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It’s nearly three am, and Harry feels like shit.
He thinks he fucked up, that he took too much, or that it was a bad batch or that it was laced, or, or, or something, because he feels sick to his stomach and his heart is beating so fast he’s worried that it’ll explode in his chest to the loud thumping of some shitty EDM song that’s ringing in his ears, head throbbing with the beat.
Harry might’ve thrown up, because he can taste vomit in his mouth, gross and acidic in the back of his throat, high and trapped there, waiting for the smallest inconvenience before it all comes pouring out. He feels it curdling in his stomach though, so might have thrown up is mostly likely just might throw up, and, right now, that feels like enough of a win.
He excuses himself as politely as he can to the random woman who had glued herself to his side ever since he walked through the doors of this shittily overpriced club, sliding away from her grip and pull with a smile that’s too tight to be genuine. She was the one with the bright eyes and the sultry expression who had grinned at him as she pulled the baggie out of her purse. Her smile felt more like the smile of a wolf or a shark when looking at prey, but her voice was sweet enough, and he didn’t hesitate much, if at all, when she so graciously separated it out for him into neat, tidy lines.
But now his body feels too hot and strung out, skin sweating, clothes itching and clinging too tightly to all the wrong places. Everything’s too bright, like every colour is immensely oversaturated and blinding against his eyes, causing the pain in his skull to worsen.
It’s too much, all of it, it’s all just too much, and a part of Harry thinks he died and went to hell because he can’t think of anything worse than this, with all the loud noises and the too-warm air and the gathering of so many people that they all start to blend into one, transforming into a rippling, screaming beast. But then he sees Josh at the bar, talking to this one random woman who seems to be hanging off his every word, and thinks to himself: surely I can’t be in hell if Josh is here.
He walks, trudges, stumbles his way over to Josh, pushing through the crowd of people and apologising absent-mindedly to the annoyed comments and quietly muttered insults of people being shoved aside. Eyes follow him through the crowd, prickling against the back of his neck, and he has to fight the shiver that worms its way up his spine.
When he gets close enough, Josh’s face lights up in that adoring way it does whenever he sees one of his friends, like he’s excited just to exist at the same time as them. It reminds him of a dog in the same way that dogs remind him of home back in Guernsey.
The woman Josh is talking to follows his stare, glancing behind herself, eyes briefly landing on Harry before she turns back at him, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb and saying, “is that your friend?”
Josh doesn’t answer though, because the eager expression of joy on his face has morphed into something confused and latently nervous, suddenly. The weight of the concern in Josh’s eyes makes Harry bristle under his gaze, and he slowly finishes those last final steps over to Josh with his hands buried in his pockets and his hackles raised high, eyes pinned to the floor and trying to swallow down the way his stomach is in his throat.
Josh raises his arm, a silent statement of: come here, and Harry presses himself tightly into Josh’s side, feeling embarrassed at committing such a gesture in front of a complete stranger, especially one who is scrutinising him as intently as she is. His need for contact, for touch, for reassurance, greatly outweighs this embarrassment, though, and he pushes it down into the confines of his chest by turning his head away from the woman’s watchful eyes.
Josh’s arm wraps instantly around his shoulders, pulling him close, close enough so that Harry can smell the aftershave he’s always obsessed with using. It’s such a familiar smell, and Josh’s touch is so cool against his skin, even through the fabric of his shirt, that Harry thinks he could cry with it.
“You alright, Harry?” Josh asks him, quietly in his ear, hand gently squeezing his shoulder.
This stupid, childish, part of him is filled with glee at the privateness of the interaction, at the way the woman in front of them frowns and sighs and bristles under the lack of attention. She probably just wants Josh for the Rolex he’s wearing, the one that Ethan bought him, the one that Josh looks after, and cares for like it’s a real, living thing.
He feels bad, suddenly.
Wants to blurt out: sorry for thinking you’re a gold digger, mate, I get mean when I’m high, before remembering that no-one can actually hear his thoughts, and that he just looks fucking stupid there, staring at the Rollie on Josh’s wrist and wishing he was back home again.
