Archive of Our Own

Niall doesn’t mean for it to happen, but it goes like this: at some point after he crashes at Harry’s in LA for a visit, using up Harry’s laundry detergent, borrowing his Scrabble board as a beer coaster, and clogging up his TiVo with golf and episodes of The Bachelorette, he just sort of never moves out. His dresser drawers never get emptied, his guitars are never put back in their cases, and the guest room at the end of the hall becomes, functionally, Niall’s room.

It doesn’t seem to fuss Harry none. The one time Niall brings it up, like hey maybe Harry hadn’t actually meant to advertise for a new roommate, Harry had shrugged, pulled a juice out of his fridge, pressed the cold bottle against Niall’s face, smirked at his shriek, and said, “Stay long as you like. I like the company.”

Of course he does. Harry is like a giant alien sunflower, happily soaking up every ounce of friendship he gets, growing the more powerful for it. It’s probably why his hair is so good even after he cuts most of it off for Dunkirk. Niall makes sure Harry saves him some strands from the chop. Niall puts them into a heart-shaped locket and wears it when they go out sometimes, just for the exquisite pleasure of seeing Harry make that pained expression on his face.

“I’ve not actually gone off to war,” Harry says.

The tabloids write, NIALL HORAN WEARS HEART ON HIS CHEST, IS SECRETLY ENGAGED???

To say Niall visits and never moves out is technically inaccurate, though. “Whatcha gonna do when I’m filming?” Harry asks one day, upside down in a yoga handstand. Which is a lot like a regular handstand, Niall supposes, except more enlightened. He peers at Harry, trying to determine if enlightenment’s something you can see in a person, lurking maybe underneath their skin like a staph infection. But Harry just looks like Harry, which is to say: long-limbed, obnoxiously calm, a bit cross-eyed.

“Not gonna haunt your house like a moony ghost, Styles,” Niall says. “I’ll go back to Ireland. Got business to take care of.”

“Business,” Harry hums.

“You know,” Niall says, flapping his hand. “The hard work of not being the cutest member of the biggest boyband in the world.”

“Seems difficult,” Harry says, and rolls out of the handstand, except he doesn’t stop rolling after that and comes to a stop only when he bumps into Niall’s feet. He gives him a serious look from underneath his eyelashes. Niall pretends to step on his head. Harry doesn’t even blink at Niall’s foot coming down on his face, which is the truly concerning thing here.

While Harry’s off getting rubbed down with ten layers of dirt and looking soulful for cameras, Niall flies home. He meets with Mark and the fellows at Modest! to sign as many forms as they slide under his pen, and then voila, they’ve a proper golf management agency up and running. It’s unreal.

Niall starts making the rounds, teeing off with Justin and Rory, doing interviews, scouting new talent, finding sponsorships, and more or less showing up anywhere his bit of fame might help the company forge new connections. When it comes to the business side of things he’s desperate to learn and prove himself, and Mark’s good at explaining things, even if Niall’s habit of wanting to be involved with absolutely everything is clearly getting on his nerves. “Soz, did we hire you as our new accounting intern too?” he asks when the accountants start complaining that Niall lingers around their cubicles watching them work.

But the thing is, Niall doesn’t know where to stop. He’s been working ten-hour days every day since age sixteen. He doesn’t know how not to be stressed and anxious all the time, going to bed each night running plans through his brain, waking up each morning to long lists of places he promised to be and people he promised to meet.

Mark finally pulls him aside and tells him to tone it down. Niall squawks with outrage. He’s barely even started. But:

“You’re treating this like it’s One Direction, like you’re on the road and the whole world’s watching,” Mark says. “It’s scaring the new hires. Be a little less intense.”

INTENSE???? Niall texts Harry. whos he talkin bout !

Harry texts back a single word. Well.

maybe sometmes im a bit much, he concedes to Harry one night, stuck in traffic on his way to give a speech. Daniella from his new PR team had told him a speech was totally optional, all he really needed to do was show up, but Niall got stubborn. Now he’s stuck in traffic nervously reading and rereading his notes for the fiftieth time, his knee jostling up and down, his tongue tucked between his teeth. His bladder is going to pop, he feels so nauseous.

maybe, he finally texts Harry when looking at his speech makes his vision hurt, i could take a day off or somethin

He doesn’t hear back from Harry until he’s climbing into bed at three a.m. replaying in his head over and over how his voice had broken embarrassingly mid-speech.

Still got a house with a guest room full of your stuff, Harry says.

Niall replies. already had my vacation ! fun times over

In the morning there’s two more texts from Harry and a notification that Harry’s invited him to play Words with Friends. Niall’s not even certain how that app got onto his phone. He doesn’t remember it being there when he left LA. He ignores the invite.

The text says, Niall. That’s it, just his name.

The second text says, I’m in London. Can you water my plants?

H, Niall explains with great patience, im not actully IN cali right now, REMEMBER? im working ! like you

Harry texts back when Niall’s in a budget meeting. I hope my plants aren’t dead.

Then: How many anagrams do you think I can make out of the word HOUSEPLANT

Heal Unstop
Ethanol Up
Lathe No Pus

Help me, N

Niall, by now mildly alarmed, excuses himself from the meeting, ducks into the loo, and texts Harry’s housekeeper, who dutifully sends him a photo of one of Harry’s plants. Niall sends it to Harry. there. happy ? ??

Very, Harry says.

A few minutes later: We should get pho at that place when I get back to LA. Niall doesn’t have to ask which pho place Harry means. He knows, and feels vaguely defeated in a war he didn’t even realize he was fighting. The next time he sees Harry, they’re at a strip mall on North Broadway, both jet-lagged from trans-Atlantic flights and faceplanting into their noodles. “Finally tore yourself away from golf?” Harry asks sleepily.

“Two weeks,” Niall says, “then a tournament in Dublin, a photoshoot, and after that, dunno.” He stirs his chopsticks in his broth, making sure the sriracha mixes in properly. “Mark practically threw me a party when I told him I was flying out for a while.”

“Was there cake?”

“Yeah,” Niall says. “It said ‘Bye Horan, you’re an annoying git.’”

“So you’re on hiatus from hiatus,” Harry says, pleased. “Me too.”

Niall doesn’t point out that Harry just finished filming a bloody Christopher Nolan film, that there’s going to be press junkets and interviews and offers of more. Harry doesn’t point out that Niall’s been checking his phone every few minutes for new emails about Modest! business and typing rapidfire replies.

They finish their pho, Niall pays the bill, and Harry drives them back to the house where they pile in the den, each of them on their laptops while at the same time half-heartedly watching Gilmore Girls because Harry’s attempting to work his way through the fourth season.

It’s alright, Niall tries to tell himself. To be like this. To even enjoy it, a little, before what they do and who they are leaks back into their lives like an oxygen tank with a hole in it. It’s alright that the world goes on and emails go unanswered as he slips into an exhausted nap, listening to Harry clacking away on his keyboard, immersed in something so deeply that he looks angry, when really Niall knows he’s just concentrating.

“Whatcha doing,” Niall murmurs.

Harry doesn’t look up or answer, but he smiles. It’s as Harry an answer as he’s going to get.

“Better not be…” Niall yawns “...plotting world domination. We’re trying not to be workaholics, remember?”

“Nah,” Harry says, still smiling, “not world domination.” He slides his laptop off his knees and says, suddenly, “Oi, want to play Scrabble?”

“Sure, sure,” Niall says, and falls asleep.

:::

In retrospect, that’s really when he ought to have seen it coming. That’s the moment in time where he can point and say, here, it begins right here. That’s when Harry Styles trapped my arse into post-hiatus Scrabble codependency.

:::

Only, he doesn’t realize it at first. When he notices Harry being cagey and secretive, his first thought isn’t undiagnosed board game mania as an outlet for repressed emotions. It’s that Harry’s probably got a new girlfriend he doesn’t want to tell him about.

Which is, fair enough, that whole thing with Kendall went tits up towards the end. And he and Harry already live together more or less, they don’t got to have their hands in each other’s back pockets too. Maybe before, when they were first getting started, it was easy to let yourself get wrapped up — Niall thinks of Harry and Louis here, with a soft pang — but they’ve outgrown that, yeah? Learned better. Built up walls.

Niall respects Harry’s walls. So when Harry disappears in the evenings and comes back whistling with a cat-got-the-cream smile on his face, Niall thinks: oh good, he’s getting laid. When Harry vanishes on a Monday and doesn’t stumble home until Wednesday, Niall thinks: he didn’t take his favourite coat, I hope he wasn’t cold.

Meanwhile Harry keeps pestering him for that damn Scrabble game.

“Do I have to?” Niall whinges. “Look, we all know who’s gonna win if we go head-to-head in Scrabble. I’m not all la dee da like you are.” He waves his hand, hoping to express that by la dee da he really means smug twat, but like, in a loving way.

“What do you mean?” Harry whinges right back. “You’re bright—”

“—who the hell says I’m not?”

Harry switches tactics. “If you win, think of how good that’ll make you feel! You’re a competitive prick — oh, don’t lie about it, Nialler, I’ve seen the way you and Lou go at it on the XBox. Screaming and hollering and throwing things at each other.”

Niall eyes Harry with sudden suspicion. “You want me to chuck shit at you?”

“No,” Harry says slowly. “I mean, unless it’ll make you want to play a game with me. Then you can, but erm, gently?”

“Mate, this weirdo desperation of yours is really bumming me out,” Niall says. “I’m sorry that your girlfriend isn’t meeting all of your Scrabble needs or whatever—” Harry looks confused, “—but I got other stuff to do.”

“Niall,” Harry says, “if you play a game of Scrabble with me, I’ll work on a song with you.”

Niall stares at him. Harry stares back.

“Are you…” Niall clears his throat with a delicate cough, “...dying?” He thinks of Harry’s mysterious disappearances and something flips over in his stomach, cold and hard. Thinks of Harry going to the doctor’s, Harry going to the hospital, Harry wasting away of some languishing disease because Niall forgot to buy organic strawberries that one time and brought home the other kind. Niall feels horrible already, for being responsible for the death of his best mate.

“‘m not dying,” Harry rolls his eyes. “And the offer’s still on the table. Play a game with me and we’ll jam afterwards. Do that song I’ve been hearing you pluck.”

“Fine,” Niall says, because you can’t live with someone and have your mutual solo album ambitions stay secret for long. “But don’t look at me like that, it’s creeping me out.”

“Like what?” Harry asks as he goes to fetch the Scrabble box, which would be otherwise unremarkable except that Harry’s walking backwards whilst keeping his eyes on Niall’s face.

“Save the eyefucking for the fans, would ya,” Niall complains. “Only strong feeling it’s giving me is indigestion.”

“There’s no romance left in this relationship,” Harry says sadly. “Remember the days when you wooed me with your guitar and we danced across the stage together in each other’s arms?”

“Do you wanna play Scrabble or not, Styles.”

“I do, I do,” Harry says, and finally moves his skinny arse to fetch the game.

Harry’s fooling no one with his mild-mannered slow drawl act. He’s right competitive too, as bad as Niall and Louis ever were. He gets quiet, focused — the way Niall used to see him before shows, his throat working as if he’s silently practicing the high notes. Harry starts with DEMIGOD straight down the centre of the board. Niall rubs his E tile between his fingers before placing SHED crossing Harry’s D for 16 points. He’s quite pleased to think of putting his H, worth four points, over triple letter score.

