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When his physical trainer leaves his gym to move back to America, Harry doesn’t take it personally. That is until the gym manager says, “I hope you know it wasn’t about you. It was nothing personal!” because why would it be something personal? Harry’s one of dozens of people Taylor trained and training wasn’t her whole life! She had family in America, if he remembers right. Why would he think it was about him? So the fact that Liam would bring it up means something.
“Oh, good,” Harry says, cracking a grin, “because I thought she was in love with me. Ha!”
All of the color drains out of Liam’s face.
“Oh!” Harry says. “Oh, well . . . I’m—sorry?”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Liam says as he stands up and comes around the desk to put his hands on Harry’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Styles. If I’d realized how serious it was—for her—I would have placed you with another trainer, anyway. I’ve gathered a group for you to chose Taylor’s replacement from, hand-picked to make sure this never happens again.”
The trainers are all men—must be all straight men if this is Liam’s foolproof group who would never fall in love with Harry. He doesn’t like straight men, as a rule, but this is about physical fitness, not friendship, and if they work under Liam and Zayn, they can’t be too insufferably straight.
The seven of them are standing in line in one of the empty classrooms, clearly about to step forward, one by one, and introduce themselves like the Von Trapp family children, but when Harry gets a good look at the last one in line, Harry can’t help but walk over to him and take him out of the running right now because this is just ridiculous.
“Are you meant to be here? Aren’t you a little—little to be a trainer?”
The man just grins—if you can really call him a man, and Harry’s not sure you can. Maybe not a boy, but that in between space that Britney Spears sang about. He’s maybe five and a half feet tall, probably skinnier than Harry’s ever been, skin pale and pink, hair bleached blond and sticking straight up, and he’s just standing there grinning at Harry like nothing could make him happier than being insulted by a prospective client.
“I’m Niall,” the man says. “And you might be able to lift more weight than me—”
“Might?” Niall probably does bicep curls with cans of soup.
“But—” Niall looks him up and down. Harry ignores the hot shock that look sends through him, in combination with Niall’s surprisingly low voice and Irish accent. “I can run faster than you can, for longer than you can, or I’ll buy you a smoothie.”
It’s a good prize. The smoothies at Zayn’s juice bar are very good, and very expensive.
“Oh, you’re on,” Harry says, immediately walking out of the room so they can settle this bet. They’re both in workout clothes already. There’s no reason to wait! He gets on a treadmill, but Niall jogs past him.
“Nah, bro, let’s go around the park.”
Harry’s 95% sure the trainers aren’t allowed to leave the property with a client for insurance reasons, but there’s something so much more satisfying about running a race in the real word, where you compare speed and distance by the other person’s body in relation to yours, instead of by numbers on a tiny screen, so Harry happily follows him outside.
The gym is about six blocks from Hyde Park. “Let’s warm up with an easy jog on our way there, and then start sprinting when we enter the park, okay?” Niall says.
He’s training him, Harry realizes, rather belatedly. Harry chose this skinny little blonde to be his new trainer without even realizing it. And the skinny little blonde beats him sprinting, too, quite soundly.
“Ha ha!” Niall says, no mercy, when Harry catches up with him. “I slaughtered you, mate!” Harry wants to smack him, but he’s too winded to lift his arms, so he kind of barrels into Niall to get back at him, aiming his shoulder into Niall’s chest. Niall just laughs, and grabs him, turning Harry’s efforts into a hug. “Don’t feel bad. I run a four-minute mile. We’ll get you to keep up with me.”
Four minutes! Harry very much doubts he’ll ever keep up with that. “Were you in the Olympics?”
“No!” Niall laughs. “You have to do a bit better than four minutes at the Olympics and I’ve never even clocked three-fifty-nine. Four minutes even hundreds of times—no exaggeration—but never faster than that, not once.” Niall shakes his head, still grinning, seemingly not bitter about it at all. “Why don’t we walk for a bit and then finish the loop at a nice, steady run, and then head back to the gym for some stretching and strength training.”
“You’re the boss,” Harry says, standing up straight and slapping Niall on the back.
“You feel good?” Niall says after a while, as he starts to pick up speed.
“Yeah,” Harry says, even though he would have kept at a walking pace for a while longer if he was in charge. “It’s nice to be outside.”
“I thought you’d like it. Taylor always said she was worried you were bored. Liam’s going to make you sign an updated liability waiver, but then we’ll be able to do this every time. If you get hurt in the next twenty minutes, would you be pal and not sue me for it?”
“I’ll think about it,” Harry says. “What else did Taylor say?”
“Oh, lots of things . . . she never mentioned that saying you can’t do something is the surest way to make you do it, but that certainly paid off.”
“I don’t like backing down.”
“Ha! Remind me never to play chicken with you,” Niall says. “Something tells me we’d end up naked—” Harry feels that same zing he felt earlier when Niall first looked him over, but Niall continues, “covered in peanut butter, spending the night in jail.”
