Work Text:
FEBRUARY 2020
“Lou, sweetie, wake up.”
“No,” Louis moans. “I'm so comfy. So sleepy.”
“But, Louis.”
“I can hear you smiling at me and I don't appreciate it,” Louis mutters, burrowing deeper under the covers.
“But she's here.”
“What?” Louis flings the covers off, sitting abruptly. “Well, why the hell didn't you say so?”
Harry's face is a fuzzy blob, but even from this distance Louis can see his husband grinning, ever so smug. “I just did,” he sings.
“Glasses.” He reaches pathetically towards the nightstand until Harry slips the glasses into his hands for him to put on. “Where's the baby?” he asks, alarmed.
Harry laughs. “Lola's got him, silly. Come downstairs already.”
Louis doesn't even need to get dressed. He'd gone down for a nap still in all his clothes so he'd be ready the second Lola arrived. He probably looks terrifically rumpled and awful, but a lot can be forgiven when you have a four-week-old.
He races down the stairs like a kid on Christmas morning, but once he reaches the door to the living room, he stops cold. He wants to run to Lola and throw his arms around her, but first, he takes a moment.
She looks thinner than the last time he saw her, and he thinks she looks even more tired than he and Harry do. It's no wonder: it took her several days to get here, the first few slowly traversing dangerous territory before she could get to a flight out of Lebanon. He's so relieved to see her. She's right here, she's home, safe and sound in front of him, staring down at the infant in her arms with an amazed smile.
She looks up. “Dad! Oh – are you crying?”
“No.” He scrubs a hand across his eyes, wiping away tears as he finally crosses the room to sink down onto the sofa next to her. “I'm just so happy you're here.” He wraps an arm around her shoulder, leaning his head against hers.
“I'm sorry it took me so long—”
“No, no,” Louis cuts her off. “It was always going to be hard for you to get out, and then this little guy went and came out early.”
“So impatient,” Lola coos, smiling down at the baby. James scrunches his face at her and makes a little squawking noise. Lola giggles. “Oh, he's so cute. And look at all this hair! I just can't believe how tiny he is.”
Louis hears a small laugh, and looks up to see Harry coming from the kitchen with a tray of mugs and biscuits.
“Well, since he was early, he's more the size of a newborn still. But he'll catch up.” Setting the tray down, Harry runs a hand gently over the fuzz of soft brown hair on the baby's head. “Look how calm he is. He likes you.”
“Look at these little fingers.” Lola lifts James' hand with one finger, and his tiny hand curls around it. She finally looks up at Harry and Louis. “He's perfect. You two look great.”
“Ah, don't lie to me, I look like shit.” Louis shakes his head. “I'd forgotten how brutal the newborn period is. I honestly thought it would be easy because I wouldn't be doing it alone.”
“Oh, no?”
“I mean it's easier, but it's not easy,” he clarifies.
“It's not as hard as I thought it would be,” Harry muses.
Louis shoots him an unimpressed look. “You put a chicken breast in the washing machine yesterday.”
“Yeah, but I haven't, like, been so tired that I hallucinated or something.”
“Are you sure you weren't hallucinating? How else does it make sense to put raw chicken in the washing machine?”
“I definitely don't recommend getting tired enough to hallucinate,” Lola says thoughtfully. “It's really unpleasant.”
“When did that happen to you? Wait, do I want to know? Or do you want to talk about it?” Louis asks.
Lola hesitates, then shrugs. “Joseph and I – I've told you about Joseph, right? Photographer, we worked together for a while? We were in this city looking into the humanitarian efforts, you know, I wanted to see if they were really coming through, and... yeah, it started getting shelled while we were there. It was a rough few days. I mean sort of like having a baby I guess, it's not constant but you're just on edge and things keep waking you up...” She shrugs. “Anyway, at one point I was seeing tiny purple camels walking around the edge of the room. That was pretty weird.”
