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nothing—”

Louis goes in for the kill, tickle attack right in his sides, and enjoys

Harry‟s shrieks as they crumple to a heap in the middle of the floor.

“How dare you!” he yells, biting Harry on the ear, and yeah. This is

going to work.

If Louis could be out on the last train, he would. He‟d be on the ten

o‟clock train tonight, falling into bed back home at some ridiculous

hour, exhausted and unshowered at work Monday morning but at least

content with the thought that he spent as much time with Harry in

London as he possibly could have.

He can‟t, though. He‟d been saving this weekend to get a small

mountain of marking done, and now he shudders to think how behind

he‟s going to be when he gets back. Not to mention he‟s starting to feel

guilty about how many times he‟s had to text Zayn to go see about

Duchess this weekend. He needs to get back at some reasonable time of

day. He knows this, objectively. But that doesn‟t make him complain

about it any less as they pull up the train schedule on Harry‟s laptop,

and it doesn‟t stop the dread from pooling in his stomach as they ride

the tube together to Euston Station to catch the five o‟clock to

Manchester.

Harry stays with him all the way through the station, and when they

arrive at the platform, the train is already there. Louis feels his hand

clench up around Harry‟s, and Harry squeezes back like a reminder that

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he‟s still there, that the train in front of them doesn‟t really change

anything.

The doors aren‟t open yet, so Harry pulls his iPod out of his pocket and

gives Louis one of the earbuds. They don‟t say anything to each other,

just wait there side-by-side, listening to Harry‟s music together. The

song that‟s playing is familiar, and when Louis recognizes it, he leans

his head into Harry‟s shoulder and remembers the first time Harry

played it for him that night after the Valentine‟s dance. Always

ridiculous. He should have known back then that this whole love-of-

his-life business was going to get him in the end.

The platform is crowded with people, but Louis feels completely

separated from all of them. It‟s just him and Harry.

Finally, the doors slide open with a hiss, and everyone around them

starts gathering up their bags and suitcases and fishing out their tickets

and filtering on board. Louis feels last-minute panic tugging at his

heart, and if he were just a little bit more reckless he‟d just say fuck it

and skip the train and spend another night on Harry‟s mattress, but he‟s

not, and he can‟t.

Suddenly he remembers it, the thing he grabbed out of his kitchen

drawer at the last minute and shoved down in the bottom of the front

pouch of his bag. He pulls his hand out of Harry‟s and turns to face

him, reaching into his bag with shaking hands. He looks up at Harry

steadily as he digs for the thing amidst gum wrappers and long lost

receipts, and when he finally finds what he‟s looking for he extracts it

carefully and holds it up between them. It‟s the spare key to his flat.

“I know you won‟t have much time to come back to Manchester,”

Louis says. He reaches out and takes one of Harry‟s hands, turning it

palm up. “But when you do,” he presses the key into Harry‟s open

palm, “come home.”

He knows what this means, not just to him but to Harry too, and he

holds his breath as Harry stares down at it, cradling it in his hand like

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he‟s afraid he might break it somehow. When he looks up at Louis, his

eyes are shining, but his mouth is curled up in a smirk on one side.

“Do you keep that there all the time,” he says, “or did you just think I

was a sure thing?”

Louis grins so big he can hardly see, and he says, very fondly, “Shut

up,” before he pulls Harry in by the lapels of his jacket and kisses him.

Harry slides the key into his pocket and wraps his arms around Louis‟

waist to kiss him back as enthusiastically as he pleases, lifting his feet

up off the ground and turning them in a slow circle. Laughing into

Harry‟s mouth, Louis listens to the sounds of the world moving on

around them and feels the sturdiness of Harry‟s body against him and

thinks that this, this won‟t go away.

Harry puts him down at last, and they can‟t put things off much longer.

It‟s time to go.

“I love you,” Louis says, touching the ends of Harry‟s hair where it

curls against his ear. Maybe if he can imprint the way that feels into the

nerves in his skin it won‟t be so hard to go without it until the next time

they see each other again.

“I love you too,” Harry says. “I‟ll come see you as soon as I can. And

I‟ll call you all the time. You‟ll be sick of me. You‟ll be like, „Why‟s

that Styles prick calling again, I just talked to him an hour ago, hasn‟t

he got anything better to do, what—‟”

“I won‟t get sick of you,” Louis says confidently. “I‟m going to whine

about how much I miss you all the time until Zayn bludgeons me to

death with his copy of War and Peace.”

“We‟re disgusting,” Harry says.

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“Too right, we are,” Louis agrees happily. They‟re the last ones on the

platform by now, and Louis leans in for one last kiss. “I love you.

Again.”

“I love you too. Again,” Harry says, hugging him tightly.

