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o.
One of the many things Harry had never thought to appreciate before about his childhood home was how silent it was.
It was a silent, and warm, and perfectly pleasant home. A home where he was the youngest and, thus, the loudest. A home where one could wake up on a Sunday morning after a night out and not hear noises. Any kind of noises, but especially not the loud and repetitive back and forth noise of what he likes to pretend is someone aggressively fluffing pillows with a dust beater.
Harry burrows his head under his own (ikea, not as fluffy as he’d like) pillows and tries to let the dust beater lull him and his hangover back to sleep.
The illusion is short-lived.
A ten-stone weight collides with his bed, half on his legs and half on the free duvet, jostling it just enough for Harry’s left foot to get exposed to the harsh morning breeze.
Harry stays put. It’s one of his mottos. When in danger, fake death.
Unfortunately, even strategies against tigers and predators alike can nothing against Louis Tomlinsons.
“Good morning,” Louis says from somewhere above Harry, completely unfazed and too awake than he ought to be. Harry had seen him down a literal rainbow of fruity drinks last night, in an attempt to ‘boost the morale of closeted freshers’. No one who drank multiple Ball Lickers deserves to be this cheerful in the morning.
“The Straights are at it again,” Louis continues. “Obviously.”
“No,” Harry slurs, shuffling slightly to the right so Louis can lie down next to him. Louis is a pain, but he, like, also smells very nice. “Dust beater.”
“Dust beater?”
“Dust beater,” Harry repeats. The less he thinks of Liam and his girlfriend du jour copulating, the better.
“You are your own special brand of weird, Styles,” Louis says, pushing the pillows up and sliding his head next to Harry’s. His breath is sweet, like he’s already had his first cup of tea. Harry gets a hot, tingling feeling down to his uncovered left foot.
Harry hums. He throws an arm over Louis’ torso and prepares to slip back into unconsciousness.
“Hey.” Louis pokes him in the ribs. Louis’ fingers are very pointy. “Hazza. I have a problem.”
“Oh,” Harry frowns into the mattress. “Is it serious?”
“Not really. But also, yeah, kind of.”
Harry opens his eyes. There’s light coming from outside their cocoon, but he can’t read Louis’ expression. He seems sheepish.
“What is it?”
Louis reaches down to bring the duvet higher over them, up to the edge of the pillow.
“I can’t write. I’ve got, like, writer’s block. Song-writer’s block, poet’s block, whatever. Haven’t written a line all semester.”
“Oh,” Harry says, quite stupidly. He doesn’t know what Louis’ asking him, and the pounding in his head doesn’t help. The pounding of the bloody dust beater doesn’t help either.
But Louis is looking at him with such tentative hope, like Harry could actually own the answer to, well, anything.
So, Harry says the first thing that comes to his mind.
“Cherry blossoms,” he mumbles, the certainty he tries to put into the words not mingling well with the hoarseness of his throat. “The solution’s cherry blossoms.”
i.
“Are you sure about this?”
Louis watches him amusedly as the tube approaches Wood Green station. Harry isn’t sure at all, but Louis looks so soft and expectant, and he’s wearing the striped shirt with the scoop neck, the one that makes Harry think less straight than he usually does, so.
And, another motto of his: when you start something, commit to it.
“I’m sure,” Harry says. “It can’t hurt, can it? And it’s a lovely day. It’s, like, almost sunny.”
The sky is a milky grey colour when they step outside. There’s a bit of breeze, enough for Louis to tug the sleeves of his cardigan over his hands. Harry wishes he could hold them.
They walk up to the front of Alexandra Palace, and Harry takes out the crumpled magazine page from the pocket of his jacket.
“I think they’re supposed to be –“ he starts, but Louis is soon tugging him by the sleeve.
“There they are,” Louis announces.
it’s with no small amount of relief that Harry spots the thirty cherry trees professed by the article. He’s already dragging Louis into a ridiculous expedition (and why did Louis even agree to do it, God); the least he can do is actually deliver.
