Led By Your Beating Heart [L.S AU]

5

Harry spends the next few days in his house, texting Louis and trying to solve the riddle. He had tried to weasel out another clue from Louis, but Louis had been adamant that Harry solve it by himself. He even called Harry up just to tell him not to google the answer, which Harry wasn't even planning to do anyway. If he has to solve a riddle just to see Louis again, he'd do it fair and square. And nobly. Like a knight.

But honestly, by the third day, he's kind of frustrated. He's no closer to answering the bloody riddle than he was the first day, and he's getting impatient. He'd really like to go and see Louis now, please.

Also he has to go out with Sara. It's the first of many pap walks they'll be having, and, according to his team, this will be played off as their 'first date'.

They don't have to do much; just go out for coffee and sit around each other's presence chatting while they pretend not to notice the man with the giant camera taking shots of them. Harry hates it already. He just wants to go back into his house and lie on his bed and text Louis.

Sara is nice--she's much taller than Harry expected, and so much thinner too--but she's polite and easy-to-talk to. Better than Taylor Swift, at least. Actually, if Harry's being honest, everyone else he's ever 'dated' was better than Taylor Swift. Harry still shudders thinking about their pap walks, and sometimes he thinks why his team thought him and Taylor Swift together would be a grand idea. All he got from that was a migraine and an album of songs supposedly about him. (But it's not.)

Anyway, Sara is much easier to get along with, and she's rather pretty, with high cheekbones and long brown hair. If Harry were into girls, he'd probably fancy her. But as it stands, he isn't. He's much more taken with the pixie-like boy he met, all dainty and wonderful with his own high cheekbones and delicate features and sharp wit.

But that doesn't mean he can't be nice to her. He smiles at her as blandly as he can, and asks her stories about her family, about her home. She talks extensively about her home in Portugal, her voice getting wistful and sad at times, and she must miss it more than she's letting on.

Harry wonders how is it they ended up in this situation--both of them still young, but incredibly aware of what they have to give up. They're well-versed in the art of building, of faking, of studying the intricacies of a bare-bones relationship and padding it up until it looks real to everyone looking from the outside in.

She asks him questions too, questions about his work, about his band mates, about touring countries and continents and performing on stage, and Harry tries to answer it as honestly as he can. It's interesting to talk about his work, and Sara seems fascinated, anyway.

"You know," she says in her accented-English, pretending not to see the photographer taking photos of them through the glass, "when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a singer too."

She only asks him about himself once, a question about his family, that Harry deflects easily. She notices, of course, but she doesn't push, and she doesn't bring it up again.

Eventually, they end up talking about why they're here.

"I need the promo," she says bluntly, her manicured fingers curling around the cup of her barely-touched coffee. She subtly tilts her head, the action elongating her neck and bringing her jaw line into stark relief. Harry notes the way she angles her face, realizes that she's playing it up for the cameras, making sure they're getting her good angle. She's good. "Victoria's Secret just got me as one of their new Angels, and although I'm excited, I'm going to be replacing some very good angels." She smiles daintily. "To be honest, nobody really knows who I am anyway, outside the fashion world. We models are usually nameless, especially to the public."