[ fic ] come close and then even closer ; harry/louis, one direction rpf
So aimmyarrowshigh mentioned how much she wanted fic about this, and the idea hit me in the right place and kinda stuck with me, and then this happened. Here you go, hun <3
come close and then even closer » one direction. harry/louis. pg. 2,674 words.
On May 2nd, 2009, before they meant anything to each other, Harry and Louis stood in the same room at Manchester Academy and watched The Fray perform. warnings: rpf. this is a fictitious portrayal and not meant to cause any offence.
The hall thrums with anticipation, two thousand and three hundred people packed together and screaming as Isaac Slade curls his hand around a microphone onstage.
Two thousand and three hundred people in a single room, and all of them will have a different story to tell by the end of the night. A boy in the back will kiss the girl he loves for the very first time in the parking lot. A woman standing in the very front row will whisper Marry me to her boyfriend when they’re too excited to fall asleep later.
And two boys who have never met will leave with the concert stuck under their skin, and they won’t meet for a while, but when they do their entire lives will be changed.
For now they stand in the same room, somewhere amongst thousands of other bodies, and they have no idea.
Harry is silent, biting his lip, waiting and waiting. I’ve seen this one before, Isaac begins, and the sound is amplified across the crowd, sinking into them, and Gemma’s nails dig into Harry’s arm when she grabs him, shaking him just a little bit like she can’t believe they’re really here.
She tips her head back, singing out with the rest of the crowd, and Harry sways beside her. There are bodies all around them, pressing in from every direction, and the elbow of the guy standing beside him knocks into him but he doesn’t care - every single person here is caught up in this, singing themselves hoarse even though they can’t be heard, and Harry has to inhale a strong breath of the stuffy air to catch himself before he can join in-
“Quiet but I’m sure there is something here-”
Louis sings, or more like shouts, his head already pounding and his throat already dry, though he couldn’t care less. He gulps some of the beer Stan and him managed to get in, and then holds it up high, waving his arm to the music. He would close his eyes, almost feels like he has to with the way all the noise and the energy is hitting him, but he doesn’t want to miss a second of this.
There’s a boy stood in front of him waving his arms as well, and Louis’ hand knocks into his, a bit of beer spilling over.
“Sorry!” he shouts, even though the kid probably can’t hear him. He laughs just as the song finishes, and the crowd screams even louder. He’s been to concerts before, but there’s something about the swell of the audience in this room, something about how good the guys up onstage sound, and Louis doesn’t think he’s ever going to be able to listen to them on his iPod the same ever again. Piano notes roll out over them, and his breath hitches-
“Halfway around the world lies the one thing that you want-”
Harry shivers; it starts in the base of his spine, and he does close his eyes, feeling a little lost in the middle of all these people and a little small in comparison to what they’re all experiencing. Mucking around with the boys and some guitars in the basement is one thing, and maybe he has dreams, but this is so very real, and raw, and he can’t imagine standing up there and-what it would look like, to be staring out at this?
The energy of the crowd doesn’t ease up as one song flows into the next; it grows desperate, frantic, everyone screaming to hold onto this night before it’s over, clinging with the tips of their fingers to what they’ve found right here.
Harry doesn’t think a single person in the hall is standing completely still, they’re a bizarre patchwork moving with each other and against each other and with the music onstage, and there is no pretence at personal space - someone in front of him steps hard on his toes at one point, and it barely registers.
Everyone is moving, and everyone is touching, and they’ve all thrown themselves into this, and he doesn’t want it to end-
“Younger now then we were before-”
-and Louis is breathless now, barely singing, words half-forming in his mouth and tumbling out almost noiselessly. Almost an hour now they’ve been on that stage, singing and singing and keeping every person wrapped around the sound of them.
Louis’ hair is sticking to his forehead, and he keeps pushing it back - he’s burning up in here, and his head is spinning just a bit, but he’d bet the electric rush under his skin has more to do with the atmosphere than the beers they finished a few songs in.