His pride is short-lasted. “Wait up,” Niall says, watching Harry reckon score. “How come you got 80 points for DEMIGOD?”

“Cos I used up all seven tiles in one go, didn’t I?” Harry says, tilting his empty rack towards Niall. “That’s fifty bonus points.”

“Christ,” Niall says. But they keep playing. Harry plays FAMISHED across Niall’s SHED and gets fifty-four points. Niall pulls a Q O N K from the tile bag to go with his W C J, and he curses because Q, really? What the hell is he supposed to do with a Q and not U to go with it? He scratches the bridge of his nose, ignoring Harry’s intense stare, before finally putting down KNOWS across FAMISHED’s S for 24 points.

“Nice,” says Harry. “You know what would’ve been better, though? JEON right here.” He traces FAMISHED’s E.

“That’s not a real word,” Niall says immediately. “You’re just pulling my leg now.”

“Of course it’s a real word,” Harry says. “It’s Korean. It’s, like, a unit of currency or summat. Look, we can even check.” He whips out his phone and spins it around to show Niall an app where you can check the validity of Scrabble words. JEON’s lit up in green.

Harry goes again. JETE for 37 points.

Niall puts down, very slowly, taking his sweet time, FUCK for 34. He waggles his eyebrows at Harry.

“You’re a child,” Harry says, nose up in the air, sniffing no doubt the fragrant scent of Scrabble moral superiority. He proceeds to demolish Niall with a series of words like QUICK and DAYLONG and SEX for 60 points, 40 points, and 74 points, respectively. Niall snorts at the last one. Harry closes his eyes and smiles like one of them bodhisattva statues in temples with his hands resting over his lap. He looks like he’s trying to commune with the Merriam-Webster dictionary gods.

“Niall,” he says without opening his eyes. “I’ve a confession to make.”

“So make it then,” Niall says, trying to figure out his next move. Christ but he’s pulled the X tile this time. He has the most rotten luck.

“I’ve been playing Scrabble,” Harry says.

“Yup, can see that.”

“No, I mean, like,” Harry says, “competitively.”

“What’d you think we’re doing right now?” Niall says, waving at the board. Harry opens his eyes like he’s shocked by Niall’s logic.

“In tournaments,” Harry says breathily. “Where you play against Scrabble experts. I’m ranked thirty-sixth in California.” He says the last part with the sort of relish people usually save for the purchase of new sports cars or when they’ve met the love of their lives. Harry’s eyes go extra wide for emphasis, as if he’s trying to import the gravity of his announcement through the quivering spaces between his lashes. This must be what the Pevensie kids felt, Niall thinks, seeing the door to weird-as-fuck Narnia. Those poor sods.

“Oh, uh,” Niall says. “That’s a thing?”

“Yes, that’s a thing,” Harry says crossly. “Let me explain.”

:::

It’s a thing.

Harry’s not been sneaking off to visit a new girlfriend. He’s not been dying of some incurable disease. Turns out, in between making movies and working on material for his album, he’s also been busy establishing his dominance as the thirty-sixth ranked NAPSA player in California (“North American Scrabble Players Association, Niall,” Harry says. “Come on, it’s easy to remember”).

“‘s not like I ought to be worried, right?” Niall asks when he rings up Louis. “Harry’s always been really into his hobbies.” He thinks of Harry’s stint with French cooking after he read a Julia Child biography, or that time Harry watched that documentary on geocaching and nearly led them all off a cliff, or that brief but extremely enthusiastic fling with macrame that probably contributed to Zayn leaving the band more than anything else, let’s be real.

“Nialler,” Louis says, yawning through the phone with the true exhaustion of someone who’s had to stay awake all night with a fussy baby, “you love golf so much you helped start a company about it. So shut your gob and let him do his thing.”

“It does seem to make him pretty happy,” Niall admits, listening to Harry bang around the kitchen singing, If I was you, I’d vwanna be me too.

He thinks of the distant look on Harry’s face that last time all four of them were together, meeting to end the contract that held them together as One Direction. The way Harry had signed the documents without really looking at any of them, blowing off Liam’s suggestion for pints at the pub. The way Harry had sailed out of the room with his head buried in his phone, spinning gently and easily towards a future without any of them in it. Truth be told, that first time Niall had arrived in LA with his bags on Harry’s stoop, he hadn’t been sure of his welcome.

But for Niall, it goes like this: he’s made the decision that he’d like to keep Harry in his life. It might be easier and wiser, sure, to disentangle those six years of a life lived together, to become the sort of mates who see each other once a year at industry parties, decide they should definitely get together soon for a proper catch-up, and then never do.

There’s nothing wrong with those sorts of friends. Niall’s accumulated plenty of them, is fond of them like he is of his own freckles. But whenever he thinks of Harry like that, a Harry who he’s got to watch grow up through the lens of other people’s cameras, he feels ill.

It’s not meant to be like that with Harry. When you find someone you get on with as brilliantly as he and Harry do, someone who can finish your sentences, remembers to send birthday cards to your da, and picks up your favourite shampoo when you’ve run out, Niall’s fairly certain you’re not supposed to let that go.

Mid-month Niall flies to Dublin. There’s some talent in the women’s division Mark’s flagged for him. He slathers on sun cream, meets players, and with a handshake and a smile sets up appointments for them and their people to chat further with Modest. People want to agree to these conversations, and maybe this is the thing he’ll never really get over in the years since he went on X-Factor, the thing that’ll always give him a quiet thrill.

People want to talk to knock-kneed, occasionally spotty-faced Niall Horan from Mullingar, will cross fairways when they see his assuming blond head, will spill drinks over their shirts when they see him approach with an “alright there?” on his lips. “An angel-faced bullet,” Justin says, and slaps him on the back so hard Niall nearly trips.

When he gets back to LA and cell reception flickers his phone back into life on the runway, there’s a text from Harry with an address and a come right away. Niall scoffs. He’s jet-lagged and famished and he wants a burger, a shower, and a nap, in that order. He’s not going to meet Harry at whatever the hell place this is.

Except that’s precisely what he does, because he’s an eejit who needs to save Harry from himself. He has his driver take him to the address, which turns out to be the Rosewood Billiards Club in the residential streets off Santa Monica Pier. It looks like someone’s house, all properly manicured lawn and stray baseballs on the front steps, and inside he can’t find Harry anywhere among the folk playing pool with cold beers sweating in their hands. Niall’s sweating for one of them beers too, but he’s got to find Harry first.

He hits jackpot in the back by the kitchen turned bar where there’s a room set up with dartboards, cribbage games, and yeah, he should’ve seen this coming, should’ve have seen it like a flare in the wilderness — there’s a couple of people huddled around playing Scrabble.

Harry’s deep in a game with a pepper-haired lady in a pink polo shirt. He doesn’t even notice Niall approaching until Niall’s pinching his stupidly chiseled cheekbones, and Harry goes, “What the—? Don’t do that.”

“What’s this then, mate?” Niall asks.

“This,” Harry says expansively, “is Lisa.” The woman in the pink shirt gives Niall a faintly amused look. Glancing down, he spies that she’s got three tattoos running vertically across her wrist. PAUL, YVETTE, and PENELOPE, they say.

“Hi Lisa,” Niall says.

“Lisa’s one of the owners of this place,” Harry says. “She’s twenty-first in the NAPSA California rankings. Lisa, this is Niall.”

“Few months ago, I found him wandering around this street like a lost cat in glitter ankle boots,” Lisa says, gesturing at Harry. “Tryin’ to peek through the windows, looking for a fix. Don’t know why he didn’t just come on in. Mort over there—” she jabs her thumb towards a man in flip-flops and a Chicago Bulls jersey, “—had to fetch him.”

“Wanted to be sure of my welcome, didn’t I?” Harry drawls.

“Poor thing was barely breaking a 1210 rating,” Lisa says, shaking her head.

“‘s not bad!” Harry interrupts.

“All talent and vocabulary, but no strategy,” Lisa opines. “But we fixed him up good.” She scoots her chair back and picks up her empty Diet Coke. “I’m gonna get myself a refill. Finish this game for me, will you, Niall? Pleasure to meet you.”

Niall yawns as she leaves. “Can’t I take a nap first?”

“C’mon, Niall,” Harry protests. “You always say you wanna take a nap when you get off the plane, but then you sit in front of the telly and watch House Hunters for hours until you’re too cranky to do anything else. Not very good at sleeping, you are.”

Niall cracks open his eyes to glare at Harry, but Harry’s biting his lip and looking at Niall pathetically. Niall grunts. He plops into the seat Lisa’s left empty and looks at her letters. Q E I L K E L. That Q, he thinks morosely, it’s following him everywhere. He rubs his forehead for a second, thinking, before he makes KEEL using the PECK that’s already on the board. Twenty-eight points.

Harry goes for REMELT for 33 points. He hits the chess clock on the table beside them when he’s finished. Twelve minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Niall doesn’t bother with Lisa’s clock.

Niall puts LEVEL using Harry’s L as an axis for sixteen points.

“You’re not bad,” Harry says absently. “Ought to sign you up for the next tournament.”

“Eh,” Niall says with a shrug that Barbara once described as Gallic, which don’t make since because he’s not French. He likes the sound of that word, though. Gallic. He should use that in a game if he can. “What’s the clock for?”

“Competitive Scrabble’s got a time limit,” Harry replies. “Twenty-five minutes per player per game. ‘s to stop you from taking too long with your moves.” He puts down DOMIC for 39 points but not before checking it on his app. “Good, it’s a real word, I wasn’t sure.”

“What decides if it’s a real word or not?” Niall asks. “Can I put FUCKBOY down?”

“No, you can’t put FUCKBOY down,” Harry says. “There’s an official word list we use in North American tournaments. It comes from, like, four different dictionaries.”

“What about new words?” Niall asks, just to be a prat. “What if I wanted to use EMOJI in a game?”

“EMOJI’s not currently accepted,” Harry admits reluctantly. “But they update dictionaries, you know. Eventually. But that’s the fun of it, yeah? Trying to memorize what words are good to use. You can’t use EMOJI but you can use DEP and OPA and SOH and TEC. Then there’s all the two-letters words you’ve gotta know if you wanna play competitively.”

Niall makes a noncommittal sound. Harry clearly interprets it as, Please go on, I’m riveted.

“EX, OX, JO, KA, KI, XI, XU, ZA,” Harry says with more excitement than he’s given to some of the music awards they’ve won. “When I first started, I didn’t know how to use the X tile for anything. But there’s lots of great little words you can spin with X once you study it a bit.” He gets up and goes over to an over-stuffed IKEA bookshelf where he pulls out two books and brings them back to drop on Niall’s lap.

Niall goes ‘oof’ and looks down. It’s the official tournament word list, 2014 edition. The other book’s a paperback copy of 101 Ways to Win at Scrabble by Barry Grossman. The lettuce green cover looks like something he’s seen on Harry’s coffee table before, back in those innocent days before he knew to examine Harry for signs of overwhelming Scrabble passion.

“I’m betting you want me to read these, huh,” Niall says, tipping his chair back and looking up at Harry who’s looming at his side smelling like the crisp notes of fabric softener and hoppy beer.

“Niall,” Harry says, catching the back of Niall’s chair before he topples over. Niall smiles up at him. Harry’s upside down mouth makes funny pink shapes as it parts and repeats, “Niall.”

“What,” he yawns.

“Make me the happiest man on earth,” Harry says. “Be my Scrabble wife.”

