fic: with all the madness in my soul (2/4)
with all the madness in my soul (2/4)
The funny thing about having a gun, Nick slowly realizes, is that once you have the first one, the rest come easy. Three days later, Harry brazenly shoves the barrel of the revolver against the base of a man’s neck at a nearly-empty gas station. The man’s huge and hulking and Harry doesn’t look even slightly perturbed, walking silent and easy across the gravel of the parking lot until he’s right behind the man.
“What the fuck,” the man says, twisting around to see what’s happening, but Harry just shoves the muzzle of the gun into his neck even harder, pushing the man forward so he stumbles against his pickup truck. His hat falls off, revealing a balding head.
“Hey, pal,” Harry says. Nick starts to walk cautiously towards him, because he’s not sure where Harry’s going with this, but he’s certainly curious to find out. He knows for a fact there aren’t any bullets in the gun, which is an interesting factor. “Would you mind opening the car? I quite fancy those.” He nods at the back window, and Nick can see a cache of weapons in plain view, several rifles and shotguns, plus a few knifes. It’s funny how well armed the man is, and yet he’s still got his hands in the air for Harry, who’s pointing an empty gun he barely knows how to shoot.
“Any money if you’ve got it,” Nick adds, because they might as well do this properly.
The man doesn’t respond at all, just fishes his keys out of his front pocket and tries to hand them backwards to Harry.
“Give ‘em to him,” Harry instructs, nodding towards Nick, who walks closer and takes them. Harry keeps the man pressed silently against the truck while Nick retrieves everything inside of it, stowing it in the boot of their own. He fishes a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a candy bar out of the glove box for good measure.
“Right, thanks mate,” Harry says happily, stepping away once Nick’s finished. “Lay down on the ground now, if you don’t mind. There you go.” The man goes face down easily, and Harry nudges his arms with the toe of his boot until they’re folded behind his head. “Count to a hundred and stay there, alright?” He grins happily, still pointing the empty revolver as he nearly skips back to their car and hops over the door into his seat.
Nick starts the engine, but before he can pull away, Harry leans in and whispers “Hold on, pull up next to him,” so Nick pivots around so they’re alongside the man, still face down.
“I didn’t introduce myself,” Harry calls to the man. “That’s Nick Grimshaw, and I’m Harry Styles. Remember that, yeah? Go on, repeat it.”
“Nick Grimshaw,” the man says through a thick accent, voice muffled by the dirt. “Harry Styles.”
“Beautiful,” Harry calls back, beaming, and then turns to Nick. “You ready?”
-
Nick wonders. He wonders quietly, because they don’t talk much about the bloke back in London, at least not directly, although it’s always there, the force driving them further and further down the road. So he wonders by himself, finds that he doesn’t want to break the spell of it, doesn’t want to inadvertently spoil it all by trying to say it in clumsy, ineffectual words, but he wonders all the same -- he wonders if there’ll be another.
And eventually he finds out.
They’re stopped at a diner, a massive old thing that looks straight out of a film, all chrome and neon signs and slices of pie. They’ve been there for nearly an hour, and Nick’s idly nursing the last dregs of his coffee while Harry plays with the enormous jukebox in the corner. Nick’s twisting the mug around, occupying himself by tearing up little scraps of napkin. More than that, though, he watches the table of two men that are sat halfway down the restaurant, directly between him and Harry, because they’ve been watching Harry conspicuously for the last ten minutes.
When the last customer besides the two of them -- an old woman with a plastic rain bonnet over her hair despite the lack of clouds -- pays her bill and leaves, Nick sets down his coffee deliberately. Nobody’s moved, Harry still flipping between records, but there’s tension in the air, suddenly. Nick’s not surprised when a moment later one of the two men shoves his chair away from his table and makes his way slowly across the room towards Harry, pushing up the sleeves of his dirty work shirt as he goes.
Harry must notice, but he ignores the man until he’s just behind him, serenely focused on the jukebox.
“Y’gonna play somethin’?” the man drawls to Harry. He’s not tall, shorter than Harry by a nearly head, but he’s squat and stocky, and there’s something oily and foul about him that’s set Nick’s teeth on edge from the moment they’d walked in.
“Yep,” Harry says, not looking up from the glass.
The man sidles up right next to him, peering at Harry’s face. “You sound like you’re not from around here,” he says. Nick can’t help but roll his eyes at the terrible cliche -- there’s nothing terribly surprising about it, the truck driver who fancies himself a proper tough cowboy, but it’s still painful and more than a bit embarrassing to watch.
Harry turns to him at that, cocking a hip against the jukebox. He’s got his tightest jeans on, and his loose shirt falls low down his collarbones, the tips of the birds’ wings peeking through, and he looks conspicuously out of place -- Nick suspects it’s probably on purpose, to some degree. There’s something coy about the expression he’s got on -- he glances down at the floor a few times before looking at the man’s face, smiling almost flirtatiously, and Nick can already guess where this is going -- he knows what sort of things happen when Harry looks like he’s at his most innocent.
“How could you tell?” he asks sweetly, drawing out his accent almost comically. The bloke falls for it, inevitably.
“Well,” he says, pulling off his baseball cap to reveal his thinning hair before putting it back on again. “Saw you and your boyfriend over there and figured you must not be, since we don’t get a lot of your sort around here.”
“Oh, him?” Harry asks, nodding over at Nick, still the picture of wide eyed innocence. The man nods, just on the edge of menacing.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Harry says sweetly, and honestly, he could go into a career in acting if this whole life of crime thing doesn't pan out, because it’s so perfectly executed -- the right line, the appropriate contradiction, but just the hint of emphasis on the front of the sentence -- he’s rather than boyfriend getting the brunt of the denial.
“Is that so,” the man asks, and Nick honestly can’t tell if he’s trying to intimidate Harry or pick him up himself -- he thinks probably the man doesn’t, either, will wait to follow Harry’s cues before he decides.
“Mmhmm,” Harry agrees, turning back to the jukebox. “Here, listen to this.” A record slips into place -- Nick can’t quite place which one -- and Harry’ hips move just slightly in time to the first strums of the guitar.
The man grins menacingly at Harry’s broad back, turned away from him in what the man must think is a vulnerable way, and then his meaty hand moves slowly forward, coming to rest just at the curve of Harry’s hip.
Nick stands up in the same instant as Harry’s spine snaps up straight, all his casual slouching grace gone. “What’re you--” he starts to ask, but the man’s hand just grips him firmer, inching around to the curve of his arse.
“What,” the man asks, “y’don’t like me now?” Harry doesn’t reply, and Nick slowly moves his hand around to the handgun that’s tucked into the waistband of his trousers, silently congratulating himself for not forgetting it in the car.
“Y’all ought to be a little more friendly,” the man says, more confident now, and he must think he’s got Harry pinned, a butterfly waiting to be crushed.
“Actually, we’re leaving now,” Harry says, just loud enough for Nick to hear across the distance.
Between them, the man’s friend -- an essentially identical if slightly taller version of him -- has risen from the table as well, slowly making his way towards them.
“Don’t think you are, actually,” the man mimics, shoving hard at Harry’s hip.
When Harry turns around to face him, a beautiful, frightening grin stretched across his face, Nick almost feels sorry for the man.
There’s a pause, a vacuum of quiet before the storm, and then Harry explodes into movement, his long arms reaching to yank the man’s head down by the ears as he smashes his knee into his face.
Harry’s not that strong, but he’s got the element of surprised on his side -- the man clearly hadn’t expected it and he goes down almost immediately, crumpling to the floor as holding his bleeding nose. “What the fuck, you little --”
Nick doesn't hear whatever he calls Harry, though, because the mans’ friend is rushing over, presumably to help him up or try to smash Harry’s face into the jukebox. It’s only the distance between them that gives Nick time to aim the gun at the friend’s knee and squeeze out several shots. One must connect because he shouts and goes down, still several paces from Harry and the man.
Harry’s a tornado, relentlessly kicking the man as he tries to climb back to his feet and failing. Harry’s heel comes down on his throat with a sickening crunch, and then his face, his stomach and his neck again all in quick succession. Nick sidesteps the one he’d shot, groaning and clutching his bleeding knee, and comes up behind the man, boxing him in on the ground between him and Harry.
