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“Got you something.”
Liam looks up from his phone and Harry’s outlined by the sun, standing in the open door of the bus, his face shadowed so he’s just a hulking dark figure looming over Liam.
Still, he can see the long stemmed red rose Harry is offering him.
“For me?” he asks, reaching out slowly to take it. The door slams as Zayn boards the bus behind Harry, and Liam’s eyes adjust in time to see him rolling his eyes as he shoulders past them. Zayn is allowed to roll his eyes, because Zayn listened to Liam moon over Harry for weeks while they were in some weird limbo, that grey place between friends and something else, and because it was Zayn who reminded Liam he could ask for more, reminded him that Harry had never said no to Liam before.
Liam looks up at Harry. He’s smiling, a new smile that Liam didn’t know before, soft and bordering on shy.
“Yeah, for you,” he says. He leaves then, trailing after Zayn, ducking his head when Liam calls a belated “thank you” after him.
Liam looks down at the rose, twisting it in his fingers. It looks dumb in his big man-hands, he thinks. After awhile he gets up and goes to his bunk to… put it away? It isn’t as if they have vases handy on the bus. He sets the rose on his pillow and then looks at it, frowns. He moves it to the foot of the bed, next to a dirty hoodie and one of Louis’s snapbacks.
Liam rolls his eyes at himself. He makes sure to close the curtain before he walks away.
Liam’s dozing on a couch backstage, halfway between awake and asleep when he feels someone over him and then lips against his forehead.
He blinks awake. He’s gotten good at sleeping anywhere, so he can sleep even under these fluorescent lights beating down on him, but he’s always quick to wake now too. He squints into the lights now while Harry settles himself onto the coffee table, smiling down at him.
“Sorry to wake you,” he says, and Liam yawns, stretching his arms wide.
“S’okay,” he mumbles, his mouth feeling cottony and slow. “What’ve you gotten up to?”
Harry grins wide, holding his phone up, too close to Liam’s face. “Look what me and Niall made,” he says, and a video pops up, shots of Niall backstage, cutting quickly from scene to scene. Liam squints and tries to follow along.
“Cool,” Liam says. “He disappeared.”
Harry looks appeased and he tucks his phone back into his pocket. “You all right?” he asks. He slides down the table and before Liam can ask what he’s doing, he’s got Liam’s foot in his hands, gently prodding the bottoms. “You want a foot rub?”
Liam gives him a look because Harry’s never given him a foot rub before; he’s never wanted Harry to. He doesn’t particularly like touching his own feet, much less having someone else doing it. He flexes his foot, trying to pull it away, but Harry holds on.
“Harry, come on,” he says, sitting up a little and jerking his leg until he gets free, tucking his feet between the cushions. He thinks it’s a game, thinks Harry is trying to bother him a little, the way he always has, but when he looks up at Harry’s face his eyebrows are creased with a frown.
Liam is lost. “Sorry,” he says awkwardly. “I just, I… I’m ticklish.”
Harry’s face doesn’t clear. “I’m just trying to be nice,” he mutters, and Liam doesn’t know what to say to that.
“Be nice and hug me,” he settles on, and Harry sends him one more furrowed brow before he flings himself on top of Liam, settling his long limbs over Liam’s. Liam pets his back soothingly.
“Hotel night tonight,” Harry says into his neck. “You know what that means.”
He hopes it means room service and morning blowjobs, but you never can tell with Harry. He doesn’t say that though, just hums into Harry’s hair and closes his eyes.
After the show Harry gets on Lou’s bus. “Sex and the City marathon, Liam,” Lou says when she brushes past, like it’s obvious, and Harry nods seriously, trailing behind her.
“Charlotte’s gone and married a man who can’t get it up,” he says. “Have to see what happens.”
“Of course,” Liam says, and accepts the kiss Harry drops on his cheek as he boards the other bus.
With Harry otherwise occupied Liam settles on Zayn to entertain him, and they end up having a FIFA tourney in the back room.
