Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

September, 2025

It’s done! The beast is finished.

(This is the place to scroll on to Chapter One if you’re not in the mood for my ramblings about what made this fic happen.)

When I started this journey in 2023, I was only seven months into fic reading—thirteen years in the fandom, and not once had I touched a fic. I love literature, I’ve studied literature, but real people fanfiction always felt too invasive, too close to home I guess, especially given the parasocial bond I’ve had with these five boys since day one, (it’s worrisome, really).

Then came November 2022: a broken arm (so much for ‘parasocial bond’), surgery, a hospital stay, and unreliable WiFi. The universe has a dark sense of humour.

What shall I say, one click led to another, and I tumbled down an ao3 rabbit hole I’ll never be able to climb back out of. I binged for hours, weeks—whom am I kidding? Months!

I found works that eclipsed much of my literature-studies reading list, works that ruined me and put me back together, and fics that healed things I didn’t know where broken. And somewhere along the way, I felt the need to give something back to this amazing community. That’s how this “little journey” began.

On Sunday, May 21st, 2023 I created a doc called fic2.

On May 22nd I renamed it Good Grief.

That these words are written 28 months after starting and the stats of my Scrivener look like this



—is just another joke of the universe.

The idea for this plot was born while navigating my own upheavals. Losses I couldn’t escape, changes I couldn’t undo.

I learned the hard way that death is a part of life as much as love is. Though we celebrate one, the other is being pushed aside, outsourced to hospitals, hospices—basically anywhere but close to us. What we don't see, doesn't exist.

Yet, it does exist. Painfully so.

I’m not gonna lie, I thought I understood grief. In less than three years, I lost five of my closest and most beloved people, and then three more followed soon after. So when I started to write this rollercoaster, I believed myself more than well-versed in the gut-wrenching truth that no matter the level of grief you’re subjected to, your own life goes on, whether you like it or not.

From the start, this story was meant to portray how loss, grief, love, and laughter go hand in hand. Because if I’ve learned one thing, both from research and from experience, it’s that discussing the hard topics in advance can and does ease the unimaginable pain when grief inevitably hits.

Never in a million years, though, had I thought that I'd be mourning the loss of one of the boys during this process.

Yet here I am.

On October 16th, 2024, Mister Liam Payne tragically passed away.

At that time I was 346,559 words into this story. A story about Louis losing his best friend.

And nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for it.

It broke me. More than I will ever let someone know.

I am not a superstitious person in any way. But the little evil voice in the back of my head, whispering, “You’ve called it” is something I will have to live with for the rest of my days.

Finishing this story was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. For multiple reasons.

I struggled. A lot. Still do.

Friendships were formed over this, friendships were dampened over this.

But in the end I owed it to myself, to my betas, to the fic fandom that has given me so much over the past three years, and last but not least to Liam to push through this beast.

To grieve is to honour the memories we’ve created with someone while we grapple with their absence.

This is me honouring 15 years of memories.

This is me honouring one special night in a hotel bar, where I still don’t know who needed the talk more—you or I.

I wish my words had had the same impact on you as yours had on me.

Sometimes life even fucks up pinky promises.

This is me grappling with your absence.

RIP Liam

Until we meet again.

xxx

❤️

“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”

George Bernard Shaw.

So, have that laugh, have that cry, have that laugh while you cry or have that cry while you laugh, but never cease to make the best out the time you have, because we’re all just arguing about our timescale given.

My special thanks goes out to the dearest Hands And Knees For Two Days Straight squat. Without you girls, I’d probably still be stuck somewhere around chapter 10.

Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for your support. Thank you for being the OT4 I needed to push through.

I will never be able to repay you.

Please know that you’ll always be in my heart.

❤️💛🧡💚💙

Disclaimer:

This product contains traces of life and death and everything that can happen in between.

There’s swearing, sarcasm, banter, smut, an attempted assault and a very happy ending.

Nothing in this story is so graphic that an average emotionally stable adult couldn’t cope with it.

To what extend you consider yourself emotionally stable is not up to the author to decide.

By continuing to read, you agree not to come at the author for personal issues that might, respectfully, be better discussed with a therapist. So take care of yourself, my friend.

Several studies (e.g., Jones et al., 2020; Bellet et al., 2018) suggest that trigger warnings do not reduce immediate distress when exposed to potentially upsetting content. They also don’t tend to prevent people from engaging with the material, but they might increase anxiety by emphasising the potential for harm, and may unintentionally reinforce avoidance behaviours.

I don’t intend to increase your anxiety. That’s why you won’t find special warnings for potentially upsetting scenes, none of them are very graphic either way. What I can promise is this: everything you’re about to read has been written with intention, balanced by humour, sarcasm, and a thoroughly considered healing arc for every single character.

There are a couple of sentences that, with the knowledge of today, I’d probably write differently. But at the time they were written with intent, so I decided to leave them in. As a wise man has engraved on his chest: it is what it is. 

AI was used to scavenge commas, spelling variants, and Louis’ bloody possessive “s” to spare my betas from having to correct the same shit over and over again. Other than that: every simile, triad, and em-dash is mine. I refuse to let chatGPT ruin 30 years of proper use of punctuation in English.

If you still think something sounds AI-ish, blame my non-native autistic arse for picking it up in way too many AI written fics and student essays. It’s a pestilence I can’t seem to escape.

Let’s just face it: we’re all doomed to live with this plague we feed ourselves anyway by now.

There will be links to pictures or songs in this fic. If you don’t want to disrupt your reading flow by clicking on them here’s the link to the masterpost where I will add additional visuals or audios as we go. 

Now, have fun, and please don’t be shy about letting me know what you think of this “little” story.

All the love

Faith

Chapter One 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Louis yelped and darted toward the spinning witches’ hat carousel at the far end of the playground. Two primary school kids had wound it up so tightly that, the moment they let go, it whipped into a dizzying blur, catapulting a little girl who had climbed onto it straight toward the trees lining the park.

“Jesus Christ,” he gasped, catching her mid-air just in time. The impact knocked the breath out of him, but he managed to steady them both. “That was a close call! Are you okay, love?”

He looked down at the blonde bundle dressed in faint rose in his arms. She couldn’t have been older than three, and now clung to his chest, too shocked to even breathe.

“AVA!” A female voice cried out frantically as Louis gently inspected her for harm. Her tiny hands clutched his jacket, her face buried in his shoulder, trembling but unhurt.

“Christ, Ava,” the woman gasped, rushing to his side. Strangely, she didn’t reach for her daughter but instead placed a hand on Louis’ arm. Louis resisted the urge to pull away.

“Thank you—thank you so much! Are you alright, darling?” she said, finally glancing at the little girl, but instantly back at Louis not even waiting for an answer. “Gosh, I was only distracted for a split second and when I looked up, she was gone and you were already sprinting to fetch her,” she added, batting her fake eyelashes.

Louis bit back a scoff. Split second, my arse. The group of four mums—all looking exactly the same with their long, flat-ironed blond hair, meticulously plucked brows, and matching wardrobes in fifty shades of mumfluencer beige—had barely moved since he’d arrived at the playground with Milly and Ruby nearly forty-five minutes ago. The biggest effort they’d shown during the past hour was to snap the “cutest” totally-not-staged Instagram shots of their wunderkinds. The rest of the time, they’d been side-eyeing other people, whispering, and passing judgement, all while their unattended offspring trampled over sandcastles, buckets, and spades.

God, did he despise these pretentious, social media mum snobs.

“Yeah, happens to the best,” he said, tone polite but edged with sarcasm that sailed right over her head. “Mind if I hand you your daughter back now?”

“Oh! Yes, of course,” she stammered, hastily taking Ava into her arms. She gave the girl a quick once-over before promptly setting her back down.

“Caroline,” she said, thrusting her hand out, and stepping even closer. Too close. Louis flinched, instinctively leaning back. There really wasn’t much that irritated him more than people invading his personal space.

Caroline’s gaze swept over him, starting at his face and sliding down the length of his body before settling somewhere around his collarbone. He cringed but forced himself to stay composed.

He hadn’t even planned on being here. One minute he was shaking hands over a multi-million-pound software deal, the next he was sprinting across the playground in Brioni. Or was it Prada? Who cared. Okay, his sisters cared since most likely it had been one of them who made him buy it.

Anyway. All it took to get here was one call from Gladys. “I’m not feeling great, sweetheart. Could you pick up the girls?” She had said, and no, he couldn’t.

He was supposed to have lunch with a bunch of other suits, celebrating their merger. But of course he did; just like every other day since Ben was in hospital. Again.

It wasn’t even a question anymore. Ben was his best mate, the girls were Louis’ godchildren, and the only ones holding their little universe together since the diagnosis were his Nan and Gladys—Ben’s mum.

So, of course he said yes, and didn’t even swing by home to change.

Now, he was the utterly overdressed weirdo sweating through his way too expensive navy suit and white shirt on this May 3rd. At least he’d had the decency to get rid of the matching tie.

Although, throwing a quick glance to Caroline, he wasn’t sure the open top two buttons were working in his favour right now. He felt like a piece of prey under the glare of a mating-ambitious bird.

Louis ran a hand through his hair. Christ. How had he gone from boardrooms to babysitting in a single breath? Again.

He rubbed the back of his neck and tried not to think about how much easier it used to be.

Ben had always been the sturdy one. A walking dad joke in human form even when he didn’t have children yet. Unshakeable, gentle, deeply uncool in the best way. Louis had never needed to step up like this, not full-time. He was the one who could happily lose eighteen hours a day in his office if it meant everyone he loved never had to worry about money, bills, or broken boilers. That was how he showed up—by making sure no one else had to panic. But now the panic had moved in anyway.

Since the diagnosis, everything had cracked open. And no matter how many zeroes Tomcare Solutions racked up each quarter…there was no way of buying a way out.

First came the chemo, then the surgeries, and now this endless hospital stay that had stretched into its fourth week.

Louis didn’t like to think about how pale Ben looked last time they facetimed. Or how small the girls seemed when they asked when Daddy would come home. He just didn’t know.

He wasn’t good at this stuff. He was a loner. And perfectly happy as such. He’d always only thought of himself as the backup. The godparent. The extra. But lately, it felt less like standing in and more like juggling the whole thing, which was okay, because—well, he loved those silly little buggers. And still, between Ben’s treatment, Gladys’ dodgy health post-stroke, and two nearly-three-year-olds who could destroy a living room in under twelve seconds, he was…coping. Sort of.

At least on paper, he still looked like a man who had his shit together—designer suit, smart watch, curated stubble. A proper professional. He’d built a whole business on that image. Knew exactly how to use it, too.

But standing here, shirt clinging to his back, collar wide open, brown brogues kicked aside to dig his feet into warm sand, it felt like wearing a costume from a different life. One he didn’t have time to put away before stepping into this one.

And judging by the way Caroline was eyeing him—like she’d just found a Daddy-shaped snack—he probably should’ve come in trackies.

She was still standing there, far too close for his liking, holding out her hand and not taking her eyes off him.

“Louis,” he answered finally, accepting her outstretched hand for a quick handshake, already ready to retreat. He turned to glance at Ruby and Milly, who were peacefully sitting in the sand, shoving their toy excavators and dump trucks from point A to point B, blissfully minding their own business.

“Nice to meet you, Louis,” she cooed. “I’ve seen you around a few times over the last couple of weeks. Your daughters are so lovely, totally different from this whirlwind. You can’t let her out of sight for a split second,” nodding to her daughter, who was now stumbling around the swings, dangerously close to a pair of kicking feet.

Louis inhaled sharply at the sight.

“Godchildren,” he said, his tone clipped, as the kid miraculously remained unscathed. “Just babysitting.”

“Oh, how lovely! That’s such a nice thing for you to do. Kids sure do seem to love you, judging by the way they cling to you,” she said somewhat smirking with a short look to her own daughter who was now trying to climb up the slide tower. “Not a single parent then?”

“Nope, not a single parent,” he replied, pressing his thumb into the palm of his hand to ease his discomfort.

Her smile broadened and she flicked her long blonde hair over her shoulder exposing her tanned collarbone under a light cream crocheted cardigan; her three friends were low-key side-eyeing them, pondering whether to come over or not.

“Oh, single godfather then?” she asked, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger. “I assume, as I’ve only seen you alone with the two darlings…”

Oh, for fuck’s sake, could you be more blunt, he thought when the ringtone of his phone saved him from answering.

“Sorry, gotta take this one,” he said, as he took a few steps aside and turned around before picking up.

“Hi, please tell me you’re in the neighbourhood. Code rainbow, Li, code rainbow!”

Liam snorted through the phone. “Tommo, again? I can’t keep saving your sorry arse every time yet another bird you won’t give the slightest chance throws herself at you, mate. You’ve seriously gotta learn how to ditch them on your own—or for the love of everything that’s holy, just let one pull you already! They can’t possibly all be shite. Anyways, where are you? I was heading back to the office but wasn’t sure if you’d still be there.”

“Pleeeeease, I’m at the park with the girls and the dumbfluencer mum-mafia is tackling me. It’s four of them! Four! It’s like throwing a piece of meat into a flock of vultures. Me being the meat! Damnit, Payno! She asked if I was a single-parent-slash-godfather twirling her stupid hair around her finger mere seconds after I prevented her daughter from smashing her head on a tree trunk! She didn’t even check on her. Grant her another five minutes and she’ll lasso me with her bra, forgetting she has a kid in the first place!”

A loud laugh bursted out of the speaker.

“Fine. I was already heading your way. Just parked at the coffee shop, give me a sec.”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me till you’re here! I’ll fire your arse!”

“Aww princess, be nice to your Wookie Bear if you want me to get you out of there with your pants still on.”

“I swear to God, Payno, don’t make me slap you!”

“Maybe I enjoy a well-placed—”

“OH, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND HURRY!” he hissed, throwing a glimpse at the four women that were still ogling him, obviously waiting for him to end his call.

“Darling, no swearing in front of the children,” Liam’s voice rang out from behind. Louis spun around just in time to see the exceptionally fit, brown-haired lad hop over the playground’s barrier giving Louis his biggest grin.

With a slight slap on Louis’ bum, he hung up the phone, let it slide into the back pocket of his black fitted suit trousers that really didn’t leave anything to the imagination and pecked Louis on his cheek.

“There you are WOOKIE BEAR!” Louis simpered loud enough for the dumbfluencers to hear.

“Hi pumpkin, missed you, how are my three favourite princesses?” Liam chirped, putting his muscled arm around Louis’ waist, and pulling him in close.

Dressed in a dark green polo insolently accentuating his brawny upper body, Louis had to admit that Liam was quite the sight, and he thanked God for the umpteenth time that Liam moved in next door at the age of five and ever since had been one of Louis’ best mates in the world. Still, he tensed at the physical contact and made a mental note to get him back later for calling him “princess” in public.

Liam’s arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed by Brandy, Mandy, Randy, and Sandy—or whatever their names were. The second Louis hung up, the pack of them began to approach again, their interest now doubled.

And Louis? Well, Louis’ momentary self-preservation mechanism was to start cooing. Totally not over-exaggeratedly of course. “I am sooo sorry for the interruption, please meet my partner Liam. I would gladly resume our little chat, Caroline, but unfortunately, Liam and I have a few things to discuss for our wedding in September,” and just because he could he then batted eyelashes on his turn, and maybe even threw the most cringeworthy love stare at Liam.

“Oh,” Brandy-Caroline stammered, “You’re engaged! That’s um, that’s wonderful, congratulations. A late summer wedding, how lovely. Nice to meet you Liam, your fiancé is quite the catch if I dare say so.” He threw a bit up in his mouth.”We were just…um,” she blushed, “We… I just wanted to thank him again for saving my daughter from flying off that hell of a spinner. He’s really got some amazing reflexes, so um yeah, thank you.”

“Oh, bless you, darling,” Liam purred. “He really is the absolute best. I guess all his football training didn’t just benefit this bum,” he winked and squeezed Louis’ right butt cheek.

Gonna staple a list of appropriate behaviour to your forehead first thing in the morning, bloody hell. And then knock you out with the goddamn stapler, Louis thought, biting his inner lip and grinning tightly. If he happened to pinch Liam’s waist just a bit too hard that was on pure accident.

“It sure didn’t,” Caroline chuckled, throwing yet another glance at Louis’ bottom. “Well, then I’ll no longer keep you lovebirds from your chat. It was a pleasure meeting you. Best wishes for the wedding and thanks again for the impeccable catch,” she pointed her head towards the toddler. “Bye then, see you around.”

Once she was out of earshot Louis snarled, “My bum? Seriously, Payno?”

“Hey, it is a good bum, don’t blame me!” he laughed. “So, is it just me or did I hear you say thanks for saving me YET AGAIN from major embarrassment and total incompetence in the flirting department, Liam, bestest friend in the whole wide world?”

“I’m not incompetent in the flirting department. I may have slight deficiencies in the dumping business, but really, how’s it my fault that I attract the shallowest of all out there? Besides, you’ve been working for me for 15 years and not once have I fired your drunk arse, you owe me.”

“Only because most of the time you’re too baked to even tell if I’m drunk or not. She was hot though, could totally have let her shag you for a change, she seemed quite fond of your dumping business,” he teased, making a beeline towards the two toddlers before Louis could hit him with the spade. “Hey, my lovely little sunshines, how are my two favourite girls? Wooow that’s some impressive building skills, did you dig that hole all on your own, or were you just helping Louis to dig himself one?”

“Limaaaa,” Ruby squeaked darting straight into Liam’s arms, “Look, I got piggy tails.” She pointed to her dark hair fixed in the smallest pigtails he’s ever seen. “Loulou did it,” she proudly smiled at him like he’d hung her the stars and started twirling.

“Wow, you look amazing, Sweetie, the best piggy tails I’ve ever seen on a two-year-old,” he patted her back and smiled. “And you, Milly, you didn’t want Louis to make you any piggy tails?”

The toddler shyly shook her head, not looking up, silently loading the dump truck with sand.

“She still refuses to speak?” he whispered towards Louis, raising an eyebrow.

Louis shrugged his shoulders, his lips pressed to a straight line. “Can’t blame her, can ya?”

“How is he? Have you been to the hospital yet?”

Louis faltered. “Li, you know I…” he stuttered, flinching back in horror.

“Yeah, mate I know,” Liam said compassionately. “It just sucks so much. Did Gladys say anything?”

“Not really, she just rang me up in the middle of the Commsmith meeting, asking me to pick up the girls from nursery because she wasn’t feeling too well. I didn’t dare ask,” he murmured. “Nan is taking them for the night. They really need to fix him soon.”

“Lou, you know he won’t...”

“They’re gonna fix him, Li, they will!”

“Mate.”

“Don’t ‘mate’ me, he’s gonna be fine! He always is.” He planted himself on the ground next to the toddlers and began to ram the little yellow plastic spade into the sand.

Liam sighed. Louis could feel his worried brown teddy bear eyes fixed on the back of his’ head, watching him stubbornly digging and broadening the girls’ construction site hole.

The situation with Ben was…tense. He and Louis had grown up practically like brothers. Ben’s mum, Gladys, and Louis’ Nan, Jen, had been inseparable since the dawn of time—just like Ben and Louis. Whether it was birthdays, Christmases, or random Tuesdays, the Burkes and Tomlinsons had been constants in each other’s lives. And once the Payne family moved in next door, they’d become part of the mix too. It was just…family.

That’s what made everything now so hard to bear.

“Is Gladys still refusing to go to a proper physiotherapy clinic?” Liam asked, letting sand run through his fingers.

“The only way she’d agree was if Nan came too. But good luck with that—every stroke rehab centre’s been jammed since the damn pandemic, and the NHS is still using it as an excuse for falling apart. Even if I managed to get them into a private place, there’s no way they’d go along with it while Ben’s still off track. You know how the old girls are—stubborn as hell.”

“Stubborn, huh? Oh, wouldn’t I know.” Liam smirked and nudged Louis’ side with the tip of his shoe.

“Shut up.”

Louis leaned back and watched Ruby collect pebbles to fill her truck. The fun fact with the Tomlinson-Burkes was that Ben’s mum was actually older than Louis’ Nan, yet Ben and Louis were the same age. It had always struck Louis as odd—like the Burkes had skipped a generation. And no, it was totally not because the Tomlinson women shot out babies like a confetti cannon at New Year’s, no matter what Ben said. Anyway. His Nan, at seventy, could still run circles around most people, but Gladys wasn’t as lucky. The strokes had slowed her down, and no matter how much she loved the twins, keeping up with two whirlwind toddlers while Ben got his treatment was too much, not that she would ever admit so.

Liam shuffled his feet through the sand, as he cleared his throat.

“Do you think we should maybe talk to him again about trying to find—“

Louis jerked around, staring at him in bewilderment. “Did someone hit you on the head, lad? Because if not, I’ll gladly offer,” he grunted, knowing perfectly well to whom Liam was alluding.

They fell silent, both knowing better than to push that train of thought. He glanced toward Ruby and Milly, still happily digging in the sand. Their mum hadn’t even lasted six hours after they were born.

As much as he’d like to romanticise their story, she basically was a hook-up on a drunken night at the pub and Ben didn’t know about the existence of the kids until the maternal ward of the Summerstone General Hospital had called to inform him that the mother of his children had taken off, leaving nothing but two newborns and a note containing his name, phone number and the sentence: “If their dad can’t take them, please find them a caring family.”

Louis could still remember the call. The stunned silence from Ben. The way he’d clutched the edge of Louis’ kitchen counter when the paternity test came back positive two days later and Ben had asked him to get his siblings’ car seats and drive him to the clinic, now!

The image of Ben holding two screaming newborns had stuck with Louis. Awkward arms cradling both girls at once, his expression a wild mix of fear and determination. “Guess I’m a dad, then,” he’d said, his voice cracking on the word “dad.”

But the truth was, Ben had already been fighting an uphill battle before the twins came along. The cancer diagnosis—Stage III colon cancer, the same shit that had taken his dad—had hit him like a freight train just six weeks earlier. He’d barely had time to process that blow when the phone call from the hospital came.

For the first six months it all went fine. Although Ben’s treatments were a constant rollercoaster, he turned out to be a real baby whisperer. On his not-so-well days, Gladys, Nan, and Louis helped out as much as they could and they made things work.

Month seven then brought the news that the cancer had spread. Two days later, Gladys had her first stroke. Ben had to stay in hospital more and more often. The new round of chemotherapy took its toll on him and with Gladys in recovery, the twins were shuffled from one set of hands to the next, passed between godparents, grandparents, nursery, and anyone who could step in when needed, mostly Louis though.

He had lost count of how many nights he’d spent at Ben’s, rocking one baby while trying to calm the other until either his Nan or Lottie, Louis’ eldest sister, came along in the morning picking them up for nursery and granting Louis another hour to go home and get ready for work. It was somehow working, but at a cost.

Which was why, when the house next to his went up for sale, Louis hadn’t hesitated to buy it, turning it into fully accessible flats, and moved his grandparents and Gladys in. He’d even made sure there was a flat for Ben, just in case.

Not that anyone ever dared say that out loud. Not Ben, and certainly not Louis.

They didn’t even need to because for a while things had seemed better. Ben’s third round of chemo had gone well, and he finally seemed stronger, more like himself again. The twins turned one, then two, two and a half, and Ben was fine.

Until, well, he wasn’t.

Louis sighed, glancing at Ruby and Milly. For now, they were happy, giggling in the sandpit. But lately, he couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was teetering on the edge. The twins deserved stability, but it felt like every time things started to settle, the ground shifted beneath them.

Because if he had learned one thing over time it was that when shit hit the fan in the Tomlinson and Burke households, it hit with a capital H.

“You okay? Want me to change the subject?” Liam’s voice cut through his thoughts, soft but steady.

Louis blinked, shaking off the heavy feeling in his chest and nodded.

“So, how did it go this morning?”

“What?”

“The Commsmith meeting.”

“Oh, yeah. Went smoothly. They signed without any further discussion. Guess that makes us the market leader now.”

“Whoop whoop” Liam blurted, “Tommo, I am so fucking proud of you, man. Look at you, Mister-Sassy-Pants-I-Failed-My-A-Levels-Twice-But-Conquered-The-World-On-My-Own. Who would have thought that teaching yourself programming to cheat at Sid Meier’s Civilization would get you to sunbathe at 3 o’clock on a workday, not giving two flying shits about your bloody 5k-suit being planted in a dirty old sandpit that strolling cats have most likely been using as a litter box since 1959.”

“Eww, Payno!!” he shouted, immediately turning towards the toddlers in the sand pit. “Girls, don’t put anything in your mouth that looks like truffles.”

“What’s toiffis?” Ruby giggled.

“Just don’t put anything in your mouth, Sweetie.” He raked the spade over the ground, relieved that the black pebbles were indeed just pebbles.

“So, pub tonight? Gotta proper celebrate my fiancé becoming one of the richest fuckers in town,” Liam teased with a blinding smile.

“Oh, fuck off!”

“Pub at seven?” Liam asked.

“It’s Wednesday.”

“And?”

“Friday’s pub night.”

“You’re 35 and own your own company, I think you won’t get into trouble for going to the pub twice in a week.”

Louis rolled his eyes. “Fine. Pub at seven.”

“Alright then. Gotta go, mate. My boss is quite a tit if I don’t figure out what to do with the 120 new people he acquired a few hours ago. Chief People & Operating Officer my arse, he should rename it Chief Herding Officer and pay me in tequila.” He grunted playfully, patting Louis on the back and taking a step back to plant little pecks on the heads of both girls.

“In your dreams,” Louis shot back. “You’d bankrupt us in a week. Juice packs it is, lad.”

Liam let out a loud laugh. “Bye Tommo, bye princesses.”

“Yeah right. Just leave me behind. A piece of prey for the vultures!” Louis frowned.

“You’re gonna be fine, sugar plum. I licked all over you, they don’t want you anymore. Rule no. 1 in the international vulture handbook: lick prey to call dibs.”

“Yuck, go already!” Louis waggled the spade, threatening to spank Liam’s rear.

“Bye, hun.”

“Bye...Hey, Payno. Thanks for being the close second bestest friend in the whole wide world.” Louis murmured, burying his toes in the sand, and strenuously trying to avoid looking up.

Liam grinned victoriously.

“Get your arse to the hospital to see him already. I mean it!” He blew Louis two kisses, hopped back over the barrier, and disappeared between parked cars.

Chapter Text

“Shit,” Harry muttered. The paper in his hand trembled as his eyes traced the bold letters in front of him: Benjamin Burke.

He blinked, staring at the name, then the birth date, and back to the name.

“Fucking hell.”

His stomach churned, and his grip tightened on the page. No, no. This couldn’t be. But fuck, the details…they lined up too perfectly.

Benjamin Burke, born Sept. 21st, 1991. There was literally no chance that there were two people running around sharing this name and the birth date.

Harry barely had time to process the sting behind his ribs, before his work phone buzzed in his pocket.

He glanced down. EMC meeting, 10 minutes.

“Of course,” he muttered bitterly. There was no time to think, not even time to breathe. Because honestly, there never was.

With a reluctant sigh, Harry shoved the paper into the file on his desk and grabbed his tablet. He was late. Again.

The hospital buildings stretched endlessly as he strode toward the meeting room on the other side of the site, his mind racing with too much all at once: the shortage of beds, the state of his ward, the never-ending admission requests piling up on his desk, and the suffocating knowledge that none of it would matter the second he sat down in that sterile boardroom.

