Got the sunshine on my shoulders - by: hattalove

chapter eleven

The next note wakes Harry up at four in the morning.
It's not Niall calling him this time; it's his email notifications, one after another after another, making an absolutely hellish racket.

He opens one eye, and peels the pillowcase off his cheek. They're all coming into his work mailbox, a dozen, two dozen, three, all from an address that's little more than a jumble of numbers and letters, all with the same subject line:

Hello.

His blood runs cold, and he immediately hides his head under the blanket. It makes him feel a little more protected.

Peter is downstairs, he reminds himself. He's probably standing guard right now. Nobody's here, nobody's broken in. Everybody in the house is alive. Everything is fine.

Still, as he opens the first email, his hands are shaking. They get a little steadier when he finds nothing there, or in the next three.

Then, he thinks of scrolling to the top. The very last, fifty-fourth message, has an attachment.

I'll tell them everything, the letters spell, red on white. There are two pictures this time, both from official events. Harry's smiling in them, but you couldn't tell: there's little x's of what looks like tape across his mouth. His eyes are scrawled out, too, undetectable underneath dark marker lines, endlessly black no matter how much Harry squints.

Tell them what, Harry doesn't stop to think. He shoots out of bed, his knees shaking, and dashes to open the window.

"Peter!" he whispers into the dark, clutching the windowsill so hard his fingers start stinging.

"Mr Styles," Peter's voice whispers back not three seconds later. The automatic light downstairs turns on, and he comes to stand right underneath the window, in one piece and wholly unharmed. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, thank God," Harry says, the tension in his body dissipating a little. If Peter's okay, then everything else is, too. It must be. "Can you come inside, please?"

He nods, and makes his way to the front door. Harry pulls a long sleeve over his head and runs downstairs to let him in.

He pushes through the door while Harry's still holding the bolt chain in his hand, his back ramrod straight, eyes alert.

"What happened?" he asks immediately, phone in one hand and ready to call in reinforcements.

Harry spares a moment to thank the heavens (and Niall. Mostly Niall) for finding someone actually competent to protect him.

"I just got these," he says, trembling uncontrollably, and passes Peter his own mobile. He watches Peter's face get darker and darker as he scrolls.

"Is this your work inbox?"

"Yes," Harry nods, wrapping his arms around himself. "It's—I have no idea how they got the address, I know everyone I've ever given it to."

"What about Niall?" Peter asks, now scrolling on both phones at once. "Does he give it out?"

"Not without clearing it with me first," says Harry. "He just gives people his own for official things, so I don't think—"

"All right," says Peter. He taps out a text at the speed of light and sends it off. "You'll need a new one, obviously, and you'll have to give me your password."

"Uh, sure," Harry says, and looks around for something to write on. He spots a pad of sticky notes on the entryway table, and squeezes past Peter to get to it. "Will you be able to trace it?"

"I'm not sure. It's one of those 10-minute email addresses, it's probably self-destructed by now, but they've got to keep some kind of record. You'll need the police if you want to dig that deep, though."