Archive of Our Own

When the lights go down and the screams rise, Louis’ heart feels like it might actually beat right out of his chest.

He’s missed this – the stadium-shaking screams of thousands upon thousands of people, their excitement palpable, as they wait for five tiny boys from the other side of the world to step out and perform a few songs. It’s a farce, really, Louis thinks; the fact that they’re so revered and loved and even paid to do this thing where they run about on stage like a bunch of idiots for two hours. But somehow, it connects with people – somehow, people love them, and in return, they all get the rush of performing and a nice pay check at the end of the tour.

Australia is warm and Louis mentally thanks their stylist for insisting on the tank top that she’d pushed into Louis’ arms, because the minute they’re out, he’s sweating. The sky is clear: the sun’s just beginning to set behind one of the stadium walls, and with night drawing closer, the show begins.

“You’re fucking dead, Payno!” Louis yells, dashing away from Liam, who had just managed to get a hit at Louis’ crotch between songs when the lights went down.

He’s missed this – the sheer idiocy that comes with performing, from running about and hitting each other or spraying one another with water. The way the five of them – though on opposite ends of a stage or a catwalk – can communicate with a look or a hand signal. There’s nothing like it in the world – nothing that can even come close – and Louis feels like he shines that first night in Sydney, practically glowing or levitating or beaming from every pore.

And when they run off stage, palming off their microphones to the stage hand that waits with the box, Louis is almost dripping with sweat but he can’t wipe the smile off his face. Clapping Zayn on the shoulder, who looks over long enough to give him a smile, Louis dashes ahead, punches Liam in the vague direction of his groin, and jogs on, catching up to Niall and slowing his pace.

“Good show?”

Niall looks up. “Yeah, brilliant. Loud, weren’t they?”

“Fuckin’ thunderous,” he says, but he can’t stop smiling, and a moment later, the corners of Niall’s mouth are twitching up – but it looks strained. Louis rests his hand on Niall’s shoulder. “What’s up?”

“Nothin’, just—“ Niall shakes his head as he looks down, and Louis follows his gaze.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary: Niall’s thin, skinny legs; his sneakers, his jeans, which are torn at the knee and with every step, Louis can see a hint of the thick, faded scar.

“—nothing,” he finishes, shaking his head again and smiling at Louis. “We going out for a drink?”

“Yeah, thought we might. Up for it?”

Niall agrees, and as they all clamber into the van, word is passed around through the boys and the security that a drink in the hotel bar is in the cards for that night. They’re all accounted for – and all in agreement – when the van starts; even Harry, who’s usually more reserved about a night out is throwing his lot in with the rest of them, and that’s how Louis knows it’s going to be a good night.

***

He’s peacefully drunk by the time Alberto ushers him into the carpet-and-mirror affair that is the hotel elevator.

Time has managed to slip away from him while in the bar, especially as shots were magically appearing in front of him every few minutes and just as easily disappearing down his throat. All around him, the others had been slowly getting drunk and drifting away – Harry peacing out first, claiming he was tired from the show. Louis had let him go, knowing that nothing is worse than a moody Harry in an enclosed space. Liam had disappeared, too, at some point, his mobile pressed to his ear and a giddy, alcohol-sweet smile on his face as he turned a corner, out of Louis’ eyesight.

It had been Zayn by his side for most of the evening, matching Louis’ alcohol intake, shot for shot, and soon his eyes were glassy and his voice a thick, molasses-slow kind of rumble that made Louis laugh every time Zayn tried to put words to his thoughts. Preston had ushered Zayn away soon after that.

And then there was Niall, the dark horse of the drinking game. It was difficult to tell when Niall was drunk – typically, his face would go a kind of splotchy red and his blue eyes would shine a little brighter, but his words were the same, and Louis liked that. Reliable, Niall was. He’d left early too, refusing the shot that Louis had slid across the sticky table top and asking to be taken back, giving Louis a tight, apologetic kind of smile that made his brow furrow in confusion.

Even now, on the smooth ride up several dozen hotel floors, Louis was thinking of that smile. It was the same one that Niall had worn as they walked off stage, and it payed over and over until he was stopping in front of Niall’s door and knocking.

Alberto, who yanks Louis’ hand away from the door before he could knock again, is helpless to do anything as Niall’s hotel room opens and soft lamplight spills out. Niall stands in the doorway, shirtless and dressed only in checkered pyjama bottoms.

“Sorry, he’s pissed,” Alberto says, tugging Louis away from Niall.

“M’not,” Louis protests, looking at Niall. “Not too much, promise. Wanted to see you.”

Niall rubs at his eyes, like maybe he was just asleep or had been about to be. “You did?”

“Yeah,” and Alberto’s let him go now, knowing a losing battle when he’s seen one. “Like—thinking about you.”

Niall laughs at that, just one breathy chuckle as his face lights up. “I’ll take him back to his room when he’s done, Al,” Niall says over Louis’ head.

“Don’t let him choke on his own sick,” warns the older man before he walks away.

Alone, Louis moves closer, scanning Niall’s face for a sign of that same, small, tight smile from earlier. There’s only a clear-faced kind of weariness, and Louis’ fingers curl themselves around one of Niall’s wrists.

“Handsy,” mumbles Niall, but he tugs Louis inside his hotel room anyway, shutting – and locking – the door after them. “C’mon then, let’s get you sobered up.”

“M’fine, really. Had water before I left.”

“Yeah, well, you could definitely do with a little more – you smell like you just dove headfirst into a liquor store,” laughs Niall, leading Louis into the room and sitting him on the edge of the bed.

It’s been slept in – the covers are pushed back from one side, where Niall had obviously been sitting. There’s a dog-earred paperback, as well as a notepad, a hibernating laptop, and a heatpack. When Louis reaches out, he feels that it’s still warm.

“My knee,” Niall explains, noticing what had caught Louis’ interest. Louis looks back to see Niall presenting him with an opened bottle of water. “Hurts a bit.”

Louis takes it. “Because of the show?”

Niall shrugs, a giant rise and fall of his shoulders, and he slumps onto the bed next to Louis. “Probably. Not used to running around on it for hours at a time, s’pose.”

“Thought all that golfing would do you good, Horan,” he teases, taking a few grateful swallows of the ice cold water.

“Yeah, but I’m not running on it when I’m golfing, am I? We drive everywhere on the cart, besides.”

Louis smiles at him. He likes this Niall – sleep-soft, warm and fuzzy at the edges Niall, who’s all sarcasm and honesty, and you can never be sure which you’ll get. He likes all Niall’s, don’t get him wrong – grumpy morning Niall and energetic mid-morning Niall and afternoon-slump Niall, but this is a special kind of version of him. It’s the Niall he knows best, he thinks; the Niall that he’d bonded with during the X-Factor and who had stayed up with him a lot of nights during their early tours.

“They should make you jog behind it, for exercise,” he says, still smiling. “Dangle the carrot in front of you or whatever.”

Niall’s face screws up in confused laughter. “Why a carrot?”

“I don’t know, it’s a saying or something. I think it might only be for horses, though.”

Laughing again – this time one that comes from somewhere in his belly – Niall shuffles back into the small, concave space in the mattress that he’d left. He lifts the heatpack so that it settles across his knee.

“Sore?” inquires Louis, capping his water and crawling straight across the mattress to take up the empty side of the bed.

Niall nods silently, fingers holding the heatpack in place.

“Suck it up,” Louis says, elbowing Niall and grinning when the other boy looks at him, first with confusion, then with happiness. They both know what Louis really means.

There’s silence, then, that’s filled by the mini fridge in the kitchenette turning over, as well as a door slamming somewhere down the hall. Louis feels wrung out and exhausted; he knows he should get back to his own room, but he can’t be arsed walking the rest of the way.

Toeing off his shoes and hearing them thump loudly to the floor, he turns to Niall. “Sleeping here,” he says, kicking down the blankets before pulling them back up, this time over his cold body.

“Okay.”

“You alright?” he asks, sleep haze already taking him over as his head rests against the pillow.

Niall hums, and Louis feels the bed shift and a moment later, he opens his eyes to see that Niall is lying down too.

“I’ll massage it for you tomorrow,” Louis promises, voice slurring as his eyes fall shut again.

“Thanks,” Niall says, a huffed laugh escaping his lips before any and all other sounds are shut off as Louis falls asleep.

***

By some miracle, he doesn’t choke on his own vomit come morning, nor does he manage to die throughout the rest of the next day.

