A/N: I'm posting two chapters this week, one now and one on Friday.

Just a reminder that all the chapters going forward take place in the "present" and are told from Louis' POV.

Also, I realize you might expect the events in this fic to unfold in a certain order: Louis finds out everything, *cue romantic music* he and Harry get together, then have sex etc. I thought that would be too predictable. I'm going in a very different direction (no pun intended). There is still another major plot twist and it's going to be a complicated, messy route to a resolution.

Once I got to my flat I began cleaning from top to bottom. Christ, the place was a disaster. Jeffrey's shit was everywhere. I was picking up his colorful underwear out of every nook and cranny. The washroom was filled with products from his extensive beauty ritual. Creams, cleansers, toners. How much body glitter and spray tan did one boy need? I collected it all into a bag to give back to him when he was less furious with me.

Then I scrubbed the kitchen until the stovetop and counter gleamed. I looked in the fridge. I had purchased some nice salmon steaks the day before. I could make wild rice with capers and grilled vegetables to go with it. It wasn't the most original meal, but Harry would be over soon and I didn't have much time. I still needed to shower and cull my bookshelf to make sure I seemed smart.

I tore off my nasty sweats and tossed them in the hamper in my bedroom. I stared at my bed for a minute. I didn't want to be presumptuous but I didn't want to be unprepared either. I stripped the sheets and put on fresh ones. I checked the nightstand to make sure I had condoms. I did.

I showered.

I didn't really know what to wear. I decided to play it cool and go casual with a long-sleeved T and black skinnies ripped at the knee. It had begun to drizzle out. It was almost nine o'clock and Harry hadn't arrived yet. I was worried he would cancel.

I seasoned the fish and put on the rice.

My bookshelf was in a worse state than I thought. Dozens of tacky mass-market paperbacks stared back at me with their embossed typography and juvenile titles. I began to pull them down one by one. The sports books had even dumber titles. He was going to think I was illiterate! I might as well have a shelf full of coloring books! I left the John le Carré novels, my dance biographies and the classics. My copy of Finnegans Wake had never been opened. Fuck it. Did anyone have the patience for Joyce?

I didn't have anywhere to stash the rejects so I just stuffed them at the bottom of my hamper. My shelf was practically empty now, but I figured a few smart books were better than loads of stupid ones. I placed some plants and knick-knacks there to fill out the space.

Harry still hadn't shown up. I felt like a wanker. What if he stood me up? Maybe he only accepted my invitation to fuck with me. I wouldn't put it past him.

I went out on the balcony and had a smoke, watching the rain come down harder and harder. Lightning flickered in the distance and my bones shook with the crack of thunder that followed. Down below I saw the top of a black umbrella. Behind me I heard the buzzer.

I quickly stomped out my cigarette and ran inside to push the button to open the door downstairs.

He knocked so softly I wouldn't have heard it unless I was standing right by the door, which of course I was.

His hair was curlier because of the humidly. It reminded me of the wild curls he had in his youth. In his arms was a giant binder. His research. I took it from him and set it down on the coffee table. It weighed a ton. He also brought dessert in a small baker's box.

He was wearing a long dark pea coat. I took it from him and hung it up. Underneath was more black. Black pants and a silk black button down. He looked like a posh undertaker. The only burst of color came from a gold ribbon tie he wore around his shirt collar.

"You dressed up," I said.

"This is just how I dress."

"Oh, well, um, you look nice!" Having Harry alone at my apartment had rendered me incoherent.

"Thanks."

"I like the tie. It's... different."

He glanced at himself in the full-length mirror by the door. "They're on all the runways this season. This one's Hermes."

"Really? That sounds expensive."

"Three hundred quid, I think."

"Three hundred! It's just a bloody a ribbon! My mum's cat wears the same one!"

"They're really on trend. All the men in Milan wear them."

"I'll tell the cat. She'll be chuffed."

Harry grinned.

I led him into my apartment. He didn't properly see it the last time he was here since there were so many other guests. Now he strolled around with his hands behind his back and took it all in, one ugly piece of furniture at time. I cringed at my own taste.

"You have a lot of stuff," he said, running his hand over my DVD rack, video games and the guitar in the corner.

"Not really," I said, from the kitchenette. I took the rice off the burner and started grilling the fish and the vegetables.

"More stuff than me."

"You live like a serial killer. No offence."

"None taken. Hannibal's my favorite show."

"I bet."

I set our plates on the coffee table. Harry cracked open his tome and discussed his research while we ate.

"Why is this ballet so important to you?" I handed him a cloth napkin and he draped it across his lap.

"Dunno. I guess because it's mercurial. The story, the choregraphy, it's not static. It's alive. It lives and breathes and changes. It's like anyone who touches it can inhabit it... I feel like it's my story."

"Is that really why you chose the Bolshoi when you graduated?"

His mouth was full and he nodded. "Yes, that and because the Bolshoi is the best."

I still remembered the end of our final school year. Eleanor, Zayn, Gigi, Liam and I were all offered contracts by the Royal Ballet Company. Gigi and Liam were even offered multiple contracts, but chose to stay in London.

Harry had the most offers of any student in RBS' history. Artistic directors from all over the world, including Paris, came to the school to court him but he was only interested in one company. The Bolshoi. He waited and waited and waited but they refused to even meet with him. The Bolshoi only tapped members from its own academy, trained in the Vaganova method, to join the company. They had foreign born guest dancers over the years, like Madame, but only one foreigner had ever been made a principal dancer, an American, David Hallberg in 2011. Hallberg was an established danseur from the American Ballet Theatre. Harry was not trained in the Vaganova method and he was not an established danseur.