Niall, feeling a little high on exhaustion, fumes, and whatever else is in the air at LA at all times to make people such nutters, giggles.

:::

There’s a local NAPSA tournament the next week. Niall doesn’t realize Harry’s actually put his name down as a player until Harry drives them to the hotel, grabs Niall tenderly by the neck, looks deeply into his eyes, and says, “Good luck.”

“Wait,” Niall says, twisting around in the car seat, “where are we?”

“In a place where boys become men,” Harry says. “Where soldiers become warriors. Where mere mortals become… champions.”

“So we’re not going for Texas BBQ then?”

Harry Styles has betrayed him one too many times, Niall thinks. Harry Styles is a cunning worm lying in the grass not to be trusted. Harry Styles is an absolute wanker, but they’re here already and Harry’s promising him BBQ after, so whatever. It’s not like he had other plans today. Niall’d rather bum out at this tournament with Harry than wander around LA without him, not that he’s going to give Harry the satisfaction of knowing that.

Harry may have guessed already, with the way he sallies into the hotel with a hand on Niall’s back. They’re wearing snapbacks and oversized sunnies as they go through the lobby, but when they get to the ballroom where the tournament’s taking place, Harry sheds them right away. “You think that’s wise?” Niall asks.

“Don’t think our fanbase and the competitive Scrabble population overlap much,” Harry says dryly. Niall looks around the tournament at the sea of, well, mostly middle-aged white men, and concedes the point. “Besides, we’ve got Lisa. Everyone’s terrified of her. She’s like the dowayne of California Scrabble.”

“And that works?” Niall asks skeptically.

“It works,” Lisa says when Harry waves her over. “I tell people that this is Harry. He works in media. If you recognize him, I’d rather you not tell outsiders that he plays with us.”

“The outsiders bit works really well,” Harry agrees.

“Scrabble camaraderie,” Lisa says. “We don’t give our own to outsiders.” She gives Niall an assessing look. “And if you’re playing today, then that makes you our own too.”

“You’ll need a fake name, though,” says Harry. “Mine’s Harold Goodfellow.”

It turns out he’s already registered Niall as Niall Gallagher. It’s not the most creative of names, but it’s one Niall’s actually used before to make dinner reservations and to check into hotels. He’s chuffed Harry remembers, but Harry’s always been like that, tucking away bits about his friends like morsels to offer out for inspection later.

They present themselves at the registration desk and receive their nametags. Niall’s keeps peeling off his shirt, no matter how much Harry leans in and fiddles with it. “Give it up,” Niall finally says, batting Harry’s hands away, and Harry does, reluctantly. The tournament’s not quite started yet, but he’s content for now to follow Harry around as Harold Goodfellow greets people. He gets a surprise when the first person Harry talks to looks over Harry’s shoulder at Niall, and says, with some asperity, “Thomas.”

“Hi Thomas,” Niall says dutifully.

“No, what, this is Ernie,” Harry says. “Ernie, this is—” He stops and looks at Niall with sudden interest. “Huh. I guess he does look a lot like… I never saw it before.”

“Didn’t know you were leveling up your training quite that much, Goodfellow,” Ernie says. “Guess I better watch out for you on the boards.” He walks away.

“Nice man,” Niall observes. “Very social.”

“Well,” Harry shrugs. “You know.”

“If his name’s Ernie, then I reckon he was calling me Thomas,” Niall says. “Why’d he do that?” He pats his chest. “Don’t got Thomas written on a nametag anywhere, do I?”

“Thomas Ruszczyk,” Harry says. “2053 ELO rating. Number one in California. Twenty-four, blond, blue-eyed, kind of scrubby with the stubble.” He rubs his chin while Niall narrows his eyes at him. “He’s a proper legend. Doesn’t come to tournaments much anymore, think his health isn’t good or summat. I only met him once or twice when I first got started, never actually played against him, but… yeah,” Harry finishes. “Reckon you do look a lot alike.”

“Didn’t know Scrabble players could be this fit, is it?”

But Harry completely ignores him. He starts to laugh. “Level up my training? Ernie thought that I had Thomas Ruszczyk coaching my game?” He seems delighted by this idea, in the same way sharks are delighted by the scent of blood in the water. Niall takes a step back for safety.

“If it helps you out, we don’t gotta correct him,” Niall says.

“Hmm,” Harry says. “Hmm.”

Ernie ain’t the only one. As the tournament starts and Niall shuffles off to his first opponent, he gets another taken aback look. More follow. People whisper as they walk past his table. He hears the name Thomas dropped more than once. Over on the other side of the ballroom he can see Harry sit down to his first match of the day. Niall tries to catch his eye but it’s no use. Harry’s too focused on his game, and Niall’s too busy looking like the identical twin of the first-ranked Scrabble player in California, apparently.

If the shock of seeing Thomas Ruszczyk in the flesh causes a tremor in the competition, seeing Niall lose seems to send everyone into a frenzied faint. His opponent, a kid in an Attack on Titan t-shirt who’s got to be sixteen years old, max, sputters like he’s eaten a spoonful of hot peppers and then turns bright red. “I won?” he whispers. “I… won?”

“Yeah, mate, good job,” Niall says, shaking his hand.

“I’m never washing that hand again,” he hears the kid telling his friends later. “This is the hand that won against Thomas Ruszczyk.”

“But his name tag says Niall Gallagher,” the kid’s friend points out.

“Clearly a fake name,” the kid says. “Clearly he’s got some long game going on where he tricks us into thinking he’s bad just so he’ll smash our asses later, but who cares. Thomas Ruszczyk let me win.” His face glows so hard his teeth are practically luminescent.

Niall moves on. He plays more matches, losing three, tying one, and winning his very last one against a bloke from Fresno who’s even fresher to the scene than he is. It surprises him how viciously good it feels to win at last, to place FILE down for twenty-eight points and a narrow victory. For the first time he gets why Harry might like this so much, and why Harry might think he’d like it too. It’s a game built on a foundation of scores and stats, a game where you’ve got to make quick decisions in conditions you can’t control. Niall’s played enough golf to be familiar with that.

It’s the numbers that keep tugging on his interest as the day goes on. How many points each tile is worth, where on the board can they be played for maximum points yield, the different ways you can reap points by piggybacking words already on the board.

Between his matches he watches some of the higher level players, and they’re a totally different beast from his own game. It’s not just them knowing bizarre words they can make out of lacklustre tiles, he realizes. It’s how they know to control the movement on the board. Making brilliant plays while at the same time blocking others from doing the same. He watches one of Lisa’s games where her frustrated opponent can’t make a single prefix or suffix on her words, no piggybacking opportunities at all. She’s completely barricaded that avenue of play.

He tells Harry this over lunch in the canteen. “Your anorak tendencies are showing,” Harry says, grinning. “Knew they would.”

“Oi, you better treat me with respect,” Niall retorts. “You’re having lunch with the famous Thomas Ruszczyk, aren’t ya?” He looks around them where people are sneaking glances and then rapidly looking back down at their food, which is something they’re both long used to when they’re out in public. Though never quite for this reason. “Your rivals are pissing their pants with jealousy.”

“It is rattling folk, innit,” Harry says happily. “One of my opponents this morning turned white when he saw you coming up to me.”

“You’re ruthless, Harold Goodfellow,” Niall says, and steals an apple slice off his plate.

:::

“Harry, your world-renowned Scrabble coach is tired of waiting for your arse, so move it.”

The steam slaps him across the face when he opens the door and yells it into the loo. He can’t be sure Harry’s heard him over the shower, or his annoyingly pitch perfect rendition of On My Own, but Niall’s displeasure is a thing that must be stated for the record, your worship. This is not what Harry promised when he said, wait a sec, he’s ready to jam tonight, he’s just got to use the toilet first.

“Wanker,” Niall says, and skulks to the den where he’s still shedding sleep off like flakes of dry skin. He’s just come back from four days in Ireland, from another round of tournaments and meetings. Flew in last night, had one of his lads pick him up from LAX, came home to find Harry asleep on the couch with the Ever After blu-ray stuck looping on the menu. Niall’d watched four rounds of Drew Barrymore’s face before he threw a blanket on top of Harry and tiptoed upstairs.

Didn’t see Harry all day today, what with Niall sleeping and Harry out with his people. Still isn’t seeing much of Harry now, he grumbles. Then Harry finally comes out of the shower and pops into the den with a towel clutched around his hips, and Niall’s seeing all too much of Harry. Wet curling hair, skin mapped in tattoos, all height and limb and throat. Niall quickly glances away.

“Give me a mo,” Harry says.

“‘m waiting,” Niall says, gaze stuck somewhere on the wall like a smushed fly. “Gonna write this song without ya at this rate.”

“Niall,” Harry says, like a warning, but Niall shrugs. Offers up his most cherubic smile at the wall. He can hear Harry rustle up the stairs, and when he returns he’s got on, thankfully, a pair of basketball shorts and his yellow towel’s wrapped around his head instead of his waist. He looks like an Eggo waffle.

Niall’s already strumming his Les Paul, picking through the scraps of a song he’s had in his head. Harry gets his own guitar on his lap and sits across from him. Pauses to light a Diptyque candle. “For inspiration,” he promises, even though all Niall’s inspired to do is sneeze. Harry’s looking at him now, quiet and patient, waiting for his cue. Niall begins to sing.

He’s not got all the lyrics figured out. Was never the greatest at them anyway, but that’s why he wants Harry’s input. Harry who’s got the journals scrawled dense with half-formed bits of every whimsy he’s ever stumbled upon. He’s never minded sharing his writing. Generous fellow, Harry is.

Niall hums when he gets to the bridge, his fingers working their way across the riffs. Harry picks up the melody slowly, uncertain the way he gets sometimes when he plays guitar with Niall, like he’s worried he’ll won’t impress. It’s alright though; Niall’s got time to wait. Niall’s singing softly until Harry clears his throat and joins in, his voice deep and raspy in counterpoint. Niall grins above his guitar, and there’s a moment when they’re picking through the chorus that he forgets that they’re working on solo albums, forgets that this song he’s writing is meant for one person’s voice, forgets that this isn’t One Direction.

Then Harry stops, looks at Niall expectantly, and Niall remembers. “Yeah,” he says, ducking his head so that Harry can’t see his face. “That sounds good. Let’s go with that.”

“Feels weird,” Harry says. “Without Liam and Louis here, telling us if it’s shite or not.”

That’s true too. It’s not like any of the songs he and Harry co-wrote in the past ever made its way to a final album setlist. Not when there was the Tommo and Payno dream team around. Writing sessions for One Direction would get so loud sometimes, the band and all those producers and collaborators crowded into the same room. So loud Niall could hardly think, and by the time he had an idea Louis and Liam would’ve already decided on theirs, and that was that. It’s easier to write without them around, but harder too. Fewer places to hide.

They work on Niall’s song until he’s ready to go out of his mind with it. Then they switch and work on one of Harry’s that he’s hoping to put on his album. When Harry’s fingers are sore and they’re weary of their own voices, frustrated when they don’t hit the notes they ought to — the notes they suspect they would’ve even a few months ago—, Harry sets his guitar aside and pushes the hair from his face. There’s not much hair to push anymore, but Niall notices he forgets.

“There’s a tournament tomorrow in Long Beach,” Harry says, and the shadows from the candle push and pull at the planes of his face. It’s an interesting face. Niall’s always thought so.

“Is there?” Niall says slowly.

