Harry doesn't leave the house for the next few days, too tired of dealing with people. He barricades himself in the living room, surrounded by the last batch of the lyrics Niall had brought with him, half-heartedly reading them over as he texts Mark to ask where he'd found these so-called songwriters.
On one such stifling, sunny Tuesday, the heat chases him out of bed not long after dawn, and he's got the kitchen all to himself. He decides to celebrate the rare occasion by making enough pancakes to feed a football team, and even starts the coffee maker for when Robin gets up to go to work. Afterwards, he settles back into the dent he's made in the left side of the sofa, pulls up the last five songs he's got to go through, and finds their corresponding sound files in the depths of his email.
It's funny, the fact that not a single one of fifty-odd songwriters managed to get his attention, but Harry's a little too discouraged to laugh about it. He really wanted a new influence, something to pick up his next album, distinguish it from the previous two. He's never recorded or performed someone else's song.
He throws out something called New York City Streets before he even reads it, just because it reminds him a little too much of Marcus. Next up is a short little thing, just a verse and a chorus, by the looks of it.
Just Hold On.
The recording is a ballad - two soft, clear piano notes to begin with, and a still clearer voice on top of them, a falsetto. There's something familiar about it, but it doesn't sound like anyone Harry knows, doesn't sound like anyone he's ever heard sing.
He almost stops breathing as he listens. There's something so incredibly sad woven through those notes, despite the hopeful lyrics, something he can't quite pick up on.
He tries to sing along when he plays the demo again, and his voice wraps around the words with a miraculous ease.
What do you do when a chapter ends? he sings, and tries to imagine the song with a full production, a chorus, strings. Whatever instruments he needs to bring out that shivering, achy sadness he's hearing, to help it reach every single person who listens to the song.
He doesn't click play again when the demo ends. He puts the lyric sheet down, and looks out of the window where they day is just waking up.
He's found a song.
He's found a song.
He bites his lip to contain the wild smile on his face, and sweeps the rest of the papers to the ground. When he skips to the window and opens it, the heavy air feels calming on his face, almost like a touch. There's a flock of birds crossing the horizon, screaming bloody murder and arranged into the shape of an arrow; on the other end of the garden, Dusty's black silhouette ducks in and out of a bush as she chases something; and down there, on the grass, a small patch of yellow flowers bend their heads to the morning breeze. Even in the late August heat, the world is alive all around him, happy to share his new-found joy.
With the exception of Louis, it seems. Just as Harry closes his eyes and angles his face into the sun, there's a commotion at the top of the stairs, and then Louis's hushed voice:
“Fuck! Fucking shit.”
Harry has to clap a hand over his mouth to suppress a loud laugh. The rest of the house is still asleep, which is presumably why Louis is trying to avoid making noise.
Harry watches him walk gingerly down the stairs, and squint into the sunlight that's flooding the downstairs.
“Harry?” he asks, still whispering. Harry waves. “What are you doing awake?”
“Working,” Harry replies, and makes his way to him. It's automatic, entirely involuntary - Louis is in the room, so Harry's body gravitates to where it thinks it's supposed to be. “You okay?”
Louis rubs a hand over his harrowed-looking face. He's got bags under his eyes, and his hair is sticking up wildly at the back of his head.
“Fine,” he says with a sigh. “Fine, I've just got to-go. Yeah. I've got to go.”
He doesn't appear to make any attempt to move.
“Where are you going?”
Louis is too busy rubbing one of his eyes to register the question. It's only the silence that makes him realise that something was said.
“Huh?”
Harry holds back a hopeless, fond sigh. Louis looks so small in these shadowy retreats of the hall, in slouchy jeans and a shirt that Harry is certain is on backwards; his feet are bare, and he's got one arm wrapped around himself, squeezing at pale skin. His cheeks are still pink with sleep; he's got a pillow crease running like a tiny red river from the corner of his eye all the way to his neck.
“Where are you going?” he tries again. It comes out gentler than he intends.
Louis shrugs. “London,” he says. “Have you seen my shoes?”
Harry looks over his shoulder, to where Louis's trainers lie haphazardly on the mat where he kicked them off yesterday.
“I made breakfast,” he says, instead of answering the question. Louis's brow furrows, and he purses his lips, blinking at Harry slow and thorough like he's trying to translate whatever language he's speaking. “Kitchen. Come on.”
