Work Text:
Louis closed the door to his hotel room behind him and sighed relieved. “What a day”, he mumbled and slipped off his shoes. He didn’t even bother walking into the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash the product out of his hair like he normally did. Today he really was too tired.
On his way to the bed he got rid off his clothes, letting them fall to the ground without thinking about it. Only his black boxers were left as he lifted the comforter and crawled into bed. “You’re sleeping?”, he whispered half-loudly as his eyes trailed over the naked body next to him which looked even more appealing in the pale moonlight that fell into the room.
“Almost”, Harry answered without opening his eyes. “I’m… thinking.”
“About what?”, Louis asked and curled himself into Harry’s side. He pressed a kiss on the shoulder before he rested his head at the exact same spot of silky skin.
“You know. Nothing special. Us.”
“Oh, we are nothing special anymore?”, Louis asked and gasped mock offended. “Good to know.”
“No, I…” Harry sighed and opened his eyes, tilting his head to look at his boyfriend. “I just know you’ll laugh at me.”
“Try me”, Louis prompted, suddenly not that sleepy anymore.
“I… I thought about our future. I came up with another name.”
The brunette boy smirked and rolled his eyes playfully. “Harry. It’s the… how many names did you suggest? I know I said I can’t wait to play football with my son or dance around the house with my little daughter, but by now we could have an own football team plus a cheerleading group.”
“Shut up”, Harry growled and turned his head to the other side. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Oh babe!” Louis laughed softly. “Come on now, tell me the name.”
“No.”
“Please please please.” Louis pushed his upper body up and lent forwards to nibble at Harry’s earlobe. “Don’t be like that. I really wanna know.”
Harry’s eyes were shining as he looked at Louis again. “Faith”, he whispered.
Louis smiled as he brought his hand into the hair of his boyfriend, gently playing with the curls. “That’s beautiful”, he admitted. “I like that one.”
Harry returned the smile before he turned his eyes a bit downwards, carefully avoiding Louis’ gaze. “I know we can’t have them all, you know? It’s just… a part of me want to fast forward my life to get to this point quicker. When you are my husband, we don’t have to hide anymore and… the day when we get our first child. I want to see the sparkles in your eyes when the baby grabs your finger and won’t let go. I want to stand in the door frame while you sing a lullaby so it won’t cry anymore. So every time I like a name, I imagine how it would be. And I… kinda, make up little stories about that child. How it could be… possibly.”
“You never told me that before.” Louis swallowed thickly, his throat strangely tight with emotions.
“I know.” Harry pressed his head into Louis’ neck. “Can we just forget that I said anything? It’s kinda embarrassing.”
Louis shook his head firmly. Sure, Harry didn’t look at him, but he knew the younger boy would feel it. Or, even more likely, Harry had already known before Louis did anything. He always knew what Louis was up to. It was somehow stressful, because even when he wanted to hide anything from Harry, it didn’t work. He managed to trick the other guys every now and then, but not Harry. Never Harry.
“Tell me about her”, he asked quietly. “About Faith. Who is she, Haz?”
“Louis…”
“Please baby?”
Louis could feel Harry taking a deep breath against his neck. “She’s wonderful”, he began after a few seconds. “All of them are, I swear. Oh… this is ridiculous. I sound all girly and… naive…”
“You don’t. I swear.”
Harry snorted, but continued nonetheless after a moment. “She… we don’t have much trouble with her. She’s sleeping a lot, and that drives you mad, because every time our friends or families are over and you want to show them what she learned since they last see her, she’s deeply asleep. You’re one of these fathers who always has pictures in his wallet, showing them around no matter if the other person cares or not. Most of them won’t, probably. But it’s okay, I’m the same type.”
Louis chuckled into Harry’s hair, closing his eyes to be able to picture everything better. Yeah, he could totally see himself glancing into the cradle every few seconds to see if the little worm finally woke up. Faith surely wouldn’t cry that much, Harry said they wouldn’t have much trouble. So eventually he would look over to find his daughter looking at him, maybe even smiling. His heart started to beat faster and something in his stomach fluttered nervously. “Go on.”
