And then a bit

IV

Folk de går fra hinanden
De kan ikke få det til at hænge sammen
Og så står der en anden
Men vi to kan ikke klare os uden hinanden
(Marie Key – "Uden Forsvar")

CHAPTER IV:

Louis is the first to wake up the next day, keeping his eyes closed even after regaining consciousness. He feels remarkably better, few traces of the fever and its side-effects left. It's usually these 24-hour things that hit Louis the hardest for some reason. Whatever. He's just glad he's feeling better, what with the next couple of weeks he's facing.

Maybe it was Harry's chicken soup, maybe it was magic. Louis wouldn't be surprised to be honest.

Sometime during the night they've ended up curled around each other, cuddling. Louis' forehead resting against Harry's bare chest. He'll surely get a nice close-up of one of Harry's birds as soon as he opens his eyes. Harry has his arms around him, holding him against his chest, and Louis' hands are resting against it, the skin smooth and warm under his touch. Their feet are tangled, and Louis briefly wonders if they could actually manage to sleep in the same bed without ending up intertwined with each other.

Probably not.

Harry is a notorious cuddler, if nothing else.

Needing to take a piss, he untangles himself from Harry as gently as possible, careful not to wake the younger man. He must have stayed up long after Louis had fallen asleep, fever and illness having significantly put a cramp on his normal bedtime.

He manages to get out of bed somehow, and though Harry twists a bit in his sleep and pulls the duvet closer to his chest, cuddling it instead of Louis, he doesn't wake up.

As a last minute decision, Louis grabs his phone from the bedside table, before making his way to the bathroom down the hall, not wanting to risk waking up Harry by using the ensuite one.

He checks the time on his phone as he's moving down the hallway. It's a quarter past eight and Louis notes somewhere in the back of his mind that he's practically slept more this night than he sometimes used to do over several days at the height of their career. Weird, that.

He also notes that it'd be a reasonable time to call his mum and inform her that she should be expecting both him and Harry sometime around noon tomorrow. She'll complain about the short notice he's giving her, surely, but she'll only be teasing, because Louis knows how much she misses him and that she'd never pass up an opportunity to have him visit. Or Harry.

His mum has always adored Harry but got to see him less and less as time progressed, and his and Louis' friendship was buried more and more from the rest of the world. As it is now, Louis doesn't think his mum has seen Harry properly for years maybe, though he knows that they still keep in contact. It's the same with Louis and Anne, though he actually has been to visit them a few times during the hiatus, the last time on Harry's birthday for a quiet dinner. It's much easier with Harry's family, has always been much easier with them because they've always known the entire truth, there has never been any reason to hide anything from them, never been any reason to constantly be on guard like with his own family.

He takes care of his business, so to speak, and washes his hands, splashing a bit of water in his head. He's looked better but, all things considered, it could be a lot worse. He needs a shower though, the feeling of dried sweat clinging to his body from yesterday's yoyo temperature.

He decides to call his mum first though, quickly dialling her familiar number. It only rings twice before she picks up on the other end.

"Louis?" She breathes, her voice familiar even through the phone. It's been too long since he's been home, too long since they've talked. If he's being honest, he's been ignoring her, knowing that she'd ask him about Harry, demand an explanation, and he hasn't known what to tell her.