Timeless - A Larry Stylinson FanFiction

Chapter 3

Harry hadn’t pictured the night’s festivities in honor of the soldiers’ return to be quite like this. What was once a dreary, colorless town almost as black and white as the film it was captured in, was suddenly teeming with energy...with life.

“They’ve really put on the Ritz for this one,” he heard a raven-haired man speak, voice thick with an unrecognizable accent, as he pushed past the crowd. Small paper lanterns folded and creased ever so neatly were lit up and hung from rope to rope, circling the cobblestone town square. The town was now bustling, alive with idle chatter, blaring music, and most of all dancing. Couples fueled by love and connection making there way to the invisibly marked dance floor. It was a mess of arms, legs, and bodies swinging and swaying with the tune of the seemingly proud-sounding saxaphone. To the side where the elder women were wild with private conversations that weren’t too private at all.

“In three years time our granddaughters will be looking like them, dancing like them,” one lady huffed, taking a revolted glance at the sea of brave flappers, wavy hair cut to the chin, skirts to the knee.

“And this preposterous music, what do you think is fueling this... this scandal!” another woman gushed, obvious disgust in her voice toward the new dance craze. Harry brushed off the remarks. They didn’t effect him and by no means was he going to let them. He didn’t quite mind the new craze, the music was upbeat and so was the dