I Hear You Calling In the Dead of Night

Chapter 11: Dude Looks Like a Lady

As the party breaks up, Louis makes sure everyone has a designated driver and calls cabs or arranges rides for those who don't. He's entirely sober and in command as he stands on the front stoop in the cold night air, breathe wreathing his head in white clouds, as he waves people off down the driveway.

While the house empties out, Harry gathers half-empty bottles and rubbish into a bin bag and wipes down all the counters and surfaces. It's just a stop-gap measure until he can do a proper tidying in the morning. He's exhausted - both from the late hour and the effort of making small talk all evening - but he wants to make sure the house is tidy when Louis' parents get home. By the time Louis shuts and locks the front door, sagging against it, Harry's taken the rubbish out to the kerb to be collected in the morning and shut off all the downstairs lights.

"Thank you," Louis sighs, collapsing into Harry's arms gratefully. "You're amazing."

"'s no big deal," Harry insists, voice slow and drawn out with tiredness, like taffy being slowly pulled through a machine.

Louis slides an arm around Harry's waist, kissing the side of his face. "Come on love. Let's get to bed."

Discounting earlier in the evening when Louis told Harry he loved him - Harry doesn't think he's ever heard anything quite so nice.

***

Lucky. Harry never thought that word applied to him before - never even believed in the construct of luck until Louis loved him - but now he can't think of a more appropriate word. When Louis rolls over in the night and reaches for Harry without thought, like he's returning to something after a long time away, like he's coming home, Harry feels lucky lucky lucky. And the best part is that the feeling only seems to grow, to germinate like a seed in his chest, the small green shoots of love winding their way through the ventricles of his heart, snaring him. Harry thinks that no matter how much time passes, he'll never stop feeling insanely, overwhelmingly lucky.

At school on Monday, on their way to English lessons, their shoulders bumping for how closely they walk together, Louis reaches for Harry's hand and takes it into his own so easily, so effortlessly, as if it costs him nothing, as if the gesture itself is an everyday occurrence. But in Harry's eyes it's everything. Harry tries to bite back his grin, lowering his face bashfully as they continue their conversation, but he feels like he's broadcasting the truth with every cell of his body, skin sparking like a live wire. He thinks that even the astronauts can see it from space - there's nothing subtle about how they look at each other - nothing in their gestures or expressions that can be misconstrued as anything else but love.

Harry's never felt this way - dizzy and slightly drunk with happiness - when he stubs his toe rounding a corner too fast, when he gets his Maths test back with a C+ scrawled across the top in red, he barely even notices, just resolves to do better, to be less clumsy. Things that once sent him spiraling into depression or a bad mood seem like minor annoyances now, waved away as simply as batting a fly. Inevitably, someone calls them fags as they're walking hand and hand down the hallway - inevitably it's Stan – and while Harry briefly feels like a cup of ice-water's been dumped down his back, he manages to reanimate his limbs and keep moving. It's nothing he hasn't heard before and it doesn't hurt quite so much as it used to now that he has Louis. When Louis moves to retaliate, blue fire in his eyes, Harry simply squeezes his hand, tugging him onward. "Come on. He's not worth it, babe."

Of course, Liam fonding all over Zayn helps to alleviate some of the scrutiny they're under. Liam's only previous relationship was the three years he dated Danielle, a dancer in upper Sixth, but in spite of the length of their courtship, he never seemed smitten with her the way he is with Zayn. Harry catches Liam awkwardly lugging Zayn's art portfolio for him between lessons and lingering at his locker after last bell like an obedient puppy waiting for his master to return.