“Starts at ten. ‘s gonna be bigger than the last one. More people from more cities.” Harry looks at him.

“Sounds neat,” Niall says, trying not to laugh because he enjoys seeing Harry work for it. “If I know anyone who’s keen on Scrabble, I’ll let them know.”

“More people,” Harry emphasizes. “More competition.”

“And you need good ‘ol Thomas R. to make an appearance and put fear into the hearts of your enemies?” Niall smirks. “Could do.”

Google Maps says it’s an hour’s drive from Harry’s to Long Beach and then some — in LA traffic there’s always ‘and then some.’ Instead of going to bed, Niall decides to prep some jars of yogurt and granola they can take with them for breakfast instead of having to grab fast food. Harry’s been an awful influence on him that way. Harry beams when he sees Niall haul out the mason jars.

Instead of going to bed, Harry decides to make cocktails. There’s a bar a few streets over that went out of business last week, and Harry’d decided to swoop in and buy all their leftover stock, so now there’s bottles of Hendrick’s gin and Cointreau and aquavit lurking in every unsuspecting cupboard.

He’s fixing them whiskey sours when Niall looks down at his phone. There’s a text from Louis on the lock screen that says, R U AT H’S? IM COMING OVER RIGHT NOW

yeah sure ! he replies. come ovr

“Louis’ coming,” Niall says, tossing his phone back on the counter.

“Oh,” says Harry, and it occurs to Niall that he didn’t think to ask if Harry was alright with it. It’s Harry's house, after all, and Harry and Louis aren’t like to have seen each other much, the way things are now. “I mean,” Harry says, going back to mixing the drinks, “that’s fine.”

Niall’s right surprised when Louis shows up with Freddie in tow, because aren’t babies supposed to be asleep at this time of the night and all that. When he expresses this thought out loud Louis gives him the stink-eye. “Babies never sleep,” he says darkly. “It’s all an illusion. I thought Freddie was old enough to sleep through the night now, but it was all a clever, clever ruse to trick me.”

“Looks pretty quiet now,” Niall says, peering at the sleeping babe.

“Fell asleep in the car ride over,” Louis admits. “But he was proper wailing before that, wouldn’t stop. Thought I’d give Bri a night off, but—” He looks over where Harry’s waving. “Are those for me? Gimme, gimme.”

They swap. A whiskey sour for Louis, a baby for Harry. Louis sprawls immediately on the couch with his drink. He closes his eyes for a moment and then opens them. He looks around. Niall, perched by his knee, follows his gaze. Sees the den as Louis must: cluttered with Niall’s golf clubs by the door and Harry’s paintings on the walls, and Niall’s Supras on the carpet, and Harry’s favourite Hermès scarf, the one with the roses, thrown over the armchair. Their half finished game of Scrabble on the table, teetering atop a pile of Peter Wimsey novels Harry’s been reading. “Look at you marrieds,” Louis says under his breath.

“Jealous?” Niall says lightly, while Harry blinks. “You’re in a house of Scrabble masters. Scrabble Yodas.”

“I’m in the house of lonely Scrabble spinsters, you mean,” Louis says. “Like Little Women but with more artfully arranged pineapples.”

Harry frowns from the la-z-boy where he’s got Freddie lying on his chest. “Think the Little Women all got married by the end of the book. Except for the one who died.”

“Look here, you’re breaking poor Hazza’s heart,” Niall says before Harry can start thinking too deeply about the death or marital status of fictional characters, which always upsets him so much it gives him a tummy ache. He steals Louis’ phone from his pocket, unlocks it — Louis never changes his passcode, ever, he really ought to — and downloads Words with Friends for him. “There ya go,” he says helpfully. “Sent you an invite.”

“Fuck off,” Louis says, rubbing at his tired eyes, but when Niall hands him his phone back, he plays around with it.

“Freddie’s waking up again,” Harry announces, shifting. Louis twists towards him in alarm, but Harry adds, “Not crying, though. See? Sleepy and happy.” He pokes Freddie’s cheek like a lump of pudding. Freddie squirms.

“Cut that out, he doesn’t like it,” Louis says.

Harry stops. “Oh. Sorry. Dunno much about babies.”

“Me neither,” Louis says with a rattling laugh. “Oi, Niall, your game’s broken. It’s not letting me put in SUCKMYDICK.” Even as he’s fiddling with his phone he’s looking over at where Harry’s got Freddie, watchful even when he’s pretending not to be. Niall sees the moment when Louis finally decides he doesn’t need to watch so hard. He sinks into the couch with his whiskey sour while Harry rocks Freddie and croons.

“I’ve a book in that bag,” Louis grunts, waving at the small tower of tote bags that seem to accompany babies everywhere. “It’s his favourite bedtime book.”

Niall rummages through the bags and finds it, tucked beside a box of nicotine patches with a #1 Stop Smoking Aid! sticker on them. He and Harry take turns reading from the book. “Go on then,” Louis says. “Give us a show.”

“Peek a moo, says the cow,” Harry says, holding the book with one arm while he’s got Freddie secure in the other. “Peek a moooooo.”

Niall leans over the la-z-boy and turns the page for him. “Peek a oink, says the pig,” he reads, scrunching up his face to make a pig nose. “Peek a OINK OINK.”

Freddie opens and shuts his mouth. Waves his arms. Burbles spit. It’s a good a time as any.

They’re pretty sure Louis’ actually fallen asleep on the couch by the time they put a sleeping Freddie in his carrier. Harry keeps stopping to stare at Freddie’s bare feet and toes with the sort of mesmerized concentration he usually reserves for triple word score victories. Except then Louis opens his eyes, burps, and kicks out so wildly that he knocks over Harry’s guitar that’s been leaning against the couch. “Still gonna make that solo album?” Louis asks casually, yawning.

“Yeah,” says Harry.

“What about you, Nialler?”

“Looks like it,” Niall says evenly.

“Thought you decided to dedicate your skinny arse’s purity to golf,” Louis says.

“Reckon I can do both.” Niall starts going around the den, picking up the books and the blankets and the empty glasses. Would rather not leave a mess to clean up tomorrow morning.

“Sure,” Louis says, “but you know it’s not the work that really matters, yeah?” He looks down at Freddie and smiles in a way that creases the corners of his eyes, soft and knackered, delighted in spite of himself. Harry and Niall roll their eyes in tandem.

“Louis’ gone soft,” Harry says when they’ve called a driver for Louis and Freddie and packed them off home. One of them will drive Louis’ car back in the morning. Also Niall stuck one of the breakfast jars into Louis’ bag and told him to eat it. He has a feeling Louis will forget and it’ll go bad, though.

“Well, fatherhood,” Niall responds, as if he knows anything at all about it, putting down your roots in someone, goring open your heart, like he isn’t mildly, secretly terrified at the thought.

:::

In the morning they’re off to Long Beach armed with granola and their wits. Harry’s in his element. He’s behind the wheel of his Audi R8, fiddling with the seat controls. “I remember this car,” Niall says. “Didn’t you use to park it behind rubbish bins or summat cos you couldn’t get proper parking for it?”

“Mm, don’t remember,” Harry says.

“How many cars do you got by now, anyway?” Niall asks, climbing into the passenger seat.

“Erm, don’t remember that either,” Harry says, and catching each other’s eye they laugh at the absurd impossibility of it, of their lives. When he took Harry home with him to Mullingar, all those years ago, they’d clattered around town on borrowed bikes. Now they’re on the I-405 in SoCal with the air-con blasting gooseflesh onto Niall’s arms, and Niall sifting through his phone so they can listen to Valerie June sing about having somebody to love.

Parts of traffic on the 405 are blocked up so that they’re not so much roaring to their destination as they are inching forward on supplicant hands and knees. But it feels like they’re getting away with something all the same, cruising down the highway with the speedometer stuttering upwards and no one knowing where they are but them.

He looks at Harry in the seat beside him, driving easily with the rings on his hand catching little prisms of sunlight. Harry’s posture is terrible when he drives, makes him look like a sea slug with curls, but Harry’s posture is terrible all of the time. Niall wonders how dating all those models hasn’t taught him anything other than how to how to use bronzer to make himself look less hungover after parties.

“So tell me about this Long Beach tournament,” Niall says, taking a swig of his water bottle. “Who’s gonna be there?”

“Loads of people,” Harry says, and he begins to rattle off a series of names that he saw on the website registration, people like Michael Sutton and Jon Koda and Gilbert Dahl, and sure, none of that means anything to Niall, but he goes “uh uh” and keeps sipping water while watching the heads of palm trees bow on the side of the road. He’s smiling, playing with the cap on his bottle and listening to Harry natter on.

“—and he’s a 2021, which puts him third in California,” Harry’s saying. “Only a few more points and he’ll catch up to Thomas Ruszczyk, which, ha! He’s chomping at the bit to do.”

“What’s Thomas’ rating again?” Niall asks. “Figure I ought to know if I’m gonna be him at this thing.”

“2053, and ‘m not asking you to impersonate him,” Harry says. “The point isn’t to lie,” he adds, as if innocently scandalized by Niall’s suggestion, as if Harry hasn’t lied a thousand times and about a myriad assortment of different things. Like he didn’t lie that very morning when he said he needed only fifteen more minutes of sleep and Niall had to drag him out after thirty, and it’s his damn tournament. “Just, if people think I’ve Thomas Ruszczyk coaching me, we’ll simply… not correct them, yeah?”

Niall snorts. Tucks his water bottle in the cup holder and drums his fingers on the dashboard. “What’s your rating then? Lisa said, a—” he casts his mind back, “1200 or summat?”

Harry nearly drives them into the divider. “Fuck that,” he announces. “I’m a 1490. Was a 1200 when I first started playing at Rosewood, but that’s, like, the most average competitive rating you can get. Gonna try to break 1500 after today.”

“What’d you need to break 1500?”

“To win,” Harry says shortly. He shoulder-checks and changes them into the left lane, passes the slow-moving Mazda in front of them, and then switches back. “And to win against people with higher ratings than me,” he adds. “Your rating’s not gonna go up if you’re winning all the time but against weaker players.”

“Mm,” Niall says thoughtfully. He twists in his seat to look at Harry. “How long you’ve been doing this?”

“Playing in tournaments?” Harry catches his bottom lip between his teeth. “Not that long. Since hiatus. But I was keen before.” Niall nods, remembering how Harry would occasionally bring out the Scrabble board when the lads were bored or had time to kill during lock-down and security wouldn’t let them leave their rooms.

“Sometimes,” Harry says suddenly, “on tour when you thought I’d gone off by myself to a party, I was really holed up in my hotel room on Internet Scrabble Club.”

“Oh yeah?” Niall grins. “Sometimes on tour when you thought I’d gone off on me lonesome, I was really just in my hotel room, wanking.”

“You’re gross,” Harry says, but he’s smiling.

The tracks on Niall’s phone’s changed from Valerie June to the Wild Belles, and he starts scrolling through Twitter while Harry drives, reading out loud some of the funniest tweets he finds just to make Harry’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. “Oh this is good,” he says. “Willie’s linked me this. It’s all about which 1D member—”

Harry groans.

“—you’d take on in a fight,” Niall finishes.

“Not Liam,” Harry says immediately.

“‘Course not fucking Liam,” Niall says. “Though… I bet you could trick him, like. Tell him you’ve a serious heart condition and that you might topple over any second, so he better not curbstomp you too hard.”

