Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Mate, I don’t wanna go out today,” Louis whined, pulling his beanie down lower to cover his eyes. “I feel like shit and I’ve got stuff to do.”

Niall gave him a look that said what could possibly be more important than football and yanked Louis off the couch. “You’ve said that all week Lou. I wanna play so we’re going to play.”

You see, Niall can be very persuasive. And by ‘persuasive’ he means pushy and annoying as fuck until Louis finally gives in just to get him to shut up.

“Go put on some sweats or something, god.” He crinkled his nose up. “Fuck you smell like shit. Take a shower.”

“Wow,” Louis said, rolling his eyes. “Way to sugar coat it, Ni. Don’t want to hurt my feelings too badly or anything.”

“Yeah, okay.” Niall’s indifference about everything will be the death of him, Louis swears. “Talk to me when you’ve burned off that layer of filth.”

Louis took a shower, taking his time to scrub (using Niall’s prized loofa) his body with his favorite wash (it’s called Beautiful Day and it fucking smells like it too).

When he left the bathroom, he made sure to wrap himself in Niall’s towel out of spite and use his hair gel.

Finally after thirty minutes and a lot of whining from Niall, they made their way out to the park. “Zayn’s meeting us,” Niall informed him as he tossed the ball up into the air. The ball went a little further than expected (“the fucking wind caught it, man”) and Niall chased after it into the street.

“I’m not coming to your funeral,” Louis told him once Niall stumbled back onto the sidewalk. “Because you will get hit by a fucking car one day.”

“You really wouldn’t come to my funeral?” Niall asked, looking like a kicked puppy. Louis shook his head seriously. “I would come to yours, you know. Even if you did something stupid.”

“So. You know it’s stupid and you keep doing it anyway. I see no logic in that.”

“You don’t see the logic in anything,” Niall countered, placing the ball on the grass now that they’ve reached the park. “You’re just as crazy as I am, maybe even more.”

Louis ignored him in favor of finding Zayn, who was leaning against the no smoking sign smoking. He is the literal definition of ‘fuck you’. Louis doesn’t know if that’s a thing, but if it is, it’s got Zayn fucking Malik written all over it.

“One day you’re going to get arrested,” Louis informed him smugly.

Before Zayn could respond (probably with some snide remark involving a literary reference that will take Louis days to figure out) Niall cuts in, bouncing the football against Louis’ forehead. “Ignore him; he’s being especially twatish today.”

Louis smiled at him sweetly. “Get back to me when you can use real words, mate.”

Niall just shrugged (because he cares about two things in life: beer and women, neither of which Louis are) and tossed the football to him.

“Two on one?” He eyed Zayn hopefully, but Zayn only glared at him and he sighed. “One on one,” he corrected dutifully. Louis doesn’t know why he tries, the only form of exercise that Zayn does is flipping the pages of books and raising his cigarette to his lips, and even those he does at the pace of a snail.

Louis set off in search of some pine cones for them to use as goal markers while Niall bummed a fag off Zayn.

“You know,” he says conversationally when he gets back to his friends, “I’m pretty sure that I’m gonna beat your ass.”

Niall grinned. “No I’m gonna beat your ass!”

“I’m gonna beat your ass!”

They giggled until a woman with two kids walked by, mumbling something about ‘hooligans’.

Whatever.

“Alright, I think we both know how this is going to end,” Zayn said after the other two boys had quieted down.

“Yeah, Niall’s probably going to break something or his knees will start actin’ up.”

“Hey!” Niall yelled, smacking Louis’ arm. “It’s a genuine problem!”

Louis ignored him and plucked the ball out of his hands. “Let’s do this Ho-ran.”

“You’re on Tomlin-sucksdick.”

“That’s not even a good one!”

“It is if it’s true,” Zayn cut in, his lips quirking up into what could almost be misconstrued as a smile as he gave Niall a high-five.

Louis just grinned and ran out onto their makeshift field.

