In my dreams - Larry Stylinson [AU]

prologue

 In my dreams – prologue

Harry was not a people-person, to summarize it. He’d rather not go out if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Which meant he only ever went out if he ran out of food or drawing supplies. And he always tried to get one of his friends to do the grocery shopping for him. He only ever bought his drawing supplies himself. No one picked the right pencils or the right type of paper to sketch on.

Moving on to the topic of friends. Harry only had two, but that was okay. Niall had been his best friend since kindergarten and he knew the Irish boy like the back of his hand. Ashton had moved from Australia to Holmes Chapel a few years ago and his happy, bubbly personality and contagious laugh made that Harry accepted him into their little group very quickly.

They were all very close, despite Ashton and Niall having several other friends.

Neither of them ever forced Harry to do something he didn’t want to do. They respected the fact Harry hated coming out of his house. Ashton had once tried to convince him to come to a club with him. The idea alone had frightened him and instead of going to a club, Ashton ended up apologizing over and over and promising to never ask it again.

Harry had three passions: cooking, writing and drawing.

Cooking was something he did when he was immensely frustrated or extraordinarily hungry.

He had countless files saved on his laptop; each file containing stories about different characters. Not one character was similar to another but they all had one thing in common: they lived adventurous lives – something Harry had only ever dreamed of.

His current sketchbook, carefully put away in the second drawer of his desk, was filled with drawings of his characters going on adventures. There was no character who didn’t have at least three drawings in Harry’s sketchbooks. He simply couldn’t write about someone without having an image of them.

There was his current favourite Liam (whom he liked because Liam was just an ordinary boy from the 17th century – Harry tended to forget his characters did not actually exist) who could be seen fighting off pirates on his ship and there was Zayn (whom Harry considered to be his best character; flawed but somehow perfect too) finding the skeleton of his former best friend who’d betrayed him.

Niall and Ashton had tried many times to understand Harry’s fantasy world, but they never truly could.

They didn’t get how creating a new character with new storylines could make Harry forget about the world for days. It wasn’t like they didn’t try – they did, all the time, but they didn’t get it. They both did support Harry, of course.

Ashton always encouraged him to bundle his stories into a book and get it published but Harry never thought his stories would be good enough to become an actual book.

Niall was always willing to try out new recipes if Harry was cooking because he was stuck on the story he was currently working on.

Harry couldn’t have asked for better friends. They might not understand his fantasy world, but they tried and they supported him in everything and that meant so much more than he could ever tell them.

“Haz, what did you call us over for?” Ashton asks as soon as Harry opens the door for him and Niall.

“I need your help”, Harry says as Ashton and Niall toe off their shoes and enter the living room.

“I got your groceries yesterday”, Ashton says confused (Harry never lets Niall get the groceries because he’ll only bring crisps for himself and no actual groceries for Harry).