Chapter Text
**Author's Note: The ages of the Tomlinson family have been changed to make sense with the storyline. For example, there is only a 3 year age difference between Louis and Lottie Tomlinson. This will not affect the overall plot of the story. Thank you. Also, a playlist has been made and you can listen here**
They say the stars tell a story. Whether that be the story of Cassiopeia, whose vanity left her stuck among the stars. Or the story of Aquila, who would bring the gods water atop Mount Olympus.
Maybe their story would live amongst the stars. Maybe their love would burn brightly above them. Until then, they were just two boys who spent the summer together in the small town of New Castle.
“I cannot believe you’re fucking leaving us for the entire summer. What are we supposed to do without you?” Liam threw back his Coke before setting it back down on the table. They were gathered around the lunch table, the one they had claimed on the first day of school. The entire day had, so far, consisted of moping around about Louis leaving them in two weeks and the lot of them trying to convince their teachers that watching a movie on the last day of school would be far more beneficial than them taking a final.
His family had just bought a house in the small town of New Castle, New Hampshire. Population 981. Where everyone knew the mailman by name, and the waitress at the diner could remember your order every time you went in. Louis hadn’t been to the house yet. Nor had he been to the town. His knowledge of the place was simply from images he found on google and had proudly sent to their group chat to show them the new place.
He was feeling two emotions going into this summer.
1. Excited to be in the new summer house along with doing all his favorite tourist activities, including but not limited to a spectacular 4th of July barbeque that his family always threw for the neighborhood.
And,
2. Absolutely pissed about having to leave his best friends for 3 months.
Luckily for him, it was more so emotion number one. Because a summer away from the anxiety and craziness of the city sounded so fucking nice. But despite all that excitement in his bloodstream, he felt about getting to spend the summer anywhere else, being away from the energy of the city was going to be a weird change for him and his sisters.
“You can still hang out, I just won’t be there,” he paused and looked around at his annoyed friends, “ and we can facetime every day. Promise.” He smiled and nudged his elbow at Zayn to cheer him up.
“Okay boys, we’re going to the bathroom, finish planning Louis’ party,” Brooklyn said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and trotting out of the cafeteria with Gigi in tow.
“Okay, we can throw the party at my house: my family will be gone that weekend for my sister’s graduation,” Liam chimed in. Now that they had established a place for the party, there was just the small matter of obtaining alcohol for the night. They were going to have to depend on Zayn for that: aside from being the only one with a fake ID, he was also the only one who looked even remotely close to being of age. Louis normally looked 15 at best, and that was on a good day. Liam could maybe pass for 19 with a little effort.
Liam and Louis both glanced over at the dark-featured lad and smiled. Zayn immediately knew what they were going to ask. He rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’ll get us the alc. Just pay me back afterward.” The two other boys smiled at that, nodding along while finishing up their food.
Originally, they had planned for their summer before senior year to be filled with countless parties, bonfires, and running around Time Square at 2 am. That was until Louis came walking into their period 2 trigonometry class with the brilliant news that his family had bought a house in some random town called New Castle- and that he would be spending the entire summer there.
Which prompted them to ask,
“ What the fuck is New Castle?”
“Isn’t that in England?”
“Why?????”
“When are you leaving?”
Despite their failed attempts at convincing him to stay, Louis was far too excited and insisted he was going. Because, seriously, what could go wrong in New Castle?
“So, is Eleanor gonna be there?” Louis toed his shoes off as he stepped inside his house, Brooklyn, and Zayn trailing behind him. He and Eleanor had been flirting for the last year and a half. She was beautiful, with long, shiny brown hair that fell the length of her back all the way to her waist with ease. Louis was completely mesmerized by it. Eleanor was his last-ditch effort in finding out if he was 100%, totally and completely gay. Because the flirting was fine, and flirting with girls seemed fine. And maybe he wasn’t gay, and maybe it was just a random moment for him. Well, a few random moments.
The internalized homophobia was definitely more than present with Louis, and his sexuality was in a constant state of denial for him.
“Probably. I mean, she goes to every party. Why are you gonna finally do her tonight? Whatcha got planned Tommo?” Zayn joked. Louis had been telling his friends about Eleanor since the middle of sophomore year when the brunette girl showed up to the end of semester party despite her only transferring to LaGuardia High a week prior.
She had been standing around in the kitchen at the party for 32 minutes before someone finally approached her. Louis. He tried to smoothly pick her up with one of those shitty pick-up lines he had googled while sitting in his bedroom a few weeks before.
Despite him feeling little to nothing with the girl, he decided to keep up the flirting and random interactions since then.