“Dunno if you ever really had a chance with him, mate,” Nick says to the man when Harry stops kicking long enough for him to be heard. The man is covered in his own blood, several teeth missing, and the only noise he makes is a wet gurgle in the back of his throat.
“Not really my type,” Harry agrees serenely, wiping the blood on his boot off on the man’s jeans. The man’s eyes have shut now, only a few groans coming up from his throat. “You ready to go?” Harry asks Nick.
“Just about,” he says, and then levels the gun at the man’s face. He pauses, though, and reconsiders. “Actually, would you like to?” He offers the gun to Harry, and he takes it, pleased.
“You need better manners,” Harry says to the man, and then shoots him between the eyes.
He looks at the man's body consideringly for a moment, like he’s examining his own handiwork for error, then smiles, and hands the gun back to Nick.
Behind them, the man’s friend is struggling to his feet, right leg barely supporting his weight, but he’s coming at them, clearly thinks he can take them. It’s almost boring when he goes down easily, four more shots from Nick hitting him, this time in the neck and the head.
“Now I’m ready,” he tells Harry.
They’re nearly out the door when there’s a small sob from behind the counter. They both turn, and Nick realizes the waitress -- the one who’d brought him pie and coffee -- is standing there in horror, pressing herself against the furthest wall. Nick had forgotten she was there, to be honest.
“Hold on,” Harry says, turning back into the restaurant. The waitress is shaking, her face gone completely pale, but Harry just walks up to her easily. “Can I borrow a pen, love?” he asks her. She fumbles, clearly confused, but stretches her arm out to hands him a pen from the pocket of her apron with a shaking hand.
Harry takes it calmly, like there’s nothing strange about the situation at all, and then pulls a paper napkin from the overturned dispenser. He scrawls something on it with the pen, and then hands both back to the waitress. “Sorry for the mess,” he apologizes, and then he’s walking briskly back to Nick, pulling him out the door and into the sunshine.
-
They’re back on the road in minutes, Nick speeding away as fast he can goad the car to go. In the distance he hears sirens, but they’re going the opposite direction, into town as opposed to following them out of it. His pulse is thrumming happily, and he doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or kiss Harry or speed the car up, faster and faster and faster, until the world around them is just a blur.
“What’d you write on the napkin?” he asks over the rush of the wind coming in through the open top.
“Our names,” Harry tells him, smiling hugely, looking so pleased and happy with himself that Nick could shout. “We deserve proper credit, after all.”
-
The dam breaks after that, and it’s like a door opening, like permission. If Nick stops to think about it too long his head starts to swim, in the best sort of way, because it’s so much, it’s so wide open and wonderful just to be with Harry, free and unstoppable. Nick thinks they’re invincible -- he hasn’t got any reason not to.
There’s more and more and more of them, a trail of dead growing steadily behind them now that they’ve given themselves permission -- there’s another drunken trucker drinking a cup of coffee at a rest stop who hisses a slur at them, and Harry squeezes out a round of bullets into the back of his head. There’s an off-duty security guard plus two other men with guns who’d tried put up a fight when Harry casually helps himself to the money in a till at a roadside restaurant. There’s a bank teller who doesn’t listen when Harry tells him to lay on the ground, a man at a bar who tries to draw the pistol in his belt at Harry when he sees him doing the same. There’s more than Nick can keep track of, after a while, and it makes him giddy.
They’re cutting a swath through the country, the landscape turning wild and barren and back to lush all over again, it seems, and they leave a trail of blood as they go. Only people who deserve it, Harry says, those are the only ones they go after, although his definition of “people who deserve it” gradually expands to include anyone who might get in their way. Harry’s almost feral with it, giddy and beautiful and unpredictable. He presses Nick fiercely into their motel beds at night and fucks himself down on Nick’s cock, recounting their own stories to Nick -- “Remember the look on his face?” he asks -- and laughing when he comes.
Nick thinks he’s never been more in love, with anyone, with life itself.
-
The landscape goes more and more wild the further west they drive, hills growing into mountains, cutting jagged lines into the sky. Nick stops the car occasionally, when his legs start to cramp up or when there’s something scenic that Harry wants to see. When the highway they’re on crosses a massive bridge over a canyon one afternoon, Harry gasps so loudly at the sight that Nick pulls over in the middle of it without second thought. Harry jumps out of the car immediately and clambers up onto the railing, watching the river snake and twist through the carved-out valley of jagged rocks far below them, so far it seems like miles. Harry props himself up on his tiptoes, clinging to the guardrail loosely like he’s never even thought about falling, and dangles his head over the edge, turning to smile at Nick while his hair blows in the wind whipping up from beneath them.
“How far down do you think it goes?” Harry asks.
“Dunno,” Nick says. It’s hard to tell from this far up, and his stomach twists in a thrill when he looks over the edge, at all the empty space floating beneath them, and then the river way down below, crashing through the narrow walls of the rocks pressing in on it.
“Hm,” Harry says, pondering it carefully. He reaches into the pocket of his shorts and pulls out a handful of things -- a pen with the end mangled and chewed up, a stick of gum, a lighter and a mishmash of loose coins, American cents and the leftover pence from back home both. He sticks his tongue between his teeth as he frowns in concentration, and drops them all over the edge of the railing one by one, tipping his hand carefully until they slide off. The pen goes first, tipping end over end, and then the gum and the lighter, and finally the money, reflecting the glint of the sunlight as it falls.
“What’s that for?” Nick asks.
Harry shrugs. “Felt like it.”
Nick watches them go until he can’t see them anymore, and even then he thinks they must still be falling, all the spare detritus of Harry’s pockets. It’s not as if he expects to hear it when they hit the river, they’re so far up -- he thinks it must take anything ages to fall all the way to the bottom -- but he listens anyway, keeps watching. Harry stares as well, although Nick can’t tell if he’s trying to track the things he’d dropped, or watching the river, or just looking at the vast emptiness beneath them, but he stares intently, for a long time, as if in a trance. Nick stops looking into the canyon and looks at Harry instead.
Finally his head snaps up, and he brushes his palms together like he’s ridding himself of something. “That’s that, then,” he says to Nick, straightening the typical hunch of his shoulders.
It hits Nick like a freight train, the overwhelming bravery and vulnerability all mixed up in that one gesture, Harry making himself up as tall as he can while he chucks his scant amount of possession -- amounting to no more than rubbish, Nick things, not unkindly -- into the abyss. He feels the need to do something monumental in return, something enormous and oceanic, but when he tries to move his hands, he finds he can’t quite manage it.
“You know I’ll take care of you, yeah?” he settles on instead.
“‘Course,” Harry says, turning to him and smiling.
“Because I will, I promise,” Nick insists, because he’s suddenly desperate for Harry to know it. “Anything that might hurt you, I swear, I’d --”
“You’ll protect me,” Harry repeats, reaching over to pull Nick’s hand into his own. “I get it. And I’ll protect you too, yeah? We look out for each other.”
“Forever,” Nick tells him.
“Forever,” Harry repeats again, and then laughs softly. “‘Til death do us part, right?” He looks out over the edge of the bridge again, down into the depth of the canyon, before turning back to NIck.
The panic in Nick’s chest shatters, falling away into something bright and blooming, and he wants to shout, wants to wrap Harry up in his arms so tightly that they can never be pulled apart, not by any force. “You’re dead romantic, love,” he says instead, trying to sound lighthearted and missing it by a mile.
“Don’t make fun,” Harry pouts, still grinning. “‘S’not nice.”
“Sorry,” Nick says, moving behind Harry and wrapping his arms around his skinny waist so they’re both looking down.
“D’you think that stuff’s hit the bottom yet?” Harry asks after a moment.
“Dunno,” Nick says into the curve of Harry’s neck. He hasn’t any idea how long it’s been falling by now, or how long it takes to hit the bottom.
-
Nick rents them the most expensive hotel room he can find that night, which isn’t much, given the remote area, but there’s a massive bed, at least, and a liquor store where he buys them a bottle of terrible champagne that’s likely been on the shelf for ages.