Not even if one of those admissions was a former schoolmate.

And wasn’t that just the cherry on top?

Instead of actually working—actually helping patients—he had to attend yet another bloody Executive Management Committee meeting. Another couple of hours wasted listening to smug suits nodding along to William Selby’s monologues, as if a two-line text wouldn’t be enough to summarise the archaic bullshit that came out of that man.

God, he hated wasting time. He was a doctor, after all, a bloody good one at that. But becoming head of the palliative care department at thirty had come with a price.

Committees. Way too many fucking committees.

Harry still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but two years ago—probably for the lack of options at the time—he’d been made spokesperson of the Executive Quality Committee at Summerstone General hospital.

Now, every quarter, he got the dubious honour of reporting to the Executive Management Committee about what worked, what didn’t, and what desperately needed to be fixed.

He might as well have been reporting back to a cactus.

The thing was, the EMC was exactly how you’d expect a committee of one of the oldest and biggest hospitals in Manchester to be: a parade of grey suits, smug smirks, and patronising comments. Seventeen men, two token women, and him—the lone thirty-three-year-old gay in defiance of the monochrome dress code.

Did it make him stick out like Elmer the Patchwork Elephant? Absolutely.

Did he care? Not in the slightest.

But Selby did.

Selby—head of the EMC, absolute tosser, and all-around menace to hospital funding—had a particular habit of peppering meetings with homophobic slurs and patronising nicknames. Kid. Nancy. Sissy. Harry had heard them all. He’d also stopped reacting to them months ago, but that didn’t mean it grated any less.

The worst part though was that when William Selby spoke, the other eighteen members nodded in unison like a row of bobblehead dachshunds on the rear shelf of a 1985 Mercedes Benz.

Today was no different.

Harry wasn’t even sure if they’d heard him when he explained—again—that the palliative care ward needed modernising and at least five more beds. The space existed. The staff existed. He just needed the bloody funding to make it usable.

But no. Instead of listening and caring about the fact that they’d been forced to turn patients away for months now the bloody committee sat there, nodding along to Selby’s bullshit like it was gospel.

It wasn’t just frustrating—it was unbearable.

By the time the meeting finally ended, Harry was ready to throw axes.

He stepped out Building 26, fury bubbling hotter with every step. His irritation peaked as he crossed the patio and trudged through the dull, but perfectly renovated, grey hallway in Building 27, the identical sterile white doorways grating on his nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

By the time he reached the first floor of Building 28, he was a walking storm, slamming the door open and nearly taking Niall’s head off in the process—the Irish lad he’d called his best mate since year 12.

“Blimey, Styles!” the light brunet huffed, stumbling against the wall, projecting his tuna sandwich straight into the plastering, where it slowly slid down to finally scatter all over the floor. “Fucking hell, who shat in your Cheerios this morning? You’ve got a face like a smacked arse,” he added, staring at the angry red patches on Harry’s cheeks and neck, but Harry continued wordlessly trudging to his office, slamming the door shut.

“What the fuck was that?” Niall asked with a questioning look at the red-haired woman sticking her head out of the first door of the hallway.

“EMC meeting,” she shrugged. “Don’t you dare pick that up and put it in your mouth, Nialler,” she warned, nodding at the tuna mess on the wall.

“I’m not weary of life, have you seen this place?” he replied, shuddering before catching the kitchen roll she threw his way and wiping the sandwich mess away.

“Better go check on him, shouldn’t I?” he muttered, trying to aim for the dustbin but missing tragically, causing yet another mess.

“Thought you weren’t weary of life?” the red-haired chuckled.

“Wish me luck,” Niall muttered heading towards Harry’s office.

“Luck!” Annie shouted back as he knocked warily on Harry’s door.

“Go away!” Harry’s gravelly voice bellowed from the other side.

Niall entered anyway. The blinds were closed, and Harry lounged on his dark brown leather sofa, letting his long limbs dangle over the armrest, throwing a tennis ball to the opposite wall, and catching it again.

“What part of go away do I need to spell out?”

“The one where I’m your best friend, psychologist in this department, and morally and ethically bound to keep you happy to prevent my life from being shite. How was EMC?” He asked, sliding half of his bum onto the sideboard almost swiping two binders to the floor.

“Magical. It was a dream.”

“H, you could crack macadamias with those furrowed brows. What happened?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

Niall fumbled with the binders to prevent them from tipping over. “Do I need to get Zayn?”

“Ugh.” Harry hurled the ball against the wall, knocking off a picture frame and snorting in frustration.

“Stupid Selby happened. On the plus side he only called me Nancy once. On the negative side, we’re yet again not being granted more beds, let alone any form of funding to make this hellhole of a building bearable,” he growled.

Building 28 was one of the few remaining old ones on the renewed hospital site. Built as a mental asylum back in the 1840s, there were only two of the original, charming Victorian buildings left and they were far off the beaten track from all the other buildings. Fortunately for Harry, the department of palliative care was located in one of them. It was enchanting, but it was old and in desperate need of renovation. Costs that the EMC was not willing to face, especially not if it was Harry to ask, no matter how good of a job he and his team did or how high the demand was for more beds.

Niall had quietly moved over to the fridge and tossed him a can of lemonade.

“That bad, eh?”

“It’s like talking to walls. Ignorant, hypocritical, abrasive, dumb walls. Not that I seriously expected a different outcome, it’s just so utterly deflating.” He heaved a sigh and flicked the can open, taking a large sip. “The day was already shit when I came in this morning. Did you see the list of new admission requests? Two from gynaecology, two from respiratory, and one from gastroenterology. Not that it matters, we’re at full capacity anyway.” Harry’s frown morphed into something concern-like as he got up from the sofa, opened the blinds and ambled to his desk. A hush fell when he reached for a piece of paper from the department of gastroenterology and handed it over.

Niall held his hand out for it and took a look. “Colon cancer Stage IV, metastases in liver and lungs. Born in 1991? Jeez, only thirty-five?” he inhaled sharply.

Harry gnawed on his thumb. Crestfallen he murmured, “Look at the name”.

“Benjamin Burke?…Benjamin Burke…huh…wait a minute,” Niall gasped. “Oh fuck! Ben Burke?? As in Tomlinson-Burke Ben Burke?” His face lapsed into pure shock.

“Yep, as in Tomlinson-Burke Ben Burke,” Harry’s voice lightly trembled as he stood and stared out of the window.

“Fucking hell. That’s…wow…that’s… holy shit, that’s bad. Are you gonna have to turn him down?” He had put his own can of lemonade down on Harry’s desk and gazed at the paper in sheer disbelief.

“Of course I’m not gonna turn him down!!” He shoved a form into his upper drawer. “Don’t care if I need to put a bed in the hallway! Jesus, how could I turn him down?” He chugged his lemonade and crushed the can with his hand before looking at Niall. “You know he’s got a set of two-year-old twins?”

Niall ran his palm over his face. “Shit. No, I didn’t know that. Haven’t seen or heard from the guy since we left school. Bloody hell. You know the mum?”

“The mum is non-existent.”

“The mum is what??” Niall gasped, leaning half-heartedly back to the sideboard.

“Remember the one with the fake name that bunked off from the maternity ward some time ago? Was her.”

“Dear Lord. I… I… Bloody hell, I don’t know what to say.”

He ran his hand through his hair, eyes fixed on the paper, shaking his head.

“What about Tommo? Have you had the chance to talk to him since…?” he said, looking up to Harry, who was pressing his thumb to his lower lip, nibbling at the inside of his lips. “That lad must really have screwed up big time in a former life for Karma to mess with him like this. First his mum, then his sister, now his best mate…fuck.”

Harry tried his best to swallow the lump in his throat but failed miserably.

Harry couldn’t remember Ben Burke and Louis Tomlinson being anything other than attached at the hip. Harry was just about to turn fifteen when he moved to the suburbs of Manchester and started sixth form at Saint Dolores College in the middle of the school year.

Being the new kid was hard enough, but being the weird new kid—thanks to skipping both year two and year five making him the youngest sixth former in the history of the school—was a whole other ordeal. Weird new kid or not, Harry was quite impressed by the two older boys who had a way of charming their way out of any situation—or into one, depending on their mood. And to be fair, they got into plenty of situations.

There was the time they skipped every homework assignment for a term and somehow managed to talk their way out of detention. Or the time they broke into the school claiming one of them had “forgotten his asthma inhaler” (neither had ever shown the faintest sign of respiratory issues). But the pièce de résistance? The day they managed to dig out a frickin’ WWII hand-grenade with a mini excavator that a construction worker had left unattended with the keys in the ignition before heading to lunch break.

The whole school had to be evacuated for the rest of the day. It was equally disturbing as hilarious. Without thinking twice, one could easily say they were never up to any good, but they were highly entertaining. Loud, vivid, quick-witted, funny as hell and Harry secretly dreamt of befriending them. Well, maybe his dreams had become a tad more graphic a year later when football practice was in full swing and on a remarkably hot Wednesday afternoon in May, in a dirty old sixth-form college dressing room, he accidentally barged in on a very much naked, freshly showered Louis fucking Tomlinson bent over to get clean shorts out of his sports bag.

Not to be dramatic, but it was a sight that had burnt itself on the inside of his eyelids. There was only one hitch: based on his expression, little did said Tomlinson know that when it came to flight or fight, Harry’s innate reaction was to shock freeze. Which is why a certain 16-year-old Harry Edward Styles may or may not have stood there, staring far too long for everyone’s comfort—especially Louis’—before finally bolting and promptly smashing his shoulder into the door frame on the way out.

Needless to say that this incident, paired with the fact that they had been attending the same maths class for months without exchanging so much as a single word, weren’t the best premises to get a laddy lad buddyship going.

There was no point in denying: being an introvert at times came with a price. Yet, being a gay 16-year-old introvert in year 13, gifted with an IQ of 145 in a northern sixth-form college, secretly wanking to the image of his straight senior schoolmates’ perfectly peachy tush resided more on the mortification side of any popularity scale.

Thank fuck for the arrival of an effervescent Irish lad a couple of weeks after Harry’s move to Manchester. If it hadn’t been for him and his simple refusal to let Harry dwell in his shell his last two school years would probably have been a pretty lonely experience.

But luckily one fateful day in November, the classroom door popped open and a compact, blue-eyed brunet with blond highlights stepped in. He took the free seat next to Harry without even bothering to ask and by the time the bell rang, Harry knew all about his parents’ divorce, him staying with his dad and his brother, the tragic passing of some fish named Tom and Jerry, a mild case of OCD, a childhood friend named Michael—although it didn’t become clear whether he was real or imaginary—and that for the love of God, the only possibility to get the lad to shut up seemed to be to stuff food down his throat. Yet Harry liked him. Very much so.

He would even go so far as to say that it was only for his new friend that he managed to bear the sheer panic that came over him anytime a certain Burke or Tomlinson so much as crossed the same hallway as him.

To this day he couldn’t even say whether Louis ever told Ben about “the incident,” all he knew was that any time he came across either one, it was weird as fuck, and they didn’t speak. Ever.

Mocking, bullying, even attacking…Harry would probably have been ok with all of it. Yet nothing like that ever happened—and it for sure wasn’t for the high moral standards or the pure hearts of both boys that they left him alone. No, they could perfectly be a pain in the arse to any one else. But with Harry, all there was, was staring and pure awkward silence, totally out of character, cringeworthy silence. Even Niall didn’t find words to explain it.

So yeah, it had come as an utter shock when he’d seen the patient’s name Benjamin Burke as a possible new admission first thing this morning, and it had certainly not only been for the fact that no thirty-five-year-old should ever see the insides of a palliative care unit.

“Mate?”

Harry startled as a ball of scrunched paper landed straight on his forehead. Niall’s look hit him like the one of a disappointed parent. “Jeez, Harry, please, tell me you outgrew your Tomlinson shock-freeze phase.” Harry awkwardly pressed his lips together. Niall rolled his eyes.

“Speaking of free beds, have you already been to see Ms. Stalworth? If it’s any help, I just had an appointment with her daughter this morning and she mentioned that the family was talking about taking her home if that’s an option.” Niall continued.

“Oh? No, I haven’t done my rounds yet. But yes, that could totally be an option”. Mrs Stalworth had explicitly refused to be transferred to St. John’s Hospice, but Harry was positive that care at home was what she would have wished for in the first place, had she not been too afraid to impose on her family.

“Well, better get on the phone then.” Niall straightened his back, brushed his palms together and checked the clock. “Anyways, ya comin’ to the pub later? Karaoke night. I promised Zayn, Mitch, and Annie.”

“Yeah, no, thanks, I’ll skip. Just wanna make sure we can admit him by tomorrow and then I’ll head home, questioning my life choices.”

Niall replied with three consoling pats on his back before heading to the door.

“Nialler?”

“Hmm?”

“Could you please make sure you don’t get too wasted? Don’t want y’all to be hungover if he, the family, or the kids need immediate support,” he uttered, his voice low and on the verge of trembling.

Instead of an answer Niall turned on his heel and shot straight towards Harry’s chest, pulling him in into a tight hug. “We’ll make it work, H, we always make it work.”

Chapter Text

“We’re hooooome!” Louis yelled, kicking the door to Nan’s flat open with his foot. He struggled to juggle two knocked-out toddlers, a giant nappy bag, and a sand toy bag as he squeezed through the doorway.

“Hey, munchkins,” his Nan’s voice rang out of the kitchen before joining them in the hallway. It smelled deliciously of apple tarts and Louis couldn’t wait to finally sit down for a minute. As much as he loved the twins, he wasn’t really used to chasing them through a park in blistering heat for three hours straight and by now he was so done, that he envied them for their ability to just nap wherever they were.

“Jesus Christ, Louis!” Nan exclaimed, pointing at the trail of sand that had trickled out of the bag and probably could be traced back to his car, if not to the park. “Don’t you dare move!” She took Ruby off his arm, and gently carried her to the living room, where his grandad was watching TV, greeting him with a silent wave.

Louis dropped both bags with a thud that turned out to be way louder than he intended, and Milly fluttered on his arm. Another load of sand poured out of the toy bag.

“Really?” his Nan muttered with a raised eyebrow coming back from the living room.

“Wot? Didn’t move,” he grumbled. He kicked his shoes off, balancing the sleeping toddler on his hip. More sand scattered across the floor.

She shook her head with a cheeky smile and silently took Milly from him.

“Dustpan, brush, pantry,” she ordered, carrying the little girl to the living room too. “And don’t even think about using the hoover—you’ll wake them!”

He rolled his eyes and walked towards the pantry.

“I saw that!!” Nan scolded from the other room as he was reaching for the dustpan and brush attached to the back of the door and started to sweep up the mess he’d caused.

Once he’d gathered everything into the pan, he glanced around to make sure the coast was clear. Hearing Nan rummaging for a blanket in the living room, he opened the window and dumped the dirt outside.

“You know we have dustbins?” he heard her say standing in the door frame. Dang her and her sixth sense for his shortcuts.

“You know I could get you a cleaner?” he retorted with a smirk.

“You could get me five cleaners and I wouldn’t make an exception to the rules in this house: you spill it, you wipe it.”

He silently smiled, pulled Nan to his side, and gave her a peck on the temple.

Household chores were his personal nemesis, but he couldn’t help smiling. His family had a way of keeping him down to earth. Ever since his entrepreneurship had skyrocketed and he had gone from failing his A-Levels not only once but twice to appearing on the Sunday Times “Rich list under 30” within 8 years, his life had changed dramatically. Too often, he noticed that once people recognised him, basic politeness morphed into outright arse-kissing. It grossed him out. Not that he’d ever admit it to them, but he was beyond grateful for the way his family made sure his success never went to his head. Even if it meant making him scrub floors on his hands and knees...in a suit.

“It’s after five, Nan, better wake them up, otherwise they’ll party till midnight,” he said, tossing the dustpan and brush back into the pantry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to let them fall asleep in the first place but the minute they were in their car seats, they were out.”

“It’s okay, poppet. If they need it, they need it. C’mere,” she hugged him and pecked him on the cheek. “How was your day? Wanna sit down with me for some tea and a slice of apple tart?”

“I’m gross Nan, I’d really like to get out of these rags and have a shower.”

“As you like, dear. I just want to let you know, it’s either tea while being gross or dinner while being clean, but you, my love, are going to sit down with me today. I haven’t seen you properly in what? Almost two weeks?” She cupped his jaw, her thumb brushing over his cheek.

He looked down, leaned into her touch, secretly grinding his teeth. He knew perfectly well that he couldn’t dodge her any longer. It wasn’t even that he wanted to dodge her, but yes, he wanted to dodge her. Ben hadn’t been able to leave the hospital for almost four weeks, and Louis hadn’t visited once. Of course, he’d called and facetimed, but he hadn’t actually seen him in 26 days—probably the longest stretch since, well, ever. And while Louis was pretty good at making excuses and blaming the Commsmith deal or the babysitting or the traffic or the alignment of the stars, he knew damn well that his Nan wouldn’t take any of his shit.

“I’ve already made plans with Liam to hit the pub later, so I guess tea it is?”

Nan smiled, guiding him toward the kitchen. The sweet, buttery scent of apple tart still in the air, and the kettle hummed softly on the counter.

Nan’s kitchen was his favourite place in the house—a perfect blend of modern white cabinets with copper handles and rustic wooden furniture, cosy and familiar. A large wooden dining table in the middle of the room held enough space for the majority of the family right in front of a small balcony from which you had the perfect view of both her own and his garden.

“Is Grandad not joining us?” he asked.

“Nah, he’s caught in an episode of The Repair Shop, you get my undivided attention, poppet.”

Louis sat down at the table with a sigh, stretching his arms high above his head, burying one foot under his thigh while Nan walked towards the cabinets.

“I’m really sorry, Nan, we had this huge merger going on that cost me a helluvalot of nerves,” he was quick to explain, totally not pursuing a hidden agenda to keep the talk away from everything personal. “We’ve signed the final contracts just this morning. Did I tell you that we now have to integrate 120 new people into our processes? It’s going to be so fun, actually I’m really excited. They built this amazing communication tool that I would really like to implement into our own systems. It gives me the ick that in 2026 businesses still communicate via fax and post-its and print their shit with dot matrix printers.”

“Language, dear.” She took two mugs and plates out of the cabinet, sliced the apple tart and brought the plates over to the table.

“For real, Nan, I’ve seen printers older than me,” he said, all but inhaling the slice. “Please, they’d rather invest in buying 3D printers to be able to make their own spare parts for repairing those old things than to put into effect intelligent digital systems! It’s bonkers! What do they think? That cloud-based solutions will go away anytime soon? That storing their own operational data in separate databases for every department will enhance communication and productivity? Seriously, just thinking about how much information gets lost on the way or how much data is outdated or duplicated…gives me the creeps. It’s such a waste of time and potential.”

While Nan served the tea and sat down opposite him, he went on rambling about the perks of new technology and complex business processes, on how to improve operational efficiency, the endless possibilities to raise productivity and how easily businesses and companies could accelerate their workflows, and as proud as his Nan was for his passion and achievements, he perfectly knew she didn’t understand a single word but still looked at him lovingly.

“You do know that I am beyond proud of you?” she said, when he finally paused to drink his tea. “You have achieved so much. It fills my heart with so much joy that you’ve found your true passion in your work.” She gently put her palm on his forearm and he immediately flinched.

There we go, he thought, putting the fork down on his empty plate, picking up the last crumbs of the apple tart with his finger. They’ve been through this a thousand times. “Nan…”

“Yes, dear?” she said, pulling her arm back to stir her tea.

“Just say it.”

“Say what?”

“Come on, we both know what’s coming next.”

“What do you mean, dear?” She raised her eyebrows, nonchalantly nipping at her tea mug, looking him straight in the eyes.

“Yada yada yada, ‘but work isn’t everything, you need to find joy outside of the office too, you need to find someone to take care of and let take care of you…’” he sighed dramatically.

“Oh. Where’s that coming from, love, aren’t you happy outside of the office?” she threw him a knowing look over the frame of her glasses.

“Oh no, no, no, no, no!! You cheeky minx.” He wagged his finger at her. “You don’t get to put that on me now. You were totally up to grilling me, don’t act like it was me taking this route.”

“Louis, sweetie, I would never grill you for your personal life choices,” she taunted with an impish grin.

“But since you’ve brought it up, how are you holding up outside of work?” she brought the tea pot to her pursed lips and took another small sip.

“Nan, seriously!” He pressed his lips together and leaned back, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“Gladys told me you still haven’t gone to see Ben?”

“Nan, I mean it. Come on, you know my stance on hospitals. It’s not that I don’t want to see him. I just… I can’t.” Nan put her mug down, tilted her head slightly and looked him straight in the eye.

“Poppet, I love you more than anything, and you know I will never allow you to be deliberately hurt. Especially not when you’re hurting yourself. You have to go see him, Louis. You will never forgive yourself if you don’t.”

Louis darted off the chair towards the sink with his empty tea mug and plate tightly clenched in his hand.

“Why is everyone acting like he’s not coming home? He’s getting chemo and any treatment available. If he needs another surgery, he’ll have it. He’ll be fine! I checked the hospital, I checked the doctors, he’s got the best oncologists in the goddamn region, I made sure he gets everything he needs; he’ll be fine!” He slammed his empty tea mug and the plate a little too hard into the sink. “He’ll be fine. Nan, he’ll be fine,” he repeated as if he needed to convince himself, then added under his breath, “It’s not like with Mum and Fizz, he actually has a chance! I won’t set a damn foot into that hospital. Anytime I did I went home alone.”

Nan looked at him sorrow stricken. And it hit him hard. The unadulterated weariness in her eyes left no doubt that she knew exactly how he felt. How could she not? She’d been the one waiting outside the emergency room at Summerstone General, dreading the moment her grandson arrived. She’d had to tell him his mum—her daughter, a mum of seven—hadn’t survived the car crash. Two weeks before his nineteenth birthday.

He knew that having to witness the hurt, the exasperation, the pain, the desperation—basically every feeling she felt herself—in her teenage first-born grandchild, shredded the few remaining bits of her heart to pieces. As young as he was, Louis had always been aware that she had never really had the chance to mourn the loss of her child, because one school dropout, six minors and a diabetic, wheelchair-bound husband needed at least one stable adult to guide them through the dark.

Little did they know at that point that the dark was about to become even darker when only eighteen months later they had to relive the almost same scenario when his 4-year-old baby sister had been brought to the intensive care unit after being in a bathing accident at the local open-air pool and didn’t make it. If it hadn’t been for Gladys and the Payne family, Louis was sure none of them would have known how to even get up in the morning.

So, yes, he was aware with every inch of his strained body that Nan wasn’t better off than he was. And that made him even more distressed. After all, she had never seen Ben as anything other than her eighth grandchild. He’d sell his soul to prevent her from reliving the same anguish all over again. Yet he didn’t know how, and it made his heart bleed.

There was only one difference between the two of them: Nan had been visiting Ben regularly. She was bravely facing what Louis dreaded the most. She had talked intensely to him in the last three weeks, and Louis was petrified to eventually learn he was done fighting. A possibility that he wasn’t even close to admitting, let alone to accepting.

So here they were, blissfully ignorant on how to get his troubled and stubborn arse to the hospital. It was somewhat common knowledge that he had developed serious anxiety regarding anything hospital related, but it wasn’t as if he ever talked about it or accepted any sort of help. Anytime anyone tried to bring up the topic, he shut it down on the spot and had to leave for some very urgent work-related thing. What was that saying again? Once is an accident, twice a coincidence, three times is a pattern.

Nan got up from the table, walked over to him, stopped behind him and rubbed her thumb gently over his shoulder.

“Love, I know you hurt. You don’t need to say it, I see it. And you have every right to be hurting. We all do. And you are right, it’s not like with your mum and Fizzy. You need to talk to him. He wants to talk to you. In person. He made Gladys and me promise that we’d get you there soon. Don’t make me break my promise to him.” As her pleading look landed on him it felt like glowing fireballs propelled right through his intestines.

He fiddled nervously with the dishcloth, before taking his smartphone out of his pocket, her palm burning a prickling hole into his shoulder blade. “Jeez, Nan, look at the time, I need to run, gotta take a shower and meet up with Liam, are you sure you can deal with the two monsters?”

Nan heaved a sigh and dropped her hand, making him crumble internally. There it was again, his pattern, he just couldn’t help himself.

“Alright,” she finally said, the expression of sorrow marring her otherwise soft features. “I’ll leave you to that. Don’t you worry about us. We’ll be alright. I’ll send them into a food coma with some bangers and mash and then we’ll call it a night. Is it just Liam and you out for tonight?”

“Lottie, Lewis, and Jess may join as well; and of course Oli will be there.”

“Ah, Jess.” Nan said, straightening the tea towel on the rack.

“Ugh, no, Nan, we are so not having this conversation now,” he objected, pecking her on the cheek before running out of the kitchen to find his shoes in the hallway. “I love you, please don’t worry. I’ll think about it, okay? I just might need a little more time.” He shouted back to the kitchen, but Nan had already followed him.

She pulled him in, squeezing him tight. “I’ll always worry about you, poppet.”

Louis was already proper baked when he walked up the stairs to The Hermit‘s Hare.

Though some weeks ago he had decided to cut back on smoking alone at home because he considered it slightly pathetic, the talk with his Nan and the stress of the last few weeks had made a quick spliff seem about right to set the mood for the evening.

After all, The Hermit‘s Hare had essentially become an extension of his living room a long time ago, so he didn’t really mind already being high as a kite when walking through the door.

The pub was exactly how he believed tourists envisioned British pubs: a large dark wooden counter with ornamental mirrors behind it, dark patterned floors, textured walls plastered in old, framed photographs, surrounded by a mix of old plates, knick knacks and trinkets. Despite its remarkable size it oozed familiarity and cosiness. Liam, Ben, him, and a couple of other lads had come here pretty much every Friday since his early days as an entrepreneur. It was the perfect place to wind down, an unpretentious setting to feel at ease and where everybody knew everybody. The fact that the owner was one of his oldest mates and Louis lived within walking distance didn’t hurt either.

Like Louis, Oli wasn’t a big fan of change, so he put all his effort into pleasing his regulars and keeping hooligans and drunks out of the picture. One of his best ideas in Louis’ opinion was to put a huge sign outside which stated:

No food

-

Crap beer

-

Bad hospitality

Although there was food, exceptionally good food even, although the selection of beers left no wishes unfulfilled and Louis had not once felt the urge to criticise the hospitality, the sign was bold enough to keep pretentious snobs out and the regulars happy. That there was live music every second Friday from nine to eleven was his cherry on top. Apart from that two-hour slot, the pub was always quiet enough to have a good talk, but not so quiet that it felt awkward.

Louis loved coming here. One of the main reasons was that here, he could be just Louis; nobody gave two flying fucks about CEO Tomlinson.

His sister Lottie, her husband Lewis, and Liam were already seated at a table in a corner not too far away from the bar yet far enough to have a certain privacy.

“Oi, oi!” he exclaimed cheerfully and was greeted by frantic drums on the table.

“Tommooooo, my man,” Oli shouted from behind the counter and darted out to pull Louis into an almost suffocating hug. Louis tensed displeasingly, as the ginger proceeded to clap him firmly on the back, cheering, “Good to see you, mate. Congratulations! The guys told me about your deal, fucking proud of you, man. That’s some massive news.”

Louis grinned, his cheeks heating under Oli’s exuberance. “Yeah, yeah, thank you,” he said, wriggling in the hug but not quite breaking free. “Now, take that stinking thing out of my face and get me a pint and steak and chips, will you?” He tugged at the damp towel hanging precariously over Oli’s shoulder, giggling despite himself.

No, taking a compliment didn’t make him feel like a proper douchebag at all. And no, sarcasm and diverting techniques were totally not his coping mechanisms to get out of situations that made him uncomfortable. Absolutely not. He knew he deserved all the cheers, but he just couldn't bring himself to enjoy being the centre of attention.

Just as he was squirming free of Oli’s tight grip, he got pulled into the next hug. Jesus fucking Christ, why did all his mates have to be so bloody tactile? Behind him Jess had appeared and slung her ebony-skinned arm around his waist, her almost black, long, bouncy corkscrew curls tickling his neck. Jess was another friend from school. They met when they both had turned seventeen. Actually, it was at Jess’ birthday party, where they’d ended up shagging in some random bedroom, pissed out of their minds, and both agreeing the next day that it was all fun and games but there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell they’d ever fall for each other.

They’d remained friends though. Good friends. With the occasional benefits.

They finally sat down, and Louis praised the slow, steady, and relaxing calm the weed was providing to his otherwise racing mind.

He and Liam took turns in recounting everything their friends wanted to know about the huge merger the company had finalised, and he couldn’t be more grateful that they all were pussyfooting around the topic of Ben. They all knew about the elephant in the room but fortunately chose to shove him under the staircase for the time being.

“…and that’s when my phone rang, and he called for Code Rainbow yet again!” Liam roared.

Lottie snorted and squeezed Louis’ thigh, “Aaaaawww you poor thing. Again?”

The first time Liam had faked being Louis’ gay fiancé was in a bar at least ten years ago. They’d all had far too much to drink, and Louis had found himself cornered by a blonde who was exceptionally keen on getting into his pants. Swamped and skittish as he was, Liam took pity on him and jumped right to his side to save him from his misery. Not that Louis didn’t like to get hit on—heaven forbid, he’d had his fair share of attempted hook-ups, but every single time he realised at some point that it wasn’t going to be worth the proverbial or literal shot. His only problem was that he was way too nice to tell them.

Growing up with five sisters had left him completely and utterly ill-equipped to deal with tantrums, tears or even the faintest whiff of disappointment. He’d spent most of his life bending over backwards to keep the girls happy, and somewhere along the line, that same impulse had extended to nearly every woman he’d ever met.

Once Louis discovered that the “gay exit” was a brilliantly convenient way to let the women who hit on him down without hurting their feelings, he may or may not have made extensive use of the rescue; to the point that a single rainbow emoji via text had become Liam’s cue.

“Jesus, Louis, what did she do this time?” Lottie laughed, “chewing with an open mouth? The nostrils too flaring? Or did she breathe too loudly?”

“Oh, come on, I’m not that superficial!” he said, pretending to be appalled.

Liam almost choked on his pint. “Louis, mate, you have the most hilarious and stupid reasons to ditch potential hookups I’ve heard in my whole life. And I’ve gone through gay bar dating for the last 15 years! Please share with the class, what was the reason you ended the date with Lewis’ colleague?”

“She didn’t like tacos,” Louis grumbled. “C’mon, what person suggests a Mexican restaurant only to reveal they don’t like tacos? Are you kiddin’ me? It’s tacos!”

“And why wouldn’t you see the one again you met at the coffee shop?”

“Oooh, I know that one,” Lottie squealed, “she pronounced Italy as eye-tally.”

They all burst out laughing and even Louis giggled.

“Ooh, ooh, ooh!! DRINKING GAME!!” Liam blurted out. “This is gonna be fun. We’ll throw out names and whoever knows the reason why he ditched the girl rings the bell and gets to enlighten the group. The others have to take shots. Louis, you take one whenever the right reason is assigned to the right girl,” he clapped his hands in enthusiasm.

“Dear Lord,” Lottie sighed, “we’ll be wasted in no time.”

“Exactly!” He cheered, bolting to Oli to get the bell from the counter and some booze. “Tequila or Vodka?” he yelled over.

“Vodka!” Louis was quick to shout.

Only seconds later a bottle of vodka and five shot glasses decorated the table and Liam blurted:

“I’ll go first. Sooooo, what was wrong with Rebecca, the teacher?”

“Didn’t like memes,” Lewis hit the bell. Louis nodded.

Shots for Lottie, Liam, Louis, and Jess.

Lewis went on. “What was her name again, the one you met at that conference? Claire?”

Bing.

“Ate her cereal with water instead of milk and laughed like a sheep,” Lottie yelled out. Louis took a shot, followed by Lewis, Liam, and Jess.

“Mylah?” Lottie called next.

“Who was Mylah again?” Liam asked with a confused look.

“The red-head from the club a few weeks ago.”

Jess hit the bell:

“She said cats were superior to dogs.”

Lottie made a honking sound. “Wrrooooooooong, that was Chrystle. Mylah was the one to eat peas one at a time.”

Louis cackled, bringing the back of his hand in front of his mouth. “Yeah, that was annoying as fuck.”

Shot for Jess.

“Willow?” she continued.

Nobody chimed the bell and Jess triumphed:

“Nobody? She was the one who voted Green party.”

“What’s wrong with voting Green party?” Lottie smacked Louis on the head.

“Eyyyy! Nothing is wrong with voting Green party, but she voted Green because IT WAS HER FAVOURITE COLOUR!” He answered, fixing his fringe.

Five rounds later, they were all proper pissed and hysterically laughing.

“Seriously???? SHE HAD HER WHATSAPP SET UP TO A FUNNY FONT?” Liam snorted, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“Wot?!” Louis replied disgusted. “What’s our future supposed to look like?? Wedding invitations in Comic Sans? Pregnancy announcement in Papyrus??? Lottie, please, back me up!!”

“Sorry, bro, you dumped one ‘cause she had an AOL email address.”

“AOL, LOTTIE!!! AOL!!! She might as well have sent out carrier pigeons or carved messages into stones!!”

They all were gasping for air. “Now that we’ve established that our dear Louis William is a judgemental fucker with commitment issues, have you noted it’s Karaoke night?” Liam exclaimed.

“Not a judgemental fucker and no commitment issues!” Louis protested.

“Oh, come on, when was the last time you got proper banged? And no, you don’t count!” he gesticulated towards Jess who sounded like she was about to suffocate in between giggle fits.

“How long have you had each other on and off on bootie call?? Eighteen years?! You know what happens in bloody eighteen years? NEWBORNS ARE ALLOWED TO DRIVE! THEY ARE ALLOWED TO VOTE for God’s sake! EVEN FOR THEIR FAVOURITE COLOUR PARTY,” Liam screamed in affected indignation.

The noise level in the pub had dramatically risen once Karaoke had started and it was getting harder to understand each other so they wrapped up their game—totally not because another round would have sent them straight into the abyss.

“Hey, isn’t that your secretary?” Lottie nudged his shoulder, pointing at a slender, dark-haired person who had taken over the mic just as Madonna’s Vogue pulsed from the speakers.

Louis raised his eyebrows, mentally tallying his drinks. The person performing on the Karaoke stage, hovering their hands over their body while grinding down and shaking their hips, totally looked like his secretary, Kyle Watson. But…not like any version of Kyle he’d seen in eight years.

Kyle was a forty-something bloke, not particularly tall, with lean shoulders and a wiry frame. He had delicate, almost pretty features—high cheekbones, sharp jawline, lashes long enough to make most people jealous. Usually, his dark hair was tied back in a neat ponytail, and there was a quiet toughness about him, a kind of don’t-mess-with-me vibe, the way he’d stand with his shoulders square and his jaw set like he could handle himself in a fight.

But this? This was a whole other side of Kyle.

The person on stage had their hair down, styled in the same waves his sisters only managed to conjure with bizarre hot iron thingies. Their eyes were outlined in dramatic, smoky makeup, lips glossed and shining under the stage lights. They wore heels that made their legs look endless, paired with a rather short skirt, and Louis could swear that there was a bra shining through the fitted, sheer black blouse. Somehow, even with all the glitter and glam, there was still something distinctly Kyle about the way they owned the stage, like they knew exactly what kind of effect they were having on the room.

Louis blinked, half-expecting his brain to catch up and tell him he was wrong. But the longer he watched, the more certain he became. This was Kyle—his quiet, no-nonsense, leather-jacket-wearing secretary. Only…tonight, Kyle was dazzling.

“Huh,” he deadpanned. “Well, that’s something new.” But before he could go into details—not that after six-ish shots his general condition would have allowed him to do so—the person had finished their performance and was no longer to be seen.

The group of three blokes and a girl from two tables next to them had taken over. Meanwhile Liam drooled at the sight of the very fit, dark-haired guy with a face like a Middle Eastern angel, dark eyes, the most perfect symmetrical brows, and cheekbones to die for. Given the not-so-furtive glances the guy kept sneaking back at Liam, the drooling seemed mutual. He and his friend had just finished an enthusiastic round of belting, “Annie are you okay, are you okay Annie” at a petite, ginger girl—who a third, lanky, bearded guy was barely managing to keep from dancing on the table—when Louis caught the two men discreetly ogling each other.

But now that the cheekbone God was singing Umbrella by Rihanna with a forbidden good falsetto, a smoky texture, and an ability to seamlessly transition from chest to head voice, Liam seemed completely lost.

“Hey, still breathing over there?” he nudged him.

“Nope. Our children will be beautiful, intelligent and have angelic voices!” he exhaled, dashing off to the DJ to give his own request.

“He does know that’s not how it works, right?” Lottie questioned belly laughing but Liam had already gone to take over the mic.

The moment Let Me Love You by Mario tuned in and Liam started full-on serenading the neighbouring-table, Louis wasn’t so sure whether it was the alcohol mixed with weed or the obscene amount of sap, but either way he had trouble stopping himself from laying down and retching.

“Lads, ladies, that’s my cue. Better head home before it gets ugly.”

Chapter Text

Harry sat in the grass, his back leaned against the old apple tree, staring at the paperwork on his knees. His night had been utter shit—waking up every two hours, jittery, tense, and drenched in the kind of dreams he didn’t want to unpack. By 4:30 a.m., he gave up. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well come to the hospital early and watch the sunrise from the garden. Edda and Wilbur, the ward’s two therapy dogs, weren’t quite as enthusiastic about the idea and prompty fell back asleep at his side.

The cool morning air settled his nerves—at least, a little.

He often came here to clear his head when his mind felt like it was spiralling, or simply to go over dull paperwork. Something about sitting under a tree, the tickling of the lush, fresh grass under his palm, the smell of blossoms and chirping birds kept him together and soothed whatever feelings threatened to overwhelm him. The palliative care ward might have been neglected in funding, falling apart at the seams, but this garden? This little piece of peace? It was worth protecting.

He glanced down at the waiting list in his lap, his stomach twisting. Five more beds could be filled instantly, and yet, he was lucky he’d even managed to clear one. A single damn bed. It had taken two hours of calls, favours, and far too much grovelling just to get Ben transferred. And now? Now he just had to wait for Ben to be brought over by patient transport, then walk in there and—what? Pretend this was just another patient?

Jesus.

Harry closed his eyes, pressing his head against the tree trunk, inhaling deeply. He had done this job for ten years. He had broken the worst news a doctor could break more often than he could think of. He had watched countless patients and families fight, grieve, and let go. And yet, the prospect of seeing Benjamin Burke in that hospital bed, and by extension possibly running into Louis Tomlinson again, made his gut wrench. For the first time in ten years Harry genuinely wished he was anywhere but here.

He forced himself to focus on his breathing, counting the inhales, the exhales, concentrating on the soft rustling of the trees when Niall’s voice rang out of nowhere.

“Hiya, thought you’d be here.” He threw his rucksack on the ground, startling Wilbur for a second, and let himself fall backwards into the grass. “How are you holding up?”

“Hey. Yeah, fine. I guess. I dunno.” He stared for a short while at the sky then rubbed his palms over his face, straightened his back and slung his arms around his knees. “Don’t really want to go in, you know.”

“I figured. Brought coffee and croissants,” Niall announced.

“You always”—Harry airquoted—“‘bring’ coffee and croissants.”

“Yeah, but today I didn’t eat them before arriving,” Niall grinned, holding out a white paper bag.

“Where’s the coffee?” Harry asked, looking at the empty paper cup in Niall’s hand.

“Tzz, ungrateful twat. As if you didn’t prefer tea anyway,” he hissed, smirking. “I’ll make you one in your office. C’mon, let’s go.” And with that he dragged Harry up.

Two hours, two croissants, two coffees, and one pep talk later, Harry found himself staring at a closed patient’s room door. A very eager Niall and a half comatose Zayn had tried their best to calm his nerves before he came here, yet his heart was pounding like a train down the tracks. He’d run his hands at least five times over his trouser legs and still, they felt clammy.

Okay, he thought, just go in, introduce yourself and that’s it. You’ve done this hundreds of times, you’re gonna be fine. Maybe if he repeated it often enough he’d drain out the little shitty voice in his head whispering, “You are, but what if Ben isn’t?”

It’s been 17 years, he most likely won’t even remember you. Yeah. He won’t remember you. It’s not even like you’d been friends or anything.

Harry took a deep breath, steadied himself for a minute, knocked and pressed down the door handle.

Keeping his expression open and sympathetic, he stepped through the door.

Harry had learned a long time ago that a positive first impression was key for gaining his patients’ trust, fuck if he’d jeopardised that today because of stupid nerves. He squared his shoulders and introduced himself with his regular deep and steady voice.

“Good morning, Mr. Burke, I’m Dr. Harry Styles, your attending consultant and head of this department.” He held Ben’s gaze, offering a small, steady smile. “As much as I would have preferred to meet you somewhere else, I’d like to welcome you to my ward.”

Yeah, that was good. Solid. No wavering, no stuttering.

“Harry,” the pale man rustled out, looking exhausted but he smiled up from his bed. “Kinda hoped it’d be you in charge of me. Didn’t think I’d get that lucky.” He paused to take a breath.

Fuck. This was not how Harry expected Ben’s reaction to be.

“You remember me?” he asked, surprised. His heart was about to jump out of his throat, and he tried his best to hide the little shake in his hands.

“How could I not?” Ben replied, “It’s not like there’d been a shitload of scientific geniuses at Saint Dolores outshining the whole sixth form at the age of sixteen. You were brilliant,” he chuckled, a little out of breath. “Surreal and weird, but brilliant. Man, I am so glad that it’s you of all people to be my consultant.”

Harry internally flinched. Okay, so Ben remembered. And yet he was talking to him. Harry felt like he’d been catapulted into a parallel universe.

“May I?” he gestured towards the visitor chair. Ben nodded. Harry pushed it next to Ben’s bed and sat down, fighting hard to defy the turmoil crawling inside his chest. Genius, brilliant…

He probably should feel flattered but all he could think was, “Fuck”.

He twisted the skin on his ring finger, slid slightly back and forth on his seat before hooking his feet around the chair legs.

Yes, he’d been the kid with all the answers in school and then some more, but this wasn’t school.

This was real life.

This was terminal, metastasised cancer Stage IV and Harry didn’t have a magic wand.

How was he supposed to live up to expectations built on an almost 20-year-old quirky college reputation?

“Ben, I…” he started, but before he could even think of putting the expectations into perspective Ben already cut him off.

“Harry, listen. I know we haven’t seen each other since college so you probably don’t know anything about me.” He shuffled in his bed to sit more upright. “I didn’t even finish school. I’m not a fancy academic and knew shit all about medicine until two years ago. But I’m not dumb. I know where this journey is going.” He needed to pause to cough and catch his breath. “I’m not here for you to magically fix me and make me walk out of here as if nothing ever happened. I mean, I wouldn’t oppose it if you did, but I know that’s not how this works.”

Harry watched him carefully, waiting patiently for him to finish his sentences. It was obvious that he had trouble breathing and he noticed a slight rustling that probably indicated some sort of fluid in Ben’s lungs making it harder for him to breathe and speak.

“Please don’t judge me for being blunt or insensitive, I’m not one for sugar-coating things. I had my fair share of people walking on eggshells around me over the past months. I know this is my final stop and I am ready for it.” His fingers tapped absently against the sheets. “I am not afraid of death. But I’m scared shitless of getting there.”

Harry tugged at his shirt collar and bit back a sigh of relief.

Welcome to the twisted world of palliative care, where a patient’s fear of dying is a relief for the doctor.

The corner of Harry’s mouth quirked up involuntarily as he relaxed in the chair.

This was his expertise. This was why he had chosen this path. The gnawing fear of not being enough yet again—the one that had haunted him since the day the man in front of him, his best friend, and the whole school had consequently ignored him—had no place here.

He wasn’t here to cure. He was here to make this bearable. All of it. The pain, the nausea, the stress, the panic…because quality of life was not just about managing symptoms. It was about holding people together when everything else was falling apart.

So, Ben knew, and that made Harry feel considerably more at ease. To be fair he had become accustomed to all sorts of situations with new patients coming from surgical or oncological wards. Most of them arrived with no real grasp for their prognosis. Too many colleagues avoided the talk, skirting around reality in the name of preserving hope. Patients got the rundown on chemo and surgeries—but no one told them they were dying. That part was often left to Harry, so it took him somewhat by surprise that Ben was so sorted and straightforward, especially given it was their first talk ever, but he appreciated it a lot.

“You’re afraid of dying but not of death.” He repeated. “I promise you that is something we can deal with. We get that a lot. So, let me ask point-blank, do you want us to jump in straight away or would you rather go a little slower today and recover from your transfer?”

“Shoot me.” Ben replied.

“That’s a service we don’t offer,” slipped out of Harry’s mouth and he instantly wanted to slap himself.

Silence.

Ben blinked at him, unmoving. Too much, too soon. Damnit Styles.

Then, finally—a snort. Actually, Ben was laughing so hard he had to clutch his chest.

Harry exhaled, tension slipping from his shoulders. Thank fuck. There had been several occasions over the years where his rather dark sense of humour and his occasional dysfunctional brain-to-mouth-filter had backfired to the point he wished for the ground to swallow him whole. But if Ben could roll with this humour this was going to be a hell of a lot easier.

They talked for well over an hour—about their lives since school, about Ben’s condition, about pain treatment, and, of course, the fears that weighed on him most.

It turned out that his biggest concern was the effect of his lung condition. As Harry had suspected, the fluid in Ben’s lungs was building up, making it harder to breathe. The thought of suffocating—of being fully conscious as his body failed him—was the thing that sent him into spirals of panic at night.

Harry took his time to explain things carefully. If it got worse, they could drain the fluid. If that ever stopped working, there were other options, medication to sedate him just enough to make the situation tolerable. “No matter what,” Harry assured him, “even in the worst-case scenario we make sure you won’t suffer.”

Ben listened carefully to every word Harry said and was visibly relieved to learn that his terminal condition didn’t mean there were no options to ensure a certain life quality for as long as possible.

“Do you remember Niall Horan?” Harry finally asked after discussing all the aspects of his treatment options.

Ben looked up in surprise. “The Irish chatter boxfrom back in school?”

Harry laughed. “Yes, exactly that one. Well, he still doesn’t shut up but now he gets paid to do so. He’s one of our psychologists, one of the best if I dare say so, I would highly recommend talking to him about your panic attacks and whatever worries you. This offer is for your relatives as well. The psychotherapy team is there to support both you and your family, kids included.”

“Dear Lord. That guy chewed your ear off for two years straight while being glued to your hip and then you went on working with him by choice?” Ben blurted out, eyes wide, watching Harry smirk and nod. “Jesus Christ, I pray for your level of resilience.”

“You’re one to talk about being glued to the hip and resilience. I’m still shocked to find you here without having to surgically remove a certain Tomlinson from your side,” Harry quipped.

Ben faltered and his facial expressions became sombre. Harry stumbled.

“Oh,” he stammered, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep…”

“No, no. It’s okay,” his lank body seemed to shrink even more into the bed sheets. “Well, no, it’s actually not okay, but you couldn’t know,” his breath hitched. “He’s still my best mate. Has always been, will always be. It’s just, jeez, I dunno what to say. We talk, we facetime, he’s taking care of my kids, he’s actually the best, you know what I mean, he just… I’m… He… He won’t fucking come to visit me,” his voice broke and Harry could swear his eyes had just turned a little watery.

“I need to talk to him so badly. There are things I simply can’t do over the phone. But he won’t put a damn foot into a hospital. And I can’t even blame him. He… well… no, that’s not my story to tell…” he cut himself off. “He’s got his reasons. And I do want to respect that. But I have to talk to him. It eats me alive! … Oh, um, can I still say things like that in here or is that too morbid?”

There was a knock on the door.

“Hey, H., sorry for interrupting. There’s a pharma bloke outside looking for you, and I don’t know what to tell him, Annie is on lunch break.”

“Hey Zayn, come meet Ben Burke. Ben and I went to school together. Ben, this is Zayn Malik, he’s our arts and music therapist.”

“Hi.” Ben nodded, leaning over for a handshake.

“Hi.”

They both shook hands.

“Arts and music therapy? That sounds cool. Does the offer for support also count for stubborn childhood mates? I may or may not know somebody who could use a word or two—or a good smack with some drumsticks.” Ben muttered towards Harry.

“If he’s willing to, we’re glad to help wherever we can.”

“Willing? You mean like as in voluntarily? I knew there was a catch,” Ben sighed. “Ain’t gonna happen then.”

His tone was definitely meant to be jovial, but he couldn’t fool Harry. The sadness in his eyes had already given away that he was deeply affected under his pretence of banter.

“Zayn, any ideas on how to bring someone around who doesn’t want to put a foot into a hospital?” Harry asked, trying to keep Ben’s supposed light-hearted tone.

Zayn cocked an eyebrow and nodded towards the bed. “You know these things have wheels and there’s a park just outside this door, don’t ya?”

Ben tilted his head in surprise and peered intently at Zayn. “A park?”

“Uhm yeah,” Harry answered. “You couldn’t see the back of the building when patient transport brought you over this morning but we do in fact have a giant garden out there. It’s packed with flowers, fruit trees, benches and even a playground. As long as you’re feeling good enough, we can bring you outside any time.

“A playground?” Ben said, astonished, straightening his upper body to fetch a look out of the window. “Huh, that could actually work.”

“Damnit, Payno”, Louis muttered to himself, sitting aghast in his office at arse o’clock before anybody in their right state of mind would even think about putting a foot into the office. His eyes were fixed on his screen. Running on only 4 hours of sleep, at least two hours before any human being should ever be assaulted with something as appalling as daylight, he had found three different concepts on how to integrate the 120 new people into their existing company structures in his inbox. In a neat and precise presentation, Liam had thought about what seemed like every potential option, risk and possibility the merger could bring HR-wise.

Louis was swamped. “Fucking hell, this is detailed.” His brain wasn’t built for Liam-level thinking, especially not at 7 a.m. after one too many shots. For the umpteenth time he questioned how on earth he managed to end up here, responsible for a shit ton of people, when he couldn’t even be trusted with his sister’s fern during her two weeks’ honeymoon. If he fucked this up, he didn’t only fuck up his own source of income, but that of hundreds and hundreds of families, weirdos, and nutheads.

Because the thing was, Louis had a heart for the misfits. Polished résumés bored him to death, so when he started Tomcare at nineteen, any time the company expanded and he needed fill a position, he preferred to hire the ones other companies wouldn’t touch. The “weirdos and nutheads,” as he called them with affection, had proven to be his most loyal people.

Tomcare thrived on trust: no fixed hours, no clocking in, just one weekly team meeting to keep everyone connected. He didn’t care if work happened at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m., at home or in the office—only that it got done. Of course, when he started with this philosophy, basically everybody with an opinion had warned him that this would never work, that Tomcare would descend into immediate chaos with people ripping him off and betraying his trust, but instead his people flourished, grateful for the freedom, and the company thrived with them.

Which was exactly why this merger rattled him. Bringing in employees used to timecards and bosses breathing down their necks was risky. They weren’t set up for people to sit around and wait for somebody to tell them what to do or their shift to end. So yeah, he was bricking it. Even if deep down he knew Liam knew what he was doing, because unlike himself Liam had actually gone to university and earned his Master of Business Psychology before becoming Tomcare’s chief people officer, but he was also painfully aware that this model was just not for everybody and that inevitably he would have to face people quitting or having to let some go.

He knew and hated the fact that in the end it was up to him to make the final decisions, because eighty percent of the time he felt like he hadn’t got the slightest clue of what he was doing.

Of course, the company’s annual review clearly stated that what he was doing was working damn well, but when it came to imposter syndrome, Louis William Tomlinson was king of the hill.

“Good morning, Louis. Up so early?” Kyle’s sonorous voice echoed through the deserted open-plan office. The man had appeared in front of Louis’ office and now stuck his head through the glass door, smiling. He was dressed in tight black jeans, biker boots and wore a dark shirt loosely thrown over his shoulders. His dark, long hair–close-cropped at the sides and the lower back of his nape– was neatly tied into a tight ponytail—like always.

Louis looked up and greeted him with a welcoming nod. “G’morning. Yeah, it’s bloody early. I couldn’t sleep and since Liam worked his magic overnight, I thought I’d take advantage of the quiet to go through his concepts on how to include the Commsmith people after they move from their place to ours.”

Kyle’s eyes widened, looking impressed. “He did what? You only finalised the merge yesterday, and he’s already done a plan? Does that man ever sleep?”

“Three plans, Kyle. Three. And now I’m supposed to decide what path we’re taking. I seriously don’t know if he ever sleeps or if he just waves a magic wand.” Louis shrugged his shoulders and stood up to boil the kettle. “Tea?”

Kyle smiled, nodded, and walked over to his desk to throw his shoulder bag over his chair. “Certainly not after last night”.

Louis cocked his eyebrows and looked at him with a questioning look. “Do you know something I don’t know?”

“Oh, uh…no.” Kyle stuttered, gesturing awkwardly, “I just ran into him, yesterday at the pub when he was...um...er…”

“Piss drunk?” Louis groaned, pouring the boiling water into the mugs, somehow even that sound was too loud. He really should know better by now. “That’d be somewhat on me”.

“Er, yeah that too, but I was thinking more about him leaving with the stunning handsomeness that escorted him out of the pub’s door shortly before the last order bell rang”.

“Son of a bitch, he really pulled that sexpot? Huh.” Louis deadpanned.

Kyle ran his hand to his nape, nervously starting to scratch the shaven part.

“You were at the pub as well? I didn’t see you there…” he stammered.

“Oh yeah, about that,” Louis suddenly remembered the karaoke night. “Could I maybe talk to you for a minute since we’re still alone?” He set the second tea mug on his desk and gestured for Kyle to sit down.

Shock-induced paralysis would most certainly be the term to describe Kyle’s reaction. He stood in the door, frozen, his hand still stuck to his nape and for all that Louis could see, he was hardly breathing.

“Come on, everything’s fine. Just have a seat. Won’t take long.”

Kyle slowly collected himself, dragged his feet over to the brown leather chair and sat down, taking a huge sip out of the tea mug, burning his tongue on the spot. “Fuck!”

