A House Built Out of Stone

Part 7

Nights are the worst, Louis thinks.

There’s nothing to keep him busy. The shop is closed, locked up and mostly dark, save for the lamp Louis keeps on. He’s long past reading now, his eyes gone dry and glazed and heavy. His chair is sunken in around him, and the books keep Louis company as he waits for sleep.

It’s the nights that get to him. It’s too quiet, even down here. It’s much too still and despite the months that have gone by, Louis’ body is still tensed to hear Zayn’s footsteps in the middle of the night, to smell the smoke settling into the fibers of his jacket, strong and stale and distinct. He’d gotten used to the noise, is all. Of the knowledge that another person was inhabiting this space with him, filling it up with their own stories and books and thoughts.

Not even the ceiling is dripping, and Louis blinks his eyes open, giving up on the pretense of giving in to his exhaustion.

His bones ache. His neck and his shoulders and his back. He’d like to sleep properly for once, maybe. Like to curl up in his bed instead of his chair and just close his eyes and fucking sleep.

He barely hears the knock against the door. He would have missed it had he been anywhere else. As it is, he untangles his limbs from the blanket and unfolds himself from his chair, wincing at the creak his bones give and the crack of his ankles.

Harry looks different at night. Without his fancy coats and jumpers and collars, he looks like any other boy. Could pass for any other fragile, sleepy boy on the street. He shrugs when Louis opens the door, his face sheepish and etched with tired lines. He slips by Louis with a grateful touch at his waist and Louis leans into it, exhausted enough to let it happen.

“What are you doing here?”

Harry’s brought the cold in, as usual. Louis curls his toes into the wood floor and shivers, pulls the blanket a little tighter around his shoulders and waits.

“Couldn’t sleep, you know?” Harry says. He fits in now, in the dim, dull light of the shop. Not as larger than life as he seems under the daylight and too stitched together sitting in Louis’ broken down chairs. “I didn’t know if you would be up.”

He’s holding two travel mugs, his gloved fingers wrapped tight around them. Louis watches the steam billow up and takes in the bruised bags under Harry’s eyes and the way the bottoms of his trackies trail on the floor. “What if I’d been asleep?”

“Then I would have gone back home, Louis. I don’t know.” He huffs and hands Louis a mug. “I’ve brought you tea from mine. It’s my flatmate’s favorite.”

Louis lets the tea warm him up. It’s a bit more herbal than he likes, but it’s good, and Harry’s watching him as if Louis’ reaction to it actually matters. He’s a stupid, vulnerable boy, really, huddled up in Louis’ shop in the middle of the night. “Thank you,” Louis says. “Couldn’t really sleep either,” he offers.

Harry moves quiet through the shop. He’s tall and he’s gangly but he makes himself as small as possible, crumpling up his long limbs on the counter and watching Louis clean up the last of his mess and turn off the lamp.

“What are you doing?” he murmurs, voice quiet in the near darkness.

Louis squints to find him in the dark. He’s warm, from his gloves and the tea, probably. They are two boys awake at the wrong hour and Louis thinks Harry looks good like this. Looks like he belongs here when he’s not all buttoned up and scholarly. When he’s rumpled from sleep and he’s got one of his fuzzy hoodies on and he brings Louis tea for once, like he’s got something to prove.

“I want to show you something,” Louis tells him.

Harry follows easy.

Louis leads him up the steps to the flat. Harry skips the panels Louis tells him to, all wide-eyed trust and easy commitment. They go through Louis’ flat quickly, Louis guiding Harry through the living room and the kitchen, up to the extra set of stairs that lead to the roof.

He doubles back and grabs another blanket, shoves it at Harry and waits for him to wrap himself up.

Louis hasn’t been up to the roof in ages. It had mostly been Zayn’s thing, looking out at the rooftops and the skyline and smoking through a pack or two. There are remnants of him up here, dirty cigarette butts and an old hoodie. Louis leads Harry to the railing, leans out and stares at London in the middle of the night.

“I used to come up here sometimes,” Louis says, “when I couldn’t sleep, you know? It’s, like, quiet up here. But not quiet enough to make my skin crawl.”

Harry sidles up close, fingers gripping at the edges of the blanket and peering over the railing. The lights reflect off the softness of his face.

He reads like a book Louis hasn’t read before. There are untold stories in the reflection of his green eyes, in the curls that peek from under his beanie, the bow of his pink lips.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I get it.”

They watch the blinking lights. The streets below are empty. It’s the middle of the night and Louis is shivering in his jumper and a blanket. There’s the slightest touch of warmth from the boy next to him and Louis lets himself feel it. Harry fits up here, in the quiet of the night. Louis would let him claim something when he looks like this, maybe. When he’s sleepy and soft and he’s not looking to get a reaction out of Louis.

“Thanks,” Harry says. “For bringing me up here. I’ve been trying to get your attention for weeks, you know.”

Louis shrugs. He’s not really sure what Harry’s been doing, taking things from Louis’ shop and calling them his own. He’s a thief, maybe, maybe that’s his flaw. He takes things that don’t belong to him, or maybe Louis just lets him. “What do you want from me?”

Harry pulls the blanket up and Louis feels the edges of his shiver. It’s freezing up here, their breaths puffing out and getting lost in the wind and the blackness. “Whatever I can take,” Harry says. “Whatever you’ll give me.”

Louis keeps his eyes on the roofs, on the roads below, on the streetlamps that leave them half-shadowed. “The only thing I have is my shop,” he says. It’s quiet, too confessional and it settles heavy between them.

“I like your shop,” Harry tells him.

The stars are out overhead. Louis tilts his head back to watch them. The sky is black and the stars are bright and Harry does the same, both of them staring up at their own little universe.