“No,” he shakes his head. “No, I. I'm going.”
Harry looks at his watch. 6:15. “Do you have to leave right this minute?”
Louis peers at Harry's watch too. “Oh.”
Harry grins. “Come have pancakes. Please.”
Despite the tiredness that's all but dripping off him, Louis immediately straightens up when he hears the word. “You did not make pancakes.”
“Oh, I did,” Harry smiles. Then, because they're still standing in the hall without moving, he reaches out, loops his arm through the crook of Louis's elbow, and pulls him forward. “It's my evil plan to make you late for wherever you need to be.”
“Of course,” Louis says, and slumps into Harry's side as they shuffle into the kitchen. His voice is hoarse in a way that takes Harry right back to countless mornings of waking up next to him - he has to look up at the nondescript white ceiling and blink rapidly to make those memories go away. “I forgot that you're here to ruin my life.”
There's not a hint of meaning behind it, no pointed heaviness. It's a joke.
Harry allows himself to laugh, a little wooden, as he pushes Louis into a seat and goes about putting a plate together. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Louis lean back in his chair and spread his arms, relaxing. The sunlight spills over the velvety skin of his eyelids and tints it a rosy gold.
Harry wishes he could take a picture of this - of how much the light loves Louis Tomlinson.
He doesn't need to ask the specifics of how Louis likes his pancakes. Between one blink and the next, between cutting a strawberry in half and reaching for the syrup, eighteen-year-old him trots up to the kitchen counter with a ridiculous grin and curly, curly hair falling into his face. He's up and awake at six because it's their very first morning as a married couple, and he's going to bring his husband breakfast in bed.
All of that Harry's excitement, his beautiful naiveté, fill the kitchen all the way up until Harry can't help but breathe some of it in. His heart jumps, and he can't hold back the smile that the memory coaxes out of him. Eighteen-year-old Harry guides his hands, giddy with the prospect of watching Louis wake up, the scrunch in the bridge of his nose and the barely-there flutter of his eyelashes; that smile he reserves for Harry and Harry alone.
Over his shoulder, Harry looks at his Louis, lounging like a sunning cat. He's nothing like the Louis of the past, and yet the exact same, so very young when he lets his guard down like this.
But, unlike eighteen-year-old Harry, he can't just walk up to him and touch his face. He's not going to see Louis blink the last shadows of a dream out of his eyes first thing in the morning, not ever again, because he's thrown away his chance.
He shakes his head, and wipes the wiry silhouette of himself away until it's just the pristine kitchen tiles, the tick of the clock on the wall, and Harry, shaking.
“There you go,” he says, but he has to try a few times before the words make it out. Louis opens his eyes sleepily, eyes the plate in Harry's hands, and smiles.
“Wow,” he says, immediately awake, straightening his back. “I can't remember the last time-thank you, Harry.”
Harry's heart falls and flutters all at the same time. “You're very welcome,” he says, and - just because it's that hazy time of morning, where things don't always seem real - squeezes Louis's shoulder. It feels monumental, despite the fact that he was all but hanging off of Louis on the dance floor a few days ago.
“Oh my God, these are incredible,” Louis says, already with a smear of syrup across his cheek. “Are you not having any?”
“I already ate,” Harry shakes his head. He takes a seat across from Louis, stretches out his legs. His toes bump into Louis's ankle, and neither of them pull away. “Been awake a while.”
Louis raises his head. A worried line stretches across his forehead.
Harry looks at him, with his brilliant concerned eyes and his mouth full of food, and feels resolutely at peace.
“I'm okay,” he says, in response to a question Louis didn't ask. “Just had work to do. I'll have to go back into the studio soon.”
“Album number three already?” Louis asks. One corner of his mouth doesn't quite lift up in a smile. “You're fast.”
“I've got to milk this while I'm young and beautiful,” Harry says, and flips his hair over his shoulder. Louis hiccups a laugh. “Nobody's going to want to see my saggy face on the cover of an album in ten years.”
Louis shakes his head, and waves his fork in the air. “You're not going to be saggy in ten years,” he says, and looks Harry up and down. Harry blushes all the way to the roots of his hair. “Even I, in my old age, haven't even found a grey hair yet.”
