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Six weeks from now, early afternoon in the living room of their south-facing apartment is going to be unbearably hot. Today, though, they’ve got the windows open for the first time this spring. The top of the cherry tree blooming in the parking strip is visible through the screen. And the fresh air, not quite warm enough, is making a stand against the apartment’s pervasive odor of stale beer and frozen pizza and incense and deodorant.
On the couch with his laptop, Harry closes out the women’s studies paper he should be writing and opens a folder of the photos he took yesterday. It’d been an ideal spring Saturday, as far as he was concerned, going for a half-hike/half-picnic in the state park just outside their college town.
(It was a half-picnic because it consisted of a bag of Doritos, a jar of Nutella, and some leftover hamburger buns; a half-hike because they’d only made it as far as the cave a half-mile from the parking lot. They’d waited there until dusk and watched the ragged, fluttering trail of bats trickle out of the jagged opening in the rocks.)
The folder has photos of spring wildflowers, interesting rock formations, Harry’s bare feet submerged and distorted in the creek. Zayn, with his head tipped back, looking up at a blur of bats overhead. Niall, messily using his finger to spread Nutella on a hamburger bun because they forgot to pack a knife. Harry clicks into that one and starts experimenting with the contrast, appreciating how the shadow sharpens and dims under Niall’s jaw.
He looks across the room to where Zayn’s sat at the table. Zayn’s eyes flick up to Harry and back down to the sketch pad spread out on the table in front of him. It happens twice more before Zayn registers Harry looking his way.
“Don’t move,” Zayn directs.
Zayn’s drawing him, Harry realizes with a thrill. Harry’s been waiting for this moment for almost four years, ever since the first week of freshman year when he heard Comfortably Numb coming from Zayn’s room across the hall on the second floor of the fine arts dorm. He’d sprawled out on Zayn’s bed and refused to leave until Zayn agreed to watch The Wizard of Oz synched with Dark Side of the Moon.
Harry snaps his laptop shut, dumps it on the coffee table, and swings his legs up. He cocks a knee and lolls his head onto the back of the couch. Zayn rolls his eyes – “Fine, you vain bastard” – and bends back over his sketchpad.
Harry holds his position for what feels like a long time, sustained by his satisfaction at being sketched. He runs his thumb around one of the wagon wheels printed on the cheap velour of the couch. They’d inherited the frontier couch from the apartment’s former occupants, and presumably weren’t the first new tenants to do so. It’s the centerpiece of the apartment, irrationally beloved by all, an aging monstrosity covered in a fuzzy western print of covered wagons, split rail fences, and ponderosa pines.
As boredom sets in and he peeks at Zayn out of the corner of his eye, Harry starts to feel that the quality of Zayn’s attention is inadequate. He’s really spending more time looking at the sketch pad than at Harry.
Harry feels that he deserves to be admired. He ostentatiously wriggles and kicks out of his boxers, dangling them by a toe before dropping them over the far end of the couch.
Zayn just bends closer to the sketchpad, texturing something with short careful twitches of his pencil. His lack of reaction is disappointing, although to be fair Harry naked on the sofa is not an unusual phenomenon. Actually, he’d been wearing pants in the first place only because his laptop gets hot.
Harry resigns himself to Zayn’s obliviousness and makes up his mind to enjoy the experience all the same. “Nude modeling is a thing that happens in art school, right?”
“Yeah, for figure drawing classes.” Zayn’s still bent over his sketchpad.
“What’s it like?”
“It’s not a big deal, mostly you’re just focused on getting the muscles right.”
“No, I mean what’s it like for the model,” Harry clarifies.
“Dunno.” Zayn erases something, blows away the debris, looks back and forth between Harry and his sketch. “You try to focus on them as body parts, not, like, a human, if that makes sense.”
“I think I’d be an excellent nude model,” Harry muses. “I may have actually been training all my life for this.”
“Not many positions on offer,” Zayn says absently, bent back over his sketchpad. “They’re not even teaching figure drawing this semester.”
“No, like after graduation, I could go full-time. Just get naked for art classes all day long.”
“I don’t think that’s a thing.”
“Well, it’s not like I’ve got anything else lined up. I could start part-time, and gradually expand the business.” Even as Harry says it, he’s not entirely sure whether he’s joking or not. Harry’s enjoyed college a semester at a time, taking whatever classes sounded the most interesting and then spending most of his time shooting photos for the student arts quarterly anyway. He ended up a sociology major just because his credits happened to suggest that direction when it was time to declare. He hadn’t really thought about what he was supposed to do with a sociology degree in the end, and he’s no closer to figuring it out even with that end less than two months away.
Well, he’s not going to ruin a Sunday afternoon thinking about his utter lack of job prospects. Harry stretches his toes out and appreciates the spring sunshine on his hipbones. He wonders if outdoor nude modeling is a thing. He’d probably excel in that setting.
Harry’s considering whether hay fever would interfere with outdoor nude modeling when his thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Niall clomping up the exterior steps to their second floor apartment. His golf bag thumps down on the tiny deck outside their door. Harry’s mood, already high, lifts still further. Niall’s going to come inside, smelling like sweat and well-maintained grass, and the apartment’s going to get a little brighter because of it. Harry’s been trying to capture that feeling with his camera for a while now, and none of his efforts have turned out the way he wanted them to.
It occurs to him that Niall would be a good nude model too. Maybe if Harry shot him that way, he’d figure out what’s been eluding him. He’s consumed, suddenly, with a fierce desire to capture all of Niall on film, to document every curve and corner.
***
Niall hoists his golf clubs over the threshold and deposits them in the corner behind the door. Less susceptible to hangovers than Harry and Zayn, he’d left for the driving range while the two of them were still sleeping off the murky combination of fruit and grain alcohol and syrupy mixers that had been ladled up from a 20-gallon bucket at the party they went to last night.
