Balance

Chapter 15

"Nialler," the voice continued lowly.  After a muffled chirp of affirmation, he went on, "I'm assuming our resident delinquent will not be joining us?"

There was an awkward pause and some shuffling.  Louis looked up at Harry, making the connection from the grimace on his face that they were talking about him.  "Er, no.  Not tonight.  He said he was busy," a somewhat familiar Irish voice answered in a much softer tone than the first speaker.  A chorus of knowing groans greeted the boy's explanation and Harry's frown grew.

"Figures," the leader—or at least Louis assumed he was the leader—replied with a disappointed sounding sigh.  Harry pressed himself even further against Louis, as though he could physically block Louis from hearing the conversation at hand with his body.  The group laughed at the leader's condescending tone and continued to do so until he made a noise to quiet them.

"It's probably for the better anyway," the man added.  "I've been questioning Styles' loyalties lately."  If there was any doubt as to who they were talking about, the use of Harry's last name—spat out as though it were a cuss word—cleared that up for Louis as he tucked his face into the crook of the taller boy's neck.

"But Aiden," the Irish one known as Nialler protested weakly, "he's been running all those chores for you.  Why, even yesterday he skipped out on his community service thing just to go check up on that deal—"

"Silence!" the leader, Aiden, snarled.  "Pretty boy knows how much he's risking exposing us just by having done a sloppy job with the theatre, Niall.  He needs to do more than just a few errands to get back the trust he once had.  Right boys?"  Guffaws and grunts of approval could be heard in response.  Louis noted with a painful skip of his heart that some of them sounded a lot closer than he would have liked; probably standing on top of the very ramp he and Harry were hiding behind.

"Just don't hurt him," Niall practically whispered, almost so softly that Louis couldn't hear.  "You already gave him a... reminder of what's at stake.  He's done what you asked.  Let me talk to him."

There was a shuffling and then a soft whimper that sounded like it had come from Niall.  Harry stiffened, muscles tensing as he craned his head to listen.  "I don't suppose you'd like to join Styles with a matching shiner on that pretty blue eye of yours, Niall?  No?  Then keep your fucking mouth shut."  Another round of raucous laughter had Louis cringing inwardly.

He had no idea what was going on but was at least able to piece together some things.  This guy, Aiden, was obviously the leader of the group gathered at the skate park.  They had been the ones to destroy the theatre along with Harry's assistance.  Aiden had also been the one to give Harry the black eye and was the reason he cut out on his service for the dance studio earlier that day.  Basically, in Louis' mind, Aiden was the bad guy.

Then there was Niall.  Louis had always been decent with matching voices to faces and he could tell that he'd heard the Irish lilt before.  Wracking his brain, Louis was able to pin Niall as the blonde one in the group Louis had run into the day of his audition.  That made the rest of the rebellious looking teenagers a part of this gang or whatever and suddenly, things were connecting in Louis' mind.  Niall had to be the friend Harry had mentioned back in the pub; Niall was responsible for getting Harry to this meeting; Niall had called him by name the other day; Harry had told Niall about Louis.

The dancer felt a weird bubble of flattery rising up despite his evident fear.  If Niall recognised him based on what Harry has said alone, he must have described him in fairly good detail and, for whatever reason, the thought of Harry talking about Louis to his very best friend had the smaller boy's heart twirling delighted pirouettes in his chest cavity.