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“We’re going to die in here.”
Liam turns, from where he’s inspecting a rack of wigs that are the exact same shade of pink, and fixes Louis with the driest look on record.
“You’re being dramatic,” he says, as if that isn’t the fucking point.
Louis is a little ticked off. Slightly inconvenienced. Mildly discombobulated.
He’s also going to perish under a pile of Captain America costumes.
“I need to put in a gravestone order,” he waves his phone in the air. He’s being rather loud, he’s sure, and he can just about see heads turning above the endless rows of identically packaged polyester monstrosities. He’s in a crisis, though – he’s sure everyone would understand if they knew. “Here lies Louis, the absolute most long-suffering best friend. Suffocated to death by something called,” he looks at the package that’s dangling from the tips of his fingers, “an 80’s Pop Tart.”
Liam pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s had four coffees today, and is currently half-crushing his fifth.
“I don’t know what to do here, Louis,” he says, and Louis’s idiot act slips off quicker than the, uh – Sexy Lady Bug in front of a creepy straight man. “I need this fucking costume, my dad cred is hanging in the balance, my child is going to hate me forever—“
“Okay,” Louis steps in, throwing the 80’s Pop Tart as far away from him as possible and gripping Liam’s shoulders instead. The muscles there are so tense they probably aren’t flesh anymore. “Here’s what we’re going to do. One, you are to never, ever, under any circumstances, use the words ‘dad cred’ around people who aren’t me. Two, we’re going to take a deep breath in—there we are, good lad—and then let it out. Count to ten.”
Liam closes his eyes, and visibly goes over the countdown in his head. One of his muscle fibers relaxes the slightest bit. Louis is going to consider it a victory.
“Three, your child is turning three years old. The only thing he hates is Mayor Humdinger, that pompous piece of shit.”
Liam opens his eyes. He looks so anguished that Louis has to tamp down on his impulse to laugh. This is serious, he reminds himself. It’s Liam’s first birthday as a single parent. Bear’s first superhero phase.
Louis’s first – and last – time going fancy dress shopping.
“Look,” he tries, gently pulling Liam away from the wigs, ”Bear is the only thing that matters, and he doesn’t care how expensive you look as the good ole Captain. You could get the assless chaps version and he’d still think it’s the bee’s knees.”
“The assless—“
“It’s a very popular model,” another voice joins the Pep Talk That Louis Was Totally Handling, Thank You Very Much.
Louis turns around. Slowly. He’s kind of in a mood to chew someone out, but he’s hoping the turn will give him enough time to change his mind.
So he turns around, one foot around the other, and comes face to face with what looks like a bastardised version of the Sexy Cat. If ‘bastardised’ is an appropriate word to describe the combination of a cat mask, floral print shirt, some kind of wide leg boho trouser situation, and a pair of trainers identical to the ones Louis is wearing.
“Sorry,” says the cat-slash-dad of six on seaside holiday. “Didn’t want to interrupt, but you guys are looking a little lost, so I figured I’d try to help.” He clasps his hands behind his back, and sways on his heels. Louis is somewhat convinced that this is a hallucination. “It is my job.”
This is when Louis realises, after a lot of careful searching, that all of that print is hiding a plain white nametag.
HARRY, it proclaims. Ass. Manager.
“I’m Harry,” Harry says then, unhelpfully, and offers his hand. Liam somehow manages to shake it. “Lovely to meet you.”
“Liam,” says Liam. Louis receives a look from under the cat mask, but he doesn’t introduce himself. “Thank you. I’ve been losing my mind a little bit.”
Harry actually – looks sympathetic. Louis thinks, anyway. He’s trying very hard to figure out how the angles of his face work under the black cardboard, what his cheekbones look like, and if they hold a candle to Harry’s, frankly, mind-fuckingly gorgeous lips.
He won’t even feel guilty. It’s a costume shop, which is a type of liminal space widely known to be filled with only freaks and children, and there are no children here.
Besides, Harry’s standing right in front of a whole stand of Sexy Burlesque Dancers. The version without the nipple tassels.
“I overheard a little bit,” says Harry, his eyebrows scrunched up. “Birthday party?”
Right. Yes. Louis’s Actually Godson But Basically Nephew is turning a whole three years old. Louis is being a terrible friend, and he will not be upstaged by someone with elephants on his trousers.