Louis couldn’t remember ever seeing him so tense.

“Kyle, really, everything is fine. Just wanted to tell you that I saw your performance. Jesus Christ, you owned that song. Madonna’s a bloody blushing bride compared to how you smashed it. I was deeply impressed.”

Kyle looked as if a silent terror seeped inside of him causing his face to blush bright red. “Um, thanks? I guess?”

“I mean it,” Louis said with a stern voice, resting his hip on his sideboard. “You were brilliant. I know it’s absolutely none of my business, but since we’ve been working together for so long, I just don’t want to pretend to not have noticed that you looked differently from how you normally look at work, which of course we all do to a certain extent when hitting the pub on a karaoke night, but I guess you know what I mean,” he paused, eyeballing Kyle and thinking about how to continue without wanting to accidentally offend him.

When he didn’t react, Louis continued, “I won’t ask any indiscreet questions, make assumptions, or judge you for who you choose to be outside this office. I only want to make sure you know that I respect you and care about you. A lot. I want you to feel comfortable at all times here in the office. So, just in case you feel like you have to groom yourself a certain way for work that doesn’t fit with the person you are outside the office, then please know that there is absolutely no need to do so.” He paused and watched Kyle closely. Yet, he still didn’t give Louis any sort of reaction.

“I truly hope I am not overstepping or making you uncomfortable by springing it on you like that, please know that I appreciate you as my secretary a lot and not only for saving my unorganised arse daily,” he shot Kyle a large smile. “I assure you, you have my unconditional support, both as your boss and as your karaoke fanboy. Christ, look at me rambling. What I actually wanted to ask you before this verbal diarrhoea started, is whether the way I address you is okay for you, or if you’d like me to change anything in the…um…pronoun department. I mean, I can also switch depending on when we meet in the office versus meeting in the pub…I just…well…yeah, I just don’t want to address you wrong.”

Kyle finally looked up to him, seeming to slowly come out of his frozen mode. It still took him a while to blink before he slightly shook his head, visibly baffled and started to speak.

“I… I… uh… I know you value distance, but may I hug you?”

Louis was taken a little off guard by this reaction, but straightened his posture and opened his arms, “Sure, bring it in, love.”

Kyle jumped off the chair and smashed himself into the embrace. Louis felt proper squidged but held in tight.

“Thank you so much, Louis. I’m a little lost for words.” Kyle mumbled while Louis patted the back of the uh, man? with encouraging claps. They stood like that for a few seconds until Kyle was the first to break the hug. Face still bright red he cleared his throat and stepped back to put some space between them. Louis leaned back onto his sideboard.

“Um, yeah,” he fumbled for words. “I came out to my partner and close friends about a year ago. I didn’t want to hide and lie to myself any longer. Almost thirty years certainly was enough. At home I go by Keira and she/her pronouns. It’s just… I didn’t really dare to bring her to work. I love this place so much, I didn’t want to make things awkward, you know.”

That stung.

To be honest, Louis hadn’t expected it to hit so hard. He knew the company prided itself on openness, but the fact that Keira had felt the need to hide? That didn’t sit right.

"Please," he scoffed. "The only awkward thing is you feeling like you have to be someone you're not at work. Look, love, I’m not here to push you into anything. You decide what happens, when it happens, and how it happens. But if you want me to tell the team that Kyle resigned and Keira’s taking over, just say the word. I promise you, I won’t take the piss. I’ve got zero tolerance for hate or ignorance in these four walls—and neither does Liam. So, whoever you want to be here, that’s who you get to be. We’ve got your back."

At his words Keira threw herself into yet another embrace. Louis couldn’t help but notice small sniffles next to his ear and some tears wetting the fabric on his shoulder. The realisation that in all these years working so close together that he never, for a split second noticed that Kyle wasn’t her true self, made his gut wrench. The sheer thought of someone close to him struggling with their identity hit him harder than he imagined. He tightened his grip around the lithe body, swallowed hard, trying to not get too emotional himself when a light-hearted voice rang through the halls.

“Heyyyy, squishing the Tommo before sunrise and I’m not invited? I’m offended!”

Keira did a proper jump scare and Louis couldn’t help but chuckle. “Payno, you utter killjoy. Don’t know no shame, do ya?”

“Yep, that’s me, ruining a perfect moment for my own amusement.” Liam quipped. He looked decently dishevelled, lips and eyes equally swollen as he approached.

“Talking of amusement. What the heck, Li? Didn’t the sexpot have any mirrors in his house or did you just fall out of his car? And for the love of God, since when do you do your walk of shame in these halls, mate?”

Liam dramatically smashed his hand onto his chest as if having been shot through the heart and pretended to fall back, bending his knees. “Kyle! I’m appalled. You grassed me up to the boss?”

“Oi, tosser,” Louis horned in. “Don’t blame me secretary, you’re in the same rags I left you in the pub, you look like shit and reek of beer, cigs, and sex.”

Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Keira hastily wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her eyes were a little puffy and slightly red, but she no longer looked as mortified as she did a few seconds ago. He shot her a questioning look while Liam took his time to straighten up. She nodded barely visible, but Louis understood the assignment and shot her the biggest supporting smile he could manage.

“Don’t talk,” he held his hand up towards Liam. “Gonna squeeze every detail of last night out of you soon enough. But before that,” he deviated, “I want you to meet Keira, my new, old secretary. She was just about to head back home to sort out her thoughts.”

“No, Louis, that’s really not necess—“ Keira insisted but Louis cut her off by gently putting his palm on her forearm.

“As I said, she is going to take some days off, treat herself with a long walk in the park, a nice chat with her family or whatever she enjoys doing. She is going to take all the time she needs to sort out her thoughts and whenever she feels ready, she’ll come back as whatever person she feels comfortable to be around us.”

“Aaaaawwww Lou, that’s fantastic! Keira, it’s my pleasure!” Liam beamed, then hesitated. “Wait—am I allowed to hug you too, or is this strictly a boss thing?”

Keira let out a shaky laugh. “Oh, get over here.”

“Alright, bring it in you two. I feel a bit bad for having interrupted that special moment,” and with that he yanked them both into a bear hug.

They stayed like that for a few seconds until Liam grunted, “I really do reek, don’t I?”

“Bloody awful,” Louis panted and Keira snorted.

After having sent Keira home and Liam to the shower, the morning had stretched like bubblegum. Louis hadn’t managed to concentrate on one single task. By noon he was so cranky that he had decided to call it quits and pick up the girls from nursery just before their nap, giving him a reason to join them in laying down in the middle of the day.

Or so he thought.

The girls had other plans. When he showed up early, they were so thrilled to see him, that instead of napping, Ruby now was jumping on his bed repeatedly screaming, “Here comes the super hopper, yeah,” while Milly silently shot him offended stares for having called the toucan in her picture book parrot, and the anteater an armadillo, all while trying to prevent Ruby from flying off the bed. Louis sighed. He really really wanted that nap.

“Girls, we need to calm down and put the book aside. It’s nap time. How’d you like if afterwards we went to the playground with the big kids’ slide?”

“Loulou, no!” Ruby squeaked. “Not tired. Nana takes Milly and I to visit dad. Oooh, wook a tiga!!” she threw herself on Milly’s lap and pointed to the picture of a wildcat.

“Snow leopard,” Milly growled, pushing Ruby away. “That’s a snow leopard.”

“Oooh, a snow leopard,” Ruby cheered, “we saw snow leopards in the zoo. Can we go to the zoo? Loulou, can we go to the zoo? I want to see the snow leopard.”

Milly wriggled her bum on the mattress frowning her brows, looking up from her animal book. For whatever reasons she was yet again wearing nothing but a nappy and looked utterly adorable with her baby death stare. “Cheetah,” she groaned, shaking her head in outright disbelief. From her look she could as well have shouted, “Dear Lord, I’m surrounded by idiots,” but the sweetheart she was, she chose a non-violent “there’s no snow leopard in the zoo, only cheetahs,” yet scowled for her dear life.

Louis could eat her up. The two girls couldn’t be any more different. While Ruby was kind of a hurricane and couldn’t sit still let alone shut up for more than a quarter of a second, Milly could sit down with her books literally for hours, not speaking a single word, absorbing any kind of information like a sponge. While Ruby could dress in eighty layers of princess dresses, pirate costumes, hats, beanies and caps, Milly would strip naked on any possible occasion since the day she learned how to use her hands and feet, including weddings, birthdays, and the summer fair of the local firefighter department.

It drove Ben, Nan and Gladys crazy, but Louis figured as long as she understood the basic concept of when it’s not appropriate to flash people and she learned in time how to defend herself, he’s not going to force her to wear things she clearly didn’t like.

“So, what was that with Nan taking you to see dad?” He asked, swallowing the upcoming lump in his throat.

“Yiiieee,” Ruby squealed, ready to go for another nosedive into the pillows. “We was late for nursery. Nana was phoning dad. There’s a park in his new house, she said. We can go visit dad in the park.”

New house. Louis’ heart sunk into his stomach. So, Ben had indeed been transferred from oncology. He felt a cold rush creeping up his spine, leaving him short of breath and quivering. He knew that his Nan had wanted to tell him something, yet his crushing guilt for still not having faced Ben had made him run off yet again.

Thirty-five years. They’ve known each other for thirty-five years and the longest they hadn’t seen each other was in year seven, when his whole class went on a seven-day field trip and Ben couldn’t come because he had dislocated his shoulder in footie practice. Apart from that they had seen each other pretty much every single day since birth. Hence, when a few weeks ago Ben was admitted to the hospital after not being able to breathe properly, Louis had thought it’d be like any other time when Ben went to chemo or had to have surgery: five days tops and he’d be back home.

Come day five and he wasn’t even nearly fit enough to leave his hospital room, Louis got worried. Come day ten, Louis was anxious. Day fifteen, the feeling of anxiety had merged into panic and seamlessly into guilt. He felt awful. A complete failure as a friend. Ben was sick and Louis couldn’t even bring himself to cross the threshold of the hospital entrance to go and see him.

It wasn’t for lack of trying though. He indeed had tried. On day 16 he had driven up to Summerstone General. He had parked his car. He had stepped out and gone up to the main entrance. The same entrance he had rushed into twice after his Nan called. But this was different. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He could do it. He knew he could do it. And then an ambulance bolted into the A&E with flashing blue lights and sirens, and he froze.

Blood pounded in his ears and his heart thudded in his chest. On the spot he was paralysed and couldn’t breathe. The dreadful sensation of an invisible hand grabbing his throat and closing up his windpipe made his vision go blurry and his mind spiralling.

The lights, the sound, the unmistakable smell of disinfectant, trauma and sickness. It all came back to him. Run Run Run, his inner voice thudded, yet he couldn’t bring his legs to move. All he could do was stand there, shaking and sweating uncontrollably, fearing his life was running out of him. It took him half an hour and the help of a thoughtful, compassionate woman to get him back to his car and another 40 minutes until he felt reasonably able to drive back home and crawl into his bed, where he sobbed until he fell asleep.

Yes, he had failed his best mate. He had been making excuses and dodging questions for weeks and he felt awful. Wondering how he could ever make it up to Ben had been crippling his mind for days and today was in no way different.

The touch of a curly, warm head on his lap interrupted his spiralling. Milly had somehow managed to drag Ruby into a hug, calming her down, had put the book away and now crawled onto his lap snuggling her warm, velvety body onto his. “Loulou, want to nap on your tummy. Yes?”

“Sure, love,” he hummed, grateful for her to bring him back to the moment. He had had his fair share of anxiety and panic attacks after losing his mum and sister, but up to that day he hadn’t had one in years. He had come to even feel kind of proud that over time he had managed to shove all triggering feelings aside. He definitely didn’t want to deal with them resurfacing.

He leaned himself back onto the pillow, stroking Milly’s back while she snuggled her whole body up on his chest.

Ruby yawned. She grabbed her dummy and slid onto his side; her chubby little hand positioned onto his wrist. It was a terrible habit. Whenever she was about to fall asleep, she started pinching or twirling the delicate skin on the inner side of his wrist as some sort of self-soothing gesture. It hurt like hell, but it was a price Louis was willing to pay for her to fall asleep approximately ten times quicker. “Let me just quickly turn off the light, yes?” he reached for the nightstand to turn on Eggy Egg, the nightlight, made sure enough pillows were draped around them to prevent the girls from crashing to the floor, and switched off the light. Ruby’s hand immediately went back to his wrist and he felt her little nails digging into his skin. Somehow the pain made him feel grounded.

It took them no more than five minutes to doze off, Louis tried his best to follow their lead but failed miserably. When he finally gave up and took his phone out to text Liam, he saw that he had a couple of unread messages from Ben.

Ben [12:38]: Oi, dickhead. What r u up to? Sorry for bailing lads’ night out, hope you had a good one?

Louis let out a disquiet breath. Bailing. Yeah right. Tosser.

Ben [12:52]: Tommmoooooooo, I’m booooooored. Entertain me!!!

Ben [13:13]: Listen, I know you’ve been avoiding me, Mum and Nan, so you probs don’t know yet. I moved from oncology to palliative…sounds shit I know but was the right choice. Not just coz they have beer 🙌

I swear this is in no way hospital like. They’ve got a fucking conservatory and an orchard. Proper Victorian. Feel like bloody Darcy will come around on a white horse to get Elizabeth any minute. Anyway. Please…if somehow you manage, come around.

Ben [13:21]: Seriously, get the kids and come along, apparently there’s a playground out there. You don’t need to face A&E, I swear... I’ll deny having said it, but I do miss your ugly face. Call me when you can. OK?

His chest tightened. Totally only because Milly was crushing his lungs. And the lump in his throat surely just came from the lunch he had gulped in a hurry and was now sitting in his stomach. That must be it. It certainly wasn’t the feeling of shame weighing on his shoulders. Shame and remorse for having disappointed the one person that had always been there for him, no matter what, no questions asked.

Who was he kidding? It was eating him up alive. Neither was it fair to Ben, nor was it fair to the girls. They hadn’t seen their dad for weeks, given the oncology ward never got rid of the pandemic restriction mode and still didn’t allow the kids to visit. They deserved to finally see him. And with Ben offering to meet outside, he surely must feel better. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? They wouldn’t allow him to go out in a park or on a playground, if it wasn’t for him being better, would they?

He took in a deep breath, the floral and fruity scent of Milly’s baby shampoo shooting up his nostrils. The mix of jasmine, rose, something berry- or pineapple-like and a whole lot of baby instantaneously soothed his nerves.

Ben is feeling better. He can go outside.

He closed his eyes and nuzzled his face into the curly ball of fluff on his chest, come on, don’t overthink. Before he could yet again talk himself out of it, he grabbed the phone, typed and hit the send button.

Louis [13:58]: Hey mate, the girls are napping, can’t call right now. Tell me about that playground. Where do I find it? When shall we be there?

Fuck. Why did it suddenly feel like 40°C in this bedroom? And why wasn’t Milly waking up when his heartbeat was thudding like a fucking marching band? He tried to loosen the collar of his shirt without stirring too much. The last thing he needed was for the girls to wake up right now, when he was feeling like drowning in a pool of his own sweat, trying to catch a hint of air through a twisted windpipe.

Ben [13:58]: You coming?? For real? Don’t shit with me Tomlinson.

Chapter Text

Louis clung to the steering wheel, neck stiff and jaw clenched. His fingers were thrumming to the sound of the radio and his lower lip was already flush pink from all the biting he had done since Ben texted him the whereabouts of the clinic’s playground. In the backseat one very well-rested, thrilled two-year-old was having the time of her life, while the other one clung equally tight to Tommy Turtle, her beloved stuffed animal.

♫ The pancake disappointed me at breakfast, yes, it's true.
But there are many other things that this pancake can do.
I'd like to think that pancakes are a bit like me and you.
We roll and we roll and we roll and we roll like a disappointing pancake.
We roll and we roll and we roll and we roll like a disappointing pancake.
We roll and we roll and we roll and we roll, not so disappointing pancake. ♫

“Loulou, play it again!!!” Ruby squeaked.

Louis sighed and restarted the song. For the third time. Stupid pancake. As if he hadn’t been feeling like a disappointing pancake himself for the last few weeks. He had weighed in the pros and cons to overrule the toddler’s music dictatorship, but since he had learned the hard way that it was either the pancake, Jingle Bells, or a hissy fit from hell, the pancake it was. Very disappointing.

Two more rounds of pancakes, some serious eye twitches and teeth grinding later, he drove into the car park, took three deep breaths before releasing the girls from their car seats and sent Ben a text that they’d arrived. The reply came on the spot.

Ben [15:24] Can’t wait to see you. I’m already there.

Louis’ heart sank into his stomach.

“Loulou, come now.” Ruby had immediately jumped out of the car and was tugging on his pant leg; Milly was still sitting in her car seat.

“Coming, sweetie, just give me a second to fetch your sandbox toys from the boot.” He swung his rucksack over the shoulder, grabbed the toy bag and leaned back into the car to get Milly out.

“Want me to carry you, luv?” he asked compassionately. The toddler hadn’t spoken a word since he mentioned where they were going, and Louis’ heart ached for her. He could relate to her entirely. Just like himself, she didn’t handle change very well. It had taken her weeks of tears and sleep deprivation to finally acclimate to staying with Nan or Louis overnight. He could totally see how bringing Ben back to the table, after almost a month of not seeing him, unsettled her.

She silently nodded and buried her head into Tommy Turtle as he lifted her onto his hip, fumbling a ring sling over his shoulder and her bum. He quickly pondered about taking the pushchair but dismissed the thought immediately. He wasn’t gonna admit though, that the main reason for his decision was that right now he benefitted as much from the comforting physical contact as she did, if not even more. But nobody needed to know that.

It took them less than ten minutes to reach the park at the back of building 28. Ten minutes that seriously made him re-evaluate his life choices, especially those related to smoking way too much, not sleeping enough and getting way too little physical exercise. He was panting like a dog.

They’d just passed the orchard when Ruby broke away from holding his hand and made a beeline towards the playground, squeaking in delight.

“Steady on, princess, steady on,” he heard Ben before seeing him.

“Ruby!” he shouted, but the girl had already swung her arms around her dad who was sitting in a wheelchair in the shadow of an old chestnut tree. “Jesus Christ, sorry mate, dang she’s fast,” he gasped approaching them.

“Loulou, look, Daddy’s come to play,” Ruby chortled, bouncing on Ben’s lap with the biggest smile she could possibly bring to her face, and with that she proceeded to pour down her whole verbiage onto the poor guy, reporting their every day in excruciating detail.

“Ruby, please be gentle!” he pleaded, perfectly knowing that it was in vain because the girl only had two settings: off or full-blown power mode. And she for sure wasn’t off right now.

Ben laughed. “It’s okay, I can handle her. Hey mate. Jeez, good to see you.” He opened his arm and gestured Louis into a welcoming hug.

Louis swallowed dry in his throat and leaned into a quick hug with Milly on his hip, a rucksack, and a toy bag on his back.

“Hi princess,” Ben gently stroked over Milly’s head, stilling immediately at the little girl shying away.

Louis’ guts wrenched at the pained look Ben shot for a split second, right before recollecting himself and making silly faces to Ruby.

Louis wriggled himself out of the ring sling without letting Milly go and flung the toy bag into the sandpit, panting yet again before sitting down on a bench right next to Ben, Milly still close to his chest and slightly caressing her back.

“Damn Tommo, you sound like you need lung treatment more than I do,” he taunted watching Ruby darting off towards the slide, giggling and blabbering something incomprehensible.

“Yeah, yeah, just make fun of me after bringing a whole damn household, kids included, to a hike from the car to the playground. Seriously, how much stuff do 2-year-olds possibly need?”

Ben laughed, leading to an immediate coughing fit, gasping for air in a way that made Louis‘ blood freeze.

He squelched the need to jump up and pound Ben’s back like he would do with the girls anytime they choked on something, instead he frantically looked around to find someone from the medical staff but there was none. He watched Ben carefully, instantly ready to run back to the building and scream for help if necessary.

“It’s fine, Louis,” Ben reassured mid coughing. “Keeps happening, gimme a sec.”

The coughs had brought colour to his otherwise pale face as he pounded his fist to his ribcage and tried to clear his throat the best he could. Louis had gone completely tense, not daring to take his eyes off Ben. He looked exhausted. Louis couldn’t help but internally cringe at the sight of his best mate, looking like a shadow of himself.

His cheeks were sunken in, making his dark blue eyes pop out more than they ever had. His arms looked tiny and weak compared to the well-defined, muscular shape they used to have. His whole demeanour had gone from top dog to frail kitten within a few months. Louis knew he had lost weight. There was no denying, even from seeing him only via FaceTime. But seeing him right here, in the flesh, with at least 30 to 40 pounds less, there was no way to overlook how vulnerable and fragile he had become and it scared Louis shitless. He still was coughing, yet Louis was genuinely afraid that patting his back a little too hard would break him in two.

“Why aren’t there bloody doctors here? They can’t just leave you here alone without any help, fucking hell,” he mumbled, fishing out one of the girls’ drinking bottles from his rucksack and handing it over to Ben.

He took a small sip and finally managed to soothe the irritation in his throat and chest.

“Thanks,” he rasped, handing the bottle back. “This is the part that really sucks.” For a split second his eyes had gone wide, and he wagged his head, as if trying to shake it off him and sort himself.

Louis’ gaze was still fixed on him, his shoulders tense, and the expression on his face strained.

“It’s okay, Louis.”

“It most certainly isn’t,” he snapped. “You’ve not been staying in this stupid hospital and paying for private treatment for almost a month for irresponsible medical staff to leave you gasping for air unsupervised on a fucking playground.”

Ben smirked and bumped his fist into Louis’ shoulder. “Chill, mate. I’m fine. They’ve already cared more in the few hours I’ve been here than the entirety of oncologists I’ve seen over the past two years.

Louis rammed his foot into the ground kicking a pebble across the sandpit, his thumb making fast little circles on Milly’s back.

It didn’t seem like Ben was still in immediate danger or bound to have another suffocation attack, but Louis remained proper strained. He had never been one to react mildly when it came to protecting the ones he loved. He’d always gone from nil to hundred within a split second to make sure they were taken good care of, he just couldn’t help it.

“Guess we should talk?” Ben murmured, still slightly gasping for air.

Louis motioned his head towards Milly, signalling that he first wanted to get her to play with Ruby. Ben nodded.

It took him quite some time to engage both girls into building a sandcastle, but finally they sat down with their toy construction-vehicle fleet and started digging holes and ditches on their own.

“How is she coping?” Ben asked, tilting his head towards Milly. Louis sat back on the bench, fidgeting with the strings of his rucksack. As much as he appreciated Ben for not immediately jumping down his throat for having been a shit friend all these past weeks, the elephant in the room made his heart beat in his head. He shuffled on the bench and brought one knee up his chest, wrapping his arms around it and started swaying slightly.

“She’s…well…um, she’s fine, I guess? Since they have been spending the night with me or Nan, it’s become a lot better. Guess it was a little too much inconsistency for her when we all took turns at your place. Gladys and Lottie had some pretty rough nights with her waking up about a million times an hour asking when you’d be home and not being able to settle. Nursery works fine though, apparently, she didn’t close up too much with the other kids. But any change in routine and she withdraws all together. Poor Payno hasn’t got as much as a hello for weeks. That’s why we have stopped spending the nights at your place, and just let them sleep at mine or Nan’s. I hope that’s okay for you?”

Ben nodded in approval. “Of course, whatever works best for you guys.” They both went silent, watching the girls play.

“Tommo, I’m so sorry for putting you all thr—”

“You are? Oh shut up! I am sorry, Ben, Jesus, I am so sorry!” Louis blurted out, cutting him off mid-sentence, he just couldn’t hold back any longer. “I should have been here for you the whole damn time. Fuck. I tried, I honestly tried. I couldn’t even pass the fucking entry door.” He ran his hand through his hair, shifting his weight from one butt cheek to the other, averting any form of eye contact. “I am so deeply sorry for being such a shit frie–“

“Cut it, Tommo!” Ben interrupted firmly. “For weeks you’ve been breaking your balls to make sure the girls are fine, you’ve been handling Nan, Mum and Payno on top of running a bloody nine figure business. For Christ’s sake, Louis, you’re the most insane workaholic I’ve ever come across and you didn’t bat an eyelid to take care of my kids. I don’t wanna hear crap about you being a shit friend.” His frail but still sharp look lingered on Louis' face. “So, you’ve got a problem with hospitals, and I happen to be bound to one. That sucks, but so what. It’s not like you didn’t give a shit,” his voice broke, running out of air, the rattling in his chest clearly hearable.

“Ben, I…”

“Louis, please. You’re here. You brought the girls. That’s all I care about right now. And I couldn’t be more grateful. So shut the fuck up with that beating yourself up bullshit, will you.”

They fell into silence.

Minutes passed where neither of them spoke a word and they just watched the toddlers that had moved on to climbing up the climbing frame and chuting down the slide.

“Are they giving you something for your breathing issues?” Louis broke the silence after a while, still not really daring to look Ben in the eye.

“There’s not much they can do. There’s an increase of fluids building in my lungs presumably caused by a small tumour. They’re planning on removing the thing tomorrow and withdrawing the liquid by suction, but they need to put me under anaesthesia to do so. Hopefully that’ll bring a certain relief.”

“You’re in pain?”

“Not at the moment. Not gonna lie, the last weeks were shit, they didn’t dare give me the good stuff, I guess for fear of killing me,” he huffed out a sneering laugh, “That’s different on this ward. First thing I got were some dope arse opioids, enabling me to sit here with you guys in the first place.

Louis had gone tense. “You’re telling me it’s a good thing they don’t care about side effects?” He hissed, pulse rising. “They’re supposed to make you better, not to fuck you up even worse.”

“They’re supposed to ensure my life quality till I—”

“Please, don’t.” Louis darted off the bench, ripping out some plastic food containers from his rucksack and positioning them on the bench for the girls to picnic.

“Louis, you know why I’m here—”

“Grapes? Cookies?” he shoved a container into Ben’s face.

“Grapes? Seriously? You brought fruit and cookies? You? What the…” Ben almost choked throwing an incredulous glance at the food containers and then to Louis. “They are even cut in halves! Bloody ‘ell, mate.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Well, anyway, the reason I asked to be transferred to palliative care is decidedly not for them to make me—”

“Ben, please. I just, I can’t yet. Can we just pretend—” he swallowed dryly. “Cookie? Please?”

Ben fell silent and shot him a sympathetic look, declining the cookie by slowly shaking his head. To Louis’ relief he decided to not push the talk any further.

“I want cookies, Loulou,” Ruby screeched, running towards them, slightly waddling.

“Sweetie, could it be that you need a new nappy?” He snatched her and sniffed her butt, immediately grimacing in disgust.

Ben burst out laughing. “Dear Lord, Tommo, you’ve really become the mummiest of all mummies.”

Louis flung a handful of grapes towards him and flipped him off. “Shut up, you twat.”

After having given both girls a quick change of nappies and having fed them pretty much everything his rucksack contained, they kept their talk light. When Louis went off to push the twins on the swings, he noticed that Ben kept dozing off and his guts started wrenching again.

The playground wasn’t that far from the building but in the whole ninety minutes they’d been there, not once did a doctor or nurse come to check on Ben, which irritated Louis massively. No, it pissed him off. Monumentally.

