I tried seeming as patient as I could as I knocked on the door; I shoved my hands into my pockets and felt my heart speed up just a bit as I heard footsteps on the other side of the wood. Within a few seconds I was biting back a smile at the sight of Louis, in sweatpants and a plain t-shirt, wearing a beanie for some reason.

“Hey,” He finally said after a few seconds of just staring at me; he looked a bit surprised to see me there, even though he was the one who called me over. “I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.”

I looked around the hall of the building, as if expecting the walls to give me an answer. I didn’t quite know what to say so I just gave him a slight frown. He asked me if I’m free to come over right now; what the hell was he expecting?

“Come on, come in,” He muttered as he took a step back, letting me walk inside his flat. I was sure that I was going to ask him something, but I lost my voice when I saw another person in the room.

“Um, this is Stan, my best friend from home.” Louis put a hand on my shoulder as I nodded at the guy four feet away from me, slowly letting the information sink in. His best friend, from Doncaster. Okay. Okay.

“Hi,” Stan said as Louis took a breath to say something too, but was interrupted. “You’re Lorena, right?” I smiled at him, but something about the way he said my name made me think I shouldn’t have.

“Yeah… nice to meet you.” I said, the forced smile still on my face as I shook his hand. He had a smile on his face too, but it looked just as fake as mine.

“Ah, the pleasure is all mine.” He kept looking at me as he slowly let go of my hand; thank God Louis decided to speak up.

“Well, Stan was just leaving. He’s been here for the last few days…” He trailed off when Stan gave him a look, and then smiled again. What is the deal with this guy..?

“Yeah, I’ll see you after New Year’s,” Stan said casually and gave Louis kind of a half-hug, before picking up a bag from the floor and showing himself out. I stared at the door for a couple seconds after he closed them, trying to figure out what had just happened. I tried convincing myself that it was just a normal meeting and saying goodbye, but it wasn’t exactly. Something was off.

“U-um… I thought Zach was your best friend?” I said through a breathy laugh, wanting to break the ice. Good thing Louis was feeling just as awkward, as he chuckled and ran a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, we became kinda distant when he got engaged. Can I take your coat?” My jaw was pretty much on the floor by the end of his sentence, mostly because of how casual he sounded. It was as if I’d said; oh, yeah, I’m pregnant, what did you say you want for dinner?

“Seriously?” I said in a thick tone as I slowly shrugged my coat off, having Louis grab it from behind to hang it on the hanger. “He’s-he’s getting married?” I frowned at myself in the full length mirror as I adjusted my hair. “No offense, but I always thought he’d be playing video games and eating junk food until he’s like 30.”

“Yeah, he… he had us all fooled,” Louis said, this time with a genuine laugh at the end. “You know what’s the best part? His future wife is 19.”

I started laughing at his last few words, “Alright, now you’re just screwing with me.” Although my smile disappeared when Louis stood behind me, his eyebrows raised at me as he watched me in the mirror. “You can’t be serious.”

“She’s turning 20 in February so it’s all good,” He said with a smirk as he slid his arms around my waist and placed a kiss on the top of my head. “They’re still not talking about a wedding, but he did ask me to be his best man.”

I raised my eyebrows, a little surprised for who knows what reason. Of course Zach would ask Louis to be his best man. “Really? That’s… great.”

“Yeah, try not to get too turned on when you see me in a tux in the church.” He kissed the top of my head again, but that didn’t stop me from trying to shove him away from me, though I only caused him to laugh at my blush.

“You want me to be your plus one?” Instead of cussing him out for embarrassing me, I decided to change the subject. And I did it with a smile.

Louis frowned at my reflection, surprising me a little. “Of course I do, who the fuck did you think I wanna take to my best friend’s wedding?” I laughed at his fake annoyance with my stupid question, and placed my hand over his that were on my waist.

“That’s great too,” I grinned, a small silence following my words. “Why the fuck are we standing in front of a mirror?”

He laughed at my words, and this time moved his head to kiss my temple. “I don’t know,” He muttered against my skin as he kissed past my earlobe, “I guess I want to have a good look on you when I do this.”

My eyes widened at his words, only to be squeezed shut when he sucked in the skin of my neck between his teeth. “No! Not that! Fuck, no!” I kept screeching, but obviously he didn’t take me seriously since I was laughing the entire time.

“Fucking hell, Louis, everyone in school is gonna see it!” I whined as I tried wiggling out of his hold, but he only wrapped his arms around my entire frame, to keep me from fighting him. “Oh my God, what the hell did I do to you to deserve this?”

“What?” He mumbled against my skin, as if he was doing the most normal thing in the world. “I’m just returning the favor.”

I nodded to myself when I remembered I’d marked him the previous week. Obviously we felt different about hickeys. “Do you know how much makeup I’m gonna need to cover tha-ah! That?”

