i remember the feeling

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.”

“Did she put out, Styles?” Corrigan asks. “Bet she gives better head than that frigid bitch Swift, am I right?” He snickers, elbowing Tate in the side.

The smile slips off Harry’s face. He doesn’t say anything, though, just starts working the laces of his cleats loose like he hasn’t heard.

“Come on,” Corrigan says. “Details, bro. You gave it to her good, right?” He pretends like he’s holding the back of someone’s head in front of his crotch, thrusting his hips forward. A few guys laugh. Most of them are just watching, though, eyes on Harry.

Niall’s still entering stats into the laptop in the corner, keeping his head down. He doesn’t miss the way Harry keeps glancing uneasily at Coach Winston’s door, like he’s hoping Coach’ll come through it and put an end to this.

“Man, Jenner’s such a slut,” Tate puts in, looking at Corrigan for approval. “Just like her sisters. I heard she got so blackout after homecoming last year, she - ”

“Leave it, man,” Harry says suddenly. “She’s not- just leave it.”

“Ooh, does that mean it’s serious?” Corrigan says. “So when’s the wedding, Styles? Too bad she won’t be wearing white.”

There’s a sudden crash, loud enough to make a few people jump. Louis’s slammed his locker door shut.

“I think what Styles meant to say was, shut the fuck up,” he says, his voice even. “Think he meant to say if he ever hears you talking about a girl like that again in this locker room, the two of you’ll be running suicides till you can’t remember your own names.”

Corrigan’s expression twists into something even nastier. “Fuck off, Tomlinson,” he says. “Wasn’t talking to you.”

“Yeah, well,” Louis says. “I’m tired of hearing you run your mouth, like there’s a girl in this school who’d go within a mile of that shriveled little thing you call a dick.”

“Oh yeah?” Corrigan shoots back. “Talked to your sister lately? The way she’s been looking at me at practice, think she might be up for a good time. Heard she’s always up for a good time, if you know what I mean.”

Louis lunges. But it’s Harry who gets there first. He stands, grabbing Corrigan by the front of his practice jersey and shoving him up against the lockers.

“The fuck, Styles,” Corrigan snarls, and for a split second Niall thinks Corrigan’s going to haul off and punch him in the face, consequences be damned. The rest of the team’s thinking it too, if the way the room’s gone suddenly silent is any indication.

Harry doesn’t flinch. He just says quietly, “Ten laps, Corrigan. Now.”

“It was a fucking joke,” Corrigan says.

“Ten laps if you don’t want to be benched Friday,” Harry says. “Or I could always take it up
with Coach.”

A muscle works in Corrigan’s jaw. “Fine,” he snarls, jerking free of Harry’s grasp. He starts stripping off his sweaty pads, flinging them on the ground. The whole room’s frozen, everybody watching it play out. Louis's standing by his locker, his face a complete blank.

“Pick it up,” Harry says, still in that quiet, authoritative voice. Niall’s never heard him talk like that before. “Put your equipment away.”

Louis turns the shower on full blast above him. Niall curses, struggling to escape, but Louis just shoves him back in, his face dark with rage.

“What the fuck were you doing,” Louis snarls. “Who let you get behind the wheel like this?”

The water’s freezing. It doesn’t sober Niall up so much as wake him up, make him painfully, agonizingly alert.

He doesn’t want to be alert. He doesn’t want to even think, because his head aches fiercely already, and because when he starts thinking it starts hurting, all of it, in ways he hadn’t even known it was possible for a person to hurt.

“Jesus, Niall,” Louis’s saying now. “You should be dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Niall slumps against the side of the tub, his cheek pressed to the cool tile. He closes his eyes, defeated. “Yeah,” he says, the words coming out thick and slurred. “Reckon I should be.”

He doesn’t mean it exactly. He doesn’t want to die, and in the morning he knows he’ll be horrified by what he’s done, what he could’ve done. He’s no different than Greg, when it comes down to it. But right now he’s drowning in self pity, and a grief he’s buried so deep down inside himself he can’t even think about it, can’t even look at it straight on, without it threatening to crack him wide open.

There’s a long silence.

He wonders if Louis will leave now too. If he’ll look at Niall like this, a shivering, pathetic wreck, and see the same thing Harry had so obviously seen. That Niall’s no good, a risk not worth the investment. That everything he touches, everything he tries to love, withers away in the end, and it’s his doing, his fault.

Louis should leave. He should get out while he can, and leave Niall to piece back together some fragments of a life he’s shattered, a life that nobody ever believed he should have in the first place.

His breath catches on a sob. He presses his fist to his mouth, trying to muffle the sound.

“Niall,” Louis says. “Niall, look at me.”

Niall shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter. “No,” he chokes out. “Just go. I’ll be - I’m all right.”

Louis doesn’t go. He gets down on his knees beside the tub instead, and takes Niall’s hand, his cold, clammy hand.

“Can’t do that,” he says. “See, I need you, Niall. I’m the one who needs you. Can’t live in this godforsaken shithole of a town without you, to be honest. I need you, and the girls need you, and my mom needs you too. So you’re going to have to get your shit together, Niall. Because I’m not letting you drink yourself into an early grave just because Harry Styles couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”

“He’s your friend,” Niall says, because he hasn’t forgotten. Louis might be here now, but he was Harry’s first, and it’s not fair of Niall, wanting to keep him, hoping against hope that he’ll be allowed.

“Yeah,” Louis says. “He is, though I’m pretty pissed off with him at the moment. But you - Niall, you’re my friend too. You have to know that by now, don’t you? And right now I reckon the two of us need each other a hell of a lot more than Harry does.”