Hate That I Love You

Chapter 17

Harry was reading several important takeaways as he sat behind his desk with a fountain pen in his hands and his eyes focused on those writings.

Biting his lip, he looked for a few seconds at the screen of his computer turned on in front of him. He immediately shook his head and went back to his papers.

But it was just a few seconds before his eyes fell back to the screen. Harry decided to look around, to make sure no one was going to come to his office and leave the pen on the desk.

He grabbed the computer mouse and clicked on the Google icon. Then, devoured by curiosity, he wrote the words Larry Stylinson on the search engine.

The results were far more than he had expected. There were even a bunch of Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter pages dedicated to them. People about people writing their absurd theories about their secret encounters (absurd ... some of those were definitely true), incredible and even tender photomontages that made Harry smile (others instead, made him blush because they represented very intimate moments.) and real photos in which the two really looked in love.

Harry stared intently at some of those photos. They were all very similar, usually. They depicted him posing for a photo on some red carpet, perhaps with Xander, and Louis staring at him smiling.

Harry tilted his head, looking curiously at those photos. Louis's gaze was so taken, adoring him.

He found himself smiling like an idiot as he looked at those photos. Maybe it was the prospect, or maybe Louis was smiling for other reasons, yet Harry loved them out of all proportion.

Shaking his head, he decided to watch any video that collected all their best "moments".

The song they had played in the background was the classic "18", a song by a very popular group of the moment called One Direction and Harry, as soon as the first note found itself echoing at the beginning of the video, magically held his breath.

The video began playing moments that occurred several years ago, when Harry still snubbed Louis much more arrogantly. Moments he had never even considered.

Like, for example, during some awards, in which the boy got up for reasons he didn't even remember and Louis was always not far from him to follow him with his eyes. Or there were incredible smiles when Harry said bullshit or jokes to de-stress the tension during public moments.

And again, Xander talking and Louis rolling his eyes or making faces at the camera.

Then came the more recent moments, when their said "relationship" had already begun. There were photos showing them on the same day, in the same place, clothes that, sometimes by mistake or for other reasons, they had swapped (yes, there was also his burgundy sweater that Harry had been paparazzi with on the day he had lunch with Xander), and their complicit looks to invite each other in inappropriate places and fuck like there's no tomorrow.

Harry remembered very well that, during the Brits award, where both had been invited because their companies had sponsored the event, the two of them had fled to the restrooms because they were too impatient to wait for the event to end.

And yes, that video also showed that moment, where Harry had stared at him for several seconds, moved his head to the right, and finally ran to the bathroom followed a few seconds later by Louis.

And finally, there was also their latest stunt and all the articles they had written about it. There was his face embarrassed after the dedication of Louis' goal and there was the fight on the pitch that the two idiots had done to "win" the heart of the young entrepreneur.

The video ended with a winking wink that Louis had given him during an interview some time before, made only and solely to irritate him but which, under that romantic music, seemed anything but.

"Holy shit," Harry whispered. It all seemed so real, the author of that video had been so good that she, almost, convinced him of the existence of a love that he knew perfectly well, had never been.

In those days, he had some newspaper articles in his hands that told what had happened on the field but Harry had never given much weight to the tabloid magazines. They invented everything to be able to sell, as in that case that they had defined Xander as someone who tried to hold on to his boyfriend while Louis tried, instead, to take him away from him in vain. It was different, those were completely made up phrases to make money.

Instead those people just reported their impressions, without any profit, indeed.

They were just defending their idea, based on looks, attention and complicity that they had well noticed between them. And Louis seemed so damned taken by him in all those photos, those videos, those little tricks that only a keen eye, far from being his, would have noticed.

Harry bit his lip badly.

Then, he jumped up from his chair and grabbed the jacket.

It was time to surprise Louis.