“It's only a question of time,” Harry replies. Louis throws a strawberry slice at him. “Oh, is that too hard for you to chew? I'm sorry, I should have known-“
“Dentures,” Louis interrupts, grinning and tapping one of his front teeth. “Can't even tell them apart from the real thing, these days.”
They smile at each other for a content, quiet moment. Then Louis looks down at his plate and realises he's finished his food.
“Those were so good,” he says, almost whispers, as if he was talking to himself. Then he bites his lip, and hesitates before he says: “I've missed your pancakes, H.”
Harry's heart gives a single, heavy thump.
I've missed you, he doesn't want to say, because he's terrified of the avalanche that would come down right after it.
“I'll be around a while longer,” is what he says instead, as much a response as a reminder to himself that this is finite. That he has to pack up and leave, again, and this time he won't be coming back. “I can make some whenever you want, just ask.”
Louis's expression is too soft for words. “Thanks,” he says.
“You're welcome,” Harry replies. There's something about the fragility of the moment that makes him want to reach across the table and hold Louis's hand, but he doesn't do that. He wrings his fingers in his lap, touches the spot where his engagement ring used to sit, and long before it, a stained second-hand wedding band.
Louis is the first one to get up, to go put his plate in the dishwasher. He looks much more alive, Harry notes with satisfaction.
He puts the kettle on while he's at the counter, and digs into one of the cupboards to unearth a worn travel mug. Harry watches the way he moves, somehow languid and graceful all at the same time, and thinks about the elegant curve of his waist, about how warm the skin there used to be under his hands.
There's a loud, grating meow from outside. Dusty slips in through the cat door a second later, holding something in her mouth. Harry gets up to stop whatever it is from being buried in the house.
“Dusty, hey,” he says, blocking her way. “Hey, pretty. What've you got there?”
She sits and looks up at him, clearly unimpressed by his choice of nickname. In her mouth, still twitching a little and stained a distinct shade of red, is a dead mouse.
“No,” Harry says, and crosses his arms. “You can't bring that in, I'm sorry.”
Dusty mrows from behind her prey, and neatly jumps over Harry's extended leg to saunter into the kitchen, tail held high.
“Hey, love,” Louis's bright voice greets her. When Harry comes back in, he's kneeling on the floor, scratching the cat behind an ear with seemingly no regard for the dead rodent still in her mouth. “Good morning to you too. Is that for me?”
Dusty bends her head and drops the mouse right onto the shiny tile. Harry recoils at the way it splats, but Louis only smiles wider and nods.
“Thank you, that's very kind.”
The cat meows, rubs her head against Louis's knee, and skips off into the hallway. She doesn't use the door Harry is standing in, and he can't help feeling a little insulted.
“Does this happen a lot?” he asks, staring at the terrifying brown heap on the floor.
“Yep,” says Louis as he pours boiling water into his mug. “Once a week, at least. She's very good at catching them.”
Harry's overwhelmingly glad she'd never done anything of the sort while he lived at home.
“What do you do with them?” Harry asks, trying to figure out the best way to clean this up. “The mice, I mean.”
“I, uh,” Louis grimaces, “I put them in the compost bin. Just give me a second, I'll-“
But he never finishes, because his phone starts ringing in his back pocket. Harry doesn't intend to snoop, but Liam's name and contact photo are both very visible from where he's standing.
Louis picks up, frowns, laughs, says a single “yes”, and then hangs up. When he looks at Harry, his expression is crumpled into an apology.
“I really have to go now,” he says. “I hate to ask, but could you-“
“Of course,” Harry replies, before he fully realises what he's agreeing to. “Don't worry, I'll take care of it before mum wakes up.”
Louis smiles at him. “Thanks, H. And thank you for breakfast, I'll definitely pay this back somehow.”
“No need,” Harry smiles back, and rotates as Louis squeezes past him into the hallway. He reaches for the coat hanger and plucks off a cardigan, despite the near-tropical temperature outside. “I'm more than happy to share.”
“Sharing is caring,” Louis says, and bends down to put on his shoes.
“Charity starts at home,” Harry grins. It's a stupid thing Louis started when Harry went through his growth spurt and refused to share any of his food; just hearing him say it feels like a shot of happiness straight into his veins.
“Indeed,” says Louis, straightening up. The long piece of fringe has been dislodged from its place behind his ear. Harry doesn't question himself, doesn't hesitate, and reaches out to put it back into place. Louis has no reaction other than an absent-minded smile as he pats his pockets to make sure he has everything.
