Strawberry Milk L.S.

strawberry milk

It's quiet, and Harry walks beside him, playing with his fingers and chewing his lip. Louis can see the word ‘nervous’ painted above him in the way he can see the lilac colour painted elegantly over his trimmed nails. Louis finds himself wanting to take the boy's hand and squeeze some reassurance into him that everything is okay.

When the boy goes to open the door to his flat, he does so with a shaking hand, not even able to get the key into the keyhole.

Louis sighs, gently taking Harry’s hand in his own. He notices the boy flinch from the contact, but he ignores it. “Mate, love, calm down, alright? Everything's fine.”

Louis guides the key into the door, and Harry blinks, slowly nodding as there is a small clicking noise. He inhales quickly, looking away, before slowly opening the door as Louis’ hand drops from his. He lets Louis in first, and then he is stumbling to get the lights on.

Louis doesn't really know what he was expecting, but then again, he never really knows what he expects for anything.

Off-white picture frames cover the wall that is painted a soft pink, little fairy lights hang delicately from where they are strung around the room, casting a gentle yellow over the walls. The couch is a very light pink, fading into a white almost, and it looks like it cost a decent amount of money. It’s decorated with fluffy, pink-laced pillows, and there is a darker coloured purple rug on the ground. It’s prim, and proper, and Louis is almost wondering how Harry got all of this pale and clean furniture, rather than why he has it.

If anything, it all just makes Louis want to run through a car wash.

Harry doesn't really meet Louis’ eyes as he leads him somewhere else. “Um, there's a balcony in my room. So, yeah,” he blushes.

His room is painted a soft white colour rather than pink like the main room. More fairy lights drape around the walls and dangle around a vanity that is filled with lotions, scrubs, and a few stray nail polishes. His bed is clad in a mint coloured bedding that looks unbelievably soft and fluffy, a white sheer mosquito net hanging from the ceiling around the headboard. Nail polishes line racks on the wall, along with fancy perfumes and different sprays. Flower crowns hang on little pins and glitter jars of different shades of pinks and purples lay mischievously on shelves with books and vases of flowers. The lacy curtains are pulled back, contrasting against the dark sky. The room smells sweet, and Louis guesses it is because there are unlit, but half-burnt candles all around the room.

Overall, the room is very sweet and delicate, and Louis thinks back to when Lottie was showing him her dream room in a catalogue.

Really, though, it’s fitting. The boy paints his nails, so Louis thinks now that he is here, it really isn’t all that surprising. At first glance you wouldn’t expect the deep-voiced and tall boy to be into such feminine things, but now that Louis’ been around him a little bit, it all seems to just fit, even if he is a boy.

Is he a boy, though?

He thinks back to Liam lecturing him on gender and sex and how there are many different combinations of what people identify as, or act like. To Louis it is still all a bit strange, or maybe a better word is foreign, only because he has never actually met anyone who didn’t act like the gender they were born as. And if he has, he never realised it.

He keeps his mouth shut despite everything running through his head, and gently sets all of their stuff that he's been carrying onto the hardwood floor.

He watches as Harry slips his shoes off and then begins to toe his socks off, before pausing. “Is- uhm- is it okay if I take my socks off?”

Louis blinks, furrowing his eyebrows, “Yeah, go ahead, mate,” he says sort of awkwardly. “No foot fetishes over here,” he jokes, to lighten the mood.