They drink it from the plastic cups from their hotel room’s bathroom, the bubbles fizzing manically in Nick’s mouth, through his blood. Harry’s cheeks flush beautifully red the more he drinks, and he laughs loudly, tipping his head back, when he turns on the television to see their own faces staring back, the caption ARMED AND DANGEROUS emblazoned above them. Nick can’t help but laugh too, can’t stop once he starts, the wonderful absurdity of it all making him feel more drunk than the alcohol. They’re both still laughing when he presses Harry against the mattress, kissing him between fits of giggles until his vision blurs, the sound of news anchors reciting their names in his ears the whole time.
-
“This road never ends, I think,” Harry tells him, days later. They’re angling southwest, sort of, the last town and two dead liquor store clerks hours behind them by now. It’s just the road, sprawling over dust and shrubs, alternating in a pattern of brown and red.
Nick thinks he knows what Harry means. They keep driving towards the horizon, sometimes flat and sometimes obscured by hills and mountains, but it never gets any closer. It’s easy to think the road might actually go on forever, endlessly leading somewhere they can never get to.
“Of course it ends,” he says anyway. “All roads have to end. We’d drive into the ocean, else.”
Harry just shakes his head, and uses the hand that’s not trailing outside the open car and catching on the wind to pull off his hat and sunglasses. They’ve got the top down -- they almost always do, now, Harry insists and Nick likes it that way anyway -- and Harry tilts his face up at the sky, squinching his eyes shut at the glaring sun but refusing to turn away. It lights him up so beautifully it’s almost as if he’s glowing from inside.
“Not this one,” he insists easily, and Nick tries not to think about how young Harry is, but he can’t help himself. Harry is young and earnest and wide-open, and it throws Nick’s own bitten-off calculation into relief.
“This one’s special,” Harry continues. “I can tell. It goes on forever. No end.” He stretches both his arms up into the sky like he’s trying impossibly to reach the very top of it. His fingers wiggle in the wind before he lets them drop back down into the car, this time his left arm draped over the console, closer to Nick. Nick reaches for it.
“There’s always an end, love,” he tells Harry, squeezing his wrist firmly across the console. His long fingers encircle the thin bones there easily, and he presses in tighter, wanting to leave a mark. Harry squirms happily in the seat next to him. His hat is abandoned by his feet now, and he nearly crushes it as he moves.
“Not for us,” he breathes out, shifting in his seat. “We go on forever too.” He tips his head up to the sky again and moans a breathy little noise when Nick digs the crescents of his nails into the thin skin of Harry’s wrist. The column of his throat is long and pale and the wind is pulling through his hair, and he moans again, louder. If he keeps it up, Nick’s going to have to pull over the car immediately.
“Yeah?” he asks, keeping his foot steady on the accelerator. “Tell me about it.”
Harry’s hands curl tightly on the edge of his seat, and he keeps watching the sky as it slides by above them. He smiles when he speaks. “Well, ‘s’like. Nothing ever dies. We can’t die, we can’t stop. We’re like -- we’re like the sun, or the wind, we just go on forever. Forces of nature.” He whines low in his throat as Nick’s fingernails clutch in even deeper, hips jerking up just a bit. Nick can see the hard line of Harry’s cock through his tight, faded jeans, the one’s he’d hacked off into cutoffs with a hunting knife in the bathroom of a motel miles and miles from here. His lower lip is white where he’s biting down on it, and Nick can feel his pulse jumping like a timpani roll at the sight of him.
He can’t bring himself to correct Harry, to tell him that even the sun will burn out one day, that the wind will stop and all of nature will go barren and flat and eventually die, no matter the force of it. He rather likes the way Harry’s said it, the two of them going on forever, even if he hasn’t got it quite right. He can picture them driving and never stopping, the long stretch of road never running out, and they just -- go, just like this, infinite and wild.
“You’ve got a way with words,” he says instead, and pulls over sharply, the car shuddering to a stop on the shoulder and sending up a cloud of dust. There’s nothing, not one living thing for miles and miles, save for several massive birds circling way off to the north, their wings flat and unmoving as they drift in a lazy figure eight.
“What’s here? Why’ve we stopped?” Harry asks, smiling in a bitten-off way that Nick can tell means he knows exactly why. Nick ignores him, gets out of the car and leaves his door hanging open as he circles around the back and reaches the passenger side. Harry stretches his legs and climbs over the top of the door without bothering to open it. His feet are bare and they press firmly into the dirt as he leans up against the car, crossing his arms lazily across his chest. The sun is beating down hot, the smell of baked earth and dry grass all around them as Nick crowds Harry up against the side of the car and grabs a handful of his hair, yanking back gently so the long column of Harry’s neck is exposed.
He’s incapable of stopping himself from biting it up, leaving a fresh trail of bite marks on top of old ones that are bruised and fading. Harry’s hips press up against Nick and he hisses and gasps in a pleased manner as Nick pushes him back even harder at the same time as he tries to get the zip of Harry’s cutoff jeans open. Harry goes slack once he does, Nick getting the zip down just enough to shove them far enough down Harry’s narrow hips so his cock pops out, pink and hard, curving up. It’s familiar enough, but Nick’s heart still stutters at the sight. He wants to take Harry apart.
“Here,” he says, holding his hand up to Harry’s mouth. He grins at him and then sucks two of Nick’s fingers in. His hips punch forward on their own when he feels Harry’s tongue swirl around them, the soft clutch of his throat and the hint of teeth too much of a sense memory for him to handle. He pulls his fingers out after a moment, and then holds his hand out. Harry spits into it, looking up at Nick through his eyelashes the whole time.
He drops his hand and wraps it around Harry’s dick, and Harry moans so load it almost echoes through the empty landscape. “Yeah?” Nick asks, even though he already knows the answer, and Harry nods.
Nick jerks him fast and carelessly, probably too hard, but Harry only leans into it, his shoulders slumping and hips coming off the car door as he strains into Nick’s fist and lets out a shameless whine. “Shit, don’t -- don’t stop, Nick, Jesus,” he breathes out.
Nick won’t stop, can’t stop, because he doesn’t know how to stop the frantic feeling that’s on him now, the sense that if he stops they’ll both disappear, that without this there’s nothing else, just dead air on a doomed, endless planet -- but this, this is something beautiful and raw and alive.
“Nick, Nick,” Harry chants, and the way he says Nick’s name wraps around him.
When Harry comes, arching up and biting back a choke as his spills hot into Nick’s hand, the grip of the feeling lessens. It’s only when Harry guides Nick’s hand back up to his mouth and licks his own come off of it that it fades enough for Nick to realize how hard he is, but when he does it slams into him like a wall, almost tangibly solid. If he could think straight enough, he would turn Harry around, bend him over the car door and spread him open, fuck him until the force of it reverberates down into the earth itself. But that involves faculties he’s not sure he’s got at the moment, so he just stands there instead, waiting.
And then Harry is smiling again, dropping down onto his knees in the rocky dirt like it’s soft carpet, still between Nick and the car. He doesn’t bother to pull his cutoffs up, so they sit open, his cock still out and halfway hard, and Nick has to lean over him and brace his hands on the car so his knees don’t give out at the sight. Harry’s hands trail up the back of his legs gently, and for just a moment he leans forward and rests his forehead on Nick’s hip softly, eyes shut, looking serene and grateful and so beautiful even as his breath is hot on Nick’s cock through his trousers. It takes the wind out of him.
Harry opens his eyes after a moment and unbuttons Nick’s trousers deftly, sliding them down his thighs before leaning in and taking Nick’s cock in his mouth in one swift motion. Nick doesn’t whine at it, but comes close. He loves Harry’s mouth, loves this. He loves Harry. He wants the earth to open up and swallow them like this.
He comes as Harry pulls off, shooting on his lips and chin, and when he’s finished Harry holds his gaze as he drags his fingers through it, smiling happily the whole time. Eventually Nick tucks himself back into his trousers, trying to keep his legs from going to rubber underneath him, and Harry stands up easily like he hasn’t just been kneeling in the dirt with bare knees and feet.
“Jesus,” Nick says.
“C’mon,” Harry says, tumbling gracelessly back into the car and stretching his legs out so his bare feet are propped up on the dash. “Still got forever.” He laughs at his own joke, just a bit.
Nick only stands and looks at him dazedly for a moment, and then shakes his head, gets back in the car, and pulls back onto the road.
