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Louis lies on his back tracing the constellations on Harry’s ceiling with his gaze. Capricorn and Aquarius side by side, a good omen, he’s been told.
He checks his phone. Still nothing from Harry. He said for Louis to come over around five and it’s already approaching six. Harry’s mum apologized when Louis arrived (not till half past five, wanting to give Harry time with his family). She said Harry’s flight had been delayed and then he’d had to stop for fans at Heathrow.
Louis offered to help with supper, but was relieved when she declined, insisting that with Gemma and Robin she already had too many cooks in too tight a kitchen. She said he should make himself at home, fetch himself a beer, relax in front of the match on television.
He contemplated it for a moment, but after checking the score, decided to head upstairs instead.
He knows he doesn’t really fit into Harry’s life anymore. Even stopping by tonight feels strange. He tells himself again that it will be the last time. He wants to break things off properly, in person.
And, anyway, Harry sent him that gift. He couldn’t very well end things and keep it, as tempting as that is.
He pulls out the waistband of his sweats and looks down. The deep blue panties hold his cock and balls tightly. They cover more skin than he’d anticipated when he’d lifted the tiny things out of the box, but they still look sexy.
And a little obscene.
The small brown package had been waiting for him in the mail room of his hall two weeks past, pink package slip in his box when he checked it just minutes after turning in his last exam.
Only one person ever sent him packages: Harry Styles. Or Hershel Stein, as he’d been signing them lately.
Louis’d been eager to open it, expecting some sort of exotic candy or maybe another teacup for the collection he’d started as a toddler (though most of the china had been added in the last eighteen months, by Harry).
Instead, he’d found a pair of silk panties, shining and smooth against the pads of his fingers. He’d been surprised, thought maybe someone had made a mistake, put the wrong gift in the wrong box, checked the wrong address on an online order form.
The fine cut of the fabric looked awkward when held between Louis’ chunky fingers. They couldn’t possibly be meant for him.
But then he’d remembered the last time he’d seen Harry. Harry’s voice had been rough-edged as he’d said, “I like you in blue,’’ his fingers skimming the hem of Louis’ navy boxers.
The note inside the package confirmed it with Harry’s blocky handwriting and cheesy wit. I’m blue missing you. I’ll be home on Saturday the tenth. Would love to see you. In these.
Louis’d put them on immediately, sanitation be damned, and snapped a pic. His thumb hovered over the ‘send’ button for a moment.
Instead, he tapped delete.
He couldn’t encourage Harry, not anymore.
The secrets and the distance and the ambiguity—Louis was finished with it.
He’d been psyching himself up to tell Harry the next time they saw each other face to face.
The front door slams shut and Louis lets his sweats snap tight to his belly.
He shouldn’t have worn the panties today, should’ve left them buried beneath his boxer briefs in the cedar dresser in his hall. He can’t let Harry know he’s wearing them, anyway.
They’re through; they have to be.
Louis can do it, can end it. He isn’t some Harry Styles fanboy, aching for any piece he could get of the megastar.
Louis is the guy who taught Harry to arm fart the tune to Hopelessly Devoted, the guy who’d given Harry his first blow job, who’d nagged him into tee-peeing their drama teacher’s home, who’d discovered that Harry had particularly sensitive nipples.
Louis has lots of pieces of Harry that no one else ever will and he knows he’ll treasure those pieces for the rest of his life.
He needs to let go of the rest of him though because, right now, Harry Styles is stretched so thin that Louis doesn’t think there’s much left of him.
“Lou?” Harry calls up the stairs.
Louis’ breath catches, fingers fisting in Harry’s quilt so tightly that the stitches etch designs into his palms.
It’s too soon. Harry can’t possibly have had time to say hello to his family, to have grabbed a glass of water, to have dropped his things into the laundry.
Louis still isn’t quite ready, doesn’t quite know what to say. And yet the door is opening and Harry’s standing in it, duffle over his shoulder, grin on his face.
“Congratulations,” Harry says.
Louis squints at him. Harry Styles is the one with the album that’s just gone gold.
