only fools rush in
harry/louis, 4233 w.
(also on ao3)
Louis spends the whole afternoon after he comes back to his apartment cleaning. He regrets the day he has left for his vacation thinking that leaving a couple of apples on the counter was no big deal, and now he has to deal with a kitchen full of flies, not to mention the dirty socks laying on his bedroom's floor, along with a Beatles t-shirt he thought he had lost. He hates his past self, really.
No one has been there for weeks, his flatmate Gemma on holiday somewhere posh with her family, and Louis back in Doncaster to realise, once again, that his sisters are growing up fast and he is missing out on their lives and maybe he shouldn’t have moved in London, but somewhere closer to home.
Gemma is back that evening, calling for help as soon as she opens the door, and Louis stands up from his bed where he was laying, exhausted, and goes help Gemma with her luggage, a big brown bag he takes from her, before she could dislodge her shoulder.
“Thanks, you know I love you,” Gemma says, as Louis follows her back to her bedroom.
“How was your trip?” Louis asks. She moved in with Louis not long before she left for her vacations, so there are still boxes around and the walls are empty, the signs on the wall where Greg’s posters used to be still visible.
“Spain?” Right, in Spain. “Beautiful, really fascinating. You know how Franco’s dictatorship ended last year? You can see they’re still rebuilding it, like time stopped somewhere along the 30s. Me and Harry wanted to know better but sadly not many people spoke English there. You know that people in Barcelona couldn’t even speak in their language, Catalan?” Gemma slumps into her chair, after taking off the backpack she was still carrying. And she complained, right before leaving, that she wasn’t bringing enough stuff with her, go figure.
“Did you hear me saying ‘please tell me all about the geopolitical situation in Spain’? Because I forgot I did, honestly.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Gemma says, hitting Louis on his left forearm.
“It was a pleasure to help you,” Louis jokes.
“Yes, yes, thank you very much, Louis Tomlinson, you are the light of my life, now leave me alone because I need to go take a shower and change into clean clothes, I’m so sweaty.”
“What’s with you today and this urge to share with me every single, painful detail?” She rolls her eyes at him, so Louis leaves the room, heading to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea.
“There’s a box of biscuits in my backpack my mom baked for you, go take them before I change my mind and eat them myself!” Gemma shouts before she closes the bathroom door, and Louis doesn’t wait a moment too long before going back to Gemma’s room. He does feel a bit like he’s intruding, although the room itself is still impersonal and it doesn’t seem that Greg is gone and there’s now a new person there. Greg left not long before the summer, moving in with his girlfriend, and Louis had to find a new flatmate. He wasn’t close with Gemma, but they knew each other because they had a couple of friends in common, Zayn and Liam, and Gemma had coincidentally just broken up with her boyfriend, with whom she lived.
Louis opens the zip of the backpack, which is completely full, and a couple of things fall on the ground. Two Polaroids - bloody posh, the Styles and their photos, Louis thinks - one of Gemma with who he supposes are her parents, and another one of Gemma with a boy. They look alike - same dimpled smile, for starters - so he must be Harry, the famous brother she is always going on about. Now Louis understands why, maybe not for the same reasons she does, okay, but he is beautiful, with an half-opened shirt with the most improbable print Louis has ever seen in his life, and curly hair and Louis is falling in love with a picture. He puts both Polaroids on Gemma’s desktop and takes the biscuits box out. And if he does take a final glimpse at the picture of Gemma and his brother, no one really has to know.
*
Louis comes back to the apartment after his lunch shift at the restaurant he works in exhausted. He figures things will get better when classes will start again and he won’t be able to pick so many shifts as he does now, but for the moment he has to save as much money as possible. Gemma is on the couch, a record playing in the background, Carole King, Louis thinks, as he absent-mindedly hums Natural Woman, while he plops down on the couch next to her.
“I wish I could have your life, Gems. Days spent on the couch, listening to music while not having to worry about not having enough money to cover the rent.” Gemma ignores him, busy looking through some photographs she’s holding in her hands.
“My pictures from Spain,” she explains, before Louis has time to ask. “I haven’t taken many, but I asked my brother and my parents if they could send me some of theirs. Harry is quite good, I reckon. Oh, here he is, the knobhead,” she says, as she shows Louis a picture of Harry. It is not from the same day as the Polaroid one, because in this photo, he’s wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt. He was caught mid-sentence, Louis figures, because he has a funny expression, and his left arm is raised, his index finger pointing to something behind the person that is taking the photo.
“How old is he?” Louis asks, completely disinterested, as Gemma shows him another picture, this one of a random old woman smiling to the camera.
“He’s starting Uni this year. In Manchester. He turns nineteen in February.” The record stops playing then, and Gemma gets up to turn it on the other side, carefully putting the needle on the vinyl. “Do you want a tea?” She asks then, while Louis registers the fact that he will never have the chance to declare his love to Harry Styles because he decided not to study in London like his sister. Louis will write a book about it, the love through pictures that never was, that will surely be a best-seller. So he won’t have to be a waiter ever again to pay his rent.