~*~

Three hours and two wins (by Louis, obviously) later, they’re down to their final game.

“Why are we even playing this?” Louis wondered aloud, panting as Niall retrieved the ball.

“You said best two of three!” Niall called back. “This is three!”

“I’ve already won two games, Niall! It’s over!”

When Niall returned he had a pout on his face that could rival Zayn’s. “You said three,” he mumbled and here he goes again with the kicked puppy look.

“Ugh, fine.”

Niall grinned, his face brightening considerably. “Yay!”

He and Niall walked to the center of the field and they bumped their foreheads together. “You really wanna do this again?”

“Fuck yeah,” Niall mumbled, sweeping the ball out from between Louis feet before Zayn even yelled ‘go’ (they didn’t have a whistle).

“That’s cheating!” Louis shouted, jogging to catch up.

“Cheaters always win,” Niall sing-songed over his shoulder, dropping the smug act when he saw how close Louis was.

“That’s not how the saying goes,” Zayn informed him from the sidelines.

“Fuck you!” Niall’s always good at coming up with witty comebacks.

Louis pushed Niall out of the way and stole the ball back.

“Hey!”

Louis didn’t say anything, just dribbled the ball back down the field, and shooting it between the pinecones. “And the Tommo scores again,” Louis shouts, dropping to his knees dramatically and making little AHH noises to sound like a crowd cheering.

“You’re getting it,” Niall informs him with a smirk as he watches it drop down a hill.

Louis isn’t so good with thinking things through.

He sighed and got up off the ground, wiping the dirt from his knees even though it was pretty pointless, what with the damp grass covering the rest of his body.

“Have fun with that,” Niall said, walking backwards in the direction of Zayn. “I’ll be up here, not chasing after a ball.”

Louis frowns and starts walking down the hill. “At least I could kick it!” He calls over his shoulder as an afterthought.

He ignores the stares he gets because it was a pretty late afterthought, now that he’s almost to the base of the hill and Niall’s already talking to Zayn.

Whatever.

Louis finds his ball. It’s sitting in the hands of a guy with curly hair who’s looking around, confused.

“Mate!” He calls, jogging over to the guy, who’s now looking up at the sky like god was asking after a kickaround. “Over here!”

The boys turns to look at Louis and he’s briefly thankful that he’s friends with Zayn so he’s used to hot people.

Because. Damn.

He’s kind of beautiful.

“Yours?” The guy asks, standing up and tossing the ball back and forth between his (massive) hands. Okay, his voice was not supposed to be that deep.

“Sorry, I didn’t- it went- how was I-“ He frowned at his lack of ability to string together a coherent sentence. “I overshot.” There. That was pretty good, considering.

“It’s fine, I guess I needed something to wake me up.”

“Oh shit-“ Great. He thinks of words and they’re expletives. With his luck, he’s probably just ruined this guy’s innocence or something. “Did I hit you? I’m so sorry.”

Louis instinctively grabbed the guy’s face and turned it side to side, looking for any injuries.

Once he got his wits back he jerked his hands down, cheeks flushing. “Sorry, force of habit. My flatmate’s accident prone.”

The guy only grinned and Louis thinks that there are probably people in this world who have never seen this smile and he feels really bad for them. “It’s fine, not every day that I get some hot guy accosting my face.”

Louis snorts. “I would hardly call that accost- did you just call me hot?”

“Why don’t you let me take you to dinner and I’ll tell you,” the guy counters, dimples making an appearance and okay. Louis was not prepared for dimples.

Louis takes a deep breath and forces his face into a look of careful indifference. “You’re just full of pick-up lines and confidence today, aren’t you?”

The guy smiles sweetly and leans down to whisper in his ear filthily, “It’s not the only thing I wanna be full of.” And. Wow, okay. Louis doesn’t have to worry about the whole innocence thing then.

“You don’t even know my name.” Louis doesn’t even try to come up with a smart remark about it.

“I figured I could just call you Angel.” Seriously did this guy fall right off the ‘smooth side’ of tumblr, what the fuck.

