Chapter Eight:
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“What?” asked Harry anxiously, instantly looking down at himself. “What did I do?”
Raising an eyebrow, Louis looked him up and down, scrutinizing him. Harry was wearing black jeans, an enormous black hoodie that swallowed his entire, skinny body within its cavernous depths, a black beanie, and grubby black Converse sneakers. He looked like he was dressed as a nun, except for the flowing white headdress like a thick, linen version of a wedding veil (although he seemed to have chosen a beanie in replacement of it). In fact, the hugely loose hoodie that fell almost to his knees and almost certainly didn’t belong to him gave Louis the rather amusing impression that he was wearing a giant black chastity gown, perhaps with electric fences concealed beneath the swathes of billowing material, ready to zap Louis’ wandering fingers if they strayed too closely to the hem of the hoodie.
“Is that a hoodie or a tent?” Louis asked a little unkindly.
Harry flushed. “Shut up! I’m here, aren’t I? That’s what you wanted; that’s what you’ve been badgering me about for the past week. If you’re going to insult me, then maybe I should just leave.” He said it a little huffily, but made no move to turn on Louis and storm off like he was threatening to.
“Harry, we’re supposed to be sunbathing. By the pool. In the first sign of glorious sunshine that this country has produced in months, the first glimpse of summer we’ve had so far this year, we were supposed to be relaxing by the pool, and here you are, clothed from head to toe in black looking like a sloppily dressed ninja! You’re going to fry inside all of that! Black fabric absorbs heat; you’re going to absolutely roast.”
“My problem, not yours. Anyway, who said anything about the pool? What happened to our quiet little drink in the bar?” demanded Harry.
Louis snorted fondly. “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, Harry – the bar isn’t open yet. So for the moment, the pool is here, and so are we. It makes sense.” Eyeing him up and down, Louis continued pleadingly, “at least lose the beanie?”
“No!” Defensively, Harry backed away a little, one hand flying up to protect the beanie that was nestling on top of his head, his curls jammed haphazardly underneath it. “The beanie stays. I’m having a bad hair day. Anyway, why is it so important? Why should I take it off?”
Stepping closer to him, Louis gave him a pitying look. “Please. You look like an Eskimo. In fact, that hat so closely resembles an egg cosy that I won’t be surprised when you become a boiled egg underneath all of those clothes – it’ll be totally in character. I’m begging you, take off the beanie? For me?” His eyes suddenly became very large and almost illegally persuasive.
“Not for anybody,” insisted Harry.
There was a long and challenging pause, during which Harry folded his arms in a display of defiance and Louis looked him up and down, appraising him, apparently re-evaluating his opinion of the boy. They stared each other down for a few seconds – then Louis lunged forwards, playfully snatched the beanie off his head so that brown curls exploded in a halo of chocolate brown around Harry’s head, and then screwed up the little black woollen hat into a tight ball and threw it as far as he could, aiming at a group of children splashing around in the pool. It landed with a plop in the water beside them and began sinking immediately, like some kind of dead animal. Squealing, one of little girls snatched the hat and started crowing over her new plaything, and before long they were all squabbling over it, tugging furiously at Harry’s poor beanie and squawking at each other in protest.
Horrified, Harry gawped at the seven children who were suddenly having a screaming fight over his beanie. “Louis! I can’t believe you just did that! That’s my hat!” he cried indignantly.
Slyly, Louis regarded him with faint amusement, one eyebrow raised. “Well, I’m sure they’d give it back to you, if you want to go over and tell them that.” The enormous grin on his face clearly stated that he thought the exact opposite, and sadly, he was completely right.
“I can’t go over there!” Even the thought made him feel almost faint with horror; if there was one thing that terrified him more than people in general, it was little kids. Especially loud, noisy ones who appeared ready to start bashing each other in order to win the prize of Harry’s rather soggy, mutilated hat.
“Well, if you really want your hat back that badly, I suppose you’ll have to take the risk, won’t you? Otherwise, might I suggest that you hurry up? There’s not going to be any sun loungers yet if we hang about mourning your beanie all day. Come on!” Grabbing Harry’s baggy sleeve, Louis gave him a tug and started pulling him towards the sun lounger with a huge grin on his face.