“Reckon Liam would know if any of us had a serious heart condition by now,” Harry says dubiously.

“Says the bloke who spent his nights playing secret Internet Scrabble on his laptop,” Niall says. “Hidden depths, mate. Plus, Liam’s gullible. I told him once that all Irish people believe they’re descended from mermaids and he flipped out at Zayn for trying to feed me sashimi.”

“Oh god, I remember that,” Harry says. “That’s why he was telling us we were horrible people for trying to dip your second cousin in wasabi. I thought he was just drunk!”

“That too,” Niall cackles. “Alright, new plan. Get Liam drunk and then we’ll fight him.”

“Nah, if I had to pick one of you to fight, I’d rather fight Louis,” Harry says. “He’s literally a Christmas elf.”

“Dunno,” Niall replies. “Would feel bad telling Freddie when he’s older that a couple of pop stars beat up his da. Gotta make Louis look cool in front of his kid. I mean,” he shrugs, “odds are already stacked against him.”

The Wild Belles wrap up and Pillowtalk slides onto shuffle. Niall freezes up because yeah, he’s got this song on a list, he listens to it, what of it. Listened to it a couple of nights go on repeat, if he’s being perfectly honest, lying in bed with a pillow propped up under his bad knee, hands beneath his head, staring up at the ceiling.

He glances over at Harry, who’s worrying his bottom lip with his teeth again. “If we’re talking past members of One Direction too,” Harry finally says, in a slow crawling drawl, “then I pick Zayn. He might come at me with his Met Gala robot arms, but he smokes too much. Wouldn’t have a lot of stamina, I bet. Could take him out while he wheezes.”

Niall’s curious. Rubs the knuckles of one hand. “When you were dating Kendall, and she’s friends with Gigi, did you ever—”

“Couple of times,” Harry says. He makes a face. “Worst double date in history.”

Niall laughs sharply. “You think one day, when we’ve all got our own projects, and we’re at some awards show bumping into each other on the red carpet, people will forget?”

“Forget what?”

“Like,” Niall fishes for the right words, “sometimes when you see two actors having lunch together or whatever, you think, huh that’s weird. And you realize only later, oh yeah, they must know each other. They were on that show together. Or that movie. A gazillion years ago. You forget. You gotta bring up IMDb to check.”

“Don’t think it’ll ever slip people’s minds that we were in One Direction together,” Harry says, like he’s taking the piss out of Niall but gently.

“Could happen,” Niall argues. “One day, when our fans have kids, and those kids grow up to be sullen teenagers—”

“Niall,” Harry promises solemnly, “when our teenage fans have teenagers of their own, I promise I’ll get a tattoo on my face that says, ‘I was in a band with Niall James Horan.’ No one will ever forget.”

“Not my point, you twat,” Niall says, but he’s giggling as he turns to look out the window. They’re passing the exit that’d take them to Compton. Eighteen minutes until they hit Long Beach, according to the GPS.

“Would be sick to learn how to fight, though,” Harry muses after he passes another car.

“Huh?” Niall jerks back, distracted.

“Done some kick-boxing at the gym but ‘s not the same, is it? I’ve always wanted to do martial arts,” Harry says wistfully. “Remember when Liam was into krav maga? I went with him a couple of times. It was fun. I’d go back.” He pushes his fingers through his quiff. “Lots of things I wish I had more time to do.”

“Sure,” Niall says. “You’re a man of many interests. Could do krav maga. Or basket weaving. Take up carpentry. Learn Arabic. Fly a plane.”

“A new hobby a week,” Harry says. Something doesn’t seem to sit right with him, though. He frowns. “I swear I’m not flaky. I just—”

But Niall knows. Harry’s always dipping his fingers into new pastimes, but he’s not flaky. Harry can’t help it. He sweats love from his pores, love for people and ideas and things, like the second night they ever spent in the X-Factor bungalow, where Harry showed him his great-grandfather’s ring that he’d packed for good luck, and let Niall hold it while Harry beamed with shy, halting pleasure. Said he’d been reading up on World War II and knew loads of great stories if Niall wanted to hear. Harry loves until he’s learned how not to, until they all learned to put limits on it.

Niall gazes out the window again, swallowing. Wonders if they drive fast enough, nothing will ever have to catch up to them. The clouds in the sky are smears of egg whites on a freshly washed blue plate. The faint whiff of someone’s petrol is leaking through the window seals. Then his phone’s buzzing with a new notification. “Ha!” he crows. “Louis’ actually playing Words with Friends with me now.”

“What? Lemme see,” Harry says, craning for a glimpse, but Niall tilts the phone away from him.

“Eyes on the road, soldier,” he says, while Harry pouts.

:::

“This is my coach,” Harry says, introducing Niall to a reporter for a Scrabble newsletter, which is another thing that Niall has discovered, like six-tailed asteroids and gravitational waves, to exist in this universe. “I’m very confident in my game today. I’ve been working hard to improve my points per play spread.”

Niall nods. “My boy’s gonna break 1500 today, just you wait.”

“And Thomas, how do you spell your last name again?” the writer asks nervously. “I’m always forgetting that z in the middle.”

“Just look it up on the internet,” Niall says airily. “Let’s focus on what really matters here. Points per play spread! Dominating the board! Using your time strategically! And, erm, words. Words are very important in this… um, crucial game of words.”

Harry’s got his eyes closed like he needs to remind himself not to hurt Niall.

“Oh look, Lisa’s waving us over. I think she really, really needs to talk to us,” Niall says, grabbing and steering Harry in the opposite direction. Harry flails a little in Niall’s grasp. The writer stares at them, agog.

“For a coach, he’s putting his hand really low on Goodfellow’s back,” a woman in a puffy jacket vest remarks as they go.

“Maybe that’s the Scrabble chakra point,” her friend says wisely. “Thomas Ruszczyk would know.”

“You know, for high-level Scrabble players, they look kind of like those boys from One Direction my daughter’s got a poster of,” Niall hears puffy jacket vest woman say as he chokes on his own spit. “And for a Polish-American, Ruszczyk’s got a strong Irish accent.”

“Really?” her friend says, cocking his head. “I don’t see the resemblance at all.”

:::

He’s a man of two lives.

There’s his public life, where he plays the starring role of Niall Horan Figuring His Shit Out After One Direction. It’s flying to Ireland every few weeks, working with Mark and the lads at Modest!, scouting new golf players, practicing his swing for photo ops. It’s six a.m. alarm wake-ups, stretching blearily in hotel rooms. It’s driving to Bobby’s on Sundays for lunch and a beer after church.

It’s meetings with his agent, followed by meetings with interested record producers. It’s nights at the pub with the LIC, and jam sessions with up and coming Irish artists who look at him and aren’t afraid to say, yeah, I want a piece of what he’s got. It’s parties where he shakes everyone’s hands, and mornings where he’s forgotten whose hands he shook.

Then there’s this other life where he meanders about southern California accompanying Harry to Scrabble tournaments like they’re on their own private mission. After Harry breaks 1500, he wants 1550, then 1600. This is his other life: it’s weaving through construction on highways and jumping in and out of metro expresslanes. It’s the girl in stalled traffic beside them who does a double take, and her sister who waves shyly. It’s the sun in the sky above them like a yellow eye, and it’s roads so silky-rich with heat that Niall wonders if you could really fry an egg on it.

It’s hotels where Scrabble players gather, it’s registration desks and signing your name on the dotted line. It’s cheap styrofoam cups of complimentary coffee or tea while they wait for the tournament to begin. It’s opening speeches and final scores. It’s Harry as he sits down across from an opponent with a pleasant smile that says nothing for how he’s determined to vaporize them using his brain.

It’s having dinner wherever they’re at and poking around the nearby shops looking for ways to amuse themselves. It’s Harry making Niall try on bright red frames at an optician’s and saying, “Your glasses are sexually harrassing me, it’s a problem.” It’s packed coolers of sandwiches and cold-pressed juice for the road. It’s sunburns on Niall’s arm where he’s propped it too long against the car window. It’s tiptoeing downstairs at one a.m. to find Harry eating peanut butter out of the jar, spoon stuffed into his chipmunked cheeks, a breaker of diets and a late night player of Quackle.

Niall learns what Quackle is. There’s a flotilla of Scrabble aids online, and in Harry’s quest to break 1600, he shows Niall what they are. Quackle’s the Scrabble AI that can simulate some of the best players in the world. Internet Scrabble Club‘s the place where people play each other in real-time to practice. Zyzzyva’s the word study software that’s supposed to help you improve your lexicon.

When it comes down to it, Niall thinks, it’s not knowing a huge amount of words that’s the key skill of elite Scrabble players. It’s the ability to look at the jumbled letters you have on your tile rack and rearrange them. It’s anagramming ability, and he takes it upon himself as Harry’s celebrity coach — first as a joke, and then he realizes he’s actually serious — to quiz him on anagrams.

“DIRTY ROOM,” he says while they’re driving to San Diego.

Harry furrows his brow and pokes his tongue into his cheek. “Dormitory.”

“ABEENORSSS,” he scribbles on a napkin while they’re waiting for lunch at a diner with creaky, funereal ceiling fans.

“Baronesses,” Harry replies.

“ACDILRST.”

“Dunno what that one is,” Harry admits.

“It’s triclads, obviously,” Niall says gleefully. “It’s a kind of worm. Don’t you know anything, Harry Styles? Not know what a triclad is. For shame!”

For two lads who never finished school, he thinks, they’re rather brilliant at studying. Or, Harry’s brilliant at studying and Niall’s brilliant at egging him on, because Harry can get lazy and Niall’s the type who’s got all his bags packed at least two days before any trip, checking off to-do items on his phone and making up new lists for tomorrow. Niall’s not actually played another tournament himself after that first one Harry signed him up for. He’d rather watch Harry play; it’s the sports management side of him coming out, he reckons.

In San Diego, the work pays off. Harry wins a game against Jon Koda, ranked fifth in the state. The look on his face, it’s like someone’s told him he can eat peanut butter out of the jar every day of his life if he’d like. Niall rushes him and squeezes him so hard he lifts Harry off his feet, which nearly sends them banging into the wall, but he don’t care, not with the way Harry’s grinning into his clavicle.

“Bloody hell!” Niall says. “1600, here we come!”

“Greatest coach on earth!” Harry shouts. He whirls around in a fit of un-Scrabble-like pageantry and says, “Told y’all I bagged the greatest coach on earth. Sorry Jon,” he adds, and Jon Koda, a mild-mannered Orange County banker with even better-looking eyeglasses than Niall, waves his hand.

“You earned it, Goodfellow,” he says. “Your game’s on fire.”

The two lives of Niall Horan: it’s spending three weeks in Ireland in the fall, looking at new paperwork Modest! wants him to sign, and realizing Mark’s listed his permanent address as Harry’s place in California. “What do you mean you don’t live there, it’s where we mail all your packages to,” Mark says.

It’s sending Harry random texts of strings of letters: ADEHOPRS, CDEEGIOT, BEMNOSU. And Harry replying — at Trader Joe’s, at pilates, at drinks with his tanned, leggy Hollywood friends that Niall’s not keen on tagging along with — RHAPSODE, GEODETIC, and UMBONES. (I cheated at the last one, had to look it up, Harry confesses).

