Their third date was a movie, and Niall and Zayn tagged along just like they had on the second. Louis didn’t care; he was still going to count it as a date. They went to see an eighteen certificate movie but Niall had dropped his ID in a puddle, and the woman on the counter took one look at his now smudgy photo and the new red streaks in his hair and refused to believe it was him, so they switched movies and watched a cartoon instead. The animation was jerky and the slapstick comedy was vaguely amusing at best (although Niall still laughed so hard that he almost choked on his popcorn and threw his food all over the floor by accident) and the colours were so garish that Louis found them offensive to the eyes, but Harry held his hand all the way through it and stroked the back of Louis’ hand with his thumb, and Louis accidentally started taking a sip from Harry’s drink, and they made eye contact and giggled like a pair of fifteen year olds.
Their fourth date was a meal: specifically pizza. Harry forgot his wallet so they both pretended it was Louis’ birthday and got a free Banana Birthday Bonanza pizza to share, and after they picked the bananas off and drowned it in ketchup it actually tasted alright.
Their fifth date was Louis taking Harry’s shift in the charity shop and volunteering for three and a half hours, and Harry showed him how to use the pricing machines and they had a tagging war so that by the end of the shift they were both covered in little luminous yellow stickers. The sticker dead in the centre of Louis’ forehead said ‘99p’, which Louis joked was all he was worth until Harry looked him in the eyes and told him he was priceless, and then they both blushed and Louis fell off his chair, and they both spent the next twenty minutes laughing and putting back all the books in the bargain basket that Louis had knocked over on his way down.
Their sixth date was more coffee, and halfway through it Zayn and Niall showed up and were oh-so-surprised to see them there, which made Louis and Harry suspect that they weren’t actually surprised at all, and they were following them around because they were bored. Niall gargled coffee and Zayn tried to juggle the wrinkly oranges in the fruit bowl and all four of them got thrown out and rudely told not to come back. Harry looked crestfallen, but Louis said “Thank God, now I can go back to crap coffee that may burn off my taste-buds but at least it only costs 99p!” and they all trailed off to Louis’ usual coffee shop and drank coffee that tasted like boiled water and nothing else, and unanimously agreed that it was vile.
Their seventh date was cancelled, because Niall got drunk and tried to get a tattoo of a Teletubby and it took the combined efforts of both Harry and Zayn to hold him back (“I’m sorry,” Harry said down the phone, which he was holding against his ear with his shoulder as he tried to haul Niall back into the house, “but if he gets that creepy green thing, Dipshit, or whatever it’s called” – “Dipsy!” screamed Niall – “tattooed onto his bicep, he’ll wake up in the morning and shoot someone”). Louis chuckled and invited Liam over, and they played Monopoly and Louis lost because he was too distracted by the way his phone kept lighting up with texts as Harry kept him posted with the latest developments of the tattoo-prevention crusade (He won’t stop screaming, I’m going to shove a sock in his mouth in a minute…He tried to punch Zayn and then fell over; he says he’s broken his toe so I think we might be all right…Oh Christ, now he’s trying to eat the curtains as a protest). Liam didn’t ask who was texting him, because he knew by now that Louis had a specific look for his mystery mate and there was no way he was going to reveal their identity (although Louis thought that judging by the look on Liam’s face, he had his suspicions).
Their eighth date involved ice cream that Harry tried to make from scratch, and then the cat came in and tried to eat some and was sick, and they had to clean it up in a mad rush before either of Harry’s parents got home. Louis made sure he left long before any of Harry’s family members got back; he didn’t much fancy coming face to face with Anne after all the things his mother had said about her.
The progression of these dates was accompanied by a constant stream of texts, emails, little folded notes slipped underneath doorways or into pockets, hushed phone calls in the dead of night and the fact that Harry kept wandering past Louis’ school with his hands shoved in his pockets, shooting little glances towards where he knew Louis would be stood, raising his eyebrows, poking out his tongue, and basically being as obvious as could be. Liam began to notice and kept looking oddly at Harry, commenting “That kid’s got a nerve. If he keeps parading up and down outside the school like that they’re going to set the cops on him and no mistake, for loitering with intent or whatever.”