“I'll probably be back by ten,” he tells Harry, then blinks as if he hadn't meant to say that. “Can you tell Anne that I'm sorry I won't make it to dinner? She was telling me about a roast yesterday, she was really excited about it.”
Harry leans against the doorframe. Smiles. “I'll let her know, don't worry. Weren't you in a hurry?”
Louis laughs, and peers out of the window like Liam's going to be standing there tapping his watch. “Yeah,” he says. “Yes. Thank you for breakfast, again.”
“It was my pleasure,” Harry says. “Have a good day, Louis.”
The smile Louis gives him in return is radiant. “You too,” he says, and reaches behind him for the door.
Later, Harry's going to go back to this moment and question his own sanity. He'll will past him to stop - to not step into the hall, to not lean forward.
To not press his lips to Louis's fading smile and kiss him goodbye.
In the moment, it's the most painfully natural thing to do. It's a thousand mornings just like this coming back and taking over Harry's body; it's the memories of rolling out of bed and into the morning messy-haired and sated, of touching hands and noses and lips and leaning against the counter waiting for the kettle to boil; of being late for work every other day because they spent too long standing right here, smiling into each other's mouths as they said goodbye.
It's Louis's hands on Harry's hips, and the smile-it's the smile that breaks down the very last brick of the wall Harry's put up, the smile that makes him realise-
Louis leans into the touch. For a beautiful, fleeting second, his lips press back against Harry's, soft and terrified, but the same. Harry's very bones ache with the familiarity, with how right it is, but then-then he reaches out and touches air.
Then, reality crashes back into him, a tidal wave that washes away the beautiful pictures he's painted in his mind.
Shaking, he opens his eyes. Louis's are still closed; his hand is halfway into the space between them, frozen in mid-air, like he'd meant to touch just like Harry wanted to.
Harry watches, as if in slow motion, as he blinks, as the elegant sweep of his eyelashes turns into a tremble, as he pulls his arm to his side, as he steps back until he's pressed against the door. He looks terrified.
Harry opens his mouth, to say whatever will come out of him, to apologise, but Louis turns around, throws the door open, and runs away.
The minute his car is out of sight, Harry leans against the nearest wall and slides to the ground, feeling a little like he's been de-boned. His hands are shaking so hard he has to squeeze them between his thighs, and he's hyperventilating; he tries to find something to focus on, something to anchor him, but the hall is full of rays of light slanting in from doorways and windows, and they remind him of how Louis looked in that chair, bathed in gold, how unbelievably, incomprehensibly gorgeous.
“I kissed him,” Harry mumbles into his knees, rocking back and forth a little as he tries to comprehend the enormity of what he just did. It was habit, he tells himself, but that's not the whole truth.
There have been a lot of things he's had to re-learn since he came back, a lot of things that felt alien because it had been so long.
Kissing Louis was not one of them.
And loving him isn't, either.
Because that's what this is, and it's been lying in wait for weeks, waiting for Harry to slip up. He'd pushed it as far down as he could when he still thought he was getting married, but now-there's no real reason for him to not admit it, at least to himself.
He's in love with Louis, has been in love with Louis, again, always. On this creaky floor, in this messy, mismatched house - this is where he's home.
Except-except there's no place for him anymore. Not the way he wants. Louis deserves someone who'll treat him the way he deserves, who won't abandon him forever in the middle of the night. Harry used to be that person, and he's given up his chance.
He gets up and brushes himself off, careful on wobbly, wobbly feet. Louis's lips are still there against his, a ghost of a touch, and something white hot is spinning out of control in his chest, wanting to explode out of him.
I kissed him, he wants to scream, wants to open the window and tell the rest of the world as it wakes up. I kissed him, and it was perfect.
I kissed him, and it was the last time.
⚜
When mum wakes up, she finds him sitting on the sofa in complete silence, staring into the wall. He's cleaned up the mouse, mostly because he almost slipped on it when he went to get a glass of water, but he's been in the same spot since then, hoping for some kind of breakthrough.
The empty frame above the fireplace seems to be making a point today.
“Morning, darling,” she says, stepping into the room gingerly and looking around like she expects Louis to be nearby. “Are you by yourself?”
Harry blinks to shake himself out of the statuesque state he's been in. “Yeah,” he says, and turns to look at her. He tries his best to smile. “Louis left a while ago.”
