Thick as Thieves

Louis had time to learn who Zayn and Niall were; where they were from, how they acted, how they thought, why they did what they did. It wasn’t the stealing or lying or breaking hearts, it was the days spent scheming in a small apartment; the stale coffee and tacky jokes and shared kisses. It was the months they spent away from one another - months taken to establish the façade of the con. It was the split-second after that con when they were together again, when they knew they were okay and when they were themselves again. The moment when the dust had settled and they could fall back into love, when they could afford to care about one another again.

It was the moments, sometimes, that happened on the edges of building and through smog-covered hallways when Niall fell into Zayn’s arms, kissing each other like it was their last moment, then breaking apart and knowing in a few short hours they could be together in all ways possible again.

It was the nights when Louis stayed over at their current apartment, sleeping on the couch while Zayn and Niall shared the unfamiliar bed. Because it was unfamiliar to Zayn without Niall, but he had learned to grow with the feeling always in his bones. It was those nights when Louis suffocated his ears in pillows and stared at the TV while Zayn and Niall rocked each other like a boat ship-wrecking onto an Irish coast. It was the screams that ground themselves out of Niall’s throat, it was the moans Zayn returned and it was the soft whispers they thought Louis couldn’t hear.

The faint “iloveyous” pressed between sheets and skin, the soft lull of Niall’s even breathing as he fell asleep in Zayn’s arms; forgetting the reality that at any moment they could be torn apart.

That was who Zayn and Niall really were behind closed doors and newspaper articles, that was what made Louis yearn for that something. Because it was a lonely life, his bones were hollow and his heart was teetering on his breastbone, running through jobs but not staying long enough to have a life. He was just Louis - there but not really.

For six months they took on small jobs, nothing that required too much planning or more than three people. For six months they made easy money and spent it all on clothes that made them look respectable, indulgences they didn’t really need and in Zayn’s case, things that made Niall smile.

It wasn’t until Niall got a message about an up-and-coming thief who was looking for a job when they started taking on riskier cons, when it wasn’t just Zayn and Niall and Louis but Zayn and Niall and Louis and Harry.

Harry was a lanky boy; young for a con but a damn good one who could always make Louis laugh. Attractive, with his honey curls and deep eyes and chocolate-brownie warmness. His downfall, if any, was that he cared too much.



Harry was kneeling in front of a bolted storage door, his hair falling into his eyes and cheeks blush from the concentration. His lanky fingers twiddled and curved and bent countless wires while his lips moved in silent-talk, Louis watching patiently from his side. Niall had, a few minutes prior, convinced the blonde-bimbo receptionist that loan-sharks were after his mother and he needed some money before they came after her and cut off her only good leg. Zayn, on the opposite end of the low-security loan office, signaled to Harry when the receptionist was out of ear-range and watched like a hawk to make sure no one would catch them red-handed.

And now here Harry was, finishing plugging in a few wires and standing up with cracking joints.

“This’ll be loud, here.”

And then he placed his hands over Louis’s ears, his touch light and warm and shocking him into silence. He didn’t press down too hard but it was enough to lessen the reverberated booming that shook Louis and him both to the core. Moving his hands and smiling that smile that shouldn’t belong to a con, he looked back, saw his successful work, then said, “at least I managed not to blow you up.”



Zayn and Niall were holding onto both of Louis’s arms, whispering into both his ears when really the only person he wanted to see was alone in the corner, silently watching the scene unfolding before him. Zayn was telling Louis it was okay, they weren’t going to get caught, she hadn’t seen them long enough to be able to tell who they were. Niall was touching his hair like the mother he always seemed to be and told him to calm down, they wouldn’t let him go to prison.

Because Zayn and Niall both knew Louis could never handle prison; he was only a façade of someone he could never be, someone who could take on the world. But Louis couldn’t, not really, he was to weak and worn out and broken. They left him alone for the night, after Louis wouldn’t stop letting salty tears swell behind his blue irises then crash against his cheeks and caress down his quavering lips. He sat by himself in the darkness of the living room, the TV that was usually on dormant and loneliness swelling. But then Louis felt the space beside him on the couch sink, and when he squinted his eyes in the dark he could faintly make out the silhouette of Harry, the one who stayed silent throughout the whole ordeal.

He cupped his hands around Louis pale face, bringing his face closer to Louis’s so that he could almost see inside his brain, and brushed their lips against one another, Harry’s tongue darting out to trace the grooves in Louis’s lips.

That was the briefness of their first kiss; a silent memory forever etched in one another’s brains.



They had sex for the first time because they didn’t know what else to do. They knew Niall and Zayn had sex when things got rough or when they missed each other or when they just needed somebody, so after a con that was particularly long and rough, Harry and Louis walked through the threshold and took each other right there. It was on the floor first; messy and unorganized and not that long. The second time they made it to the bed and this time it felt like real sex; real sex that was shared between two people who cared about one another. Sex like Zayn and Niall had.

There was no screaming or curse words or scratches, just pants and kisses and “god go faster louis’s.” It was in the end, when Louis’s head was pressed into Harry’s bare chest and Harry pressed his face into Louis’s greasy hair when they knew something special had bloomed between them; when Louis realized that must be how Zayn and Niall felt.