Happy Thoughts

Chapter 12

The first rule they decided upon was also the first to be broken.

For almost two weeks, they had been able to abide by their self-appointed restrictions so that they were able to function as normal friends by day, much as they had during their tour, and then still relieve whatever tension remained by the time the night rolled toward them. They were able to interact perfectly well with the other boys, and despite their initial fear that they would be treated differently for their somewhat unusual relationship with one another; the dynamic within the band remained the same. Zayn was still comfortable with wrapping both boys up in his arms without worrying about either one being completely offended by the act, and he frequently kissed Louis affectionately when the mood struck him - just as he'd done before the entire mess started. Niall made no lewd comments about the two of them, as he might have initially been tempted to, and Liam seemed to have no objections to what they were doing once he began to see that their normal friendship was still intact during their forays into the world outside their apartment.

Without the fear that their band mates would suddenly burst in on them in the middle of the night, Harry and Louis gained a far greater sense of safety in their own apartment, which meant that any attraction between them was safely tucked away as the sun rose, and they were perfectly natural together again. It even reached a point where they began getting worried well-wishes from the fans, who seemed to believe that they were having some sort of falling out due to the lack of obvious tension between them on camera. It was far too complicated to try and explain that they only reason they weren't hanging on each other's every touch was because their skin was still burning from the last time they were together, so they simply made do with a few quick reassurances that everything was alright and sent a few tweets back and forth to placate the concerned masses for a while.

They were perfectly balanced, managing to keep themselves split down the middle into two separate relationships that were both working well, on the surface of it. There was only the occasional moment where one part of their lives began to leak into the other; like when Harry had almost leaned in to kiss Louis out of habit during a particularly close-shot interview, or when Louis had startled himself out of a particularly vivid dream while they had all been sleeping in the car together, causing more than a few questioning glances to be thrown his way for the rest of the trip.

It was hard to tell who really broke it first, though.

Louis certainly took the first step; as soon as he grew bored enough during one of their interview days, the temptation that was sitting opposite him simply became too much to ignore - and so he didn't ignore it.

They were sitting in their second radio interview for the day, and while he usually loved getting into the questions and mucking around with the presenters, somehow the prospect of torturing his favourite person in the world was just that more appealing to him. The radio interviews were some of the easiest to mess with the others, too, which only made the idea harder to resist.

He was sitting apart from Harry, his usual target in times such as these, but fortunately they were sitting on a strange crescent-shaped table that curved around in semi-circle so in actual fact, he was sitting straight across from his roommate. Every now and then, he would look up and meet Harry's eyes and know that the curly-haired boy knew exactly how stir-crazy he was becoming as he sat there. The man's eyes were shining far too much to be innocent as he watched Louis fidget restlessly.

They were still being filmed, as always, and so Louis had to be careful; he waited until the camera man panned around to focus on Zayn, sitting next to Harry, so he was nowhere near the shot. Zayn was the only one speaking, but the second he glanced over in that direction Harry's gaze shot up to meet his questioningly.