Red Brick Heart

18

The shift in his mood the next few days is palpable – everyone seems a lot less annoyed with him, for a start, and Perrie is delighted when Harry tells her that yes, they can go out on his birthday, but only when he gets back from his posh date. He waits for Louis outside the gymnasium after his last exam – apparently he's that desperate – and they go for pizza with Niall and Ed and Josh afterwards at the uni cafe, before Louis takes him back to his flat and lets him fuck him into the mattress, slow and steady this time, and with an immense amount of concentrate Harry even manages to last long enough to get Louis to come with him inside of him – so much effort that he falls asleep straight afterwards and doesn't wake up until half-past six at night, to the smell of tea and a freshly-showered Louis playing XBOX with his feet up on the desk.

"Hey," Louis says casually, and before Harry can even sit up he tosses Harry's iPad at him. "Pezza keeps emailing you, it's pissing me off."

"Emailing me?" Harry says, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand, knee hurting from where the iPad landed.

Louis puts the ball in the back of the net with Rooney on the little TV screen, spinning on his chair to raise his eyebrows at Harry. "Yes, babes, you know, since you've been asleep all afternoon and your phone's rung about five hundred times and you've got about a thousand texts."

Harry frowns, opening up his email app. He's got four emails, one from Tesco, one from Amazon, and just the two from Perrie. Louis' big talent has always been dramatics.

"It's only two – it's just about the radio show, and apparently we're going to see some houses next week. Don't you have that English seminar on Tuesday afternoons?"

Louis shrugs, spinning the chair back around as United kick off again. "Yeah, but now exams are over I feel like some time off."

Harry snorts fondly, tapping out a reply. "You don't make any sense."

"Neither do you, Mr 'I've done no revision and suddenly want to give up on my course'."

"Fuck off," Harry says, launching forwards to tickle him, catching him by surprise – and for the first time in ages actually tickling him, making Louis yelp and hit his knee on the desk, nearly falling off his chair and smashing the TV screen with the XBOX controller.

Louis glares at him, flustered with his fringe falling in his face. "You  caught me off guard this time, Styles-"

Harry grins stupidly, leaning forward and smacking a big kiss to his forehead, managing to get a little squeeze of Louis' tummy in before he slaps him away. "You love it really, Lou."

"I absolutely can guarantee to you that I do not," he says, fixing his fringe and staring at the screen very intently while Harry gazes at his flustered expression. He loves it when Louis gets like this. He calls it his 'uncomfortably aroused' face; he's spent a few nights pinning a squirming Louis to the bed, running the tips of his fingers down his sides light as a feather, Louis' arms and legs kicking out as he gasps with laughter and pinches Harry's skin, all while his cock gets thick and heavy under Harry's hip.

Harry decides that he'll start getting dressed to get Louis to pay attention to him again, and he only manages to put one foot in his ripped jeans when Louis asks without turning his head, "You wanna stay here tonight or shall we go to yours?"

"Don't mind," Harry says, dropping the jeans immediately, looking back up at him and grinning cannily. "Depends where my present is."

"Cheeky sod," Louis says, but he's grinning too as he puts his feet back on the desk. "It's here, so up to you."

"Here it is," Harry says happily, flopping back under the duvet and grabbing his phone from the pocket of his discarded jeans.

They don't do anything for the rest of the day except play FIFA – Harry only makes it through one game, which he loses 7-5, before sulking majorly and deciding to watch TV on Louis' laptop instead – and lounge around in Louis' room. They have beans on toast for dinner, because that and Coco Pops is all Louis ever has in his cupboard, and Harry waits eagerly until they're in bed and the clock on his phone ticks over to 00:00. He nuzzles into Louis' neck and says officiously, "It's my birthday, I want my present."