*
The phone is ringing. Louis knows it cannot be too early in the morning because of the light filtering through the curtains, so he can’t really get mad to whoever is calling (probably his mom, who’s always worried about him), but Louis worked ten hours the day before and he is exhausted. He hopes that Gemma will take the call, but then he realises that Gemma has early classes on Wednesday so she’s not home. He drags himself to the hall where their phone is, luckily his mom is always patient and doesn’t hang up.
“Hi?” He says.
“Hi. Sorry, were you sleeping?” The voice, definitely not his mom’s, on the other side of the phone asks.
“Uh. Yes. Kind of. Had a long shift yesterday,” Louis answers before thinking that the stranger probably doesn’t care about his work. “Who am I speaking with?” He asks, then.
“It’s, uh, Harry. Gemma’s brother. You must be Louis, the famous flatmate.” Oh, fuck. He even has a beautiful voice.
“Yes, the one and only,” Louis says.
“So. Is Gemma home?” Oh. Gemma. Right.
“No, she’s not, sorry.” The line goes dead for a second. “Harry?”
“Oh. Yes. Sorry. Well. Tell her I called then, okay? Have a nice day, Louis.”
“I will. And you too, Harry. Bye.” Louis hangs up, and he promises himself to always be the one to answer the phone from now on.
*
It’s a Saturday, September now coming to a close, when Harry is mentioned again. Louis has a late shift and he’s unsuccessfully trying to study, but there’s Zayn who has insisted on coming over and brought some of his jazz records. He wants to convince Louis to go with him to a concert.
“Honestly, Zayn, can’t you ask Liam? Anyone else who isn’t me?” Louis asks, sighing dramatically. “And I wouldn’t be good company, anyway. I’d fall asleep after two songs.” Zayn is about to say something when Gemma enters the living room.
“My brother told me to say hi, Lou,” she casually says, sitting on the armchair. “I think he might like this music, Zayn. Unlike this illiterate here.”
“Oi! Show some respect, remember you would be homeless without me!” Louis protests, and then he registers that Harry has mentioned him. The words on the book sitting on his lap don’t make any sense anymore, so he throws it on the ground before getting up and taking out Zayn’s jazz record from the player.
“Arsehole,” Zayn mutters. “Can we trade him for your brother?” He asks Gemma then, as Louis puts Sticky Fingers on.. He lived with Zayn first year at Uni, and he listened to it so much that Louis knows how much his friend hates it. As predicted, as soon as the first track starts to play, Zayn groans and leaves the room.
Gemma sings the songs along with Louis, both of them as loud as they can, not caring much about their intonation.
"I hate you both!" Zayn shouts from the kitchen, where he locked himself in. Louis is not even thinking about Harry mentioning him anymore. Maybe. Just a little.
*
The phone rings as Louis is staring into the fridge. He is hoping that, if he stares long enough, the fries he's longing for will magically appear out of nowhere, but it is not working. Louis closes the fridge and goes answer the phone, Gemma out somewhere with a friend (Louis suspects she has a date but didn't want to tell him).
"Louis!" The voice on the other side of the phone says. "How are you?"
"Harry. I'm doing great, but the fridge is not magically creating the food I want to eat. Hope you're not facing the same struggles." Harry chuckles.
"No, here in Manchester we're all already equipped with magical fridges. You should come take a look." He should what? This is, like, the fourth time (not that Louis is counting) they're talking. And, except the first one, the other two ones were more along the lines of is Gemma home? Are you okay? Okay, bye. They're now on a whole new level of confidence and Louis had no idea about it.
"Oh. Uh. Yes. I'd love to," Louis says, because why not. It doesn't come out as confident as he hoped for, but Harry softly laughs and that's enough to make him feel better.
"Is Gemma home?" Harry asks then.
"Uh, no. She's out with a friend."
"A friend," Harry repeats, his tone suspicious.
"That's the official version. I'm quite positive it is a date, but she won't tell me anything."
"Right. So uh -" But Louis interrupts him before Harry can say goodbye, again.
"I have an important question for you. Do you really like jazz music?" He asks, the first thing that pops into his mind. Harry ends up talking for ages about his favourite records - some Louis is sure Zayn has made him listen to - and Louis decides to be honest and say he's not a fan although he went to a concert a few days before (because he couldn't say no to Zayn, in the end, and Liam pretended he had a shift at work, which, honestly, was a lame excuse but Louis was stupid enough not to use it too). By the time the conversation turns on Frank Zappa, "because he has a lot of jazz influences, and if you like Frank Zappa why don't you like jazz, Louis?", his stomach is grumbling and Louis realises they have been talking for a while and he still has to eat.Harry must come to the same conclusion because he says, "not to be rude or anything, but I don't want to spend my whole money on phone bills", and they're saying goodbye after that. Louis walks back to the kitchen and sadly notices that those fries still aren't there. He cooks some pasta instead. By the time he's done, without thinking about it twice, he heads to Liam and Zayn's apartment to ask them if they think it could be possible to fancy someone you don't even have met in person. He is asking for a friend, of course.
