Chapter Text
“So, Louis,” the interviewer, Bernie, who he met up with at a quiet café round the corner from his house, says, “we’ve talked about your latest book, ‘Hi, my name is Daddy, I’m Louis’, about your life as a father of seven and a professional as well as a husband. I’d like to get some facts down for the spread. Could you just list your children and their ages down one by one?”
Louis nods, even though she doesn’t see it. “Yes, of course,” he says, “should I just start?”
She glances up at him from her laptop and nods distractedly. “Yes, yes, please.”
“All right, well… I’ll start from the oldest. We’ve got Andrew, aged thirteen,” he says, watching her tap her keyboard, “and his twin, Archie. Also thirteen, funny enough.” She doesn’t chuckle. He stifles his grin. “And Ian, aged eleven. Marcus, aged ten. And the triplets, Dev, Daniel and Dean. Three years old, all three.”
“Goodness,” Bernie says, “house full of boys.”
“Yep. More than enough for a family band, as my husband likes to remind them. Not that they’re particularly interested in that, they—” Louis cuts himself off, realising she isn’t listening and that he’s just rattling off about his children like he has a tendency to do. “Anyway, that’s all seven of them.”
She taps for a moment, then looks up at him, eyes a bit narrowed, smile slow. “And, Louis—”
“Yes?” Louis asks, smiling as he watches her work out how to way to phrase the question he’s been waiting for.
“Can you confirm that you and your husband are expecting number eight?” is what she ends up on.
Which is more than fine. He’d been planning to confirm the rumors in this interview no matter what she’d said. He’s three months along and showing, a lot, so it’s beginning to become ridiculous not to publicly address it. Mostly, it’s just been laziness. That, and Harry’s incessant need for privacy or, as he calls it, ‘keeping a sense of mystery’.
“Yes,” Louis says, now, because it’s time, “number eight in the making.”
“Congratulations,” Bernie says, smiling widely, “you’re honestly glowing, I have to say.”
Louis chuckles. “Thanks, it’s just puke-sweat,” he says, just to horrify her, “morning sickness.”
“Right. Right.” She coughs and turns back to her laptop, tapping again. “Do you, ehm— do you know the gender?”
“No,” Louis replies, “no, not as of yet.”
She nods. Can’t have it all. “Well,” she says, closing her laptop and looking up, “congratulations again, Louis. About the little one as well as your sales numbers. It seems you really can have it all, huh?”
Well. When you’re married to a retired rockstar millionaire, Louis doesn’t say. “It does seem that way,” he says instead, “I’m grateful every day.”
*
He walks home because it’s nice weather out and it’s only five minutes. Harry doesn’t like him walking round on his own while pregnant, but Harry doesn’t get a say in the matter and a nice bit of outdoor-exercise never killed anybody. Particularly not in a place like Holmes Chapel. They’ve lived here now for just over eleven years and the worst thing Louis’ experienced in all of that time was an elderly lady forcefully stopping their stroller to ask Harry for an autograph.
No, it’s nice here. Peaceful. Great for the kids, which is undoubtedly the single most important factor in deciding where to live. It’s rare that he misses London these days, but if he ever does it’s nothing that can’t be fixed by a prolonged weekend-trip with the kids up to Niall and Liam’s or Zayn and Perrie’s.
But, that’s rare. He loves it here. He loves the house they chose and made into a home together.
It’s a redbricked three-story one with a dark green roof and a massive garden for the kids to run around in. It’s three streets away from Gemma and James’ place and only two houses over from Harry’s mum, which— well, Anne helps out a lot so Louis can’t complain. There’s a big garage with space for three cars, although they only have two at the moment; the massive minivan that fits the entire family and the new Porsche that Louis tends to drive when showing off for business-related reasons.
He walks up the front path, nearly trips over a mini-motorbike, and then makes it inside in one piece.
