Chapter Text
Louis’ back stiffened as he heard the familiar creak of the back door opening. His eyes flashed to the clock in the corner of his laptop screen. 9:38 pm. He wondered how long he’d been staring at the same sentence of the same essay on intergenerational trauma in the works of Shakespeare.
He really should have gotten so much more done today.
“Louuu?” His best friend’s voice sang out from the kitchen. “Dude, did you know they came up with this incredible invention in the 19th century called light bulbs, and we all get to use them instead of sitting in the dark.” Louis saw the overhead light switch on out of the corner of his eye. “Well, most of us do,” Harry continued. “Unless you live somewhere without electricity, but I think that's pretty rare these days. Anyway, I brought you my leftovers since I assume you didn’t eat.”
For as long as Louis could remember, whenever Harry went out to dinner, he would order too many appetizers because he couldn’t decide, get too full to finish his main, then bring it home for Louis because he insisted it was important he eat something other than cereal for dinner.
Louis could hear plates clattering and the cutlery drawer open. He sighed. Kristina deserved an ‘A’ on the final just for tackling King Lear. Louis despised King Lear.
He was in the middle of forcing himself to finally type up some kind of intelligent feedback when a large hand with glittery pale pink nails and gold rings reached over his shoulder to put a plate of pasta on the table beside him.
“What are you working on?” Harry asked, his voice several decibels softer now that he wasn’t shouting across the apartment. The hand that had dropped off the plate moved to the back of Louis’ neck, and because he was a weak bastard, he relaxed his head into it, closing his eyes. Harry’s other hand immediately landed on his shoulder, and they both kneaded the tight muscles.
Fuck this stupid fucking angel.
“That bad, huh?” Harry murmured.
Louis didn’t answer because this was the problem, and now there was a lump in his throat and tears springing up behind his closed eyelids and fuck everything.
“Grading,” he finally croaked, coughing to cover up how his voice had cracked. He shook his head out of Harry’s grasp. “How was your date?”
“Wasn’t a date.” The other hand left his shoulder, but it didn’t feel like Harry had moved away.
“Does ‘Amanda from accounting’ know that?” Louis scoffed and rubbed his watering eyes. They were bleary from staring at the screen all day anyway. He scanned his remarks on Kristina’s submission before clicking submit on it.
“Yes.” Harry still hadn’t moved back if the feeling of electricity running up and down Louis’ spine was to be trusted.
“If you say so.” Louis forced himself to laugh airily.
He maybe found that hard to believe from a man who should be starring in a Bravo show about first dates. He’d also maybe spent most of the past hour mentally drafting the treatment while he stared at Kristina’s essay:
“No Fourth Dates is a 21st-century reality dating show for the GenZ market starring a flirtatious, sexy, LA-based nonbinary pansexual who LOVES love and his fellow humans so much that he charms everyone he meets into at least one date with him! The catch? In a society where TikTok has ruined attention spans, no one ever makes it past date three! Because this isn’t actually about loving love, it’s about being insecure and really fucking picky.”
Only Louis knew about that last part, gleaned after approximately six years of close observation of the subject.
Anyway.
“Alright. How was the ‘not date’?” He opened Jonah’s essay. It was on Hamlet because eighty percent of the class had picked Hamlet. College kids were already overwhelmingly sheeple.
Christ, he really needed this semester to be over so he could start sleeping again and, ideally, not wake up until January.
“Okay. It was nice.”
“‘Nice?’” Louis snorted. “Not sure your new work wife would appreciate that ringing endorsement of her company. Especially after your tales of the holiday party last night.”
“Lou, can we talk?” Harry mumbled so softly that Louis wouldn’t have caught it if Harry wasn’t right behind him.
“What? Why?” He sputtered.
Well, that didn’t sound panicked at all, Lewis. Excellent work. Fancy pulling yourself the fuck together, mate?
He dropped his hands to the edge of his desk and took a long, slow breath before spinning his chair around. Harry had moved back to lean against the door frame between Louis’ makeshift dining room office and the kitchen. His arms were crossed over his chest, and Louis’ eyes couldn’t help but track the way the red trim of his heart-print ringer tee stretched across his biceps.
