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He was still new (and not ginger), still tingling warm and leaving wispy golden trails from his feet when he stumbled through the shattered window of a bakery, stepped carefully around the mounds of solid ice blocking the door, and spotted the boy in the corner.
He, the boy, was red-cheeked with cold and when he blinked a considerable amount of frost fell from his eyelashes. He looked as stunned as Lou felt, fresh off a regeneration and hunting a Glacialian icefly through twenty-first century London only to find a boy clutching a rolled-up newspaper in a bakery and, most importantly, not frozen in a block of ice.
“Um,” Louis began. The boy blinked again, and a melting chunk of hair dripped onto his nose. “Did you see a—uh—”
The boy opened his mouth a few times noiselessly, then cleared his throat and said, “This?” He held up the newspaper, revealing a smear of electric blue over the type. Louis bent down, leaning in to examine the spot. When he caught sight of broken antennae, several tiny teeth, and the remnants of an icicle stinger, he scrambled backwards on the slick floor.
“Yes, yeah, that would be it,” he said faintly. “Er, not to be rude, but how did you manage to kill a Glacialian icefly with the Sunday Times?”
“I just kind of—swatted at it?” The boy made the motion vaguely, smacking the air in front of Louis’s face and causing an antenna to fall to the defrosting floor. Louis slipped back a few more inches in avoidance. “A what?”
“Glacialian icefly—you swatted at it? Small as an Earth gnat and faster than a Weeping Angel and you killed it by swatting at it.”
“I guess so?”
Louis ran a hand through his hair in disbelief, shaking some gold energy from its tips and leaving it sticking up in front. “Who in the hell are you?”
“I’m uh, I’m Harry Styles,” the boy replied with the shadows of a smile, although he was still stricken in the eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m the Doctor. Pleased to meet you, Harry Styles, renowned slayer of the icefly.”
He reached for Harry’s hand and the ice underneath him promptly shifted, landing him flat on his face.
*
So that was how it started, the intergalactic dynamic duo of the Doctor and Harry Styles. They were known throughout time and space as many things in many different languages (the most common, it seemed to Louis, being “those fuckers who burnt down Pucacluchina and its rainbow springs resort”, but that was one time and it didn’t seem quite fair, to be honest).
One step into the TARDIS, still shivering from the effects of the icefly, Harry barked out a sudden, gleeful laugh. A radiant smile remained on his face as he gazed around, shaking wet curls out of his eyes to see the upper level. “Sweet,” he giggled ridiculously, “I’ve always wanted to follow a mad boy with braces and tight trousers into a dimensionally unstable police box.”
Lou decided right then that he was keeping him. That turned out to be convenient, because Harry had decided that he wasn’t leaving. They always worked that way; although they were so disparate (time lord and Earth boy, so old and so young, from different galaxies and times and histories), they ran on the same wavelength.
As Harry waited for the Doctor to return with towels and clothes for each of them (“Don’t you dare drip on my console!” the Doctor had shouted from the corridor), he ran a hesitant hand along the strange, organic-looking material of the wall. It seemed to have pores, almost, and pushed springily back against the press of his fingers. He was probing it speculatively when it sighed, a palpable disturbance of the air and a tremor through the wall. He jerked his hand back with a gasp.
“Heads up, Harry,” he heard just before a soft towel smacked into his face.
“Uh, thanks,” he replied, still reeling. “What was—”
“Oh, sorry about her. She’s got a thing for cute strangers, rather pedophilic really, likes human teenagers a lot. You should’ve heard her when I turned up looking like this. Also, she’s a mite ticklish.”
Harry, toweling off his hair, moved slowly, cautiously up the stairs. “Oh. So your dimensionally unstable police box is alive, and a girl, and she, like you, thinks I’m cute, and she’s ticklish.”
Louis screwed up his face theatrically, ticking off each on his fingers. “Yep. Sounds about right. Also, she’s a time-traveling spaceship.”
“Oh. Okay. Good.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
*
Harry quickly discovered that, while the Doctor looked quite human, something about his existence was very, very off. Besides his utter insanity, lack of food (and unfortunately tea), his young face and old eyes, the fact that he never changed clothes, and his time machine, the Doctor also had unnerving habits such as appearing from absolutely nowhere, unsettlingly constant loudness, and seeming to radiate sunshine from his being. His presence was infectious, for all it was disconcerting, and for a few hours, or days (time moved differently in the TARDIS—it didn’t seem like long at all, just long enough to warm his bones and put on the clothes the Doctor brought him and have a quick look around, but he couldn’t be sure) he was almost always with him. Watching him. Observing and learning.
