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Harry's warm from more than a few glasses of pinot noir and he's stumbling a little and whistling along to the tune in his head when he hears a loud string of curses above him.
"Shit, fuck, bollocks."
He startles and when Harry looks up it's to see a boy on a ten foot ladder with a tinsel Christmas tree hanging from his shoulder and a string of lights in his hands.
"You okay up there?" He asks, feeling the crisp winter air bite at him as he ducks out of his scarf to talk, words slow with content tiredness.
He can’t be much older than Harry himself; he’s bundled up in a knitted sweater, ugly pattern and all, and there are wisps of hair sticking out underneath a Santa hat.
The boy – man? – breathes heavily for a few moments from his perch above a dimly lit London apartment, before he blinks and twists to look at Harry.
“Fine. Just um, cut my hand is all.”
Harry may be on the edge of drunk but he knows when someone is not fine.
“How bad is the cut?”
“I–I don’t really want to look.”
“How about you throw me that tinsel tree and then you come back down here and let me look at the damage?”
He doesn’t seem to hesitate before he’s throwing the tree down to Harry, almost taking out an eye in the process.
Louis doesn’t really know what possess him to listen to the big eyed, dinosaur looking boy, who is probably drunk and is definitely a giant indie fuck, but he does and then he’s slowly backing down the ladder while avoiding looking at his left hand that’s still clutching the broken glass of the bulb.
Harry leans the tinsel tree up against the door and sits down on the steps, beckoning the boy to do the same.
The blue–eyed boy sits heavily down on the steps next to Harry, cradling his hand carefully. Now that he finally looks at the cut, Harry looking over his shoulder, he can see that while there’s a lot of blood that cut isn’t too deep. Harry pulls out a handkerchief from his coat pocket, gesturing for Louis to take it.
"Here, it's clean, promise."
"A handkerchief, how old are you, ninety?" He questions, but takes the floral cloth nonetheless, pressing it to the cut across his palm. He doesn’t mention that he has a first aid kit inside, or a flat mate who is a practicing nurse.
"You do that a lot, crush light bulbs with your bare hands?"
"Only on special occasions."
“What was the occasion tonight then?”
“I heard someone whistling my favourite song and I got distracted.”
“Oops.” Harry says, but there’s a light smile on the other boy’s face that tells him he doesn’t mind.
“I would offer to help you put up your wonderful decorations but I feel that I may just fall off, and then you’d not just have a cut hand but you’d also have a dead person outside your home.”
“I don’t want that, I don’t think.”
“No, I wouldn’t say so.”
Louis dabs at his hand some more as he inspects the broken remains of the light, thankful none of the glass seemed to have ended up in his cut. They don’t talk for a moment; just sit on the quiet street with just the streetlights for company and it feels oddly comfortable.
“I’m Harry.” He says into the silence and he’s not looking at Louis, looking out to the identical apartments across the road, and Louis feels like he could just as easily be talking to the tabby cat sitting in the window.
“Louis.” He tells him, feels the warm press of Harry’s knee against his own as he shimmies closer to Louis.
“I had dinner with my ex-boyfriend and his fiancé and for the first time I didn’t feel like I was some stupid naïve boy who was in love with someone that never loved him in the first place.”
He tells Louis, or maybe the cat in the window. Louis doesn’t reply, just lets the pigeon-toed boy mull over his thoughts.
“I thought he had invited me to show me how good his life was without me, especially when they started casually talking about kids–“ He cut himself off then, shaking his head before turning to look over at Louis. “God, I want kids so badly and I was so mad at him for never wanting that with me, Louis.”
Louis feels his breath catch unwillingly at the sound of his name so strong on Harry’s lips. He hears Harry says how much he wants kids and then hears his own mind echo back the sentiment, feels his heart rate pick up stupidly. It’s so, so stupid, because this is a tipsy boy that’s stopped to help a stranger, not someone he will ever see again. Yet he can’t help but take in Harry, his pink cheeks and his green eyes and tufts of hair poking out from the sides of his beanie and his big hands, and feel warm all over at the idea of getting to know him.
“I realised though that it wasn’t about that, it was that he wanted to make sure I was doing okay without him. It made me wonder why I was ever in love with him in the first place, someone who thought I couldn’t be someone unless I had someone else to guide me along the way.”
Harry takes comfort in the way he was able to tell him for once, I am happy. He takes comfort in the way he is able to sit next to a gorgeous stranger and still feel happy even as he tells him his inner thoughts.
