Chapter Eleven:
“Well, I thought I was bad at chatting people up,” Niall commented as he tapped the ball with his golf club, focusing intently on the game, “but really, Louis, that takes the cake. Knocking someone down the stairs!” He tutted.
Louis was almost ashamed of the flaming grin on his face. “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”
“God knows how. Maybe you knocked something loose inside the kid’s head. I know if some nutter sprained his ankle by making a himself look like a dick prancing around in front of me in a tutu and then chucked me down three flights of stairs, I wouldn’t be asking him out on a date – I’d be getting a restraining order on him!” Niall turned around and started dragging the bag of golf clubs behind him in the direction he’d hit the ball; their all expenses paid holiday turned out not to quite stretch to the expenses of a caddy. “The guy must be mad.”
“He’ll suit me quite well, then.”
“How’d you do it, man? Come on, tell me your secret. It’s official; you can get anyone. I need to know how you can do it so I can work some magic on Hannah.”
Amused, Louis shook his head and clapped Niall on the back as they settled at their next spot and he selected a club in readiness to make the next shot. “Ah, I don’t think even I can help you there, man. She’s an enigma. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re wasting your time.”
He shook his head emphatically. “If there’s one thing you’ve taught me, it’s that no one is unattainable. The right words, the right chat-up line…you got that totally uptight posh kid eating right out of your hand. Work a little of your magic on me! Make me desirable. What’s your secret, Lou? C’mon!”
“No secret. Just persistence, and a lot of luck.”
“Nah, you’re bullshitting me. I’m not having any of that. You didn’t get that guy just by stalking him. That only works in Twilight. There must be something you did. Did you drug him? Make him sniff glue or ram a needle into his arm or something? I won’t call the cops as long as you give me some of whatever you gave him so I can use it on Hannah. Was it drugs?”
Louis laughed in spite of himself. “No.”
“Did you threaten him?”
Again, he laughed. “No.”
“Bribery?”
Quite embarrassingly, Louis literally snorted with laughter, such a revoltingly pig-like sound that he clapped his hand instantly over his mouth to stifle it. “That kid’s so rich he could afford to sew fifty pound notes into a duvet and sleep under it; you really think I could offer any kind of substantial bribe to him? He’d laugh in my face! Fifty quid to us is probably like spare change to him. Besides, Harry’s not like that.”
Niall didn’t look sure. “So…no bribes?”
“No bribes,” Louis promised, grinning broadly.
“How’d you do it, Lou?” Niall whined, and Louis completely flunked his shot, barely knocking the ball at all and yet it veered wildly off course, turning weirdly to one side away from where he had intended it to go.
Rolling his eyes, Louis followed the stray ball, and Niall stayed hot on his heels like a puppy, eagerly awaiting the apparent answer to attracting anyone you wanted which he seemed to think was in Louis’ possession and would soon fall from his lips if only Niall begged hard enough. “Is it so hard to believe that he was just won over by my great hair and natural charm?”
“Natural charm,” Niall scoffed, “you get drunk every weekend and you’re crap at golf; you have no natural charm. The great hair is a possible contender,” he allowed.
“Look, I don’t have any secret, and Hannah’s a law unto herself anyway; chances are if even if I didknow the secret of unlocking any man or woman’s heart, I still wouldn’t be able to worm my way into Hannah’s bed with a million pounds in my pocket and the most attractive head in the world on my shoulders.”
“You did it once before.”
“That was a long time ago. Anyway, I can’t see myself duplicating the feat any time soon, can you? Hannah’s not looking for anyone right now. She’s single, she’s happy. Let her be. Keep mooning after her and maybe one day she’ll get sick of the single life and go for you. She’ll appreciate you far more for waiting and being patient, believe me. Women love that, and that’s one piece of knowledge I am willing to impart. Patience is a quality everybody loves.”
They fell contemplatively quiet for a while, and the next few holes were taken in silence. Louis had no aptitude for golf whatsoever, but he was slowly clawing his way back up to the top, nowhere near Niall’s score but doing less badly than he had been so far, which was something at least. They’d been golfing undisturbed for about fifteen minutes before Niall spoke again.
