You Can Hear It In The Silence

Chapter 31

At most, they would have gotten three hours sleep, having spent the rest of the night kissing. And as much as Harry loved kissing Louis because he did love kissing him and it was one of the things he'd been thinking about most since he left, he was also very aware they could have used twenty minutes of that time to talk and then they could have spent the rest of the day kissing. It would have also loosened the knot sitting at the bottom of Harry's stomach since he got back and only worsened after his party. He understood why Louis hadn't wanted to talk while Harry was drunk, but it would have saved Harry a lot of anxiety as he was pretty sure he'd been going out of his mind.

The only times he wasn't thinking about their impending conversation was when he remembered how stupidly drunk he got at his party. He would have loved to be able to let it go, but his fucking friends wouldn't let him and brought it up as often as they could, and they weren't showing signs of stopping anytime soon. The only improvement was that as the days ticked along, they'd gone from lecturing him about the seriousness of it to making fun of him for it. He'd take them joking about it instead of being concerned about him every time.

While he still had some lingering embarrassment around them whenever they brought it up, although he was pretty sure they were just making up stories at this point, he wasn't really embarrassed about it with Louis. Maybe it was a trust thing, and perhaps it was, but he'd also been in so many vulnerable situations with Louis that this barely broke into the top ten embarrassing moments they'd had. The top ten did have a new entrant from this week, though. In fact, it had made its way to the top three for sure, which, if Harry weren't mortified by it, he would have found pretty impressive.

Harry had almost let slip that he loved Louis. It wasn't that it hadn't almost come out before because it had. But the last time was so fucking clear that he was sure Louis must have heard, despite Harry's attempt to breeze past it. He'd done his best to push that out of his mind completely.

So yeah, that was much worse than Louis seeing him drunk.

But now the sun was streaming through the small gap between Louis' curtains, and the time illuminated on his phone indicated they were likely alone in the house. It was officially Friday, meaning it was officially the day there were going to have 'The Talk'. Harry still wasn't entirely sure what the talk was going to entail, but he was glad they were going to be able to talk at all, given it wasn't that long ago that he was worried that Louis would never provide them with the chance to discuss, well, anything.

One of Harry's favourite things, and another thing he'd desperately missed, was having morning cuddles with Louis as Louis slowly, incredibly slowly, woke up. But this morning, he was feeling much too restless to stay there. Disappointedly, in the time that Harry hadn't shared a bed with Louis, he must have lost his talent of sneaking away while keeping him asleep because Louis stirred before Harry had even wiggled himself free from Louis' arm.

"Where are you going?" Louis' voice was laced with exhaustion.

Harry let himself be pulled back into Louis' chest. "I was going to make breakfast."

Louis shook his head, his morning stubble causing friction with Harry's hair. "Nah, uh, going out for brekkie."

"We are?" Harry pulled back a little to study Louis.

"Yep, got a big day."

Harry wasn't sure he'd be able to keep the disappointment off his face, so he pressed his head back into Louis' chest. "Oh, I thought we were going to talk today."

"We are," Louis said. He repositioned them so that they were looking at each other. "That's why we have a big day."

Oh. "A big day of talking?"