“Let’s see. Later… she calls you Daddy and me Dad. She knows how to wrap us around her finger, she did it from the very beginning. Must be your influence, you happen to have the same effect on me. We try to get her in clubs, like… I don’t know. Ballet or anything, but she prefers to spend her days on her own, daydreaming. The whole stuff with an imaginary friend, we are a bit worried from time to time, but there’s no need to. When she’s finally in school and learns how to write she starts to get her little stories on paper. Cute little nonsense, not more than four or five sentences, but we keep all of them. We joke around how they’ll be worth a ton of bucks when she’s a famous writer… or that we could use it to embarrass her in front of all of her friends when she turns sixteen. You love to tease her with things as ‘You just have to have faith in yourself, Faith’, what annoys her to no end when she’s a teenager. Niall is her godfather, and she loves him because he always laughs when she tells him overly exited about a new story she made up.”
“Niall would be the perfect godfather for her”, Louis agreed. His fantasy threw somersaults at the thought. He could see Niall on the floor of their living room, laughing in the contagious way he always did as clear as if they were watching a HD video. Harry and he would be sitting on the couch, watching the blond guy make a complete fool out of himself to please the little girl next to him.
He wrapped his arms around Harry and pulled him closer. “What about Kilian?”, he asked, eager to hear about another one of their possibly-maybe kids. Kilian was the first name for a boy Harry had ever suggested, when they just got engaged and were drunken from happiness… and alcohol, sure, but that didn’t matter.
“Kili?” Harry grinned. “Kilian is a hearts-rob, it starts in kindergarten and… well, it goes on. He’s bringing a lot of girls home, trying to sneak them upstairs into his room without us noticing. Needless to say it doesn’t work, right? Such things simply never work, it’s a law. The most awkward day is when we have the talk… you know, the talk with him. He’s wiggling uncomfortably and mumbling that he knew everything he needed to know from the internet. You’re almost choking on your words in the beginning, so I have to talk to him. Thanks for that, by the way. But then you chip in and give him the longest lecture about SEDs any human being had ever to endure. Poor Kili, I really feel sorry for him. But he’s a great guy. One of the popular kids without being an asshole, even if there might be some girls with a different opinion.”
Louis snorted drily. “I hope he listened to me. And I hope you covered the pregnancy part. Who is his godfather, by the way?”
“Zayn is. Kilian thinks he’s kinda cool, the mysterious one of his uncles. He copied that for a while to see if it works with the girls, and hell yeah it did! But in the end he likes to chatter to much to keep that facade.”
“How was he as a baby?”
“Fat”, Harry answered promptly, causing Louis to burst out into laughter. “Really. We always say that it’s cute, but others are warning us that we have to watch what he’s eating and such shit. We don’t. The ‘problem’ solves himself because as soon as he takes his first shaky steps, he becomes a little whirlwind. He’s into sports, but not as much into soccer, sorry. He’s playing basketball instead. His first teams are… awful, there’s no way to put it in nice words, but we still watch every single game.”
“Bet on it.”
The boys fell quiet after that, both lost in their own thoughts, which yet were so much alike. Louis felt such an impatience all of a sudden. He wanted that, exactly that. He wanted the bad basketball games, he wanted the little stories, he wanted to lie on the couch, his head resting in Harry’s lap, their sleeping child on his chest. He wanted it so badly.
“Ruby”, he said quickly. “Tell me about Ruby.”
Harry pulled out of their embrace and crawled a little higher on the mattress till his face was close to Louis’. “Ruby was your name”, he smiled and caressed Louis cheek with his fingers, gliding along the sharp cheekbones before he cupped his face with one hand. “You should tell me about her.”
Louis just stared at Harry for a moment. “I can’t…”
“You can. Of course you can. Think about her, love. Our little Ruby.”
Louis rolled onto his back, keeping his eyes glued to the ceiling as he hesitantly began to speak. He didn’t even need to close his eyes this time, the pictures came out of nowhere into his head.
“She’s one of those kids who wants to try out everything, one of the big dreamers. Thing is, her dreams change as quickly as we change our underwear. One day she wants to be a ballerina, the next day she wants a horse, then again it’s all about a drama club at school.”
“We can’t say no to her, can we?”, Harry asked smiling and curled into Louis side again.
“Usually not. The horse though… thank god we said no.” Louis rubbed his nose and blinked a few times as his vision became slightly unclear. “She comes home bruised a lot because she’s befriended mostly with boys, and she climbs into trees and everything with them. Contrary to everything else the group of friends stay mostly the same. When she gets older she becomes a little pain in the ass. Skipping school, sneaking out with the boys to go to underground concerts from rockbands we don’t even know they exist. When she knows she’ll get in trouble with us she sneaks out too… directly to Liam. Guess why.”
“Godfather?”
“Yeah. But not because he’s the only one left, it’s just… I feel like it would be him. It’s just right.”