“Two more years left,” Harry clarifies. “Then you’re free.”
Free to do what? Louis wants to ask. Move back in with his mum? Go on the dole? Starve?
Harry drops his bag and settles next to Louis on the bed. “How’d exams go? You didn’t fail any, did you? I felt so badly, pulling you away from your revising last time I was in town.”
“I did fine.” Not great. But good enough. He’ll finish on time.
“Cool,” says Harry. Then he rolls onto his side, facing Louis. “You said you got my present? Did you wear it today?”
Louis swallows. Thank you, he should say and no. Then, he should tell Harry that their lives are too different and that what started between them because it was easy and convenient now feels difficult and not convenient at all to Louis.
He definitely should not show Harry, he should not even hint to Harry that, indeed, he is wearing Harry’s gift.
“Your mum must be excited to have you home for a few days. She’s pulled it all out with the whole roast dinner.”
Harry’s eyes widen. “A roast? For me?”
“Didn’t she say? Couldn’t you smell it the moment you walked through the doors?”
Harry flushes, but he doesn’t break Louis’ gaze. “Didn’t really stop to say ‘hello.’ I was too excited to see you. Been thinking about you wearing my present for weeks. Months really. Do you like them?”
“Didn’t stop to say- no wonder your mum hates me.”
Harry shakes his head. “She knows I like to shower the plane and airport off me first thing. Anyway, she and I had lunch in Paris three days ago, but I haven’t seen you in ages.”
Louis sighs. He’d seen the picture Anne had posted on Facebook of the two of them at a fancy café with food so exotic that Louis doesn’t think he’d be able to stomach it if someone paid him.
“The gift?” Harry prompts. He lays a hand lightly on Louis’ stomach and raises his eyebrows.
Louis lets out a breath, watching Harry’s hand move with it.
“Yeah,” he says. He can’t lie to Harry, can’t say no to him either, still hasn’t learned how, even after all these years. “Go ahead and look.”
Harry’s eyes are already intent on Louis’ groin. He’s dead serious about this, Louis realizes. Much of the time sex between them is light and speckled with laughter, a throwaway match between mates who’d be together whatever the outcome. Usually, the stakes feel low.
Sometimes, though, sometimes it’s more like this: blown pupils, long looks, dark marks that won’t go away for weeks, a bruise on the neck, a thumb print on the hip.
Sometimes it’s more like the league championship, for the win, for the title, for keeps.
Harry’s fingers slide beneath the waistband, pulling the sweats back to reveal the first inch of blue silk, then down further, over Louis’ hips and- with a harder pull- over the hump of his ass- to reveal the second, third, fourth inches.
“Thank you,” Louis says.
Harry doesn’t answer. He’s stopped moving, caught in time, hands still on the waistband of Louis’ sweats which are stuck in place halfway down his thighs.
Louis should have shaved his legs. He can see the fine auburn hairs standing out darkly against his tan. They don’t look quite right to him beside the delicate fabric.
Harry still hasn’t spoken or moved. He hasn’t even blinked.
Louis feels caught, too, and restless with it.
He says, “They fit perfectly. You guessed my size right.”
His voice sounds breathy and thin. Reedy, like the clarinet he’d never quite succeeded in playing well, struggling to reach the higher notes.
Harry unfreezes, sliding Louis’ sweats the rest of the way down his legs and over and off his feet. He arranges himself at the end of the bed and places his hands on his hips, commanding.
He has a reputation for sweetness, for self-effacing humor, for being the kind of boy you did and did not want to bring home to your mother.
(You might not want to bring him home because your mother might be so charmed as to try to steal him away for herself. Louis’ mum has certainly tried, what with the pies and the cooing and the long bosomy hugs.)
And Louis knows Harry is as sweet as all that.
But Harry’s also…
Serious. Intense. Rich.
Like a good cup of coffee, he wakes Louis up, makes his nerves tingle and his legs jitter in the best of ways.
“They do fit well,” Harry says finally. “I didn’t really have to guess. I know you.”