Despite it being a bit early in the season, the cherry trees are tentatively blossoming, the first flowers like rosy freckles on the lean branches.
“Where is the idea from again?” Louis asks as they come to a stop in front of the spread of trees.
“A feature in Heat,” Harry smooths the page he’s still holding and reads the title. “The top five cherry blossom parks in London.”
“Must have been a slow week.”
Harry flushes at that. “We don’t have to, like – we don’t have to stay here.”
“Are you kidding me?” Louis makes a big show of dropping to the ground, his back resting against the trunk of the first tree. “This is so mental it may actually work and it’d expect nothing less of you, young Harold.”
He beckons Harry closer with a hand. “Come, come, now. Read your philosophy shit as ol’ Louis tries to get his groove back.”
Harry's about to retort that his philosophy shit isn't, in fact, shit at all, except he's studying Kant and the lad could have done with a hug. He settles down next to Louis, sprawling his limbs on the grass, and takes the Critique of Practical Reason out of his satchel.
He does his best, his absolute best, to concentrate on the pages in front of him, but Louis' thigh brushes against his arm every so often, and Louis keeps shifting in his peripheral view. They are here for Louis, anyway, so it's not like Harry can be faulted for paying attention. He's just making sure.
"You know," Louis says after a while, laying his blank notebook face-down on his stomach. "This is all very Mulan, innit? Like, the last flower to bloom is the most beautiful of all, and all that stuff."
Harry follows Louis' gaze upwards, where the pallid shadow of the sun is peeking though the leaves.
"These are the first flowers, though."
"I know, but." Louis clears his throat, his voice growing softer. "There's something to be said about a flower so eager to blossom it risks falling before its proper season."
Harry stares at Louis' profile, the straight line of his jaw and the bit of stubble on his chin. Louis possesses a peculiar wistfulness, a subtle one. He's always so loud, always at the centre of the attention, that sometimes Harry forgets about the calmer, sweeter parts of him.
"Is that, like, a metaphor?" Harry asks, going for funny but coming out hoarser than he intended.
Louis snorts, joining his hands behind his head. "Yeah, Harold. It's a metaphor. Don't they teach you those things in between all the intellectual wanking?"
"Very time consuming, y'know, wanking." Harry makes a jerking motion with his hand just to see Louis roll his eyes. "Hardly any time for anything else at all."
“That’s inspirational.”
Louis takes the notebook back into his hands and changes position, crossing his legs. His knees lines up with Harry’s. Harry sniffs and wrinkles his nose to keep his lips from curling.
“You should write about it,” he says, looking first at a fallen flower, then at Louis.
“About wanking?”
“No.” Harry shakes his head at Louis, bumping their shoulders together. “About the eager flowers.”
Louis nods, resting some of his weight into Harry. “Yeah,” he says, a bit rough, blinking his long eyelashes at him. “Might do that.”
Harry goes back to Immanuel with a fizzy lightness in his chest.
They have to skip the next Sunday, because Harry has to go home for the weekend. He tries not to sulk as he packs a small trolley, but it’s hard when Louis is sitting on his bed and giving useless pointers about the shirts that better show off Harry’s abs. He’s going home to his mum, God, and Louis is complaining about having no one to bother for the next days while lounging in shorts and one of Harry’s hoodies. Harry daydreams of a universe in which he call his mum and cancels on her because he needs to bring Louis to see pink Japanese flowers.
He doesn’t, of course, but he does find a piece of paper on his desk after Louis leaves. He only slightly hesitates before taking it; the letters have been printed and he’s suddenly afraid he’s, like, stealing something Liam wrote for his new beau.
In the end, he puts it in his wallet, between his ID card and his license, and only takes it out five or six or twelve times during the train ride.
I want to write you a song
One that's beautiful as you are sweet
With just a hint of pain for the feeling that I get when you are gone
I want to write you a song
ii.
“Hanami is the centuries-old practice of picnicking under a blooming sakura or ume tree,” Harry announces, spreading the blanket at the perfect distance between the lake and the cherry trees.