When they first bought the house, the walls were burgundy and the floors a rich dark mahogany. They had all the floors redone, a nice smooth light wood instead and the walls painted something Harry referred to as “egg-nog”, as well as the panels painted white. They don’t keep a lot of knick-knacks or framed photo’s because they’ve learnt, from experience, that having vases and glass out on display doesn’t mix well with raising seven sons.
Most of what decorates the house these days is made of plastic. Actionman figures, miniature versions of anything and everything on wheels, foam-bulleted weapons, crayons, lego’s, basically anything designed to hurt like a thousand knives up through the foot if you step on them.
It’s awesome.
“Lou?” Harry calls out from the livingroom, as Louis begins to pull off his trainers whilst being attacked by all their dogs and scratched slow and intently on the back of his calf by the sociopathic cat Harry “rescued” from the streets half a year ago.
“Hiya, darling!”
“Daddy!”
“Hi, love, I’ll be in in a minute, I just have to— fu-lippin’ heck, move aside, boys, move aside.”
Harry comes stumbling into the hall and grabs the grand danes round their middle’s, pulling them backwards, while shoving the three smaller ones aside by his feet.
“Why the fuck do we have so many—”
“Language—”
“Why the flip do we have so many dogs?” Louis pants, finally throwing off his shoes and resting back against the wall. “And why didn’t we neuter that horny bastard over there before he made offspring? Look at the that little shit,” he says, pointing to the grand dane’s puppy, “a week from now, he’ll be taller than me.”
“Well, that’s not exactly a huge accomplish—”
“I knew you were going to say that,” Louis hisses, and Harry laughs. “I hate you.”
“Mhm,” Harry says, finally making way over to Louis as the dogs lose interest and pad back into the other room. He rests one hand on the small of Louis’ back and the other on his baby bump, leaning in to sniff his neck and then kiss his lips. “Hate you too, darling,” he murmurs into Louis’ mouth, “soon as this last baby’s out, you’ve out-played your role and you can leave.”
“S’funny, you said that before the last four ones, too,” Louis murmurs back, smoothing his hand over Harry’s hair and resting it at the back of his head.
When one of the triplets yanked on Harry’s hair so hard he accidentally knocked his forehead into the corner of a table, he ran up into the loo and insisted he was going to buzz it all off. Louis almost cried at the thought, so Harry left it long on the condition that Louis learnt how to french braid. Now it’s always tightly pinned back, hanging in one thick braid down his back. If there’s one reason to want the kids to grow up a little faster, it’s that Louis wants to be able to rake his fingers through Harry’s lovely hair again.
“How was the interview?” Harry asks, face rested in Louis’ neck. Harry’s always tactile, but when Louis’ pregnant it’s on a whole different level. He needs to touch, hold, pet, wants to be as much part of the experience of the pregnancy as a non-carrying partner can.
“Was good. Went great. She was nice.”
“That’s great,” Harry hums, hand slipping up under Louis’ shirt to pet his belly, “how’s baby?”
“Good, good, she’s just chilling out in there.”
“Or he,” Harry says.
“It’s a she,” Louis insists, “I can feel it.”
“You’ve said that with literally every single one of our sons,” Harry replies.
“Yeah, and I’m bound to be right one of these times.”
Harry’s eyes go wide and bright. “One of these times. Does that mean we’re—”
“No, Harry, that does not mean we’re having more than eight bloody children, jesus. Unless you wanna carry them, of course.”
“I do,” Harry exclaims, “if I could, I would,” he says and he isn’t even lying. He’s obsessed with everything baby. Louis once bought him a weight-realistic strap-on baby bump while pregnant and ended up having to secretly bin it because Harry grew way, way too fond of wearing it.
They head into the livingroom where they find Anne, since she tends to come around every day, sitting on the carpet with Dev in her lap. Daniel and Dean are fighting over who gets to sit in the diver’s seat of their miniature-car.
“Andrew’s brought a girl home from school,” Harry says after having split them apart, bopping a whimpering Daniel in his lap while Dean drives off across the livingroom.
