young and beautiful || larry s.

chapter 21

"I'm not your puppet."

"Tell him."

"I wouldn't even if I wanted to. And do you know why?" Louis asks, eyes pinching into a glare as he takes a step towards Harry who glares harder in response. "Because all of those people are nothing but harpies. And you can do better than that, you great, sex-crazed, bumbling oaf. So, yes, I'm going to send them away every chance I get, and I'm not going to apologize for it, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise!" With that, Louis sniffs and turns away, feeling victorious and adamant. He resists the urge to stomp his foot.

Harry's glare recedes. "What do you mean, I can do better than that?" he asks, and his tone is surprised and confused and caught off guard and all those other things that make Louis' arms uncross and fall to his sides, his face turning to Harry's.

"Just what I said," he says gently, before his voice picks up its strength again and he flicks his hair out of his eyes. "Now. Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?"

Harry ducks his head, shuffles a bit. "Why are you here?" he mumbles to the floor, and he's hugging his stomach now, the light catching in the bags under his eyes.

"Because I need to study and Niall's being a wanker. I liked it here yesterday. So. Will you take me?" Louis asks, and a smile plays at his lips.

Harry's head snaps up before it falls back down, his feet pawing at the thick, Persian rug. "Well. I was just sort of getting ready for the day. I mean, I don't have classes or anything, because I've already finished the coursework for all of them. Just, like, doing little things and looking over my song. So, I mean, yeah, that's fine," Harry rambles, and he's fiddling with his watch.

Louis grins. Success.

"Splendid!" he says, and immediately makes a beeline for Harry's bedroom. "Let's go in here, yeah? It's cozy. I like it," he smiles, and settles down in his chair.

Harry follows behind him, eyes watchful but almost smiling? It's a pleasant look, whatever it is, so Louis nuzzles deeper into the chair and smiles sleepily up at Harry.

"Have you finished your song?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"Can I hear it?"

Harry turns, walks to the window, and stares out. "Yeah." The sun catches in his skin, his hair, his troubled eyes. "In a bit though. Not right now, yeah?"

"Yeah. All right," Louis says softly, and he watches the boy before him, bathed in golden light.

And then Louis begins to study and Harry begins to putter about, sifting through his papers, tapping out quick texts on his phone, and pulling worn books off of the shelf to read them, standing long and looking impossibly elegant-casual attire and all-framed in the window.

He literally looks like the embodiment of gold, the sun doing wonders to his body as it streams in through the windows behind him, and the book is so frail and so fragile in his creamy white hands, his fingernails perfectly groomed and soft in hue. His eyelashes glow in the light and the tip of his nose is pink and his lips are wonderfully crimson and-

Okay. Maybe textbooks aren't the only thing Louis' studying.

He pulls his gaze away.

"Do you get on with your father?" Harry suddenly asks in his deep, musical voice that sits somewhere on the floor, and it's out of nowhere and he's still holding that book in his hands which he's apparently only pretending to read and it startles Louis completely.

"What?" he asks, taken aback, staring at Harry's shimmering outline.

He doesn't look up from the book. "I noticed you call him by his name. And you said he didn't like you. Why?"