larry- one shots

i'll take your pain

Harry's mum met his step dad at a bar on Thursday night, out having too much fun with her work friends. She rolled her ankle on the dance floor and fell right out of her too-tall heels, and hardly a moment later a man limped over and offered to buy her a drink, or maybe drive her to the hospital, since he could feel her pain radiating through his entire leg. She'd accepted the ride to the hospital and they scheduled the drink for another time, and they were married within the year.

It's kind of romantic when Harry thinks about it, feeling all the pain of the person he's supposed to love for the rest of his life. Sure, it's rather inconvenient when he's in class and his soulmate gets kicked in the balls, or when he's sleeping and his soulmate knocks his head or his knee off something. It'd be nice if the function helped them to find each other, but Harry supposes he can live with knowing that they're destined to run into each other someday.

It takes ages sometimes, like in Harry's mum's case. She didn't find her soulmate until she'd already been married and divorced once, with two children and a cat. Her soulmate had to have known she'd given birth twice, though, and she knew that he had broken his arm twice and his toe once throughout his life. Harry hopes it doesn't take him that long to find his own soulmate, but he's been keeping careful score of all of their injuries in case it comes up in conversation with a particularly cute boy.

Harry's soulmate has had three broken ankles, twice on the right and once on the left, two broken wrists, the left both times, and a broken nose. Harry thinks he must be an athlete, or something, because every now and again he wakes up with sore legs and arms, and sometimes he gets the breath knocked out of him suddenly like he's been hit with a football.

Harry himself has never broken a bone, but he's given his soulmate quite a few bumps and bruises tripping over his own feet and falling up stairs. He burns himself quite a bit at the bakery, as well, so he really hopes his soulmate doesn't hate him for that.

Sometimes he forgets to consider his soulmate when he does things, like when he rips out a stray piece of hair that keeps falling in his face or when he pinches his wrist when he's anxious. Today is not one of those days, though; he can't stop thinking about his soulmate as he sits in the waiting area of the salon, wishing he could somehow warn them about what's about to happen.

He made the appointment on a whim; his mum is one to paint her own nails at home, so when she got a gift card for the salon from a friend, she immediately pawned it off on Gemma. Gemma had left it unattended on the coffee table for weeks, though, so Harry really had no option but to take it when he found out the salon offered waxing.

So here he is, waiting anxiously for his first full Brazilian, pinching his wrist quite hard and bouncing his leg against the cushioned chair he's waiting in. He's always wanted to know what it would feel like to be completely bare down there, and it's not exactly something he feels comfortable exploring at home with some of the wax strips Gemma uses on her face. He just wants to try it, just to see if it's worth the hype, just to know if it'll feel better or different when he's lonely at night and he reaches down just to try...

He snaps himself off that train of thought quickly, lest the poor girl who's about to sit between his legs for a half hour get more of an eyeful than she probably ever wanted. He starts thinking about his soulmate, hopes he's not doing anything terribly important or dangerous, like giving a presentation or climbing a ladder.

He got here early just in case they might be able to see him before his appointment so he could just get it over with, but no such luck. There's a girl in the back now getting her eyebrows threaded, and as soon as she's finished it'll be Harry's turn. There's still about five minutes to go, but the time flutters from his mind when the most beautiful boy he's ever seen comes through the door with two young girls