You Can Hear It In The Silence

Chapter 16

"What time do you call this?" Amy yelled as soon as Louis opened the front door.

"I'm sorry," Louis called as he walked towards the counter. "I'm sorry!"

Ruby, whose shift didn't finish for another hour, was at the other end of the bar. "Late two days in a row," she called back.

"I know, I know." He really needed to get his shit together.

"Luckily, you're the Boss Man. Otherwise, you'd be in trouble." Ruby grinned at him.

He grinned back. "Watch it, Rubes," Louis said to her. "I've pretended not to notice you're late starts. I'm happy to keep pretending not to notice them as long as you don't notice mine."

"Got it, boss," she said and saluted him before returning to clean the glasses.

Louis walked next to Amy. She glanced at Ruby and then at Louis. "Has Harry been keeping you busy?" There was a distinct smirk on her face, one she'd been wearing a lot lately.

"No idea what you're talking about," he said, grin still hadn't left his face.

Amy hummed. "So that love bite just appeared magically, did it?"

And shit. He'd forgotten Zayn had said something about a hickey. "Tell me you're kidding! Please tell me I don't have a fucking hickey," he pleaded.

She pursed her lips, but a smirk broke out anyway.

"Fucking hell. I'm going to kill him," Louis whined. He took his phone out, switched the camera to selfie mode, and turned his head.

Sure enough, there was a deep purple bruise on the right side of his neck. Not even close to his collarbone, where a shirt might cover it. No, Harry couldn't even grant him that decency. Instead, he'd planted it halfway up his neck. It would be impossible to hide unless he wore turtle necks or scarves, and he would be doing neither. Fucking Styles. "I'm going to kill him," he repeated. He turned to Amy. "How long does it take hickeys to go away? And if the answer isn't a few hours, I don't want to fucking hear it!"

She didn't even try to hold back her laughter. "Well, then, I guess you don't want to hear it."

He groaned. "No, tell me. I need to know how much trouble he is in." He needed to be prepared.

"Like one to two weeks. Sorry." She did not look sorry at all.

"I'm going to fucking kill him!"

"He did a pretty good job at it, too," Amy said as she pressed her fingers on his chin to turn it so she could inspect it. "You didn't realise?"

"No." There had been way too much other stuff going on for him to focus on Harry assaulting his neck. He vaguely remembered Harry kissing his neck. He definitely remembered him sucking his cock and swallowing his come, though.

Amy moved her hand away from his neck. "So I assume it's all going well then?"

"It was until he gave me a fucking hickey." He touched where he thought it was lightly and definitely got the right spot because it was tender as hell. "Does he think we're twelve or something?"

Amy laughed again. "Probably just wanted to mark you to keep everyone else away. When can I meet him?"

"You want to meet him?" Louis hadn't even considered them meeting each other.

"Yeah, of course," she said. "As long you want me to. Although he probably has no idea who I am."

"Oh, no, he actually knows all about you," Louis said. He realised he'd never told her. "Did you know you had the bar name in your bio? Because Harry does, he saw it when you sent him the request."