-
Two days later the endless road is interrupted by the nearest thing to a proper town they’ve seen in ages, and even then, it’s mostly a small collection of shops and houses jammed together in a tight circle, like covered wagons huddled together against the wind. Beyond the limits of the town the red dirt spreads out, verging on becoming a proper desert, vast and unyielding, the town an oasis set down in the middle of it.
Nick’s immediately wary, because it’s a risk, being around this many people, especially as their notoriety has been chasing them, rapidly gaining. There’s a good chance they’ll be recognized here, and that’s alright, it’s happened before and they’ve dealt with it -- he thinks about their trunk full of weapons and holds onto it like a lifeline -- but this is bigger. It wouldn’t be hard for them to be outnumbered here.
But Harry wants to stop, and Nick still can’t say no to him.
Harry insists on splitting up as soon as the car’s stopped at a gas station, and Nick really needs to learn how to say no to him, but so far he hasn’t managed, so Harry meanders off while Nick fills the car up, peering into shop windows he passes before turning a corner and going out of Nick’s sight. He sighs, waiting for the tank to fill, and tries to decide what to do next.
In the end, he settles on buying a ticket at the old two-screen cinema a few blocks over, and he falls asleep halfway through a matinee of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the only one in the theater. When he jerks awake an hour later, the lights have gone up and the projector is clacking uselessly, imageless light shining over the dusty screen.
He stands up slowly, cracking his back as he does, and goes to look for Harry.
He finds him easily enough in the only diner in town, his curly hair visible over the back of a booth as soon as Nick pushes the door open with a chime. He breathes a sigh of relief, a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding from the moment they’d gone off in different directions.
The relief is short lived, though, because when he reaches the booth, he realizes with a sick jolt that Harry isn’t alone.
“Nick,” Harry says when he sees him, voice soft and fond like it gets when he’s found something shiny to catch his attention. “Look, I’ve made a friend.”
There’s another boy sitting next to him in the booth, and he’s staring at Harry with a look on his face caught somewhere between sly and enraptured. He’s shorter than Harry, about the same age, and his soft hair sweeps over his angular features in a way that instinctively makes Nick want to muss it, just to see what happens. He crosses his arms over his chest instead.
“He’s from Yorkshire,” Harry says, smiling widely up at Nick and then back at the boy in turn. “Isn’t that a coincidence?”
“What’s his name?” Nick asks Harry. The boy frowns at him, but Nick just ignores him, not moving his gaze from Harry’s face.
“His name is Louis,” the boy answers, a snappish tone in his voice that Nick hadn’t quite expected.
“Brilliant,” Nick says. “Harry, say goodbye to Louis, we need to go now.”
“Don’t be rude, Nick,” Harry pouts. “I made a friend. And we just ordered. Sit down and eat with us.”
Nick sighs and scuffs the edge of his foot on the dirty linoleum of the diner’s floor. The boy -- Louis -- looks torn between wanting to scowl at Nick and gaze adoringly at Harry, and eventually settles his attention on Harry, conspicuously not looking at Nick. Nick would be annoyed if he didn’t know that feeling so well -- the one where you want to tear your eyes away, to force yourself focus on anything else besides Harry, but can’t. He felt that the first time in the filthy pub in London, and it hasn’t left him since then. So instead of arguing he sighs again, just to register at least some sort of protest, and slides into the vinyl booth.
“This is Nick,” Harry introduces once he’s settled across from him.
“Yeah, I,” Louis starts, glancing quickly over at Nick before darting his gaze back to Harry. Harry’s absolutely basking under his attention, turning towards it like a flower to the sun. Nick thinks that if he’s not careful, Harry’ll try and adopt this boy like a stray cat -- he can see it in Harry’s pleased expression.
“I know,” Louis finishes carefully. “I, um. I know who you two are.”
Nick arches an eyebrow, and tries to keep his pulse from speeding up at the thrill.
“You’re on the news a lot,” Louis explains. “You’re both sort of rather famous, did you know? Or I guess, like, infamous.”
Nick snorts humorlessly, but Harry just smiles and preens some more. A moment later a waitress in a stained apron turns up with their food, and they must not be that recognizable, because she just drops a plate of chips in front of Harry with a thunk and walks off without a word.
“So if we’re so infamous,” Nick starts, not bothering to disguise the suspicion in his voice, “and you know who we are, why’re you sitting here with us? And not, like, running away and calling the police?”
“Do you want me to call the police?” Louis asks defensively.
“‘Course he doesn’t, he’s just being a twat,” Harry tells him soothingly.
“Just trying to figure out what your angle is here,” Nick says. “Perhaps you can understand that? Only I’d rather not sit around waiting to be arrested if you’ve gone and called in a tip or summat when we could be using this time to get a head start.”
“He hasn’t, Nick, stop it,” Harry says, and even though his tone is still fond, it still smarts a bit, being scolded.
“I won’t,” Louis says, quieter this time, looking down at his small hands that are folded on the table in front of him. “I wouldn’t.” Harry reaches over at that, letting his knuckles brush against Louis’.
“Okay,” Nick says, trying to make his voice a bit gentler this time. “But why should we believe that? I’m not trying to be an areshole,” he says, mostly for Harry’s benefit, “it’s just -- you can see why it’s important we be sure.”
“Because I don’t want anyone to know I’m here either, to start with,” Louis says, tipping his chin up in a way that Nick assumes is meant to be defiant. It has the opposite effect, though, and it’s the vulnerability in it, the desperate way Louis seems to want to be seen as collected and in control, that loosens the fist of suspicion in Nick’s chest.
“Why are you here, then?” Nick asks. Harry’s frowns kittenishly at him and his foot connects with Nick’s ankle under the table sharply, like he’s out of line for asking, but he doesn’t take the question back.
“Same thing you are,” Louis says, prodding at the plate of chips. “Running away from my problems. Only you lot are doing a better job of it than I am, I think.”
“D’you want to talk about it?” Harry says, so sweet and earnest that Nick has to fight to keep himself from rolling his eyes and leaning across the table to kiss him.
“It’s stupid,” Louis says, twisting his hands uncomfortably. Harry’s hand is still brushing up against Louis’ as they fidget, and after a moment, without quite meaning to, Nick reaches over to put his own hand on top of Louis’, stilling them. His skin is warm and soft underneath his palm, and the familiar line of Harry’s fingers press against Nick’s. The three of them sit there for a long moment, hands twisted up together, before Nick pulls his back. Louis takes a breath in, looking slightly less restless.
“Standard shit,” he says softly. “Trouble at home, crap father, stole a whole shiteload of his money to get away from him. The usual.”
Nick’s not sure what to do with the fact that that’s what Louis thinks of as the usual, but it twists his stomach around.
“I saw you on the news,” Louis continues. “And I knew I was supposed to be horrified, like -- bloke and his boyfriend kill the ex, or whatever, and go on the run, but.” He shifts, like he’s searching for the words and can’t quite grasp them. “There was this bloke I saw interviewed, said he was a friend of yours?” He looks at Harry at that, eyes wide, and for a moment, the look that passes between them makes Nick feel like an intruder. “And he said the one you -- the one you killed, he deserved it, that he like -- hit you or whatever, and just.” He shrugs. Nick assumes he must mean the bartender, Zayn, can’t imagine who else it might’ve been, but he doesn’t press it, because after a moment Louis continues. “All I could think was that I wish I could’ve done that. I wish I could’ve just... I dunno. Fought, instead of fled.”
He sits back at that, silent, and for a long moment no one speaks. Harry is staring at Louis, positively enraptured, the fierce, almost wild glint of protectiveness in his eyes familiar and foreign all at once.
“What about the other ones, though?” Nick asks. “There have been ones after him, y’know.”
“Yeah,” Louis agrees. “Figured you had your reasons.”
Nick considers, because yeah, that’s -- that’s mostly right. He’s surprised that Louis understands, and it doesn't mean Nick trusts him, necessarily, but it’s -- it’s something.
“So that’s why I won’t turn you in,” Louis says. “Sort of been rooting for you all along.”
It’s stupid to believe him, Nick thinks. It’s stupid and dangerous and so is sitting still in this diner, rapidly filling up with other people, people who might know them as well.
But on the other hand, Nick thinks he might not know how to do things that aren’t stupid and dangerous anymore.
