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Amongst the chaos that is seven adult males, referred to by both themselves and others as 'the Sidemen', Harry sits stock-still, staring in shock at the older man sat to his left.
"You want me to what?" He asks, the intonation on the final word perfectly expressing his near incredulity.
Next to him, Josh chuckles to himself. Before speaking again, he eyes the shambles that is their group of friends, that sparkle of fondness never leaving his shining eyes as he gazes over the other five men.
"I want you to bait someone in to sleeping with you." Josh reiterates, his tone kind but humorous, sounding as amused as he visibly looks. "Just one of the lads, yeah? You don't have to put yourself out there or anything. Just work with what you've got. I bet if you asked right now, one of them would jump at the chance."
Harry sits for a moment after hearing that. He glances around the room, watching everyone share their dares between them and the person whose name they pulled out of the Sidemen bucket hat they had found laying around in the studio.
(Vik looks particularly displeased as he twists his beard hairs, nodding along reluctantly to JJ's words, whereas Ethan, on the other hand, looks overjoyed. Ethan sits there - barely still on the sofa - leant over with a hand clutching at his side, his arm wrapped around his torso as he cackles. Next to him, Simon is positively beaming with poorly veiled pride at his own suggestion, glancing over at Tobi, who is watching on with a smile.
Tobi had already received his dare from Harry, and before even that, he had been the first to whisper a dare; his mystery order made Josh's eyebrows raise with curiosity. Because of that, he is now just sitting back to observe, as well as try and hear any of the dares under the jumble of different voices.)
"O-okay. Yeah! I c-can do that. No problem."
Harry's head slowly tilts to one side as he continues to look over his friends, his mind's eye suddenly overly critical of all their flaws and all their best assets. Both physical and otherwise.
He knows he didn't sound as confident as he had wanted to when accepting the dare, but he does hope that, in the long run, the dare will do something to improve his self-esteem at least somewhat.
'Right,' he thinks, 'it's easy. Just get one of them to sleep with you. You can do it, Harry.'
Yeah, easy.
"Hey, if anyone can do it, you can." Josh says, quickly batting his arm with the back of his hand in encouragement.
-•-
'Laying it on a bit thick, aren't ya?' Harry questions himself in his head, a small frown tainting his lips as he awkwardly moves his hand away from JJ's firm bicep, shuffling back slightly from his place on the sofa. As he does so, he huffs a faint laugh to match the ones around him (as he so often does), not understanding what's funny as he's too busy trying to respect JJ's personal space, having just broken it for the past ten minutes and all.
It's a couple minutes later when Harry feels a light knuckle tap against his knee, looking up to find JJ staring at him with unfiltered bewilderment. Harry hadn't noticed him looking.
"Why'd you move away?" JJ questions gently, his voice hush - not in an attempt to be quiet, but because he's relaxed and confused. He was actually quite comfortable chilling with Harry leant against him. Yeah, some of his laughs had been a bit over the top, and JJ didn't understand why he kept rapid-fire blinking at him, glancing at him from under his eyelashes, but what did that matter?
Comfort was comfort, strange friend be damned.
Harry doesn't provide an answer straight away, first stares as his thoughts sprint in circles around his brain's obstacle course, trying to determine what and/or why JJ asked.
"I- er, thought you might be a bit uncomfortable, mate. Just t-thought I might have been a bit too in your face, 's all."
"Nah, Harry, you're alright." JJ smiles kindly at Harry, and Harry, well - he's supposed to be the one getting someone to sleep with him, but it feels a bit like Josh both underestimates and overestimates Harry
Harry's only human, and his mates are good-looking, all of them; unfairly so, in some cases. Pair that with Harry's admiration and youthful idolisation of the guys he's known since his mid teens, you get a disaster waiting to happen.
Clearly, Josh was misguided. Harry is the one who would jump at the chance to sleep with any of his friends if they so much as hinted at it.
Can you blame him, though? Sometimes a childhood crush is just as hard to get rid of as it is to admit to it in the first place.