The Doctor had told him as they left the bakery that he should stay with him for a short while, because the iceflies tended to be protective, vengeful creatures, and really he shouldn’t have killed it, but he didn’t know, so. It would be best to stay with him, just for a bit. The Doctor had showed Harry a card and had looked very smug about it, but it was blank. When Harry pointed this out, his face screwed up before smoothing into an expression that was almost impressed. That was the first time he’d been on the receiving end of one of the Doctor’s brilliant smiles. Stunned, more than a little frightened, and unsure whether his flat was still standing, he’d agreed. He never regretted it.
For all his observation, Harry found that he picked up very little about the mysterious man who apparently literally fell from the sky after his whole neighborhood was attacked by a bug that stung with and shot ice. Once, eventually, as the Doctor was fiddling on his swing underneath the platform, Harry steeled himself and hung over the ledge.
“So, Doctor,” he began, feeling almost guilty, “you’re not human.”
It wasn’t phrased as a question, and Louis knew it wasn’t meant to be one, so he hummed mildly in agreement. Leaning his head backwards he saw the furrow of Harry’s brow a ways above him.
“So you’re . . . what, then?”
He hesitated only slightly, but Harry noticed. “Time Lord. From the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous.”
“You know that means absolutely nothing to me, right?” The Doctor was unreadable. He was as blank in that moment as he usually was radiant. It made Harry shiver, feeling like he suddenly wasn’t wanted. Then, just as quickly, the Doctor flashed a quick smile and returned to his work.
“Do some reading up, then. Library is down the corridor, to the left, then a right, another right, up the ladder, down the chute, and a left. Mind the pool.”
It was quite obviously a dismissal. So he did some reading, and minded the pool.
*
Harry thought he was dealing with it all very well, actually, especially when the Doctor (two hearts, regenerations, all the rest) asked him when he wanted to go. He said he’d always wanted to see his mum as a little girl, so the Doctor said is that the best you’ve got? but agreed nonetheless. He gave six-year-old Anne her favorite red lolly from the shop on the corner down from her house, and retreated quickly when his grandparents saw him and rang the police.
The Doctor laughed when he slammed the door of the police box behind him, panting and clutching his side from his escape. “Yes, what a beautiful plan that was, dear Hazza,” he said with a final chuckle. “I’m picking where we go next.”
That had been the infamous excursion that ended with the glowing rubble of the Pucacluchinan rainbow hot springs and an angry mob (with pitchforks!), so after that they kind of went with the flow. The TARDIS was never all that reliable with specifics, anyway, so mostly they let her go where and when she wanted. It was never disappointing: the Singing Towers of something-or-other, the sea planet with underwater cities and creatures that resembled gilled unicorns, and the War of the Roses, in which either side literally threw roses across a field. The twist, they quickly found, was that the thorns were in fact heat-seeking missiles.
Never a dull moment. Harry found himself forgetting quickly the details of his old life: his job at the bakery, his school, his friends, his mum and sister. When he realized this, he asked the Doctor if it was safe to go back yet. If he could visit.
The Doctor’s face fell spectacularly, and Harry felt like shit. He’d slowly picked up on the extent of his travels, his life, his losses. A book had appeared on his bedside table one night, with no title or other identification. It had been about the Time War. He’d never brought it up verbally, but he placed the book in front of the Doctor on the console one day. It bore the brunt of his haunted stare for a moment, before his eyes lit up and that smile burst across his face like the very sun Harry hadn’t seen in months. Without another look at the book, the Doctor pulled on a gizmo and slid a contraption, and they’d taken flight. They spent that night under the comet sky of Nastracine in companionable silence.
The silence following Harry’s request was less comfortable.
“Oh. Home. Absolutely you can go home, the iceflies will be gone by now. By Gallifrey, I could’ve taken you to a future where the iceflies were gone five minutes after you stepped on board. I—of course you can go home. Of course,” he finally replied, looking flustered and self-conscious. Harry had seen sparkling and mischievous and sullen and stormy, but he’d never experience a flustered Doctor. It didn’t suit him.
Louis was avoiding Harry’s eyes purposefully, and he knew it was quite obvious, but he couldn’t stop fiddling with the controls. All he could hear was an echo in the farthest, deepest buried parts of his expansive memory that screamed at him but I want to go home, Louis! I need to go home, I can’t take this, don’t you understand?
