Louis stood behind the counter of the local bakery, with his hairnet on, wearing a white coat so that he looked like he’d just walked out of a science lab. The uniform was the main downside to working here; apart from that, he enjoyed the job immensely. When Harry had first suggested that he try for the job working in the little shop, selling buns and cakes and cute little loaves of unprocessed thick-crusted bread to cute old ladies or cooing toddlers who left the shop with sticky hands, Louis hadn’t been so sure. He didn’t think it would do his stomach much good, for starters, although Harry insisted that he loved Louis’ ‘curves’ (“you make me sound like Betty bloody Boop or something,” Louis grumbled) and he could eat as much cake as he liked and still be the sexiest person in the room. For another thing, he couldn’t bake. He’d tried to bake Anne a cake to thank her for letting him stay for so long, and ended up turning the kitchen into the site of a flour-bomb explosion and raw cake mixture inexplicably ended up everywhere, even on the kitchen door-handle and splattered up the window. She’d been very nice about it, and he and Harry had cleaned the kitchen scrupulously, but during tea that night she had gently suggested that perhaps Louis didn’t do any more cooking in the house any more, and he had embarrassedly agreed.
However, Harry had managed to talk him into it, and eventually Louis ended up going for the job interview and managed to land himself a job upon the main counter with ease, selling buns and biscuits with a cheery smile. Harry liked to tease him about his hairnet and would smell him deeply whenever he came home every night, burying his face in his hair with an “Mmm, you smell nice”, savouring the sugary scent of icing and the warm smell of baked bread that wafted from Louis wherever he went and never quite seemed to leave him. But the most important thing was that Louis could work plenty of extra hours to leave Harry without distractions while he studied for his rapidly approaching exams – “babe, I love you, but I can’t focus on maths and science and all that bollocks while I’m staring at you” – and the pay was good, so he was rapidly earning money. They were intending to go and look at some flats a little bit later in the month, when Harry’s mum could go with them to make sure they weren’t being conned and could check for things like damp and wallpaper quality and all the stuff that they would have forgotten to bother about, and when Louis had enough money saved up to safely be able to pay several months’ rent in advance if he’d had to. Harry’s revision seemed to be going well; he was clever, and had a good memory, and was confident that he’d pass most, if not all of his exams without too much bother. Life was simple, and it was nice not to have to hide anything or be ashamed of who he was.
A couple of times, Louis had seen his family around town. He’d seen his mother walking down the road with the twins, who had squealed and tried to run to him, but she’d given him a dark look and hurried them away. Lottie came into the shop one day with her friend to get a gingerbread man, and was surprised but pleased to see him there. Felicite had explained the situation to her in private and she knew about Harry, and she seemed to accept it, although she was rather unkindly amused by the fact that Felicite still harboured her schoolgirl crush on the boy that her brother was dating. Now she would drop by quite regularly to buy things and see him.
Felicite herself had been on several outings with Louis, Harry and their friends, to the cinema or to see a few local bands, and she had come out of her shell quite a lot. She was able to see the funny side of her infatuation with Harry, even managing to tease him a couple times about dangerously inflaming her, and she got on well with Niall and Zayn – Niall because Felicite was at the age where everything is funny and she had a tendency to giggle madly every few minutes, and Niall thought everything was hilarious too, so they would both sit together laughing at nothing very much. Zayn got on well with her because he had several little sisters who were a similar age and he knew how to talk to kids, and also because they both had a tendency to fall silent and sit mooning over things, so they could sit together in mutual silence to their hearts’ content and not feel isolated or left out of anything. Louis loved being able to slot some of the pieces of his new and old lives together, and although he pretended not to care that he hadn’t yet found a place for his mother and father to fit, he secretly harboured a tiny bit of hope that maybe one day there’d be some kind of small resolution between them. He didn’t think Jay would ever fully accept his sexuality or his relationship with Harry, but he did hope that maybe one day she would soften enough to stop scowling whenever she saw him in the street, and that his sisters would stop sadly telling him stories of vicious things she’d said about him at one time or another.
He didn’t really believe, but he hoped.
~*~
Louis was working behind the counter on one greyish Tuesday afternoon. It wasn’t a bad day, weather-wise, but the sky was the colour of a once-white sheet that had been washed just a few too many times, until it was a pale greyish-white, and the sun was hiding behind a blanket of drab clouds. It wasn’t a cold day, or a warm one, but somewhere sort of in between. Basically, it was typical British weather; neither particularly nice nor particularly terrible, but people still wanted to buy buns, so it was a perfectly good day to Louis. Two teenage girls from Harry’s school, who had come in for a chocolate chip muffin each every day this week, bought them and stood in the shop nibbling like chipmunks, sneaking glances at Louis and giggling, were stood by the window, eating their muffins and whispering to each other. One was dirty blonde with a ponytail and had eyeliner only on the underneath of her eyes, like she’d forgotten to do the rest. Her friend had ratty, unkempt hair that had been dyed too many times to establish what colour it was supposed to be, although the roots looked like they might have been mousy brown, and she looked like she might have been moulting, although her face was quite pretty. Louis had a vague feeling that they maybe fancied him, and didn’t have the heart to tell them that he was rather too enamoured with a certain green-eyed punk boy to notice their advances.
But speak of the devil – or an angel, in Louis’ opinion – the little bell above the door clanged, making an impressive amount of noise for such a tinny-looking little silver thing. Most bells above shop doors tended to tinkle softly, but this bell seemed determined to defy all expectations, by being both extremely loud and extremely tuneless, and it was possible to hear it even in the back room when all the electric whisks and such were on, which was possibly the intention. Before Louis had started working there, the bakers in the back had needed to run through to serve anyone who walked in, which had resulted in a lot of burnt buns.