Louis backed away slowly, wiggling a finger at the guy. “I’m not that easy,” Louis informed him. (Yes he is, but he likes to pretend he’s not.) He knows guys like this. He’s been with guys like this. He’s been a guy like this. They’re called players and they have that name for a reason. They play the game, they play the field, they play everything with two legs and a nice ass. And although Louis fits nicely into that last category, he’s not really in the mood for a fuck and chuck.

Dimples clutches his heart, looking hurt, but the grin on his face says otherwise. “I’m Harry!” He calls to Louis who was more than a few feet away at this point.

“I’m not gonna be another name on your list!” Louis shoots back before turning on his heel.

He kind of regrets it, because let’s face it that guy, Harry, was fit as fuck and if Louis were in the mood, he’d have been on his knees in seconds. But alas. Louis’ stressed and tired and he just wants to go home and take a nap.

God, when did this become his life. It’s just an endless cycle of work and naps and football and studying and tests and then more work, occasionally pausing life for a moment to scroll mindlessly through tumblr and reblog everything he finds even remotely funny.

It’s actually quite pathetic when he lays it out like that.

~*~

It’s a week until Louis sees Harry again.

He wasn’t looking for him, per se. He just stumbled around, going to places that he doesn’t visit very often, but really. He’s just looking for a change of scenery, that’s all, tired of going to the same places every day and doing the same things.

It was bound to happen eventually. Their town’s quite small, and there are only a handful of places that pretty boys with green eyes and delightfully curly hair could be hiding out.

Apparently that place is the library. It would make since that he would find Harry in the last place he would go. Louis doesn’t frequent the library all that often, seeing as the last book he read was Goodnight Moon and he was six.

Obviously someone from above is not happy with his lack of literary knowledge.

Louis tries to look inconspicuous, looking through the books, trying to seem as casual as possible. Oh, no. Don’t mind him. He’s just looking at some books, because that’s what you do here. At the library.

It doesn’t take long for Harry to find him, especially when he knocks over a display for the Hunger Games series. Everyone turns to stare (Harry included obviously, his eyes lighting up significantly, which Louis doesn’t think too much about) and more than a few people shush him with frowns on their faces. They’re all going to have wrinkles; the whole lot of them.

“Sorry,” he whisper-shouts to the library as a whole. All that gets him his more dirty looks and shushing so he makes the decision then and there to never apologize again if that’s what he’s going to get. “Uptight bastards.”

Harry makes his way across the library then, stooping to help Louis pick up the books. “You’re quite clumsy aren’t you?” He asks quietly, smirking as he hands Louis some books.

“’m not clumsy, just. I tripped. It wasn’t even my fault.”

Harry rolled his eyes and then proceeded to pick up the rest of the books in one massive hand, putting them all back on the table in one go. “Come here often?” Harry asks, leaning against the table with a casualness that Louis couldn’t pull off if he tired.

“Is this another one of your lines?” Louis asks, and this time it’s his turn smirk.

“You know, I’d almost think that you like my lines,” Harry muses, gesturing to the blush that Louis’ valiantly trying to keep off of his face. “But, no. It wasn’t. I’ve just never seen you here before, and I was wondering how I’ve missed that beautiful face all this time.” He leaned toward Louis conspiratorially. “That was a line, in case you missed it.”

“Yeah, I got it thanks.”

“So, whatcha lookin’ for? I’ve got this place memorized like the back of my hand.”

Louis doesn’t want to think too much about Harry’s hands, so he speaks quickly. “Book.” Great, now he’s back to the one worded answers. No, he thinks, not again. He can do this. “I’m looking for a book.” Yeah. That’s more like it. He internally gives himself a pat on the back.

“What kind of book?” Harry asks, obviously missing the celebration going on in Louis’ mind.

“Um.” God, he wasn’t prepared for a follow up question. This is what he means about not thinking things through. Deep breaths, okay. “I don’t know, what would you suggest?” Yeah, that’s kind of flirty. Ten points to the Tommo.