The fact that they both knew he was wandering past just for a chance of glimpsing Louis remained blissfully unmentioned.
It had been a little over two months since they’d first started going out, but they both unanimously agreed that it felt like more than that. Louis got on well with Harry’s friends, he was usually greeted with approving nods from the neighbours whenever he came to call, and it was only a matter of time before he would be introduced to Harry’s parents – although he wasn’t so much looking forward to that particular prospect. He had slotted as easily and as seamlessly into Harry’s life as a new part of a well-oiled machine, and nestled comfortably within the other cogs and wheels of Harry’s life; he had every intention of staying there.
The only issue which had thus far presented itself to Louis was how to fit Harry into his life. Like a jigsaw puzzle with no flat edges and too many oddly-shaped parts, Harry was difficult, however unintentionally, a person who refused to adapt to what society liked, and that meant that Louis couldn’t imagine how he could integrate the misfit into his parents’ obsessively constructed picture-perfect puzzle the way Louis had so easily latched onto Harry’s far more adaptable one. He couldn’t imagine his parents accepting Harry’s new and rather large part in Louis’ life without putting up a fight.
Still, here he was, standing on Harry’s doorstep with a massive grin on his face, deliberately far too early for a Saturday morning, dressed well, bright-eyed, almost obnoxiously cheerful bearing in mind the hour of the morning he was choosing to disrupt Harry’s beauty sleep at. He knocked loudly on the door and spared a laugh for what he imagined Harry’s reaction would be to being unceremoniously awoken at eight-thirty on a Saturday morning.
He waited on the doorstep for several minutes, certainly far longer than he had expected; he was about to ring Harry and tell him who was waiting outside since he had apparently elected to ignore them, but before he’d reached Harry’s name in his contacts, the door was wrenched open, and Louis decided with some amusement that it had been well worth getting up at quarter to eight on a Saturday for this.
Harry’s hair was standing on end on one side of his head, as though he’d been electrocuted; on the other side, it was plastered flat against his head. His accusing green eyes were bleary, with a clumsy, smudged ring of eyeliner outlining them. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of black boxers, and a heavy white bandage encased his right arm from shoulder to wrist.
When he focused on Louis and realized who had awoken him, his whole face lit up; he grabbed Louis by the waist and yanked him into the house, and Louis hastily kicked the front door shut behind him before Harry caught his face in both hands and kissed him hungrily, until they were both flushed and breathless. They broke apart with great reluctance, and as they did so, Harry demanded “Do you knowwhat time it is?”
“Clearly you don’t, judging by the state of you,” Louis teased. “Didn’t disturb you, did I, Sleeping Beauty?” He fluttered his eyelashes innocently.
Harry poked out his tongue. “You say that as if you didn’t deliberately come round at some godforsaken hour of the morning with the express intention of disturbing me.”
“I’m offended that you would make such an accusation.” Grinning, Louis slid his hands, which had been resting lightly on Harry’s shoulders, down his arms, but his fingers had reached just above Harry’s right elbow when he flinched, and Louis registered the feeling of material beneath his fingertips, and he snatched his hand away. “Oh, gosh, sorry!”
Harry smiled ruefully. “Yeah…it’s still a bit tender at the moment.”
“New tattoo?” Louis breathed, interestedly eyeing the bandage.
“Yep.”
“When did you get it?”
“Yesterday. Skipped school for it.”
“Let’s see it, then. Come on, I know you’re dying to show me, don’t even pretend you aren’t.”
Any attempt Harry might have made to deny that statement was rendered futile by the sheepish grin that crept across his face. Shaking his head, he began picking at the end of the bandage, attempting to unravel it, and Louis watched him with open fascination as he did so, enjoying the view – the little tuft of curls that fell over one eye as Harry worked, the way he poked at his lip piercing with his tongue as he frowned in concentration, the whiteness of his pale skin. Of course, his face was only a small part of what Louis had to appreciate; he’d never had such an excellent and unhindered view of Harry’s bare chest before, and he intended to enjoy it. His eyes flickered up and down, drinking in sculpted collarbones and elegant hip-bones like he was parched and Harry was the coolest, sweetest water he’d ever tasted.