Harry walked through the door, messenger bag hanging off one shoulder with its array of badges gleaming like plastic jewels. Some of them bore band insignias, others slogans advertising everything from safe sex to gay rights, a couple of them bore puns or pretty designs – and the latest one, which a blushing Felicite had bequeathed to him, was a bright pink pin-badge emblazoned with a glittery purple butterfly. The sleeves of his maroon blazer were rolled up to his elbows, showing off the scarlet rose, Shakespeare quote, gender symbols and Motionless In White lyric on his arm and the edges of the cobwebs on his elbows just poking out from underneath the sleeve. He wore an assortment of bracelets on his arms, made with a range of beads, threads or metals, and a battered blue plastic Thomas the Tank Engine watch on his left wrist. Louis decided not to question that one; Harry had always been one for picking up weird accessories here and there and wearing them just to make a point. His grey school trousers were tighter than everyone else’s, his purple-tinted curls were falling over one eye, and he’d changed his silver lip ring and angel bites for black ones. Underneath his blazer he wore a maroon jumper bearing his school’s logo, his shirt had the first three buttons undone to show off a black t-shirt just peeping out from underneath it, and he was wearing a necklace made from metal spikes shaped like sharks’ teeth. His tie was loosely knotted and barely visible from where the knot disappeared underneath his jumper, and his shoes were scuffed black trainers with the laces trailing, undone and far too long. He looked like a textbook sexy rebel from a teenage romance novel, although with rather more tattoos and piercings, and as he stepped over the threshold and leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms, eyeing Louis up and down with a smile flirting at the corners of his mouth, the two girls stared at him and all the colour drained from their faces.
“Did you miss me?” Harry called across the shop.
Louis raised his eyebrows. “Oh, God, it’s you,” he answered, feigning disgust, “you follow me everywhere, you do. Don’t you have something better to do with your time? Old ladies to bash? Candy to steal from babies? What sort of a hooligan are you if you haven’t even scared a few small children this week?”
Shrugging, Harry sauntered over to him and leaned over the counter, one corner of his mouth twitching up into a smile. “Now that last one, I think I can do,” he said quietly, then, raising his voice and turning his attention to the two staring girls, mouths hanging open, muffins forgotten in their manicured hands, “alright, kiddiewinks? Not making eyes at my boyfriend, now, are we?”
He placed his hands flat on the counter, then tilted his head and leaned right over the counter, Louis standing on his toes to meet him. Harry’s mouth met his with a soft noise of skin on skin, his hand cupping Louis’ face, thumb grazing his cheekbone, and his eyes fluttered closed as his nose skimmed Louis’ cheek, the kiss deepening. Louis had been nibbling on an iced biscuit from the line of failures considered unfit for sale or display, and his mouth tasted like sugar and shortbread crumbs, to Harry’s pleasure, whereas Harry tasted of mint chewing gum. The rough material of Louis’ regulation white hairnet brushed against Harry’s forehead, blocking his curls from tickling Louis, and as they exchanged their fond kiss, they could feel the two girls staring at them in dismay.
With a chuckle, Harry broke the kiss, tapping Louis on the end of his nose. “I still can’t express how much I love your hairnet, babe. Very suave.”
The bell above the door let out its long, heavy toll, and when Louis glanced over the two now not-so giggly girls were rushing out of the shop, complexions ashen, gripping their muffins so hard that they were crushing them and crumbs were raining down all over the pavement, leaving a trail of cake behind them like Hansel and Gretel.
Harry laughed, teeth flashing, whilst Louis put his hands on his hips and pretended to look disapproving. “Scaring off my customers, huh?” He tutted, but couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
With a shrug, Harry said contritely, “I’m sorry, I guess they were just overwhelmed by my manly muscular charms.” The sparkle in his eye was a testament to just how insincere his apology was.
“Or put off their food by our nauseating PDA,” teased Louis. “How was school?”
Harry perched on the windowsill a few feet away, back against the window, appreciatively eyeing the display of treats behind the glass case as he rooted around in his blazer pocket to try and find some change. “Same old, same old. Got a B on that maths test from last week. PE teacher tried to make me put plasters on my arm to cover up my tattoos again, but he gave up when I asked him if I needed to cover up the ones on my back as well.” Smirking, Harry reached behind him and traced the vague area of the wings spanning his back and shoulders with the tip of his finger. “He said yes, but fifteen minutes in, we ran out of plasters. Each individual feather takes up a whole plaster by itself. Oh, and don’t let me forget that I owe that bastard Jonas Rossiter from Geography a kick in the balls.”
Louis had been idly trying to pluck the iced bun with the biggest glace cherry out of the display case with his metal tongs, since he already knew that particular brand of cake was Harry’s favourite, but he stopped and frowned, tongs hanging in mid-air. “What for?”
“Because that’s what he threatened to give me. And you.”
“Me?” Louis was astonished. “What does he want to kick me in the balls for? I’ve never met him.”
“I’m hurt that you haven’t asked why he would want to kick someone as charming and charismatic in myself in the balls, first,” deadpanned Harry. “He’s one of those Middle Aged fuckwits who think being gay is the equivalent of flaying the skin off small babies and eating them alive with pasta sauce, and he’s seen us out and about together and promised to give my boyfriend ‘a good seeing to’.”
Louis raised an eyebrow. “Ouch. Poor choice of words.”
“Quite. Well, I told him I was already more than capable of handling that –” Harry smirked, and Louis smirked right back at him, “ – but that pissed him off even more, because morons don’t tend to like having allusions made to their inferior intelligence, and turning their comments into gay sex innuendos, no matter how big an opening they left you…well, you might as well sign your own death warrant. He’s asked me to fight him. I laughed, but he was serious. How amusing.”
There was something in Harry’s expression, and the way he was talking about the fight, which made Louis rather nervous. Of course, he knew that Harry knew how to handle himself and that he had previous for fighting quite a few people and winning – that didn’t stop him from being worried. Especially at the thought of Harry getting into serious trouble so close to his exams, because with all the times he’d bunked off, the classes he’d stopped attending on principle, his attitude towards authority and all the other fights he’d been in. It really would be the worst time to get suspended, or expelled.
“You’re not going to, are you?”
“I don’t know. I might.” Leaning lazily back against the window, Harry stretched his legs out. “I do have a reputation, you know. And I don’t take so kindly to hearing people call you ‘that snobby church twat’ the moment my back’s turned. Even if they do just say it to piss me off, because they know I’ll leap to defend your virtue.”
“My virtue’s long gone by now, darling,” Louis said drily, “but honestly. I couldn’t care less what they call me, you know I don’t give a damn anymore. Please, don’t fight anyone. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m a big boy, Louis. I’ve kicked more balls than I can count – both the sporting kind and otherwise.”
“I don’t care,” Louis told him obstinately, “you’re not fighting anyone, least of all because of me. I don’t agree with fighting in the first place, but do you have any idea how awful I’d feel if you came home with so much as a scratch on my account?”