Harry may abandon his little side quest for the time being, but the security he feels as JJ allows him to cuddle close to his arm once again is unmatched.
'Failure number one.'
-•-
"Nah," Simon interrupts, sounding... not angry, but still overly passionate in some way. "If you say anyone but Harry, then you're actually tapped."
Ethan, as always, is quick to agree, having already put Harry forward for the top spot of the 'best arse' tier list that they have somehow been led to sort during the middle of a Sidecast recording.
Listening to the two, Harry feels his face flush pink, his whole body warming uncomfortably. He wants nothing more than to take off his hoodie in order to cool himself, knows he has a t-shirt on underneath, but he also reckons that viewers watching would likely catch him out, so he abstains form doing so.
Instead, Harry turns to Vik, hoping at least one of his friends will see sense and refrain from embarrassing him further. Before Simon interrupted, Vik was just about to say something. Maybe it was something that dropped Harry down the list. Hopefully.
"I feel like the fans think we probably just hype Harry up for nothing - it's actually comical how often we end up talking about his arse." Harry's torn, as on the one hand, Vik's words settle him slightly, less honed in focus on him, but on the other hand, it feels like Vik is gearing up to insult him.
(Maybe Harry's just a baby. Maybe he lets the opinions of his friends dictate his life a little too much. Maybe he isn't quite as independent from them as he likes to think he is.)
Harry is part way through saying, "Thank you-" the 'Vik' unable to leave his mouth as said man suddenly raises his voice, speaking directly to one of the crew members.
"Woah, woah, what are you doing? You can't move Harry down the list. Move him back up!"
Harry suddenly feels a flush of shame light his insides.
It's an accident, obviously, but when Vik drops his arm from where he had raised it in faux outrage, it lands palm down on Harry's thigh. There is a friendly squeeze, and then Vik moves his hand away.
Harry nearly finds himself short for breath, a choked huff drawing in as he glances below. He can feel his heartbeat speed up, thumping restlessly with renewed vigour.
'What was Josh thinking?'
-•-
'Does the dare count if it's Josh I get to sleep with me?'
Harry doesn't actually ask the question, but he receives an answer anyway.
"Harry, as hot as you think you look, those eyes won't work on me." 'Well, shit.'
Harry tries for a smile, then, "You sure?" He raises his eyebrows in what he perceives as persuasive questioning. "You and Freya not looking to spice things up in the bedroom?"
The two friends stand off to the side from the others, closer to one of the corners of the room that they are all gathered in. Harry can't remember if it's for work or for leisure - maybe both, at this point.
Josh brings Harry in for a short, strong hug, the ever-present warmth in the older man's eyes making Harry want to cry. Clearly, Harry is not cut out for any of this.
(This is all fun, in a way, but it also hurts in a way that Harry doesn't quite understand, at the same time that it rouses butterflies in his stomach. It leaves Harry feeling squirmy, tingly in a way that he can't feel the tingles, but he thinks his skin itches.)
"We love you, Harry, but if we were, it wouldn't be with you." Josh takes a breath, not quite a sigh, "Freya would destroy you, given the chance, and I-" they have pulled away from the hug now, but Josh is looking at Harry so intensely, whether he means to or not. The soft hand that combs through his hair once is a shock to his system, but Harry mourns it once it's gone. He's ready to whine for Josh to put it back, but he already has. "You just mean a bit too much to me, Harry... just not quite in that way, y'know?"
Harry does know. He's all too familiar with those words and has heard them many times through the years. Too much, some would argue, that they've taken a toll on him.
"Oh, r-right." Harry keeps it short and simple, tries not to betray anything in his tone. "That's fine, mate."
-•-
Of all his friends, Harry views Tobi as the least likely to want to sleep with him. He hasn't yet worked out if that correlates somewhere in his brain with believing that Tobi cares for him the least. Maybe Tobi just finds him unappealing.
(Maybe Harry thinks too much.)
