So distracted was Louis, his head so thoroughly in the clouds, that he didn’t even think to act contrite when he got home. When he burst through the front door, twenty minutes late, hands in his pockets, shoelaces undone, whistling loudly, hair a mess, eyes sparkling, it was to find his mother waiting at the foot of the staircase with her arms folded, scowling. He bounced over the threshold, slammed the door behind him, and exclaimed “Evening!”
Her jaw dropped. For a moment, Louis was confused by her shock, unable to identify what could possibly have caused it – but then he licked his lips anxiously, his tongue flicked over the metal ring, and his mouth went dry with the responding pang as he realized what she was staring at. His mother gazed at him in abject horror, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open in disgust. She touched her lips with her fingertips as if she could feel metal in her own mouth, while her free hand grasped wildly at the silver crucifix hanging around her neck. Louis’ heart was hammering against his own identical necklace as he cautiously watched her, trying to judge her next reaction.
Jay licked her lips. “Where have you been?” she whispered.
He had to hold back a grimace; it was not the question he had expected, nor one he could easily answer. If she had assaulted him with a host of questions about his piercing, he could probably have deflected them with some pretty sob story – among others, the main contenders for his falsehood were that it was for charity and he was being sponsored, that it was a magnetic one he was wearing as a joke (though this could easily be disproved and would expose him immediately if she tried to take it out) or that he was doing it for some form of school sociology project to see how people reacted to him differently with facial piercings – but this question was not one he was equipped to deal with, and he was more than a little lost for words.
“Look, before you start freaking out –” he began, head spinning as he frantically shuffled through the options in his brain trying to figure out the most diplomatic and parentally-approved lie –
“Where. Have you been?” She looked as if she might start shrieking, trembling all over, her knuckles white as she gripped the silver cross dangling around her neck, clearly not in the mood for any of the feeble evasions that Louis could have given her, nor the kind of mood where he could win her over with a smile and an offer to make a cup of tea. Warily, he edged backwards a little, hoping to escape from the aura of slow-burning anger that he could feel simmering around her, but her eyes hardened, and he could see that his obvious nervousness had, if anything, only made things worse. He fought the urge to curse. That wouldn’t be particularly helpful.
“Out…with some friends,” he said weakly. That was the truth.
He had to try, but of course he knew she wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “Which friends?”
“You don’t know them.” That was his first lie. She knew all too well the boy with the tangle of deep brown hair, the twinkling green eyes rimmed with a thick outline of black, the dramatic designs and quotes inked starkly up his pale arms.
“You didn’t meet them at school, I take it.”
“No,” agreed Louis. Definitely not. His headmaster would sooner light himself – and the school – on fire than allow Harry to set one foot in the grounds.
“Nor from church.”
Admitting that he’d been associating with someone who wasn’t a regular churchgoer would probably be one of the worst things he could have said, and the best way to inspire a long and arduous lecture from her about how showing your faith was one of the most important things a person could do and how wrong it was not to attend church, so Louis quickly said “They don’t go to our church.” Again, not a direct lie. If he failed to mention that this mysterious friend hadn’t been to any form of church since the age of fourteen and was pretty much banned from doing so, then it wasn’t a lie – just omitting a few details from his story.
“Then where did you meet these friends, if not from school or church? You don’t go anywhere – or at least, you never used to. It seems like you’re never in the house these past few weeks…” she mused, then came back to herself with a little jerk, eyeing him suspiciously.
If possible, Louis wanted to avoid the subject of where he was spending all his time these days – the fewer lies he could tell, the better. He wasn’t enjoying all of this deception. And he didn’t like having to hide things from his family – they were close-minded, often rude and forcibly ignorant, refusing to eventry to understand other people’s views (having once shared these values himself, he easily recognized them and felt a little sickened) but they were still his family. He did love them, even if he didn’t particularly like them anymore. Which was why he said truthfully, without coming up with an answer which would be more likely to satisfy her and reduce the amount of trouble he was in by at least a tiny bit, “At the music store.”