The sentences is taken straight from Wikipedia (literally, he had screenshotted the page and rehearsed it on the tube ride to St. James’s park). Maybe that’s why Louis seems more amused than impressed.
“You brought a blanket,” Louis says, somewhere between confused and on the verge of laughter. “Are there candles too? Please tell me there are candles.”
Harry is suddenly glad he had put the candles back in their place before leaving.
“No candles,” he says. “Bit of a hazard in a park. Now would you stop taking the piss and give me a hand?”
Louis tilts his head with a mocking smirk, but he crouches down and reaches for the Lidl bag in Harry’s rucksack.
“So, a picnic?” Louis asks as he takes out tupperwares of food while Harry distributes the cutlery. “I usually put weed in these, you know.”
“Oh, I do,” Harry says. “It’s a miracle no one of us has stumbled home pissed out of his wits and eaten it with bread and butter.”
“Only you would eat green stuff when drunk, Hazza.” He nudges Harry with a tupperware of salad, to prove his point. “Besides, ‘s all healthy stuff.”
“When my mum asked me if I was hanging out with any disreputable people, I should have said yes.”
Louis perks up, his eyes glinting. He tosses the last sandwich in Harry’s direction and lies down on the blanket like he expects for someone to appear with a block of marble and start sculpting him.
“What did you say?” he demands, eagerly, as he unwraps a ham and cheese toastie and bites into it. “Did you tell your mum you have the bestest roommates ever? Well, beside Liam? Did you tell her about me?”
Harry did indeed tell his mum about Louis. Or, he had mumbled something about a boy he may perhaps fancy a tiny bit when she’d pressed. It’s none of Louis’ business, anyway.
“Nope, you didn’t cross my mind at all,” he lies, and gets a banana thrown at him in retaliation.
They eat quietly for some time, the silence only interrupted by idle comments about the people in the park. There’s a couple of teenagers making out passionately not far from them, to which Louis remarks, “Just like being at home, innit”.
The sun is intensely bright today, a hot blanket over them. The pink flowers are almost fluorescent in the harsh light – there are more than there were in Alexandra Park, the blossoming so overwhelming the trees could burst with the thickness of it. It’s beautiful in the way sunsets are beautiful: it’s a cliché, but there’s a reason for it.
“This is actually really nice,” Louis says out of nowhere. Well, Harry suspects he’s found the cocoa puffs treats Harry’s made for him. When he turns, he finds Louis intent on stuffing his face with chocolate cereals. “Like, proper lovely.”
Harry squints his eyes at him. “Are you about to say something sarcastic and ruin the moment?”
“No,” Louis scoffs around a mouthful of cocoa puffs. “I’m just, like. I’m trying to thank you.”
It’s startling how seamlessly Louis went from being this intimidatingly gorgeous one-man show that everyone’s in love with to Louis the friend. The one that trusts Harry, average fresher Harry from Holmes Chapel, enough to let him through. The one that, maybe, is only Harry’s to be in love with.
“Course,” Harry shrugs, picking up a treat for himself to have something to do with his hands. “I mean, I’m honestly only looking for an excuse not to hear Liam and Sophia shag, but you’re welcome.”
Louis pulls a face and flings himself at Harry, his head ending up in Harry’s lap. Louis is tactile to say the least, and has been all over Harry for ages, but it still hasn’t lost its novelty.
“I’m serious.” Louis looks up at him. His eyes are ridiculously blue in the sun. “I know you have shit to do. And first year always sucks. So, thank you. I don’t want you to, like, waste your time on me.”
Harry splutters a bit. He and Louis do things together all the time, but to have a sort of weekly date, just the two of them, involving fucking cherry blossoms? Harry honestly wants to light a candle in church that Louis agreed to go along with his sleep-deprived, tequila-infused lapse of judgement, or of any kind of reality-to-brain and brain-to-mouth filter.
He tries to say exactly that, just with less hyphens, but first he cards a hand through Louis’ soft hair. Louis goes lax on Harry’s thigh, letting out a humming noise from his throat.