He absentmindedly tried to wipe an eyeliner smudge from underneath Harry’s left eye. “What a mess. You’re not telling me you slept with it on?”
“No,” Harry snorted, “I put it on in a rush before I answered the door. Made a bit of a dog’s breakfast of it, as you can see.” He shook his head disparagingly.
Amused, Louis commented “You had enough time to put on eyeliner but not enough time to put on a shirt?”
“Nakedness doesn’t bother me. I’d happily wander around all day in the nude – but scrub off the eyeliner and take out the piercings? Then I’d feel exposed. More people have seen me naked than you’ve had hot dinners – I started a naked mosh-pit at Warped Tour last year; that was interesting – but I don’t think anybody except my mum has seen me without eyeliner on since I was about fourteen… Aha!” Before Louis had time to fully comprehend this new information, let alone comment in it, Harry distracted them both by peeling the bandage back to revel a fist-sized crimson rose adoring his right bicep.
The skin around it was raised and swollen, almost angry-looking, but the rose itself was beautiful. It began about half a inch from the crease of his elbow, ending about halfway up his forearm. It was nestled in a mass of vines that coiled around the flower in an almost serpentine fashion and then trailed off, forming elegant tendrils around his bicep that curled right down his arm and finished around his wrist, spiralling delicately around the intertwined male gender symbols; emphasizing them, almost. They both admired the fresh ink, and Louis felt his breath hitch longingly; he wanted to touch it. With his fingertips, yes, but also with his tongue; he felt an intense urge to trace every loop and spiral and curve of each petal with the tip of his tongue, to taste Harry’s skin, to follow the vibrant, almost glowing lines and leave them glistening. To fill in each closed-off vine-loop with a purplish bruise pressed into Harry’s skin by his own mouth.
They’d given each other love-bites before, Louis shyly sucking marks into Harry’s neck, then with more confidence, leaving deep violet welts blossoming on his collarbones and jugular, and Harry returning the favour with gentler, fleeting marks that would fade after a few hours, leaving nothing to arouse suspicion from Louis’ parents. But Louis wanted to leave deeper marks, to bite and suck and hear Harry gasp in response, and his stare blazed over the lines of the tattoo with enough intensity to set it alight. He could almost imagine sparks flying from the ruby petals; tongues of flame licking down each elaborate vine. The urge scorched through his veins, blistering his very blood, and bit his lip to hold back a not-so-subdued whimper.
His response didn’t go unnoticed. Harry gave a small, satisfied smirk – and Louis thought he knew what had put it there, if he and Harry were on the same wavelength as usual, damn Harry for giving him a tattoo kink – and began slowly wrapping his am up again. Louis watched hungrily as the crimson petals vanished from sight, looking for all the world like a starving man who’d just had a Micheline-star banquet snatched from underneath his nose. Harry chuckled softly.
“Sorry. It’s gotta heal. Tell you what; look at me like that again in a week or so, and we’ll indulge every little fantasy running through your head right now, sweetheart.” That condescending ‘sweetheart’ should have sent Louis’ lip curling with derision at being addressed so sardonically, but instead it made him rather weak at the knees.
He pouted. “A week is an awfully long time.”
“Yeah, but I can make it worth your while.” Harry affectionately kissed him on the mouth, then tugged him by the wrist and they bounded up the stairs and into Harry’s room.
~*~
Collapsing lazily onto the bed, Louis watched in silence as Harry rifled through his wardrobe in search of something to wear. Opting for bright scarlet skinny jeans and a black tank top, Harry found some fresh boxers and calmly kicked off the ones he was wearing, stripping off with impunity. He had his back to Louis, but the sight of Harry’s bare backside was enough to turn him the colour of Harry’s jeans. It didn’t exactly help matters when Louis spotted, of all things in the world, a scaled-down version of the Dark Mark around the length of Louis’ little finger embellished on Harry’s left arse-cheek. Yes, Harry had the proverbial gang tattoo of the most evil and malevolent fictional wizard of all time tattooed on his bum.
Louis decided that it was about time he acknowledged that when it came to his sense of humour, Harry was more than a little bit fucked up in the head.