( part three)
The funny thing about having a gun, Nick slowly realizes, is that once you have the first one, the rest come easy. Three days later, Harry brazenly shoves the barrel of the revolver against the base of a man’s neck at a nearly-empty gas station. The man’s huge and hulking and Harry doesn’t look even slightly perturbed, walking silent and easy across the gravel of the parking lot until he’s right behind the man.
“What the fuck,” the man says, twisting around to see what’s happening, but Harry just shoves the muzzle of the gun into his neck even harder, pushing the man forward so he stumbles against his pickup truck. His hat falls off, revealing a balding head.
“Hey, pal,” Harry says. Nick starts to walk cautiously towards him, because he’s not sure where Harry’s going with this, but he’s certainly curious to find out. He knows for a fact there aren’t any bullets in the gun, which is an interesting factor. “Would you mind opening the car? I quite fancy those.” He nods at the back window, and Nick can see a cache of weapons in plain view, several rifles and shotguns, plus a few knifes. It’s funny how well armed the man is, and yet he’s still got his hands in the air for Harry, who’s pointing an empty gun he barely knows how to shoot.
“Any money if you’ve got it,” Nick adds, because they might as well do this properly.
The man doesn’t respond at all, just fishes his keys out of his front pocket and tries to hand them backwards to Harry.
“Give ‘em to him,” Harry instructs, nodding towards Nick, who walks closer and takes them. Harry keeps the man pressed silently against the truck while Nick retrieves everything inside of it, stowing it in the boot of their own. He fishes a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a candy bar out of the glove box for good measure.
“Right, thanks mate,” Harry says happily, stepping away once Nick’s finished. “Lay down on the ground now, if you don’t mind. There you go.” The man goes face down easily, and Harry nudges his arms with the toe of his boot until they’re folded behind his head. “Count to a hundred and stay there, alright?” He grins happily, still pointing the empty revolver as he nearly skips back to their car and hops over the door into his seat.
Nick starts the engine, but before he can pull away, Harry leans in and whispers “Hold on, pull up next to him,” so Nick pivots around so they’re alongside the man, still face down.
“I didn’t introduce myself,” Harry calls to the man. “That’s Nick Grimshaw, and I’m Harry Styles. Remember that, yeah? Go on, repeat it.”
“Nick Grimshaw,” the man says through a thick accent, voice muffled by the dirt. “Harry Styles.”
“Beautiful,” Harry calls back, beaming, and then turns to Nick. “You ready?”
-
Nick wonders. He wonders quietly, because they don’t talk much about the bloke back in London, at least not directly, although it’s always there, the force driving them further and further down the road. So he wonders by himself, finds that he doesn’t want to break the spell of it, doesn’t want to inadvertently spoil it all by trying to say it in clumsy, ineffectual words, but he wonders all the same -- he wonders if there’ll be another.
And eventually he finds out.
They’re stopped at a diner, a massive old thing that looks straight out of a film, all chrome and neon signs and slices of pie. They’ve been there for nearly an hour, and Nick’s idly nursing the last dregs of his coffee while Harry plays with the enormous jukebox in the corner. Nick’s twisting the mug around, occupying himself by tearing up little scraps of napkin. More than that, though, he watches the table of two men that are sat halfway down the restaurant, directly between him and Harry, because they’ve been watching Harry conspicuously for the last ten minutes.
When the last customer besides the two of them -- an old woman with a plastic rain bonnet over her hair despite the lack of clouds -- pays her bill and leaves, Nick sets down his coffee deliberately. Nobody’s moved, Harry still flipping between records, but there’s tension in the air, suddenly. Nick’s not surprised when a moment later one of the two men shoves his chair away from his table and makes his way slowly across the room towards Harry, pushing up the sleeves of his dirty work shirt as he goes.
Harry must notice, but he ignores the man until he’s just behind him, serenely focused on the jukebox.
“Y’gonna play somethin’?” the man drawls to Harry. He’s not tall, shorter than Harry by a nearly head, but he’s squat and stocky, and there’s something oily and foul about him that’s set Nick’s teeth on edge from the moment they’d walked in.
“Yep,” Harry says, not looking up from the glass.
The man sidles up right next to him, peering at Harry’s face. “You sound like you’re not from around here,” he says. Nick can’t help but roll his eyes at the terrible cliche -- there’s nothing terribly surprising about it, the truck driver who fancies himself a proper tough cowboy, but it’s still painful and more than a bit embarrassing to watch.
Harry turns to him at that, cocking a hip against the jukebox. He’s got his tightest jeans on, and his loose shirt falls low down his collarbones, the tips of the birds’ wings peeking through, and he looks conspicuously out of place -- Nick suspects it’s probably on purpose, to some degree. There’s something coy about the expression he’s got on -- he glances down at the floor a few times before looking at the man’s face, smiling almost flirtatiously, and Nick can already guess where this is going -- he knows what sort of things happen when Harry looks like he’s at his most innocent.
“How could you tell?” he asks sweetly, drawing out his accent almost comically. The bloke falls for it, inevitably.
“Well,” he says, pulling off his baseball cap to reveal his thinning hair before putting it back on again. “Saw you and your boyfriend over there and figured you must not be, since we don’t get a lot of your sort around here.”
“Oh, him?” Harry asks, nodding over at Nick, still the picture of wide eyed innocence. The man nods, just on the edge of menacing.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Harry says sweetly, and honestly, he could go into a career in acting if this whole life of crime thing doesn't pan out, because it’s so perfectly executed -- the right line, the appropriate contradiction, but just the hint of emphasis on the front of the sentence -- he’s rather than boyfriend getting the brunt of the denial.
“Is that so,” the man asks, and Nick honestly can’t tell if he’s trying to intimidate Harry or pick him up himself -- he thinks probably the man doesn’t, either, will wait to follow Harry’s cues before he decides.
“Mmhmm,” Harry agrees, turning back to the jukebox. “Here, listen to this.” A record slips into place -- Nick can’t quite place which one -- and Harry’ hips move just slightly in time to the first strums of the guitar.
The man grins menacingly at Harry’s broad back, turned away from him in what the man must think is a vulnerable way, and then his meaty hand moves slowly forward, coming to rest just at the curve of Harry’s hip.
Nick stands up in the same instant as Harry’s spine snaps up straight, all his casual slouching grace gone. “What’re you--” he starts to ask, but the man’s hand just grips him firmer, inching around to the curve of his arse.
“What,” the man asks, “y’don’t like me now?” Harry doesn’t reply, and Nick slowly moves his hand around to the handgun that’s tucked into the waistband of his trousers, silently congratulating himself for not forgetting it in the car.
“Y’all ought to be a little more friendly,” the man says, more confident now, and he must think he’s got Harry pinned, a butterfly waiting to be crushed.
“Actually, we’re leaving now,” Harry says, just loud enough for Nick to hear across the distance.
Between them, the man’s friend -- an essentially identical if slightly taller version of him -- has risen from the table as well, slowly making his way towards them.
“Don’t think you are, actually,” the man mimics, shoving hard at Harry’s hip.
When Harry turns around to face him, a beautiful, frightening grin stretched across his face, Nick almost feels sorry for the man.
There’s a pause, a vacuum of quiet before the storm, and then Harry explodes into movement, his long arms reaching to yank the man’s head down by the ears as he smashes his knee into his face.
Harry’s not that strong, but he’s got the element of surprised on his side -- the man clearly hadn’t expected it and he goes down almost immediately, crumpling to the floor as holding his bleeding nose. “What the fuck, you little --”
Nick doesn't hear whatever he calls Harry, though, because the mans’ friend is rushing over, presumably to help him up or try to smash Harry’s face into the jukebox. It’s only the distance between them that gives Nick time to aim the gun at the friend’s knee and squeeze out several shots. One must connect because he shouts and goes down, still several paces from Harry and the man.
Harry’s a tornado, relentlessly kicking the man as he tries to climb back to his feet and failing. Harry’s heel comes down on his throat with a sickening crunch, and then his face, his stomach and his neck again all in quick succession. Nick sidesteps the one he’d shot, groaning and clutching his bleeding knee, and comes up behind the man, boxing him in on the ground between him and Harry.
