A House Built Out of Stone

Part 4

The shop keeps him busy. It needs to be kept clean and tidy and well-stocked. He finds old books everywhere, really. His mum had a few in the attic, originals passed down and proper dusty but treasures, all the same. Zayn had a tonne, cardboard boxes breaking down with the weight of a million universes inside them, characters demanding to be let out. To be put on a shelf for the chance of their story being told.

He finds books in coffeeshops. Where patrons have left them in the lost and found too long and Louis gets to keep them. Those places know him now. They have a box waiting for him at the end of each month, filled with coffee-scented and abandoned worlds that Louis will soon understand when he opens their covers. He loves those the most, maybe, because they are probably missed by the owners, probably searched for under sofa cushions and in the bottoms of bags.

The shop keeps him busy with all its words and pages and inked thoughts. This may be Louis’ favorite part of the job, he thinks. There was a time when he didn’t appreciate it so much. When he was younger and angrier and stupider and had just been looking for something more, and Zayn had shown him that he could run away whenever he wanted, and all he had to do was open a book.

Louis is grateful for that now, as he curls in his chair. There’s a lull in business, something he’s not unaccustomed to, so he tucks his feet up under him and reads his way through the afternoon. It’s a bit too easy to get lost in the words, and he finds himself doing just that, neck bent at a painful angle and eyes stinging from a lack of blinking. The door chime goes unnoticed as Louis reads on, shivers distractedly at the outside chill nipping at his toes and his fingers from the open door.

“Is that your favorite, then?” someone asks, and Louis drops his book, heart beating too fast in his chest and his ears ringing.

“Fuck,” he murmurs. “D’ya do that to everyone?”

Harry’s got on just as many layers today. His curls are loose though, wind-flipped over his forehead and his eyes. He looks like a character in a book somewhere, Louis thinks. With his dimples and his hair and the sincerity in his smile. It’s like someone dreamt him up one night, dreamt him up and left him to fend for himself.

“I brought you something,” Harry says. He’s got a box under his arms, half-covered by the huge sleeves of his coat. “Sort of like a thank you, I guess. For the other night.”

He rests the box on Louis’ knees and waits. It’s a heavy sort of thing, wrapped up in Christmas paper, for fuck’s sake, and topped off with a bow. Louis tries to be gentle with it all, his fingers sliding under the tape and he tries to fold the paper up for safekeeping.

It’s three boxes of Twinings.

“You bought me tea,” Louis says stupidly. “I don’t even know you.”

Harry nudges him. His limbs are too gangly and long and he should be awkward with it all, but he’s not. “Sure you do,” Harry says. Teeth and dimples and hair. “I put you to bed that night, remember?”

“You left me in this chair,” Louis replies. He runs his fingers over the boxes. It’s the expensive kind, wrapped up with the gold trim, just waiting to be brewed and poured. He won’t say but it’s one of his favorite kinds, because Harry’s just a silly kid with too much time on his hands and a deceptively charming smile. “But thank you.”

“Hey, this is meant to be my thank you,” Harry tells him. He shoves himself into one of the other chairs, legs tucked up and too long. He’s still got his coat on, his scarf half-covering his mouth and his nose and cheeks flushed red. “You didn’t answer my question, you know.”

Louis wraps the blanket firmer round his shoulders. Harry’s brought the cold air in with him, and settles over them, sinking into the gaps in the blanket and under his sleeves. “What’s that, then?”

Harry nods at the book in Louis’ hands. He’s got On the Road today, the pages soft and overworn from too many hands. Louis has to remember to be gentle with this one. “Is that your favorite?”

There are shelves upon shelves of books in this shop. Louis hasn’t read them all, but one day he will. He can’t choose a favorite, because all of them are so different, because all of them give him a new place to hide, if just for a few hours.

“I don’t have a favorite,” he says again.

“Okay,” Harry tells him. He’s not giving up though, Louis can see that in the crookedness of his smile and the languid way he sprawls in one of Louis’ chairs. All irreverence and grace, this kid. “Did you read my favorite then?”

Louis has the book tucked under his pillow in the bedroom in his flat. He can only sleep down here in his chair so many nights before his neck starts to bother him, before the ache in his shoulders follows him past sunrise and during the day. So he keeps the book under his pillow in his bed, for the nights when he can’t sleep because the flat is too still and quiet and it doesn’t smell right. Doesn’t smell like books and tea andhome, is the thing.

“Why is it your favorite?” Louis asks him. He loves it, really. The thought of books being something forbidden and dangerous and it feels like that sometimes. Like it’s Louis and his shop full of books against the world.

Harry shrugs broad shoulders. He seems small, Louis notices, tucked up on creaky chair legs and his fingers rubbing against the grooves of the table. “Dunno, really,” he says. “Read it once in sixth form and I thought it was, like, I don’t know. Different.”

“Very articulate for a future lawyer,” Louis says. He’s teasing, but the flush on Harry’s cheeks is nice. The way he narrows his eyes. Less hawk-eyed now, less like he’s trying to peel back Louis’ skin. “Think you might have said something deep there.”

The thing is, Harry’s got a voice like molasses. It’s heavier and stickier than honey, rolls off his tongue and Louis catches the words easy, slow as they come. He says, “Thought I’d stop off here between classes to give you your present.”

He’s nabbed On the Road off Louis’ lap by now, flipping through the pages and careful of the bookmark Louis’ stuck in between them. His fingers are careful, gentle, as if he can sense the fragility of the book, can feel the wear in the spine and how thin the pages have become.

“Have you read it?” Louis asks. Harry would fit into that world, with what little that Louis knows about him. With his languid limbs and his lazy smile, full of sincerity, crooked as it is. “’s good.” He feels lazy himself, sitting in the middle of his shop at midday, half-hidden under blankets and the sun shining in his face.

Harry shakes his head. “D’ya mind if I borrow it?” he asks.

“This isn’t a library.”

“C’mon, please,” and it’s the same thing he said the other night, before Louis agreed to let him stay late, typing up steady on his laptop. “I’ll bring it back. And I’ll have something to talk to you about.”

He tilts back on the chair, on one of Louis’ rickety, shabby old chairs that he loves. He tilts back on the hind legs, all leggy grace and cockiness, and Louis hears the creak, knows the soft wood like the back of his hand and it holds steady. Holds steady and keeps level for Harry.

“You know,” Louis starts. “No one’s ever really sat in that chair but me. It’s tricky.”

Harry lets the chair fall, settling down with a thump back on the floor. “No it’s not,” Harry says. “Maybe it doesn’t like you.”

“It’s my chair,” Louis tells him.

Harry lifts back up on the legs. He’s cocky and silly and he has too much hair. He’s a character, Louis thinks. Done up too pretty with all his bad parts tucked away in secret. “It’s my chair now,” he says decisively. “I’ve taken it from you.”

Harry claims it then. He smiles like he’s teasing but he’s got Louis’ book tucked away under his coat, got himself held up on one of Louis’ shameful, weathered down chairs. He claims a piece of Louis’ shop, and he’s teasing, but Louis can’t help but wonder if the shop will claim him back.