(They look amazing. Louis got pulled out of bed at six in the morning; as such, he is wearing joggers that he’s pretty sure have more than one stain on them and a knockoff t-shirt his Nana brought him from a trip to Turkey for ‘being her best grandson’. Admitting how wildly attracted he is to a colourful stranger is simply not his mood for the day.)
“Bear loves Captain America,” he weighs in intelligently.
For the first time, the full intensity of Harry’s gaze lands square on Louis, and boy, does it make him sweat. His eyes are green. As in—just—whoa.
Whoa.
“Right,” Harry says, very, very slowly. He seems to scan Louis, almost, from head to toe, like he’s looking for something. “Well I think—um. In that case, I do think the assless chaps version might be a good idea. If Mr Bear, uh. Enjoys that kind of thing.”
There is a terrible, terrible silence. The stereo pauses too long between songs. Every single patron holds their breath. Cue crickets.
Liam turns fire engine red in under two seconds.
“Uh,” he coughs, as if this is the first time this happened. “He, uh. Bear. Bear is—Bear’s my son.”
Most of Harry’s face is hidden under the cat mask, but the little bits of him Louis can see immediately match Liam’s shade, and then overtake and aim for a fetching puce hue.
Louis has seen this situation play out too many times to find genuine glee in it - but the sight of Harry embarrassed, he doesn’t quite hate. There’s something in the way his hand shoots up to cover his mouth. He’s—sweet.
Louis pats down the nonexistent collar of his t-shirt, suddenly sweaty.
“I’m so sorry,” Harry finally finds somewhere in his throat, little more than a mortified whisper. “I’m so, so—“
“It’s okay,” Louis replies in lieu of his best friend, who is staring into his coffee in what Louis likes to call the Shit Life Choices Stupor. It’s a condition, and Louis is sure it’s getting more widespread with every Lakynn and Jaxxon and Oaklyn that get discharged from postnatal units around the world. “This honestly—I know it’s hard to believe, but this isn’t even the first time this happened today. He’s used to it.”
“I am so sorry.”
Harry, apparently, is also stuck.
“I promise it’s fine,” Louis repeats. “We might not get the assless version though, if that’s okay. Bear’s lovely mother will be in attendance, and she’s already concerned that,” he leans over to cover Liam’s ears with his palms, “Liam’s a bad influence.”
Harry blinks – his lashes are so long that Louis likes to imagine he’s stirring a bit of a breeze – and something—
Something shifts in his gaze. It’s like—like Louis has just walked into a club in his one tight outfit, and someone sitting by the bar has clocked him. Except the Disney version of that.
Louis will resist.
Is he chronically single? Sure. Too romantic to hold down a relationship in 2018? Absolutely. Totally and absolutely weak for quiet confidence and a winning smile and disarming, doe-like kindness? You bet.
But. He is also brilliant at prioritizing. And the priority, right now, is getting Liam out of here with an overpriced piece of fake Marvel merchandise.
“Well, I’m. Um,” Harry stutters. “I think—have you looked at the Premium range?”
Liam perks up, and his eyebrows climb back up to claim their rightful spot on his face.
“What’s that?”
Harry seems to have trouble looking him in the eye – and his solution, apparently, is aim all of that dewy Bambi-ness straight at Louis.
Whoa squared.
“They’re just—all the costumes with a little extra flair. And a, uh, higher price tag, but I can definitely get you a discount for all the. Um. Trouble.”
He fidgets. Weaves his fingers together. Hooks one ankle behind the other in those trainers he pulls off so flawlessly.
And just—adorable. He’s so fucking adorable, and he’s not sending out one hint of the fancy dress shop assistant condescension that they’d had to face today.
It’s enough to make Louis want to fall right into his arms then and there, Victorian damsel style.
Priorities, though.
Louis tries to arrange his face into a reassuring smile, and also mask the fact that his knees are wobbling.
He doesn’t quite have enough brain capacity to also steer Liam just then – but thankfully, Liam steers himself, revived and entirely ignorant of the fact that he’s leaving Louis locked in one of the most intense instances of eye contact he’s ever experienced.
“That’d be lovely of you,” Louis manages to say. At least those are the sounds he tells his mouth to shape, but. Who knows. “I swear we’ve been absolutely everywhere. Liam’s convinced that his baby is the next Sherlock Holmes, so he won’t settle for anything other than a movie-quality replica, because otherwise Bear is going to know it’s actually his dad under there. The horror.”
Harry—giggles.