He figured talking about a girl would prevent any suspicions his friends may have. Maybe it would even pull some sort of psychological game on himself to trick him into heterosexuality. (It hadn’t, but he was still holding out on some hope).
“Why not? No better time than now,” Louis smiled. Truthfully he was nervous. Deep down he knew this was a horrible idea to test his "am I gay" theory, and deep down he knew that him flirting and toying with Eleanor in hopes of changing his feelings towards men was quite fucked up.
“I mean, a better time would’ve been a sophomore year. But, to each their own, Lou,” Zayn joked. Louis and Zayn had been best friends since kindergarten, so Louis was used to the teasing and sarcastic jokes they’d make towards one another. Louis was just happy that he and Zayn had lasted being close friends this long.
Louis always worried in the back of his mind that one day Zayn and he wouldn’t be friends at some point. Not because of some big fight or because one of them decided they didn’t like each other, but because one of them would find a new group of friends, and they’d just grow apart as most kindergarten friendships did. For him, Zayn felt like the one constant in his life- and he had a huge fear of ruining that with any newfound information regarding his sexual preferences.
“Shut up, Zayn. Not all of us have high school sweethearts,” Louis rolled his eyes jokingly.
“I do” Brooklyn smiled cheekily. Just like Zayn, Brooklyn was in a happy relationship with Liam. Leaving Louis to, in a painfully obvious manner, sport the proud title that he was the only one in their friend group not in a relationship.
Zayn and Gigi had been together since the 8th grade. They were always meant for each other, and everyone knew it. They were one of those middle school relationships that may actually last. Rare, but if it were to happen to anyone, it would be Zayn and Gigi.
As for Brooklyn, she and Liam had been friends since the 2nd grade and by the time they hit the 5th grade they both had crushes on one another. It only took years of awkward and forced flirting for them to finally start dating at the beginning of the junior year.
Louis always said he wasn’t jealous, but they all knew he was. He was always envious of watching them kiss, watching them be super cheesy and cute to the point where it made Louis nauseous.
He especially hated the const 5th wheeling he was always doing. Whenever they went out together, which was nearly every night, it was always BrooklynandLiam, ZaynandGigi, and Louis. And it seemed to become more and more obvious the longer the relationships lasted.
“No really, this is gonna be the party where I make a move. Been flirting with her a bit now, might actually go for it,” Louis cheesed, showing off his white and seemingly perfect, straight teeth.
“20 bucks says he chickens out,” Zayn laughed. Louis nudged him and rolled his eyes, knowing no matter what he did, his friends would seriously doubt his ability to pursue Eleanor.
“Oh, I’m definitely in on that bet.” Brooklyn fist-bumped Zayn, the two of them smirking.
“Oh, fuck off,” the caramel hair boy barked at them. He grabbed the television remote from his bedside table and flicked on “Criminal Minds,” a staple tv show that he and his friends absolutely adored. It seemed to be one of the few things they watched when they were all together.
Them watching Criminal Minds consisted of Brooklyn and Gigi absolutely gawking over Spencer Reid, Zayn and Liam drooling over JJ, and Louis, well he found himself more attracted to Spencer Reid.
The thought of him liking boys never fully crossed his mind completely until Brooklyn had introduced him to the show and the sexually confused feelings hit him all at once.
It made so many aspects of his life make sense now. Like the time he watched Captain America in the movie theatres with Zayn for the first time, and he nearly got a hard-on when he saw Chris Evans shirtless. It was quite the adventure when he was nervously trying to push it back down and crossing his legs to cover it, prompting Zayn to ask if he was “alright over there?”
It also explained the time when all of them were watching Fight Club and Liam found Marla Singer particularly attractive and all Louis could focus on was Tyler Durden.
Or the time back at their sophomore year Halloween party when Louis just couldn’t stop staring at the captain of the lacrosse team and the bulge he had in his pants. And he couldn't help but note the boy’s ridiculously pretty, perfectly sculpted face.
So yes: Criminal Minds (or more specifically, Spencer Reid) prompted Louis’ gay awakening. But he didn’t plan on telling anyone that. Especially his friends. Louis knew his friends, and he knew that they weren't homophobic. He just didn't want them to look at him any differently after years of friendship.
If he didn’t think too much, he thought coming out could be quite easy. He’d say something like “See that guy over there. He’s hot. Boys are hot. Boys.” Then all his friends would be like, “Oh wow, cool. I kinda figured,” or something like that. But then the more Louis had thought about it, his mind would race with all those stupid what-ifs, and he’d end up convinced he’d have zero friends at the end of it.