Their second show in Sydney goes off possibly better than the first, though this time they all skip the post-show drinks. Many of them – and the crew, it seems – are still nursing quite sore hangovers. Even Harry, usually buoyant, is a little subdued as he stalks back to his room after they’re dropped back at the hotel.

Ordinarily, Louis might’ve complained about the general lack of excitement showcased by the people around him, but his own hangover is still fogging up his head, so he bunks off into his room with a room service menu and his Netflix account open on the screen of his laptop. Normally, his hangovers aren’t this bad – a little bit of water, a few pills for the headache, and he’s good to go the next night and fuck himself up all over again. But there wasn’t much room for partying over the break, and his body seems to be revolting against the lifestyle that is touring – it always happens this way. He just needs a week or two to adapt, then he’ll be back out there with the rest of them.

He’s quarter way through an episode of Agent Carter when there’s a soft, almost timid, knock at the door. Grumbling about needing to move, Louis throws it open, fully preparing to chew the person out – but it’s Niall, and Louis immediately backs down.

“Hey,” Niall says, chewing his bottom lip. “You busy?”

He’s peering past Louis to get a look at his hotel room, maybe looking for guests. Louis shakes his head and stands back from the door, leaving it wide open for Niall to walk through. Except – he’s more hobbling than walking.

“Your knee?” Louis asks, closing the door and following after him, frowning down at Niall’s leg that has always refused to cooperate.

“Yeah.” Niall’s voice sounds thin. “Landed on it a bit funny tonight – think it made it worse.”

Something feels oddly tight in Louis’ chest at hearing that, because he’d thought after last year’s surgery that this was done – that Niall would heal and become like some kind of superhuman with a robotic leg that could have outstripped them all, regardless of the other functioning limb. But the reality was that Niall returned to them with a thick scar running down his leg and a pair of crutches that he hobbled around on. He came back with exercises and hours of training to do, and even then – when his physiotherapist deemed him healed – he was still like this; still in pain. It makes Louis angry, but more than that, it makes him feel sad.

Because there’s something about Niall – something that all of them feel, really, but Louis especially – that engenders protection. They all look out for him, even though he isn’t the youngest; they all try to make him laugh, even if he’s usually the most optimistic; and they all try to keep him out of harm’s way, even though they’re all equally in this mess together. But sometimes Louis feels it so much sometimes that it’s overwhelming for him – like his body is too small and his heart is too big, and if he doesn’t do something about it, he’ll burst.

He feels that now, looking at Niall hobbling toward Louis’ bed and gratefully sinking down onto the softness, propping up his sore leg straight out in front of him.

“Want me to massage it? Got some of that cream left, I think,” Louis says, already rifling through his suitcase to find the pain treatment cream he keeps in there. They’re all prone to the odd back or sore shoulder, but Louis had kept it in there mostly because of Niall.

Though they had trained professionals who could probably do the job better than Louis, Niall had always preferred him to do it. Louis figured it had something to do with his pride – didn’t like the way they’d look at him, sympathy and pity or perhaps complete disinterest morphing their features for the hour-long massage. Louis was none of those things, at least not with Niall: he felt bad about Niall’s knee, but he didn’t pity him.

“Come on then, limpy – gimme that knee.” Louis sits horizontal to Niall and pats his lap where, a moment later, Niall rests his knee.

The scar looks the same as the last time Louis saw it – a faded red and purple line that shows it’s healed, but long enough to indicate that it was a major operation. He doesn’t stare at it – he pushes some cream out of the tube and starts rubbing it into Niall’s skin. As his fingers connect, Niall lets out a breathy punch of air, like maybe it hurts, but Louis doesn’t stop – he’s had enough experience with a pre-surgery Niall to know what post-surgery Niall can take.

The smell of the cream is heady and strong, and they’re both silent as Louis works it into Niall’s skin, losing himself in the repetition of the action. He’d done this nearly every day in 2013, right before Niall had booked his surgeon. Surviving on knee braces and pain meds, Niall had been a wreck behind closed doors – and hardly anyone had even noticed. Louis had seen it all, of course – had made sure Niall never took more than was prescribed, and that he was resting whenever and as frequently as possible. It was never a mothering kind of action, though; not even now, as he massages Niall’s knee, it’s not a parental kind of thing. Louis’ a bit too jaded for that kind of thing – doesn’t have the right kind of bedside manner to let Niall slip into that mentality.

“You know what,” Niall says, voice a bit broken up. “Your little hands are like, really good. Maybe you could’ve been a masseuse in another life.”

Louis scoffs. “Little hands?”

“They’re pretty small,” he points out, nodding down at where Louis’ hands are kneading Niall’s knee. “Look at ‘em. Practically a kid’s.”

“Fuck off,” Louis laughs. “For the record, my kid hands are currently wrapped around your bum knee, so I wouldn’t be insulting me if I were you, mate.”

Niall cackles, an arm around his belly, and when he looks at Louis, his eyes are a little brighter, a little more clear of pain. “Gonna finish me off then, are you?”

And there’s something in the way Niall says it – like maybe he wants his leg to just be finished off – that makes Louis’ hands still, fingertips still pressing to the warmth of Niall’s skin.

“It’s going to get better, you know that, right?” Louis says, voice serious. “It won’t be like this forever.”

Niall looks away. “Maybe. Just—it’s been a year, hasn’t it? Thought I was done with this shit, like... worrying about if I’m gonna hurt it if I do something or move a certain way.” He shrugs, turning further away from Louis’ imploring eyes.

It’s the most that Louis has ever really heard Niall complain about it. Even when he was fresh from rehab with crutches under his arms, he was still smiling, high on the positive results from his surgeon. Hell, even before his surgery he was still positive – knew that it would be fixed, that soon he wouldn’t have to worry about it all the time. But this, this defeated-sounding Niall, makes Louis feel sick, because there’s nothing he can do to help him. If it were possible to transfer an entire leg between humans without any risk, Louis would’ve done it – he would have given a lot more for Niall – but as it was, he was stuck rubbing cream into his knee and making up heatpacks.

Louis hates feeling helpless, because his usual knee-jerk reaction is to run away from it and hope that he forgets it’s even there. But he can’t, not with Niall – things are just always different with him.

“A year isn’t really that long, if you think about it,” Louis says, resuming his ministrations on Niall’s leg. “Especially considering what you had done. You need to give it time to heal and learn how to cope with physical exertion again.”

Niall had managed to pull through last year’s tour on a freshly-operated knee by doing exercises twice a day and no small amount of pain medication when it was too much. It wasn’t as bad as 2013, but it wasn’t great – it wasn’t ideal, seeing Niall wince after a show, rubbing it as they drove back to the hotel. This year, this tour, was supposed to be different; Niall was supposed to be as close to normal as he’d ever get, but the exercises – the physio – aren’t enough. Not yet, anyway.

“Yeah, I know,” Niall murmurs, rubbing at his eyes. “Just want to be good right now though, y’know?”

Louis knows. He gently lifts Niall’s leg off of his lap and places it on the bed before getting up and washing his hands. When he returns, Niall is reclined back against the pillows, hands in the pocket of a hoodie that he’s stolen from Louis’ suitcase. Louis says nothing about it – nor gives much attention to the pleased little swoop that flies through his stomach at the sight – but instead climbs onto the bed and grabs his laptop.

Agent Carter is right where Louis had left her, gun in hand and lipstick on point. Shifting so that he’s shoulder to shoulder with Niall and the laptop’s balanced between them, Louis rewinds the episode so that they can watch from the start, a courtesy that Niall wouldn’t have given to anyone else.

They’re halfway through the episode when Niall speaks again. Louis’ been watching Niall’s hands twist and fidget in the pocket of the hoodie for the last twenty minutes, and he knows that Niall’s got something on his mind.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says, voice quiet.

Louis presses the spacebar to pause the episode, turning to Niall. “Do what? Watch tv with you?”

“Yeah—no, like… Take care of me. With my knee, and stuff.” Niall’s cheeks are coloured at the tops, but his eyes are hard, like he’s trying to be forceful and strong about it. Louis knows it’s his pride. “You do a lot, and like… I don’t want you to think you have to.”

It’s probably the first time that either of them have really spoken about the things they do for each other, and it makes Louis shift with a sudden kind of warmth.

“I want to,” he says, hoping it sounds dismissive, but Niall keeps pressing.

“But you don’t have to. I can take care of meself.”

