Got The Sunshine On My Shoulders || larry stylinson

PART 16

“Come on,” Louis is saying, standing outside and poking his head in like Harry's a stubborn toddler. “You know them. They don't bite.”

Uh, yeah, they do. Especially when Louis is concerned.

“You said you wanted to show me something,” Harry says, cowering in his seat and crossing his arms over his chest.

“This is just a pit stop,” Louis says, barely suppressing a smile. “What are you so afraid of?”

Harry gesticulates at nothing in particular. His heart is racing. “You didn't tell me we were coming here! They're going to hurt me.”

This time, Louis does laugh. “Nobody's going to hurt you, babe. I won't let them.”

Harry melts embarrassingly quickly at the pet name. He doesn't stop trying to blend in with the upholstery, though, his back pressed against the car door he'd locked fifteen minutes ago in case Louis tried to get him out from that side.

“Let's go,” Louis sighs, but it's fond. “You'll have to see them sooner or later, you know.”

“Later,” Harry replies. “I'm fine with later, I'll just wait in the car-“

“Harry,” Louis interrupts. “Get out.”

Harry whines, but he knows that Louis is right. Besides, he made a big show of telling Louis that he's not giving him up again no matter what, and he's not doing himself any favours by acting like this.

It's just-he's actually scared.

“Will you hold my hand?” he asks, semi-serious, and hesitantly unlocks the door.

“Of course I will,” Louis rolls his eyes, smiling, fond. He moves out of the driver's side door, slams it closed behind him, and walks over to the passenger side to open Harry's.

Harry slides out of the Land Rover into the Tomlinson-Deakins' front garden, and brushes non-existent crumbs off his shirt. Louis makes good on his promise and immediately connects their hands.

“You'll be okay,” he tells Harry, rearranging a couple of stray strands of hair on top of his head. “And if you really can't take it, you can just leave. I promise it's fine.”

“I'd never do that,” Harry frowns. Even if-even if Jay was as cruel to him as she had been when they met a couple of months ago, he wouldn't leave Louis's side.

“I know,” Louis shrugs a shoulder, and straightens up the hem of Harry's t-shirt. “Thought I'd offer anyway.”

Harry knows this house well. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the curtains rippling suspiciously on the ground floor, and shadows of people who think they're out of sight moving beyond the kitchen window. They're all watching.

“I feel like Lottie's going to skin me the second I walk through the door,” he says, and watches as someone peels back the edge of a curtain in the living room. He thinks he can make out a single eye close to the glass, trained on the way they're holding each other right there in the front garden. “Maybe, um. Maybe we shouldn't hold hands, actually.”

Louis grabs him by the chin, and pulls his face away from the house until they're looking each other in the eye.

“What's this?” he asks, and he looks like he's suppressing a laugh. “Harry Styles, world-famous popstar who could buy all of us with his endless fortune, scared of my little sister?”

“She's terrifying,” Harry glups, remembering the graceful way in which she ignored his existence at the anniversary party. “And it's Tomlinson.”