No Strings Attached

Chapter Nine

Louis watched Rosie observe Harry’s face for several moments as they stood there in the doorway. Similar to what she did with her father during her contemplative moods, she snaked her small hands across Harry’s cheeks like she wanted to get a feel for this new person that was holding her.

All breathing seemed to stop until Rosie playfully nudged her head forward and pressed her forehead against Harry’s cheek, which instantly flushed with color. 

“Tank oo,” she murmured, gently patting his cheek with one hand and smartly clasping onto the brown paper bag with the other.

Harry’s eyes widened as he wandered inside, holding Rosie closer to him. Something about Harry opened up, like anything and everything he could have been hiding came out into the open in that moment. With Rosie, he was purely himself. Louis couldn’t hide the massive grin that had overtaken his features. 

“This child is going to be the death of me, isn’t she?” he said affectionately, poking her in the belly. 

Louis leaned against the closed door, arms folded and watching the younger boy – his friend – that carried his daughter and looked at her like she was the only other person in the room. 

“You’re just lucky that she’d do anything for a bloody donut.” 

And when Louis came home later that evening, exhausted from work but secretly excited yet nervous to see what awaited him at his flat, he was surprised to find Harry and Rosie asleep on the couch. The television was on, no doubt from some program that Rosie must have forced him into watching, but it played for no one as its two audience members had drifted off midway through. 

The surprise, however, wasn’t that they had fallen asleep; Rosie’s occasional nap tended to last this long, anyway. What caught Louis’ breath and made him both slightly terrified yet inexplicably alive with warmth and gladness was the fact that Rosie had fallen asleep in Harry’s lap, one of her arms splayed to the side while the other hand maintained a light grip on Harry’s wrist just beside her leg. Her head was tilted to the side, almost in the crook of Harry’s elbow, and her breathing was deep; she was comfortable. Meanwhile, Harry had fallen asleep with his head leaning back against the head of the couch, his mouth parted slightly and a low grumbling noise buzzing from the back of his throat. 

Louis stood there for a while, taking in the scene before him. Rosie wasn’t one for sitting on strangers’ laps on day one, much less napping there without concern. Yet there she was, eyelids fluttering from whatever beautiful dream she had wandered into, sleeping on Harry’s lap. And everything about it seemed oddly natural to Louis, like it was nothing out of the ordinary to walk into the living room and discover the pair sharing a catnap together. 

He bit down on his lip and clenched his fist tightly; this was nothing he was allowed to get used to. Just because Harry offered to babysit once didn’t necessarily guarantee that this was going to be a routine thing. The only routine arrangement they’d agreed to was the sex part of the equation, and even that wasn’t exactly normal if Louis gave it enough thought. 

Nerves suddenly tugged at Louis’ consciousness and he wondered if he should just wake them both up so that Harry could go home. That way, he and Rosie could have dinner and that would be the end of this day and they would be able to resume their lives tomorrow the way they had always been. 

But Harry fit so seamlessly into their reality now. Their reality, not just Louis’. Before, it had been sun-kissed Harry sneaking through the doorway, pretending it was all a game and making Louis’ world that much fuller for all of two hours. And once those two hours ended, it was back to the same old schedule and he had to remind himself that this was casual – nothing more.