Harry watches his Adam’s apple vibrate, and his eloquence dies somewhere around the left side of his chest.
“Glad to do it,” he whispers, although most of his focus is on caressing Louis. “Hope it’s helping.”
Louis licks his lips and moves his legs about, settling more comfortably on the grass and on Harry.
“I think it is.”
The second’s a post it, stuck on the small mirror that Harry keeps on his cupboard. Harry takes to fix his hair in the bathroom, because he can’t bring himself to take it off.
I think I'm gonna win this time,
Riding on the wind and I won't give up,
I think I'm gonna win this time,
I roll and I roll, 'til I change my luck
iii.
Louis is in a mood. It happens quite often, often enough that Harry's become a pro at handling a grumpy Louis, but today is Sunday, and next on the list are the Kensington gardens.
The Kensington gardens are wonderful, but all the way across town. Harry wants neither to skip it, nor brave the long journey with a Louis ready to chew off the heads of unsuspecting tube riders.
"Well?" Louis materializes at the doorframe of Harry's room and starts tapping his foot on the floor. He looks more or less like a walking fire hazard.
Harry glances at the clock. Louis is five minutes early on their scheduled time. Usually, he's twenty minutes late.
"Are you ready, or do you need to ask your hipster friends if you should wear the jeans with a cut in the knee or the jeans with cuts in both knees?" Louis continues when Harry only blinks at him.
Unlike Harry's passive-aggressive tendencies, Louis is more inclined toward destruction when upset. Personally, Harry reckons that a couple of carefully aimed whatevers are a lot less energy consuming than Louis' slicing sarcasm. He doesn't imagine the suggestion would be well received at the moment.
"Almost ready," he says instead. The jeans he picks have no cuts anywhere.
Louis is already halfway across the flat as Harry struggles to put his boots and his jacket on at the same time.
The journey to the gardens proceeds in a similar fashion. Louis walks broodily, then sits broodily on the tube as he broodily people-watches. He's not a person who values subtlety, or keeping his feelings hidden. Harry is a bit afraid that a tiny black cloud could physically manifest on top of Louis' head.
As it turns out, Harry's psychic.
The air is humid and thick with rain when they get out at Bayswater, the sky a thunderous anthracite gray.
Harry frowns, but Louis is a mix between completely oblivious and pleased that at least the weather is honouring and joining him in his sulking campaign.
He walks forward, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched. Harry, like, follows.
They arrive to the Albert memorial, as instructed by The Article (Harry has taken to capitalising it in his head after a particularly enthused wank fuelled by the visual of Louis eating a banana at the end of their picnic). What awaits them is a spectacle of cherry trees so full and gorged with pink and white flowers Harry's honestly surprised the colour hasn't bled into the sky and the grass.
Not even Louis' state is bad enough to keep him from gasping, although he immediately wrinkles his nose as if offended by his temporary distraction from his manpain.
It's in that moment that the sky decides to do to them what an open hydrant does to ants.
"I think," Harry shouts in a feeble attempt to be heard over the rain.
"What?" Louis shouts back.
Before Harry can repeat it, Louis grabs his hand and runs under a cherry tree. He halts with his hand on the trunk; it's a white tree, it's a bit like being in between drying sheets.
"Those things don't offer as much cover as I thought they would," Louis says. His hair is soaked, his fringe stuck to his forehead. He looks very much like a disgruntled kitten. Harry refrains from petting him, but it takes effort. "Do you have an umbrella?"
"Course I do. I just wanted to, you know, soak in the atmosphere."
Louis punches him on the arm. "See? I knew it. We're going to die. We're going to get pneumonia and die."
“How did you possibly know it?” Harry retorts, but it’s weak, and he’s already reaching for Louis to snuggle with him. Louis isn’t wearing a jacket, likely because his misery was too profound for him to wear appropriate clothes.
Louis burrows into Harry’s armpit right away, but he keeps his arms folded, conveying that he’s cold but still ready to fight.
Around them, the rain falls down in buckets.