Harry laid a hand on his forearm gently, to stop the nervous movement. “Just to visit, though, you know? You promised me flowers with petals taller than me, and metal trees growing from glass. I still want that.”
Louis relaxed, but only slightly. The fires of Gallifrey burned purple and blue in his mind. Ignoring the screaming ghosts, he aimed a forced smile somewhere around where the hair curled over Harry’s ear. “Just a visit. Right.”
Harry wasn’t fooled, but he took a seat and began telling fond anecdotes about growing up with a big sister as the TARDIS whooshed pleasantly around them. Eventually Louis’s smiles grew genuine, even laughing joyfully when Harry asked shyly if he’d stay for dinner.
*
Dinner was lovely, although it took some dodgy explaining to calm Anne when her missing son appeared in her doorway with a young lad in braces in tow. Gemma showed up soon after, embracing him tightly and holding back tears. Harry stuttered apologies as the Doctor used his blank paper on his mum, saying something that made her smile softly and seemed to reassure her. He made a mental note to match their stories later.
“Call me Louis,” the Doctor said to Gemma, before Harry could introduce him properly, and he’d have to ask about that one, too.
Harry was pleased to find that the Doctor quickly entranced his family, although neither his mum nor Gemma seemed to feel the need to touch as often as Harry. This development had come on fast, soon after the Singing Towers, and neither of them thought much of it anymore, slinging arms over shoulders, leaving quick strokes on the backs of necks, ruffling hair and hugging. Anne watched them carefully, but never said a word.
Refreshed and sleepy, Harry nodded to the Doctor as it was nearing midnight. “I’ve got to go, mum, I’m sorry, I’ll call again soon,” he said comfortingly with a kiss to her temple and a tight hug. “I love you. I won’t disappear again. I promise.”
She eyed the Doctor, and said “I certainly hope so, dear.” With a quick final goodbye, Harry slung his arm around the Doctor’s waist and left with a wave.
“That was actually very nice,” the Doctor commented offhandedly, looking calmer and more peaceful than Harry had ever seen him. “They’re wonderful people.”
“Mhm,” he agreed vaguely. “Um, so . . . Louis?”
The Doctor tensed, just a bit, just enough for Harry to feel it in the muscles of his back and in the jaunt of his step. “Yes?”
Harry shook his head. “No, no, I meant. I meant—are you Louis? Is that your real name?”
They reached the TARDIS and the Doctor unlocked it before pushing him inside. He busied himself with anything he could—his braces, the thingamajig, the whatsit—fidgeting before answering. Harry waited.
“Yes,” he said finally, quietly like it was a secret. Harry started to feel that it was. “It’s one of them. That’s was El used to call me. It stuck. She said calling oneself a doctor, the doctor, was too pretentious, and she wouldn’t have it.” He glanced at Harry, his hands pausing on a spinning knob, bracing himself for the question, although he knew he’d never be ready to answer it.
And it came. “Who’s El?”
“Eleanor. She, um—” He dropped off at the feel of arms around his waist. Harry rested his chin on Louis’s shoulder and whispered sorry, go on in his ear. “She was like me. So you know what happened.”
“Oh.” Harry did. He knew all too well. The book had been explicit; none on Gallifrey had survived.
“Yes. She went home . . . I took her home.”
They stood in silence for a moment, Louis without words and Harry not knowing what to say but holding on tightly. Finally, Louis relaxed back into Harry’s arms, his face rolling to press into his neck.
“It was so long ago now. She was the only one who mattered, way back, but there have been so many since her. Now there’s you. My good friend, my Hazza.”
Harry breathed out, smiling wide. Louis felt a kiss land in his hair. “Can I call you Louis, then? She’s right you know, you are a pretentious arse. The Doctor, Jesus. The Doctor of what, exactly? Doctor who?”
Louis laughed gleefully, pulling away and aiming a smack at Harry’s behind, which he dodged with a jerk backwards and a surprised shout. He grasped a shoulder and pulled him in, sliding a hand into curls and hugging him tight.
“Sure, Hazza. You can call me Louis.”