“Nah. What are the chances that happens to a person twice in one year?”
Harry is impressed as Niall manages to keep running straight and at pace as he cracks up laughing. Harry could really get used to this.
“It’s gratifying, isn’t it?” Luke says to him later, while they fill up their water bottles in the locker room side-by-side. Harry raises an eyebrow at him. “Niall.”
“I suppose,” Harry says, being evasive mostly because he doesn’t like that Luke is apparently so knowledgeable with the subject. Shit. Thirty minutes together and already Harry’s possessive. That’s bad news when the guy is available, never mind when he’s one of the seven trainers at this gym least likely to fall in love with him.
“He just makes you feel good, right?” Luke says. “He makes you feel like you can do anything. Or, no, like—like he’d be proud of you no matter what you do.”
It’s exactly like that. Niall exudes that with every look, every smile, every time he can’t stop laughing because of something Harry said. Or apparently something anyone said. He just hands out that feeling to everyone. Harry frowns. “That can’t be good for motivation.”
“And yet,” Luke says, grinning as he leaves the room.
Niall’s waiting for him in the mat-covered stretching area, saying something to a captivated group of pretty girls. “Harry!” he says, interrupting himself, when he catches sight of him. “Drink that whole bottle before we start stretching. You let yourself get dehydrated, I can tell.”
That’s fair enough, so Harry dutifully downs all the water and then tosses the empty Sigg at Niall’s chest as proof.
“Good boy.” Niall’s grin is teasing, but his gaze is warm and tells Harry he means it. Niall glances at the girls he was talking to before. “Back to work, ladies!” he says and they all deflate a little as they say goodbye to him and walk away.
“Admirers?” Harry says.
“No!” Niall says, like that’s the craziest thing he’s ever heard. “Some friends. I trained a few of them at my last gym and they were kind enough to follow me here. Now, stretching. I like to do all partner assisted stretches because as long as I’m here, you might as well put me to use, right?”
Right. Like Harry’s going to refuse Niall’s hands on his body, whatever the reason.
Niall’s every inch a professional, but even the most innocuous stretches, like when Niall takes Harry’s heel in one hand and stretches his toes back with the other, feels shockingly intimate. More than the stretch in his calves, Harry can feel the press of Niall’s fingertips against the delicate skin of his ankles.
Then Niall starts in on his legs and Harry can hardly focus at all.
Niall’s hand against his lower back and his thigh as he stretches Harry’s leg behind him—
—Niall kneeling between Harry’s legs and spreading his knees apart—
—Niall guiding Harry’s leg back against his torso and pressing his whole body against Harry to extend the stretch, their clothes the only thing differentiating the situation from fucking—well, clothes, and penetration, and location, and intention . . . but desire and position, that’s the same, at least for Harry.
“Oh!” Niall says, eyes trained on Harry’s half-hard cock in his shorts as he lowers one of Harry’s legs and takes up the other one.
“Sorry!” Harry says. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“No problem,” Niall says, grinning and continuing to stretch Harry’s other leg back like this is business as usual, “happens to us all.”
“Oh,” Harry says, though this has never happened to him and he can’t believe Niall just expects to feel random erections pressed against him every day.
It’s a relief to start on weights. Niall was right, of course, it doesn’t matter that Harry can lift about double what Niall can—that was true with Taylor, too—because Harry’s the one lifting the weights. Niall’s the one keeping him safe and effective and excited about what he’s doing. He’s great at it.
He’s really kind of wonderful in all ways.
At the end of the session, Harry feels better than he has in a long time, strong and healthy and pleasantly sore. “Thank you,” he tells Niall. “I’m sorry I was an arsehole when I first saw you. You’re a great trainer.”
“You’re not so bad yourself!” Niall hugs him, even though Harry’s quite sweaty and rubbed his half-hard cock on him earlier and they’ve only just met today. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s just a friendly guy. “Come on, let’s hit the showers.”
“You’re showering too?” Harry says before he can stop himself.
“You mind?” Niall says, throwing a grin over his shoulder as he walks away.
No, Harry doesn’t mind. Harry wasn’t planning to shower here, actually, but there’s no reason to tell him that.
In the locker room, Niall pulls a couple of thick, fluffy towels out of a locked closet and hands one to Harry. “Perk of the job.”
Harry stares at him as subtly as possible as they strip and walk into the big communal shower and decides he was wrong before. Niall’s not skinny; he’s just very compact. Trim, lightly defined muscle covers every inch of him, underneath perfect pale skin, dusted with brown hair and freckles. His arms are quite beautiful, really. Harry wants to lick the water off his shoulder blades so much his mouth aches for it.