Louis closes his eyes, the frozen in place restlessness still boiling underneath his skin.
He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this. He’d promised himself he’d be up front with Harry for once, tell him he isn’t into the whole friends with benefits thing anymore.
They have their own lives now and they need to get on with them.
Separately.
But as sure as his arms are weighted heavy to his sides, unable to reach up and touch, his words are just as stuck in his throat, too large, to heavy, too hard, to pass through.
He’s just not strong enough.
“I heard Lorde thinks your curls are bewitching.”
Harry frowns. His face had been serious before, but with a trace of happiness around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. That happiness vanishes at Louis’ words and he wants to grab them back.
How is it he has so much difficulty saying the right thing when the wrong can float right out without a thought?
“She also thinks my music is shit,” Harry says.
Louis remembers, now. In the interview in question, she’d explained that Harry’s success was solely based upon his looks and then eviscerated his music, saying its content was boring and contrived, its quality dubious, and its marketing misogynistic.
Not great press for the beginning of the UK leg of Harry’s tour.
Louis’d been ready to go off on Twitter about it, but he learned his lesson years back. He doesn’t exactly enjoy encounters with Harry’s PR team, though by this point he knows many of them by their name and their over-the-phone disappointed voices.
He’s gotten better at holding his tongue. Slightly. He never goes off on random homophobes anymore.
“Well,” Harry mutters. His hands have dropped to his sides, his presence losing some of its force, as he draws in on himself, chin tucking and shoulders slumping. “She has a point, doesn’t she?”
Louis can’t keep the disgust out of his voice, “No, fuck no. Not at all.”
Harry takes a breath. The vein in his neck jumps, as he looks about the room, not meeting Louis’ eyes.
“The only thing she’s right about is how hot you are,” Louis says.
He’s always been forthright with his praise. He’s never held back how much he likes how Harry looks and tastes and sounds and smells. He doesn’t know if he’d even be capable of damning up the flow of affection and admiration he has for the boy with the green eyes and deep dimples perched at his feet.
“Your curls are definitely bewitching, so bewitching. She’s right that your music could be shit and you’d still have fans. But it’s not shit. It’s fun and fast and it makes people happy. It makes me happy. You make me happy.”
Harry beams at him, relaxing, hands drifting back to settle on his waist.
God, Louis is so good at saying the wrong thing. No way Harry will hear of them breaking it off now. Louis’ gone and treated Harry like some sort of God at whose temple Louis’ come to fucking worship, wearing expensive gifts and confessing his adoration. Louis might as well have offered himself as a human sacrifice for Harry’s eternal wellbeing.
“You make me happy, too, Lou,” Harry says. His eyes are on Louis’ crotch and Louis knows, has always known, exactly what Harry sees in him.
A hard dick and a round ass.
Hard, just for Harry, and willing to keep it a secret.
Harry reaches out and runs a finger down the side of Louis’ cock, which twitches against him.
“This is pretty kinky, even for us, “ Louis says. He doesn’t mean to say it, yet another case of all the wrong words spilling out of his mouth and tumbling toward Harry without his permission.
“You didn’t have to wear them. I texted that you could return them if you hated them. I just wanted to get you something nice. Special. Pretty, like you.”
Louis- thank fuck- manages to hold back the you think I’m pretty? that wells up in him. He does not need that kind of excessive validation. He doesn’t.
“I like them,” Louis admits, voice soft, almost a whisper.
He looks up that the plastic stars on the ceiling. The backdrop is the same blue as the silk of the pants.
“Me, too,” Harry whispers back. His finger traces the line of Louis’ cock again, more pressure this time. “Girls are throwing shit like this- sexy lingerie- on stage all the time. I never thought much of it, rather than, like, why, until I almost tripped on this teddy a couple of months back. It was bright blue. Almost this exact color. It made me think of a shirt you have- the soft one with the deep neck. And how I’d like to see you in that color, but more… naked. It looks so fucking hot against your tan skin.”
His finger begins to dance, touch still firm, against the head of Louis’ cock, along the sensitive rim and then more lightly over the tip.