“You suck,” Zayn says as Liam’s goalkeeper pushes his shot up over the crossbar. “You suck, you suck, you-“
He cuts off as Liam’s striker takes the goal kick and breaks away, scoring easily to put Liam up one.
“Suck?” Liam supplies, grinning broadly. Zayn mutters something unintelligible.
Liam’s phone buzzes where it’s balanced on his chest as he lays on the floor.
“Bathroom,” Zayn says, pausing the game and trailing smoke out the room behind him. Liam unlocks his phone and glances at his messages. Harry’s sent, “I miss you xx” and a little heart picture and a kissing emoji face.
Liam frowns at the screen. His first instinct is to send back, “You just saw me an hour ago you git,” but he’s remembering Harry’s face when he tried to rub Liam’s feet, and the shy smile when he handed Liam that rose, now dying somewhere squashed between Liam’s mattress and the wall.
So he sends back a tempura prawn emoji, because it’s Harry’s favorite, and frowns at his screen some more.
“What’s wrong?” Zayn asks, coming back into the room. “You look confused. More than normal.”
Liam sets his phone to the side carefully and picks up his controller. Zayn unpauses the game because he knows Liam will talk when he wants to, because he knows Liam.
The thing is that Liam has to be careful now, more than ever before. He has literally everything to lose if he messes this up, and his instinct is to keep his mouth shut and let things unravel as they will, but then.
But then it’s Zayn, and Zayn won’t let him ruin their lives, that’s what he’s there for.
“You think Harry’s been weird lately?” he asks, and tries to keep his voice nonchalant.
"I always think Harry's weird," Zayn says, which Liam should have expected.
"More than usual," he clarifies.
“Besides sleeping with you?” Zayn asks. “No.”
Liam frowns and makes his centerback tackle Zayn’s striker. He gets a yellow card but it’s worth it. “Sleeping with me isn’t weird.”
“Are you offering?” and Liam isn’t looking at him, but he can feel Zayn waggling his eyebrows.
“No,” Liam says. “Fuck off. We’re talking about Harry.”
Zayn laughs and scores from a free kick onscreen. Liam’s life has gone downhill drastically in the last two minutes.
“All right,” Zayn says, once they’ve lined up and kicked off at center circle. “How’s Harry being weird? I thought things were going good.”
Liam grunts. “No, it is. It’s good. He just being, like. Like he brought me a rose, and he texted me that he missed me like six seconds after we left.”
Zayn shouts as Liam’s centerback takes him out again, “Red card, that is a fucking red card!” and Liam grins as the ref only gives a free kick.
“This is a sham,” Zayn mumbles. “You’re a dirty cheat.”
“I don’t control the game,” Liam reminds him, but he’s anxious for Zayn to get to the advising.
Zayn’s freekick goes over the bar and they quiet back down.
“Anyway,” he says. “It sounds like Harry’s being pretty disgusting, but like, sweet. I don’t get the problem.”
“It’s not a problem,” Liam rushes to say. “It’s just… it’s not… it isn’t us.”
Zayn’s quiet for a long moment. “Was that a pun on the movie?” he asks finally, sounding equal parts revolted and impressed.
“Unintentional,” Liam says. He pauses the game and rubs his hands over his face. When he opens his eyes again Zayn is looking at him worriedly.
“You guys are going to be okay though, right?” he asks slowly. “Like, you wouldn’t dump him for being a sap.”
Liam almost laughs, because dumping Harry is literally a thought that has never entered his mind. “Zayn, no,” he says. Zayn looks unsure and unsettled and he’s making Liam feel the same, even though Liam knows. “Zayn,” he says, and his mouth is forming the words before he can properly think them, “Zayn, I love him, you know.”
Zayn’s face goes soft then, slackening. “Oh,” he says, quiet. He sets his controller down, the game forgotten on the screen, and turns on to his side. Liam mirrors him so they’re facing each other, laying on the floor.
“I didn’t know it was like that just yet,” Zayn says.
“I haven’t said it before,” Liam tells him, and his eyebrows go up.
“Not even to Harry?” he asks.
Liam shrugs. He pulls his hands into the sleeves of his hoodie, suddenly embarrassed, like Harry somehow knows this conversation is happening. And really, what’s a rose here and there when Liam is throwing around words like love?