Louis laughed again, subconsciously releasing my skin as he did. “Not much, since I can’t even do it properly.” He pulled the hem of his shirt and wiped the spot on my neck, making me hiss several times. “There. You’re good to go now,” He said as he placed one last kiss on the red spot, that I was sure would become purple by the time I go to work in the morning.

“Wow. Thanks,” I said as I tapped the skin a few times, and to my dismay it hurt every time I did it.

“Anytime babe,” He smiled and kissed my head one last time, before walking to the living room. I kicked my boots off and followed him in, and sat on the couch while he was doing something in the kitchen.

“So what’s new?” He asked as he walked into the living room again, carrying two cans of soda, and sat next to me. “You know, except the little Japanese flag on your neck.”

I narrowed my eyes at him in a glare, shaking my head at his smirking face. “Nothing much…” I trailed off as I took one can of Coke from his hand and stared at it. “Oh, um, Caitlyn’s moving back in.”

Louis raised his eyebrows as he sipped his soda, “Really?” He said against the metal before bringing it down to his lap. “She lived in Cardiff until now, right?”

I nodded, “Yeah, as soon as she heard Ashton had left she packed her bags and left her parents’ home,” I smiled and mentally high-fived myself when I said Ashton’s name without feeling a weight on my chest. It’s finally happening; I’m really getting over him.

“So she’s here?” He raised his eyebrows again and I nodded.

“She came a few days ago, she’s still resting.”

“Still resting? Where did she come from, Cardiff or California?”

I chuckled, “Well, to be fair, I did ask her to help me redecorate the n- um…” I stopped myself before I could say the word nursery; the least I needed was Louis knowing I was planning to have a baby with Ashton. “The, um, the guest room. It used to be her room so we were getting it back to normal, as she likes to call it.”

He nodded and I unnoticeably let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good, I kinda missed her. I mean, she is one of the reasons we got together in the first place.”

“What?” I said bluntly, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” He cleared his throat, as if he was going to give me a big speech. “If we hadn’t gone on all those dates because of her and Devon, I would have most likely come up to you in a bar and bought you one too many drinks, until you were too drunk to think for yourself.”

I opened my mouth to ask him what the hell was he talking about, again, but the look in his eyes answered my unspoken question.

“Oh,” I said slowly. So basically, if it wasn’t for Caitlyn and Devon, Louis wouldn’t have put that much effort in me and would just do the dare, as he was supposed to.

I don’t appreciate Caitlyn nearly as much as I should.

“Yeah.” He took another sip of his drink, and then just held the can in his hands, twiddling it in his hands and just staring at it. “You know I love you, right?”

I subconsciously let my body fall backwards, hitting the armrest behind me as I stared at him in shock. “What?” Was all I could really say; somehow I knew the answer was ‘yes, of course’ but his question was too sudden. We hadn’t properly spoken about our feelings so this felt pretty much like running into a brick wall.

“I love you,” Louis repeated, this time not as casually; his voice was even cautious on some level. “I feel like I don’t let you know that as much as I should.”

If his words weren’t so touching, I’d probably be laughing at him. “Are you kidding me right now? What about the songs?”

He breathed out a laugh at my words, and shook his head a little even. “That was while we were separated. To be honest, if it wasn’t for songs that reminded me of you, I wouldn’t have even written them.”

A sudden wave of curiosity washed over me at his words, “Can you name one of them?” I sat up in the couch and leaned forward, extremely interested in his answer.

“Um…” Louis was obviously confused by my suddenness, though he only cleared his throat and looked like he was thinking about it. “Well, to be honest, Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High was one of my biggest inspirations.”

I blinked at him several times, trying to remember the lyrics of the song. “What does the Arctic Monkeys song have anything to do with us?”

While I was smirking, Louis gulped and took a sip of his Coke, refusing to face me the entire time. “I, um, I often wanted to call you whenever I… you know, whenever I got high.”

“What?” I laughed; it was more in disbelief than humor or anything else. “You got… you got high?”

“Yeah,” He said bluntly, his eyes wide as he stared into space as if reminiscing. “Oliver and Rhys were the ones who brought weed in our group of friends, and it was… inevitable.”

I was a little relieved when he said it was weed, and not something that could seriously jeopardize his health. Still, my shock didn’t go away at all. “I don’t believe it,” I subconsciously voiced my thoughts as I stared at the side of his head. It wasn’t an I’m-disappointed-in-you kind of disbelief, it was the literal I-cannot-believe-you-did-that kind. “A-and for how long did you..?”

“Just a couple of months,” He shrugged, “Once I got so stoned I slept through an entire Wednesday, thirty-two hours straight. The guys thought I was dead, and I knew that was my sign to stop. So I did.”

I breathed out a laugh, the information finally sinking into my brain… so he had weed when he was 22-23, so what? “You haven’t done it anytime soon, right?”

“No, last time I did it was the night before Christmas Eve last year, when I slept for 32 hours,” He said as he grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and leaned back in his seat. “I missed my birthday and woke up on Christmas. It was fucking creepy.”