The nonchalance with which he had stripped off proved beyond all doubt that he was as comfortable with nudity as he’d claimed to be,. Which then posed the question: if seeing him naked for the first time would be of no paramount importance to Harry, what could they do that would actually signify a display of trust on Harry’s part?
There was no sudden epiphany; the answer had been parading itself underneath his nose for a while now. He seized upon it gratefully, as if had only just revealed itself and hadn’t been brewing for days, saying softly, “Harry?”
“Mm?” Harry turned to face him, tugging his boxers into place as he did so. Relief flooded through Louis; the distraction of a rock-hard boner was not something he needed just then.
“Why do you not let anybody see you without eyeliner?”
Thoughtfully, Harry pulled the tank top over his head and began slipping – or perhaps squeezing was a better word, bearing in mind how sinfully tight they were – into the jeans. He said nothing as he dressed, and held his silence as he picked up the handful of brightly-coloured rubber bracelets lying on his desk, slipping them into his wrists. A waistcoat with spikes on the shoulders hung off the back of his chair, and he eyed it speculatively, but he made no move to put it on.
He sat down on the bed beside Louis, and just as the worrying thought had occurred to Louis that he might have caused offence with his innocent query, Harry thrust his hand into two of Louis’, and Louis obediently squeezed Harry’s significantly larger paw. The bed creaked as they both shifted into a more comfortable position, and then Harry ran his free hand through his hair.
“It’s like…you know those girls, who cake foundation all over their faces, and they look like a cheesy wotsit with lipgloss on? Everyone sniggers and chances are someone will call them orange, behind their back if not to their face. But they still turn up every day looking just the same. Because it looks ridiculous to everyone else, but to them, it makes them feel comfortable with themselves.” Taking a deep breath, Harry said, “I’m that fourteen-year-old orange girl. When I put on the eyeliner, it’s like I’m putting up a shield, and I feel like I’m strong enough to fight back against people’s criticism; it reminds me of who I am and it’s an outward symbol that I’m not afraid to do what I want even if other people disapprove of it. The piercings…were a reminder. And they helped to get people to stop asking about the eyeliner; far less people approach you when you’ve got bits of metal sticking through your face. The tattoos were the last, something that I know can’t be wiped off or scrubbed away. Eyeliner washes off, piercings heal over if you let them – nobody can take these away from me.” He tapped his left wrist. “That’s what scares me the most; the thought of someone trying to make me normal, trying to squish me up into the little grey box that society calls acceptable. This is my way of making sure they can’t.”
For a while, Louis said nothing, pondering over this new idea in silence. Harry had a fantastically eloquent way of getting his points across, so that he could explain things easily in a few sentences which grown men would have struggled to describe in thousands of words. He was left a little bit stunned by this explanation, and the way he understood it implicitly despite this simple explanation.
“Will you show me anyway?”
Harry swallowed. “It’s really that important to you?”
“I just…it sounds stupid, but I need to know that you trust me. Do you trust me?”
After a short silence, which Harry spent nervously licking his lips, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he got to his feet and walked across the room towards his bedroom door, reaching it in several long, loping strides.
He turned back to face Louis. “You may live to regret this. Just promise you won’t turn tail and run once you get a clear view of my ugly mug?” He was hiding his nervousness behind a jokey exterior, but Louis could see the anxiety in his eyes as clearly as he could see the stark black lines of the quote tattoo on his arm that Harry was rubbing his fingers over, like he was trying to reassure himself that it was still there.
“You clearly don’t trust me if you think there’s a possibility that I ever would.”
Harry wordlessly left the room, and Louis settled back to wait.
~*~
When he returned, Harry slipped through the door with his eyes glued to the floor looking subdued, almost reminiscent of a scolded child, hands in his pockets. You would have thought he was being publicly humiliated judging by the way he walked in, nibbling nervously on his lower lip, which looked oddly bare without the silver ring through it. Louis stared – he couldn’t help it; his eyes were drawn to Harry’s pale complexion.
