Room 317

Chapter 12

11 am One Direction’s House in Bexley

The house was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. All the boys were fast asleep – enjoying a long lie-in after the late night. That was until an ear-splitting screech from Liam shattered the peace – making every other boy jolt awake instantly.

“Which one of you fucking arseholes put all my boxers on Ebay - unwashed!”

Harry slowly lowered himself back to his pillow and smirked. Punishment enacted.

~*~

By early afternoon, Harry was wondering whether he had completely imagined leaning in to kiss Louis by the car. In fact, he was wondering if he had fabricated the near kiss at the O2 Arena too. Louis certainly didn’t seem to act like either had happened.

Harry had been expecting a little bit of awkwardness between them today – if not from last night’s near miss then at least as a residue from the Arena. After all, things had been rather tense between them yesterday. However, today Louis acted like things were completely normal – well, as normal as things got with Louis around. In fact, he acted more like the old Louis than he had for months – messing around with everyone, being noisy and overly affectionate.

They had band practice at the studios between 3 pm and 8 pm – rehearsing some of the songs from their album and going over the choreography for the gig on the 27th. For the first three hours, they took it all very seriously but, as the fourth hour dragged in, they started to get distracted and giggly. Rick called time when Zayn started adding in random zombie noises into the dance routine and the other boys kept cracking up at him. They were to; instead, return the next day for a few hours of practice before their small gig in Brighton later in the evening.

They stopped off for dinner at The Rotisserie, about half a mile from the studio, where they bumped into none other than… Joe McElderry, Stacey Solomon and Olly Murs having dinner together. The three older X-Factor finalists demanded that the boys joined them and One Direction were more than happy to. Well… Harry noticed Louis, for some reason, seemed rather embarrassed about sitting next to Joe. His face was bright red the whole time and he hardly said a peep all night. Now that was odd. He tried to catch his friend’s eye to ask what was wrong but Louis wouldn’t even make eye contact with him. Joe didn’t seem to notice and talked to Louis as though they were old friends. Harry did observe that when Louis excused himself to the toilet Joe did so too a few moments later. When they returned, Louis was still flushing but he seemed a little more at ease. He was still oddly quietly though.

While they awaited their desserts to arrive, Harry took the opportunity to lean across the table towards him and murmur, “You okay? You’re very quiet.” To his surprise, Louis went scarlet and his actually stammered when he replied, “I’m f-f-f-f-fine.” Harry did a double take but Louis was now finding his ice cream incredibly interesting and Harry decided to drop the subject.

At the end of the meal, they said their goodbyes outside and Harry watched as Joe gave Louis a quick hug. Louis’s face was almost glowing; he looked thrilled and yet flustered. His shy shuffle and half-smile when Joe pulled back was downright adorable and Harry felt something hot, like jealousy, flare in his chest. That look was his. And yeah, he mentally slapped himself, he really needed to get on top of that ‘ignoring those weird thoughts and feelings about Louis’ thing. Like now.

~*~