Harry grabbed Louis’ wrist and pulled him towards a shelf of books, making a big show of running a hand over the sticker reading Romance. “This one’s good.”

Louis looked at the cover. “The Fault in Our Stars,” he reads carefully, examining the book front and back. “It’s good?”

Harry gawked at him, shocked. “Have you never heard of it?” Louis shook his head slowly and frowned. “It’s literally the best book to ever exist.”

Okay, Louis seriously doubts that. “I seriously doubt that.”

Harry just grabbed the book and pulled Louis over to the checkout desk. Harry smiled sweetly at the woman behind the counter and tossed the book down. “He wants to check this out, Barbra.”

The woman, Barbra, smiled at Harry and then looked at Louis kindly. “Do you have a card, dear?” Louis shook his head and tried not to feel embarrassed. “It’s fine, just fill out this form and I’ll get you one. They’re free, of course.”

Louis smiled and took the clipboard from her, moving to sit on a chair a few feet away.

Harry sat next to him, peering over his shoulder as he filled out the basic information; name, address, phone number, things like that.

“Louis Tomlinson,” Harry comments, clearly thinking he’s achieved something great by learning Louis’ name. “I like it.”

“Yeah thanks, me too,” Louis replies dryly.

“Cheeky. I like it.”

Louis finishes the form and returns it to Barbra obediently. She hands him back a card, smiling. “I’ve already got you all checked out, hun. It’s due in two weeks, okay?”

Louis nodded and left the library, Harry carrying his book. “You’re gonna love it,” Harry tells him surely. “Everyone who reads it loves it. Scientific fact.”

“I’m sure,” Louis replies absently, patting down his pockets for his car keys. Once he finds them, he plucks the book out of Harry’s hands and grins. “I’m gonna go now,” he tells Harry, using the door as a barrier between them.

Harry frowns but nods anyway before he pokes at the book firmly. “Read it.” Louis gets into his car and before he shuts the door, Harry murmurs, “Talk to you soon, Louis.”

~*~

Okay, so. Louis wasn’t prepared for this. He wasn’t prepared for the sadness or the death or the cancer or the anything. It was just. It was a lot and he read through the book in one night, sobbing as he closed the cover at nearly three o’clock in the morning.

Harry was right though, this was the greatest book to ever grace the earth. The words flowed so well and there was that wonderful mix of comedy and tragedy that he’d never read before. (Not that he saw much of either in Goodnight Moon.)

Louis grabbed a box of tissues from his nightstand and wiped off his face, frowning at his lack of ability to contain his emotions.

Conceal, don’t feel, he thought dramatically.

He went to sleep soon after, tired from the emotional rollercoaster that he’d been on for the past fourteen hours.

~*~

Louis woke to a buzzing. He sat up and patted at his duvet until he could find his phone and sighed. The caller was unknown and he’s getting pretty tired of the fact that his number is one digit off from Burger King’s.

“Hello?” He grumbled, his voice scratchy from sleep.

“Did you cry?” Asked a chipper voice from the other end of the line.

Louis laid back down. “How did you get my number?” He wasn’t all that sad about it, if he’s being honest.

Harry chuckled nervously. “I saw you write it down and memorized it.”

“That’s not creepy at all,” Louis commented. It was. It was actually really creepy. But at the same time, he was flattered.

“It’s not really, I mean, you were practically shoving it in my face.”

Louis scoffed. “I was not! I was filling out the form and you were creeping over my shoulder.”

Harry hummed noncommittally and coughed. “How do you feel about food?”

Louis’ eyebrows quirked up in interest. “What do you mean?”

“Do you like food?” Harry asked impatiently.

“What kind of question is that?”

“A ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ would suffice,” Harry replied.

“Yes,” Louis answered simply, covering a yawn in his elbow.

“Would you like to get lunch with me?”

“Will you be using more bad pickup lines?”