“Bit soon I reckon,” he mutters.
Zayn’s face goes considering. “It has been three years,” he says, and Liam smiles because he’s being kind.
“Speaking of saps,” he says, and he taps Zayn’s nose. Liam’s phone buzzes again behind him, and he twists back to get it.
“Let me guess,” Zayn says, pressing up against his back, straining to see the screen. “He says he misses your musk. He can’t wait to see your big brown eyes again. He dreamt of you in the rain.”
Liam laughs and shoves Zayn away, although somewhere in the pit of his stomach he is a little worried Zayn isn’t far off. But Harry’s message just says, “Beat you to the hotel! Room 454. Text me when ur downstairs.”
“K,” Liam texts back, and he adds, “if ur getting room service I want a burger.” He thinks a bit longer and then he puts a “xx” at the end. He can be sweet, too.
Los Angeles is their last stop before they’re back to London, the end of the American tour, and Liam can’t help but be relieved when they pull in front of the hotel. A few weeks of doing his own laundry and having more than 4 tops to choose from will be a downright luxury, and that’s not even considering having his own bed. He’s loved the tour but he’s run ragged and bone tired, and he’s glad he only has to drag himself through one more hotel, one more city before he can rest.
He texts Harry from the lobby, “coming upppp,” but Louis distracts him for a few minutes, sending snapchats to his friends back home.
When he gets in the room, Harry’s bag is open in the corner but he’s not in sight. The bathroom door is closed, though, and Liam can see light from underneath the door, so he grabs his iPod out of his bag, plugs it into his speakers, turns on Magna Carta Holy Grail and digs for something reasonably clean to sleep in.
Liam doesn’t notice when the bathroom door opens, but he does when Harry turns his iPod off. By the time Liam turns around, Harry’s replacing it with his own, leaning down to peer at the screen.
Liam stares at him incredulously. “I was listening to that,” he says when Harry doesn’t pay him any attention.
“Sorry,” Harry says, not sounding sorry at all, and he finds what he’s looking for and straightens. Something soft and slow starts playing; Liam thinks he’s heard his mom listen to something like it before, in the car.
“Is this Enya?” he asks. “What are you doing?”
Harry frowns at him, but he recovers quickly enough, moving to Liam with his hand out. He kisses Liam, lingering a bit but not enough, and then pulls him toward the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” Liam asks again, but he lets himself be pulled until Harry pushes the door open and reveals… something. The bathtub is full of bubbles and surrounded by candles, and the room sort of smells like Liam’s grandmother.
“Um,” Liam says. He looks to Harry for an answer, but Harry just grins at him, looking absolutely thrilled.
Liam drops Harry’s hand and steps further into the bathroom. All he sees are more candles and some flower petals. “What… is this?” he asks hesitantly, turning to where Harry is standing in the doorway.
“It’s a bath,” he says, looking at it and frowning, like maybe he isn’t sure anymore. “It’s romantic.”
“It’s for me?” Liam asks. He hasn’t had a bath in years; he doesn’t particularly relish the thought of soaking in his own dirt.
“For us,” Harry says, and Liam’s gone and made him make that sad face again, but Liam doesn’t know how to do this; what he really wants to do tonight is strip down to his pants, and order two plates of chips even though he knows Harry will only eat off his plate anyway, and watch Sportscenter and argue with Harry about American football even though Liam doesn’t know shit about American football, and then fuck until they fall asleep. But this bath and Harry’s face are telling him that none of those things are going to happen, because apparently Liam bumbling around a few days ago and telling Harry “I think I want to date you and not date anyone else” had broken Harry in some incomprehensible way.
“You don’t like it,” Harry says, and Liam realizes his face must look terrible right now, annoyed and confused and tired and overwhelmed.
“I,” Liam says, because he doesn’t want to lie, but he doesn’t know how to tell the truth.