“HMV?”
“Yes, HMV, why does it matter? What other music stores are there?”
She folded her arms defensively. “There’s…there’s that little music shop next to the library!”
“Mum,” Louis said impatiently, “they sell vinyl records.”
“Don’t change the subject! How do you mean, you met them at the music store? Did you arrange to meet them there beforehand?”
“No,” Louis said, fighting to keep his temper in check although his irritation was simmering closely under the surface, quickly becoming anger as it came to the boil. “We were both in the shop at the same time, looking at the same CD. We got talking about the band, and then –” and then he ran out of the shop in a rush to help an old lady who needed assistance while I ran like the wind in the other direction because I was terrified of him “ – we talked about some other stuff, like school and that, and realized we had quite a lot in common –” I figured out I had a massive crush on him and we both like guys and he taught me how not to be an arsehole about it “ – so we just kind of became mates, really. We hang out quite a lot now.” I go round to his house and we listen to bands that you would disapprove of and if you heard them you would probably fetch holy water to drown the members in, hang out with his friends at places you wouldn’t be seen dead in, and then we slope off to his house and snog while his mother offers me pie and treats me like her second son despite the fact that our whole family is always horrifically rude to her. Oh, and I just gave him a blowjob. This last thought made Louis very nervous; despite having checked his reflection in the windows of every parked car he passed on the way home, he was still paranoid that there might be some kind of telltale stains around his mouth or on his shirt or something. He worriedly licked his lips.
Continuing to eye him speculatively, Jay frowned, clearly lost in thought. All of a sudden, her eyes widened with excitement, and she demanded “Is it a girl?”
He couldn’t help himself; he snorted. His mother had jumped to the obvious – and correct – conclusion that he was having a secret relationship with someone. Thanks to the gender neutral pronouns and his stubborn use of ‘they’ rather than ‘he’, he had an opportunity to hide behind this imaginary girlfriend and hopefully fend off any suspicions that he’d been ‘hanging out with the wrong crowd’.
The negative side, however, was that if he took this chance and ran with it, stringing her along and pretending there was a secret girlfriend in the equation, not only would she be angry that he’d neglected to tell her about said girlfriend, but she would also demand to meet her, meaning that Louis would have to find a girl willing to endure his parents’ scrutiny, pretend to be his girlfriend and maintain the facade for a prolonged amount of time in order to satisfy them, going on hundreds of family outings, attending meals and dates set by his mother in order to judge whether the girl was ‘suitable’ enough for Louis. He could also imagine her relentlessly grilling any ‘girlfriend’ on her religious beliefs, refusing to allow her back over the threshold if she wasn’t a strict Catholic, and demanding to meet her parents within mere days of meeting the girl herself.
Adding that to the fact that there was in fact no girl, and no one for his parents to terrorize until she ran away screaming and left their precious little boy alone, he was pretty sure that it was a terrible idea.
“No, it’s not a girl,” he said wearily.
She looked relieved, yet disappointed at the same time. “Well, then who –”
Louis abruptly cut her off, tired of her questions. His mouth was sore, he was tired, and he was fed up with fending off questions and having to answer for every little decision, like who he decided to spend his time with and what he chose to do to his own face. “Look, do we really have to do this now? I’m tired, my mouth hurts, I’m not really in the mood for this right now –”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh, so your mouth hurts, does it? Fancy that. Who would have thought it – that having an enormous hole pierced through your mouth and an ugly hunk of metal pushed through that hole could possibly make your mouth sore? I never would have thought it, would you?” Her expression soured. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you whether it’s real or not; I can tell by the look on your face.”
“It’s real,” said Louis with a strange sense of satisfaction.
She shook her head, momentarily closing her eyes, and then raised a hand towards his face. Instinctively, Louis flinched, afraid that she might hit him, but she simply cupped her cool hand around his flushed face, stroking his cheek with the pad of her thumb. She wore deep red nail varnish and a cluster of gold rings on her fingers which made him think of Niall, and he had to resist the urge to throw her hand off with a shiver of disgust. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but he hated the feel of her cold hands on him, leaving his skin prickling unpleasantly, making him cringe. Compared to Harry’s light, warm touch, skin on skin contact with his own mother was repulsive – Louis was almost shocked by the intensity of his disgust. How could he hate her so? She was his mother. She had been like a best friend to him.