“Maybe.” Louis swears that he could hear a smile in Harry’s voice. “But I can guarantee bad puns and good food.”

“Yeah I’ll go,” Louis answered quickly. He sounded desperate, but Harry had good taste in books and maybe he could get a few more titles out of him.

At least that’s what he’s telling himself.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

~*~

Harry wanted to meet for lunch and since he called at eleven o’clock, Louis had an hour to shower, get dressed, and answer all of Niall’s questions.

“His name is Harry,” Louis called through the shower curtain at Niall who was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. “I hit him in the face with the ball that day.”

“Super specific, Lou. Thanks for all the deats.”

“When we were playing last week at the park, and I kicked the ball over the hill. I hit him and he started hitting on me, but I was like ‘maybe I should play hard to get’ so I walked away all flirty like and then I stumbled upon him at the library-“

“You were looking for him, weren’t you?”

“What are you-“ Louis sputtered, pausing, his hands in his hair. “I was not.”

“I’ve never seen you pick up a book in your life.”

“I pick up books all the time,” Louis lied.

“Throwing them at Zayn doesn’t count.”

Louis didn’t respond, he just finished rinsing his hair and shut off the water, pouting.

“Are you pouting in there?”

“No,” Louis mumbled, reaching for his towel. He wrapped it around his waist before he stepped out.

Niall rolled his eyes and grinned. “So is he, like, hot?”

“Stop trying to be gay, Niall.”

Niall just shrugged. “I’m trying to get in touch with my inner Louis.”

“That’s rude.”

Niall just shrugged again, because he’s indifferent about everything and Louis sighed. “He’s really hot. And he’s got like some sort of endless list of pickup lines memorized. It’s ridiculous.”

“Sounds like you like him.”

“Of course I like him, he’s hot as hell and he reads. Like, regularly. And it’s good books too.”

“You’ve met him twice?”

“Yes, but before you say anything, he’s really nice and not as creepy as he sounds and he’s got curly-“

“I’m not gonna say anything, mate.” Niall put his hands on Louis’ shoulders as he dried his hair with a fresh towel. “I’m happy for you. You’ve not been, like, properly interested in anyone in a while, and I just. You seem happy with guy.”

“Well,” Louis chuckled awkwardly. “Now that I’ve got the Niall Seal of Approval-“

Niall slapped the back of his head and muttered, “fucker,” fondly before leaving Louis finish to getting ready.

~*~

“This is a date right?” Was the first thing that Harry said when Louis met him at the restaurant down the road from his flat. “I don’t want you to think that it’s anything different before we go in there.”

Louis was impressed. He’s not used to guys being so straightforward with things like this. It’s usually a tossup between a date and a casual hangout, Louis going the whole time not knowing until the end. To kiss, or not to kiss; that is the question. “Yes. It’s a date.”

“Good.” Harry smiled that cancer-curing smile and pushed to door open. “After you.”

~*~

Their lunch was good. Well, the food was okay, but the company was good. Great even.

Louis learned that Harry was from Cheshire. He had a sister named Gemma who was mean to him, but would kill anyone who hurt him, he’s sure. His mom’s name is Anne and she’s married to Robin, who’s not his biological dad, but he raised him so he loves him anyway. They still live in Cheshire and Gemma is at university in London, but she comes home on holidays and stuff. He talks about Liam, who’s his best friend and how he looks innocent but one time he stood on the edge of a thirty-story building and had Harry take a picture of it.

Louis tells Harry about his sisters and his mom and his stepdad and his best mate/roommate Niall. He tells him all about the shenanigans that he and Niall get up to; drunken adventures and sober ones. He recounts the story of how he met Zayn and that he stills swears to this day that Zayn is a secret model and that that’s how he’s able to afford his posh flat on the eastside of town. He tells Harry that he lives on the westside, but not in the dodgy area near the market, they live closer to the school than that.

