Got the sunshine on my shoulders - by: hattalove

chapter five

"Harry," his mum's voice stops him when he sneaks inside, hoping to avoid this just one more time.

"Mum," he says, resigned.

He's dripping wet again; it's a ten-minute run from the house to here, and the rain outside has turned into what must qualify as a hurricane. But mum's eyebrows are furrowed, her mouth set in a stern line, and he knows she's not letting him slip this time.

He takes off his jacket, now unbearably heavy on his shoulders, and surreptitiously checks that the inside of his pockets is still dry; that the stolen scrap of paper survived the journey here.

Mum hands him a towel, which he immediately wraps around his hair, and then steps away from the doorway to let him through into the kitchen.

There's two cups of tea waiting on the table. He'd laugh at the ridiculous sense of déjà vu that hits him, but he thinks mum might take it the wrong way.

He takes a seat, and a sip of his tea. He hates that it's not as good as Louis's was.

"So," mum says, with her arms crossed. Harry can't tell how much of it is a front and how much is genuine anger. He can't read in her anymore. "You're back."

"I am," he nods. He watches her just as carefully as she's watching him.

"Are you staying?"

"No," he says immediately, then pinches himself in the thigh under the table. Idiot. "I mean—I will, yeah, for a while. Just not forever."

"Not what I meant," she replies. She's holding back on asking him what she really wants to know, he can tell that much. "But I'm sure you'll understand my surprise when I found you on my doorstep, after you didn't so much as send a card for—how many years?"

"Five," Harry whispers, acutely ashamed. His cheeks are burning. "I'm sorry, Mum. So, so sorry."

She sighs, and looks up instead of at him. "I just don't understand, Harry. I don't understand what I did, what any of us did, to deserve being treated like that."

"You didn't do anything," he says, quietly, urgently. "Not you, or Robin, or Gems, it was—I was just scared, Mum. I was worried you wouldn't treat me the same."

She blinks. "Why on earth would we do that?"

Bile is crawling up the back of Harry's throat. He valiantly swallows against it, gets ready to bring up the one subject he never, ever wants to talk about.

"Because of Louis," he says finally, only choking on his name a little. "He—he was your family, just as much as I was, and I was sure you wouldn't see it the way I did—"

"He still is family," mum interrupts, firm. "He's my son, but so are you. I might have been angry, but I would've got over it, because I'd never want to lose you," she looks at him, her gaze heavy. "But I guess you saw it fit to make that decision for me."

"Mum," he whispers, feeling miserably small. He's really got to stop crying one of these days, but right now, he thinks the tears gathering in his eyes are justified. "I'm sorry. I—do you think I didn't miss you? I did, every single day. I was just scared, I still am."

She softens a little. Her arms fall down to her sides, then rest on the table.

"You're still my baby," she says quietly, and a corner of her mouth lifts in a smile. "You always will be, do you hear me? There's nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you," and she extends one of her hands, palm-up, into the middle of the table. Harry takes it. "But I won't lie, what you did came close."

He closes his eyes, and nods. "I figured it would."

"Why did you do it?" she asks then, not content to beat around the bush. "Why that way? Why just—disappear from our lives overnight?"

"See, that's what I meant," he says, and sniffs. "I knew you wouldn't—"

"Not what I meant," she repeats. She doesn't let go of his hand, though, so he clings to it while he puts an answer together in his head.

"I never loved him, Mum," he repeats what he's already said today. It makes him feel even more certain in the truth of it. "I just wasn't made for a town like this, I needed to go and find myself, and he—our relationship was in the way. I completely tied myself to him before I had any idea what life was about."

She tugs on his hand. He lets her go, and watches her draw back into herself.

"That doesn't sound like the Harry I used to know," she says contemplatively, looking into his eyes like she's actually searching for the Harry of yesteryear. "And the Harry I used to know wouldn't have abandoned his lifelong best friend without a word, especially at a time like that."

"I—he said the same thing," Harry admits, and feels his cheeks burn with shame, more shame. "I could've told him I was leaving, but I didn't think he'd let me go. His life was going nowhere, and he knew it. I was his ticket out, that's all. I don't see how he could have loved me when we were so young."

Mum physically leans away from him. It makes him feel like dirt.

"That's not what you really think about him," she says.

Harry shrugs. "It's the truth."

"Tell me," she shakes her head, "who put that into your head? This idea that—that you're too good, too big of a star, to treat the people who love you like human beings?"

"You know that's not how I feel," he says, pleads.

"I don't know that I do, Harry. The last time I saw you, before yesterday, you came barging in here talking about an antique umbrella stand you were going to buy and put in the hall at your house, and let me tell you, I don't think that Harry would ever say what you're saying right now."

"I've changed, Mum," he says. That ever-present spark of anger is there, still, merrily dancing through his veins like it knows it'll never go out, not as long as he's around people who knew him before. "People change."

"You're right," she nods. "Maybe I'm wrong. It's just—it's a big change, you know. I still saw you as a baby when you left, and now you're—you know."

"Grown up?" he asks. One corner of his mouth stretches into a hesitant smile.

"Yeah," she replies. She sounds tired, and the lamp overhead paints long shadows on her face. "Yeah, I guess that's the word."

He can't stand to see her looking so—sad, so crestfallen. She's always been a source of endless positivity in his life, picking him up whenever he so much as thought of being down. She was the one who taught him to follow his dreams, and the one who let him go when he was hell-bent on marrying Louis the minute he turned eighteen. Throughout it all, she had a smile on her face, like she was proud of him.

It's gone now, and he never knew he could miss it so much.

"Mum, I'm sorry," he says again. Can probably never say it enough. "I'm—is it okay if I stay? I want to, for a while. I promise I'm still the same."

"Of course you can stay, love," she says, smiles, but it's still sad, still small. She doesn't reach out to hold his hand again. "As long as you want."

"Thank you."

She shakes her head, only a little. "You'll always have a home here, you know."

He nods, and smiles.

He does know, but he can't stop the realisation that, somewhere on the road to chasing his dreams, he had forgotten.