A House Built Out of Stone

Part 5

Harry comes between his classes.

He stomps his boots on the mat Louis puts by the door, to protect the shop from the wetness of shoes and more water damage, because the ceiling’s caused enough. He’s got a bag over his shoulder, got books peeking out from under the flap, and he looks like a proper uni student, all dressed up like this. Louis feels the urge to ruffle him up a bit from somewhere low in his belly, sudden and insistent and unfamiliar.

He swallows hard and the feeling goes away.

“’s cold,” Harry murmurs. “Hi, it’s cold.”

Louis waits for the shop to greet him, but it hasn’t yet. He watches the ceiling and listens for the creaks but they remain the same, unchanged. But Louis watches. And he listens. And he waits. Because the shop knows better than him and he will take her word, whatever it is.

“It is winter, you know,” Louis says instead. “Maybe you should start wearing gloves.”

Harry frowns. He takes to hanging his coat up on one of the rickety chairs, the one he’s claimed as his own. It looks a bit out of place, being used by someone else, and Louis wonders how soon until Harry will bore of it, bore of Louis’ things. “I’d rather complain about it, to be honest,” Harry tells him. “Hey, have you got any tea? My hands are cold.”

Louis bounds up the steps. Skips the second and the fifth and the seventh to avoid the loose panels and pads into the kitchen of the flat. It smells like like the toast Louis burned this morning, because he hadn’t been the one to buy his toaster and the damn thing hates him.

It’s not his, is the thing. Louis only likes things that belong to him.

The sugar’s still out from this morning, where Louis had spilt half the container in the dim light of sunrise, all the blinds closed and his eyes still adjusting to being awake. He makes a mental note to clean the flat after his next sleepless night. Won’t be soon before long, and it might make him like the place a bit more. Might make it feel more like his home, if it’s clean.

He does a haphazard job of cleaning up the sugar while the kettle’s boiling. His feet are cold and there’s a crick in his neck from sleeping in his chair again, accidental this time. His book’s bent up from where Louis dropped it when he lost consciousness the night before, the pages wrinkled and worn from where they’d been pressed against the floor all night, forgotten. He hunches in his jumper and watches the heat from the stove, thinks about the boy downstairs waiting for him.

He does a bang up job at that, thinking about the boy who’s entirely too young, with the spots on his face that give away his age underneath all that sure cockiness, the boy who lays claim to things that don’t belong to him.

The mugs are warm in his hands as he juggles them back down the steps. He lets his feet creak over the uneven wood this time, in acknowledgement, a hello of sorts before he disappears back down to the main shop.

Harry’s sat up on the counter when Louis gets back. His hands are cold where they press against Louis; he’s all hands and feet and legs and he smiles with nothing but teeth when Louis hands him his mug. “Have you got any cream?”

Louis has forgotten it up the stairs. “All out,” he lies, and wonders at the careless shrug Harry gives him. Too trustworthy, maybe that’s his flaw, Louis thinks. “Will you manage without it?”

Harry shrugs again. “I’ve brought this for you,” he answers, shoving a book at Louis over the counter. “Finished it during my last class.”

“Some lawyer,” Louis tells him.

It’s On the Road. It’s still got Louis’ bookmark in it, untouched as if it hasn’t belonged to someone else other than Louis for a bit. Louis runs his fingers over the pages, a habit to check the condition, to make sure the book has been taken care of.

“What did you think, then?”

Harry leans back on the counter, braces himself on his palms and smiles. “I can’t tell you, obviously. You haven’t finished.”

“You can at least tell me if you liked it,” Louis says. “Or absolutely loathed it.”

Harry shakes his head. He balances the mug on his thigh, his legs still and long and gangly against the counter. “Can’t,” he repeats. “I don’t want to bias you. ’m gonna be a lawyer, remember?” He’s a visage of raised eyebrows and cheek, this kid.

He takes his tea and hops the counter. “What have you got to read for me now?”

Louis watches him wander through the shelves. Harry’s hands are restless, his fingers running over the spines and tracing over the title of every book he passes, almost. He’s a character, Louis is sure, a character looking for the book he came from, looking for the world he belongs in. He’s too inquisitive, his eyes too wide and honest when he asks about certain books. He looks at Louis and believes what he says about each one, tilts his head and thinks before moving on.

Louis follows him ‘round the shop and drinks his tea, the blackness of it bitter and stale and sharp in the back of his throat. Harry’s enough sugar for him, sweet and too much energy and too many limbs, shoving awkwardly through Louis’ cramped little shop.

“You have to pick one for me,” Harry says eventually. “I’ve got my next class soon, and I can’t decide.”

Louis slides past him. He knows the order of the books by rote, and his fingers trail over the shelves as he passes by. He can hear Harry right up behind him, his heavier steps following Louis’ lighter ones, the smell of the chill in the air outside clinging to him. He sticks out, Louis thinks, sticks out in this shop that smells like dust and print and age.

He grabs Slaughterhouse-Five with a hesitant, reluctant sort of conviction. He doesn’t know Harry very well just yet, just knows his face and his hair and the dimples in his cheek that could tell a thousand stories, probably. He’s sure Harry’s got tonnes of stories hidden in the crook of his smile, the laugh-lines by his eyes. “Try this one,” Louis says.

“Have you read it?” Harry asks.

“Yes, so you’ve got no excuse to keep your opinion of it from me this time.”

Harry nods. Too trustworthy, Louis thinks again. “Let’s go ring me up then.”

Louis curls his toes into the floor. Harry’s putting his coat back on, buttoning and wrapping himself back up again to brace the cold once more. “You don’t have to, like.You don’t have to buy it,” Louis says. “s’long as you bring it back.”

“Sounds like a library,” says Harry.

He’s teasing. His eyes are squinted up and he’s cradling the book Louis’s given him and he’s teasing.

“Have you quite finished?” Louis asks him.

He’s all well-executed charm, Harry is. When he smiles mockingly at Louis and lets the rusted bell over the door chime on his way out. He makes Louis feel like he’s given something away without his permission.

It’s not until later that Louis sees the note left on one of those old, run-down chairs.

Harry’s chair, it says.

Louis blinks. It doesn’t take a lot of thought before he’s throwing the note away, crumpling it up and shoving it in one of the trash bins. He throws it away without a thought, but he doesn’t forget the words ‘til hours later, after he’s fallen asleep in his chair again. Another book forgotten and dropped next to him.