*
Things around the TARDIS became much lighter after that. Harry already thought that Louis was the sun, but they began to revolve around each other even more than they already had been. If Anne could see them now, all her questioning looks would be knowing smiles. She’d see the way they teased and touched and finished sentences that the other had started. She’d call it the honeymoon period, Harry thought, and privately Harry agreed. They were never just two lads having a bit of a romp through time and space. They were always the Doctor and Harry Styles or more recently Louis and Hazza (and, as always, “those fuckers who started that damn fire”). From the start they had been more than what they seemed. Harry was just now beginning to understand.
Each day was more of an adventure than the last. Louis’s personal highlight of these months was when Harry woke up at Louis’s breakfast call (still no tea), sat up in bed, and said remarkably evenly: “Um, Lou? I’ve got tits. Should I have tits?”
(Lou knew immediately that it must have been mating season on the all-male planet of Ternea, during which a molecular chromosomal reaggregation serum was injected into the atmosphere, turning certain of the population temporarily into females, but he drew out the suspense a bit, letting Harry take turns moaning about missing his dick and prancing about naked. Aside from the former moments, Harry didn’t actually seem to mind his supposedly unexplained switch. After a week, Louis took pity on him and found the antidote stuffed into a trunk in that closet that always disappears. When he changed back and realized what Louis had done, Harry pouted for a few hours, then teased Lou about reasons he might have taken so long to fix him, and then gotten over it.)
Then there’d been that time when the TARDIS had apparently gotten very, very bored while being left parked beside a half-built Eiffel Tower (a temporary stop, just for Harry to see) and had merged their bedrooms in the middle of the night.
As it happened, she also merged their beds. Harry and Louis quickly found that they liked to sleep on the same side as Louis landed on top of him with a grunt, and then rolled onto the floor.
Harry was still for a moment, and Louis wondered if the wanker had even been woken up by the disturbance. However, after a moment he sat up, blinking lethargically and pushing hair out of his eyes haphazardly.
“Uh—what? Lou?” His voice was low, and warm, sleep-choked and thick. It made him appear very young, with his hair sticking up and his face slack and open.
“Yeah, yeah, Hazza,” Louis sighed, climbing to his feet. “Shut up and budge over, will you? Seems to be I’m staying here tonight.” That solicited only a vague scoot and a huff as he collapsed back onto the pillows in the center of the bed. It was a good thing neither of them had ever entertained any notions of personal space. Louis pressed himself into the spot along Harry’s side, nosing into his curls before pulling away. Just before he drifted off he felt Harry’s fingertips brush the back of his hand.
The TARDIS sighed around them triumphantly, but they didn’t notice.
Louis’s bedroom never did remanifest, but he only managed to be a little disgruntled that after more than several hundred years his TARDIS had deleted his room. Harry began leaving more space at night, waiting with his hand outstretched on the mattress for Louis to finish whatever tinkering he’d started. One day they woke up and Harry had rolled face-first into Louis’s shoulder, an arm sprawled across his waist. They smiled and Louis asked where they were going that day.
Harry thought for a minute, his face screwed up like he was debating with himself. Finally, he said, “Home. I want to visit home again.”
They made cookies for Anne—well, Harry made cookies for Anne after discovering that Louis knocking over that fire basin on Pucacluchina was no fluke. Louis sat backwards in a chair, braces hanging down from his waist, helpfully pointing to where the flour wasn’t and loudly questioning Harry’s skills.
Harry added a bunch of things to the dough, things he dug up from Louis’s pantry, things from other worlds with names that he didn’t have a hope of pronouncing. He tasted them all, put the sweet ones in and a funny gummy thing he thought would melt and give color. He told her they were gummy bear and M&M cookies. Her nose wrinkled a bit but when she tasted one, she groaned and said “Goodness, Harry, I really did miss your baking,” so he figured they were all right.
Their visit was longer than the last. She put them up in Harry’s childhood bedroom (with a mattress on the floor for Louis, but it went unused). They stayed only three days, after the second of which Harry began gazing longingly at the sky, even trailing off in the middle of sentences to do so. Louis fidgeted from the first half hour, not knowing what to do with himself when his TARDIS was parked in an alley around the block.
Anne ended up loving Louis, who could converse with a fruit fly and charm it to death, so Harry mostly sat quietly, sipping his tea and grinning as Louis told entirely ridiculous stories with fudged details to make them Earthly and timely. As Harry realized what Louis was doing, he thought about telling his mum what he’d really been up to all this time. They’d landed only a few weeks after their last visit, making the gap seem shorter for her, but the lack of communication was clearly wearing on her (around her eyes and mouth, in the way she held her shoulders, and how she clutched on to Harry when she opened the door). However, when he opened his mouth, he thought about what he could say. “Hey mum, just, I’ve been traveling in a spaceship for going on a year, but it only seems like a month for you because it’s a time-traveling spaceship,” just seemed a bit far-fetched. He thought better of it just as Louis cut off his story to shiver a bit.
