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It’s Harry’s birthday, and even though everyone has teased her for it– she’s turning 21 and should be out clubbing, completely off her face and tits out in a night she won’t remember –she’s having a sleepover. Not even a girl’s night, with wine and movies and all that. No, it’s basically a child’s sleepover: she’s taken over the entire finished basement and piled the fridge high with salty and sweet snacks, there are actual sleeping bags laid out near the tv, and her big plans for the night are to put on face masks, paint each others nails, and play as many rounds of truth or dare as her friends will allow her.
Fortunately her friends are the kind of people who, in spite of teasing her, also indulge Harry and her quirks. They show up at 7 and order pizza, and of course Harry breaks and decides that they can have beer or wine or whiskey and coke if they’d like, so by the time they’re heading downstairs they’re all a bit buzzed and giggly, probably fitting the mood Harry was going for better than they would’ve completely sober.
They do everything Harry imagined they would, even making their own face masks with a batch of supplies that Liam brought and getting actual nail art from Zayn. Even Niall joins in, making a joke about never getting laid again when her nails are painted a color called “Purple Passion.” Truth or dare, however, is almost a bust. The dares don’t feel nearly as daring as they did when Harry was young, and she and her friends are so close that there are very few truths they don’t know about one another.
That’s not how the massage starts, though. That begins when they’ve gotten a bit sleepy and have put on a movie to keep themselves up. It’s Clueless, which Harry has seen at least 600 times, and she can feel herself starting to doze when her back twinges. She winces, and Louis notices, of course. Louis notices everything about Harry. It begins with a casual rub of one hand over Harry’s shoulders, and turns into a firmer kneading that garners a response, and then Louis is tapping her, having her turn to the side so she can sit between Louis' legs and begin to have her muscles worked properly.
Harry realizes very suddenly, after a low, grateful moan caused by Louis’ hands under her shirt, thumbs walking along either side of Harry’s spine, that maybe the massage is a bit much. Maybe. It’s her birthday, of course, but it’s also a sleepover, and she can’t remember feeling this way when she was twelve.
“Umm, massage train!” she says, her voice a bit too loud. It’s then that she realizes Niall and Liam and Zayn are snuggled up together on the couch, two sleeping bags unzipped and spread out on their laps with Niall’s chest acting as a pillow for Liam’s and Zayn’s heads. They don’t stir at all, and Louis’ hands haven’t stopped moving over Harry’s back. They’re slow and steady and feel better than anything Harry’s felt in a while, probably because they belong to Louis. Strong, compact, warmhearted Louis, who has never been single when Harry’s been until the past few months.
“Haz? You wanna lie down on your tummy? I could work these knots out properly for you.”
Harry thinks about asking right then if this is Louis’ way of flirting, or maybe if Louis says this to all the girls, or…anything remotely clever that might make light of the butterflies she’s feeling. Instead she turns her head to look at Louis over her shoulder and asks, “would you like me to take my shirt off?”
Louis nods, and if most of the lights weren’t out for the movie maybe Harry would be able to tell if her eyes were wide or her pupils dilated, but as it stands she just thinks that maybe, maybe, this could be something. Louis grabs the lotion that Zayn uses for manicures and flicks the cap open, pouring some into her hands. It’s unscented but the coconut oil gives it a beachy aroma anyway, and when Louis settles just below the base of Harry’s ass and works her hands over Harry’s lower back, gripping just at her hips and sliding up, it feels like Harry’s floating off somewhere tropical. Louis’ hands are the sun on her back and every bad thing is far away.
It seems like Louis is using her whole body for the massage. Her pelvis presses against Harry’s ass and she leans forward so far that Harry thinks she can almost feel her tits against her back. She bites her lip and tries to remember how breathing works.
“Shit, I’m getting lotion all over this shirt,” Louis says, her voice raspy and low and making Harry want to writhe under her. “Is it weird if I take it off?”
Glancing at the television, Harry notices that Cher Horowitz is currently trying to seduce Christian Stovitz, propping herself up on one arm and falling off the bed. She realizes how very much this is not that, and she giggles a little to herself.
“Not weird. But I have to ask…are you trying to seduce me, Lou?” It doesn’t come out quite as playful as she means it to, probably because she wants so badly for the answer to be yes. She watches Louis break a smile, her sheepishness turning into a coy smirk.
“Is seduction an appropriate sleepover activity?”
Harry pretends to consider this for a moment, then gives a decisive nod. “It’s my birthday and my sleepover, so I think I’ll say yes.”
It might not be what she thought she’d get from her themed sleepover birthday, but when Harry wakes up the next morning topless, sharing a sleeping bag with one of her best friends and still slippery from having their lotion-soft hands all over one another, well. She definitely calls it a success.