*
It’s the 4th of November when Louis receives a letter from Harry. They have been talking regularly now, but he honestly wasn’t expecting this.
"Louis!
Letters are cheaper than phone calls. And there are lot of times I realise I forgot to tell you loads of things after I hang up. I hope that you don't mind this - I'm not crossing a line, right? I'm angry at Gemma for not telling me she has such interesting friends."
There is then a long digression on a book Harry loved and was sure Louis would like too (he has read it already, and Harry isn't wrong. He loved it). There are descriptions of funny scenes that happened at Uni, some even with doodles on the side. "I'm sorry, I can't draw." But Louis finds them adorable all the same, and by the time the two pages letter is over, he is sad there isn't more.
He writes back immediately, telling Harry he read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath already, and discussed in class last year, and by the time he's done Louis has written three pages, with no doodles because his drawing skills are worse than Harry's, and goes post it along with another one he wrote to his sister Lottie, who's always complaining they don't talk to each other enough.
After that, they write to each other often, and Louis manages to take the mail every time before Gemma realises about their correspondence, and by the time December begins she still has no clue about it.
"I went to see the Woodstock movie last night at a theatre not far from my flat. I own the vinyl (which Gemma has tried to stole several times), but I had never seen the movie before. It made me kind of sad. You see all these kids, all together because of a single, easy and pure thing (and I know what you're thinking: drugs. Yes of course,also that, but I want to be poetic here!!!!), MUSIC." Harry underlined the world music four times with so much vehemence that there's a tiny hole in the paper, Louis notices. "And they are there, far from the real world, far from the Vietnam War, and they think this thing, this concert, can change the world, right? Can make people understand that we're all the same and that music brings us together. But, the truth is, it has been seven years and nothing has changed. They all went back home, and that was it. I started thinking that maybe they're now working in banks, corporate jobs, wearing a suit, maybe still daydreaming about those days, but in the end, they didn’t end up much differently than our parents, right?? Sorry. It's just that it makes me sad seeing it and thinking that nothing really changed.”
All Louis wants to write back is a gigantic I THINK I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU.
*
"Harry's coming over next weekend. I don't know why he was being so insistent about coming to London."
It’s the 6th of December, and the city is now full of Christmas lights. The weather is cold, but the lights and the general atmosphere make Louis feel warm inside, as cliche as it may sound. He loves Christmas and he can’t wait to go back home to his family.
Louis asked Gemma if they wanted to meet after class to go to the Christmas market, and they're both having a hot cocoa with whipped cream while walking down the street. Kids are screaming and jumping around, their parents looking quite exasperated and not feeling the Christmas mood at all. For a second Louis thinks about his mom probably wearing a similar expression on her face at that very moment.
"I have no idea," Louis says then, looking intently into his mug. He’s not lying, not really. He’s not that presumptuous to think that Harry wants to go to London just because of him.
"Whatever the reason is, I'm glad you're finally meeting him. I'm sure you two are going to get along," Gemma says cheerfully and Louis smiles at her, hoping she doesn't notice his face burning despite the zero degrees. He would blame it on the hot cocoa, anyway.
The next day, Harry calls. Gemma is out on a date (this time, she admitted it was a date), and Louis is glad to finally hear his voice again. Now that they're always writing each other, they hardly ever speak on the phone. Louis is grinning like a child on Christmas day, and he has no idea how he is going to hide his obvious crush when Harry is going to be in front of him. Gemma is going to find out after two seconds, and that is because Louis is being optimistic. After a couple of minutes of useless pleasantries, I’m happy you’re coming to London, can’t wait to show you around town, Louis hangs up and realises that Harry has no idea how he looks like. It has crossed his mind a couple of times before, of course, he wanted to attach a picture of him to one of his letters, but it felt a bit too forward.
Harry is coming to London in ten days. And he has never, ever seen Louis, not even in picture. He plops on his bed, staring at the ceiling. What if Harry finds him ugly and what if Louis has misread his signals, what if Harry likes girls and only wants to to talk with him about Frank Zappa and Woodstock and what if they don’t get along in person?
Three million what-ifs later, Louis has to go to work. He hates his life.
