Larry Stylinson - Turning From Praise (AU)

11.

So distracted was Louis, his head so thoroughly in the clouds, that he didn’t even think to act contrite when he got home. When he burst through the front door, twenty minutes late, hands in his pockets, shoelaces undone, whistling loudly, hair a mess, eyes sparkling, it was to find his mother waiting at the foot of the staircase with her arms folded, scowling. He bounced over the threshold, slammed the door behind him, and exclaimed “Evening!”

Her jaw dropped. For a moment, Louis was confused by her shock, unable to identify what could possibly have caused it – but then he licked his lips anxiously, his tongue flicked over the metal ring, and his mouth went dry with the responding pang as he realized what she was staring at. His mother gazed at him in abject horror, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open in disgust. She touched her lips with her fingertips as if she could feel metal in her own mouth, while her free hand grasped wildly at the silver crucifix hanging around her neck. Louis’ heart was hammering against his own identical necklace as he cautiously watched her, trying to judge her next reaction.

Jay licked her lips. “Where have you been?” she whispered.

He had to hold back a grimace; it was not the question he had expected, nor one he could easily answer. If she had assaulted him with a host of questions about his piercing, he could probably have deflected them with some pretty sob story – among others, the main contenders for his falsehood were that it was for charity and he was being sponsored, that it was a magnetic one he was wearing as a joke (though this could easily be disproved and would expose him immediately if she tried to take it out) or that he was doing it for some form of school sociology project to see how people reacted to him differently with facial piercings – but this question was not one he was equipped to deal with, and he was more than a little lost for words.

“Look, before you start freaking out –” he began, head spinning as he frantically shuffled through the options in his brain trying to figure out the most diplomatic and parentally-approved lie –

“Where. Have you been?” She looked as if she might start shrieking, trembling all over, her knuckles white as she gripped the silver cross dangling around her neck, clearly not in the mood for any of the feeble evasions that Louis could have given her, nor the kind of mood where he could win her over with a smile and an offer to make a cup of tea. Warily, he edged backwards a little, hoping to escape from the aura of slow-burning anger that he could feel simmering around her, but her eyes hardened, and he could see that his obvious nervousness had, if anything, only made things worse. He fought the urge to curse. That wouldn’t be particularly helpful.

“Out…with some friends,” he said weakly. That was the truth.

He had to try, but of course he knew she wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “Which friends?”

“You don’t know them.” That was his first lie. She knew all too well the boy with the tangle of deep brown hair, the twinkling green eyes rimmed with a thick outline of black, the dramatic designs and quotes inked starkly up his pale arms.

“You didn’t meet them at school, I take it.”

“No,” agreed Louis. Definitely not. His headmaster would sooner light himself – and the school – on fire than allow Harry to set one foot in the grounds.

“Nor from church.”

Admitting that he’d been associating with someone who wasn’t a regular churchgoer would probably be one of the worst things he could have said, and the best way to inspire a long and arduous lecture from her about how showing your faith was one of the most important things a person could do and how wrong it was not to attend church, so Louis quickly said “They don’t go to our church.” Again, not a direct lie. If he failed to mention that this mysterious friend hadn’t been to any form of church since the age of fourteen and was pretty much banned from doing so, then it wasn’t a lie – just omitting a few details from his story.