Louis looks at him again, a half-sigh falling from his lips. “I know you can, but you don’t have to, not all the time. Not with shit like this, yeah?” He searches Niall’s face, watching the hardness to it fall away. “Let me help.”

Niall’s chewing his lip when he nods, but it’s one of acceptance.

“Good. Now shut the fuck up and watch Peggy kick this dude’s ass.”

***

After Sydney, they head north to Brisbane, a city on the coast where the weather’s warm and the humidity is high, which means Louis’ t-shirt is stuck to his back the minute he steps off the plane. The sun beats down harsher here than in Sydney, and he shields his eyes as he makes the dash to the idling van, sliding in across the seat beside Liam, followed closely by Niall. Zayn and Harry take a separate car, mostly for security reasons.

“Bit warm, isn’t it?” Liam says, and even though it’s phrased as a complaint, his tone is nothing but pleased.

“That’s Australia for you.”

Niall looks at Louis. “Wonder if the pool at the hotel will be heated.”

“One way to find out,” Louis says, smiling at Niall before leaning forward, pressing his head and shoulders into the gap between the two front seats. Alberto turns to look at him, while the driver ignores him in favour of starting to drive.

“Seatbelt, Lou,” warns Alberto.

“Yeah, in a minute. Is the hotel pool heated?”

“Might be.”

Louis punches his arm. Alberto doesn’t flinch, but he does reach forward for the clipboard that’s resting on the dash, flipping through several sheets of boring looking information until he finds what he’s looking for. Grunting, he tosses it back to its original place.

“Heated.”

“Sick,” Louis whispers, patting Alberto’s arm and leaning back, buckling himself in. “Heated,” he says to Niall with a conspiratal nod and smile. Niall beams back.

“Thought I might go to the beach though, lads,” pipes up Liam, tapping at Louis’ arm incessantly for his attention. “Want in?”

“Nah,” Louis says, flapping a hand to dislodge Liam’s. “Too crowded on a day like today. Besides, not really practical for all of us to go, is it?”

Liam’s pouting slightly, but nods. “Guess not.”

The idea of spending an afternoon with Niall in the hotel pool makes Louis feel giddy to get there already, and right now he isn’t sure if Liam’s going to change his mind and crash their small party of two.

“Catch a wave for me though, yeah?” Louis presses, eyebrows raised at Liam, who smiles at the sudden attention being given and nods.

“Sure thing, mate.”

When Louis turns back to Niall – who’s picking at a fraying hole in his jeans – he feels the same swoop as he did when he saw Niall wearing his hoodie a few nights previous. A protective, flushed sort of pleased, and he turns inward and stays silent for the rest of the car trip, musing on that feeling – dragging it out and resting within it.

It’s not the first – or even the second – time he’s felt it, is the thing. He’d started to notice it more and more a year back or so, when he’d taken to accompanying Niall about to make sure he was getting along all right. It was mostly just a pleased kind of excitement at being Niall’s friend – at being thought of as someone special or funny or good, especially when Louis didn’t really think of himself as any of those things. There were times when he wanted to be around Niall so much that he practically combusted inside to get there – times when he thought he couldn’t breathe until he was back around him again. It wasn’t love, and it definitely wasn’t romance – Louis wasn’t sure he even wanted those things – but it was something else. Something strong, something sharp.

Something worth holding onto.

There’s fans waiting around the hotel – as is par for the course – but they’re quickly driven into an underground loading bay that keeps the fans and their screams at a safe distance. They’re all bundled off into the hotel and taken to their rooms, and Louis unlocks his door to find that his suitcase has already been brought up, sitting neatly at the foot of his bed.

The hotel room isn’t anything that he hasn’t seen before – expensive, modern, clean. He unpacks only what’s necessary, given that they’ll be shifting again in a few days, before grabbing his swimming trunks and changes.

The air’s still hot and sticky when he grabs his keycard and leaves in search of Niall, who’s standing out the front of his own room with a beach towel slung over his shoulder, talking to a security guard with a wire in his ear.

Louis moves around to Niall’s side. “Ready?”

Niall puts a placating hand on Louis’ bicep as he thanks the security guard, shaking his hand, then turning to give his full attention to Louis. “Shouldn’t we wait for Al?”

“Nah, fuck it, he knows where we’re going,” Louis says, pinching the front of Niall’s shirt. “Let’s go.”

It’s actually impossible to escape the security that their team has placed on them – from the minute they leave Niall’s door, they’re followed (moreso with eyes in hallways than with actual bodies) to the top of the hotel, which contains an open-air swimming pool. The sun is setting on their last free day before a fresh run of concerts, and Louis tosses his keycard and towel onto a sunning chair before running a hand through his flat, unstyled hair.

Sitting on the side of the pool, Louis watches Niall in the corner of his eye take off his shirt and walk to sit beside him. The water, once Louis dips his feet in, is warm – cool enough to take the edge off of the heat that comes part and parcel with being in Australia, but also warm enough to fend off the on-coming chill that accompanies night.

“Gonna be a long tour, I think,” Niall says into the quiet.

They’ve got the pool to themselves, and with nothing but the Brisbane skyline visible in every direction, it feels almost like a sacred space – like whatever they say is protected. Maybe he should have taken that as a warning to watch his tongue; maybe he should have been more on guard.

“Always is, isn’t it?” he returns, sighing a sigh that feels like it gets caught on several things in his chest. “You worried about the knee?”

Niall shrugs. “A bit. Worried about Zayn, too.”

Louis can feel himself darken at the mention of his friend – his friend who, it seems, is pressing harder and harder every day to leave, to just—be out of this life. The first time it started to have any weight was last year, when Zayn wanted out, and though they managed to talk him down during that tour, he’s started again, not even three shows in. It makes Louis feel sick even thinking about losing him like that; because the truth of the matter is that if Zayn leaves, several things will get set in motion that cannot be stopped. One of those being, Louis knows, the end of whatever friendship they have.

“He’ll be fine,” Louis says, voice tight. “Come on, come swim. Exercise that leg.”

Slipping into the water, Louis wades in until it’s up to his collarbones, lapping around the bottom of his throat like a noose. Turning, he watches Niall follow him, his pale skin reacting to the temperature of the water and flushing a bit. Louis splashes him, and Niall gives an indignant “hey!” before attempting to get him back, except Louis turns at the right moment so it only hits his back.

He’s planning a second hit when Niall’s own hits him right in the face, causing his eyes to sting and his hair to flop down over his face in a wet mess.

“Oi!” he yells, shaking off his hands and pushing his hair back to see Niall laughing, floating away from Louis toward the deeper end of the pool, obviously expecting Louis’ wrath.

Giving chase, Louis hates how quickly he loses the bottom of the pool due to his height, but he keeps going, moving into a short but efficient breaststroke as he chases Niall around the pool’s edge. Niall’s laughing so much he almost forgets to swim, occasionally slipping under and re-emerging a second later, spluttering and grinning and trying to swim away.

“Stop!” he half-laughs, trying in vain to get away from the ever-gaining figure of Louis. “I hate being chased!”

“Then stop running… swimming… away!”

But Louis is faster – stronger – and catches Niall by the ankle, pulling him to a stop in the deepest part of the pool. They’re both treading water now, arms and legs working to keep their faces above the water, and Louis can see that Niall’s cheeks are flushed and his blonde hair has turned dark against his head.

Niall’s laugh fades into a smile as they stare at one another across the surface of the water, and Louis’ whole body is vibrating with something that feels so strongly like—like love, but not—something more fluid, more ambiguous, and he’s gripped with the desire to just do something, but he doesn’t know what. The urge is overwhelming and makes his hands falter for a second before he regains his rhythm, and he realises he wants to just—to touch. Not in any particular way, and not with any intent—

“Fuck, Lou, wait,” hisses Niall, and suddenly his face is red and pinched with pain, and Louis’ snapping back to see that Niall is sinking.

He reaches out without thinking, holding himself afloat with just his legs as he holds up Niall instinctively. “What’s wrong? Niall?”

“My—“ Niall goes to bow his head but it slips beneath the water and he chokes, reactively tipping it back and coughing up chlorinated water. “My knee, it’s—fuck, it’s burning—“

They make it back to the side of the pool without drowning, and Louis heaves himself up onto the tiles, dripping, before pulling Niall up after him. His bad knee is like dead weight that Niall drags after himself, not daring to move it and instead keeping it as still as possible. Louis grabs Niall’s towel and wraps it around his shoulders before kneeling next to him.

“Alright?”

Niall’s chest is heaving and he’s shaking his head, eyes squeezed shut, and it’s such a vulnerable, helpless moment that Louis’ hands are fluttering uselessly over his leg without actually touching. Eventually he settles his hands on Niall’s slippery wet skin, and he feels Niall jerk in surprise and alarm.

His eyes are like warning beacons, pleading for mercy, but Louis starts massaging it, moving lower and lower until he’s kneading the muscle around Niall’s knee, thumbs working into the tissue and he watches as Niall’s body releases its tension, limb by limb, until he’s gasping against the concrete, water pooled around him.

“Better?” Louis asks, still massaging and looking at Niall worriedly.

He’d seen Niall do this himself, back in the day before the surgery – kneading the muscle when it hurt the most in the hopes that it would relax his leg and take the strain off the delicate knee joint. Niall nods silently, eyes closed as he steadies his breathing, and when he sits up properly, he’s still flushed a pink colour but no longer in pain.

“Well that was embarrassing,” he mumbles, laughing nervously and looking at Louis quickly, then away.

“Don’t worry about it, you look good being a damsel in distress.” Louis stands up and helps Niall up, too. “Want to just sit in the shallow end for a bit?”

Niall nods, and even though he’s not in any pain, he still limps to the other end of the pool and gingerly lowers himself down the stairs until he’s in the water, knee-deep. They both settle against the wall, floating and bobbing in the water that only comes to their chests when they’re seated.

Louis can’t stop looking at Niall, partly because he’s anxious that something more dangerous is happening with his knee than Niall is letting anyone believe, but also because of what he’d been so close to mentally admitting to himself before it happened. The need to touch – to hold, maybe – was still there, bubbling and fizzing away beneath the surface, and it had never really been a problem before. He would’ve hugged Niall if he wanted to, or he would’ve tackled him, making sure to take the brunt of the fall to protect Niall’s knee. But this feels different – it feels laced with a different kind of tension, and again, it’s not new, but it’s the first Louis’ allowed himself to genuinely admit that it’s there.

“You’d tell me if something was going on, wouldn’t you? With your knee?”

Niall looks at him, a little surprised. “’Course I would.”

“Good, because I want to help. I know you said I don’t have to, but—I want to.” Louis clears his throat and his hands itch with the desire to do something. “It doesn’t have to be like last time, yeah? We’ve got more bargaining power, and if you need help, we’ll get it.”

At that, Niall smiles. “You always did what you could, Lou. It wasn’t your fault I had to wait for it.”

“You shouldn’t have had to wait two whole fucking years, Ni – that was torture. Watching you perform on a dislocated knee-…” Louis shakes his head, hands balled into fists under the water. “We aren’t doing that again, alright? No more close calls. If something’s up, you say, and we’ll fix it.”

His heart feels like it’s pounding in his throat with untapped anger at the whole thing – at the schedule and management and tour life forcing Niall to wait so long; for the fans who, in one inadvertent mistake, sent Niall into worlds of pain by throwing things on stage. He hated it – hated seeing Niall hurt, hated knowing he couldn’t help – and when he turns to Niall, waiting for his answer, he instead finds Niall just watching him serenely.

“What?” Louis asks, taken aback.

“Nothin’, just…” He hesitates, on the cusp of something, before he looks away. “Thanks, I mean. For—lookin’ out for me, and my gomey knee.”

Louis nudges him with his elbow, squashing down the fear and the worry and all the other stuff that he can’t quite put a name to.

“Someone’s gotta hold us together, and if someone has to hold that someone together, then I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”

Niall laughs, soft and gentle as the warm breeze that crosses the top of the hotel. “You’re an idiot.”

***

The next night in Brisbane, the show goes off without a problem.

Louis can’t help but watch Niall for the whole night, his eye on the blonde-haired boy when it wasn’t on the fans. Niall seems oblivious to both Louis and his knee – he runs about, guitar in hand, and doesn’t seem any worse for wear.

And when the Melbourne shows go the same, Louis finally takes a breath and relaxes a little bit, reasoning that the problem with Niall’s knee is gone. Maybe it really was just an adjustment period after spending all those months back home – maybe it just needed to be stretched out, acclimatising to the life that is one on the road.

***

They’re at rehearsals a few days later when it happens for real.

One minute, they’re all jogging up the catwalk, microphones in hand – or, in Niall’s case, his guitar – when suddenly there’s a thump and a cry of pain, and they all turn around to find Niall on the floor.

Something in Louis just stops. Maybe he would’ve said it was his heart, but the loud thud thud thud of it in his ears at the sight of Niall crumpled on the ground reassures him that it’s still beating. It must be something else, frozen solid with fear and panic and something almost guilt-like at the sight, and he’s the first to move toward the boy, dropping his microphone and sending static through the empty stadium and probably damaging it in the process.

Louis doesn’t care – can’t care as he slides to his knees and rolls Niall onto his back. His face is red, flushed with an unspoken pain, and Louis follows the line Niall’s arms to find he’s clutching his bad knee.

“Niall? Is it your knee? What’s wrong?” Louis asks as the sound of footsteps thundering up the catwalk can be heard.

“Hurts,” is all Niall grits out before someone’s tugging Louis back from him and other bodies swarm around Niall, blocking Louis’ view.

And he wants to protest – wants to struggle out of the strong hands that are holding him back and away, but he can’t; it’s Harry, he realises dimly, fingers curved into the soft skin of Louis’ wrists, and he falls pliant, willingly watching as the big burly security guards that have become more like family than employees haul Niall up. The Irish boy gives a small cry of pain at the movement before he’s taken away by the black-clad entourage, leaving the four of them standing there, dumbstruck and all but rooted to the spot.

“Bloody hell,” murmurs Liam from behind Louis, and he turns to see Zayn and Liam standing side by side. “You reckon it was--?”

“His knee, yeah,” Zayn says, brow furrowed and eyes dark as he watches the huddle around Niall disappear backstage. “Didn’t know he was havin’ trouble with it again.”

“He’s been doing physio though, hasn’t he? It hasn’t hurt him in a while.” Harry’s dropped Louis’ wrists now, and running a hand through his rapidly-growing hair. It brushes the tops of his shoulders now.

“Might have walked on it funny,” suggests Zayn with a frown and a shrug.

“Maybe,” concedes Harry. “You don’t think it’s because of tour, do you?”

Everyone looks at him, fear coursing through them all, but none more so than Louis, who had been fearing the same thing since tour even started.

“Like,” continues Harry. “We had a few months off and now we’re back… maybe it’s too much, the on-off thing.”

They’re all looking at each other now, exchanging glances of guilt or worry or fear that maybe they somehow caused it; maybe they need to change the way they’re doing things. The thought – stop touring – lingers in the back of all of their minds, because it had been a possibility little more than a year ago after Niall had been wheeled out of hospital and into rehab. Conversations had sprung up about it – should they force Niall onto tour if he could hardly walk? The risks involved – someone throwing something and hitting Niall’s knee or, worse, Niall slipping over and hurting his leg irreparably – were real and potent. None of them would have risked Niall’s well-being if there was an alternative.

But Niall’s recovery – though obviously not miraculous or overnight – had been swift enough to get him back on his feet in time for their tour in 2014, save for the continuing physio he had to do with Mark. Louis had spent hours with Niall that tour, both in the gym (pretending to be there for a laugh when really he was watching the exercises that Mark ran through with Niall, just in case) and in their hotel room, making heat packs for when the pain was a bit too much after a long concert. The idea that they’d have to cancel touring for the foreseeable future had disappeared when Niall was good again – he wouldn’t hear of them cancelling, and anyway, he was probably never would have forgiven them for it if they’d made the decision for him.

But now—now, for the first time in a year, they’re back to square one, because this isn’t a slight twinge after a long day or a bit of stiffness after sleeping on it all night. This is fell-over-while-walking pain, and Louis feels stupid that he didn’t see it coming sooner.

“I’m gonna go see him,” Louis declares, brushing off the topic that Harry has introduced.

“Lou—“

“You should wait,” Zayn urges, putting a hand out as Louis goes to walk past him, and it presses against Louis’ shirt. He stares down at it. “He’s probably with a doctor or summat.”

Louis wants to explain the feeling in his chest – the thing that’s constricting his lungs, making it harder and harder to breathe every minute that he’s not checking on Niall – but the words aren’t there. They all care about Niall – they all care about one another – but this thing… This thing in Louis’ chest at the thought of Niall in pain or Niall needing him is almost crippling, and he doesn’t think the others are feeling that. So he keeps quiet about it, stowing it away in some deeper part of him that he’s managed to keep locked down, full of things that he can’t quite ever verbalise properly.

