Life Inc.

Louis was exhausted, sore and confused and he hated being every one of those things and that made him agitated.

He and Harry had been staying with Louis’ makeshift family for a week now. Niall and Harry had been conducting tests to see if Niall could remove the chip and Niall was desperately trying to unlock the ten years of memories Louis had lost. He was trying all sorts of tests and spent hours poring over the Doctor’s notes and research to see if he could find what he had done to Louis and how he could reverse it.

When he hadn’t been with Niall, Louis had been training with Liam for up to five hours a day to get his fitness back up, hence why he was exhausted and sore. He had been doing a series of exercises over and over and over again, his only motivation being the thought of crawling in next to Harry at the end of the day and falling fast asleep in the arms of the boy he loved.

Harry had been very vocal about how much he hated what Louis was doing, but always in the mornings. When Louis came to him each night, barely functioning from exhaustion, Harry didn’t speak. He simply helped Louis out of most of his clothes and tucked them both into bed, holding Louis close to him. Louis was always too tired to think of the significance of any of Harry’s lingering touches or the way his arms would drape protectively over his waist or the consequences of him sleeping in the same bed as Harry.

Despite Harry’s ardent protests, Louis actually found himself enjoying the company of Liam and Niall. Niall was bright and bubbly and always seemed to be cracking jokes and keeping the mood light. Louis found himself laughing until tears formed on more than one occasion. Liam was kind and good-natured most of the time and had an adorable, likeable personality.

But Zayn, Zayn was entirely different matter. The dark-haired boy seemed to hate him for no apparent reason. If Louis entered a room, Zayn would leave not long afterward and since Louis had arrived, Zayn had spoken no more than ten words to him and Louis simply couldn’t understand why.

The tipping point had been when he had gone into the kitchen to make himself some lunch. Zayn had already been in there, looked at him and then had left what he was doing, just so he wouldn’t have to be in the same room as him. It made the anger burn in Louis’ chest and he’d finally had enough. He just needed to know what’s Zayn’s problem was.

He had no idea where the younger boy had gone, so he stormed into the surveillance room where he knew Liam and Niall were. They both looked up from the monitors in shock when he entered.

“Where’s Zayn?” he demanded.

“Have you tried out by the ‘stang?” Niall asked, returning nonchalantly to what he was doing whilst Liam continued to study him.

“The what?”

“The Mustang. It’s Zayn’s baby. He’s probably in the garage. Upstairs, along the corridor, third door on the right,” Niall explained. Louis nodded his thanks and left to find his evasive teammate.

Niall had been right; he found Zayn in a makeshift garage, head buried under the hood of an old red Mustang. Louis slammed the garage door closed and Zayn jumped in surprise, ducking out from under the bonnet.

“Did I do something eight years ago to piss you off? Did I put a spider in your bed? Pull the head off your action-man? What is it? Why do you hate me?!” Louis demanded. Zayn stared at him, wide eyed.

“What do you mean? I don’t hate you.”

“Bullshit! You don’t look at me, you don’t talk to me, you leave the room when I enter. You hate me!”

“I don’t hate you! I’m just...I’m scared of you,” Zayn confessed.

“Wait, you’re what?”

“Louis, when we were growing up, we were best friends, partners in crime. We were literally inseparable. And then you were just gone and for years I thought you were dead and I was devastated! And then suddenly you were back and you’re this whole other person and there’s this new guy that you’re inseparable from and I just don’t really know how to deal with it, so I’ve been avoiding you.”

“Seriously? That’s the reason?” Louis asked, anger sated, slumping to sit on the hood of another classic car.

“You don’t remember Louis. You don’t remember that through all the pain and all the misery, all we had was each other, the four of us, and that’s really hard for me. You’ve forgotten all the pranks and the laughter and the tears and the times that the three of us would hurt ourselves and you would pick us up and hold us and make us laugh so we forgot about our grazed knees and our splinters. You were my big brother and you don’t even know it.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis murmured as Zayn closed the hood of the mustang and sat opposite him.

“Don’t be stupid, it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have acted the way I did, so I’m sorry.”

“Call it even?” Louis smiled, finally looking up to meet Zayn’s eyes, who grinned and nodded.

“So, this Harry guy then, how’d you meet?”

“He saved my life,” Louis shrugged, mind flashing back to that painful day when he first saw Harry Styles walking to school.

“That why you fell in love with him?” Zayn asked knowingly. Louis’ eyes widened in shock.