Harry tries coy with Tobi, but the attempt doesn't work the way he wants it to. Tobi laughs at him, not with him, coos once or twice, and the entire time, Harry feels like his heart is about to aggressively burst out of his chest.
It's not long before Harry realises he's once again failed. All Tobi does is redirect the slow-moving conversation with a, "So how you been lately, Bog?"
Harry's glad, then, when Ethan comes bumbling over with drunken enthusiasm. Harry doesn't know how exactly to answer the question, so he wordlessly thanks Ethan for the distraction via a look Ethan doesn't even see.
"What you touching up my boy for, huh Tobi? Get your grubby mitts off 'im."
Upon hearing Ethan's words, Tobi moves his arm from around Harry's shoulders and moves his head away. He doesn't move from his seat or shuffle further away, which Harry is thankful for.
Instead of squeezing between the two of them, which wouldn't be surprising coming from him, Ethan sits on the other side of Harry, allowing him to still sit close to Tobi. Ethan's arm replaces the one Tobi had rested around Harry's shoulders.
"So what were we talking about?"
-•-
It feels like this turn of events was inevitable.
As much as Josh had tried to convince him that any of his friends would be over the moon at being given the option to sleep with him, Harry thinks it was obvious only one of them would actually take the chance. It seems obvious that only one of them would actually want to.
Eye contact at this very moment is too much for Harry. As much as he might want to look at his best friend properly, eye contact is too much for him on a good day. On a day like today where Harry's emotions feel like they have skyrocketed out of his body but at the same time also compressed into a burning ball within his chest, it's the last thing he wants to deal with.
Ethan has always respected that.
(Well, almost always. Over the years, there have been a couple occasions where Ethan has had to force eye contact, his hand gripping Harry's chin with varying levels of strength. None of those occasions were pleasant, the undertones of Harry's actions heavy in the air every time, as Ethan did his best to reel him back in.
Harry still unconsciously shivers whenever Ethan gets stern in his presence.)
Harry isn't good with feelings - neither his own nor those of other people; that's a well-known fact amongst his friends and family. He's reminded of this as Ethan nuzzling at his neck has the rhythm of his - practised - regulated breathing disrupted. His belly constricts, his hands clutching tighter at Ethan's body as he suppresses a sob.
The sob releases as Ethan stops what's he doing to check in with Harry, kissing his forehead instead of his mouth as Harry cries.
"You okay, Harry?"
And it's- it's the use of Harry, of his actual name, rather than some variation of Bog or Boggo, all of which Harry absolutely detests, that does it for Harry.
"E-ethan," he barely manages out, "I thi-ink..." Ethan gives him a second for his body to pacify itself. "I think I l-love you." Harry closes his eyes, focuses on the feeling of Ethan's forehead - too warm, too sticky - pressing against his own. "It hurts."
Despite what he tells Ethan, Harry doesn't know. Doesn't know what or how to feel. Feel more, feel less, feel right.
"Love you too, Bog."
-•-
"That was Harry's dare?" Simon asks, his voice pitched slightly higher in a way that informs Josh he feels a bit offended. "But he didn't even try anything with me."
Josh doesn't bother holding back his laugh, clapping Simon on the shoulder sympathetically.
"That's because you weren't the real target of the dare."
Simon doesn't visibly scowl, but Josh knows that if he was alone, he would.
'I should have been, though.' Simon thinks.
If only Simon's younger self had been a bit more switched on, a bit more accepting of himself and who he really is. Then maybe things would be different now.
(No one will know for sure if Simon should have been the one Josh tried to set Harry up with. Josh succeeded in matching Harry with the person who had confessed his feelings for the younger, but that doesn't mean Ethan was Harry's only option. Or that Harry had a right option.)
(Simon knows he's better. He knows Harry just as much as Ethan, only in a different way. A figurative, more intimate, less primal, knowing way. Simon knows how to live a lifetime with Harry, whereas Ethan knows how to live Harry's lifetime.)