“Louuuu,” whined Harry as he was dragged unceremoniously along the poolside, stumbling and struggling to keep up, “this is a really bad idea. I don’t think I should have come; you won’t want me hanging around anyway. In fact, I really don’t think I should be here, I should go –”
“Nonsense,” Louis cried briskly as they came to a stop beside a single free sun-lounger that had been crammed into a shaded corner away from all the others (one which, unbeknown to Harry, he had relocated earlier in the afternoon so that the other boy would have somewhere to sit) “we had a deal and I refuse to let you go back on it. Anyway, it most definitely is not a bad idea. My ideas are never bad. Ever.” He plonked Harry down on the sun lounger and was able to enjoy a few moments of Harry’s unrestrained shock before the younger boy managed to wrest some form of control over his expression.
Staring up at him, Harry stammered, “I’m not sure about this, Lou, I really don’t –” he paused. “Hang on, why are we sat over here? Nobody else is over here.”
Louis smiled patiently. “That was sort of the idea.” More to the point; when did you start calling me ‘Lou’?He would never admit to anyone how much he enjoyed the sound of the endearment falling so naturally from Harry’s perfect pink lips. “You don’t like people, remember? I figured I’d shift us out of the way.”
Harry flushed with pleasure that Louis had remembered and been so considerate as to accommodate for his social anxiety. “Oh. Thank you.” There was a pause, and then he frowned slightly and said, “there’s only one sun-lounger.”
Already beginning to shrug out of his tight blue shirt, Louis raised an eyebrow at him as he hurled the garment to the floor, ignoring the blush that exploded across Harry’s pale cheeks. “Lazing around in the sun all day isn’t my idea of fun, thank you very much. You can lurk under your sun umbrella and try not to get a tan to your heart’s content; I’m going to be enjoying the pool.” Kicking off his shorts and leaving them in a heap on the floor, along with his shirt, Louis revealed himself to be wearing nothing more than a pair of swimming trunks, and he was visibly amused by Harry’s evident shock.
“We were supposed to be hanging out,” Harry reminded him almost accusingly, looking a little sulky. His sinfully attractive lips were pushed out into a pout. “That was the deal.”
“We are hanging out. I get to mess about in the pool. You get to sulk in the shade and play out the whole angsty vampire role you’ve got going on. Everybody’s happy.” Grinning, Louis waved coyly at him, a flutter of his fingers, and then turned, gave a little run up, and dive-bombed into the pool, splashing water everywhere so that a little gaggle of teenage girls (the same little gaggle of girls, as a matter of fact, who had been stalking him for days) screeched and got rather soaked, and began wailing over their suddenly rather damp hair and dramatically streaked make-up that Louis had utterly destroyed by showering them in water, when previously they had been standing around waist-deep in the shallow end, showing off their bikini-clad bodies and doing no swimming whatsoever. He felt a little stab of vindictive pleasure at the jibe, and got to enjoy the sound of Harry’s gorgeous laugh rippling across the pool in response to their screams.
Shaking his wet hair like a dog, Louis submerged himself in water once again and emerged after a few seconds, grinning massively at the visible delight on Harry’s face and quickly swimming over to the edge. Leaning over the side of the pool with his arms folded, he called, “Care to join me?”
The look of abject horror on Harry’s face said it all. Throwing his head back and laughing, Louis pushed off from the side and spent the next couple of minutes messing around. Mainly for the purpose of Harry’s entertainment, he did a couple of handstands, demonstrated several different forms of swimming strokes (including the doggy paddle, much to Harry’s amusement) and then had Harry measure his lung capacity by seeing how long he could hold his breath for. After that, he headed for the deepest end of the pool and started doing dives off the side, while Harry applauded and rated each one a ten, even the one where Louis slipped and fell in sideways, displacing what looked like half the water in the pool with the enormous splash he created. (Suffice to say that Harry rated that one a ten simply because it sent him into convulsions of uncontrollable laughter, which Louis counted as a personal victory.)
He was having a great time, in fact, when he came up for air after having done a rather dramatic impression of a whale solely for Harry’s amusement, only to almost end up vanishing back underneath the surface and choking on chlorine-filled water when he spotted Stan and Zayn swanning in wearing swimming trunks and nothing else, and Stan’s eyes homed in on him almost instantly.
They both took several rather harsh intakes of breath as they set eyes on each other, but the moment Louis had sucked that breath inwards he found it being snatched away from him again in shock. Staring across the waters at each other, he found himself struggling not to feel unnerved by the intensity of his best friend’s gaze. Louis forgot to keep treading water and suddenly found himself under it, with water over his head and all around him, pouring inside his mouth and burning his lungs with the harsh, icy, bitter chemical taste of it. Frantically splashing and kicking, he struggled to right himself, and felt his body tipping sideways. Around that moment, he lost track of which way was up, and started flailing desperately in an attempt to find the surface. His chest was beginning to ache, and water stung his eyes, his vision blurred.
One of his hands broke the surface of the water, and he thankfully kicked up for the surface, his head bursting through the waves as he coughed and spluttered, spitting out what felt like half of the pool and trying not to choke on it.
“Are you all right, Lou?”
Harry was leaning so far over the edge that it was surprising he didn’t topple in, his knuckles white as he clung to the poolside, eyes wide as he stared at Louis, who hastily shoved his hair out of his eyes and forced a very wobbly, watery-eyed smile. Sneaking a glance at Stan, who was staring wide-eyed at them, Louis was suddenly very aware of the rather minimal distance between his and Harry’s faces; their noses were about an inch away from touching, if that.
The word ‘slut!’ washed across Louis like a slap in the face. Cheeks burning, he ducked his head, wondering whether Stan was stood watching him and thinking exactly that. Determined not to give Stan the wrong idea, maybe even to prove his innocence, he moved back a little, further away from Harry, and nodded.
“I’m okay. I just drunk half the pool, that’s all. It wasn’t very nice, but I’ll live.” He grinned.
Leaning over even further so that he wobbled even more precariously on the edge, Harry anxiously asked, “Are you sure? You don’t look so good.”
“Nah, I’m fine. You can go and sit back down if you want –”
“Louis!”
Stan was waving frantically at him from where he and Zayn stood, and as Louis watched, he leapt manically up and down and his waving intensified. As Louis blinked at him, Stan started hurrying over towards him with Zayn hot on his heels, and Harry instantly shrank back, visibly daunted by the appearance of Louis’ friends.
“Louis…” he said warily.
Frowning, Louis started gesturing violently for Stan to leave, but either he ignored the gesture or didn’t notice it, because he just kept coming forwards with a great deal of enthusiasm. Wide-eyed, Harry started shuffling backwards, visibly anxious, his lanky frame starting to shake a little bit as if he was beginning to have some kind of panic attack.
“Louis, please, I can’t deal with this, I really can’t, please, don’t make me do this, I –”
“No, no, I didn’t know he was coming! Seriously, Harry, I had no idea –” Stan, you twat, you’re about to ruin the one chance I have to impress the cutest guy I’ve ever met in my life who has only just consented to hang out with me! Quickly glancing around, Louis swore under his breath, then met Harry’s panicked gaze and demanded, “do you have your phone on you?”
“N-no, but –”
“Good,” Louis said, and for the second time since he’d met Harry Styles, he grabbed him by the front of his hoodie and hauled him into the pool with a colossal splash.
It wasn’t the warmest pool Harry had ever been unceremoniously dragged into, and his clothes weighed him down so that he would have sunk if Louis hadn’t grabbed hold of him, making him squeak in shock as the curls were shocked out of his hair, which ended up falling past his shoulders and hiding his eyes. Dripping wet, he shook it out of his eyes similarly to the way Louis had, gasped for breath and then fixed Louis with an abject glare. Water filled his enormous, billowing hoodie, and Harry struggled to keep afloat with all of the jet black material swishing around him in the water.