Harry tries to shower quickly, but Niall matches him beat for beat and they end up turning off the water at exactly the same time. Their lockers are in the same little nook, on either side of a square of benches. Harry watches Niall open his while he dries off and grins at the Irish flag pinned up like wallpaper around the inside. He’s got a dozen photos on the inside of the door, too, mostly family, by the look of them, but a few of Liam and Zayn, too, one in which the three of them have given themselves white hair and beards out of what looks like whipping cream. It looks like fun, looks like something he and Louis would have fit right into.
“I’m off after this,” Niall says from underneath his towel as he rubs roughly at his wet hair. “Want to go for a pint with me?”
Bad idea, Harry thinks, even as he says, “Sure, love to.”
They go to a cozy pub where the man behind the bar greets Niall by name. Niall says the place reminds him of Ireland and Harry lets him order for them and they’re served very dark beer and a big plate of chips. Harry stuffs three in his mouth at once and they might be the best chips he’s ever had. “Thank god!” Niall says. “I thought you might be one of those gym bunnies who hates greasy food.”
“I love food.” That's mostly why he goes to the gym as religiously as he does—it evened things out. “The greasier the better. I run a bakery.”
“You do?” Harry nods and Niall lets out a frankly orgasmic moan. “Where have you been all my life?”
Harry laughs. “Mostly at the bakery. Owning a business is about three full time jobs.”
“I thought you smelled like pastry.”
“Perk of the job,” Harry agrees.
After a couple hours and a couple pints each, Harry’s more or less in love with the man across from him and he has to get out of there before he embarrasses himself.
He takes one last swallow of his beer and pulls on his coat. “I should—”
“Sure,” Niall says, standing up with him. “I’ll walk you to the tube, yeah?”
“Great,” Harry says, because as much as he knows he should leave, he’s not going to say no to more time with Niall, plus he’s not sure where he is or where the nearest station is.
Niall insists on paying for them both, even as Harry splutters, “But I already owe you a smoothie!”
“So now you owe me a smoothie and a couple of pints. You’ll get me next time.”
Next time. Harry likes that. He likes that much more than he should, in fact, but he’ll deal with that next time.
They walk a few blocks, chatting easily before Niall stops in front of a terraced house with a bright blue door. “This is me, actually,” Niall says. “Want to come up for some coffee? I can show you that guitar I was talking about.”
Anyone else and he’d call that the most overt come on he’d ever heard. As it is, saying yes is just going to lead to embarrassment and regret.
Really bad idea. “Sure,” he says. “Love to.”
Niall leads him inside and Harry shuts the door behind him, not expecting Niall to press up against him, effectively pinning Harry against the door as he turns the deadbolt.
“Safety first,” Niall says, his voice soft and low against Harry’s ear. He doesn’t step away. Harry turns so they’re facing each other, dragging every inch of himself against Niall’s body as he goes. Niall’s gaze his dark and steady on him. “Don’t want any burglars interrupting us tonight, do we?”
I’m misinterpreting this, Harry tells himself even as another part of him screams, how? What else could Niall be trying to do here? Kill me? But Niall was hand-picked as someone who would never fall in love with Harry and Liam’s gay, and he’s not an idiot—he couldn’t have gotten it this wrong.
“Are you going to kill me?” Harry says.
Niall throws his head back and laughs and then cups Harry’s jaw in his hands. “I hope not. I like you quite a lot already and I think I’d miss you terribly, and be wracked with guilt, and then I’d probably have to kill myself—if it’s up to me, let’s skip all that.”
“But—you’re straight.”
“No,” Niall says, lining up his more-than-half-hard cock against Harry’s and thrusting against him. “Not so much. Where did you get that idea?”
“I thought—Liam chose you lot to replace Taylor because you were the least likely to—” Jesus, it sounds terrible to say it out loud. Harry can feel himself blush and he rubs his hand over his jaw in an effort to hide it and muffle his words. “—to fall in love with me?”
Niall parks out a laugh. “Uh, no. Pretty sure he chose us because we’re the least likely to leave the country because of anything to do with you.”
“You don’t think I could make you go back to Ireland?”
“Even that you take as a challenge, Harry?” The only way to describe the way Niall looks at him is fond, as he brushes the tips of his fingers over one of Harry’s eyebrows. “I can promise you I’ll never go back to Ireland—not without you in the seat next to me.”
“Aren’t you moving a little fast?”
“Let’s slow down, then.”
And then finally—finally, Harry feels like he’s waited his whole life for this—Niall kisses him, slow and deep and perfect, exactly the kind of kiss Harry loves, the kind of kiss he usually has to guide and prod and train people to give him.
Something tells him he’ll never have to do that again.
“Will you go home for the holidays?” Harry says and he can feel Niall nod as he kisses his way across Harry’s jaw and down his throat. “What’ll we do then, if you can’t go back to Ireland without me? Take my family to Ireland with us?”
“Now who’s moving fast?”
“You had me running the minute I met you,” Harry says.
“Right by my side,” Niall says, and pulls Harry in to kiss him again.