Got the sunshine on my shoulders - by: hattalove

chapter twenty six

The rain meets them about halfway down the M6, and doesn't stop.

It had been a lovely day back in Holmes Chapel, but as they drive into London the sky looks torn into grey-and-white shreds overhead. Louis has to self-consciously drive around one puddle after another to avoid completely soaking people on the sidewalks.

Harry, curled into himself in the passenger seat, enjoys it. He's not in London often anymore, barely at all, and it rushes in all at once when he rolls his window down a little. It smells like dust and concrete and city, all under the unmistakable scent of dirty rain. Everything looks grey through the windshield, blurred by the monotone back and forth of the wipers, but when he actually looks out, bright splashes of colour bleed through - a yellow raincoat here, a red bus there, the green steel of Tower Bridge swooping down among the monochromes. It's so busy, all of it, but it seems small. Like he could get out of the car and run into somebody he knows just around a corner.

It feels a little like meeting a long-lost friend he doesn't remember having.

Louis meanders around the outskirts of the city, tiredly squinting onto the wet road with a Fall Out Boy album playing through the speakers. Once London disappears behind green trees and rows of terrace houses, Harry turns to watch him instead.

He doesn't get to do it for long.

"What?" Louis asks softly as he lets a van pass before he turns right. There's a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes, but his lips are pursed as he focuses on driving. "Something on my face?"

Harry laughs. He doesn't reply, doesn't think Louis really needs him to. Somewhere in the gentle slope of his nose, in the shadows cast by his eyelashes, he tries to find the answer to the question he hasn't dared ask.

Where are we going?

Louis can tell that he's getting antsy, of course, but he just smiles beatifically and bats away Harry's attempts at distracting him into an answer with his hands.

"We're almost there," he says, probably more than ten times, until finally, finally, he pulls into a driveway and stops the car. Harry peeks out of his window at a humongous, three-storey townhouse.

"Where are we?" he asks, but Louis is out of the driver's seat before he can answer, running to Harry's side of the car to open the door for him again. "Where are we?" Harry asks again, taking the offered elbow and curling into Louis as they jog into the shelter of the building, away from the rain.

"It's, uh," Louis hesitates, his voice getting lost amongst raindrops drumming against leaves. "My house."

Harry looks up at the imposing white walls, the ivy climbing up one of them, the perfect rectangles of the windows. He has to crane his neck far enough that it hurts to even see to the top.

"Your house," he repeats. Louis doesn't explain, just tugs on his elbow and pulls him towards the front door. They're fast jogging through the front garden, but Harry still gets a few raindrops just beneath his collar, a shiver down his back. Louis works the key into the lock with hurried hands, turns it and leans against the door to get them in as fast as he can.

They leave the rain outside, right along with the noises rising up from the road. Perfect, unbreakable silence envelopes them, and they stare at each other for a minute in the semi-darkness.

"This is your house," Harry repeats again, a little afraid to look around.

"Yes," Louis nods, toeing off his shoes. Harry follows suit. "I'll explain, but let me get a towel for your hair first."

It's then that Harry realises the tips of his hair are dripping on the shiny floor. It's expensive-looking, polished wood - he can see the shadow of his own reflection in it if he looks close enough, blurry where the water has settled.