“You’re beginning to make a habit of this; consider me distinctly unimpressed,” Harry growled.
Edging closer to him, Louis shoved back several sopping wet layers of thick hair so he could get to the other boy’s ear, and whispered softly, “You needed an escape route; I gave you one. Now when I give the word, we’re going to duck underneath the water, swim to the other side, and make a run for it before they can catch us. Okay?”
Harry frowned at him in confusion. “I don’t get it. They’re your friends! I mean, I have issues with strangers sure, but you don’t have to run away from them.” Not that he would ever admit it, but he was flattered by the thought that Louis was so eager to spend time with him that he would run away from his friends and risk upsetting them just so that Harry wouldn’t leave.
Wrinkling his nose, Louis pulled a face. “Friends are overrated. And I don’t feel much like talking to them at the moment. We’ve not been getting on lately. Anyway, I’d rather make a ninja-like escape from my irritating friends with you than hang around and listen to Stan talk about how many times he got laid, if you know what I mean.” He grinned, and it was dazzling.
Harry’s answering grin was so happy and achingly beautiful that it made Louis lose his focus for a moment or so; he felt his jaw go slack with awe and stared blatantly at Harry for a few seconds like a total idiot. Once he’d somewhat regained his composure, he forgot to let Harry know that he was about to dive, and quickly ducked underneath the water anyway, leaving the younger boy treading water on the surface.
It didn’t take Harry long to catch him up; seconds later, he too was safely immersed in cool water and was following Louis as he cut swiftly through the water like some kind of swimming professional. Imitating Louis, he manoeuvred neatly around the various other swimming tourists, navigating around slender legs and fat stomachs and podgy little babies on floats, dodging them all with prowess that surprised himself, and not in the least bit left behind as he had expected to be. It helped that every so often Louis would stop and turn around to make sure that he wasn’t being left behind, which Harry appreciated, but he was fairly confident that he could have kept up anyway.
His only trouble came in the form of a pair of dark blue swimming trunks which came flying at him out of the blue when he was about halfway across the pool, appearing seemingly from nowhere. To his shock, Harry found himself being hit in the face by them, which slowed him up a bit, not to mention almost giving him a heart attack. Bewildered, he stopped dead and examined the trunks, feeling several surprised bubbles burst out of his mouth as he pinched them between his thumb and forefinger, squinting at them through the water. He diverted his gaze to Louis, who was apparently torn between hilarity and mortification, one hand covering his mouth as he shook with barely restrained laughter, looking absolutely horrified as he stared at the swimming trunks in Harry’s hand.
From all of those things, Harry deduced that they were Louis’ swimming trunks.
He almost burst out laughing himself; in fact, it was only the risk of death by chlorine ingestion that stopped him from falling to the bottom of the pool in convulsions of laughter at Louis’ embarrassed expression. The next course of action, of course, was for Louis to accept his trunks and attempt to put them back on – but when they were filled with water, and floating around in his hands, he could barely get near them, let alone slide his legs into them. The one time he was vaguely successful, he stuffed two of his legs down one leg hole and had to kick them off before he sunk to the bottom of the pool.
In the end, Louis shrugged in disgust and started swimming towards the other side again, dragging his trunks behind him like a giant parachute while Harry followed and attempted not to catch side of Louis’ bare backside as he swam after him. He was still struggling not to cry with laughter.
They both exploded out of the water at the other end of the pool, laughing at the shock on the faces of the parents and toddlers around them as they emerged, Harry fully clothed and Louis wearing – well, not very much. Exploding with laughter, Harry hurriedly stripped off his enormous, sopping wet hoodie and shoved it over Louis’ head – it was long enough to almost be a robe, hanging way past his thighs, covering him so that all of sudden Louis was insanely glad that Harry had decided to wear an enormously baggy item of clothing that day. Giggling, Harry tugged on one dripping wet sleeve, and the two of them made a dash for the exit, leaving Stan and Zayn to confusedly scan the whole pool in search of them with no results.