*
There's I can't help falling in love by Elvis playing on the jukebox when they enter the pub. Louis pretends not to notice and sits at their usual table. They all met not long before, and all go inside as soon as Louis and Zayn are done smoking, and now Gemma and Harry are talking animatedly about something, while Zayn and Liam are busy discussing problems about their flat, they have to call the plumber, a tap needs to be fixed. Something by the Beatles plays next. Louis hates whoever picked the songs, so he excuses him self and gets up to pick a Zeppelin song, or really, any song on the list that doesn’t talk about love. When he comes back to the table, Niall, a friend and also a waiter there, is already taking orders. Louis doesn't have to say anything because he always drinks the same beer, while Liam is always the undecided one. Zayn, the sophisticated arsehole, takes brandy. When all their drinks come, Harry insists on paying for everyone, and they all protest but let him anyway in the end.
Harry's hair are longer than they were in the picture Louis saw from the summer, and he looks even more beautiful. He still makes terrible choice when it comes to shirts, today he’s wearing a red one with blue flowers. And his eyes are so green and they light up when he's talking about something he likes, and he sings along almost all the songs that play on the jukebox, not caring about being out of tune and he’s not even drunk. Harry just doesn’t care. Louis' song plays half an hour later, and Harry looks at him and says "that's a good choice" and Louis wants to ask why Harry knows but he has lost his ability to speak. He then engages on a conversation with Zayn about a jazz ensemble they both saw live.
"You were there too Lou, remember?" Zayn teases him, because he knows that Louis doesn't remember because a. Since he saw Harry, his brain melted b. he forgets about the jazz concerts Zayn brings him to the second he is out of the venue.
After they all order a second round (this time, Liam pays), Harry asks Louis if he wants to go with him to the jukebox to help him choose a song. Zayn winks at Louis as he gets up, and Louis pretends not to see him. He regrets the day he told Zayn and Liam about Harry. It’s not like Louis hasn’t noticed the funny looks they are both giving to him and Harry since the beginning of the evening. They’re not being as smug as they think they are, the bastards.
Harry goes through the song titles written on the jukebox and Louis stands next to him, thinking about something clever to say. His sense of humour has left him the moment Harry has shaken his hand outside the pub. Even Harry, who’s really verbal when it comes to his letters, is now standing there, sighing and turning to Louis as if he’s about to say something and then turns back to the jukebox, as if he has to take the hardest decision of his life.
“You, uh, you’re beautiful” Harry mumbles, finally pressing the button for the song he chose. “This jukebox is too big, my pub has about ten songs I can choose from,” he adds then. He turns to Louis , smiling, and he cannot believe Harry is acting all normal after what he said.
“You too,” Louis says. He has no idea what song Harry has chosen, because Louis was too busy staring at him, but he doesn’t ask and he walks back to the table before he snogs Harry in front of everyone.
Everything else about the evening is a confused blur in Louis’ mind, all he remembers are those three words Harry muttered earlier. And when I Can’t Explain by The Who plays on the jukebox, Louis just knows. He knows that it was Harry’s choice at the jukebox earlier.
It is midnight when they’re back home. Liam has a shift early morning so, in the end, they all decide to leave together. Louis is in bed, and has no idea how late it is when Harry knocks on his door. “Can I come in?” he asks, voice not too loud.
“Sure,” he answers, the door creaks open and Harry comes in, closing it behind him. With the faint light filtering through the curtains, Louis has no idea what he’s wearing, and he wonders if even Harry’s pyjama has a floral pattern on it.
“Can’t sleep.”
“Isn’t our couch comfortable enough?” Louis jokes, and when he notices that Harry is standing still near the door, he tells him to sit on the bed. Louis sits upright, realising he’s wearing his teddy bears pyjama. It was a gift from his mom, and he wears it ironically.
“No, it’s really comfortable,” Harry says as he sits on the edge of the bed, not a hint of humour on his voice. “It’s that I can’t stop thinking about this person in the other room.”
“I didn’t know you and your sister were so close.” His humour hasn’t left him forever, Louis can’t help but think.Harry chuckles, shaking his head. He shifts closer to Louis then, and before Louis knows it, Harry is cupping his cheeks with his hands and is coming closer, and his lips are on Louis’s before he can register it. It is everything Louis has been waiting for since September, since he saw that picture for the first time, really, and now, he’s paralysed. Harry must notice because he pulls away.
“Sorry, I thought - I mean, your letters and tonight -”
He wants to say that it’s not that. That maybe he has fantasised so much about this moment that now that everything is coming true he can’t believe it, but what comes out of his mouth is “It’s not that! It’s that I am wearing a Teddy Bear pyjama.” And Harry first has a disbelieving look on his face, before he burst into laughter, an hand on his mouth as tries not to be too loud.
Louis is laughing along with him, and by the time they’re both serious again, he’s the one who leans in and kisses Harry, and this time neither of them is taken aback, both very much into it. And a while later Louis doesn’t have to worry anymore about his teddy bears, because Harry takes his pyjama off.
Louis has no idea what it is going to happen after Harry is going to leave and they won’t be in the same town, but for the moment, as he’s laying in his bed with a naked Harry right next to him, he’s happy, like he hasn’t been in a long while, that kind of happiness Paul McCartney writes songs about, and that’s all that matters.