“Is it quite cold, or is it me?”
Harry noticed he was right. The warmth had been sucked out of the room, and a severe draft blew over his skin. Anne looked confused. “No, really, it’s rather warm still, it’s July,” she said, glancing between Louis and Harry. “Honey, are you chilly? I could close the window, I suppose.”
“Yeah, that would be great, mum, thanks.” When she turned around with a frown, Louis wrapped his hand tightly around Harry's upper arm and moved in close to his ear.
“Hazza, let’s go. We’ve got to go,” he whispered urgently.
Taking in Louis’s wide, serious blue eyes, Harry felt dread seep through his cooling bones. “What? Why? Is there—oh god, is it—is there something wrong, are we okay? Is she okay?”
Louis hesitated. “If I’m right, she should be fine,” he said grimly, which didn’t bode well, because while Lou never lied with words, he never did with his face either. “Seriously, Harry. Come on.”
Anne moved back to the table to find Louis helping Harry shrug into his blazer. “Are you leaving?” She didn’t sound upset, just tired.
“Yeah, mum, I—we—” Louis had replaced his grip on Harry’s arm and was tugging slightly. They headed clumsily for the door as one unit. “I’m sorry, we have to go, things to—things to do, I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
Even to his own ears it sounded just like last time, but with a hollow core. Anne bid them goodbye, kissing Harry on the forehead. Before the door closed Harry saw her face crumple minutely and her arms come up to hug herself. His stomach turned to lead and he felt like shit, but Louis was still pulling him along.
“What the fuck is going on, Lou?”
Panic left an edge to his voice that scraped through Louis’s single-mindedness. He stopped, cupping his hands around Harry’s jaw and looking straight into his eyes. “Hazza. Harry. How do you feel?”
“I—I’m quite frightened, Lou, I—”
“No, no, how do you feel? Do you feel okay? Do you feel like you could run if you had to? Do you feel like you could fight?”
Harry blinked heavily, his mind slowing behind his eyes, and Louis was properly scared. “I, I don’t—Lou, I don’t know what is, I’m doing fine? I mean, I’m cold, why is it so bloody cold? Why is it—” Another blink, and frost fell from his eyelashes, so like the first time, red-cheeked and dazed, but this time it was wrong, this time there was a ring of ice blue invading his irises, and then he was collapsing forward onto Louis.
*
“Oh, God, oh Rassilon, oh God,” Louis kept up in a constant stream as he tripped frantically around the disappearing medical closet. “Oh God, icefly stings, icefly trackers, icefly fucking invasion what the fuck is this, fuck—oh God, oh fucking Rassilon—”
He heard Harry groaning from the hallway where he had been unceremoniously dumped in haste. Well, at least he was still conscious. Out of it and possibly in pain was still better than gone.
Louis had lost friends, but he’d never lost them. Memory loss, parallel universes he’d dealt with, but never a—never a true loss, never. (And, a little voice said, never someone so necessary.)
That didn’t mean he knew what to do, though, and his supplies were failing him, and he didn’t even know what it was or if it was possible to treat, he only had ideas, only guesses. He’d never absorbed much about the icefly, hadn’t learned about them because he hadn’t needed to because some brilliant boy had killed one by swatting at it with a newspaper and it had never again come up. But he should have known, he should have known because he said it himself, they’re vengeful as hell and he took Harry back, he took him home, mere blocks from the destroyed street with the bakery. Not far enough and not long enough, of course, he’d shortened Anne’s timeline as well, only a month and they were still there. They were still waiting.
They’d tracked Harry, and found him, and now everything was very, very wrong.
He ran out to Harry, who had gone silent, and crouched down, propping him up against the wall. His head lolled and his eyes were slits, but open. His irises had been consumed by electric blue, and it had started eating at his pupils as well.
“’m cold, Lou,” he slurred, “’m so cold.”
Louis shushed him. “It’s all right, Haz, it’s okay, I’ll make you warm, I’ll fix this,” he said, thumbs smoothing over frozen cheekbones. He remembered the cold desolation of the street, puddles of water trailing his footsteps, and an unnatural heat that melted from his skin.