In truth, he has no idea how long it's been. The mornings start to look the same after a certain time - he easily could've been here for hours and not realised.
She comes over and sits next to him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. There's a worried wrinkle between her eyebrows.
“Everything okay?” she asks, and pushes some of his hair off his forehead, touches the skin there like he's eight again and she's checking for a fever. “Are you feleing all right?”
He wraps his fingers around her wrist, feeling very small, and like he wants to hold her hand more than anything. “I don't have a fever, Mum,” he says, tried to make it into a joke, but it just kind of limply slips out of his mouth and falls onto the coffee table.
She frowns now, and fusses some more. Harry finally stops her when he tries to fix his collar, and intertwines their fingers. He feels so childish, but so safe.
“Harry,” mum says, quiet, insistent. “What happened?”
Harry squints into the sun outside and contemplates telling her. What happened is that he's been selfish again. What happened is that he's realised he never, never fell out of love; that he's been walking around for the past five years trying to fill an empty space he didn't realise was there.
What happened is that he's eighteen again, and completely, utterly, arse over teakettle in love with Louis Tomlinson.
“It's nothing,” he says, scrambling for an excuse. She wouldn't understand, he tells himself, because he's been so casually cruel, has made his stance clear over and over. “I, um,” he looks at the papers spread all over the coffee table, at his laptop which is still open, but asleep, “just struggling with picking out some songs.”
“Darling,” mum says. She doesn't believe him. “Is it-did Marcus-“
Harry shakes his head hastily. “No,” he says, and remembers that most normal people would probably still be mourning their lost relationship - the most recent one, that is. “No, of course not.”
She nods, and pats the back of his hand. “That's good to hear. You've been looking so much happier these past couple of weeks.”
“Have I?”
“Yes,” she smiles, tilts her head. Cups his cheek, and runs a thumb under his eye, until Harry has to double-check that he's not crying. “It's been really lovely to see you acting the way you used to, you know, not popstar Harry, but the one who fell into Mrs Johnston's sewage and then ran across the entire village with no clothes on.”
Harry laughs, unexpected but so very welcome. “Louis threw a two-pound coin in it and dared me to fish it out,” he says. Because that memory, like every memory, is infused with Louis's infectious laugh, with his blinding-bright smile while he watches Harry do his every bidding.
“I know,” mum grins. “Then Jay and I forbade you from seeing each other for two weeks, and you climbed out of your window in the middle of the night and left a note that said you were running away from home because you couldn't live in a dictatorship.”
Harry puts his head in his hands and hiccups with laughter. He met up with Louis that night, in the forest just outside of town, and they spent hours huddling against a tree trunk in the damp grass. That was the night Louis told him that he was gay, and he's found out because he kissed some boy in his grade, and Harry, in his ripe thirteen years of age, felt real jealousy for the first time.
“I'm sorry,” he says, even though he's sure he's apologised a thousand times. “I-I don't know what I'd been thinking.”
Mum laughs a little. “That's okay, love. It kind of was our bad for assuming you two could stay away from each other for more than twelve hours.”
She's right, so very right. Louis used to be Harry's entire life - every minute, every moment of it, up until the night Harry packed up and left - and it never felt anything but right.
From the moment Harry came into the world, and Louis toddled in on his mum's heels to say hi, they were meant to be, destined to be, each other's beginning and end.
“Mum,” he says, and his throat is hopelessly dry. “Mum. I love him.”
Mum frowns. “I know,” she says, and she sounds puzzled.
“No, I mean,” Harry says, “I'm in love with him. With Louis.”
“Darling, I know,” she says again, gentler, and pets his hair again. “Didn't you?”
Harry bites his lip, and shakes his head.
“Oh. Oh, Harry.”
“I don't know what to do,” he says, looking down at his knees, leaning into her concerned touch. “I can't-I know I can't ever have this again, but-“
“Why not?” she asks, as if it's that simple. Why not.
The amount of reasons he's got on the tip of his tongue is so enormous it won't leave his mouth. Their past, his guilt, the way Louis looked at him like he's seen a ghost after they kissed for the first time in five years, but what it boils down to is-
“He doesn't love me anymore,” he says, whispers really, but it's so heavy, so absolute, that it plunges the room into a terrifying silence. “Obviously.”