“Well,” Louis says finally. “I think you’re someone.”
Harry has to laugh at that, and it’s bright and lovely and Louis really likes it.
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you’re someone who stops to help a stranger, someone who whistles when they’re happy, someone who most certainly does not need another person to make them who they are. You know how I can tell that? Because maybe I don’t know you, but we’ve been acquainted for all of five minutes and I already think you’re maybe one of the most marvelous people I’ve met.”
The grin that breaks out onto Harry’s face then is full of dimples and white teeth and it’s completely breathtaking.
“Yeah?”
“Absolutely.”
“Sorry I blurted all that out, dunno why I did really.”
Harry’s buzz has mostly worn off now and the cold is starting to get to him and maybe Louis notices, or he feels it too because he stands up, handkerchief still pressed to his palm.
“It’s more than okay. How about a hot chocolate?”
“Please.”
So Harry pulls himself to his feet too and Louis leaves the Christmas decorations on the doorstep as he leads Harry into a cozy apartment, the only light leaking in from the unclosed door of the living room.
Harry kicks off his boots quickly, even when Louis tells him he doesn’t need to and pushes his beanie off his head, leaving it with his boots in the dark hallway and follows Louis.
When they walk inside there’s bleach blonde boy sprawled out on the couch with his face squashed into a pillow watching Love Actually and two boys in matching aprons baking in the small kitchen that can be seen through another open door.
“Harry, this is Niall the resident Irishman. Niall, this is Harry, he’s– someone.”
Harry grins at Louis’ choice of word.
“Hi Harry who’s someone.”
“Hi.” He replies, suddenly feeling shy despite the fact the blonde hasn’t taken his eyes off the television.
They don’t stop, heading straight towards the kitchen to the pair of boys baking.
“Boys, this is Harry, I found him on the side of the road and he just looked so cute, I think I’m gonna keep him.”
Both boys give Harry bemused smiles before introducing themselves as Liam and Zayn, one a firefighter and the other a writer. They’re making gingerbread cookies they inform him, and as Louis sets a pot of milk on the stove and promptly disappears back into the living room, they are quick to drag Harry into their cookie-making regime, putting him on cookie cutting duty.
They chatter occasionally but there are no questions and Harry feels an overwhelming sense of warmth and for the first time since he moved to London in his late teens, he feels like he’s home.
Louis comes back at some point with his hand in a bandage and a quick comment of; the decorations still aren’t up, before he’s pouring them all hot chocolates and sliding onto the opposite bench to watch them make cookies.
“What happened to your hand?”
“Smashed one of the light bulbs on accident, Niall fixed me up though. Also, he put your handkerchief in the wash with his scrubs, so if you stay for cookies you should have it back soon enough.”
“Scrubs?”
“Niall’s a nurse at the local hospital.”
“And you didn’t think to mention that as soon as you cut your hand?” Louis just shrugs before he tells Liam he’s rolling the gingerbread too thin.
Harry is quick to realise firstly that Liam and Zayn are totally in love and quite possibly soulmates, and secondly that Louis is very good at talking and not very good at baking.
So Louis and Harry play twenty questions as Louis sits back and Harry makes icing (including spilling blue dye all over his hands and subsequently also his white t-shirt). And Louis can’t help but think that he was totally right about the indie fuck thing. Because Harry is littered in weird tattoos and likes bands he hasn’t heard of but he doesn’t really mind one bit. He kind of loves how excited Harry gets over the things he clearly loves and how easily he fits into their mismatched group of best friends. Even when it’s heading towards 2am and Liam, Zayn and Louis are reminiscing on their previous Christmas and Niall is tiredly stealing cookies on his way out to his next shift, Harry fits in perfectly.
There’s mistletoe in the doorway to the kitchen and it’s so cheesy but Harry feels his entire chest fill with joy as he watches Liam and Zayn pass each other, stopping in the doorway to kiss briefly, nothing more than a light peck on the lips. He sees the lingering smile on Zayn’s face, and the way they turn to grin at each other only a moment later.
When minutes later Louis tugs at Harry’s dye stained hand and pulls him under the mistletoe, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to his lips, Harry thinks he might burst.
“I don’t know how you’re feeling about relationships right now, but I’d really like to take you out to dinner, or like, the zoo or something, if you’d have me?”
“I’d like that. I’d really, absolutely love that, to be honest.”
That’s how Harry ends up spending his first day of December falling asleep on a couch with a dye stained t-shirt, full on gingerbread cookies and with plans for Christmas.