Sidelines

Part title

"Fifteen minute warm-up, then we're scrimmaging," He shouts, clapping his hands together and pushing his whistle between his teeth. Liam starts to yell out drills and exercises, shooting pucks to everyone to take a shot. Harry's clearly hungover, movements sluggish and clumsy. Niall is skating circles around the boy, making Harry lift his stick to weakly hit the blond on the head.

Louis has to tear his eyes away when Zayn nudges his shoulder with the butt of his stick, eyebrows raised high. He shakes his head at Zayn's knowing look and takes off to the other side of the rink to retrieve his puck. He's feeling a bit sick, if he's honest, less hungover than just flat out nauseous. He warms up as well as he can in his currently fucked state of mind, but it's far from graceful and far from his best.

When Cowell finally blows the whistle and assigns Liam and Andy to pick teams Louis feels as if he might just hurl all over the ice. Louis hovers behind Zayn, watching almost nervously as Liam and Andy pickily choose awaiting players. Liam picks Niall right away, Andy going for Zayn.

Louis can't decide which would be worse: being Harry's corresponding forward on the same team, or competing against him. He sort of doesn't want to associate with him at all, but in the end they end up on opposing teams. Everyone groans when the realize, a helmet getting chucked in Andy and Liam's direction.

They both shrug in indifference, but Louis catches Liam's brief warning look in both his and Harry's direction.

They huddle together to talk quick, Andy giving Louis a stern look as he talks about not fighting.

Louis doesn't make eye contact with Harry as they position themselves, doesn't actually spare a glance his direction at all.

So it's a bit of a shock when the whistle blows and he almost immediately feels someone knock into as Andy passes him the puck, his side smashing against the wall of the rink.

"Shit," He curses loudly as pain shoots up his ribs, forcing himself to straighten and flit his eyes around the rink. He has no doubts as to who it was, but he can't fathom why Harry would be so quick to try to piss him off so soon after what they did.

Harry's halfway down the rink, dribbling the puck around everyone he passes before Louis even pushes himself off the wall.

He swears to himself again, using the momentum from the wall to push himself towards the pick, firm scowl on his lips.

Zayn is in the goal thankfully and is able to block the shot Harry tries to make, making Louis able to catch up to the curly haired boy.

"Fuck is wrong with you?" He hisses as he steals the puck, hockey stick wrestling with Harry's violently as they fight for it.

"Stuff it up your ass." Harry snaps back, shouldering Louis out of the way.

Louis' so shocked he nearly wipes out, anger and confusion rising in his chest. He follows after him, coming up on his left and swiping the puck as he moves to take another shot, it taking off towards Jake instead ooF the goal. It's all Louis can do to retaliate the second time Harry shoves him into a wall in his attempts to chase the puck. Sometimes he wishes he was capable of biting his tongue or holding himself back from a fight, but even his ridiculous infatuation with Harry doesn't stop him from maintaining his pride.

Louis skates after Harry as he races to the goal, ramming into his back and stealing the puck.

He's not sure why Cowell has yet to call them out, because by now they've committed about ten penalties. The rest of the team won't even go near the two, letting them fight over the puck.

It's only when Harry literally drops his stick and shoves Louis down onto the ice with huge gloved hands that Coach blows his whistle.

"Both of you, out." Cowell screams, the entire rink going quiet. Louis' face flushes hot all the way to the tips of his ears as he pushes himself to his feet. He doesn't bother looking at Harry as he slowly makes his way off the ice, the eyes of his teammates burning into his back.