Your Name is Tattooed on my Heart || L.S

Chapter Seven

On Monday, Louis woke up earlier than usual so he could take his time getting dressed, wanting to look good when he visited the radio station. As a result, he fell asleep on the bus on the way to campus. Fortunately, Harry was there to wake him up. Unfortunately, there was no one to stop him from dozing off during his first lecture and drooling all over his desk. He wasn’t embarrassed; it wasn’t the first time he’d slept through a lecture and likely wouldn’t be the last.

He was stupidly nervous and excited, and coped by spamming Harry with text messages during his afternoon lecture.

hairy y r u ignoring meeeeeee ?? hairy styles hairstyles???

oh wait u have to do a presentation today duh good luck curlyman !! not that u need it since u revised all night instead of watching telly with me :(((

I fell asleep in lecture and dreamt I was a trapeze man in a circus

there was a llama named liama

and a zebra named zaynbra

and a harrypotomaus

wait thats a zoo not a circus

is it?? wot animals r at the circus I cant remember…

I’m trying to remember all the ones in dumbo… elephants obviously.. pretty sure there were hippos.. I think?

He went off on a tangent about how the film was actually pretty twisted and inappropriate for children, what with a baby elephant getting drunk and hallucinating. After a while, he decided he was being annoying, even by his own standards, and forced himself to stop.

He tried to concentrate on the lecture and take notes, but his leg was jiggling under his desk and he couldn’t stop glancing at the clock on the wall. Greg was going to pick him up and Louis didn’t want to keep him waiting. If the lecturer didn’t dismiss them on time, Louis would just leave. It would definitely annoy her, because this particular lecturer was touchy about stupid shit like that, but whatever; fuck it.

His phone buzzed as a text from Harry popped up on the screen. For a moment, he didn’t get what it meant, but then he remembered his ramblings about Dumbo.

we’ll have to watch it sometime soon and check .x

Louis smiled and relaxed, soothed as always by Harry’s humour, Harry’s affection, Harry’s presence in his life. There was something about his friendship that felt both intensely comforting and dauntingly essential. Louis wasn’t sure how to get along without him anymore, and it was a bit unsettling how quickly and irreversibly it had gotten to that point.

His phone buzzed again, and his smile grew into a grin when he read it.

elouisphant

*

"Are you starting a trend?” Greg said, when Louis got in his car.

“What?” he said, and when Greg nodded toward the blue jumper he was wearing, Louis said, “Oh… uh, I’ve had a tickle in my throat since yesterday; just hoping to stave off a cold.” It was a lame excuse, but he could hardly tell the truth – that he was wearing a turtleneck for the second day in a row because the love bites Harry had given him on Saturday night would need a few more days to fade away.

“You felt poorly yesterday and you still snogged me?” Greg reprimanded, but there was no bite to it.

“Oh please, that was hardly a snog,” Louis said. “I kissed you goodnight. Only because I could tell you would cry yourself to sleep if I didn’t.”

“How charitable of you,” Greg said.

Louis made a show of rolling his eyes and plucked at Greg’s plaid button-up shirt. “You’ve got a nerve making fun of other people while dressed like Moss.”