“Harry?” Josh says again, bringing a hand up to touch his forehead and grimacing at the heat and obscene amount of sweat pooling there, “fucking hell, you’re way too warm.”
He turns his attention back to the woman, and Harry can almost imagine the expression on Josh’s face: lips wrapped into a wide, tight grin, apologetic and overly kind to compensate for what he’s going to say next, crow’s feet in the corner of his eyes, dark curls of his hair fanning down over his forehead; the perfect picture of politeness.
“Sorry,” he starts, voice soft in the way it gets when he’s letting someone down easy, “I gotta go look after my friend.”
She gives him a tight-lipped nod in response, one where it’s clear that she wants to object, but can’t bring herself to. Besides, even if she did, Josh would probably tell her to fuck off. The guilt festers more resolutely now, as if it’s this physical thing in the pit of his stomach, sinking like a stone in a lake. Harry can’t help but feel as if he’s ruined something somehow.
He’s being moved then, ushered away from the bar and through the crowds of people with a warm arm around his shoulder, hand gripping the meat of his bicep, and soft, quiet, reassurances spoken in his ear through the haze of the fog in his skull.
The flush of the outside air fills his lungs like it’s the first breath he’s ever taken. It instantly starts to cool his sweaty skin, wind nipping and biting against his arms and hair. He curses quietly, and presses himself more insistently against Josh’s side, against that stupidly oversized and fluffy jacket that he’s obsessed with wearing: the one that Harry steadily grows more and more fond of.
“You alright?” Josh mumbles, kindly, warmly, tightening his arm around Harry’s shoulder and pulling him impossibly closer. From far away, they could look as if they were one being, cold and shivering in the early morning air.
Harry nods once, twice, and swallows around the dryness of his throat, “‘m okay. Just a bad high.”
Josh lets out a quiet hum, overflowing with understanding and carrying a slight edge of mild admonishment. It’s not admonishment in a cruel way, though, just slightly concerned. Josh doesn’t usually do coke. Harry remembers the way he sounded that one time after a video in Spain, where they were all on a night out and he gently admitted that he hated the way it made him feel: wired up in all the wrong ways, making him paranoid and antsy, the effects lingering hours after the drug had worn out of his system.
Harry’s starting to understand this point of view.
“Let’s get back to the hotel, yeah?”
Harry nods again, but he feels bitter, suddenly, and terribly homesick.
He doesn’t want to go back to the hotel, doesn’t want to film the video tomorrow, he wants to go home, home back in Guernsey, home back when he was five and ten and sixteen. Home with the guys, with his best friends.
Harry grasps at him blindly as they get in the Uber, sweaty palms clinging to the hem of Josh’s jacket, the fabric balled up in his fist. He feels like a small child, holding on to his parent in the middle of a strange place, scared by the enormity of its unusualness, lost and trying to find his way.
Josh has always felt like that to him: a lifeline, a lighthouse, a beacon in an unwavering storm, keeping him safe and protected always.
The driver tries to talk to them, but Harry has always abhorred small talk, finds that he can never say the right things at the right times, can never stop the awkward silences from dragging on far too long, can never hide his discomfort.
Josh handles the conversations well, as he always does, laughing and joking politely as his fingers absentmindedly trail up and down Harry’s arm, a tender, comforting motion that makes all the tenseness in him dissipate into thin air. Harry supposes that it’s just another thing for him to be grateful for.
One day, Harry thinks to himself, one day I’ll show you how much you mean to me.
For now, he’ll settle on placing his hand on Josh’s thigh and squeezing once, twice, hoping that it carries the weight of everything he can’t word. Josh replies to the driver's question and squeezes Harry’s arm in return, once, twice.
You’re welcome, it says, you’re welcome for everything.