“Care to tell me what has you in such a strop?” Harry murmurs, softly as not to spook him.
“’m not in a strop,” Louis says, stroppily. Harry folds him closer into his arms. “We need to move or we’ll drown.”
“I’m not sure you can drown in the rain, Lou.”
It is raining rather heavily, though.
“I was talking with the tutor for my dissertation on Friday, right?” Louis says, staring stubbornly in front of him. “And with my mum, today,” he adds, then stops. The sound of the rain around them is a lot more daunting than on a relaxing playlist.
“You don’t have to tell me about it,” Harry offers after a silence so uncharacteristic he almost fears Louis has indeed drowned while standing.
Louis lets out a dejected sigh. “We’re stuck here, might as well.”
“Okay,” Harry says. He gives Louis a delicate head-butt, and that prompts a small smile from him.
"It's nothing. Just, next year. They all want to know what I want to do, and where, and I can't even think about it. Not being with the lads, not going to uni anymore. Leaving London."
Oh. Harry widens his eyes and rubs a hand down Louis' back without even realising it. Louis doesn't handle it well when he gets stuck in his own head, especially about serious things.
"You can still get your master's degree, yeah?" Harry asks. "I thought that was what you wanted?"
He feels Louis place his head on his shoulder, his damp fringe tickling his neck.
"I don't know." Louis pushes into the crook of Harry's neck, and Harry's shiver is not only due to the cold. "I don't know. Everyone keeps asking, and I just want to breathe and enjoy this year. I don't want for things to change."
In so many ways, Louis is a creature of habit. He drinks the same tea, done in the same way, and always buys the same brand of cereals. He's also the most easily bored person Harry's ever met.
"Sure you can, Lou. But even this year's different from how it was supposed to be, isn't it? It was supposed to be you and Zayn."
Harry swallows, unsure if he's overstepped. Louis has long since recovered from Zayn moving out, but he still gets wistful at times, sitting on what is now Harry's bed and telling him of long afternoons spent there, smoking with Zayn.
"I mean," Harry continues when Louis only hums into his throat. "That was big, yeah? And you thought it was going to suck."
"What makes you think it doesn't suck?" Louis says, but his voice is soft and breathy. He circles Harry's waist with his arms and squeezes, and Harry will need to stay a week under a hot shower after this, but he can hardly remember being this happy.
The third message is written on a bookmark, hastily scribbled and just as hastily stuck in the middle of one of Harry’s books.
Harry contemplates having it plasticised so it won’t get ruined. Louis turns pink when he sees him at breakfast the next day, and is particularly callous about Liam’s haircut.
They should probably talk about it at some point.
There’s a lightning in your eyes I can't deny
Then there’s me inside a sinking boat running out of time
Without you I'll never make it out alive
But I know we’ll be alright
iv.
They should talk about it soon, because Harry's one fluttering of lashes away from imploding, literally imploding and needing to be vacuumed off the floor of the pub. The bloody pub.
The bloody pub is hosting the bloody annual party for - something, one sport association or another, rugby maybe? Harry's positive he knew at some point, or at least was sober enough to read the huge fucking sign on the wall of the bloody pub.
Whatever the inane sport, the bottom line remains: there are dozens (more like fifteen, at best, if he's being honest) of fit, muscly men trolloping around a very drunk and very beautiful Louis, and that is not on.
"Great party, mate," Liam shrieks in his ear. He pulls Harry in a half hug and the whole room spins. "You having fun?"
"Where's Louis?" Harry asks, because he's having as much fun as a stack of carrots going through a grinder. If, like, carrots had feelings.
"Smoking on the balcony, last I saw him," Liam says, surprisingly helpful. Before Harry can take off in the balcony's direction, he puts a hand on Harry's bicep. "Hey, what's up with you two?"
"What should be up with us, Liam?"
Liam wiggles his eyebrows. "You know."
Harry kind of does, and kind of doesn't. "Not exactly."
"Haven't you been going out for a month or so? I know I always tell you lads to get a room when you get handsy in the living room, but you can tell us that you've made things official and everything."