Harry snorted. “He couldn’t lay a finger on me. I’m fast, and I fight dirty, and I’m fully aware of my weak spots. I keep my face clear, so they can’t get at my mouth or my angel bites, and I never let anyone get a handful of my hair. Then, go for the knees, floor them, and sit on them.”
“Sit on them?” Louis asked, disbelief winning over disapproval.
Shrugging, Harry pushed his magenta-tinted curls off his pale forehead. “It’s not pretty, and it’s not in any fight movies, but it works. I took self-defence classes a couple of years back, and the guy looked at me, when I was a skinny little fourteen year old with a perpetually surly scowl and no muscle on me whatsoever, and he told me straight that I couldn’t put enough force behind a punch for it to do any good, so ‘just kick em in the backs of the legs and don’t let em get up again’. It was good advice.”
“You took self-defence classes.”
“I had to. A whole lot of people took a dislike to me after my image change. Guys at school I could deal with; fourteen year old guys are babies, one square punch to the nose and they’re down and crying for mummy, no matter how little force you put behind it, but I’ve had fully grown men following me round town threatening me, been cornered by groups of them a couple of times…I figured I needed to know how to protect myself.”
Louis nibbled his lower lip. “Shit,” he said eventually.
“Yep. Aren’t people just delightful?” Sliding off the window sill, Harry strode across the room and plucked Louis’ hairnet off his head, leaving his hair a fluffy mess. Then, he leaned over the counter and pressed his forehead against Louis’, eyes falling closed as he breathed slowly out. “Wow. Just thinking about it makes me angry. I haven’t been pissed off for a while. I can’t say I missed it.”
“I love you,” Louis told him.
A wry smile twitched at the corners of Harry’s mouth. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
“Maybe not. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t still love you. And I understood that reference, you great big nerd.” Intertwining their fingers, small tanned ones with long, white digits, Louis stroked the back of Harry’s hand with his thumb and said softly, “No punching, okay? You promise?”
The pause lasted for a long time as Harry chewed on his lip ring, clearly not wanting to give Louis a straight answer. Clearly, that meant that he hadn’t yet disallowed the possibility of fighting this Jonas guy, which meant that Louis’ job wasn’t done yet. He squeezed Harry’s hand harder, then, remembering Harry’s grim anecdote about fighting dirty, blinked his azure eyes, trying to make them shine so that he’d look a bit tearful. He wasn’t beyond a bit of manipulation if that was what it took to keep Harry out of a fight.
“Pinky promise,” Louis requested solemnly, disentangling their fingers and extending his little finger.
A goofy grin spread across Harry’s face, banishing the disquiet, and he wrapped his pinkie finger around Louis’ and squeezed.
“Uncross your fingers, you cheater.”
Laughing, Harry lay his free hand flat on the glass worktop, looking sheepish. “Guilty. Okay. For real this time. I pinky swear that I won’t punch that Jonas bastard in the balls like he deserves. Even if he uses the f-word. Which usually causes me to punch people simply on principle.”
“Good.” Louis didn’t unclasp his hand; they stayed smiling at each other, pinky fingers linked. “Now, what about that cherry bun?”
“I’ve already popped the cherry in your bun,” Harry said smugly, wiggling his eyebrows.
Louis laughed. “Oh my god, shut up!” Then, without further ado, he crammed the cherry bun that he’d picked up right into Harry’s mouth, shutting off any further innuendos.
Harry was incapable of speech at that moment, his whole large mouth full of sticky bun, but Louis understood at that moment the true meaning of “it’s all in the eyes”, because Harry couldn’t have choked out a soppy declaration of love at that moment if his life had depended on it, but his mossy irises were shining like a diamond the size of the Koh-I-Noor, overflowing with adoration; if he’d been a cartoon character, his eyes would have been enormous scarlet hearts, and even as it was he was oozing with fondness even as his mouth oozed with jam. There was something about the way he was looking at Louis that made Louis’ chest ache, and he smiled at Harry with his mouth revoltingly full of bun and the white icing on his lips looking decidedly wrong and amusingly familiar, and he was so in love with this idiot that he was surprised his heart hadn’t gotten so heavy and full that it stopped.
~*~
Louis clocked off from the bakery early on Thursday, because it had been a slow day and they decided to shut up shop before closing time. Since several of the pastries and biscuits were now past their shelf lives, he went home with a bag full of tins of delicacies which weren’t even stale, but couldn’t be commercially sold tomorrow. He was pleased with the turn of events; perhaps he couldn’t bake Anne a cake himself, but he could bring her a whole bag of them home from work. He’d brought several of Harry’s favourite raspberry buns, and some gingerbread men for Robin, and an assortment of other things which his boss had offered to him, because Louis hadn’t been working at the bakery for long enough for the biscuit novelty to wear off. After eating so many cakes, you surprisingly do actually get tired of them, so none of the other staff had scrambled to claim anything, but for Louis, the idea of practically limitless amounts of cake was still an exciting prospect. It was for Harry and his family, too.
He walked through the front door at precisely half past one, carrying his bag full of treats and beaming from ear to ear. His white coat billowed around him, making him feel like he was in some kind of movie. Of course, he knew that Harry wouldn’t be home yet, but his mother finished early on Thursdays, and she and Louis had often sat together and chatted, usually about Harry, often lightly making fun of him, although it was only ever playful teasing. Harry didn’t seem to mind, or even find it embarrassing; in fact, on one occasion when he’d come home to find Louis and Anne sat together sharing a bottle of red wine and giggling together over his baby photos, he’d laughed, hugged them both, sat down beside Louis and continued looking at the photos along with them.
But today, when he walked in, Anne was stood in the kitchen, hand on the phone like she’d just put it down, nibbling on her lower lip. Her forehead was creased with anxiety, and as Louis placed his bag on the table with a soft thump, she gave a little jump, like she’d only just noticed that she wasn’t alone.
“Oh, Louis,” she said, forcing a smile, brushing a stray hair off her forehead. “You’re home early.”
“What’s wrong?” Louis asked, immediately heading to her side. She shared some of Harry’s little mannerisms, standing in the same way as he did when he was under stress, chewing her mouth the way he did, although there was no metal for her to nibble at. Louis recognized the signs of her worry as easily as he would have seen Harry’s, since he was looking for the same indicators.
Anne buried her face in her hands, hiding herself from him for a few moments. Anxiously, Louis reached out as if to touch her arm, but pulled his hand back at the last minute, not sure as to whether she would welcome the contact.
