Room 317

Chapter 8

They paused for five minutes - so that Louis could pet some of the cows by one of the field gates. Most people would stop to pet a horse but not Louis – he liked cows. The cows didn’t seem to mind the attention and Harry was half tempted to take a snapshot to post to Twitter. However, he found he was too distracted watching his friend to search for his mobile. His heart grew warm as he listened to Louis coo to the cattle like they were babies and feed them handfuls of semi-frozen grass. Somehow Louis managed to convince him to feed the cows too and as the nearest one tickled his palm with it’s mouth, he wondered if he would have ever fed a cow like this if he hadn’t had auditioned for The X Factor. Probably not. He wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of cow drool on his hands.

Eventually Louis was distracted by a friendly robin and they continued their amble up the lane, finally reaching the edge of the woods. They took the southeast trail, which would take them on a loop through the trees. It was surprisingly noisy in the woods; with the tree branches creaking, birds tweeting and the cacophony of other odd sounds you seem to find in a forest.

Their conversation moved from Pandas (thankfully) to acts of stupid logic. Again, it was Louis who brought it up,

“Have you ever wondered why when someone tells you that there are billions of stars in the universe you believe them but if they tell you there’s wet paint somewhere you have to touch it?”

“And by you, you mean yourself,” Harry teased.

“Hey, that was one time,” Louis protested, stopping and turning around to face Harry. The movement swept his fringe into his eyes and Louis blew it out again with a quick puff from his lips. “That sign had been there for three days. How was I to know someone had been doing a fresh coat every day? I thought the sign had been forgotten about.”

Harry laughed as he remembered the three blue lines of paint Louis had sported after standing up. Niall still had the photograph somewhere. It had made Twitter’s top ten dumbest pictures of the week. Liam had been so gleeful as he had been the raining champion out of the five of them with two previous pictures, including one with a rampant seagull and the other with a peeing dog. Liam liked to pretend that those incidents had never happened – complete denial – so the rest of them liked to remind him occasionally, just for a laugh.

“You had to sit through a whole signing with that paint on your arse,” Harry chuckled, “and the press were everywhere taking pictures.”

“Don’t remind me,” Louis groaned, shaking his head mournfully and knocking his fringe back into his eyes. He fumbled with it with his gloved hands but did little more than flatten it against his forehead. Harry shook his own head with a fond smile and pulled his hands out from the comfortable warmth of his coat pockets.

“Hold still,” he said, stepping forward, right into Louis’s space, and tucked his friend’s fringe back under his hat. Louis’s hair was long now, almost the same length as when he had first auditioned for the X-Factor and the layered ends poked up from under the back of his hat. They were silky soft and Harry wondered if his friend had been ‘borrowing’ Zayn’s conditioner again.

“Thanks,” said Louis quietly, breaking Harry out of his musings.

Harry froze as he realised they were standing really, really close and he could actually feel the heat from his friend’s body. It made his senses shiver and, as he took in a deep breath, he got a whiff of Louis’s aftershave, Armani Code. It was surprisingly sweet and Harry’s heart skipped a beat. Wow, he thought, Louis really did have a smattering of freckles on his nose and really long eyelashes and very delicate features.

“Oh,” said Louis softly, making Harry blink. He stared as Louis’s gaze lifted up, catching his breath when those bright blue orbs met his but rose up further and further, Louis tilting his head back… Harry looked up too.