Where We Belong

Chapter 10

He wakes with a pair of soft lips at his forehead, and big familiar arms around him, fingers searching his spine. The rain taps at the window behind their telly-stand and there's rustling going on in the flat upstairs, parents getting ready for work and children running around the floor, making a game of not wanting to put on their shoes. And then there's right here, inside this flat, naked legs intertwined and Harry's slow steady breathing through his nostrils, puffing at Louis' fringe with every exhale.

He isn't sleeping. If he were, his lips would be parted, slack and dry from mouth-breathing through the night, but they aren't, they're soft as anything, pressed to Louis' skin.

Louis takes in the look of their legs like this again, milky-white against tan, Harry's strong thigh atop of his own, caging him in.

He drags a finger along it, just to feel the hairs that are too light to see, and Harry sucks in a surprised little breath though his nose. It's nothing, really, but it's enough to jolt Louis back to reality.

"Fuck. Shit, my alarm's in the other room. Time s'it?"

Harry makes a grunting noise and reaches behind Louis to lift his phone off the coffee-table, his armpit pushing into his face. It smells of sweat, in that slight-bit-too-bad-to-be-sexy way that makes him want to tell Harry to get his stinky pits out of his fucking face while his shameless morning-wood twitches in objection.

"Six am," Harry says, in a voice much too hoarse for either of their own goods.

"Right." Louis sighs in relief. "Don't have to worry 'bout work for a while, then."

"No," Harry agrees, but it still takes him a moment before he closes his arms properly around Louis again, giving him the chance to get out if he wants. When he realises Louis isn't going to get up, he deflates around him with a long sigh and holds him round the waist, the shoulders, pulls him close and presses his mouth into the crook of his neck and mutters, "no, don't have to worry."

The duvet's slipped down around their knees through the night, much too warm, but now Louis wants it around them again, wants to roll them up together, maybe pull it over their heads and pretend to be in a cave like children, their own little world away from the world.

He settles for tugging it up to his own shoulders.

"Cold?" Harry asks, pulling back to look at him.

"Yeah," Louis says, giving a little smile, "better now."

And maybe it's the eye contact, maybe it's on the brink of reminding him, taking him back to everything he'd let himself forget for just a moment. Maybe it's just that obscene mouth. Either way, Louis reaches round his neck then, pulls him close and kisses him.

Harry falls into it easily, but doesn't get too aggressive, just lets Louis guide the pace of things. His hands glide slowly up and down Louis' back, fingertips following the bones in his spine and Louis moves his hands through Harry's hair, breathing it in when a greasy lock falls into his face.

Harry's hard against Louis' thigh and Louis' sure Harry can feel him just as much too, but they don't do anything about it for while.

When Louis shifts around a little, though, arm getting crampy, his hips fall against Harry's and their cocks grind together through the fabric of their boxers. Harry gives a whiny little moan against his lips and snaps his hips forward for more.

Before Louis has a chance to give it to him, he pulls out of the kiss, a filthy string of saliva breaking between their mouths and dropping to his chin, still clinging to it as he speaks; "sorry, I didn't- it doesn't have to be—" he reaches a hand down his pants and rearranges himself, then throws it frantically through his hair, "like, I wasn't trying to force anything. I know you're not ready to be, like—"