Chapter Text
When it happens, it’s been building up for a while.
It’s been a long, cold winter. By September Vik’s been sleeping curled up beneath his thickest duvets for days and by October he’s been hugging himself in steaming baths every night, rubbing his hands up and down his arms to try and get some warmth into them.
It helps, a bit, with the loneliness. His hot tub stays warmer for longer but it's so much lonelier so he doesn’t go in it. The cold pang in his chest at that hurts so much more than the rapidly cooling bathtub he’s found himself in once again.
He sighs, sinking into the tub until it’s just his neck and head above water, like that’s going to magically warm him up more. It doesn’t, but it does remind him of how he felt when Harry gently squeezed his shoulders during today’s Sidemen shoot; he wants more of the warmth from Harry’s large hands but he feels like he’d be greedy if he ever asked for more.
And that’s the issue, isn’t it? Vik loves physical affection – hugging, cuddling, holding hands, being picked up, and if it’s Harry, a gentle hand on his back or knee – but Vik struggles to translate it from on-camera affection initiated by the boys to off-camera affection initiated by him.
If he goes to hug someone, where does he place his arms? Is he squeezing them too tight or not hard enough? How long does a hug go for?
And that’s just hugs – all the other types of affection are much more complicated than that.
There’s no class to perfect this, and he can’t figure it out no matter how many YouTube videos he’s watched to try and copy other people’s movements. What if he accidentally makes them uncomfortable?
He thinks he has, in the past. Back when he used to try hugging people, sometimes it would be going well but then something would shift and the other person would tense in his arms. But no matter what Vik tried to change – his arm position, where he rested his head – it would either get worse or just not get better, the other person only untensing once they’d pulled away from him. They’d never tell him what he did wrong either, not even the few times he’d been brave enough to ask.
The other end of things is when someone initiates a hug with him and Vik tells them that he thinks he’s standing very close to them – he can smell their cologne or perfume – only to be told by that person that he's actually standing quite far from them.
He just doesn’t know what to do. So he just doesn’t try anymore.
He sighs. The bathwater is cold, now. He thinks, again, of going in the hot tub.
No. It’s too cold.
It’s not the first time he’s thought that today, not even the third, but it is the first time in a while that his thoughts have ended up here despite receiving affection in-person the same day.
A pit settles in his stomach. If he wasn’t so greedy, having a hand on his shoulder – Harry's hand especially – would have been enough to tide him over for at least a few days instead of just under a few hours.
He doesn’t break that night in the bath, but he still feels cold the next day.
That’s the day he breaks.
It’s been a long filming day. It’s almost 8pm and they’re on a ten-minute break while the camera crew sets up for the fifth video of the day. It’ll be another MoreSidemen video so Vik’s still settled across one of the two tiered sofas, but the others have all gone to get drinks or go to the bathroom so Vik is alone, the crew setting up lights farther away.
In the last video they’d all somehow ended up talking about hugging versus fist bumping, though Vik can’t remember who brought it up nor what was mentioned specifically. Whatever it was, he thinks he talked about it just enough that it didn’t seem suspicious that he was actually completely clueless about it, mind lost in how much he missed living with someone, having someone to hug or fist bump in the first place. Especially hug. Especially hug.
Vik has long since burrowed himself in his hoodie, curled up into the cushions, and become lost in yet another video tutorial of people hugging.
He tries to focus on the amount of contact between the two people’s shoulders and legs, how closely they hold each other, whether their heads are burrowed into the other person’s shoulder or not. But honestly, the second they started hugging in the video all the tension drained out of his body and his brain went blank at how warm and soft and comfortable it looked. It looks natural, nothing like the rehearsed attempts Vik's hugs apparently always come across as, according to the few who have ever commented on it throughout the years.
He wishes he was natural. He wishes he’d hugged enough that it was natural.
(He has, and it still isn't natural anyway).
“Vik, are you – are you alright?”
It’s Harry, his words murmured so quietly that no-one else would have heard, but Vik freezes anyway. Harry’s eyes fall to the video Vik’s been watching, but Vik’s too numb to close the video.
“Is this – um, is this about the hugging stuff we were all talking about earlier?” Harry tries again. He bites his lip, then gingerly sits down next to him. He’s careful not to touch Vik, and Vik internally cringes. “Uh, sorry about that. I um, I know I hug a lot and you’re not really into that, so me talking about it was probably too – Vik, you’re crying.”
And that’s when Vik realises his cheeks are wet with tears.
“Are you – um, are you OK with me touching your shoulder?” Harry asks, and he sounds a bit more panicked now, and Harry never panics and suddenly Vik is crying harder. “Or maybe your back? I mean, you’ve liked it before – or at least, I don’t think you’ve minded it before in videos – ”
Vik wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what to say that won’t sound ridiculous or needy.
“ – or maybe you do and just never said anything? Oh shit, I didn’t even think of that.” Harry’s eyes widen, and Vik’s heart drops.
“If you give me the word, I won’t touch your back again or anything,” Harry goes on, quieter and more hesitant than Vik has ever heard him. “I just, um. I don’t want to, you know, get in the way or anything –”
And Vik shatters. Because if there’s one thing he can’t stand, it’s Harry – warm, boisterous, loud, affectionate, Harry who hugs and holds all their friends in a way that even the more stand-offish of them love – feeling like he was intruding.
“Hug me,” Vik blurts out before he can stop himself.
Harry sighs in relief, his arms quickly but gently wrapping around Vik as he buries his head in his shoulder. He breathes deeply against Vik’s shoulder, sagging into Vik like all the tension in the world has eased at Vik’s words. Vik closes his eyes and sags into him too.
It’s nice to breathe along with him, Vik finds. In, out, in, out.
