My Only Lover(s)

Love Nest

Harry had been off for the past week and a half, since... that night. Louis and Zayn knew that he had seen them. He hadn't exactly the most subtle voyeur. They could hear his footsteps in the hall, they saw the door squeak open, ever so gently, just a crack, and ofcourse they heard as he ran away. It had seemed harmless then, he was their mate after all, so why shouldn't he watch? But he had been acting strangely ever since.

They had been expecting embarrassment. For him to blush whenever he saw them, or to break eye contact, or to fidget relentlessly. However, that hadn't been the case. Oddly enough he'd been spending more time than ever with the two alpha's.

He was over at their house as often as he could, after class and on his free days. Zayn had felt bad for Ed who had drive him so he took on the responsibility of taking Harry to and from their house.

The boy never wanted to stay in his dorm room anymore, Louis couldn't blame him because it was small and shabby and not at all fit for his darling little mate, but Harry had never seen any problems with it before. When asked what had changed he just shrugged and said he missed his mates.

He spent most of his time cuddled up on the couch, wrapped up in a heap of blankets and armored with pillows. He'd sit there for hours, practically motionless, until either Louis, or Zayn, or both of them sat down beside him. He'd wrap himself around them like a snake. He was still terribly embarrassed but he didn't want to be far from them for too long.

"Do you think he's sick?" Zayn whispered. He and Louis had escaped to the kitchen, but they had little time before their little mate summoned them back again.

"Maybe he's just finally feeling the effects of the mate bond," The suggestion was half hearted, Lou wasn't sure what was happening either.

"Maybe."

---

Harry felt feverish all the time. And tired. And grumpy. And hungry. And he wanted a good cuddle, but he also sort of wanted to be left alone. He'd been feeling this way for a while. Maybe he was coming down with a cold or something.

When he wasn't desperately craving his mates affection he was sitting in the floor of laundry room. He was pretty sure Lou and Zayn hadn't noticed yet. If they had they'd be even more freaked out than they already had been recently. They thought they were being subtle but Harry knew. He could just kind of feel it.

The tiles in the laundry room were cool beneath the soft pads of his feet. He was hot from head to toe and it felt absolutely wonderful. Besides that this was the room that smelled the most strongly of his mates.

He breathed in deeply, before setting to work. He rummaged through the hampers, not the clean one, he wasn't interested in anything in those, they all smelled like lavender detergent. He grabbed the sheets Lou had stripped off the bed just that morning. He wasn't entirely sure what was possessing him to do these things, but it felt imperative to him that along with the sheets he also take three shirts off the pule and Zayn's softest pair of sweatpants.

He carried his bounty back to his room, careful to stay out of sight. This was by no means normal behaviour.

As he shut his door behind him, he relished in the smell of his bedroom. He had, in the center of his bed, created a pile of clothes and blankets and pillows. It smelled so strongly of his mates it made his head go a little fuzzy for a moment as he went to neatly arrange his newest acquisitions.

He could smell Zayn coming before he even reached the door to knock. His scent was so much stronger coming from straight from the source than it did from his clothes and blankets he'd touched. Harry wished he could just throw his mate onto the pile as well.