“Casual Sunday, Haz?” Niall raises his eyebrows at Harry while he shucks off his shoes.
It’s not like Harry naked on the couch is unprecedented, but this seems more intentional than usual. Most of the time Niall gets the impression that Harry just forgets to put on pants, just wanders into the living room after a shower and gets caught up in a crossword puzzle or a game of FIFA or a documentary on arctic wildlife (“Niall, did you know narwhals are real?”) and suddenly it’s been two hours and he’s still naked.
Harry’s not doing much of anything but being naked at the moment, though. And he looks unusually self-satisfied, even for Harry, whose natural state of repose already trends toward smug sleepy cat.
“Zayn’s sketching me,” Harry announces proudly, wiggling his toes.
“He finally convinced you?” Niall looks at Zayn in disbelief.
“Yeah,” says Zayn. “Just some studies for my senior project. It’s supposed to have some portraiture.”
“Lemme see,” Harry demands, leveraging himself off the couch and crossing the room to inspect Zayn’s sketchpad. He makes a disapproving noise. “Too abstract, not enough dick.”
“Sorry,” says Zayn, unapologetically. “You’re kind of missing the point.”
“Your turn, Niall,” Harry proposes. “Take off your clothes and I’ll get my camera.”
“I’m not modeling for you.” Niall backs across the room. Is Harry… leering at him? It’s an expression Niall’s never seen before, despite the fact that Harry spends a good portion of his waking hours pointing his camera at Niall.
“I shoot you all the time!”
“Not nude, you don’t.” Niall’s used to Harry’s camera being an extension of his hand, casually documenting their lives since freshman year. This seems different.
“But they’ll be very nice pictures,” Harry pouts. “Tasteful.”
“I’m not going to be on your artsy Instagram. It’d be, like, three white boxes and then my knob,” Niall says, grabbing his shoes and disappearing into his bedroom. That’s his usual tactic when Harry and Zayn start getting artistic, and he’s going to rely on it here, even if Harry’s proposal doesn’t feel much like an art project.
Some cruel software error had landed Niall in the fine arts dorm freshman year. He’d gamely tried to look the part at first, spending sunny afternoons with his guitar out on the wide strip of lawn between his dorm and the next one over. That’s where Harry and Zayn found him. Harry had flopped down in the grass, a mess of limbs and curls, and asked if Niall could play any Eagles songs.
Niall could. Harry sang along. Zayn went to get a frisbee. That evening there wasn’t any question that they were going to walk over to the dining hall together, and that was it, really. It had been the three of them ever since.
Niall agreed to stick it out in the dorm sophomore year on the condition that they’d move off campus once they were juniors. No business major should have to endure the indignities of the fine arts dorm – the tortured song lyrics painted on the cinderblock hallway walls, the jam band that practiced three times a week in the basement common room, the constant open mic nights in the lobby – for more than two years. Although by the end, after Harry finally convinced him to play at a couple of the open mic nights, Niall had to admit the fine arts dorm wasn’t all bad.
The two years they’ve spent in this apartment have been better, though. It’s hard to believe it’s ending soon. Niall needs to find a subleaser for his room this summer, maybe, although first he has to decide what he’s doing for the summer. Which feels like it may require deciding what he’s going to do in the fall and forever after. Which at the moment (and, if he’s being honest, at most moments) feels like too much to think about. He reaches for his econ textbook, deciding he’ll put off a shower until nudity isn’t such a hot topic in the living room.
***
The weather’s gorgeous again on Wednesday, and Harry’s pleased to find both his roommates home after classes. (Niall works three afternoons a week as a file clerk at a law office, and Harry looks forward to the off days, when he can usually convince Niall to blow off studying in favor of FIFA or day drinking.) The little deck at the top of the steps to their apartment door will only fit two chairs, but the three of them make it work. Harry flicks through his cultural anthropology textbook, Niall plucks idly at his guitar, and Zayn leans against the railing with a cigarette. Below them, a few intrepid daffodils bloom around the edges of their rundown apartment building.
As Niall gets absorbed, Harry leans to the side to retrieve his camera from under his chair. Niall’s only wearing hoop shorts, and Harry focuses on the curve of Niall’s bare shoulder as he bends over his guitar. He tilts his chair backwards just enough to line up a shot of Niall with the white drift of the cherry tree in the background.
Harry plays around with his camera settings and captures image after image until his calves ache from propping himself back on his tiptoes to preserve the angle he’s found. When he’s memorized every freckle on Niall’s left shoulder, he lets his chair thump back onto four legs and starts to scroll through the photos. Niall’s aggressively green hoop shorts don’t appear in any of them, and it’s easy to pretend the shorts aren’t there at all. Harry remembers the idea he had on Sunday.
“Niall,” Harry starts, in the beseeching tone that usually gets him results, “I think you should model for me.”
“Fuck off,” says Niall, but he starts the opening chords to Tupelo Honey, so Harry knows he’s not mad at him. He’ll wear Niall down eventually, he’s sure of it.
***
One morning before class the following week, Niall’s making a breakfast sandwich. He backs toward the refrigerator to retrieve the mayonnaise, pivoting around Zayn standing at the counter shoveling Froot Loops into his mouth.
Zayn looks up as Niall returns to his sandwich project with mayonnaise in hand. “Hey, I have a favor to ask.” Niall notices that there’s milk on his chin.
“Sure, what’s up?” It’s possible Niall would do anything Zayn asked him to, but the theory has never been tested, because Zayn never asks. He’s so self-sufficient that he somehow managed to move into the apartment without getting Niall or Harry to help carry a single box or piece of furniture. Sometimes Niall is amazed that Zayn wants roommates at all, let alone that he’s willing to let Niall be one of them.
“I need some more sketches for my senior project. Do you think I could get you to model for me?”
“With or without clothes?” Niall feels like he has to ask, given Harry’s sudden and strange fixation on Niall as a nude model.
