**
When Louis comes back from the meeting, Harry is still there. He’s lying diagonally across the bed, as naked as Louis left him, scrolling through some web store and munching on microwaveable cinnamon rolls. His feet are up in the air, crossed at the ankles, and his tail snakes between them as it swishes from side to side. He looks back over his shoulder. “Hi,” he drawls.
Louis leans against the doorjamb and crosses his arms. “What are you still doing here?” he asks, trying to sound strict while fighting down a smile.
“Resting?” Harry suggests, raising his eyebrows. There’s a smudge of brown cinnamon filling in the corner of his mouth.
“Aren’t you supposed to be roaming IKEA and mispronouncing every single Swedish word known to man while looking for new sheets?”
“But it’s my day off,” Harry reasons. He blinks up at Louis a few times, smiling too sweetly. “Isn’t this what people do on their days off?”
“You literally took the day off so you could go shopping for everything you still need.”
Harry shrugs. “Maybe the excessive florals are growing on me,” he says as he goes back to his laptop. “Maybe I’ve decided that’s my bedroom aesthetic.”
“That’s not an aesthetic; that’s exposure therapy,” Louis replies, shaking his head. He undoes his jeans and steps out of them, throwing them into the corner of the room on top of a pile of dirty clothes that may be Harry’s. He climbs onto the bed, sitting cross-legged by Harry’s hip. The shirt he’s wearing is Harry’s, too big on him with the neckline falling open below his collarbones and the edge of it resting almost halfway down his thighs; it smells like Harry too, something he only realised when he was already in the lobby and taking his jacket off. The girl he’s working under on his new project gave him a strange look when he tucked his head against his shoulder to smell it.
“You weren’t complaining about the sheets last week when you were fucking me on them,” Harry says casually, nudging Louis’ shoulder with his feet. The tip of his tail tickles under Louis’ chin.
Louis feels heat rising inside him. “Wasn’t really focusing on the sheets,” he says, wrapping his fingers around Harry’s tail and running them up to the tip. The hair underneath is silky and soft, the muscles strong when Louis tries to manipulate them. He ends up having to let Harry’s tail snake up his arm while he runs his hand down it against the grain. “What are you looking at?” he asks, leaning forward a little to look over Harry’s shoulder. He scratches gently at the base of Harry’s tail, playing with the short hairs that run up his spine before tapering off.
“Oh you know, things,” Harry replies with a laugh. He scrolls up until an image finally comes up on the screen, an elaborate hand-crafted flogger with braided tails and a dark purple handle. Louis feels a tug deep in his belly.
“Jesus, H, a little warning,” he says, inadvertently sinking his nails into the dimples low on Harry’s back. Harry hangs his head as he laughs before turning around to lie on his back.
“But your reactions are so much better when you don’t expect it,” he teases with a smirk. His tail taps playfully on the bed. There’s a fading trail of Louis’ nails down his chest and an angry bruise above his hip where Louis bit him that morning. His cock rests half-hard by his thigh. The way his fingers dance over his side to draw attention has to be deliberate. Louis’ mouth goes dry. He knows Harry’s playing him; he also knows it’s working.
