Heroes of the Orange Skies

Part 6

“You have black marker on your hand.”

“Yes, well, Harold, I use pens a lot.”

“What kind of pens?”

“Sharpies, because I happen to enjoy getting high off the smell.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really, now let’s go get curly fries, to match your hair.”

“That’s hilarious, really.”

Louis has a bug bite on his ankle and it itches like crazy, and Harry’s wearing this shirt that’s barely fucking covering his nipples and making Louis just want to hide in his closet and never come out again. They’re wandering down 9th avenue, the sun beating down on them and making little shimmery waves rise up from the streets. Even the cars are going slowly, like they don’t want to move too quickly in the heat.

“I’m so hot, I want to fly away to the Arctic,” Harry says thoughtfully. He drags his feet horrifically, all the time, but the scraping sound of his rubber soles against the pavement is a noise that Louis has started to block out to the back of his mind.

“Can’t fly without wings, dummy,” Louis sighs. He thinks his shoulders are burning. Literally burning, skin and muscle melting off bone. He’s afraid to look at his skin, in case it’s gone.

Harry flaps his arms lethargically, ape arms waving dangerously in the air. He almost hits a woman waiting for the bus and Harry snorts loudly before sending a charming smile to her, one that she returns hesitantly. Trust Harry to charm someone he almost just decapitated with his fake wings.

The sirens and horns of 9th Avenue grumble by, and it somehow makes Louis feel even hotter. His elbow knocks with Harry’s. His spine tingles. It means nothing, the two events are uncorrelated.

Louis’s mouth is so dry, he feels like he could drink all of the Great Lakes and still be thirsty enough for a raspberry-orange smoothie from The Fruity Booty, which is easily the best smoothie shop in the city, simply because of its name. Louis is a fan of anything with the word booty in it.

“How come you don’t do anything?” Harry does a little jig, knocks his feet together as he skips over a questionable looking stain on the sidewalk.

“I do lots of things, Harold, I sleep and drink smoothies and watch tv, what more do you want from me?” Louis shrugs. He spins around a pole, dangling from one hand, and then falls back into step with Harry, who doesn’t laugh like Louis was expecting him to.

“Yeah, but like. Why aren’t you in school? Or something?” Harry sounds legitimately upset about it, like he hasn’t realized that Louis’s sole activities in life consist of giving and receiving advice to and from Zayn, hanging out his window and checking out the cute boy who lives across the alley, and eating food very late at night.

Louis laughs self-consciously. Maybe those aren’t acceptable activities for the normal society of the world. “Dunno, was in school. Wasn’t my thing.”

“Why not?” Harry links his pinky with Louis’s and then lets go again, so quickly, Louis’s not even sure if it happened or he just made it up. It’s so hot, he could easily be imagining things.

Louis laughs again, dryly. Ironically, cynically, whatever. “You’ve never known doom and gloom until you study philosophy, mate.”

“What, like, Plato? The Republic?”

Literally why does random boy metal sculptor Harry Styles know about The Republic? Louis snickers to himself that Harry probably researches obscure topics for party conversations. That feels like something Harry would do. Louis wisely chooses to omit the fact that in Year 10, he had a date with someone and was so nervous that he actually wrote note cards with topics on them, just in case they ran out of things to talk about. It’s an event Louis doesn’t tend to speak of.