“Hey, mate,” he lightly stroked over Ben’s shoulder, “I think it’s time to call it quits and get you back to your bed, innit?”

Ben startled slightly and grabbed his phone. “Yeah, sorry, I’m kind of worn out. Sucks that even doing nothing tires me out.”

“Let me just grab the girls and their stuff and we’ll bring you back.”

“No need to. I already sent a text to be picked up,” he waggled the little black smartphone in the air that wasn’t his regular iPhone, as Louis only noticed now.

“You texted? Whom?”

“Are you shitting me, Tomlinson? You developed that patient guidance/alarm system yourself, sold it to the hospital and got me mum a fully equipped, elderly-friendly flat with the profit. Who do you think I texted? The pope?” he slapped him on the chest with the smartphone-like device. “But thanks for the offer to bring me back in. Means more to me than you can ever imagine.”

“Damnit, Burke, c’mere you proper sap,” Louis flung his rucksack back to the floor and pulled Ben into a tight hug. “So, when is this procedure tomorrow? Want me to come?”

“Harry, Christ, you’re making me dizzy. Sure you don’t want a smoke?” Zayn grunted, taking a deep drag, holding out the pack and a lighter.

Harry shook his head in refusal and continued to drum his fingers on the railing. He had joined Zayn on the balcony of his arts & music room for his smoking break ten minutes ago but hadn’t managed to stand still for a second.

“Then spill, what’s going on, for God’s sake. You’re insufferable!”

“I am not insufferable. You’re just grumpy,” he huffed, holding one of the hospital’s smart devices in a tight grip and leaning way over the railing. He came up on his toes and stretched his neck to have a small glimpse around the old chestnut tree blocking the sight to the ward’s playground.

“Babes, you’ve been pacing this balcony like a sleep deprived, emotionally dysregulated toddler on a sugar rush since you’ve stepped out and you’re checking your messages every four seconds. What’s the matter? And for God’s sake stop leaning so far over that railing, you’re giving me heart attacks, you twat!” He yanked him back and shoved him onto one of the metal-wooden patio bench.

Harry groaned but leaned back.

“Speak!”

“S’nothing.”

“Nah-ah, Styles. You can try to fool Niall, but you’re not gonna fool me. What is it?”

“S’stupid,” he mumbled, bringing his upper body forward towards his knees to throw yet another glance at the device’s black display.

“You’re stupid.”

“Heeey!”

“Not getting younger here, mind finally enlightening me?”

“It’s Ben, he’s still out there.”

“And? The guy hasn’t seen his kids for weeks, didn’t expect him to want to head back after 10 minutes. What’s it been, an hour and a half? Let the man be, Harry, he’ll send an alarm if something’s wrong or when they’re done.”

“I know, it’s just…ugh. I don’t know. His best mate brought the kids, and I remember the guy from back in school. Haven’t seen him for ages.”

Zayn raised an eyebrow, took another drag and knocked the ash of the cig. “Guy from school, huh? Someone special?”

Harry flinched. Someone special. He ran his hand through his short, curly hair, scratching his scalp. No, nobody special. Just the owner of the butt that after years of inner conflict and hesitation to and fro undeniably manifested Harry’s gay awakening. The guy whose sheer existence was largely responsible for Harry being here in the first place. The guy who prevented… No. We’re not going down that road. “Don’t look at me like that, Zaynie, it’s not what you think!”

“And what do I think, babes?”

“We’ve never been a thing. He may unwillingly have had a certain influence on some of my life decisions, but he most certainly doesn’t even know I exist.”

Zayn watched him motionless, eyebrow still raised until he let out a small chuckle.

“So, what you’re putting in such eloquent words, H. E. Styles, is that the lad was the object of your teenage wet dreams?”

“Jeez, no!” Harry flushed and aimed to kick Zayn’s shin. “Insufferable my arse. You’re the insufferable one!”

“And you can’t lie for shit.”

“I AM NOT DISCUSSING MY TEENAGE WET DREAMS WITH Y—”

A beep rang through the air and the device’s screen lit up. Harry jumped up and tapped the screen. “It’s Ben, he wants to get picked up.”

“And let me guess, you’re gonna do that yourself because we’re short on nursing staff?”

“We are short on nursing staff today!”

Zayn grinned, stood up, flicked the stub into the ashtray and started humming. “You climb onto the bonnet, and you're licking the windscreen, I've never seen anything so obscene,” he dramatically arched his back, popped his bum out and let his hand slide down his thigh.

Harry smacked him on the back of his head. “Oh, stop it, you twat, and go back to work. I’ll get him,” he hissed and tapped the device to reply to the request. Zayn got to the patio door, held it open for Harry and followed him inside. Then he followed him through the studio and out in the hallway.

Once in the stairway, Harry jerked to a halt. “Where do you think you are going?”

“Oh babes, aren’t you sweet. You seriously thought you could keep me from throwing a look at your teenage wanking material? Do you really not know me at all? I’m appalled, young Styles, appalled.”

“I hate you so much. At least take the dogs.”

“Aww, you love me, babes. They’ll survive ten minutes on their own,” he winked and flung his arm around Harry’s waist, leading him down the stairs.

They reached the park within minutes and walked the short distance in silence until the path made the turn for the playground and they caught a glimpse of the family’s gathering.

“Father, Son, and Holy Fuck. THAT’s the guy?” Zayn gushed, slamming his arm towards Harry’s chest. “Harry?” His arm had hit into a void as he let a whistling sound slip through his teeth.

A few feet behind him Harry had stopped and now stood motionless, swallowing dry, eyes wide open. On the playground, in the shadow of the old, giant chestnut tree, Ben sat in his wheelchair and next to him a slender, delicate man in a knitted, meadow green polo shirt and black jeans squatted down. A curly toddler was bouncing on his knee while he was trying to fiddle a baby sling over his shoulder and the toddler’s bum. Luckily, they were far enough apart to not have been heard or noticed, because Zayn was still making sounds that could only be considered as decently unprofessional.

“Harry?” Zayn had approached and nudged his shoulder. “You breathing?”

Harry stood and stared.

“Babes?” he snapped his fingers in front of Harry’s face. “Okay, he is a handsome fucker but come on, no need to turn into a wax figure or collapse.”

Harry shuddered. A nipping trepidation laced up his rib cage leaving him with shallow breaths. His heart leapt into his throat, and he couldn’t feel either his arms or legs. How could he ever think it’d be a good idea to fetch Ben himself? This was an utterly stupid idea. Totally, entirely, downright stupid.

It’d been 15 years since he last had taken so much as a glimpse at Louis. And even then, seeing him burst into the waiting area of the A&E, he had been hiding behind a vending machine, trying not to hyperventilate, that was how much of a sissy he was. But Christ, he wasn’t eighteen anymore. He had turned thirty-three in February and definitely had seen his fair share of handsome men since then. But this… this… bloody hell… this was Louis fucking Tomlinson.

Louis-mesmerising-blue-eyes-and-butt-to-die-for-Tomlinson. And attached to his chest in a frickin’ ring sling was a darling little ball of dark curls nuzzling her face into the small swale between his neck and his collarbones. He heard Zayn talking, but all he wanted to do was scream: “You hear that sound, you hear that?! That’s my non-existent ovaries bouncing and begging for mercy.”

Yes, he’d studied medicine, and yes, he knew it was hormonally not possible, but right at this moment, he wasn’t convinced that what he was feeling in his chest wasn’t some sort of weird male lactogenesis. Damn you, bloody Tomlinson.

“Harry, seriously. Do I need to slap you? Come on, Ben is waiting.” Zayn grouched, pulling Harry’s forearm. “By all means, the lad was at the pub yesterday. He’s one of the mates of the guy I—” he stalled, “Nevermind, I’m not gonna embarrass you, you know that don’t ya?”

“Zayn, I—, he—, fucking hell. Look at him. Christ, just look at him.” Harry rasped.

Zayn laughed, “Found your way back to life then?” He gave Harry a few reassuring pats on the back and nudged him to move.

Once they had passed the chestnut tree, Ben caught sight of them, waved and started coughing. Louis startled and lightly slapped his back, throwing a gloomy glance at the two approaching men.

“Harry, Zayn, well isn’t that a service to be picked up by the head consultant himself. Come here, you two. Want you to meet the pain in the rear I call my best mate since forever.” Ben panted in between coughs. “Louis, this is Zayn Malik, music and art therapist, if you ever feel the need to get creative, he’s your man,” he smirked towards Louis. “And this one, you might remember. Harry Styles, consultant and Head of Department of the palliative ward, formerly also known as Saint Dolores’ sixth form whiz, Harry Styles.”

Harry blushed. Louis’ mouth had flown open for a split second, only to morph into a tight, unreadable line, staring at him with keen, blue-greyish eyes that ran shivers down his spine. His right hand rested on the back of the toddler, while the left one gripped the handle of his rucksack so tight that his knuckles had turned white. Beautiful, smooth, masculine knuckles bathed in a soft, glowing, tawny tan, accentuating the salient veins on the sinewy back of his hand. Harry swallowed dry.

None of them said a word.

“Oh well, isn’t that nice.” Zayn sighed. “Hi, I’m Zayn, I think I remember you from the pub yesterday?” He reached out his hand.

“You were stoned and pulled me mate.” Louis deadpanned, ignoring the hand.

“Tommo, for Christ’s sake,” Ben called out, looking at him in disbelief.

Louis shrugged his shoulders, not letting his gaze slip away from Harry. “What? He was stoned and pulled Payno. And you? Are you hungover and wrecked too, or is there another reason why none of you gave a monkey’s about looking out for Ben over the last two hours while he was gasping for air?” He snapped at Harry.

“Bloody ’ell—”

“Please, Ben, language,” he hissed, covering Milly’s ear with his hand, gently pushing her other ear to his shoulder.

“Oh, isn’t he a delight,” Zayn mumbled towards Harry who still stood there silent and immobile.

Ben shot Louis a look that could have cut diamonds. “Louis, you can’t just—”

“Weeeeeheee, you got curls like Milly!” a blithesome, squeaky voice rang out as an overly excited, 35-inch piggy tailed whirlwind bolted towards the four men. “Ooooh, and you’s eyes like me”. She giggled, pressing her tiny index into Harry’s thigh.

He startled, realising the toddler was talking to him. “Oh, hi there.” He greeted with a sympathetic smile and slowly kneeled down to her. “Let me see, oh wow, you are right, your eyes really are green like mine.” He pointed at the toddler in the carrier. “So, I assume this is Milly, and who are you?”

“I am Ruby!” She beamed.

“Hi Ruby, I am Harry. It’s my pleasure to meet you. I am your daddy’s doctor and here to bring him back to his room before he falls asleep in his wheelchair. I do hope you are okay with that?”

Ruby harrumphed, looking at him with furrowed brows. “You not a doctor. You have not a ghost sheet.”

“A ghost sheet?” Harry asked slightly baffled before snorting with laughter. “Do you mean a white doctor’s coat?”

Ruby nodded, ogling him.

“No, I don’t wear lab coats. I don’t like them. I feel like a lot of patients get scared when they see someone in a white coat entering their room. And I don’t want my patients to be scared. I am here to take care of them and help them to feel as good as possible for their situation, not to make them feel uncomfortable or anxious.”

Louis let out a dismissive, hissing sound and Ben immediately kicked him.

“But I do have a pair of these,” he pulled a stethoscope out of the back of his trousers, feeling Louis’ piercing stare needling his cheeks, but he refused to look up. “Do Milly and her turtle friend also want to have a look?” He turned to Milly making sure he didn’t let his eyes stray to Louis’ face.

Milly curled deeper into the carrier while Ruby grabbed the lower part of the stethoscope and held it to her ear. Harry turned back to her, respecting Milly’s obvious wish for privacy.

“That’s the part that transmits the sound. And these two buds are put into the ears to better hear it.”

Ruby brought the chest piece to her mouth like a microphone. “You help Daddy heal?”

Harry’s gaze turned from Ruby to Ben for reassurance. Talking to kids about their parents’ illnesses was the most sensitive thing in his job, especially when he didn’t know where they stood. While he did have a certain experience with kids given that they also took care of palliative children, he’d rather have Niall or Zayn leading these kinds of conversations, both having had additional training in children’s psychology.

Ben understood his hesitation instantly and shot him a discreet approving nod.

“I help Daddy to not be in pain and be able to spend some more time with you as long as his body is strong enough to do so.”

“Ah, okay,” was all she said as she tilted her small head to the side and eyeballed his fingertips. “You nails are pwetty.”

“Thank you. Do you like the colours?” He wiggled his nails that were painted alternately in dark blue and tuna red.

“It’s pwetty. I like pink more. Pink like we painted Loulou’s nails.”

Harry’s heart missed two beats. He only had noticed Louis’ knuckles, beautiful, prominent knuckles, his nails however had been hidden in the tight grip. It took everything in him to not stare.

Ben snorted. “I beg your pardon, you did what now??” he looked aghast at Louis, snatching his hand, not seeing any nail polish.

“Hey!” Louis gnarled as he pulled away. Ben shot him a questioning look. “What? Lotts forgot a bottle at my place and the girls wanted to try it out. What do I know if that stuff is toxic for toddlers, so I let them paint my toes instead until I could ask Lottie.”

“Your toes?” Ben held his clenched fist tight to his mouth, desperately trying to muffle his laughing outburst while gasping for air.

Zayn bit his lower lip in amusement as Louis grit his teeth. “Oh, bite me!” He grumbled, slamming his rucksack onto his shoulder and snatching the toy bag. “Are we going to keep on playing stupid games or will one of the two gentlemen finally start doing their effing job and bring you back to your room?”

Harry held out his hand to Ruby. “It was my pleasure Miss Ruby and Miss Milly. I guess Louis is right, it’s time to get your daddy back in.” Ruby grabbed his hand and shook it with her whole body strength, making Harry giggle. Milly curled up and hid behind Tommy Turtle.

“Damn right, Louis is right,” he heard a muffled growl uttered through clenched teeth from behind the curly toddlers’ head.

“Come here princess, let me hug you,” Ben said, opening his arms for Ruby to climb onto his lap, which she enthusiastically did. Louis cautiously leaned down bringing Milly closer to him, but she just nuzzled deeper into his shoulder, holding on to her plushie for dear life. Ben gently stroked her hair, planting a small kiss on the back of her head.

“See you tomorrow, mate,” Louis murmured, giving Ben a quick hug before taking Ruby’s hand and walking out of the playground without so much as a word to Harry or Zayn.

“Well, wasn’t that fun.” Zayn scoffed, clicking the fork of his lighter.

Ben raised his eyebrows, eyes wide open and shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, I am so sorry. I have no idea what’s gotten into him. I swear normally he’s not an arse.”

“It’s okay,” Harry uttered, stepping behind the wheelchair to loosen the brakes. “He’s just worried.”

“And a dickhead.”

“Zayn!” Harry scolded. “Ready to head back, Ben?”

“Yeah, thanks, mate. For picking me up and for not jumping down his throat.”

“Just let us get you back. It’s fine. He was right though; we didn’t check on you,” he turned to Zayn, “And you, you did get stoned although I asked you all to not.”

“You asked to not get hammered. I wasn’t hammered,” he meekly pushed through his teeth.

Ben’s impish, crinkled eyes landed on him, watching him fidget with his lighter, avoiding his eyes. “But you did pull Liam?”

“Oh, shut up. I don’t even know you.”

Chapter Text

It’s fine. He is fine. They are fine. You are fine. Everything is fine. So fucking fine. Louis’ mind was racing as he absent-mindedly stared at the TV. His coffee table was still a mess of half empty take-away cups, wrapping paper, cold chips and chicken nuggets stuck in dried up ketchup and sweet-sour sauce. He was knackered, but still couldn’t bring himself to clean up let alone go to bed. Nan would tear him a new one if she knew he’d fed the kids nothing but Happy Meals and Jelly Tots while watching Paw Patrol, but after driving home from seeing Ben, they’d somehow all become cranky, and Louis didn’t even have it in him to fetch something from the deep freezer and throw it into the microwave.

Milly had been clingy as anything and had thrown a temper tantrum beyond good and evil at bath time. Ruby pretty much always sounded like a mixture of Chainsaw Massacre and The Shining as soon as a droplet of shampoo came near her head. It was a mess. A loud, exhausting, chaotic screaming mess.

Since every day was a school day, today Louis had learned that bath time with worn out twin toddlers was nothing less than Sparta.

300 Greeks fighting for their dear life couldn’t have been louder. Especially since—after the girls were finally clean, dry and in PJs—every single one of the umpteen dummies had gone missing and the prospect of sleeping without one sent the twins straight into the next screaming frenzy.

Mid toddler meltdown, Louis was close to either hot glueing a milk bottle teat onto a jam lid and calling it a dummy or to screaming bloody murder himself. Never in his life had he been so glad to not live in an apartment building, because given the soundscape, dear lord, the neighbours would for sure have called the police or social services for alleged child (or rather godfather) mistreatment.

Two hours, several prayers and some serious ear ringing later, two dummies—real ones—had been found and the twins were finally asleep. It was most definitely not a representation of his mental state, that he had opted to watch The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes as soon as his butt had hit the sofa and his heels the coffee table.

As much as he normally could get lost in true crime documentaries, today his brain didn’t want to shut up. He couldn’t cope with how frail Ben had looked. All haggard and pale. The rattling sound of his chest between sentences, the slight raspy whistle any time he took a breath, it all had caught him off guard. Ben, six-foot-five goalie Ben, the man that single-handedly used to pull Louis up his bedroom window because the ladder they used to secretly sneak in and out was just a tad too short for Louis to reach the windowsill. The man that suddenly no longer had enough hand strength to open the cap of a squeezy pouch. The realisation hit Louis like a ton of bricks.

Nothing was fine. Absofuckinglutely nothing was fine.

Slowly but steadily, a boiling pit of heat spun out in his intestines and threatened to overtake him. He knew the feeling all too well. The burning tingle in his guts, the all-consuming feeling of overwhelm conjuring an irrepressible urge to run away while not being able to move. The invisible hand enveloping his neck, progressively constricting the air flow.

His eyes fell on the small green Tupperware box decorated with a 4:20 sticker next to the inscription Stoner Things, neatly stored away on the very top of his bookshelf. It laughed straight to his face. His sole proven remedy to make the growing pit stop. Just right there at his fingertips, yet completely out of reach given there were two unsettled toddlers sleeping in his bed.

How easy it’d be to take out one of the pre-rolled blunts, light it, take some deep breaths, and enjoy the soothing effect of the engulfing warmth. The ultimate quiet. The certain shutting down of his raging system.

He grunted in disenchantment trying to steady his breath, concentrating on the pressure his thumb was exerting to the palm of his hand.

Fucking brain processes. Who needs them anyway. Ugh. Stupid, bloody thinking. Nothing good ever comes from that shit. He was tense, twitching from the burning pit of worries, fear, and anger rummaging through his insides and trying his best not to choke on the soaring emotions clogging his throat.

No, he’s certainly not going there. In the last seventeen years he had mastered keeping his walls high. One bloody evening without the numbing effect of a spliff won’t make him crumble! Most certainly not. Tomorrow he’ll be back to the hospital for Ben to get his lungs drained and once that’s done, he'll feel better. And if Ben feels better, Louis will feel better. He’ll be there first thing in the morning and stay until he’s sure Ben is fine. Dead certain he won’t tolerate another negligence in caretaking. Not by nurses, not by therapists and most certainly not by bloody Harry fucking Styles. Creepy, weirdo Styles.

Where the hell did he even come from? And why of all people was he Ben’s consultant? No, not just any consultant but the Head of Department.

Head of a fucking death-department.

He let out a derisive snort, staring at the TV, where a bunch of profilers and crime scene specialists investigated Dahmer’s house and belongings. It’s always the silent weird ones, isn’t it?

Thinking back to their schooldays he shouldn’t even be surprised. If there was somebody that fit the shoe of a creepy Doogie Howser M.D., then it’d certainly been Harry Styles.

The lad had appeared out of nowhere a few weeks into sixth form and was at least two years younger than everybody else. First, he seemed to be a dorky, shy newcomer that just needed a little time to adjust, but after their first courses, he turned out to be some kind of scientific super nerd, knowing things even the teachers had to double check. Not that he ever spoke a word without explicitly having been prompted to do so, but when the kid spoke, Louis damn sure didn’t understand a single bloody thing and always felt like the stupidest person walking the earth.

He knew perfectly well that school wasn’t his strong suit. Sitting still, listening to lectures, concentrating on things that didn’t spark his interest when he could as well be coding or playing footie, didn’t come easy to him. But he still considered himself to be pretty clever.

Enter Harry fucking Styles. And with him a ruthless mirror of everything Louis didn’t even know he didn’t know. He hated the feeling. Especially since his maths teacher didn’t miss a single chance to tell him how lucky he was to be athletic any time he handed him back another F. At least he didn’t say “Good thing you’re pretty,” yet he assumed the feeling would mostly be the same. Harry Styles, of course, got nothing less than straight As. He was a freaking science brainiac. A brainiac with a creepy death stare and the social skills of a hibernating hedgehog. The kid had been weird. Absolutely offish, solitary, cringey, weird and he creeped him out.

Louis shuddered at the sudden memory of an occurrence where he was standing stark naked in the locker room after footie practice, bent over his bag to get dressed, suddenly feeling the gaze of lingering, penetrating eyes on his rear. He hadn’t heard the door being opened, he hadn’t heard any steps coming nearer, just out of nowhere he felt the presence of somebody standing in the locker room and when he turned his head, he was directly looking at a glistening green-eyed mop of curls. A motherfucking staring mop of curls. The lips of the ridiculously big mouth slightly opened, neither moving nor saying a single word, just blatantly staring. Louis was so caught off guard that he didn’t even react. He just stood there for what felt like half an eternity, until the mop of curls finally jumped up and stormed out of the door, slamming his shoulder on the doorframe, stumbling, and nearly braining himself on the door handle.

It's safe to say, it was one of the weirdest days in his whole school life.

Even back then he couldn’t explain what had been going on in his brain. He should have been shocked; he should at least have been startled and covered himself up. Thinking back, he should have been screaming at him to get the fuck out—or at least throwing something to make him leave. Instead, he had just locked eyes and stayed completely still, his naked arse, in retrospect, indecently popped out.

Later that day he’d gone to Jess’ birthday party, got totally wasted and woken up with little to no memory, a filthy condom stuck to his leg and a wrecked, smirking Jess at his side, pointing out that feelings weren’t her thing, but no strings-attached fucking was, just in case he was okay with that. It had been a weekday. A day before a maths exam. He had failed miserably.

The last time he’d seen creepy Styles was a couple of weeks later, when they prepared for their last footie game before their final exams. The day had been utter shit. They had played a friendly match against another college team and Louis’ game had been abysmal. For the first time ever, the coach had taken him out for the second half and he’d been so pissed, that instead of the substitutes’ bench, he was sent directly to the seating tiers.

Of course, he hadn’t sat down to watch the rest of the game. Instead, he’d gone to the other pitch to dash balls into the empty goal and let some steam off. That’s when he’d last seen him. In the middle of angry football-kicking, Harry had come running from behind the tool shed, acting even weirder than usual and just like that, nobody ever saw him again. Not for the remaining three weeks of classes, not for the written exams, nor for the orals.

There were rumours he’d gotten himself an exemption to take his A-levels separately, but nobody ever learned why or where he’d disappeared to. Seemed like the rumours had been true after all, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten himself into med school to become whatever it is that he’s doing. Freaky certified death angel.

Okay, maybe he was being a little unfair. After all, the creep had been proper decent with Milly and Ruby earlier at the playground. But still…who chooses death as their specialisation? Louis cringed at the thought and switched off the TV.

He really should go to bed.

“Poppet, please sit down and at least have a tea and some cereal.” Nan shot Louis a sorrow-stricken look as he was running around the kitchen like a headless chicken, grabbing clothes, sippy cups and lunch boxes while the girls were reorganising a drawer of plastic containers.

She had been eating her breakfast on her balcony when she saw him pacing through the garden looking for the girls’ sandals that they had thrown off God knows where the day before. His dithery appearance—paired with a pair of puffy, dark-circled eyes—hinted at how the night had gone and she had taken pity on him and had come over to give him a hand.

“Not hungry.”

“Dear, you’re not going to leave this house on an empty stomach.” She put a bowl of Cheerios and a milk carton on the kitchen island and led him to the barstool. He couldn’t help but let out a tired chuckle, relentlessly tapping his socked foot on the footrest.

“Cheerios? Nan, really? Are you getting soft on me in your old age?” he smirked rather smugly and poured the milk into the bowl. “NAN!”

“Yes, poppet?”

The moment he had stirred the spoon in the bowl, a mix of berries, oats and small chunks of nuts had surfaced, and Louis gasped in disbelief.

“I can’t believe you sprinkled a layer of Cheerios over a fricking bowl of oats to trick me into eating breakfast! For crying out loud, I’m not five anymore!”

“Oh, love, you’ll always be my picky little squish. Now eat before it gets all mushy, we’re not wasting food in this house.”

“You do realise this is my house?”

Nan laughed and pecked him on the temple before preparing some oats with squashed bananas for the twins.

It wasn’t even that he was a picky eater. Whenever somebody took the time to peel, chop and prepare fresh food, he was pretty willing to eat what he was served, but having to handle sharp knives or utensils with messy, wet, sticky fingers for God knows how long in order to eat for a few minutes, only to have to clean the kitchen afterwards for yet another absurd amount of time, just wasn’t something he deemed necessary if take away and instant meals existed. But oats? Come on…might as well pour milk over sawdust.

He forced the first spoonfull down and paused his fast-paced finger drumming on the countertop to throw a quick glance at his smartphone, then downed his tea in one go.

Nan raised an eyebrow. “You want to tell me why you’re all jittery and restless?”

“Oh. Um, no, I’m fine. It’s just work. My assistant has a day off and I promised Ben to come around, so I wanted to let Liam know but I couldn’t get a hold of him—” he checked his phone again. No new message.

“Liam’s not doing so great, is he?”

Louis sighed. “I honestly don’t know. He doesn’t exactly talk and there wasn’t a right moment to take him aside in the last few days. He’s been back on a partying spree for some weeks, but still he appeared at work every day. S’just weird he doesn’t pick up. ”

“Partying spree?” Nan jeered. “We’re calling it a partying spree now?”

Louis’ eyes dropped and he poked around in his bowl, leg still bouncing on the barstool. This was a conversation he most certainly didn’t want to have before 7 a.m., this was a conversation he didn’t want to have at all. But just like all the other conversations he didn’t want to have, Liam’s drinking habits were something that kept him awake at night. He just couldn’t bring himself to call it what it was towards his Nan: alcoholism. Not today. Not with so much going on in his mind right now. He didn’t think he had to; she knew anyway.

Liam had never been the kind of alcoholic to drink daily. He managed to stay perfectly sober for weeks and weeks, even when they all went out and partied hard he could stick to ginger ale for the whole night, but God forbid he was dealt a hard hand, or something went wrong. He would drown himself in booze in the blink of an eye and barely be able to function for days and longer. Only when it would get so bad his friends and family threatened to call an ambulance and put him into rehab—again, he’d sober up and stay dry till the next breakdown. It was Groundhog Day all over again. He’d already been four times, yet not once was the issue solved in the long term. And since he never let anybody know what exactly the demons he was facing were, neither Louis nor any of their other friends and family knew how to help him properly. Louis couldn’t even blame him, he was definitely the last person to call somebody out for mastering the skill of bottling up.