But, Louis reminded himself, she had also fed him with poisonous stigma, teaching him to discriminate, pouring nasty words and cruel sentiments into his mind, filling him up to the brim until not only did he believe her words as strongly as if they were the Bible, but that he followed her blindly like a disciple, parroting everything she’d taught him and believing in it implicitly. Remembering the ugly things he’d said and heard said about Harry before he’d begun to realize that there was more to the world than what his mother said, he flushed with anger, and the urge to knock her hand away rose inside him, less of an unscratched itch and more of a desperate desire that he could barely keep at bay any more. Louis took slow, deep breaths through his nose and struggled to stay calm – forget simmering; he was way past boiling point now, about to overflow.
“What on earth have you done, you stupid boy?” she asked softly. “How on earth could you do this to yourself? Have you seen what you look like?” Spinning him around, she pulled him in front of the mirror in the hallway and gestured at his reflection. “Look at the state of you!”
He eyed himself with interest. It was the clearest view he’d had of the piercing all day, and he spent a long time staring at his own face, trying to judge how it looked – how he looked. His conclusion was that he looked less vulnerable than he had. Hair standing on end – ruffled all over the place by Harry’s hands – glowing cheeks, blue eyes wide and speculative, and then of course there was the cool gleam of metal nestled against his lower lip, contrasting well against his tanned complexion, lending a slightly mocking twist to his mouth so that he looked like he was filled with contempt without making the slightest bit of effort. Raising an eyebrow, Louis teased the piercing with his tongue and enjoyed the sight of his newly cynical expression. He looked fearless, strong, the kind of guy who could stand up to his mother’s criticism and bigoted opinions without thinking twice. Confident, self-assured – for the first time, he felt like he could empathize with Harry’s need for his own piercings and eyeliner; before he had understood, but now he understood. Standing by his mother’s side, he was not the same Louis who had walked out through the front door that morning, and he thought that she knew it just as well as he did, which would certainly explain why all the colour had drained from her face and she looked so worried.
Louis fought the urge to grin at his reflection.
“I hope you’re going to take it out now.” Louis turned to face her as Jay held her hand out, waiting for him to drop the metal ring into her palm. It wasn’t a request.
He swallowed, thought of Harry and his aura of calm confidence, and tried to copy it. Wasn’t that what all of this was about, anyway? Blindly mimicking Harry to try and win some of the self-assurance that seemed to come so naturally to him and yet Louis knew had taken years to construct into the practically impenetrable armour he wore today?
“I’m not,” he said softly.
Jay raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“I’m…I’m not going to take it out. I don’t want to.”
“I don’t care whether you want to or not. I’m your mother and I’m telling you to take that ridiculous thing out of your mouth now!”
“No.”
“Take it out!”
“No.”
She looked a little hysterical. “Take it out this instant, Louis, or so help me –”
Every assertive sentence had been another piece of his armour, building it up around him. “You can’t make me.”
Seizing the crucifix necklace around her neck as if trying to ward off evil, Jay cried “You think you’re so witty, don’t you, with your smart answers? I suppose you think you’re clever. God will punish you for your disobedience –”
“Mum, I really don’t think God gives a damn about one tiny little lip piercing.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Her expression darkened, and before Louis could so much as take a step backwards, she raised her hand and slapped him across the face.
It wasn’t a gentle slap – if there is such thing – she put the whole force of her body behind it, so much so that he staggered with the force of it, his ears ringing. He hadn’t expected her to physically hit him, hadn’t had time to defend himself or back away, and it was the shock more than anything that brought tears to his eyes, one of them betraying him by rolling down his cheek. Touching his burning cheek, he gave a little cry. His armour hadn’t defended him against this.