It’s driving home after a tournament when the sun’s set and Niall’s falling asleep in the passenger seat, watching the play of other cars’ headlights in gold-shot darkness, and listening to the sound of Harry’s breathing, nasal in the late-season’s turnover of dust and pollen. “Niall, Niall, wake up, we’re back,” Harry whispers, shaking his shoulder when they’ve parked in the driveway, and it’s Niall opening his eyes, seeing that they are, and stumbling inside.

:::

Liam joins them in Santa Barbara.

The first thing Niall and Harry do is try to climb him, for old time’s sake. “Gerroff me, both of you,” Liam laughs, shoving them to their feet. “You’re like a pair of cats.”

Niall’s long stopped being surprised by how simple his feelings about Liam are. Like they ought to be more complicated, but they’re not. He loves Liam, easy as that, elemental in a way that’s different from all the other lads in the band. Loving Harry and Louis and, yeah, even Zayn — from a distance, a love that’s peppered with buckshot — is wrapped up in the pointy ends of other things Niall’s got to sort through. But Liam, Liam’s different. He’s Niall’s favourite member of the band, and Niall tells him this every time they meet.

“No way,” Harry says. “He’s my favourite. Go pick someone else, I claimed him first.” He punctuates this by trying to lick Liam’s cheek.

“Know we decided we wouldn’t fight Liam, but I’d fight you for Liam, any day,” Niall tells Harry.

“What’re you even on about?” Liam asks. “Other than the Scrabble. Louis told me all about the Scrabble. Warned me, really.” He looks around Harry’s hotel room where there’s board and tiles scattered across the floor. “Thought I’d lend my moral support.”

Harry huffs in silent laughter and flops onto his bed.

“Lemme get a look at ya, mate,” Niall says. Liam dutifully spreads his arms and spins around on his toes. “Haven’t seen you in ages. Where’ve you been hiding yourself? Other than the arms of domestic bliss, o’course.”

“Well,” Liam says, pinking up.

“What’s this,” Harry calls from the bed. “Don’t lie to me, Payno. I’ve a sixth sense about this sort of thing. A wedding wizard, that’s me. Harry Matrimony Styles-Potter.”

“We’ve told you this before, no more Harry Matrimony Styles-Potter,” Liam instructs while Niall nods fervently. Liam rubs the back of his neck. “Might’ve thought about it. Once. Twice. I know it’s too soon but—” he trails off sheepishly. “It pops into my head even when I don’t mean it to.”

Niall cackles, even as his stomach starts floating around his insides. It’s like Louis with Freddie all over again, seeing his friends and the lives they’ve made, the people they’ve anchored themselves to with such fearsome certainty. It seems reckless, he thinks, in a way that makes him queasy when he thinks of himself, his own future. But maybe that’s what he should be worrying about, barnacling himself to another human being who can put up with him and make sure he doesn’t die alone. Suddenly he wonders again: is it weird what he and Harry are doing, spending their time chasing nerd goals instead of. Instead of what.

“Niall’s got his judgemental git face on,” Harry observes, rolling over on the bed to prop his chin in one hand. He’s not shaved today. Niall can count, like, two whole hairs.

“We can’t have that,” Liam says. “Fancy a pint, lads? There’s a private beach down by the pier. I may have, er, rented it for the night.”

“Sounds sick,” Harry says. “Niall and I’ve been quizzing anagrams for hours, my head’s gonna explode.” He rolls off the bed and onto his feet, goes off looking for his favourite hat, the one Niall shoved onto the top shelf of the closet because he hates it so much, thinks it makes Harry’s head look like an overgrown root vegetable.

On the beach Niall’s all too happy to wade about in the rapidly chilling water as the sun sets and Harry and Liam are on the porch of their rented cabin, going through the cooler to investigate the drinks situation. They’ve their heads together, talking quietly as their hands move. It looks like a serious conversation, Niall thinks as he squishes sand between his toes. Liam’s saying something, and then Harry’s ducking his head like he does when someone’s said a true thing but Harry doesn’t want to admit it. When Niall joins them on the porch, Harry doesn’t actually look too keen to see him, which is. A bit surprising and hurtful.

Liam shoves a cold beer into his hand. “Nice,” says Niall, and takes a swig.

Inside the cabin they find pool chairs, and they drag them out onto the beachfront, carrying the cooler with them. The stars are starting to come out, a gentle wind’s picking up, and they position the chairs as close to the water as they can. Harry throws on an oversized t-shirt, dives into the wet sand, and starts building a castle, using flotsam twigs for flags.

Niall sips his beer. Opens up the browser on his phone and tries to draw letters upside-down with his toes. BBDEIIM, he manages, attempting to get Harry’s attention.

“Imbibed,” Harry says immediately. Liam makes a surprised noise.

Niall tries again. BDEEFOORS.

Harry sticks two flags into a tower and then drapes it with seaweed banners. “Forebodes.”

CENOORRTU, Niall writes. Harry squints in the darkness with a pinched mouth and bunched up nostrils, thinking. “Not sure,” he says.

“Sounds like a sci-fi villain,” Liam chimes. “Cenoorrtu.”

Niall checks the internet. “Recounter,” he says. “The ‘re’ words are the ones that get Harry the most,” he adds as an aside. “He never thinks of them until it’s too late.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it, Hazza,” Liam says with a smile that he’s not very good at hiding. “The ‘re’ words get the best of us.”

“Piss off,” Harry says, throwing sand at him. Liam yelps and tries to dodge, but he can’t do it smoothly with his beer in hand, so sand gets over his vest.

“Hey Liam,” Niall says, still on his phone. “Need your help here. I’m playing this game against Louis and need to know what word to use next. See?” He tilts his phone towards Liam, where Louis’ put down APPLE for nine points.

“Niall won’t let me help,” Harry says sadly.

“I wanna beat Louis, not crush his spirit into smithereens,” Niall says. Harry makes a face at him and goes back to sculpting his sandcastle. He looks like he’s trying to stuff a chicken.

“Oh, er.” Liam looks at Niall’s letters. “What about HIKE?”

Niall puts in HIKE. “Twenty-two points,” he says. “Yeah!”

Louis responds a few minutes later, and of course Niall can’t take that lying down. He starts typing frantically with Liam looking over his shoulder offering tentative suggestions that grow bolder once he gets the hang of it. Harry continues making his sandcastle, then says very loudly that he is being ignored for Words with Friends and he doesn’t like it. When they continue to ignore him, Harry returns to the cabin for more drinks. He comes back round and passes behind them.

“Try HEXED,” he sniffs. “It’ll get you forty points,” and it does. Niall stretches his leg out and rubs his sandy toes along Harry’s thigh, friendly-like. Harry tries to look stroppy but he’s smirking as he drops into his pool chair and cracks open a new beer.

It’s past midnight and Harry’s communing with the stars with deafening snores when Niall soundly beats Louis ‘my vocabulary is full of four-letter words and not much else’ Tomlinson. He feels brilliant about it.

“How’s he doing, really?” Liam asks, looking over at Harry. Niall knows why he feels like he has to ask. Harry’s not one to talk about himself much, has hardly mentioned anything all night even when Niall and Liam were shooting the craic about what they’ve gotten up to in the last few months, Niall’s golf and songwriting and Liam being all loved up.

“He’s good, I reckon,” Niall says, stretching out the kinks in his neck from looking down at his phone for too long. “Definitely keeping busy. Been marathoning this entire state looking for more games for him to play.”

“I didn’t know he still did that.”

“What, keep busy?” Niall raises his eyebrows. “C’mon, it’s Haz. Wants to do everything, he does. Or do you mean the snoring, cos you must have some serious amnesia if you could forget the snoring on tour.”

“No, I meant,” Liam says, dropping his hands to his sides. “You, him, this. Living together. Letting someone else in like that. Thought he grew out of it.”

“Mate, don’t got a clue what you mean,” Niall says, slipping out of his chair to tidy up the empty bottles at their feet. “He’s the same to me as usual, and I only live with him cos it’s easier than finding a place of my own here. What if I get a place and it’s haunted? Can’t risk that, can I.”

“Mm,” says Liam. “Louis warned me about this. Said you might not know.”

“Don’t bloody ‘mm’ me,” Niall says. “Know what?”

“Mm,” Liam hums again, grinning.

“I give up on you,” Niall announces. “You’re no longer my favourite.”

“I weep,” says Liam, who does no such thing.

:::

The night before the big statewide tournament, Harry drags Niall to a party at Jeff’s. It’s not Niall’s crowd but it doesn’t take a lot of convincing either. It’s a while since he’s been to one of these dos — he and Harry’ve been homebodies as of late, staying in and working on Harry’s game instead of going out. They’re sad sack excuses for celebrities, really. Niall’s properly apologetic to his publicist, who complains he hasn’t been papped in ages; nobody’s going to remember who he is.

“Don’t go too wild, ya hear,” he tells Harry. He raps his knuckles against his forehead. “Gotta get your game on tomorrow.” Harry beams like he’s received a benediction.

“Yes, coach.”

The incipit fall chill means he’s glad he’s put on a jumper, even if it’ll make him feel soft and overdressed in this crowd of gorgeous people. Harry’s wearing skinny jeans and a black silk shirt with gauzy see-through patches like those holes cut into the packaging of children’s toys in the shops that say, press me here. Like it’s a sneak peek of what you’ll get if you take it home.

When Niall looks at Harry, what he sees through those cutouts is tattoos and skin. It’s nothing he’s not seen a thousand times before in dressing rooms and in the LA house they share that he’s increasingly calling home, but he can’t help but stare anyway. Jesus, Harry, he thinks. He’s gotten so used to seeing Harry the slob, Harry who eats toast while he’s driving to tournaments and gets crumbs and jam all over his face that Niall’s got to wipe off for him if he wants to be taken seriously, that he’s forgotten the other side of it.

When they arrive at the party and Harry’s throwing his arms around Jeff, burying a laugh in his neck, he’s not the only one who stares. And these other sods, they’ve never had the chance to become immune to Harry. They’ve never been vaccinated the way Niall has, through years and years of close exposure and dumb antics. He feels sorry for them, the way their eyes follow Harry as he strides into the backyard to say hello to Glenne.

Well. It’s not like Niall can’t occupy himself. He may not be a fixture of this scene the way Harry is, but there’s people smiling at him too, tipping their drinks towards him, beckoning him to come over. He sees some folks he’s not talked to in years, and it’s nice, sipping on craft cocktails while shooting the shit underneath the darkening night sky, tasting the stain of mezcal behind his teeth.

It’s too bloody cold to use the pool but that doesn’t stop people from trying, and he sees in the corner of his eye a swanny model-type trying to push Harry in. Harry’s laughing, widening his stance so that he doesn’t fall. He’s got one hand on his drink, the other hand on her hip. Niall snorts. “Sorry, what were you saying?” he says to Shirley Manson, with whom he’s been reminiscing about how much they miss Ireland and Scotland, respectively.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says easily. “I get it. You got to keep an eye on your boy.”

“‘s not my—” but Niall ends up shrugging. Finishing his drink. Darting his tongue out to lick at the chili on the rim. “He’s got a big day tomorrow. It’s my job to make sure he don’t go overboard.”

“Good luck,” Shirley says, and laughs.

The night goes on. Niall has a second drink, a third, a fourth. He and a local producer chat about guitars while she’s mostly on her phone trying to figure out whether or not she’s booked a hotel for the night. Niall offers to get his assistant to book one for her if she's in a tight spot. He runs into the Chainsmokers, one of them, anyway — dunno which one — in the line for the washroom, and Niall laughs and shows him how to get upstairs where the other washrooms are, because he’s been to Jeff’s house a few times and knows the secrets. The Chainsmoker, singular, offers him a joint that Niall takes and then utterly forgets about. The fifth drink finds him by the pool with his trousers rolled up and his feet in the water. He’s making “woosh woosh” noises under his breath and grinning while admiring Ruby Rose’s new tattoo.