They swap stories about their majors and how they decided on them. Louis’ a law major because his mom always said he’s good at arguing and even though most of Louis’ arguments end in him stomping away angrily, he’s able to make a pretty good case for himself beforehand. Harry’s an education major, but he’s thinking about switching to Biology, because he went to a zoo last week and he kind of wants to work there.

“You’re deciding your future based on a trip to the zoo?” Louis can’t bring himself to believe that someone would do that.

Harry shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Biology degrees are flexible. I could change my mind again if I wanted, so.”

Louis’ whole life had been an endless cycle of what do you want to be when you’re older? You need to start thinking about your future. You can’t just live in the now; you’ve got to be planning ahead. Hearing Harry break away from that is kind of amazing, because he’s never really thought about things that way. He’s been in the whole ‘school then college then career then marriage then kids’ mindset, so he’s never really thought about what he wants to do with his life. His mom had suggested law jokingly and he never really questioned anything else. Lawyers are paid well enough and Louis’ kind of ashamed to admit that that’s all he’s ever really cared about.

“I wanted to be an actor,” Louis says suddenly, cutting Harry off in his story about the penguins he saw at the zoo. Louis is honestly terrible with the whole date etiquette thing, but Harry doesn’t seem all that upset, he just raises his eyebrows in surprise. “When I was younger. I wanted to be a singer too. Mom said I could be famous.”

Harry chuckled. “I almost tried out for the X-Factor once, when I was sixteen. I slept straight through my audition, though, so I took it as a sign that it wasn’t meant to be.”

Louis frowned. “You didn’t even try again? I don’t really see that as a sign.”

“I have a tendency to kind of just go with the flow,” Harry replied with a shrug. “It is what it is, I’m not going to go out of my way to change fate.” A smirk crept over his features and suddenly it was really hot in this café. Like, really hot; Louis is about to break a sweat on his side of the table. “That’s why I decided that you’re the one.” His eyes light up and his smile is so sweet, he could get away with murder. “When you hit me in the head with that ball, I could tell that it was fate. You came down the hill and I just knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.” Okay, that’s not a rash decision at all. Louis’ just kidding, of course it’s fucking rash. Harry’s literally met him twice (three times including this date, Louis reminds himself helpfully) and there is no way that Harry could be thinking this way based off of two meetings (one of which he was hit in the head beforehand). Louis’ just panicking a little (a lot) when Harry reaches across the table to rest a hand on top of Louis’. “Oh my god, I was just kidding. Jesus, Lou, calm down.” Louis’ head clears a little at the new nickname- well. It’s not that new, because Niall and Zayn call him that all the time, but it’s different when it slips past Harry’s pretty lips. “I’m not that crazy. I’m a little carefree and maybe a bit careless, but I’m not crazy enough to believe in love at first sight or anything.”

Louis’ finally gotten his breathing back to a semi-normal pace and he cocks his head to the side. “You don’t believe in love at first sight?”

“No, but I believe in attraction at first sight, if that’s a thing.”

Louis hums thoughtfully. “So that’s why you asked me out. Twice.”

“Yup,” Harry answers, without hesitation. “I figured it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I kind of assumed that you would take me out as an act of compensation for nailing me in the head with a football anyway, but clearly you didn’t see it that way.”

Louis let out a loud bark of laughter and slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle the noise. “So then at the library-“

“-I forced you to get a library card just so I could get your phone number?” Louis nods a little and grins. “Yeah, I also have your address, just so you know.”

Louis’ jaw dropped a little and his hand remained over his gaping mouth. “You’re such a stalker!” He would be lying if he said he wasn’t flattered, though. Louis’ views on Stranger Danger sure have changed. “That’s so creepy.”

“You wrote it down right in front of me,” Harry argued. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Well memorizing it would probably be the first thing to not do,” Louis replied.

Harry shrugged, neither confirming nor denying the creepiness of his act.

“What are you doing?” Louis asked as Harry placed a hand against his forehead.

“I was just checking your temperature,” Harry paused dramatically, “’cause you were looking pretty hot to me.”