Zayn looks away, extending a finger to shift his spoon back and forth along the rim of the bowl. “Without, if that’s okay.”
Niall doesn’t understand why everybody wants to see him naked lately. “Didn’t Haz already strip for you?”
“Harry isn’t really right for this piece.” Zayn dumps his cereal milk down the sink and adds his bowl haphazardly to the dishwasher.
“Is it going to be like your other stuff?” Niall’s seen Zayn’s paintings before, last year at his junior show. They’re huge abstract canvases, all bright acrylics and textured smears of oil paint and fine black lines. Zayn’s paintings take up space in a way that Zayn himself never does.
“By which you mean, will anyone be able to tell it’s you?” Zayn asks.
“Yeah, pretty much.” Niall inspects the bread knife loitering in the sink, decides it’s not quite at biohazard level, and slices his sandwich in half.
“Nah, it’s going to be abstract, like always. The identity of your ass will never be revealed.”
Well, in that case, Niall doesn’t really have a reason to say no. What Zayn’s asking doesn’t prompt the unsettled twist in his stomach that Niall’s felt every time Harry’s asked him to model nude. Niall tells himself it’s because Zayn’s abstract paintings are different than photographs that would be unmistakably Niall. And it’s for a grade, so it seems more legitimate, somehow. “Okay, I can do that.”
“Thanks,” Zayn says. “You’re going to watch the Masters all weekend, right?”
“Yup,” Niall confirms, with great satisfaction. No holiday is more sacred in his spiritual calendar.
“How about I just sketch you on Sunday? The light’s good in the morning, and Harry’s got a shift then.”
Niall’s grateful that Zayn’s thought about doing this while Harry’s off making coffee. The last thing Niall needs is Harry lurking with his camera, or sulking because Niall’s modeling for Zayn and not him. But watching golf nude while Zayn focuses on his sketchpad seems far less complicated than being exposed to Harry’s full attention through a camera lens. Like Harry might be able to see things Niall would prefer to keep hidden.
On Sunday, Ricky Fowler and Jordan Speith are making a shitshow of it on the front nine while Niall watches from the couch, a little bit chilly. Fowler double bogeys on hole three, and Niall pumps his fist.
“Hold still,” Zayn reminds him.
“Sorry.” Niall tries to remember where his hand was before he moved. He lines his thumb and pinky up with two posts of a split rail fence in the frontier print, so he’ll know next time. When Fowler bogeys again on the next hole, he remembers to celebrate internally.
The whole thing is less awkward than he expected it to be. Zayn’s looking at him, but he’s not, like, looking at him. Every so often, he’ll tell Niall to turn his shoulders or hold his head differently, but he never makes Niall move to an angle where he can’t see the golf. By the time Justin Rose goes on a three hole birdie run, Niall’s practically forgotten he’s nude and being sketched.
“Could you stand up for a few?” Zayn asks as Fowler and Speith are coming up on the twelfth hole. Niall does, barely paying attention to Zayn as Speith goes into the water. He comes out of it with a double bogey, and then Fowler’s wet too. Niall bounces on his toes a little. Looks like Rose has this.
“OK, I’ve got what I need.” Zayn drops his pencil and flexes his fingers. “Thanks, man, seriously.”
Niall scrambles for his sweatpants and gets right back to the golf. Rose and Garcia both stay dry on 12. Five minutes later, it’s hard to remember he was ever nude.
***
On the last weekend of April, rain runs down the apartment windows and sticks the last of the fallen cherry blossoms to the sidewalk. The picnic at the cave feels like a distant memory, the burst of spring in March an illusion.
Harry is over FIFA for the day. He tosses his controller beside him on the frontier couch. “Where’s Zayn?”
“Studio,” Niall responds absently, kicking for a final score past Harry’s motionless players.
Harry makes a frustrated horse noise. “I mean, I knew that.”
Niall pauses the game and looks over at him, just waiting.
“I feel like we haven’t seen him in a month.” Harry knows he’s being unreasonable, but it’s cold and rainy and he wants to pout a little. It’s not that it’s been bad, with just him and Niall around the apartment. The opposite, actually. On weeknights, it’s always been a rare and happy coincidence if the three of them manage to eat dinner together. But Harry and Niall have fallen into synch the last couple of weeks without even discussing it, arriving home around the same time and taking it in turns to cook. It’s probably just that it’s easier to coordinate two people than three. Harry’s started to look forward to it.
“We saw him last night,” Niall points out.
Seeing Zayn walk in the door at midnight, cross the apartment to his bedroom, and pass out hardly counts, and Harry tells Niall as much. “We should go surprise him. He’s got to eat lunch sometime.”
“Not necessarily.”
He has to admit that Niall’s right. If left to his own devices, Zayn would absolutely paint all day and forget to eat at all. “So we’ll make him come out with us and eat something.” Harry’s already up off the couch and reaching for his windbreaker.
“Are you sure he’s OK with us bothering him at the studio?”
“He shouldn’t abandon us for weeks at a time if he’s not.” Harry looks back from the door at Niall, expecting Niall to already be convinced. Niall’s easy to convince, at least about everything except nude modeling, which Harry still hasn’t given up on. “You coming?”
They’re soaked by the time they get to the arts building and find the front door locked. Harry swears. “I forgot they lock it on the weekends now.”
“Your card doesn’t work?” Niall asks, surprised.
“Nah, doing stuff for the magazine doesn’t count.” It’s not like Harry has any need to access the office of the student arts quarterly; he can submit photos electronically. Still, the locked door feels like a bit of a rebuke. “We can find someone to let us in.”
They circle the building, trying to spot someone inside. “You sure about this?” Niall asks, looking up at the windows, which end at least a foot above their heads.