“Dunno if you ever really had a chance with him, mate,” Nick says to the man when Harry stops kicking long enough for him to be heard. The man is covered in his own blood, several teeth missing, and the only noise he makes is a wet gurgle in the back of his throat.
“Not really my type,” Harry agrees serenely, wiping the blood on his boot off on the man’s jeans. The man’s eyes have shut now, only a few groans coming up from his throat. “You ready to go?” Harry asks Nick.
“Just about,” he says, and then levels the gun at the man’s face. He pauses, though, and reconsiders. “Actually, would you like to?” He offers the gun to Harry, and he takes it, pleased.
“You need better manners,” Harry says to the man, and then shoots him between the eyes.
He looks at the man's body consideringly for a moment, like he’s examining his own handiwork for error, then smiles, and hands the gun back to Nick.
Behind them, the man’s friend is struggling to his feet, right leg barely supporting his weight, but he’s coming at them, clearly thinks he can take them. It’s almost boring when he goes down easily, four more shots from Nick hitting him, this time in the neck and the head.
“Now I’m ready,” he tells Harry.
They’re nearly out the door when there’s a small sob from behind the counter. They both turn, and Nick realizes the waitress -- the one who’d brought him pie and coffee -- is standing there in horror, pressing herself against the furthest wall. Nick had forgotten she was there, to be honest.
“Hold on,” Harry says, turning back into the restaurant. The waitress is shaking, her face gone completely pale, but Harry just walks up to her easily. “Can I borrow a pen, love?” he asks her. She fumbles, clearly confused, but stretches her arm out to hands him a pen from the pocket of her apron with a shaking hand.
Harry takes it calmly, like there’s nothing strange about the situation at all, and then pulls a paper napkin from the overturned dispenser. He scrawls something on it with the pen, and then hands both back to the waitress. “Sorry for the mess,” he apologizes, and then he’s walking briskly back to Nick, pulling him out the door and into the sunshine.
-
They’re back on the road in minutes, Nick speeding away as fast he can goad the car to go. In the distance he hears sirens, but they’re going the opposite direction, into town as opposed to following them out of it. His pulse is thrumming happily, and he doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or kiss Harry or speed the car up, faster and faster and faster, until the world around them is just a blur.
“What’d you write on the napkin?” he asks over the rush of the wind coming in through the open top.
“Our names,” Harry tells him, smiling hugely, looking so pleased and happy with himself that Nick could shout. “We deserve proper credit, after all.”
-
The dam breaks after that, and it’s like a door opening, like permission. If Nick stops to think about it too long his head starts to swim, in the best sort of way, because it’s so much, it’s so wide open and wonderful just to be with Harry, free and unstoppable. Nick thinks they’re invincible -- he hasn’t got any reason not to.
There’s more and more and more of them, a trail of dead growing steadily behind them now that they’ve given themselves permission -- there’s another drunken trucker drinking a cup of coffee at a rest stop who hisses a slur at them, and Harry squeezes out a round of bullets into the back of his head. There’s an off-duty security guard plus two other men with guns who’d tried put up a fight when Harry casually helps himself to the money in a till at a roadside restaurant. There’s a bank teller who doesn’t listen when Harry tells him to lay on the ground, a man at a bar who tries to draw the pistol in his belt at Harry when he sees him doing the same. There’s more than Nick can keep track of, after a while, and it makes him giddy.
They’re cutting a swath through the country, the landscape turning wild and barren and back to lush all over again, it seems, and they leave a trail of blood as they go. Only people who deserve it, Harry says, those are the only ones they go after, although his definition of “people who deserve it” gradually expands to include anyone who might get in their way. Harry’s almost feral with it, giddy and beautiful and unpredictable. He presses Nick fiercely into their motel beds at night and fucks himself down on Nick’s cock, recounting their own stories to Nick -- “Remember the look on his face?” he asks -- and laughing when he comes.
Nick thinks he’s never been more in love, with anyone, with life itself.
-
The landscape goes more and more wild the further west they drive, hills growing into mountains, cutting jagged lines into the sky. Nick stops the car occasionally, when his legs start to cramp up or when there’s something scenic that Harry wants to see. When the highway they’re on crosses a massive bridge over a canyon one afternoon, Harry gasps so loudly at the sight that Nick pulls over in the middle of it without second thought. Harry jumps out of the car immediately and clambers up onto the railing, watching the river snake and twist through the carved-out valley of jagged rocks far below them, so far it seems like miles. Harry props himself up on his tiptoes, clinging to the guardrail loosely like he’s never even thought about falling, and dangles his head over the edge, turning to smile at Nick while his hair blows in the wind whipping up from beneath them.
“How far down do you think it goes?” Harry asks.
“Dunno,” Nick says. It’s hard to tell from this far up, and his stomach twists in a thrill when he looks over the edge, at all the empty space floating beneath them, and then the river way down below, crashing through the narrow walls of the rocks pressing in on it.
“Hm,” Harry says, pondering it carefully. He reaches into the pocket of his shorts and pulls out a handful of things -- a pen with the end mangled and chewed up, a stick of gum, a lighter and a mishmash of loose coins, American cents and the leftover pence from back home both. He sticks his tongue between his teeth as he frowns in concentration, and drops them all over the edge of the railing one by one, tipping his hand carefully until they slide off. The pen goes first, tipping end over end, and then the gum and the lighter, and finally the money, reflecting the glint of the sunlight as it falls.
“What’s that for?” Nick asks.
Harry shrugs. “Felt like it.”
Nick watches them go until he can’t see them anymore, and even then he thinks they must still be falling, all the spare detritus of Harry’s pockets. It’s not as if he expects to hear it when they hit the river, they’re so far up -- he thinks it must take anything ages to fall all the way to the bottom -- but he listens anyway, keeps watching. Harry stares as well, although Nick can’t tell if he’s trying to track the things he’d dropped, or watching the river, or just looking at the vast emptiness beneath them, but he stares intently, for a long time, as if in a trance. Nick stops looking into the canyon and looks at Harry instead.
Finally his head snaps up, and he brushes his palms together like he’s ridding himself of something. “That’s that, then,” he says to Nick, straightening the typical hunch of his shoulders.
It hits Nick like a freight train, the overwhelming bravery and vulnerability all mixed up in that one gesture, Harry making himself up as tall as he can while he chucks his scant amount of possession -- amounting to no more than rubbish, Nick things, not unkindly -- into the abyss. He feels the need to do something monumental in return, something enormous and oceanic, but when he tries to move his hands, he finds he can’t quite manage it.
“You know I’ll take care of you, yeah?” he settles on instead.
“‘Course,” Harry says, turning to him and smiling.
“Because I will, I promise,” Nick insists, because he’s suddenly desperate for Harry to know it. “Anything that might hurt you, I swear, I’d --”
“You’ll protect me,” Harry repeats, reaching over to pull Nick’s hand into his own. “I get it. And I’ll protect you too, yeah? We look out for each other.”
“Forever,” Nick tells him.
“Forever,” Harry repeats again, and then laughs softly. “‘Til death do us part, right?” He looks out over the edge of the bridge again, down into the depth of the canyon, before turning back to NIck.
The panic in Nick’s chest shatters, falling away into something bright and blooming, and he wants to shout, wants to wrap Harry up in his arms so tightly that they can never be pulled apart, not by any force. “You’re dead romantic, love,” he says instead, trying to sound lighthearted and missing it by a mile.
“Don’t make fun,” Harry pouts, still grinning. “‘S’not nice.”
“Sorry,” Nick says, moving behind Harry and wrapping his arms around his skinny waist so they’re both looking down.
“D’you think that stuff’s hit the bottom yet?” Harry asks after a moment.
“Dunno,” Nick says into the curve of Harry’s neck. He hasn’t any idea how long it’s been falling by now, or how long it takes to hit the bottom.
-
Nick rents them the most expensive hotel room he can find that night, which isn’t much, given the remote area, but there’s a massive bed, at least, and a liquor store where he buys them a bottle of terrible champagne that’s likely been on the shelf for ages.