A moment or so later, she resurfaced, trembling slightly. Her lipstick was slightly smudged at the corners of her mouth. “Harry’s been in a fight at school,” she said shakily.
Louis’ heart dropped into his stomach with a splash of stomach acid, which it subsequently proceeded to start drowning in.
“W-what?”
“They just called me. It was with a boy in his class. The boy had been heckling him, making comments, you know the sort. Harry pretended none of it was getting to him, but he was getting angrier and angrier, and eventually he just snapped and –” She stopped, taking deep, heavy breaths. “Oh, God. He hasn’t been in a fight for so long. I thought we’d seen the end of it. He’s been so happy lately, so settled, it’s been months since he last locked himself in his room and listened to his music and wouldn’t talk to anyone. What do I do? I don’t want to upset him, and in these kinds of moods I could make him worse.”
“I’ll go.”
She stared at him. “You’ve not seen him like this before.”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t like to see him in this kind of state. He gets in a mess. He isn’t like he usually is, I know he’s always been so gentle with you, and that’s exactly how Harry is, but when it takes him like this, when he gets worked up, he’s a different person, Louis. You don’t want to see him that way. I doubt he wants you to see, either.”
“Listen,” Louis told her fiercely, “you’re not telling me anything he hasn’t already said to try and put me off, and I’ll tell you the exact same thing I told him: I love him, happy or angry, no matter how many fights he’s been in or how battered he is. Will you let me go? He needs me.”
A smile began spreading across her face, small at first, but then getting larger as she gave him the kind of glowing smile that her son so often wore. It was slightly marred with tiredness and stress, but nonetheless bright.
“Go on,” she told him softly. “You’re right. He does need you. And he’s lucky to have you.”
As if that had been some kind of signal, Louis struggled out of his baggy white regulation coat, hurriedly draping it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. His hairnet still hung out of the pocket of it. Abandoning his bag of cakes, he made a run for the front door, then realized that it was quite a chilly day and he didn’t have a lot of tolerance for coldness. A large, loose black hoodie of Harry’s with a slightly cracked logo with a slightly cracked logo for some band on it was hanging over the banister, and he pulled it over his head, melting into the warmth, the familiar Harry smell, the cosiness of the worn material stroking his skin like Harry’s fingers were trailing down his arms. Taking a deep breath, Louis launched himself out through the front door and started running, his feet seeming to fly over the gravel and pavements and hardly touching the ground. He had only been to Harry’s school a few times, but he was confident he knew the way. The only question was how quickly he could get there.
~*~
Seven minutes, it turned out, for what should have been at least a fifteen minute walk, although he lost another minute or so when he staggered to a halt outside the school gates, bent double and gasping for breath. He was reasonably fit, but it had been a long time since he’d run half as far as that at the speed he’d been going. The school gates were a good leaning post, and he caught his breath fairly quickly. Brushing some lint off his shabby hoodie and smoothing down his hair at the back, hoping it hadn’t been too thoroughly destroyed by the hairnet, he put his hands in his pockets and walked straight through the open gates, heading for the main reception building.
When he slipped through the automatic doors into the main waiting area saw Harry immediately, sat in a squashy armchair with his face buried in his hands and the corners of a cold compress poking out from between his fingers. The left knee of his trousers was torn dramatically a good halfway down his calf, and the material on the other knee was looking rather ragged. He had taken his jumper and blazer off, leaving them in a ball on the floor beside him, and several buttons were missing from his white shirt, although the grey t-shirt he wore underneath seemed relatively unscathed. His knuckles were grazed and he was missing several bracelets. In a chair beside him sat Zayn, although he was mostly covered up by a lanky blond sitting on his knee, one arm looped with casual possessiveness around his neck. Niall had a red welt on one cheekbone and several dark red spots on his collar (Louis tried not to think too hard about what they might be spots of), and Zayn had a torn sleeve and dishevelled hair, but aside from that, they seemed perfectly fine.
Throat dry, Louis licked his lips, trying to find some words from where they were grimly clinging to the back of his oesophagus, but they refused to dislodge themselves from around his aching tonsils, so in the end he just dropped to his knees in front of Harry with a soft moan, fingers brushing the back of one of his bloodied hands.
Startled, Harry’s head jerked and he flinched away from the contact, but then his eyes focused, glowing green globes rimmed with smudges of ebony, shining and sore from the intensity of his crying, and he stared at Louis. His mouth was heavily swollen, dotted with glistening ruby beads, and although he always seemed to look tired, the shadows beneath his left eye were visibly darker than the ones caused by exhaustion underneath his right. Those bright green eyes encircled in black were like cat eyes staring at him from the depths of night, and similarly feral. Unreachable. Wild.
The less bruised corner of Harry’s mouth twitched into a wobbly, humourless smile. “I didn’t break my promise, Lou,” he said, his voice cracking mid-sentence. “I never kicked the bastard in the balls after all.” Then his smile dropped and he let out a little whimper, blood dripping from his abused mouth like water droplets slowly falling from melting icicles.
Louis hugged him, first and foremost. He pulled Harry into his arms and slipped his fingers into his hair, anchoring them in silky chocolate ringlets, and his lips found their way into his hair too, murmuring condolences and endearments and basically nonsense, whilst Harry shook and cried all over his neck, leaving fat dark tearstains on Louis’ hoodie, raindrops falling from his storm-cloud eyes, more grey than green now that he was crying, as if his misery had sucked all of the colour out of them.
“All right, baby, come on, I’m here,” Louis soothed. “Come on. What happened?” he asked Zayn.
Since whatever Zayn would have said would be muffled by Niall’s bony back, the blond spoke for him, blue eyes grave at the sight of their leader in such distress. “This kid called Jonas has been getting at him for days, trying to make him mad. Making comments, you know the sort. Mostly about his clothes and sexuality and all that, but then he started talking about you. Calling you names, saying you’re a dirty slit and if you’d do him you’d do anyone, etcetera, etcetera. All totally pathetic stuff, and if it had been about himself, Harry wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Anyway, you could see him getting pissed, but he wouldn’t rise to the bait – so Jonas stepped up his game a bit. Started making threats.”
“He’d found out where you worked,” Harry said, lifting his head, voice muffled by the swelling on his mouth. “He had pictures of you on his phone, from the bakery. Said he was gonna wait for you. Hurt you. Knock you down and kick you until you couldn’t even scream.” He stared at Louis anxiously, like he was half expecting the sheer threat had caused Louis some harm.