“No, it’s okay.” Harry walks over to the bath, plunges his arm in even though he’s wearing long sleeves, and pulls the plug. He blows out the candles around him, keeping his eyes down, and Harry does this, he keeps people at arm’s length and pushes them away, not because he's cold but because he likes to be in control of how people think of him, and when, and to what extent, but he's never had to worry about that with Liam.
“Harry, I just,” Liam says.
“It’s fine,” Harry says. He even smiles a little. It would be comical, because he’s got one wet sleeve with bubbles and flower petals clinging to it, but it isn’t comical, it’s horrible, and why couldn’t Liam have just pretended?
Harry blows out the last of the candles and then he shucks his shirt, dropping it into the emptying tub.
“I’m gonna go see if Nialler wants to watch a movie,” he calls, stalking back into the room too quickly. Liam moves to the doorway, watches him rifle through his bag and pick out a new shirt. He doesn’t look up until he has to walk by Liam to get to the door out. His face is flushed and his hair wild around it.
“I’m sorry,” Liam says, wanting to make him stay, but his hand is already on the doorknob.
Harry turns away. “Nothing to be sorry for,” he says, and the door clicks shut behind him almost before he's done speaking.
He’s dozing on the couch again, and someone’s above him. Instead of a kiss, though, this time he gets a hard poke in the cheek.
Liam opens his eyes. Zayn is glaring at him, considerably less fond than Harry just a day before.
“You said you were going to be fine,” Zayn hisses.
Liam blinks into the lights and turns over, pushing his face into the cushions. He groans and wishes he didn’t know what Zayn was talking about, but he does. He hasn’t seen Harry all day; he never came back to the room last night and sent his security guard to take his bag to Lou’s bus.
Zayn’s staring at him, waiting for an answer. “I said I wasn’t going to dump him for being a sap,” Liam says in response. “I didn’t say he wouldn’t dump me for… not.”
Zayn blinks at him. “He dumped you?” he asks finally, and Liam has to close his eyes because he doesn’t know, but it seems that way.
He hears Zayn sigh after a moment, and Zayn runs his hand through Liam’s hair.
“Sometimes you have to use your words,” Zayn reminds him, gentle. Liam takes a deep breath.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll talk to him.”
Liam doesn’t talk to him. He tries, but he can’t find Harry before the show. So he waits by the door to Lou’s bus after, because obviously that’s where Harry will be to go back to the hotel so he can avoid Liam some more, but when Lou comes out she’s alone.
She looks up at his warily. “I don’t want to be in the middle of this,” she says warningly. Liam shakes his head impatiently.
“You’re not,” he says. “Where is he?”
“He’s not here,” she says, and she looks sad. Liam doesn’t understand.
“He took a car straight to the airport, love,” she tells him, inching past him to get on the bus. “He got a flight back to London tonight.”
Liam’s heart drops. Harry’s so insufferable, he thinks, so sensitive and stubborn and reactive. And god, how Liam loves him.
Harry’s not at his flat in London, but Liam didn’t really expect him to be. He makes his way through Primrose Hill, and luckily he’s been to a party at Nick’s once or twice, so he knows where to go. Unlike Los Angeles, London is grey and drizzily, but it gives Liam an idea on the walk over, something Harry just might like.
Liam rings the intercom at the gate outside Nick’s. “’lo?” comes his loud voice a moment later.
Liam tries to duck under the small brick overhang, to get out of the rain a bit. “Nick, it’s Liam,” he calls. “Liam Payne,” he adds after a moment.
“Oi, Liam,” Nick’s voice comes again, tinny through the speaker. He’s even louder now, and Liam expects that’s for Harry’s benefit. “Don’t suppose you’ve come to collect a pop star.”
Liam feels momentarily proud that he was right about exactly where Harry would be. “Something like that,” Liam says. “Could you send him out, mate?”
“Send him out?” Nick asks, sounding amused. “In this weather?” Liam hears a low rumble in the background and he knows that’s Harry, strains to hear his voice, but the microphone cuts out.
“Yes, please,” Liam says.
Nick buzzes back in, but the first thing the microphone picks up is Harry’s low voice, saying, “Why should I go out so he can reject my love some more?” And then Nick again, but hushed, saying, “Go put a coat on, love, and shut up.”