“Has he rea— shit,” Louis hisses, when Dean drives over his foot, at which Harry and Anne exclaim language in unison, “my apologies,” Louis sighs, “has he really?”
“Really, what?”
“Brought a girl home?”
“Oh.” Harry tugs his sleeve over his own wrist and wipes drool off of Daniel’s chin, “yeah. They’re up in his room. Sweet girl. Daughter of that woman who works at the bank, I think. What’s her name, you met her at the play, the one with the blonde hair, she—”
“Oh, the pretty one. Right. Well, if the mother’s any indication of the daughter, he’s done well for himself, the little charmer.”
Harry grins. “I let them go up on their own,” he says, “I thought about telling them to keep the door a bit open or something, but… I don’t know. I mean, at thirteen I was always told to keep the door ajar, but that didn’t stop me from—” his gaze flicks over Louis’ shoulder and meets Anne’s. “I mean, from not doing anything, so. At all.”
Anne laughs. “From what I’ve seen, you two are lucky with yours so far. Harry was a right bastard.”
“I was good, mum, I didn’t even have a drink till I was fourteen.”
“Mate, we broke into my parents liquor cabinet and nearly died at eleven.”
Harry gives Louis a sharp look. Anne just laughs.
“Anyway,” Harry says, “Ian’s at the footie trials and Archie’s sleeping over at Tim’s place and Marcus is doing homework - at least that’s what he said he was going up to do. I better go have a look, he said he had a lot of reading to do.”
“No, let me,” Anne insists, “I wanna barge inconveniently in on Andrew and his girlfriend, it’s been so long since I’ve done something like that.”
She puts Daniel down, who then crawls into Louis’ lap instead, and puts his little head on the baby-bump.
“You hear anything, buddy?” Louis asks, petting his soft caramelbrown hair. “Is the baby talking?”
“Yes!”
“What’s it saying?”
He steps back and looks up at Louis, wide-eyed and grinning. “It’s saying,” he throws his arms out, “I’m a girl!”
“Is that so?” Louis glances over at Harry and raises a brow at him, “well, isn’t that just funny.”
*
Harry makes a big pot of spaghetti-bolognese for dinner while Louis kicks a ball around in the garden with the triplets to build up their appetites.
“I don’t like you playing ball when you’re pregnant,” Harry says as Louis helps him set their ten-seater diningroom table. “It doesn’t feel safe.”
“It’s fine, the ball is, like, ninety percent air, it’s made for the pool,” Louis assures him, but Harry still stops him to feel the belly and nose into his neck and ask if baby’s okay a few hundred times. Louis puts the triplets in their chairs and fights the battle of keeping them seated while Harry goes upstairs to get the big boys down.
Andrew’s girlfriend leaves just before Louis gets to catch a glimpse of her, but it’s just as well because that means they get to tease the hell out of his rosy-cheeked face all throughout dinner. Lovingly, of course.
“I heard noises,” Marcus says from the end of the table, eyes glinting manically, “from their room, I heard noises.”
“Yeah, me too,” Ian chimes in, “that’s why I didn’t do any of my homework, it was bloody impossible.”
“Shut up,” Andrew grits out, gaze on his plate, cheeks burning red, “shut up, shut up, shut up.”
Harry chuckles. “Okay, ease off now, lads, leave Andrew be,” he says, and Andrew looks thankful, but only for a second before Harry adds, “he’s had a very draining day.”
“Dad!”
*
Late in the evening, when the triplets are finally down, as well as the rest of the kids - unless they’re staying up to read with a flashlight under the duvet or watch dirty videos on their phones, of course, but that’s none of Louis’ business - Harry and Louis get ready for bed.
Well, Louis is flossing and Harry is attempting to place a pair of headphones around Louis’ babybump.
“It’s too small still, Harry, I won’t work,” Louis groans, “and besides, do you really think the baby’s gonna be able to pick up on the tunes at this stage already?”