But, he comforted himself, even Harry’s armour had chinks. He’d found a few of them himself.
“Get out!” she screeched.
Disorientated, Louis struggled to focus on her through his bleary eyes, blinking the tears away. “Huh?” His voice cracked mid-syllable, and he hated that he sounded so weak all of a sudden.
“I won’t have that blasphemy in this house! Get out!”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Out!”
“It’s dark outside!”
“Out!”
“But – where am I supposed to go?”
“Get out!” she screamed.
It was the harsh tone that finally got through Louis’ dizzy stupor and made him finally move. Lurching for the door, he snatched it open and bolted, running outside in a panic and sprinting down the street the way he had earlier walked up it, filled with ecstasy and fighting a smile. Now, his feet pounded heavily on the ground and his cheeks were wet as he ran as fast as he could away from his mother, standing on the doorstep, her furious banshee shrieks following him down the road and clawing at his ears like a wild animal that had latched itself onto his head and crawled inside his mind, tearing him to shreds from the inside.
Getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetout.
Louis got out.
~*~
“He fucked him,” Zayn declared.
“You think so?” asked Niall with obvious excitement, staring open-mouthed at Harry.
They were sitting in the playground at the local park, empty of children due to the darkness seeping across the world like a cloak, and empty of any other teenagers simply due to the fact that they were there. They rebelled other teens like they had some kind of adolescent-repellent that only the three of them were immune to; within minutes of entering a room, park or general vicinity of anywhere, it would be completely cleared. Sometimes it was useful. Sometimes it was amusing. Other times, it was just plain annoying, but today, it just was, and Harry was as willing to be annoyed by it as he was just to ignore it.
Today Niall was wearing a sky blue shirt, tight black trousers made of a material which looked suspiciously like lycra (although he ignored Zayn and Harry’s sidelong glances and sniggers and refused to tell them whether they were right) a battered leather jacket, eight silver rings and black platform boots dripping with buckles and silver chains. Sections of his hair were still dyed startling red, and he was wearing blue eyeliner instead of black.
Zayn had toned down his look considerably today, opting for a cosy black sweater, black jeans, an assortment of necklaces and black converse, but he had more than made up for it by swirling dramatic silver designs around his eyes in what Harry assumed to be silver eyeliner pencil, and forcing his quiff to stand up even more than usual, proud and tall.
Harry looked fondly at them both, amused by their evident fascination with his sex life or lack thereof – not that either of them appeared to think that his was in fact lacking. He had a can of Monster Energy Juice in one hand, and he slowly took a sip, noticing that they watched him like rabid wolves, practically crying out for gossip. “A gentleman never tells,” he said lazily.
Niall looked disappointed. Zayn said “That’s just a really dickish way of saying he so did.”
Shrugging, Harry said smugly, “Well, I wouldn’t like to brag, but…he does know how to put that excellentmouth to good use. Let’s just say, if he ever decides to revert back to spewing that holier-than-thou Jesus-will-smite-thee crap, I’ll know that the best way to shut him up is to get his pretty lips round my cock.” A few seconds later, looking stricken, he said “That was quite possibly the most misogynistic thing I have ever said in my life, and I take it back. Don’t tell him I said that, will you?”
Niall had been gaping at him, but he closed his mouth and said “Listen, mate, if he put his lips around your cock in the first place it sounds to me like he’s too far gone to care much that you’re bragging about it. What’s going on there, anyway? He’s Christian, isn’t he? I thought he was supposed to guard his virtue like a hawk and fend off any chances of getting laid with a giant stick!”
Harry shrugged. “Louis’ not like his parents.” Not anymore. After spending so much time with him and watching Louis change, relaxing into the easy-going, funny, non-prejudiced guy he was now, Harry felt a strange sense of pride in knowing that some of that change at least had been down to him.