“I don’t care,” Louis snaps, pushing Zayn’s hand away from him and marching back down the catwalk and around the back of the stage.

Oddly, Niall’s accident must have postponed their rehearsal, because even the band has bunked off, gone back to their dressing room or, more likely, their hotel rooms. The show isn’t until tomorrow, thankfully; the rehearsal had been merely a formality, given that they’d only started tour the week prior and their choreography is still a bit rusty; they were still making errors with timing and position. Not that any of that mattered now – what were a few fumbles on stage when Niall was hurt?

Louis followed the usual path back to their dressing room corridor, but it was empty; a few of the stage crew were bustling back and forth, getting tools or carrying clipboards full of instructions. And though Louis knew most of their names – after years of being on tour with the same people, every day – he knew when to leave them alone, too; the show the next day was putting pressure on them to get the stadium ready.

His next stop was the infirmary, or whatever the Australians called it, but that, too, was empty, save for a few unfurled bandages that were lying on a bench and the package to what looked to be a band-aid. Frowning, and with his heart beating, Louis kept walking, heading for the back of the stadium and pushing open the double doors into what was a loading area – the trucks that hauled equipment from one end of the country to the other were parked, as well as few vans and cars for staff and crew. And there—with its back doors flung wide open – was an ambulance.

And that same, ice-cold crippling feeling washed over him as he jogged forward.

“Hey! Oi!” he yells, and a few of the bodyguards who are hovering by the van’s doors turn, and Alberto – who must’ve been pitching in to help – is frowning at Louis, clearly disapproving. “Where you taking him?”

“Relax,” Alberto says, walking forward with a placating hand raised. “He’s going for a scan, alright?”

“Why?” demands Louis, trying to go around Alberto, but the man is thick and tall and built, and it’s like pushing against a brick wall. “Let me see him.”

“He’s fine, but he needs to get checked over.”

“Why?” he asks again, and this time he feints darting one way but actually goes in the other, slipping around and through Alberto’s out-reached hands, and though Louis doesn’t see it, Alberto throws up his hands in defeat and lets Louis go to the ambulance.

The other men are standing their ground, and for once, Louis doesn’t mind being small – he slips in between them until he’s scrambling up into the back of the ambulance. It smells like a hospital; antiseptic and bandages and something that reminds Louis of the times he’d gone to visit his mum at the hospital. Something clean and sterile and almost—safe.

Niall’s laying up on one of the beds, his bum knee propped up beneath by a cushion with an ice-pack resting on top. The sight makes Louis’ breath hitch and his bluster to fall away, and he ignores the questions of the doctor as he approaches Niall, cautious like the other boy is a wounded, feral animal that might startle.

“Hey,” says Niall when his eyes roll to land on Louis, and his voice is smooth and relaxed: too honey-sweet to be anything but medically induced. “You visitin’ me?”

“Nah. Just love the smell of hospitals,” he says, throat oddly tight as his eyes shift from Niall’s hazy blue eyes to his knee. “Bit bunged up, aren’t you?”

“A little.” Niall’s hand moves at the pace of a fast-moving slug, drifting across to grapple with Louis’ own hand. His skin feels clammy and too-warm as his fingers tangle with a few of Louis’. “Feel good, though.”

Louis laughs, a chuckle that eases off a little of the panic building in his chest. “That’s ‘cause you’re practically bleeding morphine, mate.”

The chuckle that Niall lets slip is delayed too long, like it took him a good five seconds to even register what Louis had said. It peters out quickly to a small, content smile as Niall’s eyes slip closed and his fingers loosen their hold on Louis’.

“Niall?”

Niall’s eyes open again, bright like he’d just woken up as recognition flickers across his face at the sight of Louis. The slow, happy smile returns. “You’re still here.”

“Didn’t go anywhere,” Louis murmurs, and he glances back out the ambulance doors to see that security is still milling, talking with the ambulance driver. There’s paperwork involved, apparently, which means that Louis is about to be kicked out.

He looks back to Niall, whose eyes are closed again. He looks like he’s asleep, and Louis spares a brief, self-indulgent moment to push the long, blonde parts of Niall’s fringe off his forehead before he releases his hand with one final squeeze.

“See you soon,” Louis promises, fingertips brushing against Niall’s arm before he jumps out of the ambulance and weaves his way back toward the stadium, ignoring the sound of Alberto on his heels.

***

Rehearsal is cancelled, meaning that they’re all free to go their separate ways for the day. Liam and Harry are apparently hitting the gym which – yeah, no thank you – and Zayn’s fucked off to go call Perrie or to Skype with his mum, so with no word about Niall or when he’ll be returning, Louis occupies himself in his hotel room with his laptop and the hotel’s wifi password. Which, inevitably, leads Louis down a blackhole spiral of YouTube videos that lands him somewhere in the region of animals and documentaries (he started at sports).

Hours somehow pass in this way until Louis is now familiar with the hunting patterns of lions and lionesses in the plains of Africa and he has way too many images of slaughtered zebra behind his closed eyes to attempt sleep. It’s still early – not even ten – but the city beyond his window is dark, illuminated by the lights of shops and streets, and Louis realises that he’s literally half a world away from home once again.

Louis loves tour: he loves travelling and seeing places and people and the culture that comes with both. There are downsides, of course – the stalkers, the paparazzi, the security risks and the fact that he can’t ever really leave without some sort of elaborate plan being involved – but it’s worth it, he decides. The hotels come to feel like home, and with the other boys, it’s like a family; tour is the kind of rush that only a select few people in the world will ever know.

But it’s the fifth year of it, now; he’s not eighteen and bouncing off the walls like he used to. He misses his mum and siblings, and what with the new twins just arrived, Louis feels like now, more than ever, that he’s just missing things. The small things – the little family moments that happen softly, without fanfare – are what Louis wants so much in these quiet moments that it almost hurts.

And there is, of course, the empty space where his love life should have been. Zayn’s got Perrie and Liam’s got Sophia; Harry’s all over the place, but he seems happy, and then there’s Louis. And Niall, he supposes, but Niall’s always just sort of – never been interested in that kind of thing. Not that he placed himself above it or scorned it when the others were nursing a broken heart or were out at a club looking for someone, but. Niall just didn’t seem to be looking, and they’d all just silently accepted it as normal.

Louis wouldn’t say he wasn’t interested – Sure, he’d had his fair share of random flings; one night stands or a month or two-long affair that ended with both of them mutually going their separate ways when they realised it wasn’t ever going to move beyond what they had. But there was no drive in him to tie himself down to anyone just for the sake of saying that he had them – that urge just wasn’t there. Yet -- there was a kind of pull to have someone; someone that he could just be with, without all the drama.

He wasn’t so far gone that he thought that Niall was that person – God knows that Niall was probably really, really interested in women, from what Louis had heard him say after a few pints – but… there was that kind of prickle inside of Louis whenever Niall was around that kind of felt like something. A buzz, maybe, or an electricity that coursed through Louis’ veins, making him excited to be around Niall moreso than other people. Like they were friends, but more: like Louis wanted a more intense kind of friendship – one that other people couldn’t have from Niall.

It felt like friendship on fire.

As he thought about that feeling, letting it fill him up, he heard movement out in the hotel corridor – orders from security guards and the unmistakeable sound of Niall’s voice protesting something.

Closing the lid of the laptop and leaving it on the bed, Louis races to his door and peers out into the hallway to see Niall being pushed into his hotel room in a wheelchair, looking very much alive and okay. Grinning, Louis grabs his hotel room keycard before slipping out of his room altogether, much to the stares of the guards that dot the hallway.

Ignoring them completely, Louis walks into Niall’s room, the door slapping against the wall loudly and causing the room’s other occupants to turn and look at him.

“Thought I’d come see the patient.” Louis smiles solely at Niall and squeezes the boy’s shoulder when he’s close enough – close enough to smell the crisp, sterile scent of hospital lingering on his clothes. “How you doing, Nialler?”

“Alright. Tired. And,” he says, directing his next words at Basil, who’s still got his hands dutifully on the handles of the wheelchair, “completely capable of walking the two feet to bed.”

Basil raises his hands. “If you say so. Call me if you need anything.”