“I get that”, Harry nodded. “And it’s good she runs to him, Li is the only one of the guys who would text or call us the second she steps into his home without her even noticing.”
“Right. And he usually manages to calm her down and make her think about what she did, so we don’t have to be super strict when he brings her back. And that’s great, because it’s not easy. Like… one day we caught her smoking weed with two of her friends. I mean, it’s not like we never did. So it’s weird to scold her when you exactly remember how great it can feel do be stoned. But she was really terrified that we would kick her ass, so she went to Liam and he was actually madder than we’d ever been.”
“I see. That clearly backfired”, Harry chuckled.
“Yeah.” Louis let out a breath and bit his underlip. “It isn’t like she doesn’t talk to us at all though. The day she notices that she’s in love with her best friend – she follows our pattern, you see? - she just clings onto you, crying into your shoulder because she knows you’re the fucking best in comforting anyone who is upset, and of course~”
Louis voice broke and he had to claw his fingers into the sheets to steady himself. It was just a thought that hit him like lightning, but now he couldn’t ignore it anymore:
Ruby would never know how good Harry’s hugs felt, because she simply didn’t exist. Neither did Kilian and Faith, nor all the other names in his head that wanted to scream their own story at him. Everything they just talked about was nothing than a fantasy. It would never become real. Well, in a way. They were sure they wanted kids, and they would love them more than anything. But those children they just dreamed about… they would never be theirs. It was a damn hurtful realization.
“Hey. Are you okay?”, Harry asked, and there was it again. The Louis-might-be-sad-radar.
“Yeah”, he managed to get out before a single tear - betrayer! - escaped his eyes.
“No, you’re not. C’mere, kitten.”
Louis followed the husky voice, wrapping himself around Harry’s body as if he was the goddamn plank that could keep him from drowning after the Titanic sunk. He felt strong arms closing around his torso, big hands rubbing his back, and he couldn’t help but whimper quietly.
“What’s wrong, Lou? I honestly have no idea”, a confused voice muttered into his ear.
“It’s just…” Louis hesitated, unsure how to put it in words. “I… I already like them so much. And they are not real. And I… I don’t know. Miss them? But that’s nuts.”
“Oh”, Harry said with low voice. “That.”
“It’s silly.”
“No, I understand. But… five years ago, when you’d asked me where I was today, I also had told you a hundred different stories. But, you see… I’d never thought about lying here with you. Being in a band with you and our three best friends. Knowing you at all. Fantasy is great, but… reality is sometimes so much better.”
Louis allowed himself to stay quiet for a while longer, giving the words the chance to sink in, and hey, when did Harry became so wise? He smiled against his boyfriend’s bare skin. “I can’t wait to grow old with you”, he whispered.
“I’d suggest you enjoy the present time. I mean, my body won’t look forever like it does now. If I were you I’d take advantage.”
“Idiot. I love you.”
“I love you too. You’ll see, it will be great. We will be so happy. I promise.”
Still a little shaken on the inside Louis closed his eyes, letting his thoughts wander around, because Harry was right, but he couldn’t shake the emotions off that easily. That was, until Harry’s voice cut through the silence.
“So are you… um… gonna take advantage of my body now?”
“I… no. Not tonight. Can we just cuddle a little longer?” Louis felt a blush creeping up his cheeks, because what was wrong with him? There was his overly hot boyfriend, offering sex on a silver tablet, and he, he was clingy like shit and preferred hugs over… well, the other sort of hugs? He didn’t know where it came from, he just felt the need to be held close that night.
“Sure.” Harry yawned loudly. “But I’ll warn you, I will fall asleep on you and you can’t move for the rest of the night.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t plan to.” Louis felt Harry shake with silent laughter, and that was what calmed his nerves a bit. Maybe not as much that he could sleep within the next minutes, but at least as much that he trusted himself to be able to stay in bed the whole night and not have to sneak into the bathroom once Harry was out of it and have a proper cry without the younger one noticing. It would be okay. “Good night”, he mumbled and closed his eyes, he could at least try to sleep, couldn’t he?
“Sleep well, love.” If Harry’s voice was any indicator he was already far away, so Louis didn’t try to keep him talking anymore. He just breathed in the so familiar scent of the body that would hopefully be right next to him for at least fifty years until he realized that there was indeed no need to be impatient about the future. He was happy now, even with all the hiding and lying that was going on. He’d been happy for three incredible years with this boy. Everything else would find it’s way. It always did.