Where I Am Without You [L.S]

Chapter Fifteen

He's sat across his kitchen table from Gemma when the he gets the texts through from Jeff. It's 9am on the morning of the 28th, the reunion and tour announcement doesn't go public till 12pm UK time but he still turns away from his laptop screen, where he'd been going through a design model with Gemma to view the message.

Don't know what you did, but you're a bloody legend! (Check your emails)

Is all Jeff's text says and he swipes the screen across on his laptop to open his emails.

"Who was that?" Gemma asks him, she has several magazines spread out before her, marker pens covering a section of his dining room table as she has spent the morning highlighting design ideas for her new range of eye wear.

            "Jeff."

He waits for the tab to load, immediately seeing the high priority email sent through ten minutes ago from Rebecca. Curiously he clicks on the email and is met with nothing more than a link to a folder.

He's met with dozens of photos from the photoshoot last week. The photos start with the group ones from the first location, the images are all beautiful shot and capture the all five of them in easy conversation, at times focused on smiling for the camera but most of the photos are purely candid as they switch around the various chairs now and then. He scrolls through each of them slowly, liking perhaps three more so than the others and saves those to his computer. He moves down the list to the wall shots, it starts with the five of them, then the images blend into just two of the lads seated next to each other, there's Liam and Niall on the edge, both mid laugh, then Niall with Harry, the Irishman's arm draped over Harry's right shoulder and smirking towards the camera.

He finally scrolls down to the next section and there's him and Louis. The first two of them with Louis' knees tucked up, Harry's sprawled out in front of them and the two of them are looking down, both with small smiles on their lips. It's...cute, he supposes. But it's also sickening as the first thought Harry has at those two images is of how they'd always looked in the very early days of getting to know each other. Before either of them were brave enough to admit to each other that their liking towards one another went just slightly beyond friends.

Harry quickly scrolls down, hoping to get those thoughts out of his mind when he feels his blood freeze in his veins. The photo is simple. In the exact moment after Louis had just told him what he thought of his performances. There's a longing look in Harry's eyes in the picture, his head turned towards Louis as if he doesn't quite believe he's actually sat there. Then there's Louis, who's looking at Harry in the picture like he's everything. A fondness in his gaze and his lips which are tilted upwards in the most endearing way possible. It's so heartachingly beautiful and simple that Harry just sits at his kitchen table and stares.

He doesn't know how long he sits there for and stares at the image, nor the first moment when a tear trails slowly down his cheek, but he does feel it when Gemma wraps an arm around him and holds him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder.

They sit in silence for the better part of ten minutes, the only sound in the room is the distant sound of the clocking ticking on the wall.

His mind wanders from the image to last week. He'd sat with his head buried in Louis' lap for the better part of half an hour. The two of them hadn't moved, their teas forgotten on the bench before them.

"I wanted to be here when you heard it, thought I owed that to you." Louis had finally spoken, his voice had been raw with emotion.

Harry had left soon after. Not a word more spoken between them as he'd simply stood, grabbed his keys and driven home in deafening silence. He hadn't heard a thing from Louis since, but he supposes he hasn't exactly tried to reach out either.