Glitch [Larry Stylinson AU]

Part IV: Violent hearts

A/N: Kudos to anyone who can tell which songs the chapter quotes are from (feel free to comment if you've got any guesses as to both origin and how it goes with the chapter content, I'd be happy to read it) x

"WE'LL LAUGH UNTIL OUR LIPS GET SOFT"

Late Wednesday evening, when Louis was still rubbing off the chock from Safaa's disappearance, dinner was interrupted by a firm knock at the front door. Determinedly goggling her couscous, Lottie didn't waver at the noise. She eyed the phone next to her plate. It had been still since that afternoon. Waliyha hadn't texted her for hours and she was sulking because of it.

At first, neither Louis nor Jay moved. His mother gauged him. There had been a heat in her eyes when he came home earlier. Hope, he reckoned, that they would have found clues, restored faith in the community, as if it had been their responsibility from the very beginning. And he had worn the news of another abduction.

The next knock came with sirens striating the kitchen curtains.

Fork falling to his plate with a clatter, Louis shot from his chair and marched to the front door. An officer wielded his badge, featureless to Louis' eyes, for behind him were flaring cars parked on both pavement and street to make sure none in the vicinity would turn the other cheek. And none did. Curtains were pulled back and peopled camped out on their lawns, some hidden behind barely agape doors to catch a glimpse of the ruckus.

By now, the rest of the Tomlinson ménage had accumulated behind Louis. The officer handed over forms. On his chest glimmered the municipal's logo below his name tag and badge.

It wasn't Louis they had come to detain.

In the blasting sirens, a windlass caressed the electric night from the Horans' garden. Harry looked every part the criminal the rumours made him out to be when officers led him from the doorway where his mother and father silhouetted. There were cuffs and smog of exhaust along the ground and Lottie's nails drilling Louis' wrist and an officer holding a green bag of herbs in the porchlight.

Louis headed for the car. Water fell from the roof, or it clung to the grass, gullying his calf below humid sweatpants. Harry's name caught in his throat. Harry, who refused to breathe the world around him, let alone look at Louis, face soft yet downcast.

All Louis could think about was how they were hacking closer to fulfilling the gossip at school. How he was failing his promise. Whoever hadn't turned on the strangers in Sunny Hills, would be hostile converted within the forthcoming days. Time was running out for a deadline Louis had yet to grasp.

Tyres blasted up a petrichor-pitched fog. Earth particles danced in the air where dust could not. One of the remaining officers sneezed before packing herself into the last car. Mr and Mrs Styles played textbook parents; a particularly aggressive glean of the porchlight revealed an empty slot for Gemma betwixt them.

Louis couldn't help but consider two things; how fast the rumour-spoiled truth would leak and the collateral damage to come of it.

✘

In the following week, the town of Sunny Hills, Yorkshire, embedded itself further into the community spirit it was known for. Louis, as a non-citizen as far as citizens with the capital C reckoned, did not participate. In a town with blind trust within the web, someone needed to start severing threads. Luckily for Louis, Zayn seemed keen to work double.

Mornings were spent brooding over the items - Louis-branded items - disappearing from his room, and gnawing out Lottie for a never-pronounced confession while