(also on ao3)
Louis spends the whole afternoon after he comes back to his apartment cleaning. He regrets the day he has left for his vacation thinking that leaving a couple of apples on the counter was no big deal, and now he has to deal with a kitchen full of flies, not to mention the dirty socks laying on his bedroom's floor, along with a Beatles t-shirt he thought he had lost. He hates his past self, really.
No one has been there for weeks, his flatmate Gemma on holiday somewhere posh with her family, and Louis back in Doncaster to realise, once again, that his sisters are growing up fast and he is missing out on their lives and maybe he shouldn’t have moved in London, but somewhere closer to home.
Gemma is back that evening, calling for help as soon as she opens the door, and Louis stands up from his bed where he was laying, exhausted, and goes help Gemma with her luggage, a big brown bag he takes from her, before she could dislodge her shoulder.
“Thanks, you know I love you,” Gemma says, as Louis follows her back to her bedroom.
“How was your trip?” Louis asks. She moved in with Louis not long before she left for her vacations, so there are still boxes around and the walls are empty, the signs on the wall where Greg’s posters used to be still visible.
“Spain?” Right, in Spain. “Beautiful, really fascinating. You know how Franco’s dictatorship ended last year? You can see they’re still rebuilding it, like time stopped somewhere along the 30s. Me and Harry wanted to know better but sadly not many people spoke English there. You know that people in Barcelona couldn’t even speak in their language, Catalan?” Gemma slumps into her chair, after taking off the backpack she was still carrying. And she complained, right before leaving, that she wasn’t bringing enough stuff with her, go figure.
“Did you hear me saying ‘please tell me all about the geopolitical situation in Spain’? Because I forgot I did, honestly.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Gemma says, hitting Louis on his left forearm.
“It was a pleasure to help you,” Louis jokes.
“Yes, yes, thank you very much, Louis Tomlinson, you are the light of my life, now leave me alone because I need to go take a shower and change into clean clothes, I’m so sweaty.”
“What’s with you today and this urge to share with me every single, painful detail?” She rolls her eyes at him, so Louis leaves the room, heading to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea.
“There’s a box of biscuits in my backpack my mom baked for you, go take them before I change my mind and eat them myself!” Gemma shouts before she closes the bathroom door, and Louis doesn’t wait a moment too long before going back to Gemma’s room. He does feel a bit like he’s intruding, although the room itself is still impersonal and it doesn’t seem that Greg is gone and there’s now a new person there. Greg left not long before the summer, moving in with his girlfriend, and Louis had to find a new flatmate. He wasn’t close with Gemma, but they knew each other because they had a couple of friends in common, Zayn and Liam, and Gemma had coincidentally just broken up with her boyfriend, with whom she lived.
Louis opens the zip of the backpack, which is completely full, and a couple of things fall on the ground. Two Polaroids - bloody posh, the Styles and their photos, Louis thinks - one of Gemma with who he supposes are her parents, and another one of Gemma with a boy. They look alike - same dimpled smile, for starters - so he must be Harry, the famous brother she is always going on about. Now Louis understands why, maybe not for the same reasons she does, okay, but he is beautiful, with an half-opened shirt with the most improbable print Louis has ever seen in his life, and curly hair and Louis is falling in love with a picture. He puts both Polaroids on Gemma’s desktop and takes the biscuits box out. And if he does take a final glimpse at the picture of Gemma and his brother, no one really has to know.
*
Louis comes back to the apartment after his lunch shift at the restaurant he works in exhausted. He figures things will get better when classes will start again and he won’t be able to pick so many shifts as he does now, but for the moment he has to save as much money as possible. Gemma is on the couch, a record playing in the background, Carole King, Louis thinks, as he absent-mindedly hums Natural Woman, while he plops down on the couch next to her.
“I wish I could have your life, Gems. Days spent on the couch, listening to music while not having to worry about not having enough money to cover the rent.” Gemma ignores him, busy looking through some photographs she’s holding in her hands.
“My pictures from Spain,” she explains, before Louis has time to ask. “I haven’t taken many, but I asked my brother and my parents if they could send me some of theirs. Harry is quite good, I reckon. Oh, here he is, the knobhead,” she says, as she shows Louis a picture of Harry. It is not from the same day as the Polaroid one, because in this photo, he’s wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt. He was caught mid-sentence, Louis figures, because he has a funny expression, and his left arm is raised, his index finger pointing to something behind the person that is taking the photo.
“How old is he?” Louis asks, completely disinterested, as Gemma shows him another picture, this one of a random old woman smiling to the camera.
“He’s starting Uni this year. In Manchester. He turns nineteen in February.” The record stops playing then, and Gemma gets up to turn it on the other side, carefully putting the needle on the vinyl. “Do you want a tea?” She asks then, while Louis registers the fact that he will never have the chance to declare his love to Harry Styles because he decided not to study in London like his sister. Louis will write a book about it, the love through pictures that never was, that will surely be a best-seller. So he won’t have to be a waiter ever again to pay his rent.