“You’d be surprised,” Harry mutters, turning off the classical music he’d found on the iPad with hunched shoulders, “I’ll try again in a week or two.”
“You do that, daddy,” Louis says, and then throws his floss at him, “catch!”
He doesn’t catch. It lands on the floor and Harry bends down to pick it up and, yeah. Still, after all these years. Yeah.
“Come to bed, babe.”
Harry flicks off the last of the lights save for the ones on the nightstand and slips in beside Louis. Louis draws him close soon as he can and fits their mouths together. Harry hums appreciatively and they kiss, slow and sloppy, for a while. Eventually, Harry crawls down to say goodnight to the baby and Louis undoes his braid while he’s at it.
“Come up to me,” Louis says, digging his fingers in, finally, his favourite part of the night, and pulling Harry back up. Harry goes easily, nosing into his neck and breathing him in, cupping his belly and licking at him.
“I can’t get over how you smell when you’re pregnant,” he’s saying, rolling Louis onto his side and fitting around him from behind, “I can’t stop touching you.”
“You never can.”
“That… is not entirely untrue.”
Harry’s mouthing at the scar on the nape of Louis’ neck when he arches into him, twists his head a little and asks, “fuck me?”
“Yes please,” Harry gasps, and Louis laughs and then Harry begins to pull down his boxers and then the door gets opened.
“Fuck.”
Louis yanks his pants back up and Harry’s already jerked up to sit. “Andrew,” he’s growling, “what have we told you about knocking?”
“Sorry,” Andrew says, voice so small and timid that Louis sits up too.
“You all right, pal?”
He nods at the floor, but doesn’t look like it. His chocolate curls hang over his eyes and he’s wringing his hands.
“Darling?” Harry asks softly, “if there’s anything you want to talk about, you know you can. You can talk to us about anything in the world.”
He nods again, biting his lip. Harry and Louis sit quietly, having learned that - as opposed to his twin Archie, who needs constant and relentless probing and poking at to ever open up about anything - the best way to get Andrew to talk is just to give him time.
“Uhm,” he does say, eventually, lifting his head, but not making eye-contact, “this is really— I’m just really— I just want to, uhm. Maybe, you guys could get me a doctor’s appointment?”
“Yeah, sure. For what, love?”
“Fuck.”
“Language.”
“Flip,” Andrew corrects, “uhm, so— so, uhm. So, I think I’ve got an STD.”
Harry and Louis both still.
“I just— ehm, there’s this weird, uhm. This weird, like, thing on my— fuck, I don’t want to talk to you guys about this, can I just get a doctor’s appointment, I think there’s something wrong with my penis?”
Louis’ chewing on his nail now, unsure of what to say. When Harry doesn’t say anything either, he spits his nail out and forces himself to say; “yeah, of course we’ll get you an appointment if something looks wrong, love. But— you know you can’t actually get an STD if you haven’t had sex with someone, yeah?”
Andrew bites his lip. Oh.
“So, you— okay. Okay,” Louis rambles. He’d never want to shame his kid for being naturally curious. Hell, Louis knows Harry lost his virginity at a ridiculously young age, too. But, still. It’s his baby. And he’s thirteen. “Okay, well, of course, yeah, we’ll call the doctor in the morning. And don’t worry about it, lad, it’s probably nothing.”
Andrew nods, but still doesn’t look convinced. “Okay,” he says, “okay, yeah. Thanks, dads.”
“No problem, lad.”
Andrew glances nervously over at Harry, then back at Louis, then nods again and then turns to leave.
“Wait,” Harry calls out then, “uhm.”
“Yeah?”
“When did you first notice this— weird looking thing?”
Andrew glances over at Louis again, and then back at Harry and then at the floor. “Like, when, eh— well, we haven’t had proper sex or anything, but when we’ve been kissing and stuff. And when she’s been doing— stuff. During and after, there’s this, eh— like, this kind of… swelling. At the base. And it’s really, eh— weird-looking and sensitive.”