Louis swallows and pulls out of Harry‟s arms, hiking his bag up higher

on his shoulder. “It won‟t be long,” he says, and then he turns and

walks the few feet to the edge of the platform, taking a deep breath as

he sets a foot in the train.

“Hey, Lou,” says Harry‟s voice behind him.

Louis stops in the door and turns around to see Harry still standing

right where he left him, hands pushed down deep in his pockets.

“Yeah?” he says.

“I am, you know,” Harry tells him. “A sure thing.”

Louis smiles around the tightness in his throat. “I know.”

He manages to find the last seat against a window, and he watches

Harry grow smaller and smaller in the distance as the train pulls away

from the platform until he‟s gone around the corner. He can do this.

They‟re going to make this work. This doesn‟t fall apart just because

they‟re in different places. It‟s all right.

He pulls out his phone and opens up a blank text to Stan, because it just

feels like the thing to do. He hasn‟t the faintest idea where to start, or

how to condense everything into a single text message. His entire life

has just been changed in the course of one weekend.

In the end, he types out five words.

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I went and got him

Stan texts back less than twenty seconds later.

I knew you would

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TWENTY-FOUR

Zayn is pulled unwillingly into wakefulness by Liam‟s hand on his

shoulder. “Zayn, wake up,” Liam murmurs, voice still thick with sleep.

It‟s the middle of November, and it‟s warm in this bed, and Zayn is

going to do no such thing.

“Zayn,” Liam says again, this time shaking him roughly. “Bo needs to

go out, it‟s your turn.”

“Mmmph,” Zayn counters, curling into a ball. Bed warm. He loves bed.

He feels motion down by his feet and cracks one eyelid open

resentfully. Sure enough, Bo has jumped up on the bed and seems to be

trying to chew on his feet through the duvet. Despite the fact that he

feels more corpse than human, she notices that he‟s awake and rushes

up the bed to lick at his face.

“No,” he says, more to the universe than to the dog, putting a hand out

so she can mouth at his fingers instead.

“You‟re the one who wanted her,” Liam says teasingly, and Zayn could

kill him for being capable of banter before noon.

“Hrrrrghh,” Zayn shoots back, and, after a moment of psyching himself

up, rolls himself sideways out of bed, managing through some miracle

of physics to land on his feet. He pulls on joggers and a t-shirt and

some trainers blindly, Bo jumping up against his legs the whole time,

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before stumbling out into the flat, pulling on a coat, and grabbing Bo‟s

leash.

“You‟re lucky you‟re cute,” Zayn says, and it‟s meant for Bo but it

goes just as well for Liam. He squints at the beams of light streaming

through the blinds of his kitchen window and curses the fact that for

once it‟s sunny in Manchester during winter. He snags his sunglasses

off the little table by the door and then lets Bo out into the hallway

before she gets a chance to scratch up the finish on his front door.

Downstairs, he doesn‟t even try to walk her, just leads her to the little

square of grass near the front steps of his building and stands there.

“Go,” he says.

Bo stares at him for a second, wagging her stumpy little tail, and then

pivots on the spot and bounces away.

He has to admit, she is cute, and getting a puppy was his idea. Last

week, at long last, he finished the final draft of his novel and sent it off

to his editor. As it turns out, the whole influx of love and happiness and

stability in his life was what he needed to make that final push to

completing the bloody thing, which came as a bit of a shock to Zayn,

who always felt that pain was the heart of creativity. It‟s hard to be

tragically poetic when you‟re dating Liam Payne, but it worked out in

the end.

Liam asked Zayn what he wanted to celebrate, and Zayn said he wanted

a puppy. It seemed like the next logical step, seeing as it‟s been almost

a month since Liam moved into his flat for good, and Liam just grinned

and agreed and asked him if he wanted to stop for frozen yogurt on the

way to the RSPCA. Together they picked out a little mutt with a

smushed face and brown splotches, took her home, and named her Bo,

short for Bo Peep, because Liam is twenty-five years old and his

favorite movie is still Toy Story. Zayn suspects she might be part

pitbull, but didn't mention it to the people at the RSPCA. He's not sure

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they would have let them take her if they'd realized, and that makes him

like her that much more.

She‟s a little demon, and Liam is spoiling her rotten, but even now,

watching her sniff around a scraggly patch of grass in the cold, Zayn

can‟t be mad at her. Yeah, she‟s a pain in the arse, and she‟s already

ruined one of his favourite pairs of shoes, but. She turns Liam into a

happy rough-housing child, and she follows Zayn around devotedly,

and she‟s a living reminder that Zayn is at a place in his life where he‟s

responsible for keeping something else alive. That‟s probably worth the

early mornings, though he‟d never admit as much to Liam.

Bo starts sniffing around the single bare shrub outside his building,

showing zero signs of actually needing to pee, and Zayn starts

questioning if he‟s being played for a fool here. He sticks his cold