They drink it from the plastic cups from their hotel room’s bathroom, the bubbles fizzing manically in Nick’s mouth, through his blood. Harry’s cheeks flush beautifully red the more he drinks, and he laughs loudly, tipping his head back, when he turns on the television to see their own faces staring back, the caption ARMED AND DANGEROUS emblazoned above them. Nick can’t help but laugh too, can’t stop once he starts, the wonderful absurdity of it all making him feel more drunk than the alcohol. They’re both still laughing when he presses Harry against the mattress, kissing him between fits of giggles until his vision blurs, the sound of news anchors reciting their names in his ears the whole time.
-
“This road never ends, I think,” Harry tells him, days later. They’re angling southwest, sort of, the last town and two dead liquor store clerks hours behind them by now. It’s just the road, sprawling over dust and shrubs, alternating in a pattern of brown and red.
Nick thinks he knows what Harry means. They keep driving towards the horizon, sometimes flat and sometimes obscured by hills and mountains, but it never gets any closer. It’s easy to think the road might actually go on forever, endlessly leading somewhere they can never get to.
“Of course it ends,” he says anyway. “All roads have to end. We’d drive into the ocean, else.”
Harry just shakes his head, and uses the hand that’s not trailing outside the open car and catching on the wind to pull off his hat and sunglasses. They’ve got the top down -- they almost always do, now, Harry insists and Nick likes it that way anyway -- and Harry tilts his face up at the sky, squinching his eyes shut at the glaring sun but refusing to turn away. It lights him up so beautifully it’s almost as if he’s glowing from inside.
“Not this one,” he insists easily, and Nick tries not to think about how young Harry is, but he can’t help himself. Harry is young and earnest and wide-open, and it throws Nick’s own bitten-off calculation into relief.
“This one’s special,” Harry continues. “I can tell. It goes on forever. No end.” He stretches both his arms up into the sky like he’s trying impossibly to reach the very top of it. His fingers wiggle in the wind before he lets them drop back down into the car, this time his left arm draped over the console, closer to Nick. Nick reaches for it.
“There’s always an end, love,” he tells Harry, squeezing his wrist firmly across the console. His long fingers encircle the thin bones there easily, and he presses in tighter, wanting to leave a mark. Harry squirms happily in the seat next to him. His hat is abandoned by his feet now, and he nearly crushes it as he moves.
“Not for us,” he breathes out, shifting in his seat. “We go on forever too.” He tips his head up to the sky again and moans a breathy little noise when Nick digs the crescents of his nails into the thin skin of Harry’s wrist. The column of his throat is long and pale and the wind is pulling through his hair, and he moans again, louder. If he keeps it up, Nick’s going to have to pull over the car immediately.
“Yeah?” he asks, keeping his foot steady on the accelerator. “Tell me about it.”
Harry’s hands curl tightly on the edge of his seat, and he keeps watching the sky as it slides by above them. He smiles when he speaks. “Well, ‘s’like. Nothing ever dies. We can’t die, we can’t stop. We’re like -- we’re like the sun, or the wind, we just go on forever. Forces of nature.” He whines low in his throat as Nick’s fingernails clutch in even deeper, hips jerking up just a bit. Nick can see the hard line of Harry’s cock through his tight, faded jeans, the one’s he’d hacked off into cutoffs with a hunting knife in the bathroom of a motel miles and miles from here. His lower lip is white where he’s biting down on it, and Nick can feel his pulse jumping like a timpani roll at the sight of him.
He can’t bring himself to correct Harry, to tell him that even the sun will burn out one day, that the wind will stop and all of nature will go barren and flat and eventually die, no matter the force of it. He rather likes the way Harry’s said it, the two of them going on forever, even if he hasn’t got it quite right. He can picture them driving and never stopping, the long stretch of road never running out, and they just -- go, just like this, infinite and wild.
“You’ve got a way with words,” he says instead, and pulls over sharply, the car shuddering to a stop on the shoulder and sending up a cloud of dust. There’s nothing, not one living thing for miles and miles, save for several massive birds circling way off to the north, their wings flat and unmoving as they drift in a lazy figure eight.
“What’s here? Why’ve we stopped?” Harry asks, smiling in a bitten-off way that Nick can tell means he knows exactly why. Nick ignores him, gets out of the car and leaves his door hanging open as he circles around the back and reaches the passenger side. Harry stretches his legs and climbs over the top of the door without bothering to open it. His feet are bare and they press firmly into the dirt as he leans up against the car, crossing his arms lazily across his chest. The sun is beating down hot, the smell of baked earth and dry grass all around them as Nick crowds Harry up against the side of the car and grabs a handful of his hair, yanking back gently so the long column of Harry’s neck is exposed.
He’s incapable of stopping himself from biting it up, leaving a fresh trail of bite marks on top of old ones that are bruised and fading. Harry’s hips press up against Nick and he hisses and gasps in a pleased manner as Nick pushes him back even harder at the same time as he tries to get the zip of Harry’s cutoff jeans open. Harry goes slack once he does, Nick getting the zip down just enough to shove them far enough down Harry’s narrow hips so his cock pops out, pink and hard, curving up. It’s familiar enough, but Nick’s heart still stutters at the sight. He wants to take Harry apart.
“Here,” he says, holding his hand up to Harry’s mouth. He grins at him and then sucks two of Nick’s fingers in. His hips punch forward on their own when he feels Harry’s tongue swirl around them, the soft clutch of his throat and the hint of teeth too much of a sense memory for him to handle. He pulls his fingers out after a moment, and then holds his hand out. Harry spits into it, looking up at Nick through his eyelashes the whole time.
He drops his hand and wraps it around Harry’s dick, and Harry moans so load it almost echoes through the empty landscape. “Yeah?” Nick asks, even though he already knows the answer, and Harry nods.
Nick jerks him fast and carelessly, probably too hard, but Harry only leans into it, his shoulders slumping and hips coming off the car door as he strains into Nick’s fist and lets out a shameless whine. “Shit, don’t -- don’t stop, Nick, Jesus,” he breathes out.
Nick won’t stop, can’t stop, because he doesn’t know how to stop the frantic feeling that’s on him now, the sense that if he stops they’ll both disappear, that without this there’s nothing else, just dead air on a doomed, endless planet -- but this, this is something beautiful and raw and alive.
“Nick, Nick,” Harry chants, and the way he says Nick’s name wraps around him.
When Harry comes, arching up and biting back a choke as his spills hot into Nick’s hand, the grip of the feeling lessens. It’s only when Harry guides Nick’s hand back up to his mouth and licks his own come off of it that it fades enough for Nick to realize how hard he is, but when he does it slams into him like a wall, almost tangibly solid. If he could think straight enough, he would turn Harry around, bend him over the car door and spread him open, fuck him until the force of it reverberates down into the earth itself. But that involves faculties he’s not sure he’s got at the moment, so he just stands there instead, waiting.
And then Harry is smiling again, dropping down onto his knees in the rocky dirt like it’s soft carpet, still between Nick and the car. He doesn’t bother to pull his cutoffs up, so they sit open, his cock still out and halfway hard, and Nick has to lean over him and brace his hands on the car so his knees don’t give out at the sight. Harry’s hands trail up the back of his legs gently, and for just a moment he leans forward and rests his forehead on Nick’s hip softly, eyes shut, looking serene and grateful and so beautiful even as his breath is hot on Nick’s cock through his trousers. It takes the wind out of him.
Harry opens his eyes after a moment and unbuttons Nick’s trousers deftly, sliding them down his thighs before leaning in and taking Nick’s cock in his mouth in one swift motion. Nick doesn’t whine at it, but comes close. He loves Harry’s mouth, loves this. He loves Harry. He wants the earth to open up and swallow them like this.
He comes as Harry pulls off, shooting on his lips and chin, and when he’s finished Harry holds his gaze as he drags his fingers through it, smiling happily the whole time. Eventually Nick tucks himself back into his trousers, trying to keep his legs from going to rubber underneath him, and Harry stands up easily like he hasn’t just been kneeling in the dirt with bare knees and feet.
“Jesus,” Nick says.
“C’mon,” Harry says, tumbling gracelessly back into the car and stretching his legs out so his bare feet are propped up on the dash. “Still got forever.” He laughs at his own joke, just a bit.
Nick only stands and looks at him dazedly for a moment, and then shakes his head, gets back in the car, and pulls back onto the road.
