A/N- I'm too lazy to edit hehe, so this is whatever I ahd written up a few days before.
~
“Hello! It’s nice to finally meet you!”
Kol staggered back a few steps when Eleanor flung her hands around her and gave her a big hug once Kol had opened the door.
“You’ll have to excuse Eleanor,” Louis said apologetically, claiming his girlfriend as he entered the room. “She’s curious about you. She brings fish sandwiches as well.” He held up a plastic container full of the said sandwiches and put them on the high table where Niall just threw his keys.
“Well, she’s traveled with you lot even more than your family has!” Eleanor reasoned, taking Kol’s hand and strutting toward the nearest sofa and sitting Kol down. Kol was bewildered and didn’t know what to say.
She hadn’t even noticed Harry entering the room. He glanced at Kol, who looked like she was encased in all the beautiful things that the world had to offer, since she was glowing and happy. Harry had confessed to Louis that he had been trying very hard to keep any lingering feelings for Kol at bay, and Louis had congratulated him for being such a good mate to Niall.
Harry hadn’t anticipated the sight of her giving him a sense of sadness though. They had gotten on well as friends because he hadn’t seen her regularly, and the girls who were actually around were a good distraction at the time. Seeing Kol again was an entirely different experience.
Seeing Kol with Niall was an even worse one to see.
Without Kol actually around, Harry thought that it was easier to adjust to. He didn’t see Niall acting all romantic with her, and Harry could just pretend that it was some fantasy of Niall’s happening. He didn’t really know what to do now though, with them together as an actual couple.
It was amazing what distance and time could do to Harry as well. It was like perfection seeing Kol at the door, smiling. He had forgotten just how gorgeous she actually was, and her recent photo bookings just weren’t the same as having the actual person in front of him.
And then he would start feeling guilty and he had to remind himself that she was Niall’s girl and he couldn’t go after her anymore.
Thank God Zayn was still single. Harry couldn’t even imagine this dinner that was almost full of couples. The boys from 1D were almost all unavailable. Harry wanted to get one now as well, so that he wouldn’t have to be bothered by all this Kol nonsense.
Harry walked in with Louis, as his boy brought the fish sandwiches into the kitchen, where Niall was to piling all the food onto dinner plates. Harry would talk to Kol later, when her attention wasn’t so fully occupied by El.
“How’s the reunion been, eh, Niall?” Louis laughed, while helping Niall set the table. “Any surfaces that we maybe should avoid?”
“Oh shut up, Lou,” Niall said, tossing a few sweets in Louis’ direction. “She may not look it, but she’s as immaculate as the day we met her.”
“What a gentleman, our little Niallator is,” Louis said, reaching over to ruffle his blond head. “Any new things happening to her then?”
Niall looked up darkly as he said, “She’ll probably tell you lads later at the table, and I really hope she doesn’t.”
“Oh, juicy,” Harry said, stuffing some chips laid out in his mouth. “Lou will have a lot of queries about it all night if she doesn’t.”
“You’ll definitely find good craic in it, Lou,” Niall said.
“Intriguing,” Louis said, looking at the meals set. “What is that though? That looks unfamiliar to me.”
“I don’t know either. Tastes pretty okay though. Kol made it. It’s a meal from her country, and she said the taste isn’t quite the same, since the spices aren’t available here, but it’s pretty good.”
“I’ll dabble in it,” Louis said, spearing one of the meat cubes onto a fork and chewing it. “The orange sauce is pretty good. I can’t quite describe the taste of it though. It’s like tomatoes with I don’t know…cheese, peppers or garlic or something like that.”
Harry gave it a try and nodded his head, “Not bad. And the meat’s nice and soft.”
“I didn’t know she could cook,” Louis said, taking another piece.
“Me either,” Niall said, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
“Just another secret that we’re slowly uncovering,” Harry grinned, remembering Louis’ comment about how she just piles on secrets to make up for the ones that she reveals.
“It’s a good thing she’s got some Chinese in her too, so she made some pretty decent Chinese chicken meal.”
“World class cuisine tonight, I see,” Louis said, nodding impressively with a ‘Not bad’ expression on his face. “I see we have some Italian here as well.”
“Want some Louis?” Harry shoved some raw salmon at his face and the older guy backed away saying, “For the love of all that is…keep that away from me, Harold.”
“Don’t worry. That one she bought at a pretty steep price at some Japanese place,” Niall said, preparing the sauce for that. “I know that one’s fresh…I hope.”
There was a knock at the front door and Louis ran toward it madly and it swung open. Zayn, Liam and Danielle were on the other side.
“I had to get this man awake,” Liam said, strolling in and holding Danielle’s hand while he went in. “Zayn seemed to have forgotten about dinner tonight.”
Danielle saw Eleanor talking to Kol and she went ahead and greeted Louis’ girl first. Liam allowed her to wander off as he helped the boys out with the table. Zayn plopped onto the high seat near the counter and watched them lazily.
“I also brought a couple of shandies,” Zayn said, holding up the drinks that he brought.
“Yeah buddy!” Niall said, putting his arm around Zayn in that brotherly familiarity.