~*~
Harry lay flat on his bed with his eyes closed, struggling to keep a smile off his face; the corners of his lips were being played with, twitching upwards every few seconds, courtesy of the memories darting through his head which had him struggling to keep a straight face, and would probably continue to do so for days to come, if not weeks.
People in general exhausted him, and Louis was no exception to that rule. He always had to take a couple of hours to recharge, at least; he needed some time to himself to relax and get his energy back, otherwise he felt exhausted, grumpy and overcrowded, none of which were a particularly good combination. So after the two of them had been chased out of the hotel lobby and given a stern lecture by the hotel manager about indecent exposure (although it perhaps ought to be noted that he rather hastily backed off once Harry managed to knock some of his dripping wet hair out of his eyes and became vaguely recognizable as the rich stepson of one of the hotel’s rather richer and more generous patrons) and had found their way back to Louis’ hotel room, where he had put some actual clothes on and they had watched rubbish daytime TV for about an hour in companionable silence, Harry was pretty much ready to drop even though they’d barely done anything, and hardly exerted themselves. Company other than his own drained him more quickly than any form of exercise.
Apart from a slightly wistful puppy-eyed expression, Louis had made surprisingly few objections when Harry had chosen to leave; in fact, he’d seemed positively cheerful, probably delighted with being able to hang out with the younger boy for even the limited time he’d had. It was a sentiment that Harry shared – which was why he was now lying in his hotel room grinning at the ceiling like a total idiot, and not really caring about how stupid it was.
He had a friend! They’d had fun together! For most people, this would seem inconsequential, trivial almost, but to Harry it was almost unknown. People didn’t like him, and yet an attractive, hilarious, ridiculously attractive madman actually wanted to be with him. He was still struggling to get his head around it, but it was an amazing feeling. One of the more surprising things was that he wanted to be with Louis, too. It was completely bad. After only an hour or so of alone time, he was feeling completely invigorated – something which was incredibly unusual; it usually took him at least three hours and half a packet of biscuits before he was feeling fit for anything other than collapsing onto the bed and listening to The Script on repeat and trying to remember how not to fall asleep immediately from pure exhaustion. Actually, he felt a strange urge to go bounding out of the room in search of Louis, but he didn’t want to seem annoying, so he lay perfectly still thinking over the day’s events instead.
There wasn’t much to think over, in all fairness, but Harry managed to find quite a few little details to go over and over in his mind – the way Louis’ blue eyes sparkled when he laughed, and the way several strands of wet hair fell sexily over his forehead when he resurfaced from beneath the water. The muscles of his back that Harry had taken great pleasure in examining whenever Louis turned around. The crinkles around his eyes whenever he laughed. He didn’t remember ever noticing things like this about anyone else before in his life; usually all he tended to notice about people was how loud their voices were and how pointless their conversations were. It was surprising to find that he was discovering these things about someone, and how happy it made him feel to think of them.
The hotel phone beside his bed started ringing, and he was so lost in thought that he absentmindedly reached out, picked it up and answered it without realizing what he was doing. Only once he could feel the cool plastic on his cheek did he realize what he’d just done, and he froze in horror; answering phones was one of the many things that he absolutely hated. In fact, he scarcely ever did it, and now his chest was tight as he gripped the plastic so hard that he was surprised it didn’t buckle.
“He-hello?” he choked huskily, amazed that he’d even managed to force out the few tiny sounds that he’d just made. He hadn’t expected them to be coherent.
“Harrrrrrrrrrry…” slurred a familiar soft voice on the other end, and Harry struggled not to drop the phone in shock – seconds later, he was trying valiantly not to laugh at the ridiculous drunken tones of Louis’ voice.
“I’m sure you’re an alcoholic, you know,” he said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. “You’re drunk off your face right now; I’m not stupid. What have you been drinking, bleach? It’s ridiculous; every time I speak to you, you’re completely and totally wasted.”
“Not every time,” Louis protested, and Harry could almost imagine the little smile on his face as he deliberately slurred his words a little bit more. “Just…nine times out of ten.”
