small town divorce fic excerpt

[saysthemagpie]

For a while they just lie there, sprawled out next to each other, the spare blanket rolled up and pillowed under their heads. Harry doesn’t seem inclined to speak, so Niall keeps quiet too, staring up at the night sky, picking out the familiar shapes of the constellations. It’s easy, instinctive, though it’s been a long time since he’s looked up at them like this.

“So,” Harry says finally. He rolls over onto his side, looking at him. Niall doesn’t look back, eyes still fixed on the stars, but he’s acutely aware of all the places their bodies aren’t touching, of how little effort it would take for someone - Harry - to change that. “That button, the one on your backpack. You want to work for NASA or something? Be an astronaut?”

“I don’t know,” Niall says. “No. I mean - I used to, when I was a kid. Kind of stupid.”

At his old school, the science teacher had organized a trip to Houston for the whole eighth grade class. Niall still remembers it: forty kids packed onto an old yellow school bus, sweaty bodies sticking to the hot plastic seats in the late September heat. He remembers the huge drafty airplane hangars and the intricately built model rockets in the museum display cases, each individual part neatly labeled. In a darkened auditorium the whole class had sat and watched a video about the moon landing: grainy black-and-white footage Niall’d seen in school, Neil Armstrong’s voice crackling over the speakers.

He’d been too nervous to ask the tour guide, but later, in the school library, he’d tried to look it up, hunched furtively over the computer like the boys who searched for naked photos of girls when the librarian wasn’t watching. It’d made him feel almost as queasy as looking for porn, shame mixing with anticipation as he typed the words into the search bar. How do you get to be an astronaut.

“Doesn’t sound stupid to me,” Harry says. He shifts a little, reaching out to trace the sleeve of Niall’s t-shirt. “Why don’t you want to anymore?”

“I’m not - I don’t think I’m smart enough,” Niall says. “You have to be really good at math and physics, stuff like that.”

Whatever he’d wanted back then, it’s not going to happen now, no matter how much Ms. Teasdale talks about the SAT and scholarships and a ticket out of Dillon. Niall doesn’t need to be some kind of math prodigy to calculate that one. A scholarship won’t pay for a nurse for Bobby, or the loans they’ve taken out on the diner, or the legal fees they’re still paying off four years after Greg’s accident.

“You are smart, though,“ Harry says. “You were in honors calc last year, weren’t you? With Corden?”

“I - yeah,” Niall says, slightly thrown. “How’d you know that?”

Harry shrugs. “Just saw you, I guess,” he says. “Couple times. Had English across the hall, same period.”

“Oh,” Niall says, and can’t think of anything else to say. It’s weird. Even though he’s literally lying in the bed of Harry’s truck, sprawled out next to him, it feels like some part of his brain’s still trying to process the fact that Harry Styles knows his name, let alone Niall’s junior year course schedule. “Was that - Teasdale’s class, right?”

Harry nods. “Definitely not honors,” he says. “My dad, he always said my sister got all the brains in the family.”

“Only seems fair,” Niall says. “Seeing as how you got the best arm in the state of Texas.”

Harry smiles at that, dimple flashing. It’s his camera-ready grin, the one he gives the interviewers when they’re asking him questions after a big game: half cocky, half sweet, a smile to make a hundred thousand people fall in love.

“Yeah?” he says. “You think so?”

His gaze drops to Niall’s mouth, just for a second, then flicks back up again. Niall’s pulse kicks up a notch.

“S'what everybody says, isn’t it,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady. “That you’re the best. In the state. In - in the whole country, maybe. That’s what they say.”

“Don’t want to know what they say.” Harry’s voice has gone low and husky. His fingers trail lower, brushing over the crook of Niall’s elbow. “Is that what you think?”

If Niall were a girl, he’d know what it meant, the way Harry’s looking at him now, talking to him, touching him. Or he’d be able to fill in the details, at least, from movies and country songs, from the things boys say in locker rooms while the coaches pretend they can’t hear. But there’s no script for this, as far as he knows – for two boys in the back of a pickup truck, for two boys when one of them’s somebody like Harry. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say next, how he’s supposed to act. How much he’s allowed to want.

He’s not even sure if it matters. Probably he could be anyone right now, and the fact that it’s him here and not some girl is just chance, just blind, stupid luck. For all he’s turned it over and over again in his mind, maybe it’s as simple as this: Harry turning his head in the hall. Harry picking him out of a crowd.

Niall swallows hard. He looks down at where Harry’s fingers are stroking the soft, exposed skin of his inner arm. He tries to remember the question.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Yeah, I reckon they’re probably right.”