He felt Nan’s warm hand on his back, realising he had zoned out for quite a while and had not even noticed the girls were almost done with their breakfast. “Sweetie, how about you take your time to get ready and do what you have to do this morning and Gladys and I bring the kids to nursery?”

He leaned in, putting his head on her shoulder before draping his arm around her to squeeze her tightly. “You’d do that? Thanks, Nan. I don’t think I tell you often enough how much I love you.”

“May I help you, Sir?” The friendly voice of an oddly familiar looking redhead disrupted Louis’ short-circuiting thoughts.

It had taken him twenty minutes and the soothing lung burn of four cigarettes to settle his nerves enough to bring himself over the threshold of Building 28. He thought he’d be okay. He really thought he’d be okay. Because exactly like Ben had promised, the A&E was truly ages away and the palliative ward really looked nothing like a hospital.

The entry consisted of a huge, saddle brown, carved, oak double door that was surrounded by massive stone mullions dividing large, white rectangular windows in sixteen smaller ones. They complemented the elaborately ornamented stone façade and balcony railings to the tee and made him think of more of an Italian Renaissance monastery than a hospital. Not that monasteries necessarily would make him feel more at ease. He’d probably go up in flames the second his foot touched the floor, or so he thought, but at least they weren’t hospitals.

Hence, he really thought he’d be okay. Until he stepped through the door, went up the stairs to the second floor and the slightly bitter, antiseptic, artificial fragrance of the mix of sickness and disinfectant hit his nose, strangling him without warning. Well, just like that, it turned out he was everything but okay.

“Sir?” The woman in the hallway had come to a halt, a bunch of health records clasped in front of her chest as she eyed him up with questioning, knitted brows. “Sir? Are you alright? You look like you're on the verge of collapsing, do you need help?”

Louis wordlessly stared at her, his back pressed against the hallway wall, swiping glistering sweat beads from his forehead, breathing fast but shallow. “Thanks, no, yes, I mean—, I just need a moment. I—,” he stammered, shuffling his hand through his hair, his other hand pressed firmly to his ribcage, trying his best to steady his breath. “I’m looking for Benjamin Burke, he said he’d be in room 223.”

“Benjamin Burke, you say? Oh, I am afraid, you came in just a little too late, he’s already gone.”

He what? Louis’ stomach twisted as he let out a strained gasp. His palm jolted to his face, covering his mouth, eyes wide open; all colour drained from his face.

“Annie, Christ, have you lost your mind!” A smoky textured voice bellowed through the hall followed by an unmistakable ‘fucking hell’ uttered through clenched teeth as Zayn darted towards him, positioning both hands on his upper arms and repeatedly exerting slight pressure.

“Louis, mate. Look at me. Breathe. Ben has only been picked up for his procedure. He’s fine. He’s just already been brought to surgery. He most decidedly is not gone.” He shot a stare at Annie that could have made train tracks curl.

As the implication of her blunt words dawned on her, she squeaked, smashing her hands to her face, the records flying to the ground. “Dear Lord, I didn’t mean to—! Oh God, I am so sorry!” She panted, face bright red, frantically trying to gather the jumbled paperwork off the ground. Zayn quickly shoved Louis through the door of a consulting room and directed him to sit on a patient bench.

“He is—?” Louis’ heart throbbed in his throat, his voice breaking just as his knees gave in and his vision blurred.

“He’s fine, Louis.” He distantly heard Zayn uttering in a calming tone. “Come on, breathe for me. Just breathe. In for three…one, two, three, hold for four…one, two, three, four, and out for five…one, two, three, four, five. Again. In for three…one, two, three, hold for four…one, two, three, four, and out for five. You’re doing great.” Zayn’s hands repeatedly squeezed his biceps, holding him steady and setting the tone of the breathing pattern.

“He’ll be back as soon as the procedure’s done and he’s cleared from the recovery room. You hear me? He’ll be back in no time.”

As the man was bending over him, uttering his words, all calm and chill, the dull ache in Louis’ chest gradually began to cease and he slowly came to himself. Woah, what the fuck just happened, shot through his mind, realising that Zayn was invading his personal space way more than he was comfortable with and he flinched.

“Well, hi there. Glad to see you back, mate.” Zayn grinned, patting his shoulder, and stepped back to get a paper cup from a cabinet and fill it at the basin.

“Here, drink.”

Louis reflexively accepted the cup and took a small sip, the chilled liquid easing the tight sensation in his throat and chest little by little.

“Feeling better?”

He did.

“Listen, I can’t tell you exactly how long it’ll take until Ben’s back. They called him in early, so I guess the schedule has been changed, but to be honest I don’t know a single thing about the surgical ward. It’ll probably take two, three hours alone for anaesthesia to completely wear off, and from experience it’ll take some time until patient transport is ready to pick him up and bring him back. So you might as well go home, and we’ll call you as soon as he’s back to his room. It’s pretty obvious that this is not a place where you can relax.”

“Relax?” Louis bolted off the patient bench, regretting it immediately, his blood circulation still being all over the place. “Relax?” he hissed, voice stern and fists clenched. “What is wrong with you all?! Is this all a joke to you? Ignoring a patient for hours, winging schedules at will, knowing shit all, but instead rejoicing in scaring the living shit out of relatives and then mocking them for not being able to relax? Are you fucking kidding me? The hell I’m going home! I’m going fucking nowhere. I’ll stay right here, making damn sure that nobody involved in this joke of patient care won’t get another single chance to extricate themselves from doing their fucking job or I’ll sue their bloody arses for medical negligence! This is not fucking amateur hour, you have people bloody dying here and nobody gives a rat’s arse. Fucking hell,” he smashed the paper cup into the bin. “Had I known he’d be surrounded by feckless idiots I’d have taken him home and organised care at home myself!”

“You done?” Zayn asked flatly, not a single telling change in his expression.

“This is ridiculous! It’s your job, it’s your fucking job to take care of him,” Louis went on, unable to hold back a derisive snort. “Should have known the second I learned pathetic Styles is in charge that this was a fucking joke.”

So far Zayn had calmly listened to his rant, but with the last part of his sentence his expression shifted from motionless to ready to turn glowing charcoal into ice within a fraction of a second. With only two controlled steps and a stare that burnt right through him, he came to stand within spitting distance and leaned way into Louis’ space, planting his palms, one left and one right beside him on the wall.

Louis could literally sense the warmth of his breath in his face.

“Listen, arsehole. Yes, Annie fucked up, she’s new and won’t ever make that mistake again. Apologies for that. Yes, surgery schedules are not set in stone because you can’t bloody plan life threatening emergencies, sorry if that messes with your entitled brat expectations. Yes, we brought Ben to meet you and the kids without a 24/7 chaperone, but you can bet your uptight arse that Harry would have jumped right off that balcony to get him if Ben or you had pushed the emergency call button. We didn’t make the best first impression with you, I get that, but don’t you dare step into this place and insult Harry. You know shit all about him, his work or his commitment to this ward. So don’t you ever dare to disrespect my boss and friend right to my face. Do I make myself clear? Now get your surly arse out of this room and control your fucking attitude before I control it for you.”

He straightened his back and with stern steps went to the door. “And by the way, if it wasn’t for pathetic Styles and his amateur hour team, there wouldn’t even be a palliative care at home unit that you could organise at yours.” And with a “bloody twat” uttered under his breath he disappeared into the hallway.

Harry was sitting at his desk going through a mountain of patient reports and handwritten notes when his door flew open and Niall burst in, red faced and fervid.

“MAKE! HIM! STOP!!!” he blurted. “Harry, I mean it! Either make him stop or I need another office. I can’t work like this, bloody—!”

Harry startled, almost knocking off his coffee pot off his desk.

“What the f—?”

“Harry, I beg you, I just—, for feck’s sake,” he ran his face over his bright red forehead, “How am I supposed to go through my sessions when that eejit is caning bloody drums like a raving lunatic?! Drums, Harry, DRUMS, what fecking shitehawk even thought it was a good idea to get bloody drums. I can’t have patient consultations with that gobshite smashing drums next to my head.”

Harry squinted his eyes and pinched the skin over his nose. The paperwork on his desk had reached a level where ignoring it was simply no longer an option. He finally managed to free his schedule for the day to get a hold on it, so getting involved in temper tantrums within his team most certainly wasn’t on his agenda, but since the shitehawk getting drums had been himself, chances were that there was no easy way out but to deal with it.

“Niall, for crying out loud, what are you talking about and may I introduce you to the concept of knocking before entering a room and giving people heart attacks!”

“Zayn! I’m talking about Zayn! The bloody eejit locked himself in the music room and has been murdering the drums ever since. Soundproof my arse, it sounds like he was playing right in my head. I can’t even hear myself thinking let alone have conversations with any of my patients. Make him stop, please, I beg you. He ignored me banging the door and just drummed even harder.”

Harry sighed. The music room was yet another bullet point on his never-ending list of things to get done. He’d been discussing properly soundproofing the room for over a year now and although the EMC had agreed to implement music therapy in addition to arts, to this day he hadn’t received a penny to set the framework for doing so. Yet another thing, they’ll have to sort out themselves.

The room was on the back end of the storey and far enough from the patient rooms that they weren’t immediately affected when the noise level occasionally rose beyond average. But even with their efforts of splitting it up into a music room and an art room with a soundproof drywall and the art room serving as a buffer, Niall’s office was directly adjacent, and Harry knew when he accepted the drum set offered by a complaisant donor, it would cause frictions, to say the least.

He sighed again, set his computer into standby mode, and got up. “Promise I’m done with parenting after that?”

“He started it!” Niall pouted.

“Oh, come on.”

They shuffled through the hall without speaking. The second he’d left his office he could already hear the snappy, tight sound of snares accompanied by the dull, thudding sound of bass drums. If he hadn’t been so cheesed off for having to deal with kindergarten behaviour, he’d have been impressed with the skills Zayn had developed since he last heard him play. But now was neither the place nor the time for evaluating his musical development. The noise was indeed borderline sickening.

Niall had stopped in front of his office door and grinned. “You’re on your own kid. Just make him stop and I won’t bother you again.”

“Traitor.” Harry gently flipped him off and entered the arts and crafts room. He made his way along easels, tables, and stools to the door leading to the music room. The noise was deafening. He banged on the door, in vain. He pushed down the handle, locked. He shouted Zayn’s name, also in vain.

Ugh, why does everybody always need to be so dramatic, he thought and strolled over to the desk, grabbing a black Sharpie and a sheet of paper, before stepping out on the balcony that sprawled along the long side of both rooms. He scribbled down a few words onto the paper and slid over to the big window. Through the pane he could see Zayn sitting on the drums, a pair of huge over-ears flung over his head, jaw tense, eyebrows scrunched together, drumming as if his life depended on it. He banged against the window and pressed the paper against it.

“LET ME IN, YOU TWAT, BEFORE HORAN WEES IN MY TEA AND POISONS YOUR FOOD.”

It only took a few more window bangs and drum hits before Zayn spotted him, dramatically rolling his eyes, and signalling him to come to the door.

“What?” he snorted, pulling the door open.

“You tell me.”

“Nothing.” He flung the drumsticks aside and kicked the grey bean bag into the corner.

“That’s a hell of a lot of anger released for ‘nothing’,” Harry said, sauntering to the windowsill and sitting on it with one leg up and one on the floor.

“What d’you mean?”

“Mate, the walls were shaking at your rumpus. Nialler almost hyperventilated.”

“Oh, sod off, I had the headphones in!” Zayn snorted, wiggling the over-ears that were now dangling around his neck, the cable still plugged into the drum set.

Harry hit the cymbals and a loud clang banged through the room. He sighed. “Oh, great. Yet another thing that broke.” He let his head drop towards his chest and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Anyways. What’s going on? Why are you so riled up?”

Zayn tossed the headphones on the drums.

“Your wanking material pissed me off.”

“Pardon me, my what?” Harry straightened his back, eyes going wide.

“YOUR WANKING MATERIAL PISSED ME OFF!”

“I heard the words, yet I don’t know what you’re saying.”

Zayn let himself fall onto the beanbag. “Tomlinson. He’s a massive wanker and I want to kick his complacent arse.”

Harry’s expression darkened, one brow shooting up. “Where did you run into Louis, it’s not even nine yet?”

“—but I can’t kick his complacent arse, because that’d be unprofessional and he’s Li—” he stumbled. “And you seem to be ridiculously protective over him.”

Harry felt his pulse rising. He let his gaze trail out of the window. It wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed that the tone Louis had taken with them the day before could have been friendlier, but for real, who would have remained totally chill and relaxed in his shoes? Zayn now bashing him for whatever reasons absolutely did not sit right with Harry, and yes, he totally felt the urge to step up for him. After all it was Zayn’s job to deal with emotionally strained people and not to act like one of them himself. Drama queens, the whole lot of them.

Anyway. Mount Paperlot on his desk was still waiting to be tackled and arguing with a miffed spitfire wasn’t likely to ramp up that process. So, he took two deep breaths and beseeched, “Zayn, please. I have no idea what happened that made you kick off like this, but would you please cut him some slack. You don’t know the full picture yet. Can you just believe me when I say the guy went through hell and back and is totally entitled to be all at sea?”

“He’s not all at sea, he’s an insolent arsehole, barging into your ward, acting like a humongous judgemental fucker, insulting us and our competencies and I sure as hell won’t have it.”

Harry’s chest clenched.

“We’ve been dealing with insolent arseholes since the day we stepped into this ward, it’s not like we aren’t used to it, are we?”

“T’is different.”

“Listen, I’d really like to understand but I also really need to get back on track. Niall has a full schedule today just next door, so could you please do me the favour of keeping it down and I’ll come around after work and we’ll talk it out?”

A subtle twitch hushed over Zayn’s face, and he shuffled awkwardly into the bean bag, trying to snag the drumsticks with his foot. “Um, I kind of already have plans for later...”

“Have ya? Huh. Well then tomorrow?”

Zayn had brought his hand to his trimmed beard and rubbed his knuckles over it, giving Harry the full sight of the tattoos on the back of his hand.

“You know, actually, um, maybe I did overreact a tad.” His arm dropped and his eyes fell down, rummaging the floor, while his fingers slid under his sleeve and adjusted the band of his watch. “I–, um, I’ll just apologise to Niall, okay? Then we’re fine.”

Harry knitted his brows and looked at him with a questioning look. Now that was new. A pissed off Zayn settling down at the first appeasement? Weird. But okay, now was not the time to try to get to the bottom of it.

“You, um, do you…” Zayn stuttered fidgeting with his watch, “Maybe you want to go check on Louis? I kind of left him in room 201 and told him to get the fuck out after Annie scared the living shit out of him making him think Ben was gone.” The tone in his voice was almost remorseful.

“You what now?” Harry huffed, shooting up and pressing both hands into his hips like a disappointed parent ready to rip off heads.

“He misunderstood Annie, he was looking for Ben, and she may or may not have said he’s gone instead of he’s been picked up. He didn’t take it too well and he may or may not have had a minor anxiety attack before bowling me out like a pissed off ankle-biter”, he fiddled with his rings on his hand.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Christ, Zayn. We’re supposed to be the professionals here, this is not fucking amateur hour!”

A small cackle escaped Zayn’s lips. “That’s what he said.”

Harry’s nostrils flared as he stared at him. “Do I look like I was joking?”

Zayn faltered, biting his lower lip. “Sorry. You’re right. I apologise. To be fair, he was a dick though. But still, somebody should go check on him. Best if it’s not me.”

Annie was rather new to the team but had managed to charm every single one of them at her job interview. Maybe the bar wasn’t set all too high, given the former secretary, Miss Barnsdale, pretty much acted as the department dragon ninety-eight percent of the time and scared the living hell out of everybody, patients included. So, when she finally retired and a not even five-foot elf-like ginger crossed the threshold, chirping, shaking hands and greeting everybody with her brightest smile, right before conjuring cupcakes out of her Marry Poppins bag, truth be told nobody cared if her job-related qualifications met the requirements or not. Harry hired her on the spot. Thankfully it turned out she surpassed the requirements by far.

Ever since Annie had taken over the secretary position, she lulled the old, battered Building 28 into a charming, warm, and happy haze. Scaring “the living shit” out of a relative, how Zayn had put it, was pretty much the last thing Harry could imagine her doing, yet here he was, pacing the hallways of his ward, not knowing what he was to expect once he’d found Louis.

Room 201 had been empty, so he tried Ben’s room next. The butterflies in his stomach had already had a field day when he checked the first room. Now it felt like they were having a full-on rave party with substance abuse and the police seconds away from intervening.

He knocked before pushing the door handle down and stuck his head through the door crack.

The window was wide open, the room flooded in sunlight and there he was, a slender figure dressed in black jeans, a backside still as gorgeous as the picture engraved on Harry’s retina, leaning way out over the windowsill. His arm was stretched way above his head and moving a phone around, granting Harry full sight of a collection of tattoos, while a soft, blue, knitted polo shirt with black and white striped cuffs perfectly accentuated the curve of the most delicate waist in existence.

Harry wanted to gasp or alternatively bite his fist. The vision of a white boxer brief waistband peeking out of the jeans and granting a glimpse of sun kissed skin was doing things to him. Things he’d rather not speak about. The golden tan, the waist, the hair…a brown, slightly messy bunch of fluff, tinged with a hint of grey around the temples glistening in the morning sun…Christ… Harry wanted to run his hands through it. How can one single person be so beautiful, he thought, so otherworldly beautiful?

The room was quiet, bar the whirring sound of the open MacBook positioned on the desk. It took everything in Harry to stop staring—again. Pull yourself together, Styles, for God’s sake. He willed himself to speak.

“Reception is shit on this side of the building,” he finally managed to utter, stalling in the threshold.

Louis’ head spun around, his piercing blue eyes landing sharply on Harry. “You don’t say.” He grumbled, giving him a cold and haughty glare before turning his attention back to his phone.

“May I come in?” Harry asked in the most unaffected tone he could possibly muster.

“’It’s your ward, Professor-Doctor-Chief-Physician-Styles.” The sharp and cutting tone of Louis’ voice at the mention of the academic titles didn’t escape Harry’s attention. He gulped. He didn’t want the spatting intonation of the words to hurt, but they did. Maybe he began to understand mildly what got Zayn riled up. No, he thought, this is not on him. Zayn and Annie were the ones to fuck up, not Louis.

“Can’t argue with that.” Harry said, trying his best to keep his voice steady, closing the door behind him and taking a few steps into the room.

Dang. He’d been in patients’ rooms a bazillion times. Why the heck couldn’t he remember what he usually did with his arms? Why was he standing there like a wooden pole rammed into the ground in the middle of a cow pasture, all superfluous and weird?

His fingers gripped the pendant of his gold necklace and slid it back and forth, before deciding to lean half-heartedly onto the bed frame, keeping the most considerable distance to Louis. The room suddenly felt way too small.

“I was informed,” he said quietly, “that you had a rather unfortunate encounter with two of my staff members this morning. I wanted to check on you and make sure you are okay and apologise for the inconvenience.”

“I was informed,” Louis parroted his words, making them sound ridiculously posh, “well aren’t we important?” He flung his phone to the table with a derisive sound, plunging himself onto the chair. He turned the MacBook to face him and started typing before pressing through his teeth, “I’m alright. Don’t I look alright?” The room fell silent, bar the borderline aggressive slamming of the notebook keys. He grabbed his phone again, unlocked the screen, not deigning to look at Harry, huffed and put it down again.

Harry watched him closely. Without a doubt he believed the man in front of him to be the single most attractive human to wander this hemisphere. The sharp jawline, the striking, high cheekbones, the most intense, bright steel-blue eyes, framed by warm, loving crinkles and illicit, long, dark lashes. He looked ethereal. He looked…broken.

While the blue was clearer than the sky over the Mediterranean Sea on a cloudless summers’ day, the look was distant. Where crinkles were supposed to testify years of laughter and happiness, the skin presented itself as slightly puffy and dark-circled. His eyelids were marginally drooping, the eyebrows frowning, and the downcast gaze urged Harry to wrap his arms around the man, whispering sweet nothings into his ear, reassuring him that everything was gonna be okay.

Yet he couldn’t.

I’m alright. Don’t I look alright? The words rang in Harry’s ears as his hand moved towards his cheek, flimsily pinching the delicate skin between his thumb and his index. A habit he never managed to get rid of in tense situations. Once he realised, he brought back his hand to his lap, quickly intertwined his fingers, and cleared his throat.

“You actually don’t.” He said, voice low and considerate. “You look tired and scared out of your skin.”

The typing stopped. Louis glared at him. Harry glared back. The strained expression in Louis’ face faltered. It was subtle, and he controlled himself almost immediately, but it faltered.

Harry’s breath hitched, forcing himself to hold the gaze. He was not going to fall back into old patterns. No, he wouldn’t. He was an adult, for Christ’s sake. He could manage to look Louis in the eyes without turning into a pillar of salt. Yeah, right. A pillar of salt in a bloody British rain shower that’d be. Dissolving as quickly as sugar in hot tea.

Tea. Maybe he should offer Louis a cup of tea? Or coffee? Was Louis more likely to be a tea or a coffee guy? Maybe both. Or none? Bloody hell what’s the protocol for steel blue eyes burning fiery holes into the depths of your soul? Dang. Harry felt his palms beginning to twitch. No way he’d be able to keep this staring game up without crumbling to dust… And then… Oh.

OH!

Louis averted his gaze first. He averted his gaze first.

His left hand had shot up to his forehead, bashfully fixing his fringe in a quick motion of thumb and index before coming back down to rest on his right hand, pinching the frail skin on the back of his middle finger.

Was that…? Is he…? Harry’s thoughts spiralled. Too quiet. This room is too quiet. Words, Styles. Now would be a good moment for words. You know, the things you form with your mouth and the airflow from your throat. Woooords. But instead, all he managed to do was to look. Look at the man across the room, who was sat with his elbows pressed to his slender body, pinching, and twisting an imaginary ring on his finger, shoulders slumped and head bowed—which, last time Harry checked, was pretty much the universal body language for Wow, I’d rather be anywhere but here. Good job, Styles. Fricking good job. No bad situation you can’t make worse. Forty seconds with the man alone and you already creeped him out. Again. If that wasn’t a new record…

“I need to work,” Louis suddenly said, a ragged edge squirming its way to his usually bright voice.

Harry’s insides felt like they were disintegrating, like a phantom fist was clenching his heart and slowly grinding it to dust.

He drew in a long breath. “Well then,” he finally managed to say, lifting his body off the bed frame, giving his trousers a clumsy stroke over. “I’m not gonna keep you from it. It was just important to me to check on you and let you know how sorry I am for what happened earlier.”

Louis brushed his thumb to his palm, not averting his eyes from the screen, jaw clenched.

“If you’d rather—” the chime of Harry’s phone interrupted him. “Uh, sorry, let me just—” he grabbed the phone from his jacket pocket and took a quick look at the incoming message. “Ben’s next in the operating theatre, they are still working on another patient, but the surgeon thinks they can start in about an hour or so.”

Louis’ eyes darted upwards and locked on Harry’s face. His mouth was set in a hard line. Shivers ran down Harry’s spine.

“Um, yeah,” he shoved the phone back into his pocket, wanting to squirm under the intense look. “They scheduled the surgery for one and a half hours. You can easily add another two to four hours in the recovery room. Rick, his surgeon, was confident they don’t need to keep him in the ICU for the night since it’s only a tiny tumour, allegedly easily accessible, and he’s planning on removing it with the daVinci. That’s their minimally invasiv—”

“I know what the daVinci robotic surgical system is,” Louis hissed.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Harry raked his fingers through his hair, internally cringing at the sensation of his damp neck. The last thing he needed right now was to start reeking of stress-induced cold sweat. Jesus Christ, this is Saint Dolores all over again. “Anyway, um, at best Ben will be back around 4 p.m., at worst, they have to keep him in the ICU. So, if you prefer to go home, you can simply leave me your phone numbe—”

“I stay,” Louis cut him off, his expression unimpressive.

“You stay,” Harry repeated. “Yeah, that’s… that’s fine as well, I guess. um, I will keep you updated as soon as I hear something?”

Louis’ forehead creased, one eyebrow shooting up. “You’re telling me or you’re asking me?”

Harry felt a muscle in his jaw twitching. Four years of med school, two years of foundation programme, six years of specialty training, not a single exam passed with less than a straight A. But one simple question from Louis bloody Tomlinson, and he could watch his confidence go down the drain like the one of a blushing Victorian bride showing bare ankles for the first time. Right, and now he’s totally not imagining what Louis’ ankles look like, given his hands and wrists are so…

“Yeah, no, I mean, no, yeah, of course it’s fine if you’d like to stay. I will update you. Absolutely,” he said. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the wee donkey, GET. A. GRIP. STYLES!

“Well…” he gestured with his thumb towards the door, “I’d better be going then.” He waited a few seconds for any kind of reaction, but there was none. Louis was back to staring into his MacBook and whatever walls he had built around him were as up as they could possibly be.

Harry turned on the heel and hesitantly walked to the door. Every fibre of Louis’ expression screamed Leave me the fuck alone and Harry was the last person to not respect that need. Yet why did it feel so… so wrong? He shot him another quick look.

“Um, Louis?” he said, not being able to ignore the downright queasy feeling in his gut. “Reception really is shit in here and we’re still waiting for IT to fix the Wi-Fi issues, but I’ll be in my office for the rest of the day and there’s a second desk with a proper internet connection and a balcony with an ashtray. You’re welcome to work over there if you need to make calls or need functioning Network access while you wait for Ben to return.” He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. “It’s the second door on the right side with the rainbow drawing on it. I have a mountain of paperwork to go through so I’m not gonna force you into any form of conversation unless you want me to.”

Chapter Text

Louis slammed the MacBook shut and let out a harsh groan as soon as Harry had left the room. You look tired and scared out of your skin. What the actual fuck? He shoved the chair backwards to get up and made a grab for the pack of cigarettes he had put on the table earlier, only to realise he couldn’t possibly smoke in Ben’s room.

“Ugh. Fucking hospitals,” he grouched tossing the pack back.

You look tired. Of course, he looked tired. Try sleeping in a bed with two toddlers who wake you up five times a night for stupid dummies gone missing and not look tired afterwards. Bet you wouldn’t look like farting rainbows and shitting glitter the next morning either. Bloody wanker.

He reached for his phone. Still no reception. The clock said 9:30. He’d been up for a little over three hours and so far, he’d been tricked into eating a fucking fruit bowl, nearly had a panic-slash-heart attack, was called “arsehole” by a bloody therapist and minutes later “tired and scared shitless” by the sixth form college swotter that had grown up to look like he was freshly sprung out from a tacky magazine of a sperm bank’s waiting room. Not that he had particular knowledge about what the entertainment supply of a sperm bank looked like. After all, the one time Ben had dragged him to one in the wake of them dropping out of school and being flat broke, they had already chickened out on the kerb.