A darker spot, wet with precum now decorates the top of the pants, right below the elastic waistline.
Louis wants to retort with something sharp and clever about how there’s no way on earth that Harry’d spared a thought him in the middle of a concert.
He’s watched Harry on stage plenty, knows how he slips into this zone where everything but the music, the lights, and the roar of the crowd fades away.
Harry’s described the feeling to him before, the buzz of it, but then he’s also sent Louis many a text during sets. A snarky comment about a fan. A snippet of a new lyric for a song he’s even begun to write. A sweaty (sexy) snap of a grin.
“Where’s the teddy, then?” Louis asks.
Harry’s brows draw together. “I didn’t know if that’d be too much. We’d never talked about this before.”
His hands rest over Louis’ cock, squeezing it tight.
Louis wants to reply that he’d wear anything Harry asked him to- they’d never talked about it, no, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want that teddy- but his breath hitches in his throat, blocking the words.
Harry begins to stroke him through pants, keeping the pressure tight. “Can’t decide whether I’d rather leave these on or take them off.”
Louis watches Harry’s hand work, absorbing the feel of the slick glide of the fabric against his sensitive skin, and then meets Harry’s gaze which has fallen questioningly on Louis’ face.
“Leave them on,” he says.
Harry nods and quickens his pace.
Louis closes his eyes and sensation overwhelms him, skittering out from his cock and over his stomach, up and down his arms and legs, his throat clenching, the top of his scalp tingling.
Harry knows exactly the right pace, exactly the right moment to slide his other hand over Louis’ balls, to press back over his hole.
Louis groans. “Fuck, Harry.” The words burst out of him. “Christ. I’ve missed you. Jerked off a dozen times imagining this. You’re so good to me. So good.”
It isn’t true, not always. For fuck’s sake, Louis planned to break things off earlier that evening. But in this moment, with Harry’s hand on his cock, with Harry leaning down to sink his teeth into Louis’ jaw, Harry is good to him.
Harry is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
“You’re good to me,” Harry murmurs, pulling and pulling and pulling. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”
His voice is low and rough, tone the same and different than it was the first time he’d said those words, so many years back. But there’s no difference in earnest rush of them. He sounds like he really means them, same as ever.
“Lou,” he murmurs. “What do you need?”
But Louis doesn’t need anything more than this, Harry’s hand and Harry’s voice, working, just for him.
He’s already coming.
“Fuck, Christ. Fuck.” Louis knows he’s loud, knows anyone walking by Harry’s room will be able to hear the stream of curses and guess exactly what they’re up to. But he’s always been that way and Harry’s family already knows exactly what they’re up to, more or less.
At least, he’s pretty sure they know exactly what Louis means to Harry.
A knock rattles the door as though Louis imagined the person on the other side into being.
“Dinner’s ready.”
It’s Gemma.
Louis blinks open his eyes to see Harry’s gaze hot on his face.
His breath heaves in and out in loud pants that he’s all but certain carry through the door.
“Okay,” Harry replies. “Just give me a few more minutes.”
“Sure. Whenever you’re ready to come out of your sex hazed reunion.” Gemma’s voice lifts and dives with the wry edge of a laugh, her words confirming Louis’ suspicion; Harry’s family knows that this is what Louis is to Harry- a convenient fuck and a couple of laughs.
Pathetic.
They probably put up with him because, well, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, and all that.
“Hey,” Harry says snapping Louis’ gaze and thoughts right back to him. His hand has moved to his own cock now, rubbing it through his tight black jeans.
“I want to see you,” Louis tells him, reaching up to pull at his buttons. Harry laughs and bats Louis’ hands away, undoing the top few buttons with deft fingers and sliding the trousers down just over his ass.
He’s huge. Every time Louis sees his cock, especially hard like this, he’s newly surprised, lucky tingles breaking out all over his body.
Harry’s fans might know and admire “the bulge” but don’t get to see him like this. Bare. Hard. Fucking gigantic.
Louis’ eyes move up over the tattoos on his torso, so much black ink on his arms, a shared history that will bind them together even after Louis eventually screws up his courage to let go.