Despite being disgusted and a bit unnerved by this total stranger professing such an intense desire to hurt him, Louis mustered a derisive snort. “Yeah. Sure. Tell me you didn’t buy into that crap, babe, the guy’s clearly all mouth and no brain.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Harry demanded with a tinge of hysteria colouring his tone. “Just tell him to go ahead? Let him hurt you?”
“Yes, because he obviously wasn’t gonna do it!” Zayn said impatiently, leaning around Niall, one hand resting on the small of the blond’s back, “I told you as much myself!”
Scrunching in on himself like a hedgehog curling into a ball, Harry fell silent.
Louis started rubbing Harry’s back in little circles, trying to calm him. “You’re in a right mess,” he tutted.
Harry gave a laugh which was also a sob. “You should see the other guy.”
“Yeah, but he won’t be seeing you,” Zayn muttered, “or anyone else for that matter, at least not until the swelling goes down.”
Harry laughed again, a little too loud and a little too high, then flinched and brought a hand to his mouth. When he brought it away again, his fingers were stained with blotches of strawberry red.
“Look at your mouth,” fretted Louis, tilting Harry’s head back for a better look at him. “God, look at all of you.”
“Yeah, he belted me right in the mouth…guess I won’t be able to suck your cock for a couple of weeks, babe.” He managed a weak little ghost of his usual radiant smile.
“I’m sure you’ll make it up to me later. Come on, what’s the damage? How much trouble are you in? And don’t try to fob me off with an innuendo, because you know exactly what I mean.”
Harry sighed. “A week’s suspension. Pending further punishment. I’m on the agenda for the next board meeting so they can decide whether or not it’s worth their while chucking me out or not, this close to the end of the year and so close to my exams, whether they can make the necessary arrangements in time and if I’m bad enough to be considered a danger to the other pupils and so on…”
“Well, if they haven’t decided you’re definitely out yet than that’s something, I suppose. Come on. Let’s head home. I want to take a closer look at that mouth.”
“Oh, I bet you do,” Harry said, with almost his usual smirk.
Louis sighed.
“Okay, okay.” He got up stiffly and began bouncing experimentally on the balls of his feet. He grimaced down at his exposed knee. “Ouch. I’m a bit worse for wear. Any chance of you donning your sexy nurse’s outfit and kissing it better for me, sweetheart?”
“No chance whatsoever,” Louis answered briskly, sliding his arm underneath Harry’s and bringing it around his shoulder for support. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah,” Harry breathed, “smarts a bit, though.”
“We’ll take it slow,” Louis promised.
“Now where have I heard that before?” whispered Harry with another wicked grin, and Louis dryly decided that he was going to be absolutely fine, if he was already back to cracking terrible sex jokes.
They started walking towards the school gates – or rather, Louis walked, and Harry limped, pale and clammy from putting weight on his bad leg. Louis suspected that he’d sprained it rather than just grazed it, but he didn’t like to say anything. Harry’s fingers dug into Louis’ shoulder, fiercely gripping the fabric of his borrowed hoodie, and he nestled into Louis’ side as they slowly made their way towards the main road.
“Did Niall and Zayn make up their minds about making another go of it, then?” he asked by way of a distraction.
For several weeks now, Niall and Zayn had determinedly refused to put a label on their relationship, which was somewhere between boyfriends and fuck-buddies, in that they were exclusive to each other and in an agreement not to see other people, spent most of their time together, flirted constantly and had copious amounts of sex, but they wouldn’t yet acknowledge that they were dating or say for definite that they weren’t, despite constant teasing and nagging from Harry and Louis to stop being awkward bastards and admit that they were going out again. But the cuddly display from in there hinted that they might have made their decision.
“They’re still dragging their heels about it, getting answers out of them is like getting blood out of a stone. Except I almost think a stone would be inclined to be less stubborn about it. But they are going out, you can tell by looking at them. Niall’s just sticking with his whole ‘roaming wild and free as the wind’ persona, and Zayn enjoys thinking he’s all mysterious and shit…”
Louis laughed, more of a giggle than anything else, and he heard a high-pitched, falsetto laugh imitate him mere seconds later, followed by several nasty, jeering laughs. Irritated, he looked up and away from Harry – he knew his voice could be a little high sometimes, it wasn’t his fault that he was soft-spoken and he didn’t think much of being laughed at for it – and found himself being faced down by a large group of people in school uniform, mostly lads but a couple of token giggling girlfriends there to cheer them on, and none of them looked particularly friendly or intelligent. One of them had a spectacular black eye and a lip almost as swollen as Harry’s, and his shirt was torn right down the front to show off several long, deep scratches from his chest to his stomach. Louis glanced down at Harry’s bitten short fingernails and then spotted Niall’s lion-shaped ring still adorning his index finger, and put two and two together. Harry couldn’t scratch, but the ring had teeth.
He met the gaze of the guy with the battered face without flinching, surprised that he could still contort his face into that ugly scowl he was wearing without considerable pain, bearing in mind how hard Harry appeared to have punched him. His grip on Harry tightened and he stroked Harry’s shoulder with his thumb, both to reassure him and because he was secretly rather proud that Harry had clearly held his own against this Jonas guy, who, incidentally, was built like a tank and seemed to have the same knack for squashing people flat, and Harry was a tall skinny guy who looked tough but was about as scary as a fluffy little kitten and ten times less violent. Then, Louis straightened up to make himself seem taller and tried to remember that he was nearly three years older than this prick, and definitely vastly superior in intelligence, and Harry was still a physical and emotional mess and Louis wasn’t going to let anyone stand in his way.
He’d planned to say commandingly (and slightly rudely) ‘shift!’ to get them all to move out of the way, but years of being told to treat others how you would have them treat you and knowing that he wouldn’t like being spoken to like that, he ended up saying a little lamely, “Excuse me.”
Laughter ensued.
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” came bouncing back at him in shrill, squeaky voices, like a horde of demented parrots, although the guy who was staring Louis down didn’t join in. He just smirked.
“Yes, that’s right, I said ‘excuse me’, which is something non-moronic people with a few manners tend to say to one another as an indication that they want them to get the fuck out of their way,” Louis said calmly, with a large helping of sarcasm and patronization, hoping he didn’t look as pissed off as he felt, because if he did, then his complexion probably resembled that of a strawberry.