Two girls moving back through the crowd push past him, on their way to the bathroom or more drinks, and Louis stumbles, grabs a shoulder that he thinks is Stan’s before he glances at a stranger’s face. He untangles himself promptly, though the other guy only laughs, nods as if it’s all good. Louis pushes his hair back from his forehead again, and a new song is starting, and he shouts-
“I see you there, don’t know where you come from-”
Harry thinks it’s louder now than it was than at the start, if that’s even possible, as if the entire set list has been a slow crescendo to this, and they’re not even done yet. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been a part of something so loud, ever felt music like this, in sync with the entire crowd, with his sister dancing and singing beside him, with everyone and anyone, even the person a few feet in front of him who's got their arm thrust up into the air, a dark bar across his vision that splits through the red and blue and blinding lights onstage. It's overwhelming - he is too aware of how his heart is beating against his ribcage, and how blood is pumping behind his ears.
His entire body is synched to the music, every single part of him, and it scrapes his throat on the way out-
“You found me, you found me-”
One song rolls into another and another, and then the band is shouting thanks into the crowd and disappearing offstage. Just like that, it's over, and that reality crashes down on them as Louis and Stan remain standing there. Louis is breathing heavily, and his head is aching, but this is just- "Wow."
It was amazing, all of it, in a way that almost hurts - the kind of hurt that comes from wanting too much too badly. Louis feels half in a daze as they follow the pour of the crowd outside, leaving the building and the concert and the whole night behind them. Stan is talking about how great it was, but Louis doesn’t really hear him. He’s only shocked back into attention when some guy practically falls into him, almost knocking him over, and Louis helps straighten him up with a laugh, not sure if he’s drunk or just feeling the same adrenaline rush.
The guy quips a quick “Thanks, mate!" and then he's gone.
Harry and Gemma find their mum waiting in the car park as planned, and Louis and Stan head off to stay at Stan's friend's dorm for the night, and the concert is over and they are all heading back into their own lives, far apart.
And Harry and Louis still know nothing, neither of them, about the one stranger amongst thousands that is going to matter one day. They don't know yet, and they go their separate ways.
But, patience. This is how it goes: Louis ends up curled up on a mattress on the floor and Harry falls asleep in the back of his mum's car on the drive home, the concert stuck in their minds as they drift off, and they think, they wish like a secret, one day, maybe, that could be me.
The school year finishes, and summer passes quicker than they would have believed, and the school year rolls around again. And when the world is melting into spring in March, Louis and Harry audition for The X-Factor - because why not, because maybe it could be them - and they don't know this is come full circle now, travelling back to Manchester. It's just a reality show, it's just thousands of people queuing up and hoping this is going to get them fifteen minutes of fame, and it shouldn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but-
Louis sees Harry sing.
And that is why all of this matters, when he stumbles into the toilets later and recognizes Harry washing his hands, remembers Isn't she lovely, isn't she wonderful? and asks Harry for an autograph. Harry laughs out of surprise, and blushes when he scrawls his name on his scrap of paper.
Maybe Harry really will be famous one day, and maybe, Louis thinks, he'll look back at this silly run-in and boast about how he got an autograph before anyone else out there had half a clue who Harry was. He has no idea that this isn't about a signature, no idea that his path is finally merging with Harry's after intersecting for the blink of an eye nearly a year earlier.
Harry grins when he passes the piece of paper over, and Louis grins back at him, and they just stand there, and, really, it's a bit weird, meeting someone under these circumstances.
But now they've met.
When Simon tells them they've been put together in a band and they're through, Harry is happier than he can ever remember being, and it's almost terrifying, how elated he is. He hasn't even processed how the other boys are reacting, not really, until Louis is jumping into his arms, and Harry catches him with arms that wrap tight and squeeze, and he buries his face into Louis' chest and tries to breathe but it's too overwhelming, all of this, he can't believe it, it feels like more than a TV program right now, it feels like they are on the verge of something truly great, or they could be, and Louis is in his arms - only for the most fleeting moment, but one that drags out like minutes in Harry's mind as he tries to come to grips with this.
And that moment will become even longer in memory, when he looks back, when he tries to understand how any of it happened. It was right there. He and Louis collided centrestage with the whole nation watching; they clung tight to each other and they never looked back.