He reentered the disappearing closet, thankfully still visible, and returned quickly holding a needle. Grimacing only a bit, he pricked each of his fingers in turn. As the gold energy began to flow hot from his fingertips, he placed his index fingers on Harry’s temples, pressing his hands hard into his cheeks, thumbs tucked up near his tear ducts.
Harry gasped and tensed, body jerking away from the temperature change. As he groaned again, held tightly in Louis’s palms, Louis kept up a reassuring babble (more for himself than Harry).
“It’s all right, Hazza, you remarkable boy, you curly-haired idiot, you’re going to be fine, you’re doing so well, I’m so proud of you—”
The blue receded bit by bit from his eyes, revealing a hazy green, and sweat slid down to pool in the dip of his collarbone. His breathing evened out, to Louis’s relief, and finally he went still and loose. Louis could hear only his dual heartbeat—badababum, badababum—pulsing in his ears as he fell back against the opposite wall.
*
Harry awoke from his doze several hours later, in their bed, with a solid weight on him. Working out a crick in his neck and fighting off a lingering shiver, he looked down at his chest. Louis, looking so very young for a creature so very old, with his hair sticking up in front, one brace hanging off his shoulder, and a leg slung over one of Harry’s, was pressing his face to Harry’s bare chest and murmuring unintelligibly in a strange language. He looked up when Harry shifted.
“Hey there, Doctor,” Harry said, voice rough. “Nice work back there. How’d you know?”
Louis’s eyes were wide, stunned but blank. Harry couldn’t read him. “I didn’t. I had no fucking clue. I didn’t even know if I could produce that energy when I wasn’t dying.” His hand fisted then unclenched at Harry’s side. “Listen—”
He broke off. He looked very much like he was in pain, Harry thought, and wondered if he’d missed some other stupid thing Louis’d done, something desperate while Harry was growing icicles along his brain stem. “You okay, Lou?”
“Yeah, yeah, shh,” he waved off the concern, “but—listen, Hazz—no, Harry, you have to go.”
“What? I don’t have to do—I’m not—what the fuck are you talking about, Louis?” Harry stuttered uncomprehendingly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Louis had known it wouldn’t be simple. He’d known there’d be a fight. The knowledge didn’t make it any easier when Harry wrapped stiff arms around him, preventing his attempted retreat, and looked him dead in the eye. “Lou. I’m not leaving you.”
“Believe me. I don’t want you to,” he said, struggling half-heartedly against the restraint. Harry was weak and Louis was not, but he was selfish. Selfish to a fault, except when it counted.
“Then why? Why would you save my life and then send me away, what kind of message is that, what do I do with that? I’ve spent a year with you, I’ve left everything to be with you—not for the extended holiday, for you. If you think I’d just leave—”
It was all too much, it was terrible, and his voice was hurt and defensive and Louis was going to lose his entire mind if Harry kept talking like that, kept that grip pulling him in tight. “Harry, shut up, shut up, you have to go, I legitimately have to send you away. Don’t you see? They followed us here. The iceflies found you and they took care of you except they failed and now they are in this TARDIS and they could be in this room and you have to go very, very far away where they can’t follow you or they’ll just keep trying until you are dead, Harry, do you understand?”
Harry choked on whatever retort that was waiting in his throat and the resolve on his face faded. “Where can I go?” he asked softly, brows drawing together.
“They can’t follow you into the time vortex.”
To Harry it sounded like a sentence, a punishment, not an offer that could save his life.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” Louis said, lips quirking in a way that didn’t reach his eyes. He could read the fear and despair on Harry’s face, so much to take in so quickly after a near-death experience. He would have put it off if he could have. “I’ll lock you onto my timestream. It shouldn’t be hard. For you it’ll be seconds, and you’ll still be on the TARDIS, and you’ll be with me. For as long as you like. And you’ll be safe.” Selfish. So selfish.
“How long? How far into the future?” Harry asked, biting his lip to hold back the how long will you be alone?
“I don’t know. Long enough.”
They stared at each other for a moment, old eyes and young, both so sad. Louis hardened. He had waited too long, let Harry sleep, and now every second was risky. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling Harry off the bed and helping him down the corridor to the control room.
As he strapped Harry’s arm into a vortex manipulator, the other was busy. His hand ran through Louis’s hair, smoothing it down in front, straightening his right brace, stroking over his jaw. When he was finished, he didn’t step away.
