When their first payroll comes in, they all cry.
Harry remembers very little about his first kiss with a girl, but his first kiss with Louis is something else. The girl he snogged on the hill at eleven, the one who tasted like cheap lip balm and vaguely of a grandmother's hard candies, is something he can bring to mind, but not without pausing for a long moment and trying to remember the proper details, and even then he still wonders if he's gotten them right. Louis, however, Louis, is an amalgram of cologne, pressed leather and sometimes even the scent of Harry himself, after he's leaned on him on the flight home, gotten a bit close during an interview, and he smells like nothing but Harry when he's clinging to him and screaming about the amount of money they've just received in the mail.
Screaming turns to yelling turns to a quiet kiss in front of the other three, and Harry does not give a damn.
Louis' pressing into it, after a moment, his hands, dainty, like porcelain, clutching onto Harry's shirt, and Harry's broad hands are placed firmly on wide hips, and he can hear somone (most likely Zayn) gasp in the background. It's all over in a matter of seconds, and Harry leaves to call his mum, call her and Gemma, tell them about what he's earned, and Niall makes a catcall when he leaves the room - his lips tug upwards into a smile, because they've all handled this better than he thought, he handled it better than he thought he would - but there's still that pang of loneliness when Louis doesn't follow, doesn't ask why he did that, doesn't walk out of the conference room to match his hurried footsteps.
Louis slides beside him when he's done with his phone call, sits next to him on the new couch, and Harry only blinks in surprise when suddenly his hand is entwined, finger to finger, pulse to pulse, with another male's. Louis leans againt him, some, and Harry can't find anything wrong with the situation at hand, nothing awkward, nothing forced, nothing like the girls he's dated in the past - and he lets his head loll against Louis', relaxing, feeling almost like he's at a second home. Louis just mutters something under his breath, something that sounds suspiciously like "it was about time," and Harry lets his lips quirk, lets out a small laugh at that, because Louis Tomlinson took the first kiss, the first move, in a much, much more positive tone than he ever could have imagined, and he's sure he'll be remembering the taste of peppermint for a very long time.