He gives Louis one last glance – a critical kind of warning, Louis thinks – before he leaves, the door closing quietly behind him. When they’re alone, Niall slumps a little in his wheelchair, like he hasn’t been able to just relax for hours. Louis’ fingers press a little harder into his skin.

“You alright?” he asks again, coming around the front to perch on the edge of Niall’s king-sized bed, putting them at eye-level with one another. “You look a bit peaky, mate.”

“Yeah, ‘m fine, just—“ Niall scrubs at his eyes, rubbing at them before dropping his hand away and looking at Louis blearily. “Lot of tests. Lot of scans. Lot of drugs.”

Normally, Louis might’ve made a joke about the latter, but he can practically see how tired Niall is, like a wilting flower right before his eyes, and the joking friend façade slips away into protective mother.

“C’mon, let’s get you into bed then, yeah?” he says, standing up and pulling back the tight, freshly made covers of the bed before he turns back to Niall, who hasn’t moved and is staring at the ground. “What’s up?”

“I—“ Niall’s face is red in the lamplight of the room. “I can’t do it by myself,” he admits, voice small.

The thing about Niall is that he’s got a certain amount of pride, just like Louis; both of them would have always preferred to do things alone because asking for help – admitting that you can’t do something – feels like you’ve somehow failed. Even when Niall was fresh from rehab and on his crutches, he never asked for help; he never asked Louis to hold the crutches, and he never asked for a hand up from a chair. He never complained about the pain, at least not out loud, despite how much it probably did hurt while it was healing and he learned how to walk again.

But this – right now – is Niall asking for help, and Louis knows that he has to tread carefully.

“S’alright,” he mumbles, and he kneels to take Niall’s tennis shoes off before he stands up. “I’ll get you under this arm, yeah? You use the good leg and I’ll take the weight of the other.”

There’s a countdown to three before Niall heaves himself up on his better knee, and Louis ducks under his shoulder, one arm around Niall’s back, and together they hobble to the bed. Niall flops gratefully onto the soft mattress, and once he’s sitting up against a stack of pillows, he manoeuvres his legs so that the sore one is stretched out and propped up slightly by the duvet.

“Thanks,” Niall murmurs, embarrassed, as he fusses about for a moment before he settles for wringing his hands.

Louis nods but doesn’t comment, and then he begins to busy himself about the room, straightening the wheelchair beside Niall’s side of the bed and pouring water for him and grabbing an extra blanket from the bottom of the bed and laying it across Niall’s socked feet. He feels restless and torn, like if he stops for too long, he’s going to crumble away completely, because there’s this ugly sort of feeling rearing up inside of him – kind of hot, like tears, but feral and black, like anger. The fear that he’d been keeping down all day, pushing further and further to the back of his mind, feels startlingly close again, and Louis knows that if he stops for too long, it’ll escape, and that’s the last thing Niall should have to deal with.

“Lou,” Niall complains, and Louis looks up from where he’d been about to start folding Niall’s clothes, which have spilled out of his suitcase, to see Niall looking at him pleadingly. “Can you just—sit?”

“I—yeah. Yeah, alright.”

Louis drops the jumper he’d been holding and crawls onto the spare side of the mattress, trying not to let his hands tremble.

“Wanna watch something? Order some room service?” Niall suggests, picking up the remote from his bedside table and tossing it to Louis, who’s attempt at catching it fails miserably, and it flops to the bed between them.

Louis nods, distracted, and switches on the tv while Niall grabs some menus.

It’s better after that – the television hums away in the background with neither of them really watching it, and the room service fills the room with the smell of freshly cooked fries instead of the lingering smell of a hospital that clung to Niall’s clothes and skin. And it could almost be any other night on any other tour – the two of them holed up in one or the other’s room, eating and laughing and watching trashy television until the early hours of the morning when, despite all his egotism, Louis would pass out first against Niall’s shoulder.

Best of all, the hum in his veins that’s pure Niall is back, lighting Louis up on the inside like a Christmas tree, warm and bright and happy. The fear of earlier – the thing that had screamed at him to just do something – feels tamed, for the moment at least, buried beneath Niall’s silent assurances of good health.

“You scared us today, you know,” Louis says, picking at the fries that he’s got scattered across his plate, half-smothered in ketchup.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to, obviously.”

Louis nods, silent for a moment. “You said you were going to tell me if it got worse.”

It comes out as more of an accusation than Louis intends, because he doesn’t have any right to feel hurt or betrayed – Niall’s reasons are his own, but the bitterness lingers over the thought that Niall didn’t tell Louis because he didn’t think he could actually be of any help.

“I know,” Niall says quietly, pushing around the crumbs on his plate so that they form a tiny little pile, before he scatters them. “I didn’t… I didn’t really know? I mean, it hasn’t been that bad in a while, like… It came from nowhere. It was just a kind of—twinge, I guess. Like it was a bit weak. I ignored it, and then when we were runnin’ up the catwalk, it just—it gave out.”

Louis feels sick, and he stops touching his food. “Do you need another surgery?”

“Nah,” Niall shakes his head. “Just need to do some different exercises for it, they said. I’ve been strengthening some muscles, but not others, so it left me vulnerable.”

“Maybe we should find you a different trainer,” Louis’ saying before he really registers it, his heart pounding with worry and a kind of protective righteousness that makes him feel angry at the fact that Mark fucking Jarvis didn’t realise he was leaving Niall vulnerable to injury. “We have enough money – we’ll bring ‘em on tour, yeah? You can work out with them every day, make sure your leg’s, like, back up to speed, and—“

Niall’s laughing, blue eyes alight, and Louis stops talking, frowning harder.

“What’s so funny? I’m serious, Niall, you shouldn’t have to pay someone if they’re not doing their fucking job properly. Like, you pay him good money, and he’s let you fucking hurt yourself—“

“Stop,” Niall says, voice raised slightly to cut off Louis’ own, but he’s still smiling, albeit somewhat sadly, but he’s not actually mad. “It’s not Mark’s fault – he was doing the exercise my physiotherapist told him to do, so.”

“Then fire your physiotherapist!” Louis’ anger swings toward this unnamed, faceless specialist. “Honestly, Niall, like—“

“I’m alright, Lou, yeah? I appreciate it, but no one’s to blame for me knee – the physio thought the exercises would be enough, they aren’t, so we’re changing them. No harm done.”

And it’s easy for Niall to say that, because he doesn’t know what the rest of them have talked about behind his back – whether they should cancel the tour, whether they can change the choreo so that Niall doesn’t have to run or walk as much, whether it would be better to just call it quits altogether— He doesn’t know what Louis’ felt today, for the past three years, he doesn’t know--

“There was harm done,” Louis says, outraged, and his voice rises a few octaves. “You were hurt – you fell.”

Niall’s smile wanes, and he bites his lip instead. “M’just a bit banged up. That’s what the morphine’s for, isn’t it?”

Louis lets out a groan of frustration, wishing he could just make Niall see – he’s worth more than this, and people shouldn’t be playing games with his well-being. If Louis was in control, he’d fire the lot and hire new, more competent people who constantly made sure Niall was getting the help he needed. Because the absolute truth is that Louis watched Niall struggle through two tours on a bad knee that dislocated so many times that it almost became second nature to see Niall on a hospital gurney getting wheeled away. And the surgery – this now-or-never surgery from one of the best surgeons in the world – was supposed to stop all that; Louis had thought his days of worrying were over.

But seeing Niall fall – seeing Niall passed out in the back of ambulance – brought it all back, and Louis just. He can’t handle that – seeing Niall hurt, seeing him in pain, and being helpless to do anything.

“Hey,” Niall says, voice soft, and Louis looks back to him. His eyes are a soft, careful blue that are familiar and warm and secure, and Louis can feel his anger crumbling away inside of him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he says immediately, but then he hitches a deep breath and looks away, shifting awkwardly. “Just—I don’t like it.”

“Like what?”

Louis internally rolls his eyes at how oblivious Niall can be sometimes – how they can share the same space for so many years, and know each other so well, that he couldn’t see that this is tearing Louis apart.

“This. You, being hurt. I don’t like it.”

“Oh,” and Niall pushes the tray on wheels away from his chest. “Uhm. Why? I mean, other than the obvious.”

“How do you know it’s not for the obvious reason?” Louis asks, eyes narrowed as he looks back at Niall, searching for some kind of answer on Niall’s face before he responds, but he’s closed off, nothing but a flush on the tops of his cheeks and a kind of tired, soft look in his eye.

“Because,” he says simply, “Harry, Liam or Zayn would be here, too.”

