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"This is ridiculous," Liam says, even as he pulls his cap a little lower over his face.
"You said that already," Louis points out, grinning.
Around them, the crowd is growing, and the noise level is growing with it, a loud impatient buzz. Some of the girls are starting to pull glow-sticks out of thin air, waving them around. Liam only narrowly misses being cuffed over the head.
"Couldn't we just--" Liam begins, desperately, just as someone at the back starts shrieking.
Louis cups a hand over the back of his ear and leans in. "What?"
Liam rolls his eyes, trying to ignore the heat of Louis' skin. "What if we get separated?" he says, voice raised warningly.
"Aww," Louis says, still grinning. He's so close now, heat brushing Liam's ear with every word. "Are you worried I'll get lost and end up in some other bloke's bed?"
Liam very resolutely does not flush. He's had months of practice, and he's getting rather good at pretending to be unaffected. "I'm going to head back to the flat on my own if that happens," he says, like Louis hadn't spoken. "Just so you know."
"We're not going to get separated, mate," Louis says, and he doesn't laugh, but Liam feels like he's just missed a punch line, all the same.
"Well, I like to be prepared," Liam says, and there's a flash of something in Louis' eyes that makes him look away, awkwardly, and clear his throat. "Why are we here anyway? You never said you were a fan of David Cook."
"You are," Louis says, tipping his head back a little, light pressure on Liam's shoulder, and once again Liam is back to struggling not to blush. "Besides, this is a life skill. How to be a rock star and all that."
"Right," Liam says, dubiously.
"It was a toss-up between you and Niall," Louis continues. "You boys could both use a lesson or two."
"Thanks for that," Liam says dryly. "What helped make up your mind?"
"Well Niall's not the one I want to be snogging now, is he?" Louis says, blithely, as Liam stares and stares and stares.
It's extremely unfortunate that that's when the lights dim and David Cook comes onstage, because Liam spends the rest of the concert in a trance, and Louis, naturally, doesn't offer any further explanation.
They do get separated after. It's a large arena, and there are what feels like fifty thousand people around them. But all it does is make Louis even more smug when he finds Liam later, standing outside in the cold, his hands tucked into his hoodie so he doesn't freeze, and when Louis smirks and says, "You waited," Liam almost wishes he hadn't.
He opens his mouth to say so, but: "You want to snog me," he hears himself say, instead.
And then he thinks he might die of mortification. It isn't - he knows it's a joke, it's always a joke to Louis, always something else to be laughed off, but Liam isn't wired quite the same way, and he lets that land him back in this ambiguous space between friends and - and more-than-friends, where Louis says these things that make Liamcrazy, and then turns around and says other things that... literally make him crazy, crazy enough to spend an entire concert analyzing gestures and meanings and facial expressions, and Liam's tired of it.
"Of course not," he adds, before Louis can. "Sorry I assumed. I just--"
Louis leans in and kisses him, just a quick peck on the mouth.
"Oh," Liam finishes, weakly.
"This isn't really how I pictured our first date," Louis says, thoughtfully, as Liam stares at him some more. "Could you try not to deviate so much on our next one?"