“Got it.” Harry chooses a likely window, then pulls himself up and hangs by his elbows from the brick ledge long enough to knock on the glass a few times. A student in black with a chopped streaky haircut, looking exactly like an art school gatekeeper should look, comes over to the window. She cracks it open and raises her eyebrows silently at Harry.
Harry grins at her. He can feel water dripping off the ends of his hair. “Is Zayn Malik here?”
“Wait out front, OK?” She rolls her eyes and shoves the window closed.
Harry drops to the ground and poses triumphantly. “Impressive,” Niall says, and smiles at him from under the hood of his windbreaker. It feels like the rain stops and the sky brightens, even though they don’t, at all.
They squelch their way back to the front door, and in a moment Zayn’s there to open it. Instead of letting them inside, he slides through the crack in the door and joins them on the front steps, leaning back against the locked door in his paint-stained Ghostbusters shirt. “What are you doing here?”
The question’s more curious than rude, but it’s still not the warm welcome Harry was envisioning. “Thought you might want to get lunch with us,” he says. “You up for it?”
Zayn shakes his head, not exactly with regret. “I can’t, I’m right in the middle of something.”
“Can we see?”
“Nope,” says Zayn, strangely definitive.
“Why not?” Harry only asked because it seemed like the most likely way to spend a few minutes with Zayn, but now he’s curious about what’s keeping Zayn in the studio day and night.
“They’re still in progress. You ought to see them when they’re all done, at the show.”
“Okay.” Harry feels rebuked for the second time in five minutes. No wonder he never bothered to change his major to art, this building has it in for him. “Um, see you tonight, I guess?”
“Yeah, tonight.” Zayn pulls his keycard out of his pocket to let himself back into the building.
“Eat something!” Niall calls out to Zayn right before the door slams behind him.
Then he turns to Harry. “That was weird,” Niall says slowly. “It’s not like we haven’t seen stuff that he’s working on before.”
“Yeah, fucking weird,” Harry agrees. Zayn had gotten a little intense before his junior show last year, but he hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth, and he definitely hadn’t minded Harry and Niall dropping by the arts building to sprawl out on the disreputable studio couch and rattle his cans of spray paint.
Looks like it’s him and Niall again tonight. Harry examines that thought, and is surprised to find that it’s not disappointing. He’ll ask Niall about the nude modeling thing again later; maybe this time he’ll come around.
***
On the first day of May, Harry and Niall wander through campustown on yet another Zayn-less afternoon, flip-flops on their feet and iced lattes in their hands. Niall follows when Harry peels off into a secondhand clothing store.
Harry aims unerringly for the t-shirt collection at the back of the store, and Niall stops to shuffle half-heartedly through a rack of button-downs. He’s looking at a dark blue one, with some kind of pattern that looks like starbursts or dandelion puffs, when Harry reappears with a Rolling Stones t-shirt draped over his arm. As if Harry doesn’t have enough vintage band shirts.
“You should get that one,” Harry tells him. “It’ll look good with your eyes.” Niall’s still processing that when Harry tugs another shirt off of the crowded rack. “Hey, tell me what you think of this one.”
Harry strips off his Hawaiian shirt, with minimal effort because he only had a couple of buttons done up in the first place, and puts on the new one. It’s mostly sheer black stuff with a few rose-patterned panels. Harry buttons it halfway up his stomach and holds his arms out as he looks up at Niall. “What do you think?”
It’s not like Niall hasn’t seen every square inch of Harry before – sees it sprawled over the frontier couch on a regular basis, in fact – but somehow it’s different through the filter of the shirt. His eyes catch on hazy tattoos and the shadow of a nipple, and Niall wonders for a split second what the fabric feels like.
He swallows. “Yeah, it works.”
“Try on yours,” Harry directs, and Niall’s about to trade his tank top for the button-down until he sees Harry unzipping his camera bag.
“No way.” Niall backs down the aisle. “You perv.” Harry tips his head to the side, watching Niall tug the shirt on over his tank top as he keeps backing toward the cash register. It fits. He shrugs at Harry and Harry nods.
Niall’s got two layers on, but he still feels exposed, somehow.
***
Harry reluctantly knots his hair into a bun and shoulders his bag. It’s not fair that he’s got to go to work on a Saturday afternoon when Zayn’s actually at the apartment. Even if all Zayn’s doing is frantically typing a poly sci paper, it’s the most Harry’s seen of him in weeks. He envies Niall, who’s on the other side of their kitchen table scrawling at some kind of economics worksheet.
Harry pauses on his way out the door. “It’s open mic tonight, if you want to come by,” he suggests hopefully, looking back and forth between Niall and Zayn. It would be nice to see both of them, even if Harry’s stuck behind the counter. Zayn doesn’t look up from his laptop.
“Yeah, sure.” Niall tosses down his pencil and links his fingers to stretch out in front of him. “As long as we can go to Jesy’s party afterwards?”
“Fine by me.” Harry decides to push his luck. “Will you play something?”
Niall wrinkles his nose. “Really?”
It’s not a no. That means Niall can be convinced. “It may be the last time I can shoot you on stage.”
“Stage? It’s a rug and a lamp.”
“The lighting’s nice.” Harry loves shooting Niall and his guitar under the makeshift spotlight at the coffee shop, warm and glowing. Those images are the closest he’s come to capturing the brightness he expects photos of Niall to have, the thing that always seems to elude his camera.
Niall gives in. “As long as I can keep my clothes on.”
Harry heaves a put-upon sigh. “I suppose.”
He walks over to kick his other roommate’s ankle. “Zayn, how about you?” It feels like they’re running out of time to spend together, and they’re not spending the last of it doing anything worth remembering.
Zayn looks up, tapping his fingers nervously on the table like they can’t stand to stop typing. Harry wasn’t even sure Zayn was paying attention to the question, but he answers. “Gotta finish this first, but yeah, if I can.”