“None of us have ever met the guy, you realize that? Not properly. Stan tried to speak to him in the hallway yesterday and he stared at him with such horror you’d think he was about to mug him, and scuttled off, pretending he hadn’t heard a word of what Stan had said. And he quickly goes in the opposite direction whenever he sees any one of us coming, like he recognizes us and he’s scared we’re going to speak to him. He’s totally unsociable and he’ll hardly speak a word to anyone, which is why we’re maybe not as insulted as we should be…from what anyone else can see, Lou, he’s just some silent little rich kid who reckons he’s above mundane things like conversations with us lowly mortals – and yet when you talk about him…I wish you could see yourself. Your face lights up and you go all soft, and you talk like…like he’s something special, like he means so much to you. And that’s insane, because you hardly know the guy! How can you care so much about someone who won’t speak a word to anyone?” Amazingly, Niall wasn’t frustrated; he was honestly curious, and that touched Louis to the core. He wanted so desperately to make Niall understand, to show him how Harry sparkled and how his quiet light lit up the whole room and how when he was with Louis, he wasn’t quiet at all. He wanted to show someone else the Harry that he saw when nobody else was around; the Harry who laughed and teased and flirted and was one of the most amazing people he’d ever known. Who was afraid to show people who he was, and yet that made no sense, because who he was, the real him, was truly incredible. And yet at the same time, Harry was his, his perfect shy little secret who he kept all to himself and truly came alive only in his company (from what he could see, anyway; perhaps it was vain of him to assume that he alone knew the real Harry, but he’d never seen Harry act so comfortably with anybody else.) and Louis wanted to keep him a secret that he held against his chest forever, and never told anybody else about.
But he owed it to Harry to show people how beautiful he really was, once you peeled away all the layers of social anxiety and insecurity and nervousness around strangers. Harry had so many different layers of undesirable qualities, like nerves and panic and uncertainty, and awkward unfriendliness, like an onion, and at first glance just as bitter. Yet if you took the time to delve deep, and peel them all away, you discovered one of the sweetest, most intelligent, most brilliant people in the world. Knowing that he had uncovered all of that…it was a nice feeling. And Louis wanted everyone else to know that Harry wasn’t surly and unsociable, a rude rich boy who felt he could ignore everyone who was ‘below’ him. He hated thinking that people thought of Harry that way.
“He speaks to me,” he said quietly. “He’s cripplingly shy, and terrified of what other people think when they look at him, and yet…if you can get past all of that, he’s funny, smart, idiotic… he runs rings around me, honestly. He banters like a pro, knows exactly what to say to unsettle you…it’s brilliant. And the fact that he doesn’t always say much means that when he does speak, it’s so much more special, because you know he has something he actually wants to say. I can’t stand it when people talk just for the sake of talking, and they ramble on for hours and hours without actually saying anything. Harry doesn’t do that. Everything he says matters. I feel horrible, because I thought he was just going to be a challenge, a bit of fun, and then I could have him as my cheap shag of the holiday and leave him behind at the end of the three weeks and that would be it. I never expected him to mean something to me. I’ve not got near his bed once this holiday – at least not whilst he was in it – and I don’t think I’ll mind if I never do, because you’re right, he does mean a lot to me. I think about him so often that it scares me…when my mind wanders, it wanders to him. He’s always lingering in the back of my mind. And I think about things he’s said, and wonder what he was thinking when he said them, and it feels like if I don’t find out, I’ll lose my mind. His smile lights up my morning and gives me sleepless nights. He infuriates me. He’s so many things that I’m not, but he’s lots of things that I am – I think he’s just enough of what I’d like to be, and enough of the things that I am for us to be such amazing friends. We just gelled, from the second we first started talking. I don’t know who’s more scared by that; him, or me. But he’s not really close to anyone, not really…and I’d like him to be close to me.”
He’d never told anyone that. Perhaps he’d thought they’d laugh, or think he was weird. But he had a strange dream, a fantasy, really, in his mind: he wanted to get into bed with Harry, fully clothed, and lie there stroking his shoulders, with Harry’s head on his chest. He wanted the younger boy to lean up, propping himself up on one sharp elbow, and press those sinful lips to the shell of his ear, and whisper every single one of his secrets against the soft curve of Louis’ earlobe. And once he’d heard them all, Louis wanted to lock them up safely inside him and feel Harry’s deepest darkest fears and desires and past mistakes fluttering inside him – and he wanted to know, and Harry to know, that they were safe with him. That he’d never let them loose.