Without the eyeliner defining his green eyes, his whole face looked different, as if he was a pencil drawing and someone had tried to rub him out. His eyes seemed smaller and their green less shockingly vivid; his skin was colourless, the dark shadows underneath his eyes painfully emphasized. The curls falling across his forehead seemed cute and childlike rather than disturbingly sexy, so that Louis wanted to sweep them out of his eyes and tuck a curl behind his ear. His plump mouth looked empty and incomplete without the single snakebite on the left of his lower lip. It was only now that Louis could believe that Harry was a year younger than him; was inclined to believe that the age difference surely had to be far more than that, because Harry looked young. A fragile, scared little boy, as if putting his first layer of eyeliner on at fourteen years old had halted the aging process and now that he’d taken it off, he was restored to how he had been before he started wearing it. Young, nervous, easily intimidated. He was twisting his fingers together, a compulsion that he didn’t seem to realize he was engaging in, and his gaze remained trained to the ground, occasionally flickering across his tattooed arms. Louis got the impression that this new, scared Harry needed to keep his eyes on the tattoos lest he forgot who he was supposed to be – the audacious punk rocker who didn’t give a damn about other people’s opinions, who laughed in the face of anyone who tried to tell him that anything of his beliefs were wrong. He was blurred, like a face fading into the background of a photograph of someone else, except to Louis he was still sharply in focus; the rest of the world could waste away around him and Harry would still be there, the most vivid thing in the universe. His rosebud lips seemed to have lost their lustre, draining to candyfloss pink. They looked about as substantial as candyfloss, too – and tasted as sweet, Louis thought idly. Ivory skin had become papery; light lilac shadows beneath his eyes had become deep purple; moss green eyelashes were the colour of the underside of a leaf, with veins of lighter colour seeping through them. He looked tired, and it was odd to Louis that a boy who suddenly looked so young could seem so old and lifeless as well. He was unfinished; that was the best way to describe it. A drawing that someone hadn’t finished colouring in.
He was absolutely breathtaking.
Harry dropped onto the bed looking like all the life had been sucked out of him. Holding out his arms, he presented himself to Louis with the hopeless air of a man at the gallows, ripping his gloomy stare from the ground to lock eyes with Louis. “Here I am,” he said wearily.
Silence fell as Louis stared at him; Harry bore it for a minute or two and then dipped his head, flushing bright pink as if he thought that Louis was horrified by his appearance. The fingers of his left hand curled around the fabric of the duvet; his right hand stayed balled into a fist, keeping something safely trapped inside the cage of his long fingers.
“I look a state,” he mumbled.
Louis caught him by the chin, lifting his face up so that Harry had no choice other than to ashamedly meet his gaze. Squirming uncomfortably, he half-heartedly tried to break Louis’ hold, but the cerulean-eyed boy was having none of it, holding him perfectly still.
“You look incredible,” he whispered.
Again, Harry blushed, this time with pleasure, his cheeks growing hot. Delighted by his reaction, Louis cupped a hand around his cheek, thumb tracing lightly over the spot where the ring through his lip ought to have been. A shudder of pleasure was his reward, accompanied by a soft exhalation, and Louis wanted to tease the obviously sensitive spot with his tongue until Harry whimpered. Invigorated with the new power he seemed to have over this new, nervous Harry, the sense of control he’d never fully realized he craved, he captured Harry’s bare mouth in a kiss.
It was an odd experience to kiss Harry without his piercings – not quite like kissing a stranger, but close to it. There was a new vulnerability to Harry, a hesitancy, that meant it took him a while to work up to his usual rhythm, and without the icy bite that the taste of metal brought, the sparks it sent flickering erratically down Louis’ spine every time he accidentally caught it with his teeth (or deliberately; he had been known to pull delicately on the metal ring with his teeth if he was in the mood for properly working Harry up into a frenzy) it felt a little odd to him. Still, Louis was nothing if not adaptable, and he enjoyed the opportunity to feel like he was in control, to caress Harry’s lips without the distracting waves of heavy arousal coiling down his spine like the vines on Harry’s new tattoo – not that he didn’t like it that way, but there was something nice about the innocuous simplicity of this.
“You really like this, don’t you?” mused Harry. “Maybe I’ll save it for special occasions, like birthdays, or the next time I forget to pay for one of our dates.”