He doesn’t know how long they hug for. Could be minutes, could be hours. It’s definitely on the longer side, since he swears Harry lifts a hand at one point to gesture to someone, long enough for it to be a shooing motion of some sort. But Vik is too comfortable at that point to protest, Harry’s warmth a soothing balm to the coldness stuck in Vik’s heart.
At some point, long after Vik has stopped shaking (he doesn’t know when he started), Harry gently pulls away.
Harry looks over him, mainly his face, looking for something Vik doesn’t know of. “We should talk about it.”
Vik bites his lip. He doesn’t really want to, but he knows how these things go. If he tries to play it off as nothing or that he’s just tired, Harry won’t buy it. Worse, he won’t let it go; he’ll keep pushing until he knows what’s happening, they’ve figured out a way to fix it and Vik is OK.
Normally this is one of Vik’s favourite things about Harry but right now part of him wishes that Harry was like everyone else, fooled by Vik’s well-spoken manner and carefully worded bluffs.
Even if Harry wasn’t so astute, Vik knows that the issue will just show up again and they’ll be right back here, on the cusp of an intervention. That’s how all the romance stories go, after all.
Not that this is a romance story, but Vik can dream.
Vik sighs. “OK,” he murmurs reluctantly, because knowing this doesn’t make admitting it any easier.
“Do you want to leave now? We can both take this video off,” Harry offers. “Or we can do it at the end of tonight once everyone’s done, if you like.”
It’s sweet that Harry’s willing to skip a video for Vik’s wellbeing, but Vik wants to be in all the videos he can. It’s what he does normally and he wants as much to be normal as possible.
“At the end of tonight,” Vik says.
“OK,” Harry says. “My house or yours?”
_
By midnight they’re both at Harry’s house. Despite the late hour, neither of them are tired.
They’re sat together on the sofa, but Vik makes sure to keep a careful distance from Harry. He’d love nothing more than to lean on his shoulder, but they hugged for so long just hours ago and he doesn’t want to overstep.
“How long has it been like this?” Harry asks.
Vik hasn’t been able to look at him, and he isn’t starting now. Harry’s rug is nice though, baby blue and fluffy, just like him. “For a bit,” Vik shrugs.
“As in...” Harry trails off. “A day, a week?”
Even as he says it, there’s a hesitant but knowing air in his voice that says he knows full well that it’s been a lot longer than a week.
“A month?” Harry then pauses, before saying, “a few months?”
Vik can’t stop himself from freezing at that. From the corner of his eye, he sees something sad settle across Harry’s face before he shakes it off.
“You know what,” Harry says. “It doesn’t matter long it has or hasn’t been. Well, it matters,” he stammers to correct himself. “But the point is that no matter how long or short it’s been, you need hugs, more than whatever you’ve been getting in the past however long.”
Vik sinks into the sofa, gaze fixed on his own lap now. He likes that Harry isn’t endlessly asking about the origins of the problem like most people would (like, ironically, Vik himself would, and the thought just makes Vik feel even more undeserving of Harry’s kindness). Harry is focussed on the solution, and apparently that solution is more hugs.
“That’s the problem though,” Vik says. “I can’t hug correctly.”
Harry tilts his head to one side. “Hug correctly?” he echos. “Is that what the hugging tutorial’s for?”
“Yeah.”
Harry sticks his phone under Vik’s nose so that the two of them can see his screen, open to the hugging tutorial Vik had been watching. “Well then let's watch it and see what they’re doing,” Harry says, all matter-of-factly, shuffling over closer to Vik but still with a decent gap between them.
“I already have. Lots of times,” Vik snaps before he can stop himself.
Harry startles.
Vik quickly bottles up his annoyance. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that."
“No, it’s fine,” Harry says. “Like I’m surprised, but it’s fine.” He shrugs, before adding, “It’s how you’re feeling, isn’t it?”
“But it’s ugly. And it’s not positive.”
“Emotions don’t have to be positive, Vik. If this is how you’re feeling then this is how you’re feeling,” Harry says with such conviction that it almost makes Vik forget, for a split second, that he’s spent years training himself to be happy-go-lucky no matter how shit he actually feels that day.
Vik can’t bring himself to reply. In that time, Harry puts his phone away.
“Can’t be easy though,” Harry says. “Not like you’ve had anyone to really try it on.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Vik sighs, and he doesn’t realise until he’s already said it that it’s those very words that have given it all away.
“I mean, you do live alone, and from what I can tell I don’t think any of the boys know about this so I don’t think any of them are like, your cuddle buddy or something,” Harry says.
Then Harry gasps, the way he does when he's just come up with a crazy, wild, wonderful idea. And Vik looks over to him, only to hear words that would change the course of his life forever.
“We should be cuddle buddies,” Harry says, wide-eyed and grinning now. “I know how to hug and cuddle or whatever, so I could teach you, and I could be someone you can practise on!”
It’s a good idea. An insanely good idea. But - “I’d be really awkward. You probably wouldn’t want to practise on me.”
"Well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?” Harry says, frowning like Vik had just suggested that he wasn’t from Guernsey or that the sky is pink instead of blue. “You know, being awkward, figuring it out, giving feedback – gentle feedback, of course – and talking things out. Taking the time to do all these things because normally there isn’t any time to do that sort of thing.”
“It does sound good,” Vik allows himself to say, because it does.
“Besides, what’s some awkward cuddles between friends?” Harry says.
“Mmhmm,” Vik hums.
“So, what do you say Vik? Do you want to be my cuddle buddy?” Harry asks. He says it light-heartedly, but there is an earnestness and hidden seriousness to it that takes Vik’s breath away.
And as Vik looks into Harry’s shining eyes, there’s only one answer in his mind.
“Yes.”