It wasn’t the kind of desires to have about the boy you had originally objectified with the intention to grab, befriend and have sex with in the shortest amount of time possible, and Louis was almost terrified by the intensity of his desire to be the one person who Harry Styles could trust, and who he would trust. Swallowing, he awaited Niall’s reaction.
Rather than reacting to Louis’ rather emotional outburst, his outpouring of passionate and confusing feelings about Harry that had poured out of him as he warred with himself, torn between lust and the kind of deeper, more mature feelings he had for the vulnerable, nervous younger boy, Niall nibbled his lip for a moment, then burst out as if he simply couldn’t help himself, “So you haven’t boned?”
“Niall!” Louis dropped his golf club on his foot in horror; swearing furiously, he snatched it up, and then hissed, “No, we haven’t ‘boned’, as you so charmingly put it!”
“Really? Oh. I thought you would’ve, by now. In fact, the way you’re carrying on about him, you would’ve thought the two of you were engaged or something.” Niall hesitated, his eyes twinkling teasingly with humour; Louis knew he was being wound up, but he was nonetheless infuriated despite knowing that the Irish boy was teasing him. “Why, what’s wrong with ‘boned’? Too crude a word for the boy wonder, this curly haired marvel who you’re so helplessly infatuated with? Would you rather ‘made love’? ‘Had passionate intercourse with’?”
Spluttering with laughter, Louis swiped playfully at him with his golf club. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Truthfully, he preferred both of those ridiculously old-fashioned endearments for the word sex rather than more commonly used terms such as ‘bonked’ or ‘fucked’ or whatever words he usually used when referring to his nightly exploits with previous conquests. He couldn’t imagine shagging Harry Styles. Oh, he could imagine making love to him very well, but not shagging him. The word just didn’t go hand in hand with the chaste image he had in his head of Harry, who was anything but innocent and yet with his halo of chocolate brown curls and cute dimples, seemed as pure and unsullied as a two year old.
Delightedly, Niall whacked him in return, smashing his club down on Louis’ sore ankle. “Man, you’re full of it! It’s ridiculous. You’ve gone all gooey, you should see yourself! And after all the times you’ve clocked me one for getting all moony over Hannah – this is brilliant!”
Louis growled at him. “Shut up, Horan. And come here! That was my bad ankle; I’m going to get you for that!”
He went to deal Niall a sharp smack over the head with the golf club, expecting the Irish boy to dodge – but Niall was too busy gleefully giggling at him to leap out of the way like Louis naturally assumed he would. With a loud crack, he slammed his golf club right into Niall’s skull, and the resulting crunch as Niall yelped and then staggered unsteadily, clutching his head, made Louis flinch. He hurled the club to the floor like it had attacked Niall with a mind of its own.
“Oh, God, sorry!” he cried. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Niall groaned, “what the hell was that for? You smashed my head in! You’ve killed about a thousand brain cells there! I think you’ve given me concussion!”
“Rubbish,” Louis said worriedly, but he grabbed Niall in almost a headlock and squinted worriedly through his blond hair, looking for visible marks that he’d left behind, like bruises or a sign of bleeding or something. There were none, but he still felt pretty bad.
“Oi!”
A man dressed all in white with a Mario-type moustache came huffing sternly over to them, looking put out, sweat beading on his receding hairline. Hands on his hips, he stood over them, scowling at Louis and the rather compromisingly positioned Niall, who was turning red and gurgling because Louis was holding him so tightly and in such an uncomfortable position.
“No fighting on the golf course,” he puffed, “either you play golf, or you leave. This isn’t a place for larking about; this is a place for playing golf! I saw that little stunt with the club, you know.” He picked up the abandoned club and tapped it accusingly. “This isn’t a toy!”
“No, I know. Sorry.” Louis quickly released Niall, who bobbed up rather red in the face, blushing painfully and looking dizzy. “We’ll go, shall we, Niall?”
“Yeah,” Niall agreed breathlessly. “Yeah.”
The two of them abandoned their clubs and, in fact, abandoned the game entirely, leaving the complaining manager to sort it all out for them. They sprinted giddily for the entrance, laughing like the idiots that they were, and leaving the irritable man in the white outfit with his bushy, bristly looking moustache to huff and puff like a steam train in their wake, dancing around and struggling to pick up the equipment they had left behind. Niall recovered pretty quickly from the knock over the head, grinning as he and Louis chased each other off the obsessively mown course, onto the pathway and out of sight.