head over heels

14. christmas

"Last year on my birthday" Louis starts, pulling the blue hoodie Harry hands him over his head. "I thought I was barking back to my dog"

"You have a dog?" Harry asks, eyes widening.

"Yeah, his name is Bruce, he went with my dad and my sisters." Louis says, smiling at Harry's excitement. "Anyways. Turns out it was just me and Zayn barking back and forth in different rooms of the house for an hour or so"

Harry laughs loudly, walking up to Louis and fixing his fringe. He eyes his hair for a long time, smiling lazily. "Quite a mess you've made here"

"Oh, it's my fault now?" Louis asks, raising one eyebrow playfully.

Harry only shrugs, pouting. "Of course it's your fault" Then he turns around and Louis shakes his head grinning. He still needs to get used to this.

This morning, his birthday's morning, he woke up, opening his eyes to see a pair of forest green ones staring back at him, along with a mop of brown curls surrounding them. Harry's fists were curled around the duvet to keep it close to keep them warm, pressed into Louis' chest.

When he saw that Louis opened his eyes, a wide smile spread on his lips. "You're awake!" He cheered, sat up and crawled off of Louis, sitting beside him cheerfully. "Happy Birthday" he sing-songed, although he had already congratulated him last night.

Louis only smiled and went through his hair with a hand. "And where's my present? And cake?"

Harry hit him with a pillow. "Patience, old man. The other lads didn't want me to give you my present earlier, so we agreed on doing it during breakfast. I don't think any of them are up yet, since after the party yesterday they stayed up a bit longer to watch Niall perform some Irish dance, I don't really remember" Harry keeps chatting, but Louis zones out a bit, smiling while he's staring at nothing in particular.

Yesterday, all of them went out to celebrate Louis' birthday, went to his favourite club and let him get cheered on by everyone who knew him. Come on, he just turned eighteen. Donny is small. Everybody knew him. All of them did a countdown until midnight, Louis standing on the surface of the bar as they cheered on him, Harry climbing up over a barstool to press a kiss to his cheek when the clock hit twelve.

They went home at about three in the morning, Louis and Harry staying a bit behind the group that was belting out Last Christmas into the quiet nightly street. Louis twirled Harry around and dipped him, both of them falling down onto the wet asphalt of the street (the snow melted quite a while ago).

Harry came up with the fun idea to recreate the famous dirty dancing move, so Louis distanced himself from the other boy and giggled, before sprinting back towards him. Harry actually managed to catch him, hands at his waist to lift him up into the air. For a second, Louis lost balance and thought he would fall, but Harry caught him, arms securely around him as he let him back down onto the floor laughing hysterically, drunk on the alcohol, drunk on the giddiness and adrenaline of the night, and drunk on something else. Louis just didn't figure out what it was, yet.

He believes Zayn took a few pictures of them hanging on each other as they walked, drunk off their asses and laughing at everything. Literally. They stood bent over watching some sort of worm... worming on the street and laughed at it for about five minutes.

Niall, Ashton and Luke then got emotional over some Kanye West drama they saw on instagram and said they had to sit on the porch for a while, to calm down.

"I'm not supposed to tell you" Harry had giggled as they stumbled into Louis' bedroom, the door banging into the wall next to it, Harry holding onto Louis' shoulder like a lifeline. "But I did bake you a cake. You'll get it tomorrow, shhh, don't tell anyone."