Louis feels sort of frozen, like he’s been caught in metaphorical headlights, and he just – yeah, maybe Niall’s right; maybe if what he felt for Niall was like what the others felt, he would’ve popped in for a minute and left. But he didn’t, and he’s here now – he’s always been here, beside Niall when no one else was. It’s not that they don’t like Niall, but because they have their own somebody’s, and Louis—Well.

Maybe Niall is Louis’ somebody, he realises.

“Because,” Louis says, voice slightly unsteady as he tries to take in all of Niall and gauge the response to what he’s going to say before he says it. Can he say it? He’s never been good at saying how he feels – never really needed to, at least not with someone he cared about – and he feels like he’s burning, from the inside out. “Because, you’re—you. Because I care about you, alright?”

It’s not enough – it’s not nearly even close to enough – but he can see Niall thinking about it.

“I care about you too,” Niall replies, carefully, automatically.

“I—I know you do, but what I’m saying—what I mean, is that, like… I don’t like seeing you hurt because I care about you,” and this time, Louis tries to fix him with a significant look. “Like… I don’t know. When I saw you fall, I couldn’t even fucking think, and when I saw you in that ambulance, I would have probably torn the world inside out to get to you. I just—I care about you, and like—I guess it’s not how the others do, and it’s not how other people would think I do. It’s, like… this middle ground.”

The words hang between them, Louis’ cheeks burning because he knows he can’t take them back. He isn’t sure he needs to – they didn’t make a lot of sense, even to him, but he waits, and hopes. Niall looks away, then back at Louis, thinking and frowning, and when he brings his thumb to his mouth, Louis thinks that he might’ve pieced something together, because there’s an anxious, skittish, frenzied look in Niall’s eye as he takes in Louis.

“A middle ground,” Niall clarifies, looking at Louis questioningly.

“Yeah.”

“Between--?”

“Yeah.”

“Right.” Niall is looking at Louis. “You know that I’m not—I don’t, like—I’m not…?”

And there it is. Louis can feel something in his chest sort of snap and give way, and he feels like he’s freefalling away into nothing. Realistically, he should’ve expected this – he’s never even spoken about dating or sexuality with Niall; there was just never a point when it came up, when it needed to be spoken about. Niall did what he liked, and so did Louis, and those paths never crossed in order for them to register it.

“You—don’t like me… you don’t like guys,” Louis says, swallowing thickly. “Right, I sort of—I knew—“

“No, wait,” and Niall’s free hand shoots out and closes around Louis’ wrist. “I’m—yeah, I—I’m not gay, but I’m not, like, straight either.”

Louis looks at him dubiously, wondering if Niall is just trying to spare his feelings because he’s made an absolute fool of himself.

“Niall—two pints deep at the pub and you’re waxing poetic about girls as good as the rest of them,” he says, rolling his eyes and giving an experimental tug to his hand. Niall’s grip is firm.

“No—yeah, but—“ Niall sighs. “I don’t want them. I appreciate them, like, aesthetically, but I don’t, really, like… want anyone. Like that, at least.”

Louis squints at him, because he’d known that – he’d definitely known that – but it still feels like news. The thing is that he doesn’t mind; he’d always accepted that Niall just didn’t care about those things because it was just who Niall was. No one questioned him about it, no one teased him – it was just Niall, and Louis liked that about him because it was who he was.

“Okay,” he says slowly, wondering if there’s more.

“So, when you say you—you care about me, I can’t… I can’t do that. I can’t move from this to—that. Being physically with someone, I mean,” and his face goes a little bit pinker as he says the words, as if he’s not used to it.

Louis frowns. “I didn’t—I didn’t want you to. Christ, Niall.” He turns his hand so that his fingers are brushing against Niall’s palm, and that overwhelming urge to touch or hold rears up again. “I wouldn’t—I don’t want that, I mean. I do, maybe, I don’t know, but not—not if you don’t want to, you know? I want this. I mean—this. This sort of, like, stuff.”

To emphasise his point, Louis curls his fingers around Niall’s hand and squeezes, and he feels reassured when Niall’s own fingers close around Louis’.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” Louis says on an exhale, as though he’s been holding both his breath and the admission in for a long time. “I just know that I like. Really want to be your friend, but more.” Louis’ face screws up. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Niall shifts closer, still keeping his leg still. “It does,” he says, thumb on the back of Louis’ hand. “Like—an exclusive friend, sort of.”

“Yeah!” Louis lights up. “Is there a name for that?”

They look at each other, thinking through all of the names they know, but nothing comes to mind. Eventually, Louis grabs Niall’s laptop and settles into his side, like they had done a few nights ago when watching Agent Carter – except this time, it’s Google he opens. They compile a list of words – friendship, gay, relationship, no sex – and eventually land on a glossary of terms that makes Louis’ heart beat hard in his chest.

He’d always known that he liked boys – there had been years of experimentation, but eventually he’d realised that his sexual attraction was centred mostly around men. And he wasn’t averse to calling himself gay, he just – he didn’t know if that was the whole of it. He’d never looked further into it, mostly because he was scared of what he would find – some label for himself that locked him down and made him somehow Other. Louis didn’t know what Niall was thinking, but when his hand reached for the touch pad, he thought he saw his fingers trembling just a little bit.

“Hm. That,” Louis says, pointing at the screen and thus pausing Niall’s scrolling.

Queerplatonic relationship.

“I like the sound of that,” he continues, reading the description:

A queerplatonic (or quasiplatonic) relationship is a relationship that is not romantic but involves a close emotional connection (platonic) beyond what most people consider friendship. The commitment level in a queerplatonic relationship is often considered to be similar to that of a romantic relationship. People in a queerplatonic relationship may be of any romantic or sexual orientation.

“Yeah,” Niall breathes. “So… it’s like, dating but dating as friends. Sort of.”

Louis laughs, cackling with his eyes shaped into little half-moons, and even to his own ears, it sounds slightly manic, his nerves jangling everything up on the inside. “I guess? You’re sort of exclusive… exclusive friends. Who, like, do stuff.”

Niall looks down at him, corner of his mouth rising into a sardonic grin. “Stuff?”

“Yeah, stuff. Whatever we’re comfortable with,” he says, and it somehow seems new and exciting to think of himself and Niall as an ‘us’ and a ‘we.’

He’d never contemplated that before – had never thought that there was a way to be like this with someone else. Louis knew only of friendship and relationships: there was no easy middle ground between the two, because you either liked someone or you didn’t. But it was more complex than that – it was more than wanting to just casually hang out with someone, but not the kind of feeling where you wanted to strip them down and spend the night with them that way. Louis just – he wants to be with Niall; protect him, keep him safe, make him laugh. He wants to cuddle with him like they always used to do, and talk to him in the dead of night about the things that make him scared, and make sure that Niall’s there when he wakes up with nothing but a free day ahead of them both.

Louis looks at Niall, heart pounding and wondering how the fuck he’s going to say all that without giving the other boy the wrong impression, because it’s so bizarre, even to him, that the words falter in his head. Niall just hums and keeps scrolling, oblivious, and Louis looks at the screen to find the mouse following the words that Niall reads on the screen, which is the definition provided for a person who is asexual.

“That’s definitely me,” Niall announces, and tilts the screen enough so that Louis can read.

When he’s finished, he glances up at Niall. “You want to use that term for yourself?” he asks gently, open and soft.

“Yeah, I like it.” Niall turns the computer around again. “It’s upfront so that people don’t get the wrong idea. I just don’t feel sexual attraction, like… ever. Never, actually.”

And maybe Louis should’ve felt rejected about that, but there’s only a kind of solid warmth there – he realises, belatedly, that he doesn’t feel that toward Niall either, despite knowing for a fact that he’s able to feel sexual attraction.

“Not even when you saw my arse for the first time?” he questions, mouth pulling up at the corners when Niall cackles.

“Maybe I felt something, but it could’ve just been amazement at how fuckin’ big it was.”

“Oi!” and Louis elbows him, careful not to jostle Niall too much.

Louis settles back against Niall’s shoulder as they continue to scan the list of terms that people can choose to define themselves by, and he almost misses one that catches his eye. “Go back,” he says quickly, pointing at the screen to a definition that’s just disappeared. When it reappears, a lump forms in his throat.

Aromantic.

“Huh,” he murmurs, eyes quickly scanning the definition before he shrinks into Niall. “Would—is it fucked up if I think I’m that? Aromantic?”

