Larry Stylinson - Turning From Praise (AU)

4.

Not because it mattered, because he wasn’t attracted to Harry, of course not! Harry was a weirdo with angel bites (ironic, bearing in mind that stepping within a one hundred metre radius of anything church-related earnt him the filthiest looks you’ve ever seen in your life) and too many bracelets, and eyeliner, and he hated Louis anyway! He’d practically thrown him bodily out of the shop, for God’s sake – and yeah, maybe Louis had deserved it, he could see that now, but still.

These were the kind of thoughts that had been weighing him down for days, and he wasn’t concentrating on anything very much at the moment. Least of all his little sisters, who were jostling each other and hissing so-called taboo insults – pig, dog, monkey, a whole menagerie of animals to compare each other to – which was why he struggled to drag himself out of his reverie when he noticed that Phoebe was no longer trotting along beside him and leaning around his legs to yell at her sister.

Disorientated, he stopped dead and looked around, and relief shot through him when he spotted her only a few feet away, hovering on the edge of the pavement and looking both mutinous and martyred, which was something of an accomplishment. Louis had no idea how she managed that. She was holding her head high, her bottom lip sticking out, and he felt extremely uneasy at how close she was to the road.

“Phoebe, come here –”

“I hate her,” she shrieked indignantly, pointing at her slightly ashamed-looking twin sister, “and she was calling me names and you weren’t even listening, and I hate you both! I’m going to tell mum!”

“Okay, whatever, fine by me,” Louis said impatiently, “but for goodness sake come back here, it’s dangerous to play in the road –”

Phoebe cried, “I’m not standing with her!” and then she turned and rushed right into the road without so much as a glance either way to check whether any traffic was coming (which it most definitely was; an enormous lorry with a cab so high-up that it would never be able to see the tiny blonde girl was lurching towards her, weighed down with some kind of enormous weighty cargo).

Louis’ heart leapt into his mouth, and by instinct, he lurched uselessly forwards, grabbing at the thin air she had just vacated as if he could grab the back of her luminous pink coat, crying out in utter panic, “PHOEBE!”

He waited for the high-pitched scream and the squeal of brakes, waited for his sister’s small body to vanish underneath the lorry, waited for her shriek to be joined by his and Daisy’s as they watched the monstrosity crush her.

But just as he was wishing that he could close his eyes so he didn’t have to watch, as if from nowhere, a hand reached out and grabbed the back of her coat by the fur-lined hood, yanking her backwards. They barely heard Phoebe’s squeak of protest over the sound of the lorry’s horn blaring aggressively in reprimand for the figure who had just appeared in the road, swung the little girl up into his arms and gotten a decent grip on her, waiting for her legs to tighten around his skinny hips. Shrugging apologetically at the irate driver, he jogged back over to where Louis stood feeling almost faint with relief, Daisy clinging to his hand so hard he was surprised he could still feel it, and neatly placed Phoebe on the pavement in front of him, where she slid down his legs, swayed in shock for a moment and then allowed her gaze to flicker upwards to meet Louis’ own shell-shocked expression.

“One of yours, I believe?” Harry asked mildly.

Louis could only answer with a strangled gasp of “Phoebe!”

She staggered forwards and wrapped her arms around his legs, burying her face in his stomach, apparently lost for words. He felt her little pink-clad body shuddering against him for a few seconds with an awful stab of horror, imagining how it would have felt to see the insides of his little sister spurt messily all over the road – and then he remembered the reason why they hadn’t, and his head snapped up to look at Harry, who was still standing there with his hands shoved into the pockets of his black jeans, carefully watching Phoebe like he thought she might be about to dive back into the road again.

“Never do that again, okay?” His fingers dug into the back of her coat and gripped hard, and Phoebe didn’t complain for once; she stayed hanging onto his legs. Louis felt his throat burning as he realized that he could have just lost his little sister, and his head fiercely snapped up as he looked at Harry. “You saved her.”

He shrugged self-consciously and shifted his weight, staring at the floor. “Well, I wasn’t exactly going to let her get squished, was I? What sort of person do you think I am?”

“A far better one than I am, apparently.” Forget his throat; his whole body burned now with shame for the things he had said, the outpouring of anger and misery he had provoked when he had blindly lashed out and managed to hit Harry’s one weak spot. Almost as if they’d never had the conversation, Harry’s face was impassive, but Louis thought he saw a tightness in his eyes. “You just saved my baby sister’s life. How can I ever make it up to you?”

“I’m not a baby,” Phoebe squawked indignantly, but they both ignored her.

“I don’t need repaying. But if you were to be a little more open-minded in the future, that might be nice,” said Harry levelly.

Okay, so that was a bit of a low blow, but nothing more than he deserved. “It’s a deal,” Louis said, and he shook Harry’s hand because he wanted to get across that he wasn’t bothered about essentially holding hands with him and was determined to get over the whole thing. Harry’s hand was far bigger than his, pale and quite warm, but not unpleasantly so, and his skin was smooth. Louis’ thumb skimmed over his knuckles and he felt surprised at how nice the sensation was.

A huge grin danced across Harry’s face, like Louis had made his day with one simple gesture. “Well, that’s okay, then. Consider your debt repaid. And you didn’t even have to sell me your soul.” He raised his eyebrows teasingly.

“Louis?” Daisy was tugging on his sleeve with round eyes, staring open-mouthed at Harry. “Who’s that?”

“This is Harry,” Louis told her, “and he just saved your sister’s life, so you might want to say thank you.” He wasn’t sure whether his sister had been listening to his mother say awful things about Harry, and he was pretty certain that if she said something awful, he was going to give her a serious telling-off once Harry was out of earshot.

Thankfully, she did nothing of the sort. Uncertainly, she took a few steps forward, then hurled her arms around him and squeezed him very hard. Shocked, Harry blinked, and his hands landed on her shoulders in alarm as if he thought she was trying to hurt him and was about to push him away – but as she buried her face in the loose black material of his obscure band t-shirt, Harry’s face softened and he carefully hugged her back.

Daisy looked up at him. “Thank you for saving Phoebe,” she said solemnly, and Louis felt strangely emotional at the sight of his little sister giving this complete stranger a hug, despite the appearance that so many people found alarming. It was true that kids could be so much less judgemental than adults if they weren’t taught to be so harsh.

Beside Louis, Phoebe was peeking at Harry, and she slowly turned around and looked at him with interest, her eyes scanning him up and down. Louis sent a little prayer that she would emulate her sister and not say anything rude.

“I like your tattoos,” she said innocently. “What does this one say?”

Harry’s eyes lit up like it was his birthday and she’d just given him the present he’d always wanted. “It says ‘love me or hate me, both are in my favour…If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart…If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind’.”

She blinked. “That’s sad. But I like it. What about this one?” She tapped the inside of his right wrist, and Louis saw two intertwined male gender symbols with a five-point star around them, and then underneath in neat printed writing, I can’t change. He felt a little bit worried about that one – he wasn’t sure how Harry was going to explain his sexuality to them, or how they would react to it. It wasn’t something his mother had ever seen fit to talk to them about.

“That’s to show that people fall in love, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Harry said gently, “and that when I fall in love, I’m not going to listen to what people say about me, because that doesn’t matter…I can’t change who I am. And I don’t want to.”

Louis really hoped his eyes weren’t shining quite so brightly as he thought they were, because he’d never heard anything so melancholy and yet so accepting in his whole life, and with a lump in his throat he realized that he’d taken one look at Harry Styles and judged him at face value – and he’d been completely wrong.