The Ring {L.S}

Chapter 6: The beginning

While Louis was showering the vomit off himself and hoping to sober up, Harry made himself at home around the kitchen table with a peanut butter sandwich and cup of coffee from the Keurig. When he waltzed into the Tomlinson home he felt tense and awkward. Their home was big considering it had to inhabit multiple children and Louis' parents. Harry was intimidated to say the least, but when Louis told him to make himself at home, he scoured the cabinets until he found something worth consuming. It was a long night and he didn't plan on staying too late, just long enough to have this draining conversation with Louis. It wasn't like Michael to act the way he did - Harry knew there was something underlying there. When he told Harry that he knew Louis had a crush on him, Harry shook it off - but he had hoped Louis didn't hear him through the phone. It wasn't weird to hang out with his friends, but Harry didn't understand why Louis was any different than Zayn or any of the other guys at the bar. Michael "had a feeling" and that was what he was basing his anger off of. It frustrated him that Michael didn't trust him after all of these years together, but he understood that being away for months at a time really put a strain on their relationship. Even if Louis did like him, he knew he wouldn't act on it, and it shouldn't matter to Michael anyway. There were so many things he wanted to say to Louis, but he loved Michael to death. He was going to marry the man after all, he thought of even biting the bullet and adopting to save their relationship even though he really didn't want a child.

Deep in thought, Harry didn't even hear Louis coming down the stairs or even the water stop running. The only thing he could pay attention to were his thoughts consuming his head about how he was going to go about telling Louis that he couldn't hang around him anymore, or at least not as much.

Louis stood on the bottom step right before his kitchen in a navy towel around his waist and his hairy messy from the water. He looked at Harry who now had a mouth full of peanut butter and his sister's hand painted coffee cup in his hand and couldn't help but smile at him. Even though the situation at hand wasn't the best, he still found humor in Harry drinking out of a cup that had different color hearts and smiley faces painted around it.

"Give me a minute, my clothes are downstairs," Louis strolled down the next set of stairs to the laundry where he grabbed a pair of Adidas joggers and a white t-shirt and ran back up them to greet Harry. He sat across from him in the wooden chairs and smiled.

"We don't have to talk about it, yknow, I get it" was all Louis could say before Harry threw his head back and let out an exaggerated huff.

"Louis, I just spent the entirety of your shower planning a conversation to have with you, we're talking about it," Louis nodded and walked to the refrigerator where he grabbed himself and Harry a bottle of water knowing that this may be a long conversation. Louis prompted him to continue.

"Lou, that man means everything to me, y'know? I wouldn't have asked him to marry me otherwise. He has never once acted like this. I tell him about Zayn, I tell him about Liam, hell, I even tell him stories about how fast Niall runs circles around the other servers at work. But every time I bring you up, he gets tense. He turns into someone I don't know, Lou, I-"

"H, I'm not upset with you. I am a bit sad. This may sound crazy, but you've become really important to me really quickly." Louis fired back at him holding his tongue because he had so more that he wanted to say. It wasn't like Louis to hold back, and he's not sure that he could after all of his thinking in the shower. The alcohol was subsiding and he was beginning to feel like himself again, the severity of the phone call in the car sobered him up quite a bit.

"You don't understand Lou, we've been together a long time. I love spending time with you, I really do. It's probably best if we lay low, just quick hi's or whatever at work. I'll still walk you out, help you pick what you want for dinner and all that, I just love-"