Got the sunshine on my shoulders - by: hattalove

chapter twenty two

When mum wakes up, she finds him sitting on the sofa in complete silence, staring into the wall. He's cleaned up the mouse, mostly because he almost slipped on it when he went to get a glass of water, but he's been in the same spot since then, hoping for some kind of breakthrough.
The empty frame above the fireplace seems to be making a point today.

"Morning, darling," she says, stepping into the room gingerly and looking around like she expects Louis to be nearby. "Are you by yourself?"

Harry blinks to shake himself out of the statuesque state he's been in. "Yeah," he says, and turns to look at her. He tries his best to smile. "Louis left a while ago."

In truth, he has no idea how long it's been. The mornings start to look the same after a certain time - he easily could've been here for hours and not realised.

She comes over and sits next to him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. There's a worried wrinkle between her eyebrows.

"Everything okay?" she asks, and pushes some of his hair off his forehead, touches the skin there like he's eight again and she's checking for a fever. "Are you feleing all right?"

He wraps his fingers around her wrist, feeling very small, and like he wants to hold her hand more than anything. "I don't have a fever, Mum," he says, tried to make it into a joke, but it just kind of limply slips out of his mouth and falls onto the coffee table.

She frowns now, and fusses some more. Harry finally stops her when he tries to fix his collar, and intertwines their fingers. He feels so childish, but so safe.

"Harry," mum says, quiet, insistent. "What happened?"

Harry squints into the sun outside and contemplates telling her. What happened is that he's been selfish again. What happened is that he's realised he never, never fell out of love; that he's been walking around for the past five years trying to fill an empty space he didn't realise was there.

What happened is that he's eighteen again, and completely, utterly, arse over teakettle in love with Louis Tomlinson.

"It's nothing," he says, scrambling for an excuse. She wouldn't understand, he tells himself, because he's been so casually cruel, has made his stance clear over and over. "I, um," he looks at the papers spread all over the coffee table, at his laptop which is still open, but asleep, "just struggling with picking out some songs."

"Darling," mum says. She doesn't believe him. "Is it-did Marcus-"

Harry shakes his head hastily. "No," he says, and remembers that most normal people would probably still be mourning their lost relationship - the most recent one, that is. "No, of course not."

She nods, and pats the back of his hand. "That's good to hear. You've been looking so much happier these past couple of weeks."

"Have I?"

"Yes," she smiles, tilts her head. Cups his cheek, and runs a thumb under his eye, until Harry has to double-check that he's not crying. "It's been really lovely to see you acting the way you used to, you know, not popstar Harry, but the one who fell into Mrs Johnston's sewage and then ran across the entire village with no clothes on."

Harry laughs, unexpected but so very welcome. "Louis threw a two-pound coin in it and dared me to fish it out," he says. Because that memory, like every memory, is infused with Louis's infectious laugh, with his blinding-bright smile while he watches Harry do his every bidding.

"I know," mum grins. "Then Jay and I forbade you from seeing each other for two weeks, and you climbed out of your window in the middle of the night and left a note that said you were running away from home because you couldn't live in a dictatorship."