“Sorry, Liam,” he says, back to full volume. “Be with you in a mo’.”
Liam presses the button again. “Did you give him red wine?” he asks, because he knows that specific lilt to Harry’s voice. “You know it makes him melancholic.” Liam makes a mental note to tell Zayn he used his word, and he’s pretty sure it was even the right context. There's no reply from inside, so Liam hunkers down and waits.
Through the gate Liam sees when door opens, sees a disembodied forearm shoving Harry out into the rain, dressed in an oversized sweater and stumbling down the stairs in those hideous, peeling at the seams boots that he loves so much.
Harry comes to the gate, obviously trying to school his face into disinterest but landing somewhere closer to misery or maybe nauseousness. Liam gets it suddenly, Harry's dumb texts about missing him, because he's just seen Harry less than 24 hours ago, last touched him 2 days ago, and he's standing right there but Liam misses him anyway.
Liam grips the iron gate, leaning into it when Harry stops just out of reach. The rain is coming down harder, flattening Harry's hair down across his forehead, like he used to wear it before, making him look young and lovely the way he did when Liam first met him.
"Do you want to take a bath?" Liam asks helplessly, forgetting everything he planned to say on the way over. "I'm going to be honest with you, I think it's a bit gross, but if you want to take a bath I'll take a bath. I'll take two, every day. Is that what you want?"
Harry's brow furrows, and he takes an unsure step closer, close enough that Liam could touch him. He keeps hanging on to the iron bars instead. "I don't care about baths, Liam."
Liam leans back in frustration, stretching out his arms, because he doesn't know what this is about. "So neither of us care about baths," he says. "Great. Okay. So what is the problem?"
"What's your problem?" Harry asks, and it's less harsh and more inquisitive, like he genuinely wants to know.
Liam shrugs. He wishes the gate was open, wishes he were dry and warm, wishes things were back the way they used to be a week ago. He wipes his hand over his face, pushing the water out of his eyes.
"I don't know," he says honestly. "I thought we were fine, and then... we weren't." He drags a hand through his hair, slicking the water out, and maybe he didn't think through this making-up-in-the-rain scenario all the way.
Harry blinks, water dripping from his eyelashes. "You said you wanted to be, like, boyfriends, yeah?"
Liam shrugs, awkward. He had said that, or something to that effect, but the word still sounds too formal for them - or maybe the opposite, like it's not enough to encompass what Harry is to him, what he wants to be to Harry.
"Yeah," he says. "I mean, I do want that."
Harry steps closer again, hooking his hands around the iron gate above Liam's and blinking against the rain. "So I was just trying to be a good boyfriend. Like how you deserve."
Liam takes a chance, moves his hands up so his pointer fingers cover Harry's pinkies, cold and wet as they are, and Harry doesn't move away.
He shakes his head. "But you were fine before," he says. "You were perfect. I just wanted to stay as us, but like. Exclusively."
Harry's frown deepens, but he leans closer still, his chest against the metal bars. "So you're not rejecting my love?" he ventures.
Liam laughs then, moving to curl his whole hand around Harry's, tipping his head back and letting the rain hit his face. "I'm not rejecting your love, Harry. I'm only rejecting baths and foot rubs."
It's slow, but Harry's face turns into a soft smile, the kind of new and different that Liam likes. Harry pushes his face between the bars. "Kiss me now, you unromantic idiot."
"I'm not," Liam protests, but he does kiss Harry, lips cold and wet and familiar.
He pulls away moments later, just enough to speak. "Look, Haz, we're kissing in the rain. That's romantic, right?"
Harry's got red marks on his face from the iron bars, and he pulls a face. Then he sneezes. "I'm going to catch cold," he says. "Leave the romance to me, please."
Liam laughs, squeezing Harry's hands beneath his. "Gladly," he says.
Harry grins. "Wanna come in and roll around in Nick's bed?"
And Liam's just relieved Harry isn't offering to undress him and dry him off and maybe sprinkle scented powders on him. "I'd love to," he says, and they do.