“Are you sure?” mum asks. When Harry looks at her, she seems tentative, timid in a way she never is, with her small shoulders hunched in on themselves. “I mean-God knows you've spoken to him more than I have, but-“
“I'm sure, mum,” Harry replies, takes her hand again, squeezes it. Thinks about Louis signing the divorce papers with a flourish, about his peaceful face when he lay down in the grass after, and immediately feels guiltier because they're not even- “I'm sure. He's told me enough times.”
Mum blinks at that, and her eyes seem a little too shiny for the shadowy corner of the room they're sitting in.
“Okay,” she says, and gives him a watery smile. “Then-then I suppose you've got to find a way to move on. Throw yourself back into your music, maybe.”
She looks at the papers curiously, reaching forward to lift up the corner of one and read what's underneath.
She's right, and Harry knows that. He can't stay here and dawdle forever, can't hover in this in-between, can't hold on to Louis in the vain hope that something is going to happen. He's got to get back into the studio, back to LA, to doing his job and moving on with these pieces of a life. He'll figure out how to put them back together, eventually.
“I've already picked one of these,” he tells mum, looking at the sheet he's set apart from the others on the far corner of the coffee table. Just Hold On. It makes him smile a little, the promise it holds, the idea of working on music again when he's been so preoccupied these past few months. “I'll probably go away for a bit to work on it.”
“Good,” she says, and stands up. Brushes off her pyjamas like they've been sitting on the ground. “Oh, I almost forgot - I actually came to tell you that I just got off the phone with the reno company.”
Harry perks up. “And?”
When she smiles this time, it's bright and unreserved, full of that spark that's undeniably mum. “The house is ready.”
⚜
Harry packs up his things the same day and moves back into his room.
He tells himself he'll go over around ten to say goodbye and thank you to Louis, stands by the window in the darkness and imagines he can see the light in the kitchen coming on somewhere in the distance, through the trees - but he ends up nervously pacing behind the door, reaching for the handle and then changing his mind.
He doesn't know what Louis is thinking, what he's feeling. Maybe it's better if they talk about it in daylight, when neither of them are tired and prone to saying things they might regret.
The house feels painfully empty without anyone else there. Harry's room has been repainted the exact same colour, and most of the furniture survived the water, but it still feels alien - that's no longer the wall that he and Louis leaned against when they first talked about moving in together, where Louis kissed him and told him that he'll follow him to the ends of the world. It doesn't feel like the same bed, even though it is, doesn't feel like it's got anything left that made the room Harry's.
And it's so dreadfully, dreadfully quiet, so dark and dull without a fire in the fireplace, without Louis sitting in the kitchen until the wee hours scribbling away like he does, without-Louis. That's what Harry misses most, here in his self-imposed exile - the knowledge that Louis is always close by, that the essence of him has soaked into every wall and floorboard in the house even if he's not physically there, that at any given time, his laughter could drift up the stairs and curl around Harry's ears like it's at home there. He already misses the evenings they would spend on the sofa, together, laughing about inane things. Warm, and comfortable, and at home. Here, with these clinically new walls and stiff new carpeting, Harry might as well be lying in a hospital bed.
At midnight, as Harry contemplates going for a walk to help him sleep, Mark texts him back about the demo.
Good 2 go, the text says. Meet in Ldn tmrw at 1, will text address writers name is Will T lol.
Will T sounds like a Black Eyed Peas reject. Harry becomes a little more wary, then, but it's not quite enough to quell his excitement about getting to work on new music with this person, whoever they might be.
He pulls up the demo on his phone again, and listens to the gorgeous piano while he goes online and Googles his potential writing partner.
Google comes up with a Wikipedia page, and a very extensive list of writing credits, but no personal information. No full name, no date of birth, no photo. It is a man, though - and he's written with two dozen artists Harry knows, with Ryan Tedder, on at least five songs that Harry recognises from the radio in just the last few months.
He scrolls through his other search results, but nothing real comes up. Will T doesn't have a single social media account, doesn't talk to the press, and wherever he's mentioned in an interview it's in very generic terms. He's an enigma, and Harry cannot wait to meet him.
He goes to bed with the ballad still ringing in his ears, already thinking of tweaks, of lyric changes he might suggest. He stubbornly thinks about music and music only as he stares into the dark, and ignores every thought of bell-bright laughter, of blue eyes.