For Our Eyes Only

12- Surprise

Louis wandered out of the guest room one morning, still sleepy but feeling pretty good. He smelled something cooking, which he knew meant Harry was awake. He wandered down the hall and into the kitchen and, just as he figured, Harry was stood at the stove cooking.

"Morning!" Harry said cheerfully when he saw Louis.

Harry was always a morning person. Louis never could figure out how in the world he did it.

"Morning," Louis mumbled sleepily, sitting down at the table.

Harry finished plating what he was cooking and turned off the stove before turning around and setting one plate in front of Louis and the other in his place. Louis perked up a little bit as Harry sat down once he noticed what it was. It was eggs on toast, one of his favorites.

"Happy Birthday Louis," Harry said, smiling.

Louis frowned, confused. "It's not my birthday?"

Louis pulled out his phone, and checked it. Sure enough, at the top above the time it read 'Saturday, December 24th'.

"Fuck," Louis said, "I didn't think I had lost track of that much time."

Harry laughed, "That's okay. Do you have plans with any of your mates?"

Louis shook his head. "No. I've not really talked to anyone other than you since, well, the funeral." It still hurt to say that, but neither of them mentioned it too much.

"Do you want to do anything?" Harry asked.

Louis shrugged. "I don't know what we would do to be honest."

"We could do dinner. Not in that way," Harry said, blushing and looking away.

Louis smiled, trying not to appear at all disappointed in the fact that he would be happy to go out to dinner 'in that way'. "Yeah we can do dinner."

They finished eating, talking about their progress in their music and such. Harry had made considerable more progress than Louis had, but then, the last year or so had forced him to put a lot of things on hold. It was also really nice not being forced to constantly be working, some days Louis felt like he could actually breathe now.

They actually had started to find it easier to talk now as well. Many subjects were still a bit sensitive but they were finding some amount of the comfort that they once had, and found it easier to come to one another for advice.

After they had finished Louis went back into the guest room and changed, trying to make an effort to look at least a little more presentable. He sat down on the bed for a moment, staring around trying to decide what to do with himself. It was going to be quite a while until dinner so he had to find something to entertain himself. The downside of sharing a birthday with Christmas eve meant that a lot of places were closed and there weren't any football matches on. Right. Christmas tomorrow. Louis wondered if Harry had plans for tomorrow. He hoped not, because Louis himself had nowhere to go and didn't exactly fancy spending Christmas in Harry's flat alone. In the week since the funeral in which he had lost track of time he had at least remembered to get Harry something, mostly to thank him for all the help through his grief.

Eventually Louis sighed and got up. He knew he probably shouldn't be working on Christmas eve, but there wasn't much else to do. He left the room and went and found Harry, who was curled up on the sofa reading.

"Hey Harry?" Louis asked.

"Yeah?" Harry answered, putting down his book.

"Do you happen to have a guitar around?" Louis asked. He felt like it was kind of a dumb question, but he didn't exactly know where it was.