Where We Belong

Chapter 15

Things seem all right the following morning. Or, well, as all right as anything gets right now. Louis' folded himself around Harry during the night, one arm linked around his belly, and Harry hasn't pushed him off, even as he's breathing like he's been awake for hours.

Louis lies stiff in it for a moment, then dips in and presses a little kiss between Harry's shoulder-blades.

Harry's entire back tenses up.

Louis drops his forehead to the spot where he kissed. "Love you," he says on a long sigh.

"Love you too," Harry replies, fingers twitching where they loop around Louis' arm, "you're gonna be late for work if you don't get up now."

"Yeah." Louis sits half-way up, then stops, nervous, and pets Harry's arm, "you're feeling all right or—"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Harry mutters, but he won't lift his face from where it's half-way buried in his pillow, rest of it covered by his long hair.

Louis reaches down and tucks it behind his ear for him. "Okay," he says, pressing a kiss to his temple, "love you."

"Love you too," Harry mutters, but he mostly sounds irritated with having to repeat himself, "- go, you're gonna be late."

Everything remains calm. Louis gets ready for work, Harry kisses him goodbye, texts him to remember to buy toilet-paper and milk and lube, cooks dinner in the evening and watches telly with him after. They get ready for bed and then they get into bed and then Louis shifts around, braver in the dark, and asks Harry do you want to talk about any of it? and Harry tells him no. There's nothing to talk about.

They fuck, doggystyle, and soon as they're both finished, Harry rolls off and then that's that. Then that's the end of the day.

They have another two weeks full of those exact same days. Louis tries to talk to Harry, really talk to him, tries to ask him what he wants, what he's thinking, starts to understand just how hard it must've been back when the tables were turned, but then he thinks no. No, this isn't the fucking same, I don't deserve to be treated like this, he fucked up first and then things snowballed and it's not the same as what he did to me. And, when he thinks that, he gets angry, mean, jabs at Harry just to get him to react.

Worst part is, he still doesn't. He smiles without the eyes, kisses back when kissed, crawls onto Louis once the lights are off and jack-rabbits him and then goes to sleep. He doesn't cry, and if he does he tries to hide it. He doesn't tell Louis off or make him sleep on the couch or even just look at him like he's utter scum once in a while.

So, Louis has no right to go around feeling as fucking miserable as he does.

"You have no right to feel sorry for yourself," Eleanor tells him over the phone during his lunch-break one day, "it's been, what, two weeks? He's still processing. Give him time."

"I know that," Louis says, "I know that, I just... I'm still angry at what he did. And I'm still worried about what I did. And I haven't got—" anyone but you to talk to about it and you don't even really know him so you wouldn't understand, you only know half of us, you don't know us together, "I haven't got a clue what to do."

He lies to Eleanor because otherwise he'd hurt her feelings. Or maybe he wouldn't, probably wouldn't, but he can't let himself risk it. There's enough hurting going on in his life as it is.

"Just give him time," she tells him again, and he can't really use it for much, but he tells her thanks anyway.

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