“Yeah, you’re telling me. I met that mother of his down East Street about two weeks back – she’s a right old hag, I’m telling you. She gave me filthy looks from across the street and started holding all her bags really closely against her chest, and when she saw me looking at her she glared at me like I was something nasty on her shoe and hurried off in the opposite direction, looking like she was sucking on a lemon. Witch.” Zayn spat vehemently onto the ground, causing both Niall and Harry to cringe in disgust.
“You’re disgusting,” Niall informed him. “I can’t believe I used to let you do that in my mouth.”
“When did I ever spit in your mouth?”
“Snogging, spit-swapping, same concept, mate. You’re gross. I’m so glad I got out of that one.”
“You love me really,” Zayn drawled, raising his eyebrows and taking a sip of his own energy juice.
“He’s got a point, Zayn, you are pretty gross,” Harry said helpfully, and then the sound of heavy footsteps made them all pause.
It was hard to make anything out in the dim evening light, but they could just about see the outline of a figure coming towards them from the darkness, sprinting across the field like he was being chased by wolves. All three of them sat up straighter on their swings, frowning and squinting as they tried to get a better look. The runner’s breathing was ragged and he sounded like he might be sobbing, choking low noises through his teeth as he ran towards them, and the voice was familiar. It took Harry a minute or so to process where he knew that sound from, especially bearing in mind that he hadn’t heard it in any kind of distress for months and even that had been muted, more restrained. This was raw, uncontrolled, and as Louis lurched out of the darkness with his hair ever more messy that it had been when he’d shyly made his exit from Harry’s room earlier, it was clear that he’d been crying.
Harry was on his feet in an instant, taking a step forwards, mouth hanging open in shock, but before he could move an inch closer Louis was slamming into him, their bodies colliding with such force that Harry staggered and almost fell, catching himself on the framework of the swing so that they both didn’t topple right over. With a low sob, Louis grabbed him and buried his face in Harry’s chest, crying unrestrainedly.
It was frightening, and the fear leaked into Harry’s voice as he asked in shock “Louis?”
He lifted his head, blue eyes swimming with moisture. His whole face was red except for a livid white handprint standing out on his cheek, shocking in contrast to the rest of him. Horrified, Harry grabbed him by the arms and held him tight, supporting him, but Louis shook like his knees were about to buckle underneath him anyway.
“Louis, what happened? Did – did your parents find out?” He didn’t need to specify what about. He was afraid, not for himself but for Louis – he’d dreaded this, that Louis might be backed into a corner where he was unable to make the decision between Harry and his family because they had forced him into it, throwing him out in their mindless disgust.
“No,” said Louis miserably, “but they may as well have done.”
Burying his red and white face in Harry’s shirt, he allowed more tears to leak out, seeping through the fabric and heating Harry’s skin like scalding raindrops. Harry mindlessly rubbed a hand up and down his back, trying to soothe him, but his head was spinning as he struggled to understand what could have happened to make Louis so upset, and how could he have sustained the mark to his face. At a complete loss, he decided to just ask.
“What happened to your face, Louis?”
Lifting his head, Louis gave him a wobbly smile. Instinctively, Harry laid his cool hand over the burning mark on Louis’ face; his skin was chilled due to being outside and it soothed the burn of his flesh from the blow like an ice-pack. “It would appear that my mother doesn’t have much of a taste for body piercing,” Louis said, struggling to make it sound mocking and failing miserably.
Harry was appalled. “She did this to you because of your lip?”
“She did it because I told her God didn’t care about my lip. Apparently that’s blasphemous, although claiming that God does care about piercings and clothing and sexuality isn’t, so I suppose someone had better rewrite the Bible and put a list at the back of all the things which aren’t wrong to assume God likes or doesn’t like, because I would appear to have got my priorities in completely the wrong order.”
Grinding his teeth, Harry said “Louis, this is abuse. You know that, don’t you?”
“Oh, no. You see, she’s punishing me for disobeying God, so it’s God’s will, you see? Which means it’s perfectly alright.” His voice shaking with what Harry guessed to be a combination of shock and anger, Louis continued with biting sarcasm, “the last time God apparently decided I needed to be punished was when I was twelve, but I guess that rule still applies.”