Harry's a bit choked as he says, "We haven't. Excuse me.", and springs far far away from Liam and his meddling.
Their roommates think Harry and Louis are shagging. It's disturbing, but also encouraging, because it means Harry isn't totally delusional and maybe has a shot at prying Louis away from the grabby hands of the rugby players.
When Harry steps outside, Louis is taking a drag while chatting with a bloke with biceps bigger than his head.
“Louis,” Harry says, because he’s needy and too drunk to be embarrassed by it.
Louis turns and throws his hands in the air, his eyes crinkling in delight. “Hazza,” he shouts, reaching for him.
“Hey,” Harry smiles dopily at Louis. His hair is up in a quiff, and Harry yearns to pat it. To avoid that, he addresses Biceps. “Alright, mate? Good job with, you know, the rugby.”
“We’re the volleyball team,” Biceps says.
“Right,” Harry nods. Biceps sort of has two heads now, and they’re still smaller than the biceps.
Biceps makes an unintelligible amused noise, takes his drink and walks away, waving at Louis with a, “See you around, Tommo”.
“Do you know him?” Harry frowns. Louis appears terribly endeared by it.
“Used to come to our meetings, but he doesn’t have time this year,” Louis explains, as he puts out the cigarette on the railing. He tilts his head, then, smirking at Harry. “You okay there, love?”
“Yeah." Harry preens, just a bit, pleased to have Louis' attention on him. "Glad to see you."
"We literally came here together, pumpkin," Louis says, but with the sweet tone that makes Liam yell at them to get a room.
"Yeah, but. I lost you in the crowd."
Harry moves his jaw in a circular motion to keep it from pouting.
"Ah, yeah, Keith offered me a fag," Louis says. He shrugs, and Harry feels an entire region of his brain short circuit.
"Keith," Harry repeats. It's a fucking ugly name. Louis can't possibly want to date a Keith. And Louis' grandad is called Keith. How weird would that be? "Lad with the biceps?"
Louis chuckles, his fringe falling over his eyes. "He does have biceps, yes."
Harry has biceps too. This is an unfair situation.
"Uh," Harry gasps, dumbfounded. It hits him right there that, if Keith with the biceps used to go to the LGBT+ soc meeting, he may have had ulterior motives to lure an unsuspecting Louis onto this balcony of sin. "Did I interrupt anything?"
Louis squints his eyes with a confused frown, then breaks into one of those dangerous grins that makes Harry want to literally drop on his knees. He flicks his fringe back and shimmies closer to Harry, one of his hands settling on Harry's elbow.
"No, Harold," he says, like Harry's an undisciplined puppy Louis is very fond of. "You didn't interrupt anything."
He takes a step forward, so close their chests are almost touching. Harry stares down at the lack of distance between them and, when he glances back up, Louis' look is a lot less fond and a lot more feral.
Harry wheezes a little.
"Alright?" Louis brings his free hand to cup Harry's cheek, a spark of heat running through Harry like Louis' a fire and Harry a fuse.
Harry nods, can’t even be bothered not to look too eager because he bloody is, he’s never been this eager about anything, he wants Louis all over him, he wants all of Louis, and Louis may want him too, and – and Louis is whipping his head toward the door at a boisterous choir of Tommo.
The tiny balcony is flooded with people, everyone hollering about a game Louis and Harry have to take part in.
The moment is gone, but Louis is still solid and warm beside him, still smiling at him with bright, kind eyes, an arm now thrown around Harry’s shoulders. Harry can’t feel put out at all.
“I’m going to be sick.”
Louis rolls on his side, cradling his stomach. Three cherry blossoms twirl graciously in the air and settle on his sweater. Harry would take the piss, but it’s one of the cutest things he’s ever seen, and also he’s rather busy dying himself.
They’ve dragged their bruised bodies and egos all the way to number four, Regent’s park, to find the cherry trees in fully shedding. Harry has decided to take it as a sign of sympathy from Mother Nature.
