Got the sunshine on my shoulders - by: hattalove

chapter eighteen

Niall, it seems, has brought the LA sunshine right along in his suitcase. The hottest days of summer are exceptionally hot while he's there, and he and Harry use them to their advantage - that is to say, they play golf more or less every single day.
Niall is staying at the clubhouse there, which means he's got the entire body of staff wrapped around his little finger within hours, and they're allowed to stay on the green long after everyone else is gone. Harry finds that the tranquility of evenings there has nothing on Los Angeles - it's just him, Niall, the breeze and the sun going to sleep over rolling hills in the distance. It's exactly what he needs to get his mind off of absolutely everything, starting with Marcus and ending with the fact that he's theoretically homeless.

Some evenings, he stays at the club, and some evenings he goes back to Louis's and spends the night going through lyrics and demons Niall has brought him from potential writing partners. It's a relief to be reminded that there's something to go back to, still - that his career is his and his alone, something that he's built and that nobody's going to cheat him out of.

Some nights, Louis joins him, curling up at his desk. They sit on opposite ends of the room, and rarely speak, but the silence between them is always pillow-soft and comfortable. Everything about Holmes Chapel becomes synonymous with calm, with peace.

Which is why Harry is intensely suspicious the minute Niall bursts, panting, into the house, and demands that they go for a pint.

"I don't want to," he says, waving Niall away. He's just stretched out on the sofa with a new sheet of lyrics. "I'm too tired."

"It's four in the afternoon," Niall replies, apparently unwilling to listen to anything that Harry has to say. "I haven't had a beer since I came here, Harry. I'm suffering."

"Ask Louis to go with you," says Harry.

"He's not here."

"Then ask my mum or Robin," Harry sighs, and puts his papers down.

"I can't do that," Niall says, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. He's wearing golf clothes.

Harry sits up, defeated. "Why not?"

Niall looks around, at the empty frame above the fireplace, at Harry's slippers abandoned halfway across the room, out of the window. Anywhere that's not Harry's face.

"I just can't. Let's go," he says, and he doesn't wait for Harry to answer - just walks over to the sofa, physically pulls him up, and pushes him to the stairs. "Put some clothes on."

Harry frowns. "I'm already wearing clothes."

They're an old set of pyjamas, but. Clothes.

"I meant something you can go outside in," Niall says, ruthless in his pristine polo shirt and golf trousers. "I'm waiting on the porch."

For a minute, Harry considers going to bed and pretending to sleep until Niall goes away. As if he was reading his thoughts, Niall presses his face to the window by the front door and makes a face.

"Fine!" Harry yells at him, and reluctantly trudges up the stairs.

Ten minutes later, Niall's looping an arm through his, and all but dragging him through the forest. There had been a rainshower a few hours ago, and the dirt road is still mostly mud, but he doesn't seem to care, marching them straight down the centre of the road, through the gate, and into the village.

And into Jay's, of course.

It's unusually quiet for a Friday afternoon - there's a couple of booths filled in the very back, and a group of kids huddled around the ancient quiz machine, but the tables down the middle of the room are all clean, gleaming, and empty. Niall marches up to the one closest to the bar and sits right down.