Four hours later, Harry’s delighted to see Niall walk into the coffee shop with Zayn behind him. While Niall adds his name to the sign-up sheet on the clipboard, Zayn comes to lean on the counter.
“Glad you came out,” Harry says, bumping his fist against Zayn’s. “Everything going OK?”
“Yeah, paintings are coming along.”
The plural registers. “How many are there?”
“Two of them.” Zayn pauses. “I really like how they’re turning out.”
“Can’t wait to see.” Harry is pointedly ignoring the person behind Zayn holding an empty mug. “It’s weird not having you around.”
“Just a few more days.” Zayn raps his knuckles on the counter. “Anyway, you’ve still got Niall.”
Which is true, but it doesn’t feel like the reassurance Harry wants. He already feels assured of Niall. It’s been so easy lately, just the two of them. Harry wants to be reassured that Zayn still fits, that they’ve still got the three-way friendship that’s sustained them for four years. Or maybe he wants to be reassured that he and Niall will still fit together as well when Zayn’s around again.
Harry makes Zayn a drink, and then makes a few more drinks, and then does a pass through the room with a bus tub to reduce the likelihood that anyone will get mad at him for shamelessly abandoning his post at the espresso machine while Niall’s playing.
He’s determined to make the most of Niall’s two songs, starting at the back of the room to shoot Niall in front of the silhouetted audience. Then he scrunches himself cross-legged between two tables at the front of the room to capture the details of Niall’s fingers on the strings and Niall’s head tipped back during a chorus, eyes closed, relaxed and happy.
It feels like time folds up close and he’s a freshman again, convincing Niall to go up during the open mic in the lobby of their dorm. Something about Niall’s golden head bent over the sap-colored sheen of his guitar had prompted Harry to pull out his phone and take a picture. The nice camera, shooting for the magazine, the compulsion to frame and preserve everything and everyone from behind his lens, all of that came later. But a lot of it came from that first moment of seeing an image worth capturing and deciding that he was up to the task.
At the end, Harry lowers his camera and just watches. He feels lucky, suddenly, to have ended up here, to have met Niall and Zayn, to have had four good years together, even if he has no idea what happens next.
Zayn ducks out after Niall plays (“It’s my first night outside the studio in three weeks, Gigi’s gonna kill me if I don’t spend it with her.”). But Niall sticks around while Harry closes, perched on the couch with his guitar still in his lap. He strums lazily while Harry wipes tables and bags day-old pastries and flips off the overhead lights, leaving only the glow of the lamps on either side of the couch.
Harry finally pulls his apron over his head and ducks behind the curtain at the back of the shop. He emerges a moment later after trading the apron for his camera, and holds it out toward Niall. “Want to see?”
“Sure.” Niall scoots down the couch to make room for Harry and props his guitar to the side. Harry sits down close enough that they can both see the screen on the back of the camera, and starts scrolling through photos. His elbow bumps Niall’s as he flicks past a few images of Zayn in the audience, looking shadowed and a bit tired, and slows down to give Niall a good look at the ones of himself.
“You always make me look good,” Niall says. He reaches over to flip back a few images in the sequence, his fingertips skating around Harry’s on the back of the camera.
“Well, that’s easy.” Harry says it without thinking, and then decides it’s true. It’s easy to make Niall look good. It’s only hard to make Niall look the particular way he looks inside Harry’s head, something better than good.
Niall rolls his eyes. “Stop it.”
Harry pokes him in the arm. “Hey, Niall?” He grins, poking again. “Hey, Niall?” Niall gives him a suspicious look, but Harry’s not going to pass up an opening this good. “I could make you look just as good naked, you know.”
“You’re impossible.” Niall stands up and carries his guitar over to its case. “And it will never happen. Let’s go to Jesy’s.”
***
Niall looks up as Harry leans against the doorway to Niall’s bedroom, rings clacking against the frame. “Do you want to get dinner tonight before Zayn’s show?”
“Yeah, sure.” Niall looks up from where he’s sprawled on his bed with his econ notes. It’s hard to believe his last finals week is coming up fast. This aspect of college, at least, he’s ready to be done with.
He showers off the funk of studying all day and stands in front of his closet, towel around his hips, considering. Last year, he dressed up a little for Zayn’s junior show, but it turned out people wear all kinds of weird stuff to student art shows. He ends up in the starburst shirt from the secondhand store.
They get burritos and find a bench by one of the outdoor sculptures on campus. Niall peels back strips of foil incrementally, working his way neatly down his burrito. He watches Harry trying to catch rice and beans and chunks of avocado with his tongue as they topple out of his disintegrating tortilla.
Harry licks salsa off his fingers. “Do you know when you’re moving out?”
“I’m gonna stay through the lease.” Niall had put off finding a subleaser for his bedroom until it was late enough that he had to admit to himself he didn’t have any plans to leave before their lease ends in August. Part of him is relieved not to be the first out the door; Zayn’s staying, too, running out the lease before he moves to Savannah for his MFA program.
“What are you going to do?” Niall’s heard that question plenty over the last year, but it sounds different coming from Harry than from his parents. Maybe because Harry doesn’t seem to have a plan that’s any more well-formed than Niall’s. So he gives Harry an honest answer instead of the dismissive sarcasm he’s been honing for all other inquiries.
“My job now, they want me to stay full-time. Become a paralegal.”
“Are you going to?”
“It seems like the easy way out.” But, with grad school unappealing and corporate interviews fruitless and moving home a horror not to be contemplated, it’s looking more and more reasonable all the time. “It doesn’t have to be forever, right? It wouldn’t be the worst, staying here a little longer.”
“You like the people, right?”
“Yeah, they’re okay.”
Harry shrugs. “You could do worse.”
“What about you?”
“I have no idea.” Harry leans back and stretches his arms above his head. “Something will work out.”
