Smoke and Mirrors (extremely canon story)

1

Louis sighs, tucking his teensy feet under the covers and yanking out his phone- his real phone, not the one with Louis_Tomlinson on it. His Harry-phone. It's full of dick pics and dirty texts and the only number in his contacts is Harry's Louis-phone.

Harry answers in half a ring. He never makes Louis wait.

"Baby," he says, in his gravelly low voice that makes Louis want to melt. Louis sinks back into the cushions and snaps the suspenders he's only allowed to wear when he's alone.

"Hi, my Disney prince."

Harry chuckles. "Hi, little one." He sounds tired. Training for a fake role in a movie is surprisingly hard. Even if it seems glamorous and easy compared to having a fake baby, Louis knows that Harry is having a hard time, and he never wants to compare their closets, of course, that would be disgusting. Louis doesn't care anyway, because Harry has muscles lately, and he can't wait till their next two-week date in a top-secret location so Harry can push all one hundred pounds of Louis up against a wall and nail his brains out.

"How was your day?" Louis asks. "Tell me everything."

"Pretty slow. Boring. I just want to hear about you. How are you holding up?"

Louis sniffles. "It's hard."

"I know, babe."

"Just, like, I had to go to Starbucks today. Again. But at least they didn't force me to smoke, thank God. I've been eating all my superfoods and taking supplements but it's still really hurting my health!"

"Oh, my poor little one. I wish I could suck all the smoke right out of your lungs. I wish I could set the Starbucks on fire. I wish I could feed you kale every day."

Louis smiles. Harry's such a romantic.

"Then I had a pretty free day. I even got to watch a footy game."

"Oh, I love when they let you watch footy! You love footy!" Harry sighs. "Almost as much as you love me, right, Lou?"

"Almost," Louis says teasingly. "But not as much."

They fall silent for a moment, which happens to soulmates sometimes. Louis shuts his eyes and sighs deeply.

"Hey, Lou-bear."

"Mmhm?"

Harry coughs.

"Have you thought any more about, like. Maybe trying to come out?"

Louis opens his eyes.

"We can't," he says shakily, hand clenched around one suspender. "Because of the contract."

"But, like, our Modest contract ended, and now that I'm not with Syco-"

"We can't." Louis hugs a pillow to his chest and pretends it's his daddy. He can't always quite remember why he can't, but he knows that he can't. "Because the contract says so."

"I mean, maybe if we, like, tweeted something, I mean sure they'd take it down, but we know our incredible, loyal, devoted fans would screenshot it in a split second, there'd be no going back, and we could win in court if they sued us-"