“Happy days!” Louis said, sitting down on the high seat next to Zayn. He started swinging back and forth and surveyed the room in contentment.
“Niall!” Kol said, looking like she was having a good time making new friends, but in her typical manner of banter, continued with, “Keep me away from these crazy women! What have you put me into?”
The girls laughed and Niall grinned as he pretended to take Kol from Eleanor and Danielle as he hoisted her from the couch and carried her in a fireman’s lift and then moved to cradle her in his arms.
The boys watched this scene with renewed interest. It was a little odd, seeing the two of them finally couple-y. Harry found it even stranger, and he felt like kicking something. He wouldn’t admit it, but there was some envy somewhere mixed in there.
“Put me down,” Kol said, looking embarrassed. Niall let her down and she went over to the speaker and plugged her iPod in.
“Watch the Throne is always a good selection,” Liam said, nodding as ‘No Church in the Wild’ played.
“Can we please have dinner now? The only thing I ate today was the Peri-Peri chicken that Niall made me try today.”
They all gathered to the table and took seats naturally, without even bothering. They all huddled together, so that they weren’t spaced out so far away from each other.
“So, what have you been up to today, Kol?” Danielle asked, taking some spaghetti and piling it on her plate.
Niall coughed and he started making the usual pointed jokes about the difference of Englishmen and the Irish.
“Oh yeah, Niall said that you had news!” Louis said, putting his arm on the back of Eleanor’s chair as he sat back and rested his ankle on the opposite knee. “Now be a dear and share what it is before we all go mental.”
Kol shot Niall a dirty look and said, “Ehm…”
“Don’t tell me us you’ve got a bun in the oven,” Harry said, looking at them in amusement. “You just got here yesterday.”
Kol rolled her eyes and finally sighed as she said, “I just did a shoot for the FHM here earlier this morning, which I hadn’t been planning on telling everyone over our dinner, since I was hoping they would just see it in stands randomly and I won’t be here to get laughed at.”
“Genuinely?” Louis said, already laughing as the others just looked at Kol in a way where they didn’t seem to know how to react.
“I don’t know if I should say congratulations or what,” Eleanor said, looking just as amused as Louis. “What is the protocol of this, lads?” She looked around the table, probably thinking that this was standard for the boys and Kol.
“Sorry El, but this is a first for us,” Zayn said, shaking silently as he tried keeping his laughing internal.
“You can say congratulations to me,” Kol told Eleanor as the people around the table all started laughing.
“Well, then congratulations for your cover,” Eleanor said, placing her hand on top of Kol’s as she smiled at her. “That’s very difficult to come by.”
“Are you allowed to tell us what it’s going to look like?” Danielle asked. She was probably the only one who didn’t seem to find it funny. She looked more interested than amused, actually.
“I’ll tell you later,” Kol said, glaring at the boys, “since these guys can’t seem to take me seriously about it.”
“You have to admit, it’s a little funny,” Louis said, raising his hands and doing his normal hand gestures when he talked. “I mean, you were in five different fantasies for our video, and now you’re going to be one for a lot of other men.”
“How did you get Niall to agree to that?” Harry wondered, looking over at the only person with the blonde head at the table.
“Oh he couldn’t do anything about it anymore when I told him, since I booked it already,” Kol shrugged, piling her plate with more food.
“Sneaky girl, isn’t she?” Danielle said, looking at the boys, but they didn’t seem to find this new. “Is she always like this?”
“Most of the time,” Niall said, drinking some of Coke that had been laced with a little alcohol already. “I kind of felt like there was a sixth member of the band who was just the same with banter, and just as bad as Louis when it came to pranks while we were touring.”
“Really? It doesn’t look it,” Eleanor said, appraising her newfound friend.
“I wouldn’t say as bad as Louis,” Kol said, glancing at Niall. She had her fair share of pranks on the boys, but she made up for it with the presents, didn’t she?
“An example?” Danielle inquired.
“There was this one time when she asked the hotel we were staying at for a load of bath soap,” Zayn said, “and she made a lot of suds in the bath and collected it and topped it on Harry while he was taking an afternoon nap.”
The girls burst out laughing as they clapped with impressive looks shot at Kol. “Very good,” Eleanor said. “We finally have someone creative on our side. I hope you have pictures.”
“That was only once!” Kol protested. And she turned to Eleanor and said, “Yes, I actually do have an array in my phone.”
“Yeah, the bubbles incident once, and then more after,” Harry said, looking up at the ceiling as he was distracted by some bits of dust that had accumulated there. “I remember the time that you couldn’t stand the unshaven faces of Louis and Zayn, and they didn’t want to shave the light stubble, and you ended up shaving half of Zayn’s right side, and half of Louis left, just so they would definitely shave themselves.”
“Louis was pretty furious at that, actually,” Liam said. “I think he intended to grow a full beard.”
“She shaved it off at the most opportune moment, actually,” Louis contradicted. “She just made my effort to shave less, since she had done half.”
“Really, because I remember you complaining about management telling you to shave to keep up the clean image, and you wanted a bit of scruff,” Eleanor said sweetly, holding Louis’ cheek with her hand.
“Traitor,” Louis said, but he leant into Eleanor and kissed her lightly on the nose.