stumbling into line (sidemen ff)

Chapter 28: 'A little boy once told me that love isn't complicated'

*^* WARNING THIS CHAPTER IS LONG, HEH, I'M PROUDS *^*

"This is so beautiful!" Adriana exclaims, staring out across the impossibly blue and green ocean and loving the way it crashes mercilessly against the rock faces either side of her.  She digs her toes in the sand and smiles up at Harry.

"It is, it's pretty calm 'n'all.  I enjoy coming back here a lot, especially when there's loads of crazy shit happening back in London." Harry agrees walking them a little further across the tiny beach known as Petit Bot Bay and towards a little cluster of rocks.  He sits against the tallest one and Adriana sits in between his legs as his arms instinctively wrap around her waist.

Breathing in the smell of salt water, he remembers when he would come here as a kid.  It was mostly in the summer and it was warmer and less windy than it was now, there was no need for a jacket.  He would run up and down the beach looking and searching for interesting rocks and shells and pulling tiny little crabs, that had been stranded by the high tide, from rock pools and throwing them into the ocean only to have his parents inform him that the crabs lived in the rock pools.  When he was seven, his little sister was four and he finally had someone to help him with his constant searches as his parents had long left him to do it on his own.  Probably getting bored.

"Hey, I want to show you something." Harry declares, carefully standing and pulling his hood up and tugging the sleeves of his jacket down.  He leads Adriana around a couple rocks until they come to a particularly large one and if Harry could have recorded her reaction to what was on the other side of the massive rock, that was probably more a boulder, then he would have.

On the other side, it was completely sheltered from the tide and was covered in different carvings and dates.  A couple names were repeated but Adriana couldn't help but notice that Harry, Rosie and Josh was written at least a hundred times and Harry alone even more.  They were all accompanied by a date, mainly in summer months and between the years 2000 and 2013, but some were just Harry alone and there was one for Christmas eve of 2013 and two consecutive days in March of 2014 as well.

Harry reached in a little crack in between two rocks and pulled out an old rusty pen knife that Adriana hoped didn't cut her because she didn't feel like getting a tetanus jab today.

He gestured her over and he started to carve their names into the rock, right next to a Riley and a dateless Katie, he also carved a little heart next to their names and the date.

"My dad started this." He murmurs, pointing up high to the name Harry written neatly and the date 11/06/1999, "I was three and this is even the same pen knife." He then gestures to the rusty pen knife that has Phillip G. Shaw scribed in the handle, "It was my grandad's, my dad said that he got it in the scouts when he was eleven."

Adriana smiles, she loved learning about people's pasts and what is important to them and this obviously was important to Harry and she felt honored that he brought her here and even scratched their names into the rock.

"It's amazing." She breathes, pulling Harry in for a side hug and kissing his cheek.  She couldn't help but notice the creases in his forehead and the frown on his lips as he stared at where he just carved their names.  Something was wrong.

"We should head back to the house or we'll have to go out smelling like the sea."

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"Ads, this is Sean and Aimee.  Guys, this is my girlfriend Adriana." Harry introduces two of his old school friends to Adriana, hoping that they get on but he has nothing to worry about because they immediately hit it off and Aimee and Adriana soon become engrossed in a conversation about something that Harry wasn't interested in at all but he did enjoy just staring at Adriana and pretending to listen.  Instead, he was watching how her lips move incredibly fast and her eyes light up with interest every time that Aimee speaks.