***

“I think we need to tell Louis and Harry that they’re in love with each other,” Liam mused, breaking the comfortable silence that had formed between him and Niall in the lounge. Niall closed his laptop and gently placed it on the floor, looking to the other end of the sofa where Liam sat, their feet tangled in the middle. It was late and the Louis and Zayn had already gone to bed.

“Why is that?”

“You’ve seen the two of the together Niall. For starters, Harry’s the only one who Louis will let touch him. He’s been sleeping in there every night. And they look at each other like their worlds are revolving – no, dependent on the other. Harry is Louis’ anchor and he needs that if we want any hope of succeeding.”

“But on the flip side, it’s safer if they don’t know,” Niall reasoned, frowning. Liam had two sides; the regimented solider and the kind brother and lover. Niall could hear the soldier talking in Liam’s words.

“How?”

“The same reason that we don’t say that to each other.” Liam knew which ‘that’ Niall was referring to. It was the one that hung thick and unspoken in the air when they collapsed exhausted next to each other and when they woke in the mornings, still in each other’s arms and whenever Niall did something amazing or funny and even when their hands would just lightly brush as they went about their daily activities. ‘I love you’. Liam wanted to tell Niall that he loved him so much that sometimes it physically ached to keep silent. He knew very well why they didn’t say that to each other, but Niall still felt the need to clarify. “At this rate, the operation will be going down within two months and the chance of one of us not making it back is too high to want to think about. It would tear Harry apart to lose Louis, especially if he realises he’s in love with him,” Niall paused, letting his fingers lace with Liam’s. “Just like it would tear me apart to lose you.” Liam surged forward to kiss Niall, one hand knotting desperately in his blond hair, doing what he thought would effectively end all conversation for the rest of the night. He couldn’t hear that Niall loved him too, he couldn’t let their feelings for each other become a risk.

He frowned as Niall laughed and pushed him away back to his own side of the sofa and cuddled into his side. “Don’t think you’re going to shut me up that easily. I am going to tell you soon, deal with it.” Liam sighed and wrapped an arm around the shoulders of the Irishman, resting his head on top of his.

When their thing started, whatever it was, he never meant to fall in love with Niall. There had simply been an undeniable attraction and a desperate need to release the bottled up emotions and insecurities that they had been told soldiers didn’t, couldn’t, have. Doctor Howard had become so consumed by his project and seemed to have forgotten that they were only teenagers, only children.

They had been going for three or four years now. Brothers by day and lovers by night. Nothing about it had been mentioned aloud to this day, but it was obvious that after about six months of increasingly frequent late night rendezvous that Zayn knew what was going on and seemed to accept it.

Liam had first realized he was in love with Niall after roughly a year. It was the fourth time Niall had forgotten to leave his bedroom and fallen asleep straight after one of their hook-ups. The first three times had been immensely awkward - before, the day after, they just pretended that nothing had happened, but when they woke up next to each other, that wasn’t possible. But the fourth time, Liam had woken up to Niall still asleep on his arm, leaving him unable to escape. And Niall looked so peaceful that he didn’t really want to. When Niall had finally woken up twenty minutes later, his eyes opened blearily, and in his barely conscious state, ran his hands tenderly down Liam’s bare chest and murmured “Mornin’.” That was the moment he realized that he didn’t love Niall like he loved Zayn, he was in love with Niall.

“What are you thinking about?” Niall asked, breaking Liam’s reverie.

“Huh?” Niall laughed and squeezed Liam’s knee.

“You zoned out, I was just wondering what you were thinking about.”

“You, actually,” Liam smiled, leaning down to kiss the blond again. Now that Niall knew Liam wasn’t using his infuriatingly addictive kisses to distract him, he was happy to return them. For Niall, he knew within six hook-ups that he was in love with Liam, and unlike his team leader, he had no problem with it, nor did he think it would jeopardize the mission, but all he wanted was for Liam to be happy, and if that meant never saying out loud that he loved him, then so be it, at least he could show it.
T-shirts were shed and hands mapped skin that was as familiar to each other now as their own. Somehow they managed to stand up without breaking too much contact and suddenly, Harry and Louis didn’t matter; all there was, was each other.

***

Harry sat up when he heard the lock click open on what he had come to call his ‘cell’. Louis didn’t stumble into the room from exhaustion like he usually did. Instead, his walk was slow and deliberate. He took his time firmly closing the door before he turned back around to let their eyes meet, an action they had both been avoiding since the first few times it happened, both afraid of the emotion it made blossoms in their chests.

“Hi,” Louis said, lips twitching into a small smile.

“Hi,” Harry breathed back, captivated.