Glitch [Larry Stylinson AU]

Part X: Sweetness

"DO YOU THINK YOU DESERVE YOUR FREEDOM?"

            

"Harry is calling you."

Zayn's chest jolted while he spoke, and Louis with it. The rest of the Maliks, and Liam, had relocated to the kitchen, where the telly blared a newscast and forks met with porcelain.

At some point during the night, Louis had hauled himself up against the bed. Since he had quivered so badly, Zayn had joined him with the abandoned duvet. Louis had woken up on his shoulder.

Now they'd gone back to their mattresses, dust specking the gloomy sunlight filtering in while Zayn hoisted himself to his elbows. He removed the phone from his ear, stared at it, then displayed it to Louis.

"It's the fifth time."

"Hang up."

"Can I take the call?"

Apart from the intermittent disturbance of Zayn clearing his throat, Louis could hear Harry's rasp perfectly well through the speaker. Zayn offered him a lenient look when he got up to dress. While Louis dressed, Liam and Doniya slithered past in the hall. Although he hadn't been to the Maliks as often as Liam probably had, Louis figured they couldn't have that many bedrooms. Or rooms. He started pondering storages.

"I'm going to soften this for you," Zayn said, phone pressed to his clavicles to muffle, "But he's being proper disturbing. And he isn't telling me anything if he knows."

Louis watched a door close down the hallway. "Tell him to fuck off."

Instead, Zayn told Harry something else and finished the call.

"There's a crowd at Mary's," he then told Louis. "Something's boiling."

The mystery came to a head that morning, sometime after breakfast.

Policemen and the Malik parents occupied the kitchen, so Zayn and Louis ate in bed, or hawkishly towering by the windows. Meanwhile, Lottie packed and Mrs Malik carried Safaa up the hallway, laying her to rest under supervision. Waliyha eyed Zayn from the doorway and helped bringing down the packing while both big brothers sweltered in questions.

The snowfall eased when the Tomlinson siblings walked home. This made it possible to see the gathering outside the profitable café. Flashes from sirens ignited the fragile downfall.

It immediately brought Louis back to a dinner interrupted by sirens on the Styles' property, of Harry being taken in chains. And Harry was here in the crowd, apathetic as he could be. But there were no sirens meant for him.

A red-cheeked intendant scooped away people from the plot while stringing out tape. People foamed at the entrance of Mary's Corner, of which a vast majority were children. These stood behind the tape, weren't ushered out in the snow. The folks outside, on Louis' side, stood equally still as him, wary.

In a steady stream, the children left the site in car after car and a chorus of emergency sounds pealed over Sunny Hills. The air ignited with it.

"Do you think he'll hold some big speech when he gets away?" Lottie asked.

She had let go of his hand and attempted to laden herself with the sports bag. Louis let her.

When he looked up, Harry was just a few feet away.

"I think he'll burn," she said.

"Louis," Harry said, all breath and wide eyes, akin to the way about him he'd had in the woods, beneath a wolf's mask.