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Louis likes watching Harry. He likes the steady rise and fall of his chest, the way his hair floats up and down with each breath, like its pulsating, like he's an angel. Which he is, but that's irrelevant.
Louis lets his finger trail down the curvature of Harry's porcelain cheek, hears his breath catch in his throat. His heartbeat stutters, a rhythm known so well to Louis, and pounds back into its pattern. He mumbles something in his sleep, words garbled and slurred, and Louis pretends he understands him. He pretends that they're having a conversation - maybe in a fancy restaurant in New York City, in the twenties, around the round table at the Algonquin and surrounded by influential authors, drinking champagne and speaking critically of everyone around them.
Maybe they're on the Maid of the Mist or whatever the hell it's called at Niagara Falls, hands clasped as the water droplets gently soak their faces, people around them stealing glances at the loving couple pressed side by side. It'll be their honeymoon, because Harry and Louis have always loved Niagara Falls, and it'll be sweet and romantic and they'll have a hotel room on the Canadian side because they have stronger beer. They'll get drunk off of something fruity at a bar and go back to their room, free to do dirty things and whisper dirty secrets into each others' ears as their hands roam the plains of their bodies.
Or maybe they're in Paris, having a picnic under the Eiffel Tower, hand-feeding each other grapes and cheese covered crackers and popping open a bottle of wine and drinking it out of the bottle, no glasses, and strumming a guitar and lightly singing. There'll be sunglasses perched on Harry's mess of hair, him grinning hugely with dimples punctuating his mouth on either side as they sing of something stupid but sweet and right in the moment.
Perhaps they're in Detroit, holding hands as they run from the cops for doing something illegal, possibly drugs in Harry's hand. They'll run until they're out of breath, leaning against a brick wall with their hands on the knees, hunched over. Harry will look at Louis, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes, and they'll both burst out laughing, right in that grimy alley where they're as free as can be with the police after them and Harry's smile bright on Louis like a sun.
But for now they're in a hotel room, and Louis is watching Harry sleep, and none of those things can every happen because they're bound by paper and ink and words that have no meaning to Louis and Harry other than they can't love each other the way everyone else does. It's what keeps them up at night, what makes their words tense and their lips pursed and everything strained. It's like - it's like a death sentence, or something, how it hangs over them. One wrong step and they're in front of the firing squad.
So Louis just draws more patterns into Harry's skin, wishing they didn't have to hide a love so worthy to show to the world, because it's the kind of love that you can only dream of. Louis wants to show himself on Harry's arm, the way the two of them fit together, the beautifulness of HarryandLouis.
But they can't do that. They have to wait, but when Louis really calms down and thinks about it, he doesn't mind waiting for Harry.
No, he doesn't mind at all.