A Royal Pain

Chapter fifteen

Harry stays situated in his room until dinner starts to draw closer. He knows that he can't stay just lying on top of his bed the whole day and that he has to confront everyone and especially Louis at one point, so with a sigh, he moves away from the bed and out of the door, making sure to bring the key with him.

As he walks through the hallways of the palace toward the dining room, he does his usual routine and smiles at all the staff members, greeting them with a sweet 'hello'. Seeing the now familiar people with grins on their faces makes Harry extremely happy and it causes him to take his mind off the confrontation he has to make after dinner.

As he steps into the dining room, his first instinct is to glance at Louis and see if he actually feels something. Some sort of spark, butterflies in his stomach...

When he perceives the King and stares at him for a small moment, he realizes that he does feel something warm coursing through his body but that that is not something new. It's something he has been experiencing for quite some time, Harry comprehends. His mom was right after all. He was in love with Louis even before she told him that straight to the face, in fact, he's sure he has actually been falling for him since the day they met.

Even though their first encounter mainly was banter, it did cause a spark to ignite in his body, and now he recognizes that feeling as a form of love. Sure, he has now fallen a lot deeper and his emotions have heightened a lot since they first met, but ever since he exchanged his first words with Louis, his heart has slowly started to belong to Louis.

This hits Harry like a ton of bricks, but he shakes all the thoughts crashing through his mind out of his head and quickly takes a seat at the dining table. When he looks up to his family, who was already seated before he came in, he sees his mom give him a worried glance which Harry ignores by looking away.

All with due time, he tells himself. After dinner, he'll confront Louis and everything will be fine. His mom told him that she suspects that Louis loves him back and Anne was right about everything relating to Harry, so there must be a high chance that this is the same with Louis. Sure, she probably is able to read Harry better, but his mother is a smart woman with perceptive eyes.

Dinner passes slowly, almost as slowly as Harry consumes his food. He raises his fork slowly to his mouth, his teeth chew the food with slow drags and it takes forever before he swallows his bite.

He can't help but want to postpone his talk with Louis, because he's going out of his mind. He's replaying every word they ever spoke to each other, literally every syllable that left their mouth, and he tries to figure out if his feelings are returned. Harry's just so scared to be blown off and to make things awkward.

But at one point, all the food has finally left the plate and somehow reached his mouth, and he can't delay the event that has to occur any longer. As the staff clears the table, he glances at Louis to gauge something from his demeanor. Can he see love in his eyes? Anything at all to not make this whole thing one-sided?

As he finally meets Louis' eyes, however, it seems to be the complete opposite of love in those blue orbs. It makes Harry want to cower away, but he then tells himself that he can't start overthinking everything again. It's better for him to just take a shot in the dark and get it over it, he decides.

So he strides toward the King, determination being found on his face, and comes to a halt when he's about three feet away from him. "Lou, can we talk? Alone? Maybe in our room?"

Louis' eyebrows shoot up and a mix of emotions seems to flash over his face which is unreadable to Harry. "Yeah, sure."

Wordlessly, they move toward their room. Of course, they're not in private yet and they don't have anything to discuss which can be heard by ears from the staff, but Harry's not used to the awkwardness that is present all of a sudden. Normally, they would steal secret glances, or squeeze each other's hand or whisper a joke... Not not speak at all, so it's weird to Harry and he doesn't like it at all.