Louis really wished there was a fourth wall for him to break right now with a snide comment about how perfect that shirt would be for the opening sequence of No Fourth Dates. But what he said instead was, “What’s up, H?”
And because Harry enjoyed confrontation as much as he enjoyed fourth dates, he immediately looked like he would rather swallow his—obscene, giraffe-like, skilled at torturing innocent bystanders with the act of eating—tongue than have the conversation he requested.
“Nothing. Nevermind.”
Louis raised his eyebrows and waited, but Harry pushed off the wall and headed back into the kitchen. Louis was about to turn back to his computer when he spun around, sneakers squeaking on the tile floor.
“It’s just that you’ve been in this really shitty mood since the show closed?” Harry blurted out. “And you’re being, like, really weird about it? Like I was just wondering what’s wrong?” he rambled, fiddling with his rings. “I mean, I get that it’s the end of the semester, and you’re stressed; I’m used to that. But I just thought that you would be less stressed now that the show’s over, and….”
“And what?” Louis cut him off. “And now I’m raining on your happy holidays' parade?”
Three months of living and breathing The Taming of the Shrew meant that even as white-hot rage curled up his spine and flooded his cheeks, his brain was still thinking in Shakespeare. And right now, the line repeating on a loop was: “My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.”
Because, yeah, Louis felt like he was about to break from all the things he wasn't saying.
“I’m soo sorry I’m still stressed, Harry. But yeah, I am,” he ranted, springing out of his chair and bouncing on his heels, riding a wave of adrenaline that had been building for days, if not months.
Or, well… years.
“I’m stressed because—I don’t know? Maybe because I’ve hardly eaten or slept in weeks between the play, getting my draft into my advisor, and all this fucking grading. Which doesn’t even matter because once I finish these—” he glanced back at the screen and quickly counted, “—last four essays, I have to switch to the pile of treatments I owe Matt if I still want an actual job after graduation. Not to mention how I need the money from them for presents for me half-dozen siblings since I can’t even afford a plane ticket home.”
Louis had reached the point of anger where his Yorkshire accent, softened from almost a decade in the States, had come roaring back.
“And I have to get it all done in, like, a quarter of the time it should take, you know what I mean?” he carried on. “All so we can go to Catalina with your parents this weekend so that at least one of us gets to celebrate bloody Christmas with their fucking family. All because next week, they—god fucking bless them—will be on a beach in Hawaii instead of here with you.”
“We could’ve just gone to Hawaii,” Harry muttered, twisting his fingers, eyes fixed on his chipped nail polish.
“What?”
“We could’ve gone to Hawaii for Christmas, so you wouldn’t have to rush now.” He shrugged like it was a simple answer to an uncomplicated problem.
“That’s what you’re taking from this?!” It took everything in Louis to hold back from actually shouting. “If I don’t have the money for Doncaster, how exactly would I afford to go to Hawaii?”
“I’d have paid,” came another mumble.
“Oh yeah, sure, great. You pay for fucking enough as it is.” Louis flapped his hands around to indicate the spacious apartment that Harry and his real job and his lack of student loans afforded them, the kitchen stocked with gadgets that Harry had accumulated, and the groceries from Gelson’s he had purchased.
“And, like, Jesus,” Louis went on because his mouth was like a train with busted brakes, which, if he knew anything about physics, probably had something to do with mass, and momentum, and velocity, and, and…
“Why would you pay for me to come to Christmas with your family? You know…? We’re roommates, Harry. We’re not fucking married.”
Well, shit.
Fuck.
There went one of the things he’d been trying not to say.
Harry’s hands immediately dropped to his sides, and his head jerked up to look at Louis. His mouth parted in shock, opening and closing several times without any sound coming out. He looked unusually pale.
“Right. Yeah. Roommates,” Harry finally said, crossing the dining room in a few strides to the opposite door. “Got it.”
“Jesus, Harry, you know I didn’t mean—” Louis scrambled over a couple of piles of textbooks and scripts to try to stop him.