Rolling his eyes, Louis nuzzled him gently. “I do like it. I like you the other way too, though.” Thoughtfully, he asked, “where did you put the..?” He gestured vaguely at his mouth.
Taking the other boy’s smaller hand, Harry opened his cupped fist and dropped two metal studs and a ring into Louis’ open palm. Then he sat back and leaned against the wall, apparently content to watch as Louis curiously studied the little bits of metal.
He paid especial interest to the lip ring, running the tip of his finger over it, examining it to see how it opened and closed. His fascination did not go unnoticed by Harry, who was speculatively eying Louis’ pursed lips like he was trying to imagine a piercing there. The idea seemed to please him. When Louis reached to probe at his mouth, as if he was figuring out which side he’d prefer to have the piercing on, Harry’s gaze brightened with approval. He could imagine Louis with a silver glint at the corner of his mouth, and the mental image was sinfully hot. He licked his lips.
“Does it hurt?”
It was the typical annoying first question, one that Harry had been asked so many times before that his usual reaction would be to give a curt answer along the lines of ‘they stick a needle through your face, of course it hurts, fuckwit’ and then move on – but he couldn’t bring himself to snap at Louis.
“Yeah, but it’s not so bad. After the initial stab it’s just kind of a dull throbbing…you considering getting one?”
“Considering being the operative word – but yeah, I dunno. Maybe.”
Harry smiled a little. “It’d suit you.”
Louis’ face lit up with pleasure.
A gentle knock on the door interrupted their musings; Harry and Louis both flinched a little in surprise, and instinctively edged away from each other, although they had been sat a perfectly respectable distance apart. A female voice came through the door; “Can I come in?”
“Hi Mum!” called Harry, “yeah, come in.”
The door opened, and she came in. She was dark-haired and pretty, dressed in a business suit and stiletto heels, with her hair tumbling loosely around her shoulders. There was a spring to her step that he didn’t remember seeing in his own mother in living memory – in fact, she emanated vibrancy from every inch of her, from her bouncy shoes to her sleek hair, and her eyes were bright and lacked the dullness that adulthood unceremoniously dumps onto so many (along with a heavy burden of responsibility onto their shoulders). She certainly looked too young to have a child as old as Harry.
Then she spotted Harry with his pale complexion, looking so much more vulnerable than usual, almost fragile without his eyeliner and the silver glinting in his mouth that Louis had never realized made him look so much older. He still looked gorgeous, of course, but there was a kind of uncertainty lingering about him that showed that even here, in his own home, without the accessories he felt uncomfortable. Surprised, she blinked at his appearance as if the sight of her own son with his barriers down was strange to her – and then her gaze flickered to Louis, sitting beside him on the bed, and her eyebrows flew up, almost vanishing into her hair with the extent of her astonishment.
For a few seconds, she stared, not at her son but at the blue eyed boy next to him, who was struggling not to turn post-box red with embarrassment because he couldn’t forget that the last time he had clapped eyes on Anne, he’d been listening to his whole family slagging her off from only a few metres away and doing nothing to intervene. Louis sat and stared at his hands and struggled not to squirm underneath her appraising look, but Harry coughed gently and raised his eyebrows at her, and when she looked up at him she seemed to recover slightly.
“Hello,” she said. She gave Louis a brilliant smile that showed exactly where Harry’s megawatt grin came from and also showed that she had no idea who he was.
Louis smiled uncomfortably back.
After waiting for a moment to see if she was going to say anything else, Harry commandeered her attention once again by asking, “What’s up, did you want something?”
“Your sister’s on the phone, she’d like a word,” Anne told him.
Immediately, Harry leapt up and shot out of the room, so quickly that Louis didn’t have time to register the look on his face, but he was willing to bet a substantial amount of money that it would be that achingly beautiful blazing grin that was slowly beginning to seep into his every conscious thought, the smile that he never thought he could get enough of, the expression that he wanted to spend the rest of his life putting on Harry’s face. Anne smiled after him, shaking her head, and then she walked over and sat down on the bed beside Louis, giving him another warm smile.
