Where We Belong

Chapter 3

When he wakes the morning after, the bathroom door is ajar and the shower's running. He puts his phone in the charger and lies there for a moment, just coming back to reality. There's a part of him that still can't quite figure out what he feels, apart from sickness at the thought of what Harry's done. There's a part of him that fears Harry might think everything's all right again, or at least on the way to be, just because they fucked last night and Louis stayed over.

But that's not what that was. It was weakness and familiarity and feeling vulnerable, in need of the person he always wants as close as can be, but it wasn't resolution.

It doesn't make him feel any less horrible, soon as he wakes and remembers.

"Louis?" Harry calls from the shower, when Louis' phone comes back to life with a loud screechy tune. It startles him, just being talked to by Harry, and not in any good way. Sets his heart galloping, his body into flight-mode.

He grabs his phone, hoping for a bit of distraction.

Then the messages from the other night start ticking in.

H - louis please come back we can talk

H - baby please lets talk about it

H - where are you

H - where have u gone

H - ur keys are here, are u all right?

H - louis??!

They keep coming, so many so fast that the screen begins lagging from it.

"Lou," Harry says, walking in from the bathroom, towel round his waist and a faint crease between his brows. He never wraps a towel round anywhere. "Who's texting?"

"No one." Louis flicks the screen off.

He sits for a moment, legs over the edge off the bed, elbows rested on his knees and face in his hands. He can feel Harry's eyes on him, can feel the thick silence between them, pressing at his throat, suffocating him. They're probably meant to talk now. He's probably meant to sit Harry down and ask him everything he needs to know and then they're supposed to cry again and then, maybe, they're supposed to fuck again, talk again, talk until they run out of fucking voice.

But, Louis doesn't want to talk. He doesn't want to fucking know.

"I'm- I've gotta call the office," he says, hurriedly, doesn't bother to check Harry's expression to see if he buys it, just grabs his phone and gets out of there before the walls close in on him.

-

Eleanor's called him a couple of times. She's never been the worrying type, tends to go with well what are the chances something's gone wrong? Zilch rather than where the fuck are you you, I thought you were dead?!, but her last text does read just dont go and do something stupid darling. It's debatable whether he obeyed her wishes or not.

He types out a text for her, deletes it, types a new one, deletes again and calls her up instead.

"Hiii, I'm just - sorry, I'll just be a minute, I have to take this, I - yeah, hi, love, how are you? Where are you, are you all right?"

"Oh, I didn't mean to interrupt you-"

"No, it's just a lunch with these collabbers, have to be nice to them, but they're boring as all hell and you didn't hear that from me- anyway, where- how are you?"

He stands in the front hall, actually. Staring at the door. Wanting to run out of there so badly, no keys, no goodbyes, no nothing, just run and never have to face Harry again. He wants to and he doesn't. "I'm back at the flat- my own flat."