“Go finish your essays,” Harry barked.
“What?!” Louis had no idea what that had to do with anything.
“You said you have four essays left, right? Go finish them now,” Harry ordered in a clipped tone he so rarely used that Louis tended to obey it out of sheer confusion.
“And eat the food.” Harry jerked his chin towards Louis’ desk before disappearing down the hallway and slamming his bedroom door.
+++
An hour later, Louis had clicked submit on the last essay and was debating his next move. At some point, he’d heard Harry leave his room and make enough noise rummaging around the back of the apartment that Louis had to talk himself off a ledge of crazy thoughts that said Harry was moving out on a whim.
Oh, great, now he was thinking about it again.
He was about to get up and bring his empty plate to the kitchen when Harry reappeared in the doorway. He’d changed out of his date night clothes into gym shorts and a hoodie with the hood up over a beanie. He was carrying a duffel bag, which did not help Louis’ paranoia.
“Did you finish them?” Harry asked. The past hour hadn’t done much to soften his tone.
“Yes?”
“Good, then go get in the car.” He held the bag out to Louis.
“What?” Louis asked, rotely taking it. For someone about to get an MFA in playwriting, his vocabulary sure had dwindled down to nothing.
“Go get in the car,” Harry repeated, picking up Louis’ plate and heading to the kitchen. “We’re gonna go for a drive, and we’re not coming home until we work this out.”
It was Louis’ turn to fishmouth as he looked around his mess of an office and tried to wrap his brain around walking away from it for an undisclosed amount of time.
“H, it’s ten-thirty on a Tuesday,” he hedged. “You have work tomorrow, and I already told you what I have to do.”
“Fine, then bring your laptop,” Harry sighed from the kitchen like he was being incredibly gracious to grant Louis this small luxury, like he wasn’t being bizarre and demanding out of the blue. “I’m starting Christmas break early. I already packed for both of us.”
Louis bit his tongue. He physically bit down on his tongue and swallowed the cornucopia of feelings arising because this, this… behavior, was precisely his fucking point, okay? Where could he look into a camera a la Jim Halpert right now and find anyone who would agree with how this…was not normal roommate behavior?
“Let’s go.” Harry poked his head back in, spinning his keys around his finger.
With a sigh, Louis followed him.
+++
“North or south?” Harry asked after ten minutes of driving in silence.
They were sitting at a red light at the intersection that would take them onto the 405.
“What?” Louis replied for what felt like the thousandth time that night.
“Which way do you want to go?” Harry drawled in an exaggeratedly patient tone; he sounded like an overworked kindergarten teacher. “North or south?”
“You decide; I could not give a fuck.” Louis flicked the ash from his cigarette out the window onto the pavement.
If he gave any fucks, Louis would’ve recommended they take his car instead of Harry’s classic Mercedes that barely made the daily commute on side streets to his office, much less managed the freeways.
If he gave any fucks, Louis also wouldn’t have his feet resting on the dash of the fifty-six-year-old convertible that Harry had named Delilah and regularly serenaded with Tom Jones’ and The Plain White T’s eponymous songs.
Or be smoking in it. Her. Whatever.
“Mexico or Malibu?” Harry sing-songed as if there wasn’t a dark cloud of blatant aggression seated beside him.
“It’s your fucking decision, Harold,” Louis snapped. “I didn’t even choose to be here.”
At that, Harry pulled out into the deserted intersection—despite the red light—and whipped the tanker-sized car into a U-turn.
“What the fuck?” Louis dropped his Converse-clad feet from the dashboard and leaned forward to clutch it like a nervous gran.
“Fine. We’ll go to the desert,” Harry announced cheerfully.
“If you don’t get a fucking ticket first,” Louis scoffed, sinking back into his seat once he was convinced Harry was abiding by the rules of the road.
“Dude, you have run that light after ten pm a hundred thousand times yourself; try not to be a complete hypocrite,” Harry shot back as he steered them down Venice Blvd towards the 10.