There was some uncertain shuffling; as Louis had suspected, they didn’t know quite how to react to someone with a sharp tongue and a few extra years of age who refused to back down or be intimidated by their numbers or their infantile jeering, and he had a motive other than bravado for wanting to win this fight. Harry looked anxious and also like he was trying very hard not to look anxious, instinctively going to nibble on his lip ring but trying not to because it hurt, and Louis felt a strange urge to protect him, even though Harry was all long limbs and sharp bones and wild hair and people crossed the street to avoid him and he looked like an extremely attractive eyeliner-wearing thug (which seemed laughable to Louis now that he knew him, but still). Louis was little and compact and curvy and wore a rosary around his neck and had Jesus bracelets for religion rather than fashion, and didn’t look like he was capable of making a three year old get out of his way, and he would never willingly hurt anyone because that wasn’t his way of doing things (or Jesus’, and contrary to what his mother and now his school seemed to think, Louis paid great heed to Jesus’ way of doing things, because to put it plainly, Jesus had his shit together even if he did die several thousand years ago) but that didn’t mean he would blatantly refuse to use violence.
Basically, if someone hit Harry, Louis was going to make sure he hit them a whole lot harder. He’d hit them so hard that they felt it in a past life. If reincarnation genuinely was a thing.
“So.” The guy with the panda eyes spoke like he had a mouthful of marbles, every word rolling around weirdly in his mouth with a kind of clinking sound. Louis wasn’t sure whether it was his swollen mouth or whether he usually talked like that, and also the clicking sounded rather like the grinding of broken teeth. He couldn’t decide whether the idea of Harry breaking someone’s teeth was satisfying or not. He knew he wasn’t supposed to enjoy people’s pain, but if he was going to have to find it in himself to forgive this guy then it might be nice to have a bit of recompense – like knowing that he was going to regret picking a fight with Harry Styles for a long, long time.
“So,” Louis replied.
“You’re the boyfriend.”
“I am,” agreed Louis. “Lucky me. You’re the wanker who’s been making threats to my boyfriend.”
“I a –” at the last possible second, Jonas realized what exactly he’d been about to agree with and cut himself off with a scowl, ruining Louis’ fun. “You don’t look as holy as I expected. Where’s your Bible, then?”
“I left it at home with my whips and fluffy handcuffs,” Louis deadpanned, “Harry and I take ‘Bible Bashing’ very seriously, you know. You should hear how he squeals when I smack him with the flat of my Holy Book and make him promise to abide by the laws of Jesus. Kinky little bitch.” He fondly squeezed Harry’s shoulders and raised his eyebrows suggestively, punctuating it with a little smirk.
He also sent a silent apology flying skywards for the blasphemy, hoping that God had a sense of humour and wouldn’t mind. Still tucked under his arm, Harry was shaking with the effort of not laughing, biting his sore lip so hard that Louis was afraid it might bleed again, and he decided that even if this came to a fight and he lost, at least he’d made Harry laugh, and that was a victory in itself.
The amassed crowd wore a variety of expressions, from horror to amusement to confusion. Louis would have loved to sit gleefully admiring them all, seeing the effect that his little statement had had, but he wanted to get Harry past them, so he started walking purposefully towards them, pulling Harry with him.
Some of them scattered, but a great deal of them stood their ground. Louis looked up at Jonas, who looked pretty immovable, and said “Excuse me,” with such ferocity that he might as well have shouted swearwords in his face. The guy looked taken aback. Louis thought that Harry looked pretty surprised as well.
“Just hold on a minute. Where do you think you’re going?”
“Well, wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Yeah, I would, actually.”
“That’s a shame, since it’s none of your concern.”
“Hmm. Maybe not. But you know what is my concern?” Jonas leaned forwards, breathing out a gust of mint chewing gum and that rusty, bitter blood smell, and sneered, “what sort of church boy doesn’t even go to church?”
Flabbergasted, Louis stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Looking incredibly pleased with himself, the battered boy straightened up. “I went to wait outside the church last Sunday. Heard you’d be there. Except I waited and I waited, and you weren’t there. Skiving off, huh?”
Louis’ first instinct was to make up some excuse as to why he hadn’t been there, although that seemed a bit pathetic and he didn’t have to justify himself to this guy especially since he had been a regular churchgoer and toothless Jonas had probably never set foot over the threshold of a church in his life and probably couldn’t tell the difference between an altar and a pew if his life depended on it – but in the end he just folded his arms and scowled.
“Except I asked around. Talked to a couple of people. And apparently they haven’t seen you hanging out at the church in weeks. They were worried, actually, your mother apparently wasn’t very keen to tell them where you’d gone. I wonder why that is? Wonder why she’s so ashamed of her gay son.”
As if he were a cooking hob and someone had just switched on the gas, Louis felt his anger spark, ignite, and slowly begin kindling into a burn. It licked at his stomach lining, coiled around his intestines, crept through his blood and then began dancing in the tips of his ears, which were probably turning red. Underneath his arm, he could feel Harry stiffening, see his expression turning hostile from his peripheral vision and knew that Harry was, if anything, even more furious than he was, and strangely that helped to anchor him. If he lost it and started yelling at this guy, then so would Harry, and Louis didn’t want him upset any more today. He forced his anger back, swallowing it like scalding water that seared every cell of his body on the way down.
“She can be as ashamed as she likes,” Louis told him. “I don’t care. And I don’t have to go to church to be devout and to care about god, and I don’t have to stand here talking to you fuckwits about it, either. Come on, Harry.”
He pulled Harry ahead of him, ignoring the slight resistance as Harry hung back, clearly still unwilling to let the comments slide. Silently pleading with him to just leave it, that the two of them could just walk out now and leave it at that, Louis dug his fingers into Harry’s shoulder and tried desperately to convey how much he wanted them to just rise above all of this and walk away, and maybe it was because he was practically burrowing holes in Harry’s skin with his fingertips, maybe it was because Harry knew him so well or maybe Harry too decided that it wasn’t worth kicking up another fuss – but whatever the reason, he became pliant, obediently allowing Louis to lead him away.
A cloud of catcalls and mockery floated after them, trying to poison them with anger, but Louis took a deep breath and ignored it. He heard the soft sound of Harry swallowing, felt the cold chill of the metal clasp of one of his bracelets brushing against Louis’ hip as his large hand rested on his waist, the material of his borrowed hoodie riding up slightly to expose a silver of golden brown skin.