“Mate,” Ruby stops. “How many drinks have you had?”

“Not that many,” Niall protests. “Where’s Harry? I gotta go — find Harry. He’s not in the pool, is he?” He squints at the shivery water.

“Nah, he’s not in the pool,” Ruby says, leaning back on sharp elbows. “Think I saw him head inside.”

Niall grabs his shoes and heads inside. “Catch ya later,” he promises while Ruby waves. Inside the house are all the people who’re regretting they weren’t as clever as Niall as to bring jumpers, and the music’s got a thumping bass, though there’s a bloke in the corner who keeps on trying to whip out his acoustic guitar. “‘Scuse, ‘scuse,” Niall mutters. “Any of you seen Harry Styles?”

No one can say for certain so Niall starts opening bedroom doors. “There are so many people snogging at this party,” he says aloud to no one in particular. “Why’re there so many people snogging?” He checks the door at the end of the hall, the guest room where he’s stayed before after a night of too many shots, and oh good, there’s Harry, sprawled on the bed with a Scrabble board.

“Should’ve guessed,” Niall says, closing the door behind him. “Where’d you find that?”

Harry hums. “Jeff’s got no Scrabble secrets he can keep from me. ‘m visualizing.”

“Yeah?”

“Gotta be in my best shape for — hic! — tomorrow.” It’s clear that Harry’s had a few drinks too. He smiles angelically as Niall sinks down on the bed beside him. He’s undone even more buttons on his shirt. Harry’s an excess of teeth and nipples, and it’s sort of hurting Niall to look at him.

“Why’re you hiding in here?” Niall asks. “The point of a party is to party, innit?” He laughs at his wit. Harry laughs too.

“Got tired of it, I suppose,” he says. He sticks out his hand and widens his eyes, licks his lips. “Hi, I’m Harry Styles. Yes, I used to be in One Direction. Yes, I finished filming Dunkirk — it’s in post-production now, gonna come out next year. What was it like, being in a movie for the first time? Let me think about it.”

“So people ask boring questions,” Niall says, yawning. “What’s new? Budge over, will ya. You’re taking up all the room.”

Harry scoots over on the bed, dislodging the Scrabble tiles and sending some of them scattering to the floor. “Why’ve you no shoes on, Niall?” he frowns. “Why’re your feet wet? Did Jenny push you into the pool?”

“Who’s Jenny?”

“Tall, blond, eyebrow piercing — just got accepted to Harvard Law.”

“Oh, you mean the model you were talking to earlier?” Niall asks. He feels itchy suddenly. Maybe he’s having an allergic reaction to the chlorine.

“Harvard Law,” Harry repeats.

“God,” Niall says, “if you like her so much, why don’t you marry her? Bet she’s still out there. Don’t want you to miss your chance or anything.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Harry says.

“Your shirt is ridiculous,” Niall says, grabbing at it. “Hope you got a discount for all these bits where there’s no proper fabric.”

“Stop yanking at my shirt, you’ll rip it, you wanker,” Harry says, trying to wriggle away but mostly failing. Niall sticks his fingers where he knows Harry’s ticklish and Harry starts shaking silently. “Fine, you hate this shirt so much, I’ll take it off,” Harry threatens. He rears up and shucks the shirt off in one go, which is somewhat of a problem because he didn’t bother unbuttoning the rest of it first. Buttons pop off and join the Scrabble tiles on the floor.

“I said I didn’t like your shirt, Styles. Didn’t say you needed to give me a strip show,” Niall says, falling back onto the bed and bouncing. He’s got a completely unimpeded view of Harry’s tattoos now and it’s — totally normal, he tells himself. It’s totally normal that he can feel his pulse quicken in the peach-soft skin of his wrists. He’s probably just sick and dying, or summat. Nothing to worry about.

Harry’s got a smile on his face like he’s thought of something tremendously clever, like that first time he realized his arms were long enough to take selfies of the entire band. Niall’s heart lurches at the sight of it. He doesn’t like what’ll come next, he’s sure.

“Hey Niall,” Harry says slowly. “Ever played strip Scrabble?”

“You’re on your own.” Niall rolls over.

“Don’t be like that,” Harry says, grabbing his hips and turning Niall back to face him. Niall grunts, trying not to think about Harry’s fingers on his hips where they definitely don’t belong. “Could squeeze in some extra training for tomorrow,” he adds, while the only thing he’s currently squeezing is Niall’s love handles.

“How does strip Scrabble even work?” Niall asks.

Harry grins in victory. “It’s easy. Kendall and I used to play it all the time—” Niall stares at him flatly, but Harry is completely oblivious to the desert prickliness of Niall’s glare as he continues. “Your goal is to score higher than me on your turn. If you can’t, you need to take off something. Or if you challenge a word and win, the other player has to take off something.”

“No problem,” Niall says fake-brightly. “All I’ve got to do is score higher than you on my turns?”

“Yes,” Harry smiles.

“You’re out of your bloody mind,” Niall shouts. “Mr. Now Ranked Twenty-Ninth in California. How’m I supposed to score higher than you? You use words like mulliga— mullinga—”

“—mulligatawny,” Harry offers helpfully.

“Yes! That! I can’t even say it,” Niall groans.

“You’re from Mullingar,” Harry says. “Practically the same word.”

“No it ain’t,” Niall says, “cos one of them is my fucking hometown and the other is some kind of soup with a long name that gets you a million points in Scrabble. There’s a huge difference.”

“It’s alright that you’re bad at this,” Harry says, rubbing comforting circles on his belly, which is not comforting Niall in the least if the over-heightened nerves of his skin are anything to go by. He hisses at the drag of Harry’s fingertips over his jumper. “Not all of us can be champions.”

“You’re not a champion, Haz,” Niall says. “Not yet anyway.”

“But I could be,” Harry says, and his face glows with the fervent confidence of people who go off and fight holy wars. The Joan of Arc of NAPSA. “With my brilliant coach at my side, who’s to stop me from being number one in California?” He pauses, and isn’t that just like Harry as well, to switch from swaggering bravado to secret vulnerability like turning a page in a book. “You don’t mind, do you? Doing all this with me.”

Niall looks up at him. In the dim, watery grotto of the room, moonlight striped through the curtains, he can see how Harry’s hair is starting to grow long enough to curl again. He wonders if Harry’ll grow it out or he’ll keep it this way, the way it was when they first met, this mop-headed lad with green eyes, a wide smile, and big dreams. Niall finds he doesn’t care. It’s Harry. Niall will take whatever he gets.

“Nah, I don’t mind,” he says, swallowing. “C’mon, where’s that board? Let’s play a game. Warm you up for tomorrow.”

“I’m ready,” Harry says. “I’m so ready. Just let me get another drink first.”

:::

“It’s not like I’ve never competed while hungover before,” Harry whimpers the next day.

“That’s the spirit,” Niall says mercilessly. He slaps Harry on the arse. Harry yelps. “Faugh a Ballagh. Go get ‘em.”

:::

The first thing Niall realizes about States is that it’s the biggest Scrabble tournament he’s seen yet. Even though he and Harry’ve been traipsing across California chasing their vocabulary high, the tournaments they’ve registered for are mostly local affairs, drawing the people nearby who can get time off work or family duties to play. Not everyone travels the way Niall and Harry do. Except for States, because everyone’s here. Everyone Niall’s ever heard of in passing, every name Harry’s ever whispered to him with a mixture of fear and awe, belong to one of the people milling by them to take their seats on the folding chairs and begin.

He’s not allowed to get too close to Harry once a game's underway. So Niall… hovers. He bounces on the balls of his feet and watches from a respectable but frustrating distance as Harry slaps the clock on his turns. Niall mutters under his breath things like, “Whilst! 24 points, look” and “Control the board, goddamnit, control the board.”

When Harry ties with Matthew Kirk of Calimesa, Niall clutches at his face.

“Niall Horan watching sports,” Harry says as he follows him to get a water. “I never get tired of it.”

“Shut it,” Niall says. “People think I’m Ruszczyk, remember? I can’t believe you’ve turned me into a Scrabble con man, by the way. Unbelievable.” He punches the buttons on the vending machine and hands the first bottle of Dasani to Harry. “Drink up. You look like you’ve been run over by a lorry.”

“‘m knackered,” Harry whinges.

“Whose fault is that?” Niall shoots back, though he bets his own eyes are as bloodshot as Harry’s after last night and the strip Scrabble game that will remain forever unspoken of.

“Whatever,” Harry mumbles. “You love it, anyway. Being a Scrabble con man.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re a regular Brad Pitt and George Clooney,” Niall says. “Now get your arse back in the game. You’re playing against Ian Chung next. He’s ranked fifteenth. Don’t forget to use your two-letter words when you have to.”

Harry uses his two-letter options his next game and scrapes out a victory against Chung. The look on his face lights up the entire room. They’ve barely managed to stumble away from the game before Niall’s throwing himself at him and hugging him with a whoop. “That’s more like it!” he says. “Keep on playing like that and we’re going up, babes. All the way up to the top.”

Harry breaks out into a chicken dance that devolves into him throwing up his arms and spelling Y M C A. He looks like a bendy pipe cleaner. “s the only dance I know that involves spelling things,” he says when Niall, laughing, tells him to stop making a fool of himself. “C’mon, I’ve got Guy Gillen next. He’s a newcomer. Never seen him play before.”

Harry wins against Gillen. He wins against Duetscher, and Posocco, and Williams, and Moffitt. Niall realizes with a jolt that he’s not even kidding. Harry is shooting up the rankings, giving even the big boys a run for the money. Bloody hell, he thinks, all that practice, all those anagrams, all those late nights spent on Internet Scrabble Club instead of going out on the town and picking up girls — it was worth it. Because Harry’s sweeping the board like a beautiful Scrabble demon, and Niall’s whispering into his ear after every win, like Mephistopheles: you did good, lad, you did good, while Harry shivers.

Then Harry’s playing Lisa.

“Goodfellow,” she says kindly, but her eyes are bright, like she’s laughing at the secret only the three of them know. “Shall we then? Gotta wrap this up and go out for dinner with my son.”

“Don’t let me keep you,” Harry says sweetly. He plays HIKER for 32 points.

Lisa plays CHEVIOT for 30 points.

JAG, for Harry, for 35 points.

Lisa chews the side of a nail and goes for FE, for 30 points.

Harry plays FOP for 26 points. Niall, watching, thinks, so far so good. They’ve been evenly matched and no one’s pulling ahead of each other. But even as he thinks it, Harry reaches his hand into the bag for his next set of tiles and it’s all vowels, nothing he can use to make a word. Lisa plays ZIGS for 44 points, and Harry has to use his next turn to trade in his tiles for new ones. Niall winces when the ones he pulls out aren’t much better. Scrabble’s a game of luck as much as anything else.

And then Lisa starts pulling ahead. EXUDED for 45 points, BLATTERS for 65 points, OUZO for 42 points. Harry plays CRAWL for 20 points, INTONE for 23 points, and MAYHAP for 38 points. Niall can tell the frustration is starting to set in for Harry. He’s not getting the right tiles and also, Niall suspects, he is tired. Lisa’s his seventh opponent already, she’s several spots above him in rankings and experience, and it’s been a long day.