Finally, their gazes meet.
“I want to come all over you,” Harry says, words slow, much slower than the rhythm of his hands.
“Yeah,” Louis replies, moving to peel off his shirt.
“No, leave it. I’ll give you something else to wear. I want-” Harry gasps, eyebrows knit, jaw lax. “I want to mess you up.”
Louis cock twitches, damp in the panties, almost soft again now, but not disinterested.
“Yeah, okay,” Louis agrees.
The first blurt of Harry’s come lands white against the blue cloth covering Louis’ balls and the next slides down his thigh.
Harry comes for a long minute, his breathing stopping and starting again in hitches and gasps, as drop after drop rolls out of him and onto Louis.
“Good?” Louis asks when it’s over.
Harry leans over, arm still trembling from his shoulder all the way down, and kisses Louis, deep and long, pulling away with a, “Fuck yeah. The best. Always.”
Louis runs a finger through a spot of come on the bottom of his shirt. “Been saving this up for me?”
Harry tilts his head and smiles. “You like it, right?”
Louis nods, a mirroring smile, tugging at his own lips. He likes that idea, the idea of Harry holding out on sex, putting off masturbating for days, or weeks maybe, between their visits. He doesn’t believe it, not really, but on lonely nights with just a few intermittent texts from Harry, the reality of their situation doesn’t matter. The idea, the hope, it’s always been enough.
But he’s not sure it is anymore.
Harry leans over to press a kiss on Louis’ forehead. “You look sad.”
Louis takes a shaky breath and glances at his phone and wallet sitting on Harry’s nightstand. “Sad because I have to run. Can’t stay for the roast.”
Harry’s face grows comically stormy. “You insult my mum by leaving her home cooking for a hot date?”
Harry’s teasing, of course, but there’s an edge to his question that has Louis pulling in another sharp breath. Keeping his gaze averted, Louis wipes at his stomach with his shirt.
Louis can’t do it. He can’t stay for dinner and he can’t keep this up.
He’s tried to for so long, holding on to the sexy bits and easy conversation and those too few tender moments for dear life. But he can’t keep it up anymore, can’t do the domestic shit, can’t pretend to be Harry’s happy-go-lucky fuck-buddy.
No, he’s not feeling happy or lucky. Not anymore.
Except that then Harry’s rolling his body still close to Louis’ and pressing another kiss to Louis’ forehead.
“I’m joking. I understand,” he says. “Your life doesn’t revolve around me. My schedule is too much trouble, even for me. I bought you tickets, though, for one of the London shows and backstage passes. You can bring a friend.”
Louis frowns. He can’t imagine bringing any of his friends to a show, and he definitely can’t imagine bringing them backstage. Sure, they know that he and Harry went to college together and keep in touch, but that’s all they know.
“I’ll bring Lottie. She’s always up for one of your shows,” he decides. And then frowns. No, he’s not supposed to go, at all. He’s supposed to be ending things.
Harry dimples. “Sure. She can meet my stylist. I’ve been meaning to try to set them up. You can bring someone else, too, though, if you like. I want you to come. I want you to have fun.”
Louis shrugs. “I’ll think about it,” he says, though he won’t.
“Good.” Harry sighs and closes his eyes. “It’s so good to be home.”
“I’m glad you’re home, too.” Louis’ throat feels tight and his words betray him. “We’ll hang out again.”
Harry open his eyes and wiggles his eyebrows. “After the show? I have an amazing suite at the hotel. Private hot tub.”
It’s a fun fantasy- champagne and room service, perhaps even a romantic lie in with roses and breakfast in bed. It’s a fantasy he shouldn’t be dreaming up, let alone actually considering.
“Boys, come on,” Gemma’s voices sounds far away. Downstairs, maybe.
Louis pulls up his sweats, covering the damp blue panties. “I’ll just head out.”
“Tell them I’m in the shower,” Harry replies, standing up and moving in the direction of his ensuite. “See you soon!”
“Later, mate,” Louis calls back at a door that’s already shut.