“Nice hoodie,” Harry said softly. “Didn’t know you were into Death Cab.”
Louis looked sheepishly down at the peeling insignia which, now he knew what to look for, was just about legible as reading “Death Cab For Cutie” in shabby yellow block lettering. “Yeah. I just sort of threw it on. I figured it was one-up from showing up in a hairnet and stripey apron.”
“FAG!”
Harry’s cheeks pinked, but he kept his composure as he commented quietly, “In no way do I resemble a cigarette.”
“Sure you do, babe. You’re hot, aren’t you?”
A little smile flickered across Harry’s face.
“Wanker!”
They exchanged glances.
Louis shrugged. “Can’t deny that.” They both giggled.
“Gay emo tosser!”
“I’m a punk!” Harry bellowed over his shoulder, “it’s a completely different subculture!”
Casting him a disapproving look, Louis reprimanded him sternly, “Don’t confer with the ignoramuses, Harry, it only gives them odd ideas that they’ve secured some sort of victory.”
“Sorry.”
They walked a little further, still being hurled abuse, and Louis heartily wished he could turn around and give them all the finger, but Harry was tucked into his side and thus far having the moral high ground was their victory, and he knew that the best way to aggravate them was by not responding, so he said and did nothing, and it felt far more satisfying than you might imagine.
After a particularly graphic comment directed at Harry which described him as being something along the lines of a ‘filthy cocksucker’, or something equally charming of that sort, Harry commented with some amusement, “For such a group of insistently heterosexual teenage boys, they do seem rather preoccupied with the great and bountiful adventures of my penis.”
“Of course they do. As is the case with most insistently heterosexual teenage boys, they hide behind a whole lot of swagger and homophobia whilst secretly they get off on it, and hide in their rooms watching gay porn into the small hours of the night and thinking that of course they hate gays in any shape or form, but they are perfectly at their disposure to abuse them because nobody knows that they would really like to watch us all have sex.”
“Speaking from personal experience, are we?”
“Of course not. I was far too God-fearing – and mother-fearing – to watch porn. And I have my dignity. However, my dignity is a long-forgotten thing, tattered and broken as it was, and I don’t think God will so much mind my watching porn, seeing as I’ve already partaken in similar activities already. Is it any good?”
“Depends,” Harry admitted, “I haven’t had cause to watch any of late, maybe that would be a good rainy-day activity next time we’re at home. I have a few old favourites that are absolute compulsory viewing, by the way, there’s a couple of things we really must try.” He said all of this in such an earnest fashion that he might as well have been recommending they sample some form of pie recipe than try out some new sex positions learnt from gay pornography, and Louis burst out laughing.
“I love you,” he said, shaking his head, eyes dancing with merriment like waves breaking against rocks on the sea bed, sparkling like sunlight on the water.
“I love you too. Now, how about we give these raging closeted gay sex aficionados a little something to say thank you for the lovely greeting they gave us?” He stage-whispered, “Make out with me, it’s for science. I want to see how many of them get hard.”
“Oh, well, if it’s for scientific purposes,” Louis said with the kind of smile you don’t often see outside of weddings, maternity wings or pictures of old couples who look at each other with so much love in their eyes that it makes onlookers’ chests ache to look, and he grabbed Harry by the collar of his torn white shirt and pulled him down to his height and kissed him with a complete lack of regard for his swollen mouth, because his anger was still hot and heavy in his cheeks, stomach and chest and he needed an outlet, and this was as good an outlet as any.
It wasn’t one of their better kisses, because Harry’s mouth was sore so his technique was messy and sloppy, and Louis was angry and distracted, so his own skill was rather diminished. And for the first few moments or so, before the gentle heat of Harry’s lips took over, whilst Louis could still taste that metallic copper tang on his boyfriend’s mouth from where he had bled, and whilst he still had it firmly in mind that this kiss was intended largely just to piss off the people who were watching them, it wasn’t particularly enjoyable. It was sullied by the fact that this was for the most part a display of affection intended simply to offend. But then Harry sighed into Louis’ mouth and breathed coolness into him, extinguishing the flames inside him, and his large hands found Louis’ waist and settled there, and Louis pressed his warm forehead against Harry’s colder one and melded into his touch, and then the kiss was just them. Just the icy electric zing of Harry’s lip ring on Louis’ mouth, brushing against the tip of his tongue. Just the steady pressure of familiar hands holding him steady as he stood on his toes. Just the tickle of curly hair on his face and the heat where their bodies were pressed together and oh, if they were alone in a house with a nice comfortable bed and not standing battered and simmering with anger in a schoolyard being watched by a horde of disgusted bullies, the things they would have done. The things this would have continued into.
But Louis wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of hearing the little soft moans Harry made just for him, gasping against the shell of his ear like each sound was a secret. He didn’t want them to look at how Harry’s skin, white and soft like clouds, became interspersed with splashes of cherry red on his cheeks. He hated the thought of them watching as Harry’s long fingers dipped underneath his clothes and stroked his skin, worshipping every part of him with his slender hands. Those things were just for him, and nobody else was allowed to see them.
So he broke the kiss with a little pleased sound, and stayed on his toes to meet Harry’s gaze, tired but warm with adoration, and shining like cut glass in candlelight, which gave him the idea that he was going to run Harry a bath with candles later, and maybe they’d share it, if they could cram Harry’s long body and Louis’ lithe one into the quite small bath at Harry’s house. Then he’d wash Harry’s hair for him, because he liked that, and he made the most pleasing purring noises when Louis rubbed his scalp just right to get all the shampoo bubbles out, and Louis liked to tease him about how wrinkly his fingertips got when he’d been in the bath long enough. Baths were an excellent thing to have immediately before or after having sex, to clean up and relax afterwards, or to prepare so that you looked and smelled wonderful just before, so there was that, too. Anyway, Louis gave Harry a tug and Harry came with him, and finally there was silence as they sauntered out of the gates hand in hand, with the people who had been yelling comments finally silenced, slack-jawed and open mouthed and, for once, completely lost for ignorant words.
~*~
But there was one last thing which Louis found was bothering him.