“Do you want a drink or anything, um..?” she hesitated.
“Louis,” he hastily informed her, “and no thank you, Mrs. Styles.”
“It’s Cox, actually; Mrs. Cox. But just call me Anne. I haven’t seen you around here before, Louis, are you new to the area? Do you go to Harry’s school?”
“Oh no, I go to the Grammar.”
If she had looked astonished before, now she looked completely flabbergasted. “You – really?” she spluttered. “But – none of the boys from Holmes Chapel Grammar will go near my son. Oh, they’ll catcall and whistle and chant every insult under the sun after him – once they think he’s out of earshot, of course; he scares them all out of their wits – but they wouldn’t go near him if you paid them!”
Louis shifted uncomfortably. “Mm.”
Seeming to realize that she’d made him feel a bit awkward, she swiftly changed the subject. “Have we met before? You look really familiar, I could swear I’ve seen you before…and your name strikes a chord as well, but it’s funny; I don’t think Harry’s ever mentioned you.”
“Hasn’t he?” asked Louis with a pang of disappointment, although he supposed he shouldn’t expect that Harry would mention him to absolutely everyone he ever spoke to, and it wasn’t as if he’d ever dare say Harry’s name in front of one of his parents.
“No, but don’t take it to heart, dear; he’s barely mentioned anything for weeks. His head’s well and truly in the clouds at the moment, he just sort of wanders around with this little grin on his face, like he’s hotwired into his own personal comedy show…” she clicked her fingers triumphantly, making Louis jump. “That’s it! You go to church, don’t you? Of course you do, they don’t accept non-Catholic students at the Grammar. What did you say your name was again?”
“Louis Tomlinson,” said Louis shamefacedly, hanging his head. He could feel the colour creeping into his cheeks.
“Tomlinson, Tomlinson, now where do I know that name…oh.” It suddenly clicked into place, and he heard the bed creak as she shifted defensively, folding her arms over her chest. Louis couldn’t quite bear to look at her, rooted to the spot with shame. She sounded disapproving as she asked curtly “how’s your mother?”
“She’s not so bad,” answered Louis weakly, although he was pretty sure that was a feeble attempt to try to justify his mother’s actions, which he wasn’t so keen to do anymore; he instantly wished he could rectify his response. “I’m – I’m so sorry, she shouldn’t have said those things. I shouldn’t have let her.”
Her breath came out in a steady huff, but when Louis looked guiltily up at her she seemed unperturbed, almost relieved, in fact. “Not to worry,” she said airily, “it wasn’t your fault, and it’s not the first time I’ve heard those kinds of comments. It won’t be the last, either. I’m not particularly well-liked by many at that church; they like to sniff disapprovingly at me whenever they have the chance. I feel like it’s the highlight of their week for some of them. Apparently it’s my fault – fault, as if someone needs to take the blame for goodness sake – that Harry’s gay, which is ridiculous, but supposedly it’s my fault for divorcing his father, because he hasn’t had any figure of ‘male authority’ in his life – though what his stepfather is, then, I don’t know – and this is his way of expressing his craving for male attention. I don’t blame you for the things they say, don’t worry; I know Harry wouldn’t be friends with you if you were like that, there’s nothing he can’t stand more than condescending hypocrites.” She tutted softly to herself.
Harry came walking back in, beaming all over his face. If he was surprised to see his mum and his boyfriend sitting amicably on the bed together, he didn’t show it; he cheerfully squeezed in between them and looped his arm around Louis’ shoulder through force of habit before realizing that the gesture which they’d both become accustomed to and Niall and Zayn didn’t even bother to tease them over any more didn’t exactly look platonic. After a moment’s hesitation, Harry decided that removing his arm would look more shifty than leaving it there, he gave his mum a huge, innocent smile and tugged Louis conspicuously closer against his side.
“Gem wants another quick word with you before she rings off,” he told his mother.
Getting up, she wiggled her fingers at Louis in a little wave, said “You’re welcome here any time you like, sweetheart,” and then left, leaving Louis twice as guilty as before but extremely relieved, Harry bewildered but amused, and making Louis feel extremely wistful that his own mother wasn’t so open-minded and accepting.