Harry’s probably right, Niall thinks. He manages to fit himself into any space, expand to any expectation. Niall can’t imagine a job interview where the interviewer wouldn’t immediately fall in love with Harry. But at the same time, it’s hard to see Harry constrained by a job. He seems larger than paystubs and withholding taxes and doughnuts in the conference room on Fridays.
“I’m here for the summer, anyway.” Harry crumples up his foil and takes the napkin Niall’s holding out to him.
Niall hadn’t expected Harry to go anywhere, but the feeling of relief is still stronger than he expected. They get the summer, the three of them.
There’s a table with drinks and cheese and crackers and grocery store pink-frosted cookies just inside the door of the student gallery. He and Harry fill tiny plastic cups from an oversized bottle of cheap white wine and start looking for Zayn’s work. They breeze past everything that’s obviously not – metal sculptures and a colorful mobile and a series of watercolors of odd animals – without even pretending to appreciate them.
It doesn’t take them long. They turn the corner into the second room of the gallery space and Niall knows before he’s even seen the label that these are Zayn’s paintings, taking up an entire wall.
He glances over the one on the left just long enough to see that it’s a landscape, and then forgets all about it when he focuses on the painting to the right. Although the two canvases are the same size, that one feels larger. It’s all water and sky, but in ominous sunset colors, nothing blue about it. There’s a figure in the foreground, but Niall can’t tell if he’s is underwater or on top of it, or about to be swallowed up by the otherworldly orange sky. Everything on the canvas burns with urgency, but the vastness of the horizon feels soothing at the same time. It feels like the painting is pressing against Niall’s heart, taking up too much space inside his ribcage. He wants to move in close enough to touch it, and at the same time he wants to back away enough to breathe.
Instead, Niall reaches out to put an arm around Harry, because it’s a little overwhelming, and because Zayn did this, their friend did this, Zayn put this searing thing into paint. Niall aches with how proud he is.
Harry’s not next to him, though. He’s backing away, eyes locked on the other painting and a hand to his mouth.
“Harry?” Niall asks cautiously. He’d just assumed Harry would understand, would share the feeling of being knocked askew by Zayn’s work, by the idea that something so infinite could come from the person who never empties the can of cigarette butts on the porch and hogs the bathroom so he can gaze at his hair in the mirror. He’d expect Harry, of all people, to feel what he’s feeling; after all, Harry’s an artist too, in his own way. Niall’s just some git with a guitar and a niche talent for organizing things chronologically.
“I’m… going to go,” Harry says slowly, eyes still on the landscape painting. Niall follows his gaze, still finding nothing that compares to the magnetism of the sunset painting.
“Are you okay?” They just got here, and they haven’t even seen Zayn. And, hell, Niall’s not even close to done looking at his favorite painting yet. At some point he should pay some more attention to the landscape too, try to figure out what Harry’s reacting to. Maybe he’ll do that if the first painting ever lets up the pressure on his chest. This is not the time to leave.
He’s relieved to see Zayn come up beside Harry. This should be Zayn’s big night, but Zayn’s the one wrapping his arms around Harry, whispering something in his ear when Harry jerks his head toward the door. It looks like Zayn is asking something, waiting for Harry to nod reluctantly but affirmatively before Zayn claps him on both shoulders and Harry walks away.
Zayn turns toward Niall, and Niall resolves to forget whatever’s going on with Harry for a few minutes, forget how he and Zayn seem to be sharing some big artsy secret that Niall’s not in on, and give Zayn the attention he deserves. Niall hugs him tight, and Zayn doesn’t have to know how much of it is Niall needing Zayn to hold him up. He swallows, trying to get his throat ready for some words to come out. “This is incredible,” he finally settles on.
“You like them?” Zayn asks, not like he’s fishing for a compliment but like the answer’s very important all the same.
“This one.” Niall turns back toward the painting. The painting. He should really pay some attention to the second one, he thinks wildly. “It’s… wow.”
“Do you recognize it?” Zayn asks.
“No, should I?” Then he remembers, and cringes with embarrassment at the possibility that he’s such a raging narcissist he’s been staring undone at a painting that’s based on the sketches he modeled for. “Wait, this isn’t…?” It can’t be, this larger-than-life painting cannot possibly reflect anything that’s inside of him.
Zayn grins. “No, not you.”
Niall exhales, but Zayn’s not done. “This one’s Harry.”
Just like that, the painting that’s been crowding at Niall’s chest catches in a fissure and cracks it open, spreads his heart out flat and wide to show him what’s been wrapped up in there. Of course it’s Harry. Of course that otherworldly painting, immediate and infinite and outsized and cracking Niall wide open, is Harry.
“Oh,” Niall manages. And he can’t look at it anymore, so he looks at Zayn instead, and finds that he can’t really look at Zayn either, or at least he can’t manage to rearrange his face into an expression that he wants Zayn to see. So he finally turns toward the other painting.
Now that he really looks at it, it’s complimentary, in a way. Light where Harry’s painting is hazy, open where his is mysterious. It’s more… cheerful than Zayn’s usual work, although just as abstract. It gives the impression of rolling green fields and blue skies and the suggestion of a flowering branch. All of it is drenched in light, and Niall doesn’t understand how Zayn can paint in blues and greens and still manage to make everything look golden. There’s a figure in the foreground, in the same colors, blending into the hills, there and gone depending on how hard you look at the painting.
It’s nice. But it doesn’t do anything to Niall the way Harry’s painting does. Then he remembers the sketches. “So this one, it’s me?”
“Yeah, couldn’t you tell?”
“No,” Niall says, determined not to be embarrassed about it. Art’s Zayn and Harry’s thing, not his. “I thought the whole point was that nobody was supposed to be able to tell.” Even knowing what it is, Niall can’t see anything about the painting that would identify him as the model.
“I think Harry figured it out.” For some reason, Zayn looks pleased about this. He’s practically smirking.