He didn’t really like to bring it up, not after the lovely evening they’d had. He’d given Harry a blow job in the shower, whilst they both struggled to stay quiet because Anne and Robin were just downstairs, and Harry was often very vocal. Then they had a bath afterwards to clean up, and now Harry was lying sleepily and contentedly on the bed with his head resting in Louis’ cross-legged lap, as Louis stroked his silky, freshly washed hair and enjoyed the slide of soft curls between his fingers. But something was bothering him, like an unscratched itch; a splinter buried just beneath the skin, and Louis couldn’t seem to get it out of my head.
“Maybe he’s right,” he said eventually. He’d meant to say it to himself, but somehow it slipped out, and Harry’s eyes opened and his head tilted back as he looked up at Louis, irises clouded with tired happiness.
“Mm?” His deep voice was heavy, fond and exhausted. Louis wished he hadn’t brought it up, knew that it was just going to upset them both, but Harry always knew how to make him feel better, and he so desperately needed reassurance.
“Jonas. Maybe he was right.”
Harry’s forehead wrinkled. “Baby, that guy’s never been right in his life. Every word that leaves his mouth is automatically wrong just because he’s said it. What exactly is it that you seem to think he has actually managed to be right about?”
Louis swallowed. “I’m not a good Christian.”
Immediately, Harry sat up, wrenching his head out of Louis’ hands which must have hurt, bearing in mind how thickly intertwined Louis’ fingers were in his hair. Turning around, he said pleadingly, “Please. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t do it to me. You know God doesn’t give a damn about who you fall in love with, you know that. I’m going to kill that Jonas,” he seethed, “you know God doesn’t care! Don’t you listen to that guy. Don’t you dare. Please don’t let him change your mind about this. Please.”
He looked like he might cry, and Louis was horrified. “Not about that! How stupid do you think I am?”
Harry looked so relieved that he almost looked like he’d been in horrible pain that had only just gone away. “Oh. Well. If you’re listening to anything he’s said then you’re pretty stupid, no offence, but go on. What’s up.” His fingers brushed the underside of Louis’ jaw, and Louis leaned into his hand, eyelids fluttering closed.
“What sort of Christian am I if I don’t go to church?” he asked miserably.
“Louis, plenty of Christians don’t go to church. Some of them can’t, because of mobility issues and stuff.We can’t. That doesn’t make you a bad Christian.”
“It does. I could go to church, I just won’t, because despite all the times I’ve insisted that I don’t care what people think of me anymore and I’ll do what I like, I do care. I hate being given snide comments and sideways glances, I’m afraid of what my mother would say if I turned up at church, and of all the things that everyone else would say, because she’s probably been gossiping about me – or if she hasn’t, then that’s even worse, because they will assume a lot of awful things and hate me all the more. I’m scared, Harry. We promised each other we’d stop being scared. I don’t like letting you down. But I’m scared about what people will think. What they’ll say.”
“Don’t be scared.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Don’t.” Harry looked him in the eyes. “Louis. Please. I know it’s hard. I know it’s scary feeling like people hate who you are, and even scarier knowing that they do. But I’m here. Always. Please don’t be scared.”
“The worst part is that I want to be a good Christian. I know I’m not a bad person. But I’m becoming a bad person because I’m scared to do the right thing. I’m the worst kind of bad person, the kind with good intentions who doesn’t have the guts.”
“You’re not a bad person!” Harry’s hand jumped to his hair, ruffling it into a mess. He swallowed. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“Huh?”
“To church.”
“You? Go to church?”
“If you want me to.”
“But…you hate church.”
“I don’t hate church in itself, I hate all the judgemental bastards who go there. But I don’t care about that. Because you’re right, it’s hard. It’s so, so hard. But you know what makes it easier? It’s when someone else is there to hold your hand. We proved that earlier. Because with all those people saying that stuff, and the state I was in, I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Louis gave Harry a watery smile and tried to pretend he wasn’t about to cry.
“This is important,” Harry told him, “because it matters to you. That makes it the most important thing in the world right now. I’d do anything for you. So. I’m gonna ask you again. Do you want me to come with you?”
“I feel like a baby,” mumbled Louis. “Can’t do anything without holding your hand. That’s a reflection on me, not you. But I feel like I’m pathetic because I’m only ever strong when you’re with me.”
“That’s not a bad thing. Togetherness is never a bad thing. I guess we’re like two halves, who function separately but work best together; we’re just lucky to have found the missing piece. But that’s not true, Louis. What about when you found your sister in the club that time, and got her away from those girls? I wasn’t there, then. When your mother was screaming at you and you told her you’d chosen the person who was going to let you be who you are, I was there, but that was all you. You only think you need me to make you strong, Louis. That’s your fatal flaw.”
“I wish I was more like you.” Louis looked down at the ground. “You…can be strong by yourself. You don’t feel like you need anyone else to help you stand up for yourself.”
Harry smiled wistfully. “That’s funny, because I wish I was more like you. I wish I hadn’t spent so longhaving to be strong by myself.”
Silence fell. They both watched each other, Louis’ eyes flickering over Harry’s pale skin and dark tattoos, the splashes of colour dancing across the white like paint splodges on white paper. Taking in his tangle of rich mahogany curls that spiralled around his head like a halo, un-brushed and uncontrollable. His swollen mouth, a red blot on his face with a little silver flash in the corner. Leaf green eyes, no longer tired but dreamy, faraway, lost in memories of other things.
All Harry saw was the boy sat opposite him. Caramel fringe falling over his forehead. Two spheres of azure twinkling in his lightly tanned face. Mouth serious, lips full, and Harry wanted to bring a smile to them. Pointed pixie chin, cheekbones to die for, the sort of face Michelangelo might have sculpted out of marble, but ten times more beautiful – and of course, Louis didn’t have such a tiny dick as his statues tended to. That thought brought a smile dancing across Harry’s face like a ray of sunshine flickering through a dark room, and Louis smiled back, basking in the warmth of Harry’s sudden happiness.
“Should we hug to break the tension?” Louis asked after a long pause.
“Okay,” Harry agreed, and then he lurched forwards and buried his face in Louis’ neck, inhaling the smell of shared shampoo and of Louis’ skin and deodorant and that cake and biscuit smell that still clung to him. Louis put both hands on his back, closed his eyes, smiled contentedly at no one in particular. It was a nice moment – quiet, and all theirs, and after all the talking, all they really needed to say was in that hug.
“I’ll always be there for you, Louis,” Harry whispered.
Louis believed that he would. That was more important than believing that maybe people were going to hate him. That was more important than anything.
He didn’t say this out loud, but he hugged Harry even harder and hoped that he already knew.