Lirry Stayne One Shots

Think About Summer

Liam is a pool boy. Harry is his best friend.

By piginawig on archiveofourown.org

Harry Styles looks forward to summer, and has since the year he was fourteen and Robin bought that bungalow down the road from their actual house, the one with the game room and the big flat screen telly and the long bar and the waterbed in the guest bedroom and the inground pool in the backyard.

What came along with said inground pool was weekly cleanings. Robin and Anne were both busy with work, and Gemma usually laughed in the face of manual labor, and Harry attempted to clean the pool but accidentally put too much chlorine in that one time he tried and then he only got out about half the bugs and leaves and grass before he decided it was a job well done and it was time to go swimming.

Anne just patted Harry on his curly head and called him "pet", and then pulled out the phone book and dialed up Miller's Pool Company.

And so a weekly appointment was set up for the summer time months, followed by bi-weekly appointments for the colder parts of the year, and Harry was put in charge of being at the bungalow while Miller's pool boy was doing his work.

*

"It's Tuesday, Harry," Anne's voice sounded against Harry's ear.

"Thanks?"

A sigh. "The pool boy should be arriving in the next half hour. Are you at the bungalow?"

Harry looked down at himself, naked and in his bed, game console controller in his lap. Anne took his silence as an answer.

"Get down there, now," she said.

The call ended and Harry saved his game (because that was of the upmost importance) and glanced at his floor, surveying which articles of clothing looked the least frumpy. He decided quickly that none of the underwear would do, he would simply have to find a new pair to wear, but his black basketball shorts and blue t shirt would both be perfectly acceptable.

After he finished dressing Harry left the house and walked the three minutes it took to arrive at the bungalow. It was as he was fishing out his key that a boy that looked about his age on a bicycle pulled up the drive and stopped. Harry glanced at the boy confusedly.

"Hullo," he called to him. The boy glanced up from where he was setting up his kickstand and paused for a moment before smiling and waving. Harry furrowed his eyebrows. He hoped he wasn't selling some type of goody, like sweets or biscuits, because Harry was out of money and he had a terrible time of telling people no.

But the boy pulled out a folder from the basket attached to the front of his bike and marched right up to Harry and stuck a hand out. Harry cautiously took the hand and shook it.

"My name's Liam Payne and I'm here on behalf of Miller's Pool company to clean your pool," Liam Payne of Miller's Pool Company announced.

"I'm Harry," Harry said, "and I have a pool."

Liam's brown eyes squinted for a quick second before they opened up widely again. "Well, as was discussed on the phone, I'll be using the equipment you already have here to clean out any debris and to scrub the waterline, and then I'll put in a new chlorine tablet which I brought, and that's it. Any questions?"

"How old are you?" Harry asked without thinking, and then backtracked when Liam looked affronted. "It's just, you can't be much older than me, and no where I've heard of will hire if you're under sixteen. Also you're riding a bike."

"Um," Liam said, "my uncle is the Miller of Miller's Pool Company. I'm fourteen. Fifteen at the end of August, though."

"Oh, that makes sense," Harry agreed, and then, "well, here, let me show you to the backyard."