Dare To Love

25 - One of Those Days

"When are you gonna trust me with Guinness again?" Niall whined when Liam pointedly passed the bottle over to Louis without asking if he wanted any.

"Never," Liam informed him with a smile. "You still owe me a new rug."

Niall slumped over in defeat, nose scrunched as he seemed to recall that specific detail. They were all gathered in Liam's room as was the case on most Saturday nights. It was refreshing to be able to just sit back with a beer and enjoy the rhythm of the banter of his friends.

"Whose turn is it to get dared?" Zayn asked, pouring Vodka into a plastic cup.

"Not me!" Louis announced proudly.

As though they could've forgotten the fact that he'd gone to class sporting a long neon orange wig for an entire class, with Zayn tagging along to film him. Louis' cheeks had been tinted crimson as students giggled at him while he'd practiced his lines in Romeo & Juliet, he'd even seen his professor fume as he ran his lines with Maia effortlessly. He knew he wanted to fire Louis on the spot, but he couldn't because Louis hadn't done anything wrong.

"Niall hasn't done anything in awhile," Zayn observed, having attempted opera on the quad earlier in the week.

"Harry hasn't either," Louis reminded them, a little tipsy already from taking vodka shots. "The tree was a week ago. We all did a dare since then!"

"Traitor," Harry complained through his laughter as Niall slung an arm around his neck in a show of solidarity, perhaps.

"Okay, how about this," Liam suggested, tossing back the vodka he'd gotten his hands on.

Zayn had already flopped down on the bed, cackling loudly at Liam's proposition. He was too high and drunk to notice Louis' nerves spiking.

"So," Liam went on, rubbing his hands together. "Because Niall and Harry haven't done any dares recently, I dare the two of them to make out."

It would have been absolutely hilarious to Louis if he didn't have any feelings for Harry, and if they'd done the dare earlier during the year. Because now that he'd accepted his feelings, he could already feel the heaviness in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't as though he wished that they'd have dared him to kiss Harry instead, because that was still terrifying and about twenty levels of complicated, but he hated that someone else was going to be kissing Harry. He wanted to be the only one kissing Harry.

This thing with Harry, whatever it was, had been such a reprieve from the loneliness Louis often felt. It had been a patch for the dark, gaping hole inside, the part of him that felt unlovable. It was exciting, refreshing, and riddled with hope. His whole body was a pin cushion, pricked over and over by the thought of someone else kissing Harry. That thought had him sick to his stomach, but that was something to deal with at a later time. Because right now, Harry and Niall were about to make out, and Louis was powerless to stop it from happening. Louis couldn't demand that they stop the dare as though Harry was his boyfriend, because he wasn't.

They weren't official, and they weren't exclusive.

Even if he did know where they stood, and even if he knew that Harry wanted to be with him, no one else knew that they had a thing. No one, aside from Zayn, even knew that Louis was gay.

No matter which way he looked at it, there was nothing he could do.

And even if Harry could read his mind and know that Louis didn't want him to go through with the dare, what could he say to stop it? Nothing valid unless he announced that he and Louis had kissed and had a thing going between them.

There was no way around it.

When he looked up from the spot on the floor he'd been glaring at, green eyes were looking at him intently. There was anxiousness floating in his eyes, maybe he'd ran through everything that Louis just thought about, and realized that there was no way out of the dare.