Dirty Thoughts (l.s.)

Part 5

Harry was late. He promised Louis that the dinner would be ready in thirty, and now he was running out of time. He was on the edge of anxiety all day, his actions clouded with this weird trembling in his body. He was talking to Lora about it tomorrow, it was slowly becoming his prominent state and he was not impressed.

"Just a minute," he called out into the living room. Louis wasn't even making a sound of protest. He got home some time ago, asking if Harry wanted to go out to eat. Harry said no to that because being around people seemed like a recipe for a disaster. But when Louis asked what he wanted to order from takeout, Harry felt a pang in his chest.

"You don't think that I can cook you dinner?" he asked already affronted.

Louis frowned.

"I didn't know you wanted to cook," he shrugged. "You can if you want, love, I don't mind. I'll be reading over manuscripts in the living room then."

And that's how Harry got here. He used to love cooking, but sometime around last year it became a chore, to feed himself, to wash himself, to be himself. He wanted to win some of it back tonight.

But it was easier said than done. Because the chicken he was making turned out to be too blend for his liking. The souse he googled the recipe for was a bold choice that came to bite him in the arse, and the potatoes that he baked burned his palms while he was hurrying to peal them, changing his mind from baked potatoes to mash.

Finally, he turned off the stove and sighed. It was terrible. Everything was terrible and he wanted to run away and hide. But Louis was right in the next room and waiting for his dinner, so Harry gathered his strength and walked out of the kitchen to surrender his fight.

"I quit! Your kitchen is cursed, I'm no longer wondering about it and from now on I'll stop laughing at your burned french toasts," he declared walking to the armchair that was facing the window.

Louis didn't even chuckle and Harry frowned at that. Walking closer he heard an unmistakable sniffle and stopped in the middle of the room.

"Lou?" he whispered in shock.

He saw Louis crying only once before and then Harry was the reason for the man's tears. Some part of Harry automatically thought that he was guilty of it once again.

"Oh, love, sorry," Louis turned in his direction slightly, his eyes puffy and red, but a smile adoring his face. "I didn't hear you. Got lost in this script."

"Were you..." Harry raised a brow. "Were you crying over a book?"

Louis nodded, swiping tears with his cardigan sleeve, glasses in his hand.

"Yes, it's a memoir of this girl," he thought for a moment, "or should I say woman, she's old now."

"Is it that good?"

Louis looked at him again and tapped the arm of his chair for Harry to come closer. The younger man did, feeling his feet uprooting from the spot.

"She published it in America and she wants to publish it here in Europe, but something was going wrong with other publishers, so her agent called me. I decided to read it myself, considering that the others were keeping the book on hold for some reason."

"What is it about?" Harry frowned at the slightly darkened screen of Louis' laptop.

"She tells her story of living in a cult from the moment of her birth and until she turned twenty two," Louis started. "It was this popular scandalous cult in America in the nineties, I had to google it, to be honest. It was called 'The Family'."

Harry grimaced. "Sounds awful already."

"That's what I thought, but it gets worse, trust me," Louis' eyes widened in dramatics. "They were called a 'sex cult' by the media and not without a reason, may I say. They were practicing swinging and polyamory, but that would be okay if not for the children."