“I’ll see you soon, Hazza,” he whispered with the fakest smile he’d ever mustered.
Harry’s answering grin was the saddest thing Louis had ever seen in his thousand years. “You won’t,” he said, leaning in and pressing a kiss to the corner of Louis’s mouth before landing firmly on his lips. Louis melted into him, selfish to the very last second, then pulled away to lock the manipulator to his signal. Then all that was left was to hit go, and Harry was gone.
*
Louis, of course, had been right. The TARDIS dripped like liquid from his vision and for no more than twenty seconds he was enveloped by a whooshing, pulsing darkness. He immediately squeezed his eyes closed against the assault of time. It was impossible to measure how far he was traveling, to where and to when, unprotected as he was in the vortex.
It was an overwhelming experience to inflict on the already overwhelmed, and—Harry knew it was necessary, knew for his own sake there was no other way, knew that Louis had given him up to save him, but—but it was hard, in those twenty seconds of pounding sensation and fear and loss, not to resent him, just the littlest bit.
The TARDIS rematerialized around him, and he realized that he’d overshot the control room in the split second before he fell into the pool. Dripping and sputtering, he pulled himself out of the water and moved for the towel cabinet, only to find it missing. Everything was missing, actually—the millions of books, the big comfy chairs—there was only a pool. A normal pool room, now, but lacking towels. Harry swore as he stripped down to his pants. The vortex manipulator on his right wrist was buzzing angrily from its dunk, so he yanked it off and tossed it back in.
The corridors had been redesigned as well, because outside the door he was met with three halls branching off instead of one. He leaned against the wall with a frustrated huff, knowing it was useless to start yelling in such a vast maze. The wall, at least, was its familiar, springy self. As his palm pressed against it, it pushed back the slightest bit, like recognition.
“Hey there, old girl,” he said softly, “Been a long time, I suppose. You had to go change everything before I got back.”
He wasn’t expecting a reply, but one came in the form of twinkling lights along the floor, lighting the path to the right and twisting around a corner. A smile pulled at his lips, and he said gratefully, “Thanks, baby.” The TARDIS hummed.
As he walked, Harry contemplated the changes he hadn’t expected, had never really had time to anticipate. If the TARDIS was so changed, what’s to say that Louis hadn’t? He could have been several different people since sending Harry away, could have died again and again, forgotten Harry’s short year with him easily. He could look old, or young; hell, he could be a woman. The research had mentioned such transformations.
Suddenly, he dreaded the Louis he might find.
He emerged, finally, into the control room (now three cascading levels with ropes and slides in addition to the tamer stairs, with the console positioned on the top level). Still damp, cold, and almost naked, he carefully crossed the glass platform and leaned over the rail.
“Uh, Louis?”
There was a clatter of noise amidst the wires and tubes, then dead silence. Harry tried again.
“Doctor?”
A complicated string-and-pulley contraption began whirring, and a dirty figure on a harness swung up out of the darkness, right to Harry’s eye level. It tugged the goggles down around its neck, revealing familiar blue eyes. They stared at each other a moment before Harry giggled giddily, so very relieved, and said, “Hi.”
Louis hesitated. “Er, hello.” A beat, then, “Holy shit.” He scrabbled with the harness, pushed buttons on the belt seemingly at random, gave up and climbed over the railing.
“Hazza,” he breathed, looking unsure. He was so the same, Harry noticed. Aged not a single day, still shining as brightly in his red trousers and braces as Harry had ever seen him, and so, so beautiful. His face was smudged with grease and dirt save the clean circles around his eyes from the goggles.
“Yeah, Lou. Yeah,” Harry stuttered.
At the name, Louis’s hands came up to cup his jaw, eyes growing wide and mouth going slack. “It’s been a very long time since anyone has called me that.”
“How long?” Harry asked, not certain he wanted to know the answer.
“Long enough. Too long.” Harry felt searched, bare and open as Louis studied his face carefully. “You haven’t changed.”
“’Course not, you know that. Besides, neither have you. Although you’ve done some redecorating.”
Finally, finally Louis smiled big, and tugged Harry in, wrapping his arms around him tightly and burying his face in his neck.
“God, Hazza,” he exhaled, going limp. “Almost two hundred fucking years. I thought I’d fucked up. I thought you were lost.”
There it was. Two hundred years. Two hundred years and twenty minutes, all at the same time. Harry felt he’d been hit by a train.