“Really? Again with the-“

“You’re hotter than papa bear’s porridge.”

“Does this honestly ever get you-“

“You are so hot, you make the equator look like the north pole.”

Louis rolled his eyes and decided to just wait it out. He’s never been one to turn down a compliment anyway.

“Excuse me?” Harry called loudly to the restaurant as a whole. “Are there any firefighters in the building? Because my date is smokin’!”

Louis’ face flushes and he slides down a little in his seat, covering his face in embarrassment. “Have you quite finished?” Louis asks once Harry sits back down after taking multiple bows in front of a less-than-amused crowd.

“No, but I’ll make sure you do.” Harry winks and Louis swears no one else in the world would be able to get away with half the shit that Harry says. The boy can just flash a dimple and all is forgiven.

“Very punny,” he commented dryly, sliding away the glass of wine that Harry had been sipping (“I hate it, but it’s proper date-like to have wine.”). “Yeah, okay. I think we’ve had enough.”

“I’ve only had a few sips. I’m not that lightweight.” He reaches for the glass, but Louis sweeps it up before he can grab it, downing the wine in one go.

He lets out a refreshing little ahh and smirks. “I’m gonna need something to get me through this.”

Harry rolled his eyes fondly. “That bad, huh?”

“The worst.”

Harry flagged down a waitress to ask for a check, which he paid while ignoring all of Louis’ protests.

“We’re leaving?” Louis asked, trying not to let his disappointment show.

“I do believe that this date was- how did you put it? The worst? I thought you’d want to-“

“Well you thought wrong,” Louis cut in quickly. He grabbed Harry’s hand and pulled him to the door. “I want ice cream now. And for you to keep telling me how hot I am.”

Harry obliged wordlessly, moving ahead of Louis so that he could direct them to his car. “I know this great place-“

“Don’t care,” Louis cut him off, stopping Harry from opening the door for him. Instead he backed up until he hit the car and pulled Harry against him.

The taller boy was surprised at first, but his shock turned into smugness as he lined up their bodies from chest to toe. “Are you gonna kiss me? Or am I going to have to lie to my diary?”

Louis didn’t even complain about that one- he just wrapped a hand around the back of Harry’s neck and pulled him down so their noses brushed together lightly. They just sort of froze like that, spending a couple of seconds just breathing into each other’s mouths, which seems like it would be gross but Harry had something with strawberries for lunch so Louis’ could practically taste the sweetness on his breath.

Eventually Louis couldn’t take it anymore. “Oh for god’s sake,” he mumbled before he connected their lips with the finesse of a hippo. Harry didn’t seem to mind all that much, though, because he slotted their lips together just right, hesitating for the briefest of seconds before pushing past Louis’ lips with his tongue, taking the kiss from an innocent brush of lips to a filthy battle for dominance in seconds.

Louis moved his hand up to twist into Harry’s hair and Harry moved his hands down to wrap around the smaller boy’s waist before lifting him off the ground a little and resting their weight against the car as Louis hooked his ankles at the small of his back.

They moved together like they’d been doing this for years and Louis kind of wished they had because as far as first kisses go, this is definitely topping the list.

Harry pulled back for air and Louis’ lips unconsciously chased his for a moment before deciding to change course and head for his neck, which was currently hickey-free. Louis was just going to have to change that, now wasn’t he. He was just working in a good one when Harry started laughing, effectively slashing through their moment. Louis wasn’t distracted too easily though, so he pinched a bit of skin between his teeth before sweeping his tongue over it and blowing softly.

Harry’s laughs cut off with a shudder and Louis grinned. “What was it you were laughing at again?”

Harry thinks for a moment and then shakes his head. “I don’t remember. Something about Tennessee and seeing things-“

“Ice cream now, yeah?”

“We might want to go for milkshakes instead,” Harry muses thoughtfully, head tilted up to the sky.

“Why-“

“Because one look from you and it’ll all just melt anyway.”