*
The phone is ringing. Louis knows it cannot be too early in the morning because of the light filtering through the curtains, so he can’t really get mad to whoever is calling (probably his mom, who’s always worried about him), but Louis worked ten hours the day before and he is exhausted. He hopes that Gemma will take the call, but then he realises that Gemma has early classes on Wednesday so she’s not home. He drags himself to the hall where their phone is, luckily his mom is always patient and doesn’t hang up.
“Hi?” He says.
“Hi. Sorry, were you sleeping?” The voice, definitely not his mom’s, on the other side of the phone asks.
“Uh. Yes. Kind of. Had a long shift yesterday,” Louis answers before thinking that the stranger probably doesn’t care about his work. “Who am I speaking with?” He asks, then.
“It’s, uh, Harry. Gemma’s brother. You must be Louis, the famous flatmate.” Oh, fuck. He even has a beautiful voice.
“Yes, the one and only,” Louis says.
“So. Is Gemma home?” Oh. Gemma. Right.
“No, she’s not, sorry.” The line goes dead for a second. “Harry?”
“Oh. Yes. Sorry. Well. Tell her I called then, okay? Have a nice day, Louis.”
“I will. And you too, Harry. Bye.” Louis hangs up, and he promises himself to always be the one to answer the phone from now on.
*
It’s a Saturday, September now coming to a close, when Harry is mentioned again. Louis has a late shift and he’s unsuccessfully trying to study, but there’s Zayn who has insisted on coming over and brought some of his jazz records. He wants to convince Louis to go with him to a concert.
“Honestly, Zayn, can’t you ask Liam? Anyone else who isn’t me?” Louis asks, sighing dramatically. “And I wouldn’t be good company, anyway. I’d fall asleep after two songs.” Zayn is about to say something when Gemma enters the living room.
“My brother told me to say hi, Lou,” she casually says, sitting on the armchair. “I think he might like this music, Zayn. Unlike this illiterate here.”
“Oi! Show some respect, remember you would be homeless without me!” Louis protests, and then he registers that Harry has mentioned him. The words on the book sitting on his lap don’t make any sense anymore, so he throws it on the ground before getting up and taking out Zayn’s jazz record from the player.
“Arsehole,” Zayn mutters. “Can we trade him for your brother?” He asks Gemma then, as Louis puts Sticky Fingers on.. He lived with Zayn first year at Uni, and he listened to it so much that Louis knows how much his friend hates it. As predicted, as soon as the first track starts to play, Zayn groans and leaves the room.
Gemma sings the songs along with Louis, both of them as loud as they can, not caring much about their intonation.
"I hate you both!" Zayn shouts from the kitchen, where he locked himself in. Louis is not even thinking about Harry mentioning him anymore. Maybe. Just a little.
*
The phone rings as Louis is staring into the fridge. He is hoping that, if he stares long enough, the fries he's longing for will magically appear out of nowhere, but it is not working. Louis closes the fridge and goes answer the phone, Gemma out somewhere with a friend (Louis suspects she has a date but didn't want to tell him).
"Louis!" The voice on the other side of the phone says. "How are you?"
"Harry. I'm doing great, but the fridge is not magically creating the food I want to eat. Hope you're not facing the same struggles." Harry chuckles.
"No, here in Manchester we're all already equipped with magical fridges. You should come take a look." He should what? This is, like, the fourth time (not that Louis is counting) they're talking. And, except the first one, the other two ones were more along the lines of is Gemma home? Are you okay? Okay, bye. They're now on a whole new level of confidence and Louis had no idea about it.
"Oh. Uh. Yes. I'd love to," Louis says, because why not. It doesn't come out as confident as he hoped for, but Harry softly laughs and that's enough to make him feel better.
"Is Gemma home?" Harry asks then.
"Uh, no. She's out with a friend."
"A friend," Harry repeats, his tone suspicious.
"That's the official version. I'm quite positive it is a date, but she won't tell me anything."
"Right. So uh -" But Louis interrupts him before Harry can say goodbye, again.
"I have an important question for you. Do you really like jazz music?" He asks, the first thing that pops into his mind. Harry ends up talking for ages about his favourite records - some Louis is sure Zayn has made him listen to - and Louis decides to be honest and say he's not a fan although he went to a concert a few days before (because he couldn't say no to Zayn, in the end, and Liam pretended he had a shift at work, which, honestly, was a lame excuse but Louis was stupid enough not to use it too). By the time the conversation turns on Frank Zappa, "because he has a lot of jazz influences, and if you like Frank Zappa why don't you like jazz, Louis?", his stomach is grumbling and Louis realises they have been talking for a while and he still has to eat.Harry must come to the same conclusion because he says, "not to be rude or anything, but I don't want to spend my whole money on phone bills", and they're saying goodbye after that. Louis walks back to the kitchen and sadly notices that those fries still aren't there. He cooks some pasta instead. By the time he's done, without thinking about it twice, he heads to Liam and Zayn's apartment to ask them if they think it could be possible to fancy someone you don't even have met in person. He is asking for a friend, of course.