“Best road trip ever.” Louis mocked, propping his feet back up and lighting another smoke. He kind of wanted to see how far he could push it before Harry threatened to “turn the car around.”
+++
Harry didn’t turn the car around. Or threaten to.
Obviously.
Instead, he noisily shifted around in his seat and huffed occasionally without actually saying anything.
Louis had the distinct impression that he was supposed to say something, which was downright hilarious, considering it was, after all, Louis’ big mouth that had set off this whole thing in the first place. So, no, thank you; Louis was quite content to sit in sullen silence and watch the city of Los Angeles pass by while he chain-smoked to the point of nausea.
After they crossed the 110 and passed through downtown, Harry let out the most put-upon sigh yet and reached over to the CD changer he’d had retrofitted into the car.
(Harry had wanted to keep the 8-track player; Louis had wanted the option to listen to things not sung by the Rat Pack. They'd compromised.)
Louis’s eyes flicked over to watch his shimmery nails jab at the buttons.
After a bit of whirring, Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me poured out of the speakers.
Harry had a mix CD for every problem he preferred to solve by looping the freeways late enough at night that the Merc trundling along at fifty miles per hour wasn’t a safety hazard. Louis wasn’t usually a passenger for these journeys. No, he was typically at home telling himself he was “working late” and definitely not waiting up to make sure Harry and his death trap got back safely, but he’d been along enough times to know the opening chords of Harry’s ‘midnight desert melancholy’ playlist when he heard them.
Come away with me in the night…
It was more of a habit than a choice for Louis’ eyes to drift to Harry’s face as his low rumble began to harmonize with Norah’s breathy soprano. They traced over the familiar features—the slightly upturned nose, the soft cheekbones, the jut of his bottom lip, the five o’clock shadow that was actually a week old.
The hood of his sweatshirt had been pushed off during his earlier fidgeting, and the little claw clip that held back his fringe was barely hanging on.
Come away with me
And I will write you a song
“What?” Harry asked without taking his eyes off the road as though he could feel the weight of Louis’ stare. He grabbed at the falling clip, pulling it out and clasping it around the steering wheel before running a hand through his hair and shaking it out.
Louis turned back to the window and closed his eyes.
He didn’t need to be looking at Harry to see the profile that he’d grown so used to sitting beside, in the car, on the sofa, in airplanes, at the theater. He’d had the planes of Harry’s face memorized for a long, long time.
He didn’t need to be looking at Harry to remember how gorgeous he was.
Everyone who saw him remembered that.
From the moment they’d met in a bathroom at undergrad orientation—twenty-year-old Louis fresh off a gap year and eighteen-year-old Harry clomping around campus with high tops like hooves at the ends of his Bambi legs—Louis had watched him charm everyone he encountered. He’d kicked that off immediately by flirting his way into the international student orientation with Louis despite it being five years since Harry had moved from Cheshire to LA when his mother remarried and him talking more like a surfer from the OC than a lad from the north of England.
So, yeah, Harry being the most beautiful, charming, magnetic person Louis had ever met had long since become a basic fact, like gravity, or freshman drama majors thinking they were already experts on Shakespeare.
At least, that’s what he’d been telling himself.
Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountaintop
Come away with me
And I'll never stop loving you
Had this song always been this bloody romantic? Fuck.
Louis pitched his burned-down cigarette out the window and closed his eyes.
It felt like he’d been thinking nonstop since Sunday night, replaying memories on a constant loop, like he’d relived the entirety of the last six years three times in forty-eight hours.
He knew it wasn’t fair of him to be acting this way, like Harry owed him something.
Because rationally, genuinely, obviously, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Harry hadn’t done anything wrong; he’d always been the perfect best friend and roommate.
Which was precisely the goddamn problem.
Fuck, he was so just fucking tired.
Louis tucked his feet up onto the bench seat between them and leaned all the way into the door frame. If Harry got even more mad that he was going to sleep, oh well, fuck ’im.
But Harry just kept singing quietly.
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night
Come away with me
The last thing Louis noticed as he drifted off was the weight of a hand landing softly on his ankle and gently wrapping around it.