They find out about the concert in Harry's step dad's bungalow, when they're grouped together on the couches discussing musical taste because it seems like a vaguely important and therefore productive topic, now that they're going to be a band and all.
Niall is praising Bublé to the heavens, swearing that seeing him in concert was some kind of religious experience while the rest of them look faintly amused, Zayn raising an eyebrow, and then when he stops for a breath Louis interjects with "I saw The Fray last year, that was a great concert," and Harry's head snaps up from the pattern in the quilt draped over their laps.
"Me too," he says. "When, um, when d'you go?"
Louis stares at him for a second before he replies. "Back in May. Manchester." And he knows it then, knows it even before Harry starts to smile slowly, knows it before Harry actually says it-
"Yeah, I was there too."
It's a harmless statement, and Louis can't quite explain why they all go silent, unless maybe they're all just staring at him. Maybe he's the only one reacting oddly, staring at Harry and swallowing and not blinking enough. He coughs. "Nice." It's just one word, and there are so many more he could have chosen. He wants to ask Harry a million questions about that night, but Liam is telling a story about Gareth Gates and the conversation has moved on.
Harry's staring at him too though, with a hint of a smile like he actually gets it, whatever there is to get, whatever Louis can't quite understand and just knows is important. Harry thinks it's important too. And maybe that's all that matters: recognizing it, even if they don't understand it. This is only the beginning of everything, and they have time.
"What if I bumped into you in the crowd," Harry teases later, bumping shoulders with Louis for effect, and then it becomes a Thing.
"What if I walked right by you and your curls, and I never even noticed."
"What if I saw you for a second and thought you were cute, then forgot all about it."
"What if you were standing right beside me."
And of course, there's the what if I'd met you then. What if.
Two years pass and they've risen to fame so fast it feels like they never got the chance to take a proper breath first, and Louis still brings it up: "Weird, innit, thinking I almost met you before I did meet you?" He's pulling back the duvet covers from the hotel bed, and Harry's so tired he doesn't bother to do more than strip his clothes off and collapse face down on the mattress with a muffled noise into the pillow. He lifts his head a second later.
"Huh?"
Louis crawls into bed beside him, tucking the sheets over them both and settling back against his own pillow. "The Fray."
"Oh. Yeah," Harry agrees softly, shuffling as Louis moves closer and throws an arm loosely over him. He noses the skin over Louis' collarbone, then exhales. "Crazy."
Louis' fingers slide into Harry's hair, sifting through the curls, and Harry makes an encouraging noise that's barely more than a hum. "What if there was no X Factor," Louis says quietly, and his fingers stop. "No One Direction, and we really did just... walk by each other, and that was it."
This is something they all talk about sometimes, the millions of little things that could have happened differently and changed everything - if Liam had made it in 2008, if Katy had said no to Niall, if Zayn had walked out instead of dancing with the rest of them, if Harry had decided to wait a year until he was a bit older, if Louis' friends and family hadn't convinced him to actually go for it. So many things had to go right for them to all end up in the same place at the same time, and it's a bit frightening to imagine, but Harry thinks that's just how it happened, and that's that. The same could be said of anything in life, honestly.
But this is Louis talking about them, not the boys or the band, just the two of them, and what if everything had gone differently and that one night in a concert hall had been their only chance?
"I reckon..." Harry says slowly. "I mean... What happens is what happens. And if not X Factor, some other way, you know?"
Louis strokes a path down the back of his neck. "What's this, do you believe in fate, Harold?" And Harry rolls his eyes at the stupid name, but he gets it, gets that it's just how Louis is, needing to tease and lighten the mood when he's most genuine. Harry gets it, so he just rolls his eyes, and kisses him quick and soft on the mouth, grinning.
"Whatever you want to call it," he mumbles, his lips against Louis', and Louis makes a throaty noise he takes as agreement. It's not important what they call it, really, or even that they acknowledge it, Harry thinks, curling his fingers around Louis' side and tugging him closer. They did find each other, after all. Not in a crowd of thousands screaming, but they did. So this, the here and now-
This is the part that matters.