Work Text:
“To be honest, lads,” Louis starts, moving the mic away from her mouth so she can huff in a quick breath, “I think you’ll have to start carrying me around the stage before this tour’s over.”
Just the idea is enough to practically draw a swoon from her. There’s sweat on every part of her body that she can feel, making her top stick wet and uncomfortable against her back and the swell of her belly. The skin on her feet feels tight, the stage floor warm under her bare toes. Liam puts a hand on her shoulder when he leans in to whisper, “water?”, and Louis nods in his direction thankfully, trying to mop the sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist.
“They’ve got those things,” Niall says, gesturing extravagantly with his free hand, “things for queens to be carried in on.”
“That’s fitting,” Zayn agrees. The ones in the crowd following the exchange yell a little louder, a quiet, roaring aww filtering past her in-ears, and Louis rolls her eyes.
“I don’t feel confident that all four of you would put in equal effort,” she says. “I’ll get Liam to cart me around.”
“No more piggybacks,” Zayn warns, pointing first to Louis and then to Liam coming up behind her, three bottles of water and his mic between his two hands.
Leaning down to talk into his mic while he walks into Louis’ space, offering her a bottle, Liam promises, “No more piggybacks.”
“No piggybacks,” Louis says, dismissively, holding her unopened water bottle against her forehead for the cold. “Everytime I try that now I get an elbow to the kidneys.”
“Not my elbow,” Liam clarifies, a giggle erupting at the end of the sentence when he tries to pour water from the third bottle down the back of Harry’s jeans.
“Shall we get a move on, then, lads?” Louis asks. It’s futile, she’ll admit, but at the beginning of each show she hopes this one will last a little shorter to spare her poor ankles.
“Right, so,” Niall says, “if you’ve never been to one of our shows before, we’ve got a time where you all can send in your questions and we answer them right here, so if you’ll all just have a look at the screens now, please-”
“Oh, alright, okay,” Liam says. “‘Can any of you do a walking handstand?’”
“Like, just walking on your hands?” Zayn asks.
“Are you serious? Could you not have asked that around 8 months ago, @sophiiex98?” Louis groans. “I was wicked at that.”
Niall laughs suddenly, loud and directly into his mic. “You were not. You were absolute rubbish.”
“Don’t contradict me, Niall,” Louis sighs. She rubs an absent hand over her belly, prodding at a spot where the baby’s knee is digging into some vital internal organs.
“I’ve been practicing, though,” Harry announces. Liam is already rubbing his hands together and hopping a little in place, warming up.
Zayn wanders over to Louis, sliding his hand from her elbow down to her wrist. “I’m gonna judge with Louis.” Mouth away from his mic, he asks, “Alright?”
“Kid’s killing me,” she mumbles back honestly. Zayn skims his knuckles along Louis’ fingers and against her stomach, and the baby jerks, nearly like it knows he’s there. It’s sharp and sudden and it hurts, but Louis still has to laugh a little. “Think it knows its Dad, though.”
Zayn’s resulting grin is enough to make Louis want to kiss him, the corners of his mouth stretching so wide that she can see a tiny glint of teeth behind his lips. It’s harder to keep her hands to herself in public with each day that passes; being so close to term is making her broody, ready to hole up with Zayn in her house or his (or maybe make one of them theirs, officially). “Nesting” instincts, her mum told her, natural and incredibly helpful if they kick in at the right time. She swears she never would’ve gotten the house ready for the twins if she hadn’t been in nesting mode for near a month before the delivery.
They completely miss Niall and Harry’s attempts at hand-walking. Zayn winds his arm around Louis’ waist and turns just in time to catch the tail end of Liam’s third “step” taken before his elbows give out. “I’m gonna have to say that Niall definitely won that,” Zayn says.
“Actually, Zayn, I’m going to have to disagree. That’s a solid point for Harold coming from me,” Louis announces. She wraps an arm around her middle and stretches her fingers until she can touch the tips of Zayn’s that are resting against her ribs.
Disappointingly, Liam just pulls himself up and shrugs hugely while the others battle it out via rock, paper, scissors; Niall wins in the end, holding the sole title of best hand-walker.
“Now that that’s settled, let’s have the next question, please,” Louis says. The screen flickers and lights up again, and she reads; “‘What’s the one thing you can’t live without?’”
“Just one thing,” Harry starts, like he’s thinking, “are the essentials already covered, food and water?”
“I would imagine so,” Liam says.
“What’re you thinking, Zayn? What one thing can you not live without?” She turns slightly to face him with a patient expression, mic held out to touch his bottom lip.
“You,” Zayn replies, so simply and surely that Louis just stares. “Both of you, I reckon.”
The wall of screams that hits them is deafening, the noise supplemented by the boys joining along with their amplified voices. Louis struggles against the tightening of her throat, stretching her fingers further to twist them into Zayn’s.
“You gotta hug it out after that,” Niall goads.
“Also, technically, not even a cheating answer,” Harry says.
Louis side-steps closer to Zayn, tilting her head in to press the side of her face against his sweaty neck. Zayn kisses her temple and rubs his hand up and down her side a few times, and she takes a deep breath, mustering up as much annoyance as she can to inject into her voice. “Don’t you dare say soppy fucking things to me, don’t ever try to make me cry in front of this many people.”
When Louis pulls away, Zayn smiles at her, amused and affectionate. Louis doesn’t realize she hasn’t answered any part of the final set of questions until afterward, when they’re launching into a song and she’s still touching the spot where their baby kicked, right underneath Zayn’s fingers.