#ladyliam

Louis wakes up like a person coming out of a coma, wading through fuzzy layers of almost consciousness until he can feel warmth on the backs of his eyelids. Which is pretty weird, considering his room gets almost no light in the mornings and less in the afternoons. 

He cracks an eye open and immediately recoils from the sunlight, throwing his arm across his face and hiding in his elbow. “Ugh,” he grits out, rolling away to futher protect himself, legs tangling in the warm sheets. Once the light isn’t burning on his chest anymore, Louis lowers his arm, blinking hard until the room comes into focus.

It’s not his room, or the living room, and that explains the total lack of back pains from the crappy couch, seeing as he slept the night in Liam’s bed.

Panic swells in his throat—oh, fuck, this is bad, this is really bad; Louis had really planned on handling whatever this sparkling shiny new thing between him and Liam with gentle hands, not by having sex with him on a whim.  Only, he feels a bit too cozy in Liam’s bed, not gross and sticky or like he’s had an orgasm in the past few hours. So maybe Louis wasn’t quite as stupid as he thought.

He mulls over it for a little bit, and doesn’t remember much about coming back to the dorm aside from being fucking exhausted from work.  And Liam. Oh, Liam had been so goddamn sweet that it made Louis’s stomach do all manner of embarrassing lurches and leaps. And he fell asleep in Liam’s bed instead of on the couch because Liam knew how tired he was and refused to let him pass out on the dreadful thing. What a saint.

A saint that is quite conspicuously absent from the other side of the bed, Louis notices. He shifts around a bit, stretching and sighing in satisfaction when his bones crackle. There’s a ticking he can hear from somewhere off to his left, and it’s awful and familiar, reminding Louis of late nights squinting at Word documents and chugging Red Bulls until his skin felt like it would melt off.  

Sure enough, Liam is across the room at his desk, hunched over his laptop and clicking furiously at the keys. The glare from his laptop slants right over his shoulders—shoulders that are so far ratcheted up that it looks like Liam’s neck has disappeared completely.

Guilt washes over Louis. Liam must have skipped over writing one of his honors essays last night to help Louis out when he stumbled home from work like an extra from an apocalypse film, ragged and bone-tired and clothed in the worst outfit known to man. Now he’s comfy and warm in a sweater that’s gotta be Liam’s, if the too-long sleeves are any indication, and the poor bloke’s obviously been up for hours gritting out a paper that he could have started hours and hours ago if Louis hadn’t interrupted him.

Louis eyes the tense line of Liam’s shoulders. A bit of a massage wasn’t a great apology, but it was better than the fat bit of nothing that he would barely be able to choke out to Liam to make up for it. He sits up, the old dorm bedframe creaking at the change, and swings his legs over the edge of the mattress. “Morning, Li.” He pushes his bangs off his forehead, not bothering to move the sleeve up and off of his hand.

“Hey,” Liam mutters. He doesn’t turn around or anything, still typing feverishly. “Sleep well?”

“Fantastic, actually. You got the good bed, mate! I’m jealous.” He plops both feet onto the ground, standing up to crack his joints again before padding over to stand behind Liam at his desk. He levels his hands onto his roommate’s shoulders, and Liam jumps like he’s been electrocuted, startled out of his mad typing. “Woah, hey, just me.”

“S-sorry, I just.” He still hasn’t bothered to turn from his laptop. Louis starts to rub circles into Liam’s shoulders with his thumbs anyway, figuring he didn’t want to interrupt his essay-writing any further—rather, he just wanted to make Liam a little more comfortable while doing it.  He massages in wider loops, making sure to work out the knots up close to Liam’s neck and push the rest of his fingertips into the front of his trapezius muscle. Turned out his anatomy lab was actually teaching him someth—

Shit. His anatomy lab.

The clock on Liam’s laptop burns a very blatant twenty minutes of time since the lab’s started into Louis’s face. “Shit, I forgot about my lab. I’ll see you after class, okay?” He jogs toward the living room, stopping short at Liam’s door. “And I. Thank you for last night. You’re amazing.”

Liam doesn’t face him, still, but his typing slows, shoulders sinking to near their rightful place now. “You’re welcome.”

Louis grins, even though Liam can’t see it. “Later, Li!”

The lab flies by, as does his sociology class and the psych quiz that he missed when he was sick (read: skipping to catch up on sleep) last week. He knows he aced the quiz and the TA for his soc lecture had complimented him on the last essay he’d done and the day is pretty cracking good, really, even if he hadn’t had time for a shower beforehand.

It actually isn’t until he’s making his way down the hall to his and Liam’s dorm room that he realizes he’s still wearing Liam’s sweater. He curls his fingers in the baggy sleeve and blushes.

He isn’t keen on getting himself mentally psyched for work right now, especially when he realizes that the odd sense of comfort and warmth he’d had all day was due entirely to the way Liam had taken care of him last night, and now that he knows about it, the way that he’s been wearing his sweater through all his classes. It’s…something to think about, probably, that sense of contentment that had sort of seeped into his bones over the course of the day. 

It’s also worth thinking about that it’s most likely stealing and oh, god, Liam could totally be really mad at him about this. What if he’s pissed off?

When he opens the front door, Liam’s not waiting on the other side ready to pounce so that’s a pretty good sign.  Instead he’s perched on the couch poring over a book, highlighting furiously and flipping through a notebook to scribble down notes.

He looks exhausted, and Louis stomach goes twisty-sour. This is his fault, isn’t it?

“Liam?” he tries. It comes out quieter than he expected, but somehow Liam still manages to flinch. He turns away from Louis, too, hiking the book further into his lap and turning his face like he doesn’t even want to see Louis.

Which. Ouch.