“Shit.” That must be why Harry left, he’s figured out Niall modeled for Zayn, and he’s mad. Niall’s stomach drops. Then he realizes there’s a larger problem here. “Is anyone else going to be able to tell?”
Zayn grins like there’s some joke Niall’s not in on. “No, pretty sure Harry’s the only one.”
“Okay, I probably ought to go home and find him.” Niall gives the painting of Harry a last wistful glance over his shoulder. He feels, irrationally, like he shouldn’t leave it. Standing there drowning in the painting seems much less complicated than trying to figure out how to apologize to Harry when all he can think about is kissing him.
Zayn falls into step with Niall as he crosses the room. “He should still be outside.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked him to wait for a few.”
Niall stops, meaning to let Zayn ahead of him to the door. “Oh, do you need to talk to him?” It would be a relief to let Zayn explain the modeling thing before Niall has to.
“No, you should.” Crap.
And now Niall’s lost his momentum, now that he’s trying to think of the words to explain that Zayn’s senior project had some legitimacy to it because it was for a grade, that nobody was supposed to recognize him, that he wasn’t wearing clothes but it wasn’t like that. In his head, all of it sounds an awful lot like he’s cheating. Like, “I modeled for Zayn, but it didn’t mean anything!”
“Hey.” Zayn catches him by the elbow as he turns to leave Niall at the door and head back into the gallery. “The paintings.”
“Yeah?” Niall’s glad for any excuse to put off facing Harry, plus he’s ready to listen to anything Zayn has to say about that painting. Zayn owes him some kind of explanation, really, for leaving Niall’s heart spread out flat and defenseless.
“They wanted to hang them on opposite sides of the gallery.” Zayn looks like he’s choosing his words carefully, like this is of significance somehow.
Niall doesn’t get it. “Why?”
“They’re so big… they’re a lot in one place.”
“So why didn’t they?”
“I kind of got mad about it.” Zayn’s still doing that intense artist thing, looking at Niall like this is of great import somehow. “They look better together.”
“Okay…” Fucking art students. Niall can’t imagine why it matters where the paintings are hung. Better together?
Zayn shoves him toward the door, not gently. “I’m gonna stay at Gigi’s tonight. See you idiots tomorrow.”
***
Harry’s made it out of the building and across the sidewalk to one of the oak trees that line the edge of the quad. He leans back against it, thumping his head against the trunk, feeling the bark snag in his hair. The evening light’s further along than he expected, the sky a serene translucent blue. The best time of day for a photograph.
Not that he’s inspired to document much of anything at the moment. He feels like he’s been turned inside out. Maybe that’s from the painting itself, gorgeous and golden and warming him all the way through. Or maybe it’s from looking toward Niall to exclaim about Zayn’s work, and instead seeing the lines of the painting echoed in Niall’s profile.
The last few weeks, the easy alignment Harry thought he and Niall had fallen into, all of it suddenly seems like Harry’s read it the wrong way. He’d gone from feeling Zayn’s absence like a lost limb to occasionally forgetting that Zayn was missing at all. He’d actually worried that things wouldn’t be the same between him and Niall when Zayn got through with his show and their twosome became a threesome again.
But all that time, Niall and Zayn kept the biggest of secrets from him. Niall modeled for Zayn, and didn’t even bother to tell Harry about that. Didn’t mention it once, even as he refused again and again to model for Harry. How did Zayn convince him? What’s Zayn got to offer that Harry doesn’t? (Well, an art degree, Harry reminds himself.)
God, what else has he been missing? Is he the one on the outside, and he hasn’t even noticed? Are Zayn and Niall….?
No. Harry takes a deep breath and tries to think rationally about it. He doesn’t have any reason to be upset, even if his roommates are snogging. Which they aren’t. Zayn has Gigi. Zayn hasn’t even been around. And just because Zayn got to see Niall naked, it doesn’t mean Niall and Zayn are… something. Harry modeled for Zayn, and that didn’t mean anything more. And Harry’s been hassling Niall to model for him for weeks, and it doesn’t mean…
Oh, wait.
It does.
It definitely does.
All the photographs he’s ever taken of Niall, thousands and thousands of them, realign themselves in Harry’s head. None of them manage to convey what Zayn’s painting did. It’s a stupid and beautiful way to find out he’s in love, the revelation smeared across a gallery wall. Harry savors the crackling adrenaline rush of having figured something out. Even if it’s pointless, because Niall must not feel the same way, not when he modeled for Zayn and not Harry.
He just wants to get away from here. He shouldn’t have told Zayn he’d wait. If Zayn’s not out here in two more minutes, Harry’s going to walk away and not feel one bit guilty for leaving him hanging. He can congratulate him on his senior show later. Congratulations on the paintings, buddy, great use of color and stunning composition and actually fucking heart-breaking.
He tips his head back against the tree and breathes slow and steady while he counts off sixty seconds, twice. It doesn’t do much to straighten out his insides.
When he looks down, it’s not Zayn walking toward him. It’s Niall. Harry straightens up and presses his lips together, bracing himself for a conversation he’s not really interested in having.
Niall stops in front of him. He’s still got his plastic cup, now empty of wine. He’s holding it pinched by the rim in one hand while his other fingers tap at the bottom. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Didn’t tell me what?”
“That I modeled for Zayn.”
“That’s it?”
Niall looks puzzled. “Yeah, that’s it, what else would there be?”
“You and Zayn, are you...” Harry trails off, not sure how to finish the question, but wanting to be absolutely sure that he’s the only person in the apartment inappropriately channeling his feelings through nude modeling demands.
“No!” The expression on Niall’s face is shocked enough that Harry knows he’s not lying. “No, no, no.”
Harry feels relief start to trickle in around the edges. “Why Zayn and not me?”
“It’s Zayn’s degree, it was like an assignment.” Niall sighs. “You just want to take naked photos of me and that’s creepy.”