—
It’s only when they get back to the hotel that the nausea kicks up in full force, his stomach coiling and churning around nothing. Logically, Harry knows that he’s making it worse by thinking about it. Stuff like this is a mind game as much as it is physical: that if you’re thinking to yourself my heart is racing and I’m going to be sick, then your heart will race and you will go and be sick.
But, fuck, he’s tired, and his head hurts and it’s easier to fall apart and let Josh pick up the pieces, like he always does (like he always will). The guilt will come and fade, and maybe tomorrow Harry’ll do something obscenely nice for him, the kind of nice that makes all the others poke fun and laugh and say: fucking hell, Bog, the fuck happened to you?
And maybe Josh’ll smile at him in that way he does when he can’t hide the way he loves his friends, and maybe Harry’ll smile back and tonight will be forgotten and forgiven.
Right now, though, he’ll slam his knees into the polished tile floors of his hotel bathroom, and he’ll throw up every scrap of food he has alongside bile and guilt and regret and fuck, I’m never doing coke again and what happened to the kid I was at thirteen?
And right now, Josh’ll crouch down next to him and rub his back and make him feel better.
Josh always makes him feel better.
“Think you might be getting too old for this shit, mate,” Josh laughs quietly as he wordlessly reaches over and hands him wads of toilet roll to wipe away all the spit and vomit on his chin.
Harry’s smart enough to see it for what it was, and what it was, was an alley-oop, an olive branch for Harry to reply with something snarky that breaks apart all the tension in the air, thick and palpable with the stench of vomit.
“You’re one to talk about being old, Zerkaa,” he offers weakly, voice all rough and raw, and when Josh grins, his face lights up like the sun. It loosens the vice-like grip on his insides, and he hopes that when he grins back, it doesn’t look as messy as it feels.
They stay in silence for a little bit after that, occasionally broken by stuttered gags and low groans as he tries to swallow the worst of it back down. Josh’s hand on his back never stops moving, always a steady, grounding presence, pulling him back from the edge and keeping him sane.
The patterns change, though, shifting from circles to random lines and shapes and letters. At first, Harry just thought he did it to give himself something to do as he waited patiently for everything horrible inside Harry to find its way out, but somewhere along the way, he realised that it was on purpose, that it was to give Harry something to concentrate on.
It’s funny how he realises this: because he realises it when he laughs all warbled-like and mumbles, “did you really just draw a dick on my back?”
He realises this when Josh replies, a smirk in his voice, “me? Never.”
He realises this when Josh draws something else, a silent question in the air, and Harry goes, “a smiley face,” and then, “a love heart,” and then, “a star,” and then, “was that supposed to be a fucking cat?”
He realises this when it’s been half an hour of this and Harry hasn’t hunched over the toilet once.
Harry feels his heart swell at this realisation, overflowing with the abundance of warmth and love that he feels: fucking hell, he really does take care of me.
Josh pats his back gently, and leans forward slightly as he asks, “you feeling better now?”
Harry nods his head, throat feeling thick and full with the weight of everything that threatens to pour out. He doesn’t know why, but he’s feeling very emotional, suddenly, and he blinks away the blurriness of his vision, hoping that he can pass off the way that he paws at his eyes as being from all the retching and gagging beforehand.
Josh doesn’t comment on it.
But then the hand on his back pulls away as Josh stands up, and this soft, pitiful sound worms its way out of his throat, a resigned objection, of some kind, and he reaches out to grasp the sleeve of Josh’s jacket and halt him in place.
“I’m just gonna get you some water, Harry,” Josh tells him, his voice this low, gentle rumble that reverberates through the air around him, filling it with warmth.
Harry looks up at him from his place on the floor, knees digging into the overly sterile bathroom tiles, hunched slightly over the toilet that’s beginning to reek of vomit. He wonders, then, if Josh pities him; he pities himself, really, but seeing the gentle downward tilt of Josh’s mouth and the tight furrow of his brows makes Harry feel like he’s stepped in the world’s largest pile of shit.