I laughed again and glanced at the TV as he flicked through the channels. Oddly, the fact that he used to do drugs wasn’t bothering me. Not as much as it should, anyway.

“I never went out, or had alcohol or cigarettes, so Ollie and Rhys felt the need to do something about my misery,” Louis explained, answering the question that I’d previously wanted to ask him. “And what says ‘we care about you mate’ better than bringing marijuana into your dorm on a Saturday night?”

I chuckled and shuffled closer to him, as he put an arm around me but didn’t look away from the TV. “And you wanted to call me when you’d have, um, weed?”

“Not just when I had weed.” I loved how blunt he was being. “I wanted to call you all the time, so it had nothing really to do with it. Weed would actually make me forget about you for a few hours, so that's another reason why I did... what I did.”

Even though I was as against drugs as a person could be, I actually liked his way of trying to forget about me. He didn’t try to replace me with other girls, he didn’t drown himself in alcohol or cigarettes, so this actually turned out to be the least harmful way to do that. I blinked several times, my lips forming a smile as I kept staring at him. “I can’t believe you had drugs because of me.”

“It’s actually quite fun, we should do it sometimes.”

My usual reaction to that would be jaw on the floor, shouting and even hitting him, but this time I only shook my head, “You’re fucking mental if you think I’d go anywhere near that stuff,” I said in the calmest tone I could muster. For some reason, I knew he’d say that in the back of my mind.

“I know you wouldn’t.” He pulled me closer to him, this time so I was lying against his chest. “I don’t want to go back to that.”

I sighed, fully accepting what he’d just told me. “Thank you for that.” I smiled as his hand squeezed my arm. If Ashton had told me something like this, he would be spending the night outside our door. But the things I’d let Louis get away with… I only hoped he wouldn’t take advantage of it. It’s his friends who had brought that into his life, anyway.

I frowned a little at the thought of his friends, “Can I ask you something?”

“You ask a lot of questions, but alright.”

I decided to ignore his comment, “How did your friends feel about me? I mean, when they found out we broke up? Did you even tell them?”

“Um, yes, I told them. They weren’t exactly thrilled about it.” His uncomfortable shifting assured me he was leaving something out.

“Louis, tell me.”

“Okay,” He sighed, “They fucking hated you.”

I nodded slowly, his words being exactly what I’d expected. “Even Zach?”

“Oh, he hated you the most,” Louis chuckled, “When I called him a few weeks ago to tell him we’re seeing each other again, he made me explain everything to every last bit, then yelled at me, then hung up. And then he called me again to tell me he got engaged and that he wants me to be his best man, and hung up on me again.”

“I get them,” I said, ignoring his attempts at trying to make me feel better.

He sighed at my words, and I couldn’t help but look up at him. “Babe, if you start going pessimistic on me now, I suggest you leave first.”

I glared at him playfully, “Fine.” I spat and stood up within a second, only to have him pull me back down; just what I was aiming for.

“You need to start taking me less seriously,” He chuckled, even though we both knew I was joking about leaving. Nevertheless, I pretended to be offended by his request to leave, so he rolled his eyes and pulled me in front of him so I was facing him. “Stop pouting. I love you.”

I couldn’t help but break into a huge smile at his words. “I love you too,” I grinned; there it was, we’d finally both said it. Good. “What do you want for your birthday?”

He was obviously surprised by the question, as I was, since I didn’t know I’d ask him until the words left my mouth. “Um, I don’t know?”

“I can get you something on my way back from the doctor, in a few days.”

Louis blinked a couple times at the second sudden change of subjects; his confusion was kind of cute. “Oh, you’re getting your results, right?”

I nodded, “Yeah, on Friday.”

He nodded as well, “Good, I’ll call you then.”

I smiled and leaned down, kissing him for the first time since I knocked on his door. Louis reached behind me and pulled me down on his lap, my position making me have to straddle him. How convenient.

“Mm, actually,” He mumbled against my lips as he pulled away. “I do know what I want for my birthday.”

His tone made me a little afraid of his answer, “What do you want?”

“You.” His answer was simple, but the look on his face – the sparkle in his eyes, and the smirk that soon turned into a genuine smile made me a little hesitant, but I smiled too.

“Birthday sex, classic.” I chuckled at my words and expected him to do the same, but he kept the same expression from before, and started shaking his head after a few seconds.

“No, I don’t mean that.” Nothing personal, but that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. “Not just that, at least.”

“What do you mean?” I studied his face as I felt my heart speed up; the knowing smirk his lips were forming wasn’t helping either.

“I mean, I want you… all of you.”

Well, there’s a few ways to understand that…

*******

~A/N~

Sorry, this was kind of a filler..
Could you guys follow me on twitter? My wattpad app is rarely ever being normal, so it's easier to ask me questions, etc this way. @funkystyles_ cc:
I'm too tired to think of anything else to say, so vote and comment? Next chapter is in Louis' POV :)