Night Changes // l.s.

▰ 09 ▰

[hiiii I really, really love the new cover like wow and also here's another chapter thanks to you all and your lovely response. enjoy, all the love, b.]

Harry calls two days later, Friday. Louis punches 1 into his keypad so quickly he thinks he might've broken the phone, but the line connects soon enough.

"Harry!" he all but shouts, "good morning, babe, or wait, is it afternoon there? I'm shit at maths," he laments.

There's a small silence.

"'S'Afternoon."

His voice is quiet, guarded. Louis closes his mouth, bites back his slightly hyperactive word vomit. He swallows.

"Okay," he says gently, "how you going? Miss you."

Harry sighs, lies down Louis thinks, from what he can hear. "I'm just tired. Really tired, you know."

I miss you too; Louis thinks, please. It doesn't come.

So he waits for what always comes next; tell me about London. But it's just silence. He's not sure they've ever had one of these conversations without that question.

"Yeah, babe, I can imagine," he says, let's the sentiment in his voice hold for a moment, "hey, I read your card, though. Proper catch, you are."

He expects Harry to laugh, even just to smile. To say, I got yours too. Happy anniversary and two days.

"What?"

He doesn't, however, expect that. His heart rate quickens, or maybe falls, he can't tell.

Your card your card your card, the one you wrote me, and please don't say you've forgotten it, the best card I've ever been given, the card I'm considering sleeping with every night you're not here.

"Your card," he says again, carefully, trying to keep the edge out of his tone but failing.

Harry sighs. And if Louis' not mistaken, he sounds irritable. "Louis, what? My card for what?"

Louis traps his breath in his lungs, closes his eyes for a long moment. He shouldn't be disappointed. Harry's on the front fucking line of a goddamned war, for Christ's sake. It's not a felony if he's forgotten an arbitrary date in their calendar. He's got one or two things going on.

It doesn't stop the sinking feeling that runs through Louis' whole body, drags him down.

"Anniversary, babe," he says quietly, "it was Wednesday." And I stayed up till midnight, he thinks, and I slept with that card in my hand.

"Oh," Harry says after a long moment, and for a second he thinks it might be okay, that Harry will apologise and rifle through his bag till he finds Louis' card, read it as they're on the phone and maybe, maybe, maybe it'll be okay.

Instead, Harry says "shit," like he's forgotten to put the towels in the drier or record The Voice, and Louis wants to cry.

Louis swallows, takes a deep breath.

He forgot. 1095.726.

"Yeah," he says, out into the silence, "shit. A bit."

"What's that s'posed to mean?" Harry snaps.

Louis blinks. Thinks he might need to check he's got the right number, because this whole conversation has been stilted and odd, but that tone, harsh as though he's looking for a fight, that's not his boy.

"What?"

"Look, Lou, I'm sorry I forgot, but no need to get all fucking melodramatic on me," Harry says, in there before Louis can even wrap his head around what's happening, "do you think you could just say, oh, hey Harry, you're in the middle of fucking Afghanistan, it's okay if you forgot our anniversary and not treat it like a federal fucking case?"