“That’s fucking psychotic. She can’t say that! What the hell is wrong with her? She can’t blame God for her hitting you!”
“Well, it’s okay. She’s punishing me for my sins, remember? I guess if I repent, then she can beat me to death and it won’t matter – at least I’ll go to heaven,” Louis said bitterly.
“Fuck.” Harry caressed Louis’ cheek with the softest touch he was capable of, then caught his face in both hands and laid a kiss onto his mouth. “I can’t believe you let her do that.”
“What would you have me do, then? Slap her? Push her away, or hit her back? I did the right thing – I ran. Not that she would have given me a choice, but I didn’t try to fight her. I figured it’d be better to run for it before she threw me bodily out of the house.”
“No, you should have – you should – oh, I don’t know!” Harry hugged him hard, and only then did he remember Zayn and Niall, sat on the swings behind them, gaping at the two of them. He rested his cheek on Louis’ shoulder for a while, before exhaling deeply and turning round, his arm wrapped around Louis’ waist. “Look at him,” he said helplessly, and Zayn and Niall did just that, taking in Louis’ flushed, teary-eyed face and the stark white handprint on his cheek with disgust.
There was a long silence, and then Zayn said vehemently “I said she was a hag.”
“Oi, watch it,” snapped Louis, “that’s my mother.”
“That’s the woman who just smacked you across the fucking face. I wouldn’t defend her if I were you – you owe her nothing.”
“She’s family,” Louis said helplessly.
“Yeah, she sure acts like it. Look, mate, I get it, I really do. She’s your mum. But she hit you, she threw you out, and for what? Nothing. That’s not reasonable, that’s not rational. The woman’s a total head-case. She needs psychiatric help.”
“Thanks for your expert psycho-evaluation, Doctor Malik, but there’s nothing wrong with her head. She’s just seriously, seriously misguided. She has a really twisted way of looking at things, but she’s not nuts.”
Zayn opened his mouth to disagree, but Harry shot him a vicious warning look. He agreed that Louis’ mum was several sandwiches short of a picnic (and she’d probably poisoned said picnic to give to anyone she disapproved of) but now wasn’t the time to argue the toss about it. Louis was shaking, cold, and by the sounds of it he had nowhere to spend the night and no idea what to do, and Harry wasn’t about to keep him lingering out on the street when what he really needed was a decent night’s sleep and, by the look of him, some food. He’d been thrown out of the house before he had a chance to have anything to eat.
“Where are you staying tonight, honey?” he whispered against the shell of Louis’ ear, his own piercing sending a shiver down Louis’ spine as it brushed against his earlobe.
“I…I don’t know,” Louis said shakily. His eyes welled up with more worried tears. “Oh, God, I don’t know where, or – or what to do –”
“Okay, okay, shush for a second.” Again, Harry hugged him, and Louis gratefully buried his face in Harry’s neck. “You can come home with me, yeah? My mum thinks the sun shines out of your arse, she won’t mind.”
“I – I don’t have any pyjamas, or a toothbrush, or – or any –” Louis was scrambling wildly, sounding borderline hysterical. The events of the night had unsettled him, and he was unused to making quick, impulsive decisions. Not having the chance to plan ahead unnerved him.
“Louis. I’m sure we can stretch to a pair of pyjamas and a toothbrush.” Kissing the exposed curve of his neck, Harry softly reminded him with a murmur against his skin, “You don’t really have anywhere else to go. Mum won’t mind putting you up for the night; she thinks you’re great, you know that. Come on, it’s fine. You’re okay. Breathe for me, Louis, you understand? Breathe.”
After a couple of shaky breaths, Louis pressed his lips firmly together. “Okay,” he said weakly.
Harry rubbed his back a couple more times, then glanced over his shoulder at Zayn and Niall, who were both gawping. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to cut the Mothers’ Meeting short tonight, ladies. See you tossers around.”