Louis, with his eyes closed to shield them from the sun, makes grabby hands and him, and hits Harry on the nose. “Come cuddle me, come on, there’s a good lad.”
“You hit me on the nose,” Harry pouts, but he scoots closer and places a hand on Louis’ hip.
Louis huffs, burying his cheek further on the jacket it's lying on and twining an ankle with Harry's. "Did not. Now let's do some silent conversation, yeah?"
Harry wants to argue just for the sake of it, but his head is playing a loop of nails over a blackboard, so. He traps Louis' foot between his legs and closes his eyes.
The flowers fall on and around them, like flakes in a snow globe.
This week’s message is a polaroid of them. It’s dark, their figures shadowed but for the matching grins on their faces. They’re on the balcony at the pub, engrossed in each other, laughing wildly. Harry can’t remember it being taken, and he’d bet they didn’t even notice.
Behind it, Louis has written:
And when the city's sleeping
You and I can stay awake and keep on dreaming
v.
They're still holding onto their thirteen quid entry tickets when tragedy crashes upon them: the cherry trees in Kew Gardens are barren, their branches nothing but dark brown silhouettes towering over a blanket of succumbed, dying flowers on the ground.
“Fuck,” Harry says, but Louis has already taken one of his hands in his and is leading him toward the Rose Garden, where the trees stand, adorned with nothing but disappointment.
“I’m so sorry.” Harry’s stumbling both over his words and over his feet, following Louis. “It’s my fault we missed the second week and had to set everything else back. There are supposed to be so many varieties here, and we could have made it, we could have, and – ”
“Harry.” Louis halts his jog suddenly, making Harry almost trip into him. He puts his free hand over Harry’s mouth. “Babe. I don’t give a shit about the cherry blossoms.”
Harry lets out a sigh, breathing wetly into Louis’ palm.
“I mean, they’re beautiful, they truly are, but this whole time I wasn’t really paying attention to them,” Louis continues. He slides his hand till he’s caressing Harry’s cheek, and it’s like being on the balcony of the pub again, the city at their feet and the moon above them, but there’s no one to barge in now, no one who could disturb them.
Harry has had nothing but a cup of tea today (Louis’, too sweet, but Harry couldn’t say no), but he couldn’t walk straight if he wanted to. He’s dizzy, his stomach swimming around in his belly like he’s about to puke, and his knees are keeping him upright through sheer force of will. Fuck, even his knees are in love with Louis.
“I think I’ve figured out why I couldn’t write,” Louis says, soft and earnest. “I tried to stick with my usual stuff, but that wasn’t working. Like, the sullen and emo poet. It didn’t feel right anymore. I thought I had unlearned how to write. For a period I thought I was sick,” he rolls his eyes at himself, and squeezes Harry’s hand. “Turns out I was just too happy.”
Harry’s glad his head doesn’t detach from his neck and shoot off into the sky like a firework.
“You were?” he asks, tentatively, and leans into the fingers stroking his face.
“Still am,” Louis nods, licking his lips. Harry finds that, one he’s started watching them, he can’t look away.
It takes less than two seconds for Louis to scoff, tug at their joined hands and take advantage of Harry’s lack of stability to press their mouths together.
It’s like all of Harry’s happiest memories getting condensed into a single stroke of tongue and set on fire, and it’s embarrassing how fast they go from kissing like proper people to groping each other like they’d fucking die if they put an inch between their bodies. It’s also, like, bloody brilliant, though.
Harry’s knees do give out at some point, somewhere between snogging and Louis surreptitiously trying to slip a hand down the front of Harry’s jeans.
Their fall is softened by the bed of cherry blossoms. Harry’s too busy to make a joke, intent as he is in his oral worshipping of the most wonderful boy he’s ever met, but he does appreciate the irony.
(The fifth message, like all the following ones, is delivered by Louis himself, slightly flushed as he sits down on Harry’s bed and bullies him into accompanying him with the guitar.
I was stumbling
Looking in the dark with an empty heart
But you say you feel the same
Could we ever be enough? Baby, we could be enough)