Anyways, what were the odds that the bloody school geek grew up that nice? The dark chestnut curls that used to form a ridiculous mop now were perfectly trimmed and styled backwards totally not bringing out an obscene jaw line and scintillating green, hazelish flecked eyes. The eyes he remembered, but the jaw line was definitely new. As were the rags. Totally absurd rags. It went beyond him how someone could wear light brown plaid suit trousers with a red-blue striped Mickey Mouse T-shirt under a cerulean blue coat and still look like one of those poster boys his sisters would have plastered their lockers with. But yeah, of course someone like Harry bloody Styles would get the brains and the looks, fucking twat.

You look tired. No shit, Sherlock. That’s what you get for googling stupid former school mates on your phone under the cover of your duvet for yet another hour after finally having gone to bed.

• A levels at 16
• Med school graduation at 20 with awarded honours
• Registrar at 22
• Consultant at 28
• Head of Department at 30
• Published books: 3
• Published articles in The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet: way too fucking much.
• Not to speak of the bazillions of interviews and even some bloody morning show appearances on TV. Seriously, who wants to talk about pain and dying over their eggy breads and crumpets at 6 in the morning?

You look scared out of your skin. Yeah, guess what, could have figured that out without a fancy degree. Smart arse.

Nine thirty. Fucking hell, he really needed to get a hold of Liam.

He shoved his MacBook in his bag, grabbed his phone, cigarettes and his jacket, and stormed out of the room. At least on the playground he had had decent reception and since Ben was only due in the operation theatre in about an hour, he might as well try to get in touch with the office before the first updates on Ben were due to come.

When he stepped out of the building, he took a minute to bathe in the warm and shimmering sunlight of the tender spring sun before bringing a cigarette to his lips, lighting the end and pulling the smoke as deep into his lungs as he could. An immediate buzz of pleasure and relaxation shot through his body before he could even release the smoke. It was certainly not one of his best habits, but as far as he was currently concerned, it did the job. Yet, he’d been thinking of quitting for a while. Since Ben had to give up their old crocks footie sessions, Louis had been missing practice more often than not and with no sports, his stress levels at work, too much weed and fags, and no further mentioned amounts of booze within the last few weeks, there was no denying that one or two delicate signs of the times had caught up to him. Maybe it was finally the time to reconsider some of his life choices. But fuck if he cared right now.

He finished the cig with a final drag, put the butt out in the ash bin, and sauntered into the garden. The sweet smell of grass and flowers tickled his nose as he followed the gravel path until he found a bench, abandoned and quiet under a magnolia tree.

Finally! Reception! He sighed in relief when he saw five new messages coming in. In a quick motion he grabbed his MacBook from the bag and set up his phone as a hotspot, the messages appearing on his screen.

Ben [8:37] Hey mate, hope you’re not on your way already. Little change in plan, they’re taking me to surgery earlier than planned, so no need for you to come in. Told Harry to call mum when I’m done. It’s near to impossible to get a text message out of these 5-feet-walls without hanging from a balcony, so I hope you get this in time. Tell the girls I love them.

You don’t say, he thought, scrolling to the next message.

Ben [8:39] And Tommo, just in case… love you too, mate. Thanks. You know… for everything.

Louis’ heart skipped a beat for the umpteenth time this day. Just in case. In case of what? In case of… No. Just no. His thoughts would definitely not go down that hill right now. It was only a small procedure. Just draining some fluids and removing a tiny tumour with a robotic arm. No major cut, not even the need for spreading the ribcage if all went well. If all went well! Of course, everything would go well. It was minimal invasive surgery. He had watched every single YouTube clip he could find on daVinci lead surgeries the night before. It really, really, really shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Even Harry had said so.

Nan [8:43] Hi, poppet. We didn’t make it to the nursery. The munchkins are in a right tizzy. We’ll have a day out in Wythenshawe Park. Please tell Ben we’re thinking about him. Call me if there’s news. Take care, love.

Payno [9:02] Tommo, my man. Where are you? You’ve taken two afternoons off this week and you’re still not back in the office this morning? What’s going on mate? You sick? The kids sick? Is it Ben? Call me, I’m slightly worried.

Payno [9:33] Louis, seriously. Worried is an understatement. Your phone is off. Your phone is never off. What’s the protocol here? Do I have to file a missing person’s report? Do you need an alibi? Are you held hostage? Do I need to come and get you? Not that I resent you for taking a break, heaven knows you deserve one, it’s just… I’ve got three of the Commsmith people here waiting for you to come in… Please, just call me when you get this message.

SHIT!! Shit. Shit. Shit. He had totally forgotten that he had scheduled a meeting with three executive team members from the newly annexed company and was supposed to walk them through their processes. Fuck! He really was useless whenever his secretary left him out of sight for a day.

He hit the video call button and Liam picked up on the third ring.

“Jesus, Louis, are you alright? Where are you… is that… are you sitting in a bloody park?” Liam deadpanned, squinting his eyes and leaning closer to the camera.

“Hey, Payno, um, yeah. I’m at Summerstone,” he reclined on the bench, bringing one foot up, trying to balance the notebook on his knee. “I’m fine, why the fuck does everybody feel the urge to ask me if I’m alright?” he mumbled, fiddling with his jacket to bring the collar up. Two days ago, he was sweating his arse off like in the middle of summer and today it was bloody freezing although the sun was out. Welcome to Manchester, where the weather is as unpredictable as the mood swings of your teenage siblings.

“Listen, mate, I’m so sorry, I forgot about the Commsmith people. Ben is due for surgery any minute; I just can’t leave. Please don’t make me leave. I promised him I’d be there, but then they changed the schedule and when I came in they’d already taken him and I haven’t seen him since. But I promised and I just… I just can’t not be here when he wakes up. I already feel bad enough that I wasn’t on time before he left, if I leave now and am not back on time or if he— “

“Jesus Christ, Louis, take a breath!” Liam cut him off. “Listen, sugarplum, you stay where you are, we’re gonna be fine, I know it’s hard to believe, but we’ll get through the day without you. I was just worried because I couldn’t reach you. I wasn’t guilt tripping you for taking a day off for the first time in fifteen years, OK?”

“Yeah, OK. I’m really sorry though. If maybe you could just show them around, give them the basics and I’ll do the rest via video call later? It’s not ideal, but it’ll do for now,” Louis suggested.

Liam skimmed through some papers lying on his desk and nodded. “Fine by me. I just need to switch some things around since I didn’t know you weren’t coming in,” he shot a look at his watch. “How does 11 sound? I just have to be out by 2, I’ve got… um… a thing.”

“A thing? Oh, I am sure you have a thing.” Louis smirked. “On that note… Mister Payne, I’m wondering… why exactly haven’t you been answering your phone since leaving the office reeking of sex and shame yesterday morning?” He bulged his cheek with his tongue.

Liam coughed into the mug he had brought up to his mouth. “Fuck’s sake, Louis!” he looked around to find a cloth to wipe the spilled mess.

“That’d be my name, yes. Now, care to share with the class?” he asked, innocently repeating the cheek poking twice.

“Holy Ghost, God, what are you, twelve?” Liam hissed. “It’s not like that. Well,” he blushed, “it sort of is like that, but it’s not like that. Jesus Christ.”

“Ooh, the whole trinity united, was it that good, eh?”

“Please, don’t, okay?” Liam’s expression suddenly shifted to looking like a beat up puppy. “I…” he stammered. “I kind of met someone and I don’t know, it’s different. It feels different. He is different.”

“That for sure he is.” Louis mumbled, adjusting the MacBook so that he could sit on one crossed leg.

“What?” Liam asked, rattled from his stupor.

“What?”

“What did you just mumble?”

“Nothing,” he fumbled with his fringe, the change of the atmosphere palpable. “It’s nothing.”

“Louis William Tomlinson, you’re a shit liar. What is it that you want to tell me?”

“Really, it’s nothing. I’ll make up for it, okay?”

Liam looked like a cross between an eight-year-old trying his best to understand Einstein’s theory of relativity and a puppy whose owner vanished into thin air behind a magical blanket.

“I honestly haven’t got a single clue what you’re talking about, Tommo.”

“The guy… it’s the one from the pub, isn’t it? Zayn?”

Liam’s facial expressions froze. “You… um… what? How do you…?”

Louis shuffled on the bench and adjusted the screen.

“I kind of ran into him,” he said, pulling his lower lip between his teeth. “Twice. And I don’t think he particularly likes me.”

Liam looked into the camera with a totally unreadable expression. “I feel like I am missing out on some bits here…”

“Apparently he works here and is sort of good friends with Ben’s consultant, who turned out to be the weirdo-brainiac of our sixth form maths class.”

Unlike Ben and Louis, Liam had gone to a business and economics orientated sixth form college and had never met Harry, at least not to Louis’ knowledge.

“And that guy introduced you?” he asked unfazed.

“Well, Ben did. Sort of, but we didn’t quite hit it off.”

Liam raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t quite hit it off? Zayn’s literally the most chill guy I’ve met in—probably ever. And you’re my best mate, and… I’m a little confused here.”

“He literally called me arsehole half an hour ago and told me to control my attitude or he’ll control it for me.”

Liam burst out laughing. “He did what now? Fuck, he’s hot.”

“Li!”

“What, he is hot! Listen, sugarplum. I still have no idea why and how the two of you went south before even getting to know each other, and as much as I’d like to know, I really gotta go now. Take care of yourself, will you? And keep me updated on Ben. See you at 11:00. Is it okay for you if I don’t attend the call till the end?”

“Yeah, of course. Leave whenever you need to. Um, Li?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re still coming to the pub later or will you be spending the night at…?”

“Um,” Liam ran his hand through his hair and dropped his gaze. “Will you be gutted if I don’t know yet?”

“No, of course not, it’s fine,” he said a little too quickly for Liam not to notice he was pretending, but at least he had the decency to not dig any deeper.

They exchanged a few more words and as soon as they’d finished their call, Louis shut the MacBook and let out a grunt. Of course, he was gutted. Fuck if he wasn’t. There’d always been just one single established convention in their friendship and that was that Friday was pub night, come hell or high water. Not even the birth of the twins changed anything to that tradition. On Fridays the kids sleep at his grandparents’ and the lot of them are free to get as hammered as they wish, so says the law.

But with Ben staying in the hospital, Lottie freshly being married to Lewis, and Jess having a new job that required her to stay in London, more often than not it was only him and Liam left. Well and Oli, but since he owned the pub, he was barely able to sit with them longer than five minutes anyway.

So, what could Louis say? ‘Yeah, I’m gutted, ditch your newly acquired sexpot because I can’t deal with all this change that’s happened lately and I need pub night as the only remaining constant?’

He might be an emotional fuckwit in terms of his own, non-existent, love life, but he for sure wasn’t a shit friend. After all, Liam—unlike Louis—had never been good alone and deserved someone in his life to get closer to. Still, Louis was gutted. Why couldn’t they just hook up on any other day of the week? Or at least have a two-hour shag-gap between eight and ten? He’d even be fine with Liam bringing the prat along. They might not have had the best start, but at least the bloke had proven to have balls defending his friend; Louis was the last person to not fully acknowledge when somebody stuck up for a friend. Even if the friend in question was an insolent dreamboat with way too green eyes, a way too big mouth and a fucking IQ of 369 making him feel like he had the intellectual comprehension skills of a Teletubby.

Louis clenched his teeth. Seventeen years. He had dropped out of school seventeen years ago and since then had built a whole company from the shreds of his 4.5 m² kid’s room that couldn’t even properly fit a desk. For God’s sake, when he hired his first three employees his bed was still covered in Pokémon bed sheets, that’s how young and broke he was and now he owned multiple houses in multiple countries.

He knew bloody well that he wasn’t daft. And still, the voice of Mr. Robertson, their former maths teacher, rang in his ear after Harry had yet again given the solution to an equation Louis didn’t even know how to tackle in the first place. “Exactly, Mr. Styles. Infinity. Or as I call it the amount of Mr. Tomlinson’s benightedness on all things science.” It was just one of a myriad of degradations followed by the laughter of twelve schoolmates he would hear over his last two school years. Mostly in direct comparison to high achiever Styles. The only two to never laugh had been Ben and the kid himself. Ben obviously for solidarity reasons and Harry… fuck if he knew. Whether it was his haughtiness that kept him from joining the laughter, or that he was so uptight that his body physically was inept to produce something so mundane as a laugh, who knew.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he hadn’t even noticed that he had brought yet another cigarette to his lips until the wind had blown out the lighter for the third time. He cursed under his breath and stuck it under his shirt, pulled the collar away and dug his head into the shirt to light the fag in the shelter of the fabric before closing the zipper of his black windbreaker jacket. Anticipating the numbing effect of the nicotine on his nerves, he inhaled long and deeply, but it didn’t come up to scratch. Jittery and cold, that was all he felt and he’d kill for a simple hot cup of coffee. He pulled up the hood over his head and reopened the MacBook. Nothing more apt than a good Payno-plan to keep his wandering mind at bay.

He finished the fag, clicked on his mail program, opened the three files and… the low battery warning popped up on his screen. Ugh.

Were it not for the eye muscles and his optic nerve, his eyeballs would have rolled to the back of his head in annoyance. He rummaged through his bag looking for his power bank… well, of fucking course. He’d forgotten to pack it. Not that he’d ever been a religious person, but now was the moment he’d kindly ask Him to take this day back, he genuinely didn’t need it anymore. Thank you, Lord, for your kind attention very much.

Annoyed to the max, he shoved the MacBook in his bag and marched back to the building. Not bothering to take the stairs yet again, he banged the lift button and waited for the doors to open. Minutes later he found himself banging on the second door to his right. A kid’s rainbow drawing, adorned with colourful, sparkling flowers, beads and pearls embellishments laughed directly at his face.

“Come in, it’s open,” the low, drawling voice from earlier called from behind the door.

“Jeez, give me the strength to not strangle him,” Louis mumbled, eyes pointing towards heaven before pushing the door open.

What he found then wasn’t exactly what he’d expected from a medical Head of Department’s office. It was more like stepping into a surreal, yet cosy and warm living-room/library setting. The room had the same high ceilings that Ben’s patient’s room had, but rather than in friendly pastels it was painted from ceiling to floor in a dark, slate blue-grey shade.

Instead of square, practical LED panels, a stylish, round, oversized, white ceiling light with a golden outer and wooden inner wrap lit the room. Thick mustard coloured curtains hung loosely alongside the high windows and the balcony door, and provided a homely, snug atmosphere. On the right side stood a large, cognac brown leather sofa opposite to two armchairs, garnished in way too many cushions and a blanket matching the room’s colour scheme, while on the left, Harry was sitting behind a crappy 22” computer monitor that looked nothing less than like a Game Boy on the free-standing, massive oak desk that was flooded with paperwork, books, scented candles, a vase with fresh flowers and an even crappier laptop that most likely still ran on Windows XP.

Behind his back, four giant built-in bookshelves with an attached slideable, wooden ladder reached up to the ceiling. Two apothecary sideboards next to the door accommodated a collection of binders, an old record player, a kettle and a fully automatic coffee machine. The shelves were all painted in the same dark slate shade as the rest of the room and were packed to the brim with books, LPs, art prints, candleholders and decorations. Louis even spotted a bong and several vaporisers standing on one of the shelves, right next to some sort of metallic globe thingy that could as well have been a prop straight from the Harry Potter movies. To be honest, the whole room gave him a kind of modern day Ravenclaw library vibes.

“Jesus Christ, what are you, some sort of 21st century Dumbledore in his chamber of secrets?” Louis snorted without even saying so much as hello.

“Oh, Malfoy, hello. Please come in and grace me with your noble presence. What can I offer you? A cup of Dragon claw, a bucket of Billywig wings?” Harry shot back.

Louis bristled. Sod that. Not only did the wanker keep up, he was also quick as fuck.

“I neither need a brain boost nor a laughing potion, just need a plug socket for half an hour.”

A single barking laugh erupted from Harry’s mouth. Huh, apparently the creep’s body was physically apt to produce laughs after all.

“Brain boost and laughing potion? Colour me surprised, Tomlinson. Didn’t take you for a Potter nerd knowing your potions.” Harry said, smiling broadly.

Louis stiffened. There, two inches above the obscene jawline: Dimples! What the hell? The brains, the looks and now also dimples? God loves us all equally my arse.

“Shocking, I know. The dumbarse school drop out can read, who would have thought? Wouldn’t have bothered with it though if I’d known the author turned out to be a raging nutter,” he answered snappishly.

The dimples dissolved on the spot, the grin turning into a frown. A truly impressive frown. The exact same frown they’d named creepy death stare back in school. How the human forehead was even able to form furrows like these might forever remain a mystery. “That’s not what I—,” Harry shook his head, but Louis cut him off.

“Can you just tell me where in this building I can find a plug socket and a hint of reception? I’ll be out of your sight in the blink of an eye.”

Harry pointed to the second desk on his left side in front of the window. “Socket, LAN cable.”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant, Louis.” Their eyes met for what felt like a hint too long before Harry turned his gaze back to his computer. “You have three options. One, you can sweat your bollocks off in the muggy conservatory, sending prayers to the mobile reception gods and hope that plugging in your Mac in the 80-year old socket behind the palm tree won’t make the fuses blow, two, you can go to the A&E waiting room in Building 32, unplug the drink dispenser, sit on the floor and use the wonky open Wi-Fi, or three, you get over yourself, sit down on that chair and put up with my presence in return for decently fast internet, warm feet and a cuppa. Your choice.”

A rush of blood flooded his head. “Get over myself? GET OVER MYSELF? You can shove bloody get over yourself up your perky, little arse, you insolent son of a—” was what he was about to bawl. Instead he heard himself say, “Coffee. My choice’d be coffee.” What the fuck, Tomlinson?

“Milk and sugar?”

“A dash of milk. If you have whole milk, not any of those weird ones.”

Harry got up, grabbed a mug from the sideboard and seconds later the grumbling and gurgling of the coffee machine filled the room.

“Not planning on drinking that in the door frame, are you?”

Louis clenched his teeth, realising he still wore the hood of his jacket over his head. He quickly shoved it down, still standing on the threshold, all dressed up with nowhere to go.

“Where do you want to sit?” Harry asked, motioning between the sofa and the second desk. Louis just blankly stared at him, leading to Harry eyeballing him with a risen eyebrow. Was that a faint smug smile on his face? Jeez, why was Louis still not moving?

“Well, then next to me it is,” Harry declared and with that set the mug on the second desk next to the window and sat back down on his office chair. Louis instinctively took a step back; establishing a physical distance had always been a good way to secure his mental one.

Harry’s eyes were still locked onto his face. “For heaven’s sake. Just sit.”

There were a lot of things one could say about Louis William Tomlinson, but losing the ability to speak had never been one of them, yet here he was, standing in a fucking door frame, apparently unable to function, feeling nothing less than like a proper chump.

His face prickled. There was something in Harry’s voice that was as infuriating as it was soothing and he couldn’t decide whether it made him want to throw him off a cliff or let himself be lulled to sleep with a blanket up to his chin. The way the man pondered on every single word like his life depended on it in this deep and appeasing tone clashed massively with Louis’ innate giddiness. He was sure he had sleep audiobooks on his phone that were more stirring than Harry’s voice, yet commanding him to sit did things to his intestines. Strange things. Things that aroused an urge to comply without questioning. Yeah, brain not braining apparently was a thing now.

Eventually, he squeezed himself past the bookshelf, along Harry’s back towards the second desk. A tender wave of perfume captured his nose, a delicate mix of chamomile, bitter almond and something blooming. Jasmine perhaps, but also a tad musky or woody. Whatever it was, the combination smelled… divine, okay?! Infuriatingly divine. And it pissed him off. He threw his bag on the desk and his jacket over the chair backrest and let himself fall on the office chair.

“You’re welcome.” Harry said, not taking his eyes off from his computer.

Harry stared at the clock in the bottom right corner of his screen. Twenty-seven minutes. It had been twenty-seven minutes since Louis had sat down on the desk next to him. Twenty-seven minutes in which neither of them had said a single word. Twenty-seven, nope, twenty-eight minutes of empty staring at patients’ files and getting shit all done. Twenty-eight minutes of picking and peeling every single cuticle his hovering fingertip could locate to the point of bleeding raw. He was on the brink of screaming.

What in his right mind had he been thinking when offering Louis to come over?? Nothing. Apparently he hadn’t been thinking at all. Or maybe he had, but come on, what were the odds of him really taking up the offer? For crying out loud, he must have known how awkward this was gonna be. Louis himself must have known. The two of them together in one room… alone… like that had proven to be a clever move in the past. He instinctively rubbed his shoulder, suddenly feeling the bruise he had sported for at least ten days after fleeing the locker room resurfacing. Twenty-nine minutes.

He checked his phone for the umpteenth time. If only Rick would update him on Ben and give him a reason to break the silence. He considered making another coffee, but that’d be his fourth today and he figured one more would most likely send him right into tachycardia. Maybe it was worth the risk? Yeah, right, because even more palpitations and shortage of oxygen in his brain was totally what he needed right now. Sure.

He grabbed the iPad, pulled up the clinics’ messenger and searched for Niall.

[Harry]: HELP ME!!! He came!!

[Niall]: Things I didn’t need to know for £800. 🎶 Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, ding di ding ding ding ding ding

[Harry]: Was that supposed to be the melody from Jeopardy?

[Niall]: Pling ✅ Correct and felicitations on 🍆💦

[Harry]: Oh dear God.

[Niall]: 🎺Wuah wuah wuaaah🎺 Incorrect. Your answer must be phrased in the form of a question at all times.

[Harry]: Why can’t I have normal friends? 🙄

[Niall]: Pling ✅ Correct.

[Harry]: I’M NOT PLAYING JEOPARDY WITH YOU! For the record I meant he came as in he came over to my office!

[Niall]: Boring 🥱

Well then, oh dearest friend of mine, would you kindly enlighten me about who graced your noble working space with their unforeseen presence but denied you the beatitude of a climax in your office?

[Harry]: Are you sniffing the water-resistant ink pad again? Jesus Christ, Niall. I have a major crisis here. Louis!! Louis bloody Tomlinson is sitting in my office, ignoring the shit out of me and I don’t know what to do. I’m losing my mind.

[Niall]: On a scale from nil to ualach sé chapall de chré na h-úire ort, how much do I need to know how that happened?

[Harry]: Nil to what now?

[Niall]: Ualach sé chapall de chré na h-úire ort!

[Harry]: You really don’t see a problem here?

[Niall]: Six horseloads of graveyard clay upon you.

[Harry]: That doesn’t even make any sense!

[Niall]: You’re digressing.

[Harry]: I am digressing??? 😲

You’re the one talking to me in Leprechaun! It’s only 10.45 and this day already feels like a whole month. Why are you all trying to take me to an early grave today?

[Harry]: Before you answer: no, this wasn’t “Friendship Trivia for £600”! Don’t even bother to answer. I don’t know how it happened. Basically, he’s been waiting for Ben but also needs to work from his notebook and asked me for a spot with proper connection.

[Niall]: HAHAHA has he learned yet that this building is appointed with the technical standards of a Stone Age cave?

[Harry]: That’s why I told him he could use the desk in my office.

[Niall]: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Harry]: NIALL!!! What do I do? I didn’t think he actually would!! And now he’s here. Looking like he looks. Doing this thing he does. We’ve been ignoring each other for 30 min straight and I am losing my mind.

[Niall]: Traditions. So important in life.

[Harry]: You’re not helping!

[Niall]: Oh come on, he’s been ignoring you for two years, what’s another 30 minutes?

[Harry]: But we’re alone. In my office. It’s awkward as fuck.

[Niall]: First: What is that thing he does? Second: Then stop making it awkward.


[Harry]: EXISTING! The thing he does is existing. Like breathing and stuff. And having this smell. God, he smells… like in a good way. I don’t know what it is that he put on, but my nostrils have never been happier in their life. They’ve literally taken over my brain capacity. I can’t think, jeez. 


[Niall]: Awww, look at my best bud reverting to his sixth form’s self, all flustered and shit, spelling jizz wrong. 


[Harry]: I can’t believe I still haven’t strangled you in all these years. 


[Niall]: Just talk to him, ffs, a little casual small talk and all is well. You’re not 16 anymore, Styles.


[Harry]: Well, aren’t you a bloody genius, my friend. Because last time I checked casual small talk has been my core competence since exactly FUCKING NEVER. 


[Niall]: Now that you’re saying it…

Well, guess you’re fucked.

[Harry]: That’s the thing. I am not, but I wish I was! Aren’t you listening to me? EXACTLY THIS IS WHAT DRIVES ME INSANE! Make it stop for fuck’s sake. I can’t be sitting here fantasising about licking all over my very much straight college crush that happens to be a relative to one of my patients. Just because he looks like sin and smells like summer rain doesn’t make it any less ethically and morally inappropriate. I’m a bloody professional for Christ sake! HELP ME, haven’t you been trained to help people? What did I hire you for?! 

He huffed, his fingers darting over the iPad screen.


“You know you can use the chat function on your desktop?” Harry startled as the light, raspy voice to his left cut through the silence. The pile of files in front of him hadn’t shrunk an inch within the last hour and the realisation kicked him in the guts.

“Uh, beg your pardon?” he said, a rush of warm blood shooting straight into his cheeks.

“The chat function. You’ve been typing on the iPad the whole time while using the desktop to work on your patient files. You can use the exact same messenger on your desktop. Might save you time not having to switch devices and being able to type on a regular keyboard.”

“Um. I did not know that.” More blood shot to his face. Great. Of course, now of all times he had to turn into a fricking Elmo doll. Wait a sec! How on earth could Louis have been seeing him typing? He hadn’t turned around once. At least not that Harry had noticed. Christ, had he been watching him all along? Had he been so in his head that he didn’t even notice that Louis had been eyeing him?? 

“Upper right corner, the symbol with the two intertwined speech bubbles.” Louis said, not bothering to look up from his own device. 

Harry tried to focus and locate the symbol. Indeed, there it was: two light blue speech bubbles on a dark blue background. He clicked on it and miraculously a messenger side bar opened on his screen, showing him the full conversation he’d just had with Niall. Damn, how could he have not known that? He’d been working with this software for almost two years and the constant frenzy of switching devices drove him insane. Not once did the thought cross his mind to click on that symbol that now was laughing at his face. Great. Another mark for Louis’ surely by now existing Styles-incompetence-list. 

“Um, thanks.” He said pressed through his teeth.

“You’re welcome.”  Louis answered, mimicking the exact same cadence and tonality Harry had used before. Okay, maybe he had brought that on himself. 

A new message came in with a loud ring. 

[Niall]: 1) Technically not a relative; 2) a professional who hasn’t been properly laid in ages because he refuses to have a LIFE outside of this madhouse. 

Harry gritted his teeth and slightly tilted the screen. Dear God. If Louis had been watching him, had he been able to read what he was typing too?? Oh God, maybe this was finally the moment to light himself on fire. His breath hitched in a suddenly too tight chest and palms annoyingly turning clammy. 

“The sound settings are in the burger menu by the way”. 

“Sound? Ah, er, yes. Burger…?” he mumbled.

“The three little lines in the upper right corner.” Louis turned around and made a move to get up. “It’s called burger menu basically because it looks like a burger. You see there—” he came closer, his finger pointing to the screen.

“NO!!” Harry blurted out, darting his hand towards the monitor in a ridiculous attempt to hide the chat, knocking a glass of water all over his desk. “Fucking hell. Um… Sorry!! Shit. Don’t look!! Er… patient data. Confidential.” He frantically hit the keyboard for the screen to jump to another window, simultaneously trying to keep the puddle of water at bay. 