-
Two days later the endless road is interrupted by the nearest thing to a proper town they’ve seen in ages, and even then, it’s mostly a small collection of shops and houses jammed together in a tight circle, like covered wagons huddled together against the wind. Beyond the limits of the town the red dirt spreads out, verging on becoming a proper desert, vast and unyielding, the town an oasis set down in the middle of it.
Nick’s immediately wary, because it’s a risk, being around this many people, especially as their notoriety has been chasing them, rapidly gaining. There’s a good chance they’ll be recognized here, and that’s alright, it’s happened before and they’ve dealt with it -- he thinks about their trunk full of weapons and holds onto it like a lifeline -- but this is bigger. It wouldn’t be hard for them to be outnumbered here.
But Harry wants to stop, and Nick still can’t say no to him.
Harry insists on splitting up as soon as the car’s stopped at a gas station, and Nick really needs to learn how to say no to him, but so far he hasn’t managed, so Harry meanders off while Nick fills the car up, peering into shop windows he passes before turning a corner and going out of Nick’s sight. He sighs, waiting for the tank to fill, and tries to decide what to do next.
In the end, he settles on buying a ticket at the old two-screen cinema a few blocks over, and he falls asleep halfway through a matinee of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the only one in the theater. When he jerks awake an hour later, the lights have gone up and the projector is clacking uselessly, imageless light shining over the dusty screen.
He stands up slowly, cracking his back as he does, and goes to look for Harry.
He finds him easily enough in the only diner in town, his curly hair visible over the back of a booth as soon as Nick pushes the door open with a chime. He breathes a sigh of relief, a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding from the moment they’d gone off in different directions.
The relief is short lived, though, because when he reaches the booth, he realizes with a sick jolt that Harry isn’t alone.
“Nick,” Harry says when he sees him, voice soft and fond like it gets when he’s found something shiny to catch his attention. “Look, I’ve made a friend.”
There’s another boy sitting next to him in the booth, and he’s staring at Harry with a look on his face caught somewhere between sly and enraptured. He’s shorter than Harry, about the same age, and his soft hair sweeps over his angular features in a way that instinctively makes Nick want to muss it, just to see what happens. He crosses his arms over his chest instead.
“He’s from Yorkshire,” Harry says, smiling widely up at Nick and then back at the boy in turn. “Isn’t that a coincidence?”
“What’s his name?” Nick asks Harry. The boy frowns at him, but Nick just ignores him, not moving his gaze from Harry’s face.
“His name is Louis,” the boy answers, a snappish tone in his voice that Nick hadn’t quite expected.
“Brilliant,” Nick says. “Harry, say goodbye to Louis, we need to go now.”
“Don’t be rude, Nick,” Harry pouts. “I made a friend. And we just ordered. Sit down and eat with us.”
Nick sighs and scuffs the edge of his foot on the dirty linoleum of the diner’s floor. The boy -- Louis -- looks torn between wanting to scowl at Nick and gaze adoringly at Harry, and eventually settles his attention on Harry, conspicuously not looking at Nick. Nick would be annoyed if he didn’t know that feeling so well -- the one where you want to tear your eyes away, to force yourself focus on anything else besides Harry, but can’t. He felt that the first time in the filthy pub in London, and it hasn’t left him since then. So instead of arguing he sighs again, just to register at least some sort of protest, and slides into the vinyl booth.
“This is Nick,” Harry introduces once he’s settled across from him.
“Yeah, I,” Louis starts, glancing quickly over at Nick before darting his gaze back to Harry. Harry’s absolutely basking under his attention, turning towards it like a flower to the sun. Nick thinks that if he’s not careful, Harry’ll try and adopt this boy like a stray cat -- he can see it in Harry’s pleased expression.
“I know,” Louis finishes carefully. “I, um. I know who you two are.”
Nick arches an eyebrow, and tries to keep his pulse from speeding up at the thrill.
“You’re on the news a lot,” Louis explains. “You’re both sort of rather famous, did you know? Or I guess, like, infamous.”
Nick snorts humorlessly, but Harry just smiles and preens some more. A moment later a waitress in a stained apron turns up with their food, and they must not be that recognizable, because she just drops a plate of chips in front of Harry with a thunk and walks off without a word.
“So if we’re so infamous,” Nick starts, not bothering to disguise the suspicion in his voice, “and you know who we are, why’re you sitting here with us? And not, like, running away and calling the police?”
“Do you want me to call the police?” Louis asks defensively.
“‘Course he doesn’t, he’s just being a twat,” Harry tells him soothingly.
“Just trying to figure out what your angle is here,” Nick says. “Perhaps you can understand that? Only I’d rather not sit around waiting to be arrested if you’ve gone and called in a tip or summat when we could be using this time to get a head start.”
“He hasn’t, Nick, stop it,” Harry says, and even though his tone is still fond, it still smarts a bit, being scolded.
“I won’t,” Louis says, quieter this time, looking down at his small hands that are folded on the table in front of him. “I wouldn’t.” Harry reaches over at that, letting his knuckles brush against Louis’.
“Okay,” Nick says, trying to make his voice a bit gentler this time. “But why should we believe that? I’m not trying to be an areshole,” he says, mostly for Harry’s benefit, “it’s just -- you can see why it’s important we be sure.”
“Because I don’t want anyone to know I’m here either, to start with,” Louis says, tipping his chin up in a way that Nick assumes is meant to be defiant. It has the opposite effect, though, and it’s the vulnerability in it, the desperate way Louis seems to want to be seen as collected and in control, that loosens the fist of suspicion in Nick’s chest.
“Why are you here, then?” Nick asks. Harry’s frowns kittenishly at him and his foot connects with Nick’s ankle under the table sharply, like he’s out of line for asking, but he doesn’t take the question back.
“Same thing you are,” Louis says, prodding at the plate of chips. “Running away from my problems. Only you lot are doing a better job of it than I am, I think.”
“D’you want to talk about it?” Harry says, so sweet and earnest that Nick has to fight to keep himself from rolling his eyes and leaning across the table to kiss him.
“It’s stupid,” Louis says, twisting his hands uncomfortably. Harry’s hand is still brushing up against Louis’ as they fidget, and after a moment, without quite meaning to, Nick reaches over to put his own hand on top of Louis’, stilling them. His skin is warm and soft underneath his palm, and the familiar line of Harry’s fingers press against Nick’s. The three of them sit there for a long moment, hands twisted up together, before Nick pulls his back. Louis takes a breath in, looking slightly less restless.
“Standard shit,” he says softly. “Trouble at home, crap father, stole a whole shiteload of his money to get away from him. The usual.”
Nick’s not sure what to do with the fact that that’s what Louis thinks of as the usual, but it twists his stomach around.
“I saw you on the news,” Louis continues. “And I knew I was supposed to be horrified, like -- bloke and his boyfriend kill the ex, or whatever, and go on the run, but.” He shifts, like he’s searching for the words and can’t quite grasp them. “There was this bloke I saw interviewed, said he was a friend of yours?” He looks at Harry at that, eyes wide, and for a moment, the look that passes between them makes Nick feel like an intruder. “And he said the one you -- the one you killed, he deserved it, that he like -- hit you or whatever, and just.” He shrugs. Nick assumes he must mean the bartender, Zayn, can’t imagine who else it might’ve been, but he doesn’t press it, because after a moment Louis continues. “All I could think was that I wish I could’ve done that. I wish I could’ve just... I dunno. Fought, instead of fled.”
He sits back at that, silent, and for a long moment no one speaks. Harry is staring at Louis, positively enraptured, the fierce, almost wild glint of protectiveness in his eyes familiar and foreign all at once.
“What about the other ones, though?” Nick asks. “There have been ones after him, y’know.”
“Yeah,” Louis agrees. “Figured you had your reasons.”
Nick considers, because yeah, that’s -- that’s mostly right. He’s surprised that Louis understands, and it doesn't mean Nick trusts him, necessarily, but it’s -- it’s something.
“So that’s why I won’t turn you in,” Louis says. “Sort of been rooting for you all along.”
It’s stupid to believe him, Nick thinks. It’s stupid and dangerous and so is sitting still in this diner, rapidly filling up with other people, people who might know them as well.
But on the other hand, Nick thinks he might not know how to do things that aren’t stupid and dangerous anymore.
( part three)