Niall’s brow furrows as he reads, shaking his head as he does so. “Why would that make you fucked up? This is—this is fine, Lou. Seems like a lot of people feel the same, y’know?”

It’s embarrassingly new to feel this raw and open in front of someone. Niall’s always been the person that Louis has put up his best front for; someone that he’s tried to shield from the worst parts of himself, never wanting to hurt him because of who Louis is, as a person. And maybe, somewhere along the way, Louis forgot to keep putting up such a good defense because Niall was older now, because Niall understood more; because they started to share in the same problems. Niall had always understood Louis in a way that never really needed words – it was in the way he’d open his arms to hug Louis, or in the laugh he’d release whenever Louis had actually tried to be funny for someone else’s sake, or in the way Niall always just seemed to be there, in Louis’ periphery, ready for him.

At some point, Louis had realised he hadn’t needed to keep himself from Niall, because Niall could handle him.

“I suppose,” Louis replies slowly, mouth twitching to one side as he considers it. “Sounds… sounds like I don’t know how to like, love, or summat.”

Niall closes the laptop and gently tosses it toward the end of the bed. The glowing Apple logo fades out.

“Nah, you of all people know how to love. Anyone who’s seen you with your sisters knows that,” he says. “Besides, like. These things are just options. You don’t have to call yourself aromantic if you don’t want to.”

Niall’s right – of course – and Louis gives him a shaky smile, still feeling almost disturbingly giddy inside, like his organs have melted into some kind of molten lava that’s sloshing around inside his chest.

“I’ll think about it,” Louis decides. “Can we watch tv now? We’ve still got a few episodes left of Agent Carter and I want to know what happens with that Russian sleeper cell girl.”

Niall agrees, and he watches from the bed as Louis pushes the room service trays toward the middle of the room before he starts puttering around in the small kitchenette.

“What’re you doing?”

Louis returns with one of Niall’s pain meds, a tube of pain cream, and some water.

“Don’t think I don’t know you’re in pain,” Louis says. “Your eyes get all funny.”

Niall laughs. “Thanks,” but he doesn’t contradict Louis’ words, just swallows the pill with some cold water. He caps it and places it on the bedside table.

Louis climbs back onto the bed, dropping the tube of cream next to Niall’s knee, settling himself comfortably and looking at Niall.

“Alright?”

Niall looks at him, cheeks still glowing pink. “Yeah, ‘m alright. You?”

Louis feels exhausted and exposed and wrung out, like talking about feelings and making leaps and bounds in self-discovery has tired him out. There’s so much uncertainty – what will happen with Niall’s knee? What will happen if Zayn actually does leave? What does it even mean to be aromantic and to ‘date’ someone who is asexual? Was being in a queer platonic relationship even akin to dating? It’s all new and pressingly present in Louis’ head, like his own personal tolling bell, and if he could just switch it off and run away, he would seriously consider it.

And he thinks he should say that to Niall, but looking at the blonde-haired boy, Louis knows that there’s time for that – and that time is not tonight, because this thing between them is fragile and new, and if he starts offloading all his issues, Niall might reconsider whatever they are.

“I’m good,” Louis says, shuffling down the bed slightly and patting his thigh. “Bring ‘er up here.”

Niall lifts his leg onto Louis’, and they set about their routine of pushing some cream from the tube onto his skin while Niall finds Netflix and the correct episode, pressing play. Their eyes are on the screen as Louis massages in the heady cream, thumbs circling the tender muscle and tissue of Niall’s knee until the tension seeps from Niall’s body, and he’s practically sinking into the pillows by the time the cream’s absorbed by his skin.

Louis’ fingers trace the length of the scar on Niall’s knee, and he looks down at it through the darkness, remembering a time last year when he’d turned it into a double-sided arrow. It had seemed easier to joke about it then – to be optimistic about Niall’s future, because everything was coming up positive. Now, it feels like they’re back at the beginning – no better off than when Niall was dislocating it every other week.

“Do you really not need another surgery?” Louis asks, speaking over the top of the television.

“No.”

Louis looks across at Niall, still nursing his thin leg on his lap. His face is a wash of reds and oranges from the screen of the tv, making him look slightly other-worldly. “You lying?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

And that’s—it’s not a recovery time or a guarantee that Niall will be alright, but it’s something – like a weight off of Louis’ chest, and he presses his lips together to keep them from wobbling. Capping the cream and tossing it in the vague direction of Niall’s suitcase, Louis settles himself back against the pillows before he’s almost immediately pulled in against Niall by one of his arms. For someone as thin as he is, Niall is strong, but Louis goes willingly, curling into his side and knotting his fingers in the material of Niall’s shirt.

“Do you think that this can even work?” he asks, and he can feel Niall’s warm breath on the top of his head. “Like… this thing. This—queer platonic thing?”

The name is still new that it sounds heavy on Louis’ tongue, but if Niall feels awkward about it, he doesn’t let on.

“To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing,” Niall replies, laughing just once. “Do I want to be your friend? Yeah, obviously, have done since we met and you had your hair cut like a fuckin’ helmet. You remember that? Round as a ball. But do I want something more than that? Like… a relationship?” He pauses, and Louis feels Niall’s hand rubbing against his back, just slightly, almost like a distracted tic. “I think… I think I do, if ‘m honest. I like you, and—I think I have done for a while now, I just… didn’t really see how it was ever going to work, because I know who I am and—I didn’t think that would have allowed me to have a relationship.”

Louis grabs the remote from Niall’s lap and pauses Agent Carter.

“You think just because you don’t want to have sex with someone, you can’t have a relationship?” Louis says, half-angry. “That’s bullshit. Anyone who turns you down on that factor alone is clearly—“

“I get it, I promise, I do, and, like... thanks, but—“ Niall shrugs, “it’s important to some people. Sex is—I guess this intimate thing that can bring people together. It doesn’t have to, but for the majority of people, it does. And if you say to someone that sex is off the table, no compromises possible, how many do you think would actually see you for a second date?”

There’s no answer that Louis can possibly give, so he stays silent, fingers still tight on Niall’s shirt. He feels floored – stunned, even, that this is what Niall’s been thinking this entire time; that Niall’s listened to their stories of girls (and boys) coming and going and never saying anything because he knows it’s not possible for him to have the same luxury.

“I would,” Louis says, honest. “Like—I don’t know about dating, or like… if that’s what we’re doing, but—I would see you again. I kind of have to.”

“Shut up,” laughs Niall, pushing at Louis. “You literally are ruining every nice moment.”

“Sorry.”

“Twat.”

Louis settles back against Niall, but the television is still paused, and neither of them moves to change it.

“Are we?” Louis asks into the silence.

“What?”

“Dating,” he says, poking at a tiny hole in Niall’s shirt and subsequently making it bigger. “Is that… what this is?”

Niall takes in a deep breath – Louis can feel it beneath his head – before exhaling. “We’re… in a relationship, but it’s not dating. You liked the description of the queer platonic thing, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Then we’ll do that,” Niall says brightly. “See what happens with being, like, exclusive friends, and if we change our minds, then we can change what we call it.”

Louis thinks about it for a moment, trying to decide whether it’s enough. “Okay,” he says, nodding his head against Niall’s shoulder.

“Okay?”

“Let’s do it,” Louis says, pinching at Niall’s nipple and making him squawk. “Let’s be—platonic dating.”

“Hey, that’s a good word for it!” Niall grabs Louis’ wrists and pins them to his thigh. “Platonic dating. Dating, but as friends.”

“Exactly.”

They look at each other, flickering between each eye, trying to take it all in, and Louis doesn’t know who starts it first, but suddenly they’re both smiling. A kind of contented, satisfied smile that one might find upon someone walking through the front door of their house after being gone for a year. Louis’ still scared – still utterly terrified of Niall hurting himself for the sake of the band and the fans, as well as of the fact that what he is might eventually push Niall away – but he feels hopeful, too. Like maybe, if Niall’s there – promising to be there – it can’t be so bad; maybe he’ll help Louis fix whatever it is that’s been going so wrong inside of him all these years.

They’re heavy thoughts, and clearly destined for another day, so Louis contents himself with the fact that he’s now allowed to hold Niall in the exact way he wants. Settling back against him, Niall’s hands turn over so that his palm is to Louis’, and their fingers entwine.

“This okay?” Niall murmurs above him.

Louis nods, and with his free hand, grabs the remote and unpauses the tv, eyes settling once more on Peggy Carter’s exploits. “This is perfect,” he says back.