happy. Fist to his mouth, teeth running over his knuckles to try and contain his glee. Louis just grins back at him.

 

“You're gonna be a mum,” he tells Harry, quietly. It's not a secret. More like a revelation, something he’s already realized but now is coming true. 

 

It's coming true.

 

“I’m gonna be—” Harry starts, feeling his eyes well up in tears. He pushes his palms into his eyes, but Louis doesn't like that, no, he pulls them away to watch the joyful, overwhelmed tears pour out. No ‘here comes the waterworks.’ No nothing. 

 

“Lou..!!! Louis!!!” Clutching at his face now, hands desperate and searching, bringing his lips to kiss whatever skin he can find. Louis giggles through it— alright, alright— but doesn't push Harry away. “Oh my god!!!”

 

And it’s only for a moment that he thinks of his old self, the confused sixteen year old who didn’t know what he wanted yet, the goofy seventeen year old in honeymoon love who attached himself to domesticity to make up for a lack of it. The twenty year old who  had to endure so much in just a short period of time, who changed his looks and mannerisms to mold into something. The twenty-six year old who knew what he was, what he wanted, but who was so afraid to come out and say it. 

 

It all simmers away in a single kiss floating from Harry’s lips to Louis’. His kisses are like drops of water, like petals off flowers, abundant. Evermore. He lets them fall and fall and fall, and they’ll never run out. The love in his heart— that’s forever, too. Forever, in him. In Louis. For Louis. For their kids. He’ll always have room to share. For this child, and the next, and the next, and… 

And he’s just so happy. 

He’s so happy even when his giggles die down, even when he starts to kiss Louis harder, with purpose. Whimpering into his lips. He’s so happy.

 

“Take me… Baby…” Whispering now, just as quiet as a mouse, fingertip tracing Louis jawline. “C’mon. Please… please…”

 

Not begging. Just asking.

 

And Louis couldn’t be happier to comply.

 

They leave the telly on mute, and the envelope on the couch for later, for Harry to swoon over and read through thoroughly.

 

And their room is still bright and sunny, with the balcony door open so Harry can still smell the fresh air of their summer, the breeze bringing the scent of hay and peonies and nature in with it. Falling back onto the lush bedding, ready for his husband, Harry feels like Venus, like some beloved creature. They strip themselves easily, fluidly, watching each other like if they look away it might turn into something else. A dreamscape. Harry’s in love.

 

When they make love, it’s for them. Not for Harry, not for Louis. For them. 

 

“Want it… Want it in me,” Harry whimpers, rubbing his stomach with the hand curled over his stretched thigh. He’s open and vulnerable and dirty, but Louis is only looking at him. His face is like something out of a fairytale as his cock kicks up in Harry’s other hand. Just staring with these blown out eyes like he can’t begin to imagine a world without this.

 

Harry hasn’t been this vulnerable like this in months. Hasn’t let Louis fuck him in months. Hasn’t wanted to.

 

“Baby… my baby…” As Louis presses inside, stretching him. Slow and comforting, gentle. It’s for them. 

 

The room quickly fills with pants of breath, with sweet nothings, with love.

And outside, in the garden, flowers bloom in the late summer air. Basking in the heat, the sun, in the misty water Harry sprayed with the hose not two hours ago. In the fertilizer he bought at the shop a few months ago. The fruit and vegetables— zucchini and tomatoes and lettuce and carrots— they’re all in full bloom, waiting to be plucked from the ground they were sown in. And the flowers planted make the air smell sweet like honey, attracting the butterflies and bees and hummingbirds like a flame does moths. It’s in full harvest again, like it will be next year, even if nothing gets planted. It will regrow like this. Again and again and again. Like a healed fracture of a pulled ankle, like a mended heart. 

 

Harry stretches out like Venus with her lover, growing sleepy in the late afternoon light with a baby growing inside her. Perhaps not literally, not physically. Not exactly. A different kind of birth. Harry lay with his arm strewn over his head, face turned towards Louis, shielding himself from the light of a thousand angels. He’s nude, laying with his body exposed in the pull of a tide. Through the gaps of his fingers, he sees Louis watching him, smiling at him, ready for him. For them. For a new life.

And he smiles back.

It seemed

like years

before

I picked

a bouquet

of kisses

off her mouth

and put them

into a dawn-colored vase

in

my

heart.

 

But

the wait

was worth it.

 

Because

I

was

in love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

I hope you enjoyed this fic. Please let me know what you think in the comments, any criticism is helpful.

Sharing is appreciated.

Have a wonderful rest of your summers !!

 

Fic post:

 

here

 

My tumblr: @gaymoustache