*
It’s the 4th of November when Louis receives a letter from Harry. They have been talking regularly now, but he honestly wasn’t expecting this.
"Louis!
Letters are cheaper than phone calls. And there are lot of times I realise I forgot to tell you loads of things after I hang up. I hope that you don't mind this - I'm not crossing a line, right? I'm angry at Gemma for not telling me she has such interesting friends."
There is then a long digression on a book Harry loved and was sure Louis would like too (he has read it already, and Harry isn't wrong. He loved it). There are descriptions of funny scenes that happened at Uni, some even with doodles on the side. "I'm sorry, I can't draw." But Louis finds them adorable all the same, and by the time the two pages letter is over, he is sad there isn't more.
He writes back immediately, telling Harry he read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath already, and discussed in class last year, and by the time he's done Louis has written three pages, with no doodles because his drawing skills are worse than Harry's, and goes post it along with another one he wrote to his sister Lottie, who's always complaining they don't talk to each other enough.
After that, they write to each other often, and Louis manages to take the mail every time before Gemma realises about their correspondence, and by the time December begins she still has no clue about it.
"I went to see the Woodstock movie last night at a theatre not far from my flat. I own the vinyl (which Gemma has tried to stole several times), but I had never seen the movie before. It made me kind of sad. You see all these kids, all together because of a single, easy and pure thing (and I know what you're thinking: drugs. Yes of course,also that, but I want to be poetic here!!!!), MUSIC." Harry underlined the world music four times with so much vehemence that there's a tiny hole in the paper, Louis notices. "And they are there, far from the real world, far from the Vietnam War, and they think this thing, this concert, can change the world, right? Can make people understand that we're all the same and that music brings us together. But, the truth is, it has been seven years and nothing has changed. They all went back home, and that was it. I started thinking that maybe they're now working in banks, corporate jobs, wearing a suit, maybe still daydreaming about those days, but in the end, they didn’t end up much differently than our parents, right?? Sorry. It's just that it makes me sad seeing it and thinking that nothing really changed.”
All Louis wants to write back is a gigantic I THINK I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU.
*
"Harry's coming over next weekend. I don't know why he was being so insistent about coming to London."
It’s the 6th of December, and the city is now full of Christmas lights. The weather is cold, but the lights and the general atmosphere make Louis feel warm inside, as cliche as it may sound. He loves Christmas and he can’t wait to go back home to his family.
Louis asked Gemma if they wanted to meet after class to go to the Christmas market, and they're both having a hot cocoa with whipped cream while walking down the street. Kids are screaming and jumping around, their parents looking quite exasperated and not feeling the Christmas mood at all. For a second Louis thinks about his mom probably wearing a similar expression on her face at that very moment.
"I have no idea," Louis says then, looking intently into his mug. He’s not lying, not really. He’s not that presumptuous to think that Harry wants to go to London just because of him.
"Whatever the reason is, I'm glad you're finally meeting him. I'm sure you two are going to get along," Gemma says cheerfully and Louis smiles at her, hoping she doesn't notice his face burning despite the zero degrees. He would blame it on the hot cocoa, anyway.
The next day, Harry calls. Gemma is out on a date (this time, she admitted it was a date), and Louis is glad to finally hear his voice again. Now that they're always writing each other, they hardly ever speak on the phone. Louis is grinning like a child on Christmas day, and he has no idea how he is going to hide his obvious crush when Harry is going to be in front of him. Gemma is going to find out after two seconds, and that is because Louis is being optimistic. After a couple of minutes of useless pleasantries, I’m happy you’re coming to London, can’t wait to show you around town, Louis hangs up and realises that Harry has no idea how he looks like. It has crossed his mind a couple of times before, of course, he wanted to attach a picture of him to one of his letters, but it felt a bit too forward.
Harry is coming to London in ten days. And he has never, ever seen Louis, not even in picture. He plops on his bed, staring at the ceiling. What if Harry finds him ugly and what if Louis has misread his signals, what if Harry likes girls and only wants to to talk with him about Frank Zappa and Woodstock and what if they don’t get along in person?
Three million what-ifs later, Louis has to go to work. He hates his life.