Louis watched him silently with a cocked eyebrow and tight lips.

When finally the web browser window came to the front, making the traitorous chat window disappear, he all but squeaked in relief. 

Louis slowly leaned over him and pressed a button on his keyboard. Harry couldn’t help but stare at the neat, slender fingers. Fingernails. Short fingernails. Very, very short fingernails. And tattoos. Jesus Christ. A whiff of tobacco and coffee titillated his senses as the monitor turned black. “There. Sleep mode. Chill, curly. I don’t think that Wikileaks is interested in the shape, colour and consistency of Miss Stefford’s stool or Mister Bell’s ingrown toenail, and neither am I. Even less in your in-house sexting.” He turned around, walked over to the sink, grabbed a cloth and threw it into Harry’s face.

“I–” Harry gasped for air, “I was not sexting!” he said, turning yet again bright red while mopping the spilled water and silently contemplating whether he preferred to slap or to snog the devilish smug smile off that obnoxious, beautiful face. Who was he kidding, there wasn’t a single violent bone in his whole body.

Several moments passed in which Harry tried his best to a) regain his composure, b) bring his face back to a colour that could be considered human and c) wipe up the spilled mess on his desk without wreaking further havoc. Two of the patient files were drenched beyond repair, but luckily they didn’t contain anything he couldn’t replicate. The rest looked fine so far. Once his desk was cleared, he threw a glimpse at Louis, who was concentrating on some sort of report, and he deemed it safe to turn the computer back on again.

A loud ring echoed through the room. Louis turned his head, one eyebrow cocked as if to say, “Seriously, Styles?”.

“I know, burger menu.” Harry hissed, fumbling through the menu to set the messenger on silent or at least to something less penetrating.

[Rick Almasi]: Patient’s asleep, stable, x-ray unaltered, cut in approx. 10 min.; est. duration: 120 min., keeping u updated in case of complications.

[Harry]: thx! Good luck.

[Rick Almasi]: Don’t need luck. I have the ability, Styles, the ability.

He chuckled and shook his head at the reply. He had known Rick for years, they got along pretty well, but just like with any other surgeon he would never understand the recurrent need of acting as if they were dominating the hospital’s food chain while all other departments were supposed to kiss the ground they’re walking on. It was ridiculous.

“Um, Louis?” he said, watching the man turning his head. “Ben’s surgeon texted. They’re starting right now. Ben’s asleep and everything is well so far. If we don’t hear from them in the next two hours, everything’s going according to plan.”

Louis’ back tensed visibly as he nodded, all colour drained from his face in a matter of seconds. “Thanks.” He said as he got up and groped the few things he’d spread on the desk to stuff them in his bag. “I— er, I— should go anyway. I’ve got a video call to attend in a few minutes.” But instead of gathering his MacBook and his keys that still remained on the desk, he just paced back and forth. He ran his fingers through his hair as he grabbed the pack of cigarettes and tapped his sides, probably to locate the lighter in one of his pockets, then reached for his keys, put them back down, shut the MacBook, unplugged the cord, then reached for the keys again, put them back down again. It was almost painful to watch.

“Unless it’s a confidential video call, it’s no problem for me if you take it from here, you know?” Harry opted for nonchalant. It was questionable though if pretending to be casual while his hand had the computer mouse in a death grip was his most persuasive move, but he couldn’t let Louis go. Not like this. Not while Ben was having his procedure and Louis obviously wasn’t coping well. Not when they just broke the spell of ignoring each other for the first time in almost twenty years. No, he simply couldn’t let him leave now.

“It’s not confidential per se,” Louis all but murmured, vibrating with unreleased tension, judging by the rubbing of his palms and his posture. “But you have to work too. I don’t want to… you know…” he cracked his knuckles before wringing his hands again.

Harry felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach. Louis cared? In all his aloofness and annoyance, he was concerned about overstepping or bothering him? Huh. That was nice, wasn’t it? He’d always believed him to be kindhearted and compassionate under the cheeky, untouchable surface. There was just something about the way he acted with his younger siblings and their—

A sudden memory hit him and he deemed it worth a try. “Don’t worry. I need to head out for twenty minutes anyway. I forgot to ask, you aren’t allergic or afraid of dogs, are you?”

“Dogs?” he asked, the bewilderment in his expression undeniable.

“Yeah, we have therapy dogs that are currently with Zayn. I usually spend my lunch break walking them and then bring them to my office afterwards.”

Louis’ face lit up like the porch lights of an American suburban home in a Christmas Hallmark film.

Ha! Knew it!

“You got dogs?”

“Yep, two of them.” Harry said with a smile. “Edda and Wilbur. Edda’s a Bulldog and Wilbur’s a Labradoodle. Technically they’re Zayn’s, but that’s a story for another day. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just have my lunch break early today, walk the babies and in the meanwhile you can have the office for yourself till I bring them along?”

“I haven’t had a dog since me mum—“ he cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders and clapped his hands together, “Um, yeah. ‘Course. I’m fine with the dogs. I like dogs.”

“Fine then. Just let me finish up this report and then I’m out of your way.” He gathered all but one of the documents on his desk and locked them up in the cabinet and sat back behind his computer.

“You really don’t mind me being here?” The sudden, insecure undertone in his raspy voice made Harry’s heart beat faster.

“I really don’t mind you being here. I mean, it’s not like we had been friends or so back in the days, but it’s not exactly like we were total strangers either, right?”

The muscles in Louis’ shoulders tensed, his cheek minimally twitching as if he’d been unexpectedly electrocuted but trying to mask it.

“I guess.” He said, averting his gaze and fiddling to replug the laptop cord into the socket. Harry tried his best not to stare. Opinions diverged on his level of success.

A few moments passed with them sitting in silence.

“Er, Harry?”

Harry internally startled. Why did the sound of his name coming out of Louis’ mouth cause a rush of adrenaline shooting through his veins? Styles, chill for fuck’s sake. Niall’s right, you’re not 16 anymore!

“Mmh?”

“If I keep the call short, do you think we maybe could walk the dogs, like… together?”

If he thought the mentioning of his name had caused a rush of adrenaline… what was this then? A morbid culmination of adrenaline, serotonin, endorphin, dopamine, oxytocin and whatever other -ines are known to mankind trying to end him on the spot? How was he supposed to keep his cool when every fibre of his being screamed, “FUCK YES” and urged him to jump on the desk to perform a happy dance? An ache in his knuckles brought him back to earth. They were bright white wrapped around the computer mouse. At how many Pascal do we think is a computer mouse likely to crumble? Or is that measured in Newton? Huh, twenty years of working in sciences and still shit at physics.

Louis cleared his throat. Oh, walking dogs. Yeah. Right.

“Oh, yes. Of course. If you like. Sure.” He sputtered, trying not to choke on the spur of excitement clogging his throat.

The flicker of a smile hushed over Louis’ face. “God, you’re so weird,” he heard him mumble to himself as he groped his pack of cigarettes.

“Do you mind if I?” he gestured towards the balcony door.

“Go ahead. Ashtray should be outside.”

And as Louis opened the door and stepped outside, Harry couldn’t help but beam.

Chapter Text

Well, that was… something else? Louis bloody Tomlinson in full blown boss mode, totally winging a whole speech about the structures of the company he’s working in. Not that Harry had a single clue about what his job even was nor what the company he worked for did, but only a few minutes into the call it was clear as day that dropping out of school hadn’t prevented him from climbing some sort of corporate ladder, just as he should. Harry was impressed. And maybe a tad flustered. Louis definitely deserved being project leader or manager or whatever it was he was doing. The way he navigated through that impromptu call, the way he made the people listen to him and the way he steered all kinds of questions all so smoothly into the direction he wanted them to go, without ever so much as losing an inch of control, was inherently hot. Hot as fuck hot, if Harry dared say so.

As far as the little glimpse and eavesdropping he had risked revealed, there had been six people on the call. Louis, a woman called Rachel, who seemed to be pretty close to Louis, a guy called Liam, most likely the one he still had to grill Zayn about, and three men that apparently were new to the team. One of them, whose name he didn’t catch, per the bits and pieces Harry had overheard, was a right prick. Be it for not once letting someone finish a sentence, especially not when the woman talked, or be it for every other question or statement he made coming across subliminally hostile and belittling, the lad sounded like an utter arse.

Over the years Harry had been invited to speak at numerous conventions, lectures, and interviews. To a certain degree, he had become accustomed to speaking in public but people like these were the reason he still had heart palpitations and clammy hands any time he had to step into the spotlight. The sort of people that question every single thing you say, that constantly interrupt you only focusing on getting their own opinion across instead of listening and letting others speak, spitting destructive criticism and bottom line just being borderline narcissistic, disrespectful pricks. Yes, people like these were his worst nightmare. But Louis was having none of it. After the third interruption he shut the man down with a friendly but determined ‘I’ll be glad to get your feedback after I’ve shared my information, but I’d like to make sure you actually hear it first,’ Harry had shivered.

When the guy interrupted him the next time, and Louis’ voice turned into a firm ‘I value your suggestions. Yet what I value even more is for you to let me finish my thoughts before we discuss alternatives. Thank you’, Harry had been ready to drop down on his knees. That was the moment he deemed it best to get some fresh air.

Minutes later, he found himself yet again knocking on the Music & Arts room door, but this time it flew open without major effort.

“You’re early,” Zayn said, checking his watch. The raised-eyebrow once-over he gave him immediately turned into a smirk that made Harry secretly reconsider his stance on minor physical violence. “You look proper flushed. What did I miss?”

“You mean apart from you all making me disproportionately age by the second and not being physically, emotionally, or mentally equipped to deal with my life today? I am this close to just tearing my head off and eating it.” Harry replied as he entered the room and promptly was attacked by a sniffing ball of fur.

“Good thing you’re not prone to dramatics then.” Zayn said, bumping his shoulder, trying to not get pushed over by the mildly ecstatic puppy. “Jesus, Wilbur, blanket.” He snipped his fingers, pointing at the corner where two dog beds stood.

“Aw, no, not blanket, come ’ere, my boy.” Harry patted his thighs, making the light brown-white ball of fluff frantically jump up and down and nearly waggle his tail off in excitement. “Well hello, pal, happy to see me, aren’t you? I’m excited to see you too. Where’s my good boy?” he said, tickling the dog behind his ear and grabbing a treat from his pocket. 

“For fuck’s sake Harry, no. You can’t reward him for jumping on you. Do you know how long it takes me to get him out of the habit again?”

“But look at him, he’s just a baby. You’re my baby, aren’t you?” He squatted down and nuzzled his face into the soft ringlets of the puppy’s fur. “Grumpy Zayny is no funny, isn’t he? Yeah, you understand me, sweet boy, don’t you? Only surrounded by killjoys and pains in the neck.”

Zayn rolled his eyes, turning to his desk and pulling two paper bags out of his tote bag. 

“Why do I even care? It’s not like he’s my dog anymore anyway, is it?” He sighed, “might as well have him trained to your likings since he spends pretty much all the time with you anyway. But I’m telling you now, he won’t make it a therapy dog this way.”

“Don’t you listen to the old party pooper,” Harry said, chucking the puppy under the chin, “you’re gonna be the most wonderful therapy doggy we’ve ever had,” a quiet huff rang out from next to the balcony door. Harry turned to the bulldog, chilling in her bed watching him with a half complacent, half indifferent look. “No offence Edda. You’ll always be the unbeaten queen in this house.” She groaned and he could have sworn he’d caught her rolling her eyes. 

Zayn tossed the paper bag at him and Harry snatched it out of the air with effortless reflexes, right in time before Wilbur could get a hold of it. Literally nobody ever wanted a repetition of the big black-bean-salad-raid from a few weeks ago. That pretty much anything was more fun than peeling black beans, quinoa and avocado smear out of curly puppy fur for days was a thing all involved parties had agreed on in unison.

“What is it today?”

“Chickpea tuna sandwich”

“Yummy. Thanks.” Harry smiled, unfolding the bag, taking a quick look and sealing it again, ignoring Wilbur’s inquisitive sniffing. 

“Not planning on eating here?” Zayn asked slightly baffled when Harry put the bag aside to get the leads from the rag.

“Um, Louis kind of asked if we could walk the cutiepies together, so I thought… ” he twisted the leash around his finger, fiddling with the snap.

“… that you’d rather share your lunch with him, woo him with my cooking skills, make him fall in love with you and live happily ever after, all while banging him six days to, from and on Sunday?”

“Heyyyy,” Harry said, startling the puppy with the sudden droning of his voice, “I am not wooing anybody. He’s had a shit day so far, okay? Which if I remember correctly was partially your fault. Sue me for trying to keep him appeased until Ben’s back.”

Zayn sputtered out a laugh that was utterly too pleased. 

“What?” Harry said, frowning.

“Nothing, babes, I just love how you feign outrage on the wooing but choose to ignore the banging part.” 

Harry rolled his eyes. “Awful lot of sex talk for someone that allegedly has gotten some the last two days.” 

Zayn snuffled, turned to the big wooden table in the middle of the room and started to rearrange several pen cups. 

“Yeah, about that… ” he said, avoiding Harry’s glare, “Shut up, be nice and be grateful that I keep you fed and happy.”

“I am,” Harry said, poking his shoulder. “Not so sure about the happy part though.”

The bright magenta-coloured peonies had Harry’s whole heart. There was just something about the rich blooms, standing tall like regal monarchs presiding over their floral kingdom with their voluptuous petals unfurling in all shades of blush pinks, creamy whites and ruby reds that warmed his heart. But the magenta ones lit up his mood like nothing else, no matter how much his brain was racing, how deflating or devastating his workday had been, they always managed to tickle his spirit with optimism and wonder. 

Wilbur was already frantically jumping around on his training line, chasing after a bug, seconds away from yanking Harry off his feet, while Edda stood at his heel, unleashed, shooting him scathing looks for not yet having started to throw her ball. 

“Not yet, girl. Let’s wait for Louis, and then I’ll throw you your ball as much as you like. Go sniff around for a while, princess, okay? I call you when I’m ready.”

She fixed him with a reproachful stare, tilted her head like she was trying to persuade him with cuteness, but then changed her mind and trotted off with a haughty snort. Her miniature tail held high in a display of indignant arrogance. Harry chuckled. God, he loved this dog. Her calm demeanour, patience and confidence towards patients was one of a kind and made her the best therapy dog he’s ever seen, but with her attitude towards her owner, or in his case co-parent, he had zero doubt that in a former life she had been a cat. 

He stepped down the patio and perched on a small stone pedestal, cautious not to knock over the flower pot standing on it as he soaked in the picturesque scene. Spring had painted the patio and the garden with vibrant hues of green, peonies, tulips and honesties, creating a mesmerising mosaic of colour that stretched as far as the eye could see. The air was infused with a sweet scent, luring in bees and butterflies while carrying on a gentle breeze that rustled through the trees and danced across the lush greenery.

After having fetched the dogs from Zayn, Harry had chickened out of returning to his office and had asked a nurse to inform Louis he’d be waiting for him on the patio next to the conservatory. 

The air was chill, but the sun was out and he did his best to enjoy the peaceful quiet. It was a challenge though. On his regular days when he was scheduled with patients, he was perfectly able to channel his whole attention to them. He listened, he comforted, he advised and came up with therapy plans. He kept himself busy being focused on their needs. But as soon as he retracted to alone time or was faced with less challenging tasks like stupid office work or waiting in the sun for someone to join him, his mind went into overdrive. Ideas sparkling and fizzling out like fireworks, each one competing for the first place in the race of importance, provided a constant sense of urgency, a feeling that time was slipping away, no matter how much his mind raced to keep up with its own relentless pace. No, relaxing really wasn’t a thing that came easy to him. Or, most of the time, didn’t come at all. 

Luckily it didn’t take long until he saw Louis approaching, his shoulders tense and his brows furrowed. There was a note of weariness belying the cheerfulness Harry remembered from back in school and had always admired so deeply. 

“Hey,” Louis said, his voice carrying a certain strain and concern. “Mind if I join?”

“Hi. Of course not. That’s why we’re here, aren’t we?”

Louis shrugged and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, letting his eyes wander and stare into empty spaces.

Harry couldn’t help but wonder what happened in the twenty-ish minutes since he left the office. Was it the prick that finally managed to get under his skin? Did the meeting take a turn Louis didn’t approve? Oh, or did anyone happen to come to his office with news about Ben? He instinctively jerked his hand into his pocket to retrieve the clinic’s smartphone and check for messages. 

“News?” Louis asked warily. 

Harry shook his head, the cacophony of thoughts swirling and colliding in his head messing with his speech centre.

The tension hung heavy in the air as the two men stood in awkward silence.

“Do you mind?” Louis asked, taking the package of cigarettes out of his jacket. 

Harry looked down at his hand.

“You smoke a lot.” 

Louis froze, a flicker of frustration igniting in his eyes.

“Last time I checked I was an adult, perfectly capable of making my own decisions.” Louis replied, lips tight and eyes pierced.

Harry’s jaw tightened in unease. Damn, the last thing he intended was to come across as judgemental or patronising. It was just his bloody brain to mouth connection. Stating the obvious but forgetting to use the in-brain voice. He did that a lot, without any bad intention, but of course Louis wouldn’t know about that. He should tell him. Little quirks did make people more likeable, didn’t they? Or maybe not. Maybe they’d just make him look weird. Yeah, because weird was an attribute that’d be totally new to Louis when it came to Harry. Right. 

“Sorry, um, I didn’t mean to… yeah, um. Sorry.” Genuine regret poured out of his voice when he finally pulled himself together.

“Should have known you’re the bloody health police,” Louis gritted through his teeth, shoving the pack back into his pocket. 

The silence dragged. Harry shifted, eyes flicking anywhere but Louis, searching for something to say, but no matter how hard he tried, his head was empty.

“Didn’t you promise me dogs?” Louis said out of the blue and like on command Wilbur darted towards God knows what he’d seen, strained the lead and yanked Harry off the pedestal. Oh, for fuck’s sake shot through his mind, not even wanting to know how ridiculous he must look, windmilling his arms in a futile attempt to regain balance but instead hurtling towards the ground. Niall! How the heck would he now avoid Niall for the rest of the day, because there was literally no way how to explain why he came back from a dog walk with Louis, covered in mud and bruises without having the Irish chastising him with boisterous HAHAHAHAHAs for the next two to fifty days. Okay, years. It would be years. 

“Woah, Curly, what the fuck?” He heard Louis hissing. His breath caught in his throat but just as the ground was rushing up to meet him, an arm was flung around his waist, breaking his fall with surprising grace. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, how are you still alive and not paralysed?” Louis murmured, guiding Harry back to his feet, the protective embrace burning right through three layers of clothes.

For a fleeting moment, Harry’s eyes met Louis’. There was a warmth in his gaze, a flicker of something more beneath the surface of his stony-faced expression, that made Harry squirm. Realising how close they were, Louis retracted his hand from the curve of Harry’s waist and took a step back. Harry immediately felt like something was missing.

When the lead strained yet again, Louis’ hand shot out. “Gimme that.” He said, snatched the lead from Harry’s grasp, raised his fingers to his lips and let out an ear-piercing whistle. 

“Thanks,” Harry murmured, his voice tinged with awe and gratitude as he steadied himself. 

Louis merely shrugged. “Can’t exactly have you cracking your head on a bloody stone pedestal, can I?”

Wilbur’s ears had perked up, his head swivelling towards the source of the noise. With a joyful bark, he changed direction, his clumsy legs propelling him towards Louis with boundless enthusiasm. Edda bounded alongside. Together, they raced towards Louis, tails wagging in delight as they closed the distance between them. 

Harry’s jaw flew open, no way in hell would Wilbur have come back if he had whistled, let alone Edda joining without a real command. Beginner’s luck. That must be it. 

“Enlighten me,” he heard Louis say, “Who’s who?”

A wary grin formed on Harry’s face as the two fur balls came bounding back towards them. While Edda had stopped racing and now marched quietly towards Harry, Wilbur darted towards Louis in unbridled enthusiasm.

“That’s Wilbur,” Harry said, “fair warning he comes without brakes, and he jumps.” 

Before he knew it, the energetic puppy had crashed into him, jumped up, his front paws landing squarely on Louis' thighs. 

“Woah, what is it with you boys constantly wreaking havoc to yourselves and your surroundings?” A soft laugh escaped his mouth. “Well, hello there, Wilbur! Quite a whirlwind, aren’t you?” he asked with a grin, rubbing the puppy’s ears affectionately but immediately retracted his hand again. He squared his shoulder, stood stock still, and with a firm voice said “Sit!”

Wilbur paused, looked up, tilted his head and then threw himself on his back, wiggling his bum into the ground, practically wagging his whole body and panting like he’s chased a freight train for five hours. 

A loud, honking laugh erupted from Harry’s lungs, making him clasp his hand to his mouth, trying to contain his amusement. Louis looked at him with bewilderment. 

“Um, yeah. We’re still in training.” 

“You don’t say.” Louis crouched down to Wilbur’s level, reached out to pet him again and his eyes lit up with warmth and affection. The puppy instantly calmed down under his touch. “And you are?” He looked over to Edda who was brushing gently against Harry’s legs and extended a hand for her to sniff. She couldn’t possibly have cared less and just kept winding herself around Harry’s legs affectionately. 

“This is Edda,” Harry replied, “Say hi to Louis, sweetie.” She shot him a look like she was saying ‘really?’ but then trudged over to Louis. Her gentle brown eyes were filled with curiosity as she mustered him attentively before putting a paw on his thigh. 

Harry was about to melt at the sight of the affectionate gesture. Normally the command “go say hi” meant for her to approach, stay still, let herself be petted for 2-3 seconds and then return to him or Zayn. But what’s normal anyway?

Normally by now he would be in his shorts and trainers, and running the park’s circuit two to three times to get the wriggles out of the dogs and himself.

Normally he would NOT be standing here, gushing over a patient’s relative warming up to his dogs, the dogs that aren’t even his dogs, saving him from braining himself on a flowerpot, all while wracking his brains if Louis liked chickpea tuna sandwiches or not, or if he might like them but couldn’t have them because he was allergic, like to celery or to tomatoes or such. Or maybe he didn’t like pickles? Or chickpeas in the first place, or anything else that Zayn had put in. He couldn’t even properly tell what ingredients the sandwiches contained. Because the last time he tried to help Zayn prepare food, he had chased him out of the kitchen, threatening to shove the spatula up his arse if he didn’t leave RIGHT NOW.

But well, he figured in case Louis would want to know, he could simply call Zayn and ask. After all, the prevalence of celery allergy in Europe was only between 2.8 and 11.1%, tomatoes even less with 1.7% to 9.3%. For obvious reasons he didn’t know the statistics on how many people didn’t like pickles, but until he could check, he assumed chances were higher than to send Louis into an anaphylactic shock with a hint of celery.

His eyes fell on Louis gently stroking Edda’s fur. Yeah, nothing was normal about this day. She had put her nose on his knee and let him pet her, totally unbothered with her tongue lolling out in a contented pant while he looked about twenty times less tense. The strain in his shoulders had almost been replaced by a sense of calm. Leave it to the therapy dog to know what was the right move. 

“Do you like pickles?” Harry suddenly blurted out.

Okay, maybe he really needed to pick up working on his communication skills again. Somehow they seemed to have ultimately gone down the drain somewhere between yesterday afternoon and this morning. 

“Do I what now?” Louis looked at him, like he had lost his mind.

“Pickles. Um… I have sandwiches.” He held up the bag he previously had put next to him on the pedestal. “Chickpea tuna sandwiches. But there’s pickles in them.”

“You brought chickpea tuna sandwiches but are concerned about pickles? 

Harry's cheeks flushed with embarrassment, realising the absurdity of his question. "Right, sorry," he stammered, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. "I just wasn't sure if you were into them or not."

“I bloody hate pickles.” He deadpanned. Harry crumbled internally. “But they aren’t necessarily hard to remove, or are they?”

“Guess not, I mean, unless… um… I actually don’t know. Zayn made them.”

“Before or after he wanted my head on a stick?” Louis said, kicking a pebble with his trainers, making Wilbur take off yet again.

“About that,” Harry said. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you and I am not sure if it’s even any of my business, I just want you to know that Zayn and I have known each other since the first week of Uni. He’s a genuinely good guy. The best. We have quite the history and—” A derisive snort from Louis interrupted him. “What?” Harry said, frowning.

“Nothing.” Louis shifted his weight from one foot to the other and wrapped the lead around his wrist.

“What?” Harry insisted.

“Really, nothing. I just… I wouldn’t have taken him for the possessive ex,” he mumbled. “But that actually explains a lot.”

Harry was sure his brain had just glitched for a hot second. There was absolutely no possibility that Louis had just said what he believed him to have said. The loner nerd Harry was, he definitely had devoured enough fiction to develop quite the imagination early on. He was positively able to picture an uncountable number of parallel-universe-plots in their most glorious ways, but Jesus Christ, not one was absurd enough to picture him romantically involved with Zayn. And mind, he had read stuff. Weird stuff, like Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos. Not even shipwrecked, as the only surviving humans on Earth, evolving into furry animals, narrated by a ghost, he and Zayn would make sense…

His mind was digressing. Again. The sheer thought made him erupt into peals of laughter as finally the ridiculousness of Louis’ words sank in.

“Zayn? Ex? Oh, dear God.” He choked out, trying his best to stifle the laughter, but that was as successful as to make Wilbur sit down.

Louis faltered; his shoulders stiffened as he pressed his lips into a tight, straight line. His gaze flickered between the dogs and the ground, avoiding looking at Harry at all costs. “Not? Er, fuck, um, sorry,” he said, ruffling the hair on the back of his head. “I didn’t mean to assume, I… I just… with Liam and Zayn and all that… I just thought… I didn’t mean to imply you were—”

“Gay?” Harry cut him off with a loud chuckle. “Oh honey, I am. As a maypole. Couldn’t find a straight one in this ward if your life depended on it.” He said, his eyebrows suddenly morphing into a frown. “Got a problem with that?”

Louis looked perplexed. “No,” he exclaimed, “God, no. Liam would have ripped me a new one ages ago if I had”.

“Just as he should.” Harry said, leaning down to Edda, finally getting the ball out of her mouth. “Shall we?” He nodded his head towards the path leading deeper into the park.

Louis stood stock still. “Seriously Harry,” he reached out, his fingertips gently touching Harry’s forearm. Harry looked up straight into his eyes. His heartbeat somersaulted. The sunlight made the hues of blue shine like mountain lakes. Beautiful, peaceful, crystal-clear mountain lakes. Harry blinked. The beautiful mountain lakes suddenly were filled with genuine regret. His heart clenched. Biting his lip, Louis continued, “I’ve been to more gay bars alone in the last six months than any straight man ever will in his whole life. I’ve known Liam’s gay since—I don’t know—preschool probably, or like—ever? It never even was a question when we grew up. He’s just always dragged me along. The other day I learned that my secretary is transgender and I couldn’t be more proud of her if I tried. I get that you remember me as the gobby footie-lad who gave everybody and their mother shit. But I sure as hell have never been and will never be homophobic.”

There it was. Any straight man.

Harry’s stomach dipped. He knew, of course he knew, but somehow hearing it out loud still felt like walking straight into a wall. Louis is straight. Because of bloody course he is.