There has always been something about disappointing Josh that resonates more deeply, more painfully inside him. It’s like looking at the hand that has been the kindest to you, pausing, and then snapping your teeth into its flesh, tearing the largest chunk out of it that you possibly can.
And yet, Josh remains.
He remains by Harry’s side even despite it all, with his sad eyes and his bleeding hand and his too-soft, too-kind reassurances of: I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.
Sometimes, Harry wants to grip him by the shoulders, shake him, and ask: well, who’s got you?
Harry has him, he thinks, he hopes. If Josh would let him, that is, but that’s an entirely different question for an entirely different day, and right now his knees are starting to go numb and the stench of vomit is making his stomach turn inside out again. He nods his head, and Josh gives him a quick, reassuring smile as he leaves the room.
By the time Josh comes back, the nauseous clawing at the insides of Harry’s stomach has died down once more, leaving him feeling exhausted and relieved. A cold glass of water is pressed to his shaking hands, and he swallows it down slowly.
“I think you need a bath, mate. You’re covered in sick,” Josh mumbles as he absentmindedly wipes away the water dribbling down Harry’s chin. His eyes are soft as he says it, gentle and probing, as if studying for every part of Harry that is broken, and trying to find out how to fix it.
“Can you help me?”
Josh gives him a lopsided grin as his head tilts with the question. He looks so unbelievably fond that the misery of the past few hours is temporarily forgotten, “‘course I can.”
He pushes himself to his feet from where he was crouched in front of Harry, extending a hand down and helping him to his feet. Harry sways with the movement, knees stiff and unyielding, calves slightly numb; Josh grips his biceps gently, and steadies him.
Their movements are slightly disjointed at first as he strips down, Josh’s hands hovering uncertainly as he’s careful not to overstep, not to touch where he shouldn’t touch, not to rush where he shouldn’t rush. It’s so overwhelmingly respectful that Harry doesn’t know what to do with it.
“What kind of hotel doesn’t have a fucking shower?” he grumbles to himself as he fights against a shiver, crossing his arms over his bare chest and sits down on the edge of the bathtub in nothing but his boxers.
Josh gives him a soft, lopsided smile as he folds Harry’s dirtied clothes and leaves them in a neat, tidy pile on the side, “you can blame Behz. He’s the one who booked the rooms.”
Harry hums in response as he leans over and starts running the water. It’s a quiet, domestic scene that they’re in, and the coldness of the room quickly warms as the bathtub fills and Harry watches the way that Josh tidies everything up, towels and toothbrushes and toothpastes that Harry had thrown around haphazardly the morning before. He thinks of grinning: they have cleaners here, y’know, but he keeps it locked away in a box in the centre of his ribcage labelled: things my mates do that makes me happy.
(Other things in that box include: the stupid, inside jokes that him and Ethan have, the dumb shit that JJ would say whenever they’re in a Reacts session together, Vik’s puns that no-one else thinks are funny but him, the way that Tobi rolls his eyes with that soft, fond smile on his face when one of them does something stupid, and Simon’s quick wit and random insults that are always said with warmth in his eyes.
Josh is in there a lot, too. They all are, but Harry especially loves it when Josh gets that look in his eye, that look that tells them all he’s going to be mischievous and cheeky, the way his whole face lights up as he joins Harry in whatever asinine and chaotic thing he’s found himself in this time.)
Fucking hell, he loves them all so much.
“You ready?” Josh asks when the bathtub is sufficiently filled and the water is no longer scalding. His jacket is discarded now, wearing a hoodie instead, the sleeves drawn up to his elbows. It’s a good look on him, makes him appear gentle, and kind, like he always is; it’s no wonder that he’s loved by many people.
Harry nods his head and moves his hands to the waistband of his boxers. He pauses, then, and gives Josh this sheepish smile, face heating up in a silent question; he doesn’t want to make Josh uncomfortable.
Josh just smiles back, and looks like he’s fighting against a roll of his eyes. His voice is soft and fond as he replies, “I’ve seen your cock before, y’know.”
Harry blushes again, but his quiet laugh is genuine, and soon enough, he’s settling in the bath with a low groan as the heat seeps into his muscles. Harry feels all strung-out, suddenly, tired and weary, like a ball of yarn that’s been unravelled completely and is trying desperately to ball itself back up.
“Wash my hair for me?”
The corner of his mouth is tilted up into a cheeky smile as he asks this, and Josh really does roll his eyes this time, smiling back and perching himself delicately on the side of the bathtub. If the situation were any different, Harry might have pulled him in as a joke, but Josh has been so kind to him this evening, and Harry’s overcome with this urge to be kind in return.
Josh’s body is blocking out the dim bathroom light that buzzes quietly in the background. The backlight makes him look like an angel, or a god, of some kind, the edges of him fuzzy with it.
Josh’s voice is light, and airy as he jokes, “fucking hell, next you’re gonna ask if I can suck your cock.”
Harry laughs, and mumbles in response, “won’t say no if you’re offering.”
Josh splashes him with water, and his eyes light up like stars, a toothy grin on his face as he replies fuck off. He looks so young like this. So young that Harry can’t help but think: have you ever had someone look after you in the way that you look after us?
After all, who is the older brother’s older brother?
The thought sits heavily in his gut as Josh’s hand, always softer than he remembers it being, gently presses down on his forehead until his hair is submerged underwater, rising towards the surface like fronds of seaweed. His fingers run through, blunt nails scraping pleasantly against Harry’s scalp, concentrating diligently on his task as if it were somehow the most important one of his life.
Something that Harry notices often is that Josh has this way about him as if caring for them is impossibly significant to him, as if it’s his only redeemable feature, as if God took one look at him and said: you? Your only point of existence is to give everything you have into loving your friends.
Not for the first time, Harry thinks that there’s something hidden in Josh. Something sad and lonely, stored in all the closed-off areas of his chest, behind his ribcage, so that only he can take it out and fester with it.
“You’re a good guy, y’know,” Harry says, suddenly, before he can stop himself, “you- you take care of people, of us.”
Josh freezes a little, and his hand twitches in Harry’s hair, like an electric shock had jolted him. It’s clear that Harry’s sudden sincerity has startled him immensely, and that he doesn’t know what to do with it all. He never knows what to do with it.
We should compliment you more, he thinks, bitterly. We don’t tell you nice things as often as we should.
Josh seems to pull himself together, then, shaking himself out of the stupor that Harry placed him in, and gives him a small smile, eyes soft in the corners.
“Taking care of you lot is my job,” he says, simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Maybe for Josh, it was.
Harry stays silent for a while after that, watching Josh intensely, observing and perceiving him. It’s clear this is not something that Josh experiences often, because his eyes keep darting back and forth as he gently lathers the shampoo in Harry’s hair, mouth occasionally slipping into a straight line before he seemingly catches himself, and forces his expression into something more neutral. He looks like he’s starting to flounder under the weight of Harry’s gaze.
Harry notices that, too.
How had he not noticed Josh like this before?
Maybe because it was easier. It was easier to pretend that Josh was strong enough to go through everything alone, easier to pretend that he didn’t need help in the same way that everyone else did, easier to believe him when he said that he’s okay and fine and good.
Harry’s head hurts, and a light headache starts to blossom at the front of his skull.
Fuck, he thinks, I really need to stop doing coke.
The shampoo is washed away quickly, and Harry lets his head be moved as Josh is careful not to get any in his eyes as he cards those gentle fingers through. They’re both embedded in a warm, comfortable silence, only broken by the occasional sounds of shifting water; Harry never wants to leave.
“Sometimes, I think it’d be easier if we were both gay and into each other, y’know.”
Yep. I definitely need to stop doing coke.
Josh laughs quietly, brows raising, and the warmth of it settles in the air, making his chest feel light. He’s unfazed by Harry’s comment, and there’s that glint in his eyes that he only gets when he’s playing along mischievously. His smile is soft, “yeah?”
“Yeah,” Harry smiles back, moving his head forward slightly to allow Josh to apply the conditioner, “‘cause then we could look after each other.”
“What does it look like I’m doing right now?”
“Fair point,” he responds with a grin and a quiet laugh. Josh says nothing else, just keeps looking at him fondly, and proudly, as if he’s just happy that Harry exists and that he exists at the same time as him.
Harry gets the urge to say something hauntingly profound then, something like: I just wish that you’d let us look after you as well, or you’re gonna make someone so happy one day.
He swallows it all down, instead, burying it within the deepest parts of himself alongside that horrible wave of sappiness and embarrassing earnestness that is threatening to boil over.
Maybe another day, he thinks, maybe another day I’ll be able to say all these things to him.
For now, though, they’ll remain in silence, fond and warm and loving, and Harry will try not to preen too much at the way Josh laughs when he mutters some absentminded thought or dirty joke. He will try not to let his eyes fall closed at the gentle way that Josh brushes all the conditioner out of his hair, and he will try not to push his head up into it, like a cat with its owner.
(He will fail all of these things.)
“Please tell me you can wash your own body,” Josh says lightheartedly after his hair is clean and the air surrounding him smells like strawberries, “the boys are never gonna let us forget about it if they find out that I scrubbed you down at four in the morning.”
Harry’s fingers are starting to prune, and the water isn’t as warm as it once was, but his smile is all cheesy and toothy as he grins up at him and says might have to tell them we fucked, instead.
Josh finds that funny.
He finds that funny and his voice is all breathy with laughter and his face is faintly red as he leaves Harry to clean himself up at Harry’s insistence.
I’ll be right outside if you need me, Josh had told him, one hand wrapped around the door handle, don’t take too long though, recording starts at twelve tomorrow.
The air feels instantly colder when Josh leaves, as if he had stolen all the warmth of it for himself. Harry thinks that maybe the only reason why he feels this way is because he gets clingy when he’s high, sometimes, and Josh is such easy company that he can’t help but want to be around him always, and forever. Forever and ever and ever.
Harry cleans himself quickly and carelessly, lacking the thoroughness and grace that Josh had shown him, but, hey, he doesn’t give a single fuck.
I don’t smell like sick anymore, and that’s what matters most.
It’s only after he’s drying himself off that he realises that Josh had left him a spare change of clothes, folded neat and tidy. Fresh clothes hadn’t even crossed his mind, and there Josh was, thinking several steps ahead, as he always does. The kindness behind the action strikes him deeply, deeper than he thought it would, and he’s filled with so much gratefulness, suddenly, that he doesn’t know what to do with it all.
He hurries as he puts his shirt on inside out, and he hurries as one of his socks starts to get wet from where he stepped in some water, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all because Josh is busy looking at his phone and rubbing the tiredness from his eyes and he’s not expecting it when Harry hugs him, suddenly, as tightly as he can.
Harry thinks that Josh might’ve dropped his phone, if the soft thump of something hitting the carpet means anything, but he feels so loved and cared for, as if the sun is resting behind his ribcage and is desperately trying to fight its way out, and he needs Josh to know this.
“Thank you,” he says, balling up the fabric of Josh’s shirt in his fist, and burying his face in the crook of his neck, “thank you for this. For everything.”
Harry’s hair is still damp, slightly, but it clearly doesn’t bother Josh, who just laughs gently and holds him a little tighter in return. Tomorrow, Harry will probably be embarrassed for thinking this, but he can’t help it when the only words that reside in his skull are: wherever we go, you always feel like home.
Josh’s voice is low, nothing more than a gentle rumble that reverberates in all the softest parts of him, and he says, “it’s no issue, Harry. I’m always gonna be there for you, yeah?” his voice turns cheeky, and Harry can hear the smirk in his tone, “if you wanna make it up to me, you could always buy me lunch tomorrow.”
Harry grins into his shoulder, “don’t beg it, mate.”
(He bought Josh lunch the next day.)