*
There's I can't help falling in love by Elvis playing on the jukebox when they enter the pub. Louis pretends not to notice and sits at their usual table. They all met not long before, and all go inside as soon as Louis and Zayn are done smoking, and now Gemma and Harry are talking animatedly about something, while Zayn and Liam are busy discussing problems about their flat, they have to call the plumber, a tap needs to be fixed. Something by the Beatles plays next. Louis hates whoever picked the songs, so he excuses him self and gets up to pick a Zeppelin song, or really, any song on the list that doesn’t talk about love. When he comes back to the table, Niall, a friend and also a waiter there, is already taking orders. Louis doesn't have to say anything because he always drinks the same beer, while Liam is always the undecided one. Zayn, the sophisticated arsehole, takes brandy. When all their drinks come, Harry insists on paying for everyone, and they all protest but let him anyway in the end.
Harry's hair are longer than they were in the picture Louis saw from the summer, and he looks even more beautiful. He still makes terrible choice when it comes to shirts, today he’s wearing a red one with blue flowers. And his eyes are so green and they light up when he's talking about something he likes, and he sings along almost all the songs that play on the jukebox, not caring about being out of tune and he’s not even drunk. Harry just doesn’t care. Louis' song plays half an hour later, and Harry looks at him and says "that's a good choice" and Louis wants to ask why Harry knows but he has lost his ability to speak. He then engages on a conversation with Zayn about a jazz ensemble they both saw live.
"You were there too Lou, remember?" Zayn teases him, because he knows that Louis doesn't remember because a. Since he saw Harry, his brain melted b. he forgets about the jazz concerts Zayn brings him to the second he is out of the venue.
After they all order a second round (this time, Liam pays), Harry asks Louis if he wants to go with him to the jukebox to help him choose a song. Zayn winks at Louis as he gets up, and Louis pretends not to see him. He regrets the day he told Zayn and Liam about Harry. It’s not like Louis hasn’t noticed the funny looks they are both giving to him and Harry since the beginning of the evening. They’re not being as smug as they think they are, the bastards.
Harry goes through the song titles written on the jukebox and Louis stands next to him, thinking about something clever to say. His sense of humour has left him the moment Harry has shaken his hand outside the pub. Even Harry, who’s really verbal when it comes to his letters, is now standing there, sighing and turning to Louis as if he’s about to say something and then turns back to the jukebox, as if he has to take the hardest decision of his life.
“You, uh, you’re beautiful” Harry mumbles, finally pressing the button for the song he chose. “This jukebox is too big, my pub has about ten songs I can choose from,” he adds then. He turns to Louis , smiling, and he cannot believe Harry is acting all normal after what he said.
“You too,” Louis says. He has no idea what song Harry has chosen, because Louis was too busy staring at him, but he doesn’t ask and he walks back to the table before he snogs Harry in front of everyone.
Everything else about the evening is a confused blur in Louis’ mind, all he remembers are those three words Harry muttered earlier. And when I Can’t Explain by The Who plays on the jukebox, Louis just knows. He knows that it was Harry’s choice at the jukebox earlier.
It is midnight when they’re back home. Liam has a shift early morning so, in the end, they all decide to leave together. Louis is in bed, and has no idea how late it is when Harry knocks on his door. “Can I come in?” he asks, voice not too loud.
“Sure,” he answers, the door creaks open and Harry comes in, closing it behind him. With the faint light filtering through the curtains, Louis has no idea what he’s wearing, and he wonders if even Harry’s pyjama has a floral pattern on it.
“Can’t sleep.”
“Isn’t our couch comfortable enough?” Louis jokes, and when he notices that Harry is standing still near the door, he tells him to sit on the bed. Louis sits upright, realising he’s wearing his teddy bears pyjama. It was a gift from his mom, and he wears it ironically.
“No, it’s really comfortable,” Harry says as he sits on the edge of the bed, not a hint of humour on his voice. “It’s that I can’t stop thinking about this person in the other room.”
“I didn’t know you and your sister were so close.” His humour hasn’t left him forever, Louis can’t help but think.Harry chuckles, shaking his head. He shifts closer to Louis then, and before Louis knows it, Harry is cupping his cheeks with his hands and is coming closer, and his lips are on Louis’s before he can register it. It is everything Louis has been waiting for since September, since he saw that picture for the first time, really, and now, he’s paralysed. Harry must notice because he pulls away.
“Sorry, I thought - I mean, your letters and tonight -”
He wants to say that it’s not that. That maybe he has fantasised so much about this moment that now that everything is coming true he can’t believe it, but what comes out of his mouth is “It’s not that! It’s that I am wearing a Teddy Bear pyjama.” And Harry first has a disbelieving look on his face, before he burst into laughter, an hand on his mouth as tries not to be too loud.
Louis is laughing along with him, and by the time they’re both serious again, he’s the one who leans in and kisses Harry, and this time neither of them is taken aback, both very much into it. And a while later Louis doesn’t have to worry anymore about his teddy bears, because Harry takes his pyjama off.
Louis has no idea what it is going to happen after Harry is going to leave and they won’t be in the same town, but for the moment, as he’s laying in his bed with a naked Harry right next to him, he’s happy, like he hasn’t been in a long while, that kind of happiness Paul McCartney writes songs about, and that’s all that matters.