And— oh.
Harry tilts his head, a slow smile spreading over his lips. “That’s nothing to worry about, darling,” he sighs fondly, “nothing to worry about at all.”
“But— does this mean that— cause I was thinking, but I didn’t want to suggest that, but— maybe that I’m—”
“Yeah,” Harry says, “yeah, I think you might be. So— congratulations. Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk, just you and I, yeah? About precautions and protections and ways to cope with certain stuff and... Any questions you might have.”
Andrew nods, smile beginning to tug at the crooks of his mouth. He pushes his shoulders back. “So, if— if I’m alpha, then— then Archie is too, in’he? Cause we’re identical and they said at school that identical twins are always the same breed, so.”
Harry nods. “Yeah. That’s what it means, then.”
“Should— can I tell him?”
Harry glances over at Louis and then back at their son. “Why don’t you let him figure it out for himself, yeah?”
“Okay. All right,” Andrew says, a little disappointed, but still jittery with excitement, “all right, so— okay. Thank you. Thank you, I’ll— I’m going to bed now.”
He turns, but Harry stops him with a soft call of his name.
“Yeah?”
“I know this is incredibly exciting, but I just wanted to remind you,” he says, “this doesn’t in any way determine who you are or what kind of a person you’re meant to be. You can be anything in the world that you want to be and you’ll never be wrong for it, whether you’re alpha, omega, beta or a bloody chipmunk, it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re kind to others and true to yourself, you’re exactly how you’re supposed to be. Okay?”
“Okay,” he says, still jumping in his spot a bit, “I love you both.”
“We love you too, darling. Goodnight.”
“Congratulations!” Louis calls after him, just before the door closes and he’s speeding off down the hall.
Louis plops back onto his back on loud sigh. “Bloody hell.”
“Yeah,” Harry agrees, dropping down beside him, “thought we handled that pretty all right.”
“You handled it brilliantly, Haz.”
Harry lifts one of Louis’ slack hands and high-fives it. “That was one.”
“Only seven more to go.”
*
A week later, they’re at the most exciting ultrasound appointment so far.
“So,” the doctor says, rubbing the cool gel on Louis’ bump, “are you interested in knowing the gender?”
Harry and Louis exchange quick looks and then nod. “Yeah, we want to know.”
The doctor smiles as the ultrasound appears on the screen and she begins to look around.
“But honestly, we couldn’t care less either way,” Harry begins to say, “if it’s another boy, we’ll be elated. If it’s our first girl, we’ll be elated. It doesn’t matter,” he rambles, “— and honestly, like, what even is gender? You can’t tell what someone identifies as through genitalia alone, that’s just a social construct that—”
“It’s a girl.”
Harry nearly jumps out of his chair. “Oh my god, are fucking kidding me, oh my god!” he exclaims, “Lou, we’re having— we’re having a little girl, we can— we can paint the nursery pink and put her in little dresses and bows and— oh my god, we’re having our first girl.”
“Yeah,” Louis cry-laughs, “or, I suppose we won’t know until she’s old enough to tell us what she identifies as, right?”
“Right,” Harry mutters, nodding quietly, “right.”
“We’re having a baby girl, Haz.”
Harry’s eyes beam right back up again. “We’re having a baby girl!”
They hug and kiss the doctor far too much before finally leaving the room, buzzing with excitement. First they’re going to tell Anne because she’s back home babysitting the triplets now anyway, then they’re going to tell Gemma and the lot, and then they’re going to call Lottie and then—
And then Louis sees something that makes him stop dead in the middle of the waiting-room.
In the corner of the room, on a blue plastic chair with a paper-mug of coffee in his hand, sits Colin. He’s in a plaid button-down and he’s grown his beard out, a nice trimmed layer framing his jaw. He’s put on a bit of weight and his black hair isn’t all black anymore, sprinkled with grey all over. He’s with someone, a young blonde man, holding his hand and laughing at something he’s just said.