Louis just stares at her for a long moment. Shaking his head, then, he wraps his arms around her and James, pulling them close. He feels another hand on his back, larger than Lola's, and he knows Harry has gotten up to sit with them, too.
Louis absolutely hates that of all the things Lola could be doing, she's spent nearly a year working as a war correspondent. He doesn't say it; he's sure she knows. He hates that she's seeing death and devastation on a regular basis, and he hates the terrible risks she lives with, and he hates the way that worry gnaws at him constantly. He knows, though, that she believes in what she's doing. They'd argued terribly when she decided to take that first assignment. There were days of impasse, frosty silences and heated words, until she'd finally crushed him with a passionate speech about giving voices to the voiceless and not letting the world ignore what was happening.
He'd had to let her go – he never had a choice about that – but he never liked it, no matter how many bylines she got, or with how many publications she made connections and contacts.
He didn't much want to think about the things she had seen. Still, he didn't want to be shut out, so he listened to her stories, and he kept quiet.
The moment passed; they set to drinking tea, eating biscuits, and sharing with her all the news she had missed, all the little domestic things: Liam had a girlfriend, Niall and Annie's daughter had started walking, Simon had renovated his store, Nisha's brother was back home disappointing his parents after dropping out of university. Lola had light-hearted stories to share about her travels, too: sweet stories of hospitality and surprisingly delicious meals, recollections of vibrant markets in the cities where life was still proceeding somewhat normally, and, most of all, stories about strange and funny encounters with journalists from all over the world.
James slept a while, passed between them occasionally, a sleepy warm little lump. He woke, cried, ate, slept again. “He's not that interesting yet really, but he's so fascinating to watch,” Harry admits, tapping the baby on the nose during a period of wakefulness. “Like you can just see him taking it all in.”
They nap, they eat, they take care of the baby. It all feels strangely timeless; they drift through the day and into the night with little intention.
Late in the night, or perhaps early in the morning, Louis is pacing in the dim kitchen, bouncing a fussy James against his shoulder and murmuring mindlessly.
Lola pads quietly into the kitchen and strokes James on his head. “How's it going?” she asks softly.
“Ah, you know, he just doesn't want to settle. Sorry if we woke you.”
“Nah. My sleep schedule's a mess.” Lola waves a dismissive hand.
“Jet lag?”
“Eh, maybe a bit.” She pours herself a glass of water and sips it, leaning against the counter.
Louis clears his throat and looks down at James' little scrunched-up face. “Are you going back soon, do you think?”
“Ah.” He hears her take another drink from her glass. “I've been thinking. I might not.”
Louis' heart hammers in his chest. “Oh, really?” he asks, trying to sound casual.
“Yeah.” He sees her shrug out of the corner of his eye. “It's been... I mean, I've learned a lot. But it was... hard. And now I'm a big sister.” Louis looks up to see her smiling softly. “I want to be around. I mean, probably not in Gilmore's Hollow, but in Britain at least if I can manage it. I've made a lot of contacts this year. I'm going to start getting in touch, see if I can get a job or at least some freelance work.”
Louis beams. “That sounds brilliant.”
“Well, don't speak too soon.” She chuckles quietly. “I'd kind of need to stay here for a while? Since I'm basically quitting my job. So... But, you know, I'll help out with the baby and stuff.”
“Oh.” Louis rubs at his eyes, feeling tears well up suddenly. “Yeah, no, that's fine. That's better than fine.”
“Aw, Dad.” She steps closer and rubs his back.
“You stay as long as you need to.” He leans his head against hers and smiles.
He sleeps through much of the late morning the next day. When he comes downstairs, he finds them in the kitchen. There's music playing softly, Lola and Harry talking and laughing by the stove. Lola's nudging vegetables around in a skillet; Harry is holding James face-out against his chest, swaying to the beat while the baby looks at Lola with wide eyes and a wrinkled forehead. They look so happy and comfortable, his little family. Louis feels so lucky, and so amazed. He doesn't know how he deserves any of this, but he must have done something right, somewhere along the line.