They started walking, but in a misguided attempt to lighten the mood, Niall made an obscene motion with his fingers whilst wiggling his eyebrows, and Zayn stuck out his tongue and made a seductive licking gesture into midair. Under normal circumstances, Harry would have laughed – if just one of them had done it, he might still have laughed. As it was, he gave them both the finger, thanked God that Louis hadn’t seen, and tightened his grip on Louis as they headed out of the park and towards Harry’s house.
~*~
“I know it’s short notice, but please, Mum, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. His mother chucked him out of the house and he hasn’t a clue what to do; you’ve seen the state he’s in!”
Louis splashed more cold water onto his face and shuddered as he listened to Harry’s words drifting down the corridor. He examined his reflection in the mirror and worriedly touched the imprint on his face, which had now flooded vivid scarlet as the rest of his face faded back to its normal colour. The temporary aura of confidence he’d gained had faded again, leaving the same old scared, easily dominated Louis back in its place, except with a side effect of a good dose of self-loathing left in its wake. Harry was right; he should have done something. Not fought back, necessarily, but perhaps stood his ground, shown her that he wasn’t scared. Then she wouldn’t have known what to do. There was only so many times she could have hit him, right? Now, she had a whole night and maybe longer to get angrier and angrier, to turn his father and siblings against him, to come up with a new plan to ensure that when he came crawling back, she crushed any further resistance flat. Closing his eyes, Louis felt a tear leak out from underneath his closed eyelids; aggravated by the betrayal, he angrily swiped it away.
“I still don’t understand what happened, Harry – why did she throw him out, what did he do?”
“I don’t fully understand that myself, yet,” admitted Harry. “I’m not even entirely sure Louis does. I don’t think anyone really gets what’s inside that woman’s head. But he can’t go back there, at least not tonight, and he’s scared and tired and he just needs somewhere to stay. Please, Mum. I promised he could stay here for tonight.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to have him here, Harry, it’s just that you know we’re having the spare room redecorated, and Gemma’s is absolutely off-limits to guests; she’d go crazy if anyone had been in there. I just don’t know where we’re going to put him…”
“He can sleep in my bed with me,” Harry said confidently.
Louis could almost feel the amusement radiating off Anne as she said “How much sleep would you actually be doing, though?”
Louis blushed, and he was pretty sure Harry did too.
Mortified, Harry stammered “I – what – w-what do –”
“I was sixteen once, you know,” she reminded him, “I know what I’d have done if I was sharing a bed with my boyfriend for the night –”
“I – we – Mother!”
“All I’m saying is I have no issue with it whatsoever, but the fact is that teenage boys have…well, I know teenage boys, that’s all, and I doubt Louis’ strict Catholic parents would be any more likely to let him back over the threshold if they knew you’d…you know…done it. Not to mention they’d crucify me if they knew I’d let you do it – in my house.”
Purple with embarrassment, Louis closed his eyes. He was pretty sure he’d rather go straight back home, march through his front door and have his mother give him another matching welt on the other cheek than continue to hear Harry and his mum talking about his and Harry’s sex life.
“Mother,” Harry said stiffly, “I give you my solemn word that all Louis and I will be doing in my bed tonight is sleeping. Look, I’ll sleep in Gem’s room, then. Or I’ll sleep on the floor. Whatever.”
“Don’t be silly. As long as you can promise me that there’ll be no funny business –”
Harry groaned. “Fine. There’ll be no ‘funny business’, Mum.” Louis could imagine the quotation marks he would be making with his fingers around the words. “Just sleep. Okay?”
“Good boy.” It sounded like she patted him on the back. Then she vanished down the stairs, leaving Louis to fan himself in an attempt to cool down and wonder how on earth he was ever going to look either of them in the face again.
