A House Built Out of Stone

Part 6

Louis doesn’t clean up the flat any time soon. He doesn’t sleep often, but he reads a tonne, flips through hundred of pages until his eyes feel gritty and dry and his back aches, bent as it is in his chair.

He doesn’t sit in the rickety old wooden chairs, because one of them has been claimed, and it feels wrong to sit in its counterpart.

Louis makes a mess of the sugar each morning. He doesn’t clean it up very well, but he moves the cream to a more visible spot, so he won’t forget it.

Louis watches Harry flit through his shop. He’s got heavy steps in his boots, and the days when he forgets to take them off at the door, he trails snow or rain through the aisles between the shelves.

The shop still hasn’t greeted him, and Louis wonders about that, wonders if Harry doesn’t belong here and wonders why he keeps coming back. He’s too young, is the thing, got youth flushed bright in his cheeks and the easy intelligence behind his green eyes.

Harry’s a character and Louis’ got a bookshop full of worlds, maybe that’s how they relate to each other.

Louis curls up in his chair. It’s been a busy morning, more customers than usual, and he’d lost track of Harry in it all. Harry’s big and tall and broad but he manages to take up the smallest amount of space, manages to lose himself between corners and edges and stacks of books so that Louis finds himself looking for a crooked, dimpled smile before he realizes and stops himself. But it’s just the two of them now; Louis is balancing a plate of toast on one knee and his mug on the arm of the chair. He’s got a book resting on his thighs, and it’s all quite precarious, but Harry keeps watching him like he’s waiting for something to fall, and Louis has never known how to back down from a challenge.

“Have you figured out a favorite yet?” Harry calls out. He’s somewhere near the back, the words slow and heavy and drifting towards Louis just the same. “You must have.”

“I haven’t,” Louis replies. It’s distracted and quiet, because he’s almost at the end of Catcher in the Rye and he won’t be able to settle the heavy sort of feeling in his stomach until he finishes. It’s a bundle of nerves and anxiety and anticipation all huddled together and waiting for the book’s end. It’s a familiar sort of feeling, but it hits him hard all the same, makes his shoulders hunch up and his fingers tap restless against the arm of his chair. “I won’t.”

Harry sighs. It’s too quiet to carry, really, but Louis is listening hard enough for it. “You will,” he says decisively. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Louis ignores him. It’s quite easy, really, because Harry demands attention but doesn’t push when Louis won’t give it to him. Harry’s too easy, maybe that’s his flaw too.

“Louis,” he hears. “Are you ignoring me?” and Louis listens for Harry’s huff, the petulant sound he makes when he’s not getting enough attention.

He leaves Louis be eventually, like he knows to do. Louis only hears the stomp of his boots, the whisper of the pages he’s flipping through because he won’t stop picking up books, is the thing. He’s constantly reading through the inked words, too fast and too inattentive to be getting anything out of it. He does it to make Louis barmy, obviously.

It’s a good half hour later before he pops up again. He leans his face over the back of Louis’ chair and looms over him. “Have you died, then?”

“Yes,” Louis mumbles. He’s got his head buried in the cushion of the chair and he’s trying wrap his mind around the end of his book. “He was in psychotherapy,” Louis mutters. “The whole time and I never realized.”

“Oh, were you reading Catcher in the Rye?” Harry asks. “I love that one.”

Louis frowns, and Harry pokes at it. “Don’t do that, I’ve got a present planned for you.”

“You always have presents,” Louis says. “Is that how you win people over?”

“Is it working?”

“No.”

“Well then, no,” Harry tells him. “It’s more of a donation, actually. You don’t have one of my favorite books so ’m going to give you my copy.”

Louis blinks. Harry’s a weird sort. Louis hasn’t given away a book in his entire life. They’re his things, really, his possessions. He’s loved them and their pages and their worlds and he won’t turn them over for someone else to ruin. “Why would you do that?”

“So you’ll read it,” Harry says. “And it can, like, live with you, for a bit. With all the other books. Right?”

Louis loves additions to his collection, but he won’t tell Harry that. “Which book have I been missing?”

“It’s a surprise,” Harry says. “I’ll bring it for you the next time I come ‘round.”

He leaves Louis there, all bright eyes and this stupid sort of hopeful tilt to his lips. He stops at the door on his way out, the bell cutting off when the door doesn’t shut right behind him. “I’ve put my name on my chair again,” he says. “Stop taking it off or ’m gonna frown at you a lot.”

Louis sighs, and Harry smiles at him. He uses too much teeth, like he’s trying too hard but not enough at the same time. Maybe that’s his flaw, Louis thinks. Maybe Harry’s just stupid.

Louis lets the note stick to the chair for a few hours. It mocks him a bit, sticks out like a sore thumb and makes Louis anxious. He rips it off, eventually, but he doesn’t crumple it up. He lets it fall into the bin and doesn’t feel bad about it, because he doesn’t do that.

He doesn’t sit in the chair though, is the thing he notices. It just doesn’t feel right, since it’s already been claimed, despite the fact that Louis has thrown all the notes away. The ones that say Harry’s chair with dotted i’s and smileys.

Harry has claimed a piece of Louis’ shop, and Louis wonders what he will try to lay claim to next. He wonders why he’s waiting for his shop to claim a piece of Harry, too.