A House Built Out of Stone

Part 11

The bell over the door chimes too loud when Louis unlocks the shop. The drip from the ceiling is steady, and Louis grabs the bucket from behind the counter and sets it on the floor. “Need to get that fixed,” he mutters, and Harry doesn’t answer and Louis sighs.

He clears his throat and shrugs a shoulder towards the stairs. “We can go upstairs and I’ll make tea?”

Harry still doesn’t answer and Louis turns away, footsteps loud and heavy and echoing as he walks to the stairs.

“Louis,” Harry says, finally. Finally.

“Yeah?”

Harry’s hunched in on himself, arms crossed and his head down. He stands small and unsure in the middle of Louis’ shop, like he doesn’t belong there. “You don’t, like. You don’t have to explain it all to me, okay? I just. I need to know the truth so I know what I’m doing here.” He looks up then, stares right at Louis and doesn’t back away. “I need to know what I’m doing here.”

“Harry.”

“You told me, Louis. You said you only had your shop. You told me that.”

“I meant that,” Louis tells him. “That’s all I have. I don’t, like, that’s all I have.”

Harry shakes his hair out of his eyes. He’s still got his gloves on, still got his boots on like he’s a moment away from leaving out. “Do you have Zayn?” he asks.

“No.” Louis sags against the wall. “I used to? I don’t anymore, I haven’t for a long time.” He shrugs, tired and worn down. “What happened tonight won’t happen again. We don’t. That’s not who we are anymore. It’s just me, Harry. Me and my bookshop, that’s all there is.”

“Does Zayn have you?”

Louis curls his hands into fists, his nails digging into his palms where Harry can’t see. It seems like such a private thing, talking about this, something Louis wants to keep hidden in the space in his chest where he doesn’t have to talk about it. Harry’s justified though, Louis knows that, knows that somewhere deep where logic reaches, but right here it just feels like he’s exposing himself. Making himself too vulnerable.

“No,” he forces out. “How many ways do I have to say it? It’s me. I’m here, and this is all I have to give you, Harry.”

Harry stares at Louis from across the shop. They’re both holding themselves too quiet, too closed off, and Louis doesn’t know when that started being a problem, being too closed off, but he feels it now. He’s never seen Harry likes this, because all Harry’s emotions play on his face, that’s just who Harry is, but Louis can’t read a thing off him now.

“I don’t want tea,” Harry says eventually. He drops his arms and shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Okay,” Louis says. He pauses, thinks about what he’s meant to say because this seems important, the two of them standing in the near dark in Louis’ old, worn down bookshop. “What do you want?”

Harry shrugs. He’s a character in a book Louis hasn’t read yet, a book whose pages are unfamiliar to Louis, whose words are new and interesting and delicate, fragile. Like all the other books in Louis’ shop.

“I want creaky floors,” Harry tells him. He moves closer, slow and hesitant, never looking away from Louis now. “I want a thermostat that never, ever works. I want a ceiling that leaks into a bucket.”

“Is that all?” Louis asks him. Harry won’t stop moving now, is the thing. His boots echoing through the stacks of books and towards Louis.

“No,” Harry says. “I want to find books on the shelves with the bookmarks still in them. Did you know that you do that? You leave the bookmarks in so I know all the books you’ve read in here. I want to keep finding them.”