He’s curled into himself in the armchair, scrolling down his Twitter feed. He hasn’t actually posted anything in weeks, and his fingers kind of itch with the incessant need to tweet a sad song lyric or something, but he manages to resist.
It’s better if people forget about him for a while, even his own fans. He’s lying low for a reason.
At the end of the day, the point is this: the three of them co-exist, and sit in the same room together. It doesn’t feel friendly, but it does feel like something. Healing, maybe.
After Liam leaves, Harry goes to the kitchen to make himself another cup of tea before bed. He can’t quite stop, now that he’s started drinking it again.
He’s trying to put the kettle on without touching anything unnecessary when Louis walks in. He smells like the outside.
“Put a bit more in, will you?” he asks, and Harry doesn’t even have time to turn to him before his body automatically obeys. He opens the tap again and pours enough in the kettle to make a few cups. “Tragically, I’ve got to stay up tonight.”
Harry turns to him carefully, bracing himself with tentative fingertips on the countertop.
Louis looks soft, relaxed, lovely. Like he hasn’t got any weight on his shoulders, for once. And he’s—talking to Harry.
“Sorry,” Harry says aimlessly into the silence, waving an arm about to indicate the whole of the kitchen.
“What for?” Louis frowns, and even that is soft.
As if there wasn’t an entire list.
“Just,” Harry shrugs. “Using your things. Being around, and all.”
Louis sighs, and presses a hand to his forehead. It’s all covered with his sleeve, just his fingertips peeking out.
“Harry,” he says, slowly, as if he were speaking to a child. “Are you apologizing for existing?”
“No,” Harry replies immediately. The kettle starts rumbling behind him, letting out steam that curls around the underside of the cabinets and rises to the ceiling. “You know what I—“
That’s when he notices that Louis is grinning. It’s genuine, but a little feral, not the soft kind of expression he reserves for people he loves.
“Relax,” he says. “You live here, at least for now. If I didn’t want you touching things, I would’ve put them away.”
“I just,” Harry starts, tracing the rim of his cup. “I don’t feel like I should be here, or—or touching things. You said our lives shouldn’t have anything to do with each other.”
Louis sighs. “You’re the one who said it first, and they don’t. We share the same space, but that doesn’t mean we live here together.”
“If you’re sure,” Harry looks at him distrustfully. “I don’t want to—to overstep, I guess. I shouldn’t be where you don’t want me to be, not after everything.”
Louis opens his mouth a little, but doesn’t say anything.
This might not have been the best way of going about apologising – or explaining that he’s realised how badly he’d fucked up and doesn’t know where to even begin apologising.
“I mean,” says Louis finally, careful, tracing a pattern in the tabletop with his fingers. “It’s a bit late for that. No offense.”
Harry hangs his head, and pretends to only just notice that the kettle’s gone off. He’s debating the awkwardness of only fixing his own cup versus fixing Louis’s and not getting it right, even though he’s done it a million times; on top of that are Louis’s measured words, the heavy reminder behind them of how he’d acted when he first showed up.
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Got The Sunshine On My Shoulders || larry stylinson
Fanfiction© hattalove on ao3 Five years ago, Harry Styles left his tiny hometown to make it big as a recording artist. He didn't have much regard for what he left behind - A life, a family, and a husband, who woke up one morning to find him gone. Now, Harry h...
PART 6
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