A week before our convocation, Harry did the unthinkable. He contacted each one of the artistic directors who had offered him a contract and turned them all down. We thought he'd lost his fucking mind. Newspapers that had been following Harry's story put him on the front page of the arts section. "The English Boy with a Russian Dream Risks it All." The artistic director from The Bolshoi was so intrigued by what Harry did, he got on a plane to London the very next day.

I was standing outside the studio when Sergei Filin and the Russian envoy arrived. Harry wasn't even nervous. He knew. He knew that if he could get that man alone in a room to watch him dance, he would hire him on the spot and he was right.

Harry, the boy who got into RBS with no formal training, the worst dancer in school who transformed himself into the best, was offered a contract at a company that had never, in its two hundred year history, offered a spot to a foreign student.

He was the exception to every rule.

"I wish I knew how you did it, Harry." I licked the back of my fork.

"How I did what?"

"How you became what you are. There's something about you... You have something nobody else does. I just can't figure out what it is."

Harry's expression hardened. "Maybe it's the exact opposite. Maybe I'm missing something."

"You sold your soul. I knew it."

"Something like that."

Harry flipped through the scanned letters from 1876, all neatly organized in plastic sheaths by date and author. He'd travelled to several archives across Europe to find them but he'd done most of his research at the Russian State Library in Moscow.

He translated some of the letters aloud. I could tell from the clauses and the nuanced expressions that Harry's Russian must have been very good.

"How long did it take you to learn Russian?" I asked, stabbing at a few capers that escaped my fork.

"About a year. I hired a tutor."

"That's impressive. I wish I spoke a second language."

"You speak French."

"Not well." I frowned.

"I've always loved your French."

We were quiet for a minute. Harry kept turning the pages in his binder.

"I'm really intimidated by you," I blurted out.

"Why?"

This was so hard for me, but I had to say it. "You're talented and famous and now you bring this research here and I find out you're some crazy academic too! I don't even know how to talk to you anymore. I'm afraid I'll say the wrong thing."

Harry looked down. "You called me stupid."

"What?"

"When we were in school. You said I was stupid."

I wasn't expecting that. I had to wrack my brain before I even remembered what he was talking about.

Our fight.

"Harry, I didn't mean... We were arguing."

He shook his head and set down his fork and knife. The rain outside hammered on the window.

"No, you meant it."

I didn't know what to say. I was such a little shit when I was in school and Harry really hurt me that day.

"I wanted to hurt you back," I admitted. "I'm sorry. Even after what you did, I shouldn't have said it."

He wrung his hands over his plate.

I touched his research, all of it carefully laid out and annotated in his feminine handwriting.

"Is that why...?"

He looked at me. "I didn't want to be stupid anymore."

I was doubled over with guilt. There was still so much pain between us. It was like we had never left that dorm room. I hadn't gotten over any of it. Maybe Harry hadn't either.

"I'm so sorry, Harry, but nobody has ever hurt me the way you did that day. You were my best friend. It crushed me, absolutely crushed me... Tell me you're sorry for what you did to me. Please."

"Louis..." His lips parted in anguish. "I wish none of it had ever happened. That's the truth." It looked like he wanted to say something more. Something was still bothering him. Instead of speaking, he surprised me by taking my face and kissing my forehead.

He didn't say the words "I'm sorry" exactly but wasn't that just semantics? A weight had been lifted. The past was in the past. We were both kids back then. Everyone's done something in high school that they regret. Was I really going to hold the trip to Kiev against him forever? What purpose would that serve? Harry was here, he obviously wanted to make amends and I wanted my best friend back.

"Friends," I said, extending my hand.

He took it. "Friends."

We finished dinner and I cleared our plates. Harry had brought dessert: two custards in a pink baker's box. I untied the string on the box and carried it over to the coffee table.

Unlike Jeffrey, Harry had a huge sweet tooth. This was the richest dessert I'd ever eaten. I liked watching him lick the sugar powder off his fingers.

Harry went through his vision for the production point by point. He'd even made me a copy. He'd thought of everything. Every detail mattered, from the choreography to costumes. He'd managed to exert his influence in most of these areas already, but there were still a few people who needed convincing, the girls, for one and Niall and now, since Maurice had left, the assistant choreographer Joni. He asked me if I would back him up. I said I would on the condition that he spoke to Kenneth and made sure Liam didn't get fired.

"Deal," he said. "It's nice doing business with you, friend."

I might have just made a deal with the devil but it was fun hatching a plan like this. I liked being on the same side as Harry for once. I missed this.

We were sitting on the couch: me curled up and Harry leaning back, one leg crossed easily over the other. He was explaining the differences between Václav Reisinger's original choreography from the 1877 production and Petipa and Ivanov's choreography from the 1895 revival. He spoke softly, the warm lamplight making his cheeks glow. I tried to pay attention to what he was saying but I was too busy staring at his mouth. He would touch my knee when he was making a point and I kept asking him to clarify so he would keep touching me.

We were so deep in conversation I'd forgotten to make tea or coffee. I only realized my faux pas when Harry stood up and stretched.

"I should go. I have an early day tomorrow."

"Wait! We haven't even had tea."

"I shouldn't. It keeps me up."

It was still thundering out. Rain came down hard and fast like a steel wall.

Harry looked down at the street. "Hope I can catch a taxi in this weather."

"Spend the night," I said boldly.

There was a heavy silence between us.

"It wouldn't be appropriate."

"We used to sleep together every night," I said, the memory still so tender and dear to me.

"We were just boys then. It's different now."

"We slept together in the studio." I clasped his wrist. "You didn't even need your pills."

He paused. "I've always slept better beside you."

"Come."

I placed a hand on the small of his back and lead him into my bedroom.

A/N: I will post the continuation of this scene on Friday.

Gird your loins. *grabs a Xanax and holy water*