#erinsbreakfast

12. What first changes when it starts getting serious?

They go public, albeit it in a very lowkey way. The truth is, not much else changes. Apart from the talking. They’re better at that, now. Harry doesn’t say everything to his song-writing book or to his guitar. Nick manages to use the word ‘boyfriend’ once without breaking out into a cold sweat. It’s progress. The public thing isn’t some big announcement. They don’t get paid a load of money by OK to dress in matching Gucci loafers and recline on sofas in one of the houses Harry hardly uses anymore. It’s more like the old days, where they start going to events together. Nick complains that he looks like a potato next to Harry with his scientifically fit face. Harry thinks Nick’s fitter than anybody else in the room, but he knows Nick won’t believe him if he says that, so he just presses close to Nick for most of the evening, and Nick tells him he’s like a limpet. Nick doesn’t mind, really. Particularly not when Harry tells him he might suck him off in the loos, later. It helps. They’re terribly romantic. Twitter gives Nick shit for it at first, because people can be twats, and Harry gets so angry and frustrated. He thinks Nick’s going to leave him and he goes quiet and moody, until Nick tells him it’s been like that from the start and he’s not going anywhere. Never has, never will. They snog on the sofa, have a cuddle and put on Bake Off. They laugh about the time they did some baking and Harry forgot to bring eggs. Harry reminds Nick that he used to be a baker, actually. Nick rolls his eyes and says you’d look good in one of them Mary Berry floral bombers. Harry sends Harry Lambert a text asking if Gucci make floral bomber jackets. It’s going to be okay.

29. Why do they fall a little bit more in love?

Nick says it’s when he found out the size of Harry’s popstar bank balance. Harry gets offended and tells Nick off for being unromantic. Nobody talks like that in rom coms. He makes Nick watch three Julia Roberts films and one with Reese Witherspoon and gives him a book of romantic poetry. He couldn’t be more offended when Nick refuses to quote a single one to him. One night, Nick’s complaining about Harry being like a furnace and the California sun making it too warm to sleep. Nick doesn’t like L.A. and he’s been complaining since he arrived. They decide to give up on sleeping, because neither of them can and they dick around in the kitchen. Nick gets out all of the new, shiny, cooking equipment and reminds Harry of the time he didn’t have any pans. You’re a proper adult, now. Harry throws flour at Nick because he still feels like a kid around Nick, sometimes. Not because of the age difference, but because it takes him back to a different time. Nick’s one of the few people who can make him laugh one of those laughs that just bursts out of you and makes your whole face crinkle up, until it gets difficult to breathe. Nick throws some flour back at Harry and they’re covered in the stuff when they kiss, all floury and weird, Harry pushed against the kitchen counter and Nick running his fingers over Harry’s stomach. 

Nick sings a bit of Harry’s song at him, off-key and he changes the words: you got the flour, I got me an appetite. Harry says I mess around with him, and I’m okay with it. Tells Nick in a hot-breathed whisper I think I’m going to stick with it. Nick asks Harry to draw him like one of his French girls and laughs for ages until Harry has to shut him up with another kiss. Harry thinks how strange it is that he knows how Nick’s kisses taste when he’s covered in flour, when his lips are hot from the sun in Mallorca, when they’re damp with London rain, salty with tears after watching Titanic and when they’re boozy, smokey, sleep-warm and, best of all, the way he tastes with Harry’s name on his lips. The way his kisses taste just after a rare I love you. Just at that moment, Nick pushes his hands into Harry’s hair and calls him Henry Stars and it’s somehow more romantic than anything else because it’s just theirs. It’s their past, present and future. That night they make sugar-free brownies which taste like shit. Harry tells Nick a joke he learned about raccoons to make up for the lack of sugar. He says you’re sweet enough already and Nick hits him with a cushion. That night they fall in love, just a little bit more, and Nick doesn’t think L.A. is quite so lonely anymore.

30. Why does it work (or not work) between them? 

It almost doesn’t work because they’re both terrible at reading the signals and they’re excellent and not really saying the things they want to say. There are so many nights out, so many moments of falling into bed and wondering if this time it’s going to be different that for a while it looks like it’s just going to be one of those things they’ll both look back on with a remember when with different people by their sides and a lifetime in front of them where Nick and Harry are just friends. In this universe, in this life, time aligns just right and it catches them both off-guard, even though they have been idiots in love for a long time already. Harry tells Nick once that he thinks if there are a million different universes they would be together in every single one of them. It would happen even in the ones where time moves differently, sooner, or later. Nick says it probably wouldn’t happen in the ones where Nick gets a face full of wrinkles and Harry still looks like a Grecian sculpture. Harry doesn’t say as much, but he secretly likes to think that if Nick has wrinkles in those other worlds, Harry put them there. The frown lines, the laughter lines, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. Harry gets possessive about the lines on Nick’s face and stops him from trying to erase them when it gets to that stage, because it matters, the past. It’s what gave them a future, after a all. A past full of laughing and leaving, of loss and love, of friendship. A past full of stories told and untold. They have the best stories, Harry and Nick. They could make a library out of them. 

It’s well into the future when Harry gets a new jumper and Nick’s outside the changing room. Harry laughs about that time people thought Nick was his dad. He pulls Nick into the changing room, kisses him breathless just like he always wanted to all of those years ago. Nick kisses him back and Harry never wears cashmere again without thinking of Nick’s hands on his skin. It’s their history, that makes it work. Friendship first. The rest just follows. Easy, like a Sunday morning.