I'm fine, We're fine [boyxboy]

Ten

Louis's POV

An uncomfortable silence was thick in the air between the two of us as soon as Zayn and Liam were gone. The sound of my own breathing was a gale-force rush that assaulted my ears and forced me to hold my breath just to ignore it. My shifting on the couch was much too loud. It disturbed the air and I may as well have been jumping up and down on a bed of tinfoil and eggshells while banging a boiler with a wooden spoon.

"Did you tell them?"

Harry was the first to break the silence and I was slow to look at him. "Tell them what?" I was trying to hide the nerves that shook my voice.

I wasn't like Harry. Playing stupid, piling believable lies on top of one another like a layered cake weren't my forte. I was weak and scared. I was a lamb. A fluffy, feeble lamb who couldn't defend itself. And Harry? He was the wolf lingering in the shadows, his blood-stained teeth bared and hackles raised, ready to pounce at the first movement. And pounce he would, ripping and tearing at everything he could get his claws into.

"You know what I'm fucking talking about," Harry spoke, the anger evident in his voice. He rose from the recliner and advanced on me, fists closed and fear began bubbling in my belly. Not now, not after the other night. My head was aching, I couldn't take anything else he dished out to me. It was soon put to rest when he dropped onto the couch beside me, but it didn't ease my fright.

"I swear to you, I didn't tell them anything." I insisted. Technically, I hadn't told Zayn and I wasn't lying because he had figured it out on his own. The words Harry hit me had never left my lips.

"Then why were they here?"

"Because Zayn is one of my best friends, he can't check up on me? Harry, please." I squirmed out of my soft cocoon so I was able to crawl into his lap. "We left without telling them goodbye the other night, remember? They wanted to make sure we were okay." I could feel his hands making their way to the curve of my behind. They always went there when I sat like this and on more than one occasion in the last month, I had used it to my advantage. "We're supposed to have a nice evening together." I laid my forehead against his, pinning a stray curl so it looped just above my eye. It tickled my lashes.

Blue met green again and I could see something brewing there. It was dark, it was vexed. I couldn't find the viridescent, grassy irises I had fallen so hard for just a few months ago.

But there was still a sweet side buried somewhere in that angry mess of bones and flesh that was Harry Styles. I held his face between my hands and that tight-lipped expression he had slipped into a sloping smile. "I'm sorry, love," he sighed at last, pressing into my hand. Harry kissed my palm. "I just don't think anyone should know what goes on between us. Our relationship is ours."

"And it's going to stay that way," I assured him quickly. "What goes on between you and I, stays between you and I. Now come on, let's eat before it's cold. I want to bake cookies with you and watch a movie so come on." I squeezed his cheeks, my thumbs pressing the dents that were his dimples. I pecked his lips and slipped off of him.

A rough hand caught me and I braced myself.

Harry kissed my head. Right on the bandage that was stuck to my battered skin. I winced but he was as easy as a mother with her new newborn. Sweet, butterfly kisses dotted every inch of tender skin in such an intimate, nurturing way, it formed a lump in my throat. "I love you, Lou," he whispered and pulled me back into his arms.

With him, I was safe. I wanted to kiss every one of my hopes and dreams onto his lips. My mind ran a thousand miles an hour picturing the beaches where we would one day run hand in hand, heads thrown back in a boisterous laughter as a torrential rain poured down on us. We would fall into the sand and he would kiss me and until his wet curls were plastered to my face. In the rain, moonlight would glint off the rings on our left hands. Harry was wild, I was tame. We were in our storm but every storm ran out of rain and soon ours would, too.