Open Road (Larry Stylinson)

Chapter 5

"What's your most embarrassing childhood story?" Harry asked over the loud music coming from the rental car's speakers.

Louis thought for a moment, he had a lot of those. He wasn't sure if he was quite ready to share the worst ones with his crush, even if Harry was his best friend. Louis' final decision was start off slow.

"Well, this is embarrassing-"

"It's supposed to be embarrassing, it's an embarrassing childhood story."

"Okay!" Louis said, blushing. "Once when I was seven, I decided to see how many rocks I could fit in my nose. I got three in one nostril, but then I couldn't get them out. I had to go to the emergency room and everyone was staring at me the whole time."

Harry laughed but shook his head. "That's lame," he said. "I can do so much better than that." Even though Harry was planning on one-upping Louis, he wasn't prepared to share his absolute worst moments quite yet.

"Okay, so," started Harry already red like a tomato. "In 5th year, my class was putting on a production of the Nutcracker. I don't remember what part I was playing, but at one point, all the fairy girls had to carry me down and lay me in the bed on stage. You know how bad my stage fright is,"

Louis nodded understandingly. It wasn't uncommon for Harry to have freak outs before going on stage, he imagined it would have been worse when he was younger.

"So when I layed down on the bed," he continued. "I couldn't help it! I forgot to use the washroom before the show and I might've, kinda, pissed myself in front of an entire audience."

Louis was near beside himself as Harry kept his eyes on the road, refusing to look at him.

"The whole cast knew too, they could smell it the entire performance, it was awful." Harry finished. Excited, Louis smirked, he could one up that easy.

"When I was little, I didn't like to wear underwear under my pants. Nobody knew this, of course, until one day on the playground, my pants got caught when I was sitting on the monkey bars and someone pushed me."

"Oh no, Lou," Harry said sympathetically, knowing where this was going.

"Yeah, well, they ripped right down the crotch and I got flipped upside down, showing my goods to the whole school until a teacher came to get me down. Absolutely traumatizing," said Louis.

"Awe boo, I'm so sorry," Harry replied, even though he wasn't, really. It was funny.

"After that, I wore under wear all of the time. And when I was eight," Louis continued. He was on a roll now, loving the laughs he was coaxing out of Harry's mouth. "I went through a phase where I wet the bed almost every night, and I didn't want anyone to know either, you're supposed to have stopped wetting the bed by the time you're eight."

Harry chuckled and nodded. It was endearing the way the blood kept rushing to Louis cheeks and he wouldn't make eye contact with his curly mate.

"So every morning I would, you know, change my underwear. But I knew that if I put them in the wash, someone would, like, find them, so I would take them outside and bury them in our backyard."

This time, Harry laughed loud enough to startle Louis from his story, evoking a glare out of him.

"Shut up," Louis growled. "Eventually the phase ended, but a few years later, my dad decided to start remodelling our backyard. When the workers started digging, they found a ton of underwear. Needless to say, my dad was pissed."

Unable to contain himself, Harry lost it. "Oh my god, Lou! The things I learn about you, love. I swear you'll be the death of me."

"I'll be the death of both of us if you don't keep your eyes on the road," Louis retorted, alarmed.

"Okay, okay. Sorry," said Harry. "But I promise I can beat you. Just promise me that you'll never tell a soul."

Nodding, Louis composed himself, the blush draining from his cheeks.

"Promise," Harry repeated.

"I swear I will never tell anyone what you're about to tell me," Louis promised.

"Okay, but the worst part about this is that I was fourteen. Some of my friends and I were at a lake and we'd been swimming for, like, a few hours and I really had to take a dump, but we were way out. So I figured, it's a shit, you know? I thought it would sink. So I, sorta, did my thing and swam away as fast I could, just in case but a few seconds later, someone noticed. I looked back and because of the way the water, like, moves or something, there was this turd following me and everyone knew it was mine!"

Louis was laughing so hard he was legitimately crying. He reached out to put a hand on Harry's shoulder, but decided against it. Touching the blushing boy would make him even more likely to do something he'd regret.

"Poor baby Harry," Louis commented between fits of giggles.

"I wasn't a baby, though!" Harry cried.

Louis just laughed and looked out the window again, turning the music back up.

Trees and bushes raced past them as they sat in silence again, the blush slowly sinking from the two boys' cheeks.

[e d i t e d   10 . 5 . 1 5]

[what? an early update? maybe.]