Harry looks over his shoulder at Niall. Lisa doesn’t object or accuse him of cheating. Niall gives Harry a smile and a thumbs up. Harry nods.

Niall clenches his fingers into fists as he watches the rest of the game. He tries to send Harry silent thoughts of encouragement. But it’s like the moment the tides turned, they turned too swiftly and Harry isn’t ever going to catch up. Lisa’s absolutely on point, emptying her tile rack time and again for fifty point bonuses while Harry’s staring at the board and frowning, worrying the rings on his fingers, twisting them round and round in what Niall knows is a nervous habit. Harry’s not happy. He knows he’s going to lose.

Lisa plays REQUIEM for 104 points, and it’s game over. Niall can see the lump in Harry’s throat, the way he’s trying to swallow around it. They were so close, Niall thinks. They were having such a good run. Harry could’ve made it into the semi-finals. He could’ve gone far. The disappointment seeps through him like an intravenous drip.

“You okay?” Lisa asks, peering into his face, and Harry nods.

“Of course,” he says. “Beat me fair and square.”

“Next time you’ll do better,” Lisa promises, and there she goes, darting off to pick up her son. Harry remains in his chair after she’s gone. He summons a deep breath and then looks at Niall, trying to smile.

“Stupid, innit,” he says, “getting so worked up over a game.”

“No, it’s not,” Niall says hoarsely. “You cared about it, worked so hard. It’s not silly at all.”

“Oh,” Harry says.

Niall looks at Harry’s upset face, the crease on his forehead, the wobbliness of his eyelashes. He thinks of riding in a car with him down the freeway listening to podcasts and eating homemade sandwiches. He thinks of lying in bed beside him last night, hunting for the Scrabble board they kicked under the blankets. He thinks of Harry picking him up from the airport after Niall’s last trip and texting him madly because he went to the wrong terminal and isn’t LAX the most confusing labyrinth ever. He thinks of stumbling back after a long night out and finding Harry in the den with a face mask and a bottle of manuka honey. Saved one for you too, he always says, and now Niall thinks, so this is what it’s like.

Funny, isn’t it, that they’ve sung so many songs about this moment, pantomimed it in so many music videos, like they knew fuck all what they were talking about. When it’s only now that Niall knows for the first time, at twenty-three years old in a conference hall with stale air and the sound of tiles clinking all around them, with his heart trying to escape his body.

He stares at Harry. Harry returns the stare with a hitch in his breathing, his expression folded into something pointed and solemn and afraid. Niall suspects they both look terrified. Life-changing emotional epiphanies aren’t supposed to happen to you at statewide Scrabble tournaments.

But then two things sideswipe them: a man with a very familiar face sticks that face in between them, and says, “You’re not Thomas Ruszczyk, I’m Thomas Ruszczyk. And aren’t you those two guys from One Direction? What the hell are you doing here?”

There’s a small crowd of interested people following Thomas. They reach for their phones.

:::

So ends the competitive Scrabble career of Harold Goodfellow.

:::

“It’s alright,” Harry says. “It would’ve happened eventually. I’m surprised we got away with it as long as we did.”

It’s the worst sort of bollocks, Niall thinks, that they’re so famous they can’t have hobbies for themselves. Because pictures of Harry in the Scrabble tournament are all over Twitter now, and fans are already sharing schedules of upcoming tournaments, trying to figure out which ones Harry might be at next.

“There’s always plastic surgery,” Niall says. Harry’s dragged them to an Irish pub a couple of blocks away from the tournament, and he’s picking at his chips but not particularly interested in eating them.

“Ha ha,” Harry says, except he enunciates each word so that it comes out rather breathy. He looks embarrassed. “I mean, there’s always online Scrabble. It’s just as competitive as these tournaments. Even more, if you think about how you have all these international players online.”

“Right,” Niall says, dragging his chip through ketchup.

“And we’re writing albums, and you’ve still got your golf, and I’ll be starting the press circuit for Dunkirk. So it’s not as if we’ll have much free time.”

“Busy as bees, we are,” Niall says dully, except the dullness is really just a coverup for the terror that’s still ringing his ears every time Harry looks at him. “I, erm, need to use the loo. Be right back.” He gets up and climbs over Harry’s long legs, because of fucking course Harry would sit beside him instead of across from him like a normal person. He escapes to the loo and splashes water over his face. Get it together, Horan, he thinks.

When he comes back Harry’s stacked his chips into some sort of soggy chip log house. “Niall,” he says nervously when Niall slides into the booth across from him, and so much for escaping when Harry’s clearly determined that they talk about their feelings.

“Harry,” Niall mocks gently.

“You know we made some meaningful eye contact back there, before Thomas interrupted,” Harry says.

“Meaningful eye contact, that’s my jam,” Niall says. “I’m always going about making sure I have meaningful eye contact with all the creatures of the world. Babies, trees — you name it and I’ve probably had sustained eye contact with it.”

“Number one, that’s a total lie,” Harry says. “You get antsy whenever someone looks at you for too long. ‘s why I think you have the fake glasses.” Niall scoffs — yeah, his glasses are fake but he don’t need Harry reminding the world of it. “It’s a shield for your face.”

“Harry,” Niall interjects before they can get to whatever number two is.

“What?”

“I know you’ve had a shit day,” he begins. “A shitty and emotional day. I think what we really need is to get a hotel room and take a nap before we drive back to LA." He leans back in his seat, nearly bumping his knee into the tabletop. "Clear our heads. Make better decisions tomorrow.”

“Better decisions?” Harry asks coolly. “You mean about the fact we’re in love?”

Niall goes silent.

“We are, aren’t we?” Harry says.

Niall plays with his coaster and tries to make meaningful eye contact with the potted plant by the wall. Harry plucks the coaster away and, after glancing to check no one’s watching, takes Niall’s hands across the table. He plays with Niall’s fingers while Niall sucks in a quick, sharp breath. There’s a fine tremor through Harry’s hands too.

“I was daft not to realize until today,” Harry says. “But that’s what it is, isn’t it? Everything that we do. I’m always waiting for you to come home.” He sounds like he wants to cry. “You’re my home, Niall.”

Niall’s lips are dry. He licks them anxiously. “Yeah, reckon it’s probably love,” he admits.

“Good,” Harry says fiercely. “I’m glad. Would be terrible if I was the only one who felt this way.”

You’re a selfish bastard, Niall Horan, he thinks to himself, because it’s not as if Harry’s done this any more often than he has. He squeezes Harry’s fingers. “You’re not,” he manages to croak. In return Harry gives him the softest smile he’s ever seen, and Niall wants to say, don’t ever stop smiling at me like that. Don’t ever stop or else I might die. He doesn’t say it, though. Talking about this shit is hard enough, he feels like he’s going to have hives.

But Harry’s still smiling, still holding his hands, rubbing his thumb over Niall’s knuckles. Then he decides he wants a chip, so he lets go of Niall to eat one.

“So what now?” Niall asks, watching Harry demolish the house of chips. Apparently being in love makes Harry ravenously hungry.

“I like what you said earlier,” Harry says with his mouth full. “Get a hotel room. Have a kip. Drive back to LA when we’re feeling fresh.”

“Sure,” Niall says. “But, um, after that.”

“After that?” Harry says. “We go home. I do a terrible parking job in the driveway, you snicker at me. Then you can’t find the key in your pockets, and while you’re standing there being a stubborn git trying to find it, I unlock the door and put on the kettle. We don’t bother unpacking our bags, we leave them in the foyer, and we order takeout. I make us watch Love Actually. You fall asleep halfway through and spill your tea over your shirt. I tell you you’re an old man, you tell me I’m a hedge bush with legs.”

“Nothing changes then,” Niall says.

“What’d you think would be different?” Harry asks curiously.

“Well, what about, uh, sex?”

“Mm, right, sex,” Harry says, and his voice sounds scratchier. Deeper. He looks at Niall. Niall stares back, feeling his face flush. It’s ridiculous, is what it is, to feel shy suddenly around Harry. But the look on Harry’s face, it’s like Niall’s told him he can brush his teeth in the shower in the mornings to save time. It’s giddy realization of possibility.

“We don’t have to, if you don’t wanna,” Niall says quickly. “Not everything needs to be about sex! There’s the more important stuff in a relationship, like — like respect, and um, proper household financial management.”

“I’m sure I can somehow find it in me to shag you, Niall,” Harry says dryly. “Pretty sure I can find it in me to do it right now, if you’d like. Over this table.”

Niall turns redder.

Harry laughs. Takes his hand again. It’s sort of gross because there’s salt and ketchup on his fingers, but Niall doesn’t make him stop. Is resigned to the fact that a part of himself would actually enjoy licking it off Harry’s fingers, and it’s somehow the same part of himself that was there yesterday, and the day before that.

“We’ll figure it out,” Harry says. “You know, the thing about romance is… people only get together right at the very end.”

Niall stares blankly. “Isn’t that a quote from Love Actually?”

“I’ve a very small range of experience when it comes to this sort of thing, alright?” Harry huffs. “God.”

:::

“I think we ought to start dating,” Harry decides a few days later, when they’re in bed after an evening at the studio and Niall’s tracing letters over the long, lean line of Harry’s back.

“We already live together,” Niall says, and is proud of himself for saying it so calmly, when every day this week he’s woken up and tried to scream into his pillow, he’s so worried he’ll fuck this up. But Harry’s still in the bed beside him, purring contently and arching into Niall’s hand, so that’s got to count for something. “Doesn’t exactly make sense for you to ask me out to coffee, is it. That would mean having to put on trousers.”

“Oh no,” Harry says earnestly, “this is a no-trousers zone.” He shivers. “Whatcha writing on my back?”

“Guess,” Niall says.

“Okay, um.” Harry closes his eyes. “Scrabble words?”

Niall laughs at him without making a sound. “All words are Scrabble words, Haz. That’s how it works.” He swoops his finger around. “What’s that?”

“MY,” Harry says.

“Got it,” Niall says. He hesitates. “We don’t need to go on a date. Reckon we could stay in bed all day tomorrow. Don’t got any other plans, do you.” Harry turns over to blink at him, and Niall tries his best to look sultry. Know he’s utterly failing at it. Or, judging by the dark flash of Harry’s eyes, maybe not.

“That sounds good. Let’s do that,” Harry says, and Niall hums in relieved agreement as he continues to trace words onto his back, dropping the occasional kiss. Two-letter words, devastating when correctly played, like OX and XO and XI and JO. Harry melts into the sheets as he says Niall’s name, and then sleepily reminds him to check if they’ve turned off the oven. Niall’s nearly positive he did, but Harry seems genuinely concerned about it, so Niall rolls out of bed and goes downstairs to check. When he returns, Harry’s asleep, arm flung out like he was saving a space for Niall to fit.

“Y’know…” Harry says.

“Jesus!” Niall jumps. “Thought you were asleep.”

Harry gives him a crooked smile. “England’s got a Scrabble circuit too. Lots of countries do, actually. We could go deep. Next time I could be the coach and you could be my player.”

“I’ll think about it,” Niall says, pulling the duvet over them.

“Please do,” Harry says. “We’ll chat in the morning, yeah?”

Niall slings a leg over Harry’s hip. Digs his toes into Harry’s side until they warm up, despite Harry’s squirms and half-hearted attempts to push him away. “I’ll be ready,” he says.