It feels a little like the entire shop takes a breath just before it happens – the dust motes that settle and re-settle everywhere, frozen for just a second as they meet a beam of light; the single flickering lamp above the till, in that same second, getting stuck on a cheerful yellow glow; Liam in the back of the shop, holding something up to the heavens Simba-style.
And then the perfection of that second spills warm over Louis’s skin, flickers, disappears, and Harry giggles.
“He’s fictional,” he says.
“Liam?”
Another giggle. Then a laugh. “Sherlock Holmes,” says Harry, whose last name Louis doesn’t even know, and it’s a good thing he doesn’t because otherwise he probably would have blurted out something extremely inappropriate and super fucking gay, like marry me. “He’s a character. From, you know. A book.”
“Think I’ve heard of it once or twice,” Louis replies, scrambling through his brain for anything that isn’t the idea of going home and writing Louis + Harry all over everything he owns. “Guess that’d actually make Bear the first Sherlock Holmes, then.”
Harry quiets, and looks, and bats his lashes. “I think,” he starts saying, and the way his lips wrap around it—God, his lips—
“Louis!” comes bounding up the aisle, closely followed by one Liam Payne.
Louis’s best friend.
Who definitely didn’t just slip Louis’s mind.
“Louis,” Liam says again, crashing into him, overjoyed, and all but beating him in the face with a picture of the Star Spangled Man himself. Louis reluctantly switches his attention to this very pressing matter, but not before—fucking hell, not before he catches Harry’s sin of a mouth wrap around a whisper of his name. “Louis, I found it, and it’s perfect, and Cheryl just texted to say I need to go pick up the cake so we gotta go right now—“
Harry moves into action at the urgency in Liam’s voice. He gives Liam the smile that was just Louis’s a second ago, they make their way around Louis and to the till, and.
Louis is in actual love with someone who spoke about four full sentences to him (And a giggle, his brain supplies helpfully. You’re not going to forget the giggle for as long as this idiot organ has a blood supply).
Slowly, reluctantly, he follows. His mobile is suddenly burning a hole in the pocket of his hoodie.
This isn’t how it goes.
This isn’t what he does.
And he can’t even be sure.
But then. No straight man has ever thought Bear was anything other than an innocent toddler.
Even with Harry’s discount, Liam’s precious mix of polyester, elastane, and lycra, made in Taiwan, comes to a price that should actually be illegal. Even better, considering the effort they just went into to find it, somebody should pop out from behind a ‘Sexy Animals’ display and buy it for them.
But Liam, of course, is more than happy to pull out his card.
“I honestly don’t know how to thank you,” he’s saying, fussing all over Harry as he bags everything up. “This birthday party’s going to be wicked, all thanks to you.”
Louis wants to box Liam up sometimes. Cover him with lots of soft things so that he never ever gets hurt again. Bottle up whatever it is that gets him out of bed in the morning.
Harry seems to be thinking the exact same thing. Somehow, their eyes meet over Liam’s head.
The burning in Louis’s pocket intensifies. His hands are itching – he’s close enough that he could lean over the counter and grab the cat mask and just—pull. See how realistic his chances are.
If there are any chances at all, because they got what they came for. And it’s time to leave.
And Harry.
Harry is handing him something.
Harry is saying his name.
“Louis,” leaves his mouth, and it’s every last fat little cherub cliché. Louis is going to build a fucking shrine to that sound. “Louis.”
Right. Being handed things. Which usually requires taking said things – so Louis does. He reaches out a little blindly, because he can’t be expected to just look away from those eyes, and the feeling of smooth paper under fingertips stops him in his tracks.
“Liam said it’d be safer to give you one copy of the receipt as well.”
At the mention of Liam, Louis extricates himself from the Bambi Trap to look around the shop, only to realise they’re alone.
And then he looks down at what he’s holding. It definitely is a receipt. It’s a receipt listing the ungodly amount of money Liam just paid.
And a phone number.
He’s up against the counter immediately, a laughably easy drift, like giving in to gravity, and Harry is smirking at him, and Harry is reaching out to close Louis’s fingers around a piece of paper that has Harry’s phone number on it.
Louis is going to declare his godson’s birthday a national holiday.
“I wasn’t sure,” he scrapes together, sure there’s some kind of response he’s supposed to have that amounts to more than hopeless, besotted staring.
Harry laughs. The very last hint of a stranger’s polite distance just melts off his face.
“My name tag says ‘ass manager’,” he says.
And right there, Louis knows.
~fin