It’s been ten years since Louis’ last seen him and he looks the happiest he ever has.
“Lou,” Harry mutters, leaning into him, “isn’t that—”
Colin looks up and directly into Louis’ eyes then. His face falls. Louis’ throat goes dry.
He begins to move before he realises it, and soon he’s standing close enough to say, “fancy seeing you here.”
It’s absurdly casual, but Colin just laughs, tilts his head back and says, “fancy that, huh.”
He introduces them to his husband, Felix, a young kindergarten-teacher whom he moved to Cranage for two years ago and is now going through fertility treatments with. They talk for a bit, but run out of things quickly. It doesn’t feel uncomfortable, though. It just feels like life. They aren’t the same men they were fourteen years ago and there’s nothing left to talk about. They’ve outplayed their roles in one another’s lives, and yet Louis feels grateful for this little encounter. For seeing that Colin is happy, that he’s found someone too, and for looking into the eyes of the man he once knew better than anyone and finding that the feeling is reciprocated. Finding something along the lines of I’m happy to see that you ended up happy, and it’s okay that it wasn’t with me.
“Have a good day,” Louis says just before they part ways, and it feels like have a good life. The smile Colin replies with tells him the same.
They’re sitting in the car, pulling out of the parking lot when Harry says; “they looked happy.”
“Yeah,” Louis says, “his husband. Felix. Was he beta or—”
“Omega,” Harry says, and glances over at him after a moment, “seems you weren’t all that wrong about beta-omega relationships after all. It’s just about finding the right one.”
“Yeah,” Louis says, pulling his hand in and threading their fingers together, “it really is.”
*
“Oh,” Felix says, when Colin’s just told him who it was they just awkwardly small-talked with. “My god.”
“Yeah,” Colin says. It’s been more than ten years since he’s last seen Louis. He’s still just as stunning as he was at fifteen.
Felix turns to catch another glimpse of Louis and Harry, but they’ve just left.
“Wow,” he sighs, turning back to Colin, “are you all right?”
“Of course.”
Felix takes his hand and smiles. “Well, it’s nice he’s found someone.”
“Yeah,” Colin says, and squeezes Felix’s hand.
Of course, Felix doesn’t know the full story. He doesn’t know about Harry, or those months that Colin fought through with them, he doesn’t know more than what Colin’s told him. That he left when he fell out of love. And then, many years later, he met Felix and he fell into love for the first time since. The part of it that matters is the truth.
The full truth, Louis doesn’t even know. But it doesn’t matter now.
When Colin left all those years ago, he was just as in love as he’d been the very first time he saw Louis. At the time, he didn’t think he ever wouldn’t be. He’d been willing, ready, to keep trying for the rest of his life to make things work, but when he sat down with Louis that last night they had together, and told him he’d been cheating with the man that’d knotted him against his will and Louis didn’t even react, he knew. There was nothing left to fight for. Louis was going to stay for as long as Colin let him, but his heart had left a long time ago.
Lying to him to let him be happy was the hardest thing Colin ever did.
For years after, he was convinced he’d never love again. He’d resigned himself to that fact, he’d accepted it. He made partner and he made a name for himself career-wise, he got a new dog and had a lot of great sex with a lot of different people. But the part of him that fell in love still belonged to Louis. Even if it wasn’t requited. Even if Louis loved someone else.
And then he met Felix.
And slowly, but surely, he weaved his way into Colin’s heart. Showed him what it felt like to have someone fight for him. Showed him what it felt like to have someone love him back just as fiercely as he loved them. Showed him what it felt like to be enough.
“Was it weird seeing him?” Felix asks him after a while of silence, “did it feel— I mean, you were married.”
Colin looks at him and smiles. “No,” he says, and then leans in and kisses the love of his life, “I’m just happy that he’s happy too.”