~*~
He spent the night in Harry’s bed, one of Harry’s long arms draped around his waist while they both snuggled into each other and Louis held Harry’s free hand, playing nervously with his long fingers. He didn’t get much sleep that night, although the comforting warmth of Harry’s body made him feel like he ought to have done. Harry had attempted to soothe him to sleep by tracing gentle spirals across his hip, murmuring into his hair and pulling Louis closely against him so that Louis’ back slotted against Harry’s stomach, and in the end Louis had relaxed slightly out of his tense little ball, causing Harry to believe that he’d fallen asleep so that before long he dropped off and started snoring softly in Louis’ ear. (It was a nice sound, not a snorting rasp like his mother’s or an irritating in-and-out drone like his father’s; Louis didn’t think he would mind falling asleep to a gentle, reassuring snore like that every night for the rest of his life). But a coil of tension was still knotted like thick chains in his belly, meaning that he struggled to get more than a consecutive hour or two of interrupted sleep before he was jerked back awake by the sensation of the flock of butterflies in his stomach, all picking up tiny knives and stabbing viciously at his stomach lining, not hard enough to make him unbearably uncomfortable but enough to keep him tense and awake, listening to Harry’s snores to try and calm himself down again.
By the time morning came, Louis was itching to be off. He knew that what he was about to do was cowardly, but so what? He was a coward at heart. After waiting for eight o’clock to arrive (he deemed that a reasonable time) he carefully lifted Harry’s arm off him, being sure not to wake him, and after a moment’s hesitation stuffed a pillow where his body had been so that Harry’s unconscious mind wouldn’t miss him and cause Harry to wake. He crawled out of Harry’s bed in silence, then waited with bated breath to see if his movement had disturbed the sleeping boy.
Mumbling restlessly in his sleep, Harry sighed contentedly and buried his face in the pillow, and Louis gave a little smile at the sight before he stripped off the pyjamas he’d borrowed. They were Batman pyjamas, several sizes too small for the boy with the curly hair who lay peacefully sleeping in his bed, but somehow Harry had dyed the little yellow circles scarlet, and Louis guessed that he had no particular love of Batman but had, when he had been the right size, just wanted a pair of pyjamas with bats on them.
Now, of course, Harry slept in his boxers, something Louis well knew after having the skin of Harry’s bare chest pressing against him all night long.
He put his jeans and shirt from yesterday back on, crumpled as they were, and slipped his feet into his espadrilles. Then, swallowing, Louis reached for his mouth, looking at his reflection in Harry’s bedside mirror so that he could see what he was doing. His reflection made him stop, startled; he had a large, fairly sizeable bruise on one cheek, around the size of a two pound coin, purplish in colour and painfully obvious in contrast to the rest of his face. Swallowing, Louis probed it, winced, then shook his head and diverted his attention back to his mouth.
It took him several minutes of fumbling before he could manage to unfasten the little silver ring from his lip, but once he had, he rolled it around in the palm of his hand for a minute or so before placing it down on the bedside cabinet. After a moment’s hesitation, he walked over to Harry’s messy desk, found a square of scrap paper and a pen, then returned to Harry’s bedside.
He scribbled on the piece of paper,
Thanks.
Then, after a moment’s consideration, chewing his lip (which already felt weirdly empty without the ring through it) he added,
Sorry.
Placing the ring on top of the little square of paper, he took a deep breath, glanced at Harry, and then left the room, padding softly down the stairs and hoping that someone had already been downstairs to unlock the doors and he wouldn’t have to go upstairs and ask Anne to let him out. That had the potential to be a bit awkward.
Thankfully, the door was unlocked when he tried it. Before he could do the right thing and stop himself with all the protestations and sentiments of decency running through his brain, before he could remind himself how ungrateful and rude it was to slip out like this without so much as a goodbye, before he could think about how he had just betrayed the boy who looked so peaceful and vulnerable in his sleep with his eyeliner all wiped off and his guarded expression down, and how that boy would wake up with a start and be confused and hurt when he awoke to find that his bed had one less occupant than he had when he’d fallen asleep, Louis hurriedly walked out, closed it carefully behind him and then started walking down the streets, hands in his pockets, head bowed. He couldn’t look back for shame.
If he had, he’d have seen Anne watching him through the kitchen window, shaking her head and tutting at him as he vanished around the corner.