By Another Name

Chapter 2.

AL.

*2 weeks earlier*

I am floating. We are tubing the Ichetucknee Springs State Park in Florida, in the USA. Friendly tour guides always get us to the places that celebrities really never get to see. Harry is genius with finding people who will take us around and show us how real people in America, or Argentina, or Australia live and what it is they do all day. I have known Harry since 3rd grade, and he is a person who has remained, despite an incredible stroke of luck and brilliance, a lovely person that I adore. He is why I know Tuna. I am floating and holding my love's hand and the sun is bright and warm on my belly and my forehead, and the water is cool and refreshing on my bum and my heels dropped down in the water and frankly, I could do this forever.

"God this is relaxing," he says next to me, our bums stuck together inside a big tire as we float down the crystal river, ever so slowly.

I hear Niall laughing from round the next bend, up with them all as they try and hold on and stay together a bit ahead of Tuna and I.

"My bloody camera!" Harry shouts, and I think God, not another one ruined and chuckle to myself.

"Al, I love having you. I love it. Stay longer," Tuna says to me, watching me with bright clear blue eyes that match the stream, and his thin blue headband that's keeping his rock star locks back from his eyes. "This is so real. This is how we are, you and I. Not held up in a hotel room and playing FIFA"

"Which I just trounced you at, as you know," I throw in.

"All night and ordering room service," he continues. "If this was us, you would marry me wouldn't you?" He's been asking for a year. Almost begging really, and I don't know if it's a competition with Zayn, or if he truly loves me or what. But men need the hunt and the chase, and Tuna does too.

"You don't mean it," I say, and I lean over ever so slightly to kiss him, and he grabs my face and collects my hair underneath my chin and he's never been super gentle, but this does seem a bit rough.

"I would die all the deaths there were for you, Al. I would die, I don't give a shit about any of this, just you," and he crushes his beautiful lips against mine and he pushes his tongue so hard up to my lips that my mouth falls open almost bruised as I match his intensity and his wanting and my breath goes away and his need is right there, immediate.

"Al please, please stay. Don't make me beg you, don't take home far away from me again." And I can hear the ache and I'm pleased. Pleased because it's how I feel most of the time, and have felt for three years. That dullness of being far away, and never being satisfied with the time we have together. And I just know that as soon as we lose that ache, then we've lost ourselves.

I need him to feel the loss when I go and the light when I come. "I want you right now," I say, and he twists around and puts a hand onto my bare stomach and slowly traces circles down to my bathing suit bottoms and into them with his delicate fingers. I put my hand softly over his, and think to myself that photographers are surely hiding in the bushes and this is not okay outside. It feels like I am going to explode with need for him, and I have to stop him, because I don't want to see myself online tomorrow with Tuna's hand down my shorts.

"I'll come back in two weeks, as soon as Mindy and Maeve's shower and wedding is over. That you won't be at, then," I offer quietly into his mouth. He kisses me roughly again, more roughly than usual, really, and I start to squirm, thinking about how I will have him soon when the craziness resumes and we go into the hotel for the night. I fly out at 4am and I intend to go.