Louis shook himself out of his thoughts and dragged himself back to the present. Brooklyn and Zayn were hard at work on their final acting project, and it was about time Louis contributed something. The three of them sprawled on Louis' obnoxiously large king-sized bed with the show playing in the background. No matter how hard he tried to focus, Louis kept occasionally glancing up to stare at Spencer.
“So, I was thinking,” Harry began as he hopped onto the bed. He looked at his two best friends, who looked less than thrilled to see what he had to say. “What if instead of movie night, we go stargazing?”
The silence from Niall and Kennedy was a clear enough answer to Harry: a definite no.
Eventually, Niall piped up, “One more time, I’m gonna add that to the list of things we’re not going to be doing this summer.” He plopped a chocolate chip cookie into his mouth before focusing his attention back on the tv show they had on. Harry may or may not have forced them into doing this before.
“Agreed,” Kennedy said.
“ Pleaseeee, you guys. It’s such a clear night, and I wanna see if I can find Cassiopeia. I promise we can do movie night tomorrow.” Harry put on his signature puppy dog eyes that no one and, especially not Niall, could resist.
Niall turned his head to try and avoid Harry’s glassy eyes and black fluttering eyelashes. Harry jumped around in front of Niall, flaunting the puppy eyes barely 3 inches from his face. Niall failed and quickly caved. “FINE! FINE! We can go if you stop giving me that look, H. God, you look like a sad, lost puppy.”
“Yeah, that was kind of the whole point,” Harry beamed, smiling ear to ear.
“Hold on, don’t I get a say in this?” Kennedy sat up from the bed and gave Niall a good shove before mumbling to him, “Why the fuck did you say yes?”
“I couldn’t resist the sad puppy face, Ken! You know I can’t!” Kennedy only rolled her eyes in response.
Harry loved stargazing. Every night that he wasn’t baking with his mother or watching Mamma Mia with his friends for the 1200th time that week, he went to this spot in the woods to look at the stars. It was the spot that he had found when he was 13 years old, the day his dad had passed away. He had needed to get out of the house and escape, if only for an hour.
He had wandered the small town in circles for ages until he ventured into the woods that were tucked away behind the lighthouse. He walked for 15 minutes before coming upon a small clearing in the wooded area. It had a large rock and soft green grass.
Since that day, it was a place only for him. No one knew about it. Granted, it may have been because the town was so small that no one ever dared to go searching the other side of town for an obscure area. It also may have been because Harry chose a spot deep enough into the woods that no one would be able to hear him scream.
“Okay, so you’re just gonna skip out on Mamma Mia night?” Kennedy pouted, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“No... we’re all gonna skip Mamma Mia night. Plus we’ve seen it a thousand times already” Harry declared. He did love a good Mamma Mia singalong night, but seriously, he didn’t know how many more times he could watch Niall and Kennedy do their own rendition of “Dancing Queen” and still insist their performance was better than Colin Firth. It wasn’t. No one was better than the dancing queen himself, Colin Firth.
Niall looked over at Kennedy and batted his eyes, she groaned before pressing out a shallow, “Fine.”
Harry smirked, proud of himself for getting his friends to agree, even though he knew that all night long he’d only hear complaints from the two of them. He’d put up with it somehow. He always did, after all.
Hours later, Harry was leading his two friends through the woods, quickly weaving in between different trees and bushes.
"Okay, Harry, look. I love you, I really do. But I'm getting increasingly nervous that you might be dragging us out here to commit manslaughter." Niall had a white-knuckled grip on Kennedy's hand, which was making her blush in the dark. The two of them had liked each other since elementary school, but they were both too terrified to make a move. It was painfully, embarrassingly obvious.
This hand-holding that Niall was doing, because he was scared of the dark, was the closest they had gotten to what could be considered “flirting”.
“Yep. You caught me. It’s been my plan all along, Ni. Ever since preschool, I planned on becoming your friend only to one day slaughter you in the woods.” Harry continued leading the way, rolling his eyes as he went.
“See, you said that with a surprisingly straight face and now I’m getting a bit concerned too,” Kennedy added.
Harry laughed and moved a tree branch over with his arm to reveal the final destination. “Welcome. All I ask is to not tell anyone about this place, it’s kind of special to me.” He smiled before spreading out a blanket down on the grass for them to lay.
“Wow, this is actually really nice, Harry.” Niall sat down next to Kennedy on the colorful blanket, “Sooo, now what?”
“We look at the stars,” Harry said with a grin before leaning back onto the blanket and looking up.