Harry opens his mouth to object – his photographs are art and he is an artist -- but Niall’s still talking. “And nobody was supposed to know it was me, anyway.” Niall holds the back of his neck. The gesture makes him look nervous, and young. He cocks his head up as if something’s just occurred to him. “Wait, how did you know?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Harry’s baffled. The painting was so thoroughly Niall that it’s hard to believe anybody wouldn’t be able to see it. “So there’s that hill in the background, on the left, and it matches your shoulder” – Harry’s hands trace through the air in front of him, trying to recreate the lines of the painting – “and the way you, like, tilt your chin…” He can’t find the words; it’s more like trying to explain an emotion than describe a painting. “All of it, it’s like sunshine and green and everything’s alive, and it’s... welcoming, like it’s welcoming you home...” And that’s all Harry gets to say, because Niall grabs his face with both hands and swallows the next few words before Harry catches up and realizes he’s being kissed.
He can’t decide where to put his hands, so they end up everywhere at once, grabbing at Niall’s elbows and brushing over his shoulders and smoothing down his back until Harry finally just wraps his arms around Niall and pulls him in as close as he can, as close as he wants to. He feels Niall relax against him and drop the death grip he’s got on Harry’s face in favor of sliding one hand around Harry’s back and another up into his curls.
The warmth fizzing over Harry’s entire body gradually resolves itself into the individual sensations of warm evening air and the warm weight of Niall against him and Niall’s warm tongue in his mouth. He slides a hand under Niall’s shirt onto the smooth skin at the small of his back – also warm, so warm – and then realizes that the middle of campus is not where he wants to be for this.
Harry pulls back, something that already seems counterintuitive, and points in the general direction of their apartment. “Do you want to…?” He pinches the collar of Niall’s shirt between his thumb and first two fingers, wanting to keep him in place.
Niall rubs a hand over his flushed face and exhales vocally. “Yeah, home’s good.” Harry feels buoyed by the smile of dazed possibility on Niall’s face, probably echoing his own expression. He grabs Niall’s hand and starts running, cutting across the grass, pulling Niall along behind him.
He doesn’t have any idea how to do this with Niall, how to be this, but he’s going to learn, he’s going to learn so fucking fast. There’s so little time, Harry realizes frantically. They graduate next week and everything’s going to change, and that’s not fair, not when everything only just started to make sense.
They cross the quad at a run and slow down when they’re back on the sidewalk, passing the last layer of academic buildings before sorority houses bump up against the edges of campus. Although heading back to the apartment had been a good plan in theory, it seems like an awfully long time to wait before kissing Niall again. Harry pulls them to a stop outside the geology building and wraps the hand that’s not holding Niall’s around the back of Niall’s neck, fingertips dipping under his collar. This kiss feels less awkward but no less desperate, and only after a couple of minutes does it occur to Harry to ask, “This is OK? I can keep doing this?”
Niall’s eyes focus on Harry. “Yeah,” he breathes out. Then, a little steadier, hand tightening in Harry’s, “Yes, we should keep doing this.”
They make it past the greek houses into their neighborhood of old homes awkwardly chopped up into student apartments, stopping to kiss under streetlights and at intersections and finally on their porch, Niall fumbling his key into the lock with one hand while the other catches in Harry’s belt loop and Harry’s teeth scrape along his neck. Finally, they stumble through the door and onto the frontier couch.
Harry’s spent hours, even years, learning Niall’s details by framing and shooting and editing them. The lines of his back, the fine hairs on his forearms, the breadth of his neck, all of it’s familiar. But he realizes now how much he’s been missing out on by focusing on the visual, letting one of his five senses do all the work. Harry rubs his nose against the stubble under Niall’s jaw, inhaling the scent of clean laundry and grassy hair product. He curves his hand around a shoulder blade. He shivers at the noise Niall makes when Harry drags his knuckles just above Niall’s waistband. He touches every place he can get his hands on and tastes everything he can get his tongue against. Turns out everything about Niall is best enjoyed with at least two senses and ideally all five.
Evening turns into night, and Harry eventually realizes that they’ve let the sun set and the apartment slip into full darkness without getting up from the couch to turn on a light. The dark makes it easier to say, “So, no pressure, but we do each have a bedroom over there.”
Harry holds his breath until Niall asks, “Whose sheets are cleaner?”
“I honestly don’t care.” Harry tries to kiss Niall and wrap his arms around him and pull him up from the couch all at once.
***
For all that Niall’s seen Harry naked for years, he’s never thought about how Harry would feel in his hand, never wondered what it would be like to come with Harry’s long fingers wrapped around him and Harry’s wide mouth sucking a mark into his shoulder. Now that he knows, it seems like a colossal failure of imagination not to have considered this sooner. Or at least Harry should have thought of this sooner; after all, he’s supposed to be the creative one.
Afterwards, Niall pastes himself along Harry’s side, nose in his neck, arm over his chest, knee hooked between his legs, toes planted against the top of Harry’s foot. It still doesn’t feel like enough. He squirms a little, trying to figure out whether there’s any way to work himself closer to Harry without actually climbing inside of him. Harry wraps an arm tightly around him and spreads his fingers out over Niall’s ribs like he’s trying to touch as much of him as possible.
Niall’s memorizing the soap and cinnamon scent of Harry’s neck, brushing his lips against it so he’s not just lying there inhaling creepily, when Harry turns his head and scoots down the pillow so the tip of his nose touches Niall’s. It disrupts Niall’s position, but now they’re chest to chest and hip to hip, and that’s nice too.
“So… modeling for you doesn’t seem like that big of a deal now,” Niall says after a minute.
Harry hums in a noncommittal way. He noses his way in to kiss Niall slowly and gently. The moment stretches out and pools around them until Harry pulls his head back.
“I don’t think I wanted that after all, you modeling for me,” Harry says, low and wondering. “I think I just wanted this.”