Fondly, Harry snorted and lay back on his bed again, the cord from the phone trailing from the bedside cabinet to where he lounged on top of the duvet, rolling his eyes and fighting a grin. “Idiot. Come on then, what do you want? Why have you called me at this drunken hour? What do you want from me? And before you even start, there are a few things which I would like to say ‘no’ to straight away: no orgies, no belly dancers, no alcohol – wait, hang on, more to the point, where the hell did you get my number?”
“I managed to scoot behind the desk and write it on my arm while Iris was in the bar last night. And I called you because I dropped my phone and cracked the screen, and I can’t scroll up or down, and the only numbers on my contacts that I can see past the cracks are yours and the pizza place down the road. And this isn’t a pizza situation, Harry. This isn’t a pizza situation.”
Struggling not to laugh at the sheer seriousness of Louis’ tone, Harry asked amusedly, “What kind of situation is it, then? Hot dogs? Tacos? Burger and extra fries with a large strawberry milkshake?”
“Ladder.”
“Ladder?” Harry frowned. Drunken Louis was even weirder than the normal Louis, something which he hadn’t actually believed to be possible. Completely confused, Harry wondered whether Louis might be suffering from undiagnosed mental problems. Ladder? He was baffled.
“That’s what I said.”
“Why do you need a ladder?”
There was an embarrassed pause. “I need it to get down.”
“Why, where are you? You’re not on my balcony again, are you?”
“I’m up a tree.”
“You’re up a tree?”
“Do you have hearing problems? Or do you just have some kind of irrepressible urge to repeat everything I say? Yes, I’m up a tree. A large one.”
“How on earth did you get up there?”
“By climbing.”
Amusement colouring his down, Harry teasingly suggested, “Then climb down.”
Louis growled. “I’m not in the mood for your games, Styles. I’m stuck up a tree. You don’t have to find it so bloody funny! Call the fire brigade, the FBI and my mother, in that precise order, and then come and bring me a ladder. And keep your voice down, will you? I don’t want Stan knowing that I got stuck up a tree.”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Harry spluttered, “I’m sure he woodn’t mind.” Then he started rolling around on the bed in convulsions of laughter, bright pink in the face.
Again, Louis made a disgruntled sound. “Oh, hilarious. You should be a comedian. Come and get me down, you twat!”
“I’m a twat? You’re the one who managed to get stuck up a tree! God, this is brilliant. This is comedy gold. Someone call the paparazzi – Louis Tomlinson got stuck up a tree! If you were famous, the press would have a field day.”
“Yeah, well, if I was famous I’d have made my body guard throw you out of the window by now. Please, Harry. I don’t have any intention of staying up here all night, and it’s absolutely freezing. Don’t just leave me up here!” Not for the first time, Louis was pleading with him, and it felt so, so good.
Shaking his head, Harry sat up with an enormous grin spreading uncontrollably across his face, fighting a fit of helpless schoolgirl-type giggles. “I’ll come,” he promised. “Hang in there.” Then he snorted with laughter again.
“I hate you with a burning passion that could singlehandedly ignite the fires of hell,” Louis said mildly.
“I know you do.” Swinging his legs off the bed and stuffing his feet into a pair of unlaced Supras, Harry told him, “stay right there, okay? I’ll be there in two. Well, two plus the amount of time it takes me to find a ladder. Promise me you won’t fall out of the tree before I get there?”
“Haha, funny. You’re a real joker today, you know that? I don’t like it.”
“I’m being serious! Don’t fall, all right? Because if you do, I’ll make you wish you were never born, do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal,” grumbled Louis. “I’ll do my best; I’m making no promises. But if I do fall, make sure they play decent music at my funeral.”
“Will do. See you there.”
Hanging up, Harry snatched up his room key and despite only being dressed in sweatpants and a baggy grey shirt, he jogged out of the room with the laces of his white Supras trailing on the floor so that he was at extreme risk of falling over. For Louis’ sake, he hoped that Iris hadn’t drunk so much that she was incapable of telling him where he might find a ladder.