Suddenly Louis pulled back, surveying Harry once again.
“You’re wet. And naked,” he said, as if he’d just noticed.
Harry smiled through the weight on his chest. “Forgot to mind the pool. And I’m not naked.”
Louis laughed gleefully, the remnants of strain and shock melting from his face. “No matter, I’ve got plenty of clothes. Oi, lads!”
And really, it might have been foolish to assume he’d just happened to land when Louis didn’t have a friend, but he never would have suspected three boys about his age to run, pushing at each other and laughing, down the corridor behind them. Louis saw Harry’s raised eyebrow and shrugged.
“Doctor,” the blonde said with an Irish accent, out of breath, “Liam’s fucking misplaced my trainers again, can we swing round that shoe planet? I—” He broke off when the boy next to him, tall with dark eyes and a sweet face, nudged him on the shoulder. He’d been studying Harry silently along with a dark-haired boy while the blonde ranted. “Shit. Doctor, why is there a naked boy in the TARDIS?”
Harry leaned back against the rail, glancing at Louis. “I’m Harry. And I’m not naked.”
“Near enough.”
“Shut up, Niall,” the sweet-faced boy said. He moved forward, hand outstretched. Harry shook it. “I’m Liam. That loudmouth is Niall, and I didn’t misplace his trainers. The quiet one is Zayn. Don’t get used to it, it doesn’t last long.”
Zayn shrugged, looking tired, and Niall started, “You did too misplace my trainers—” before Louis cut him off with a pointed look.
“Erm, lads,” he rubbed his hands on his trousers nervously, “Harry’s an—old friend of mine. He’ll be staying for—”
“Indefinitely.”
Louis turned to him, surprised, and Harry grinned. It had been a long time since he’d seen those dimples, and his breath caught. They stared at each other until Liam cleared his throat.
“Well then, that’s great. Good to meet you, Harry. From all of us, I’m sure. I’ll just, we’ll all just go run and fetch some clothes, then. Zayn’s trousers should fit you, I think.” He smiled politely, backing up and taking each of the other boys by the elbow. He nearly dragged them down the corridor, hissing “Let’s give them their privacy,” when Niall tried to look back. They disappeared around the corner, and Harry smirked at Louis.
“They seem fun. Started a collection, have you?”
Louis pulled Harry in by his hip, burrowing again into his chest like he couldn’t stop, like he’d been starved of touch. He sighed into the soft skin, stroking along the small of his back gently when Harry’s hands rubbed through his hair.
“I missed you, I missed you so much, Hazza, all I could think was it wasn’t long enough, we didn’t get long enough and I could have showed you so much. We could have been magnificent. We were magnificent.” His voice was muffled by Harry’s collarbone, but clear.
“Still are,” Harry murmured, tilting his face up. “We will be, you know. For a long time. Forever, even.”
“That’s a lot to ask for. You know that doesn’t happen.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, moving in. Louis frowned.
“I do, I know exactly—”
*
Liam held the boys back, sneaking a glance around the corner and signaling to wait a moment when he saw the scene on the platform.
“They’re snogging, aren’t they?” Zayn asked rhetorically, scratching the back of his neck. “Who the hell is that kid, anyway?”
Liam thought about his answer. As he was the first of the boys to join the Doctor by a few months, Liam had some experiences to draw on that the others didn’t. “D’you know the Doctor had a cry on me once?”
The others looked skeptical.
“He’d gotten smashed off that cider from the Moon of Raxacoricofallapatorius, and it was giving him these flashbacks, like, and he said ‘oh, Liam, you darling cheesecake’ and then burst into tears and told me these stories about a Harry from way back, and how he was so lost, and then he passed out and drooled on my favorite jumper.”
After a beat, Niall said, “Seriously, mate? So that’s why he doesn’t drink.”
Liam nodded. “He never brought it up again. That’s definitely him though, his Harry.” He peeked back around the wall, caught an eyeful, and jerked back. “Er, why don’t we just—leave the clothes here, for when, when they’re not, er, occupied.”
He’d seen their faces, though, seen the wet shine in the Doctor’s eyes, the sparkle in Harry’s, felt the simultaneous relief and tension between them the second he’d entered the room. They gave off an unmistakable aura of home, finally, after so long.
Liam thought of his mum, dad, and sisters, and vaguely made a mental note to ask the Doctor if they could swing round his parents’ soon. It had been a while since his last visit, and he missed them to his bones.