Larry Stylinson ~ Poor Little Rich Boy AU

Poor Little Rich Boy - Larry Stylinson.

Louis’ dare is simple: to find some sad little rich kid stupid enough to fall in love with him, and win him over by the end of the holiday. In every figurative sense. It’s a challenge that Louis is completely confident he can carry out. So when the perfect, pretty little Harry Styles crosses his path with a seemingly endless bank balance and a head full of romanticism, it looks like Louis has found his idiot.

Chapter One:

The sun was warm, but not unusually so. There were a couple of clouds floating lethargically above the square. People milled about, bumping into each other and shooting each other nasty looks, waving at old friends, having conversations at a volume which was deemed necessary because of the masses of people all gathered in one place, and the hubbub which made it hard to have a chat at normal volume. And very few people noticed the attractive young lad with the feathery caramel hair and the pleasant voice, who was making his way through the crowd like he was used to it while his friend, a young man of a similar age who seemed constantly on the verge of a smile and whose cheeks were almost always pink with enthusiasm, trailed slightly behind, like he couldn’t quite keep up.

As crowds went, this was a large one; close to a thousand people crammed together in the centre of Doncaster, churning and babbling as friends talked to friends and people socialized and every unfamiliar face blended into the next and little attention was paid to them. Louis expertly slipped through the masses, inserting a charming “excuse me” or a sweet “I’m sorry!” every now and then, easily negotiating his way through the crowd with Stan clinging to his sleeve so as not to be left behind. They had little interest in the festivities, but rumour had it that there would be alcohol there, and since when had Louis ever refused alcohol of any sort? It would be rude, he decided, to not show up when there was booze being passed from hand to hand at a discount price. Luckily, Stan agreed with him. But then again, Stan usually did.

“It’s mad around here,” Stan panted. “Absolutely bloody bonkers!”

“My kind of place,” Louis called back to him, and he neatly dodged a woman with two whining toddlers while Stan was left struggling to edge around them without getting himself into trouble.

There were old people mumbling disapprovingly to each other, and a couple who were still young enough at heart to be having fun. Louis kept a constant stream of glances towards his ankles to make sure he wouldn’t step on any of the little toddlers running around, even though he was almost completely certain that he would hear them weeks before he saw them, what with the amount of noise they were making. Some of the people there were his age; some of them he knew, and these he awarded a sociable wave because Louis was friendly to everyone, and he would have waved to someone he’d only met once in his life, just to be nice.

He wasn’t sure of the exact nature of this particular charity event, only that it was a big one, and the big prize that everyone wanted was apparently an excellent one. That was about as far as his inquiries went; raffles and games and the like held little interest to him. Louis wasn’t the type to buy an entire book of raffle tickets just on the off-chance of winning a prize he’d probably hate. In fact, his motives for being there in the first place were simple; discounted alcohol. Louis wasn’t an alcoholic, but he was definitely hovering dangerously closely to the borderline.

According to Stan, Niall and Hannah were waiting on the other side of the square beside the alcohol coolers, ready to start insistently demanding as much alcohol as they could afford to buy and probably begging for a whole lot more to be put on the side so that Louis and Stan could buy even more once they arrived. Zayn was keeping an eye out for disapproving parents who could bob up at inopportune moments, such as while the other four were attempting to smuggle a dangerous amount of booze out of the town centre without being spotted. Louis had a reasonably loose leash, but Niall’s parents often worried about him (not his fault, poor kid; he had one of those cute faces that you couldn’t help but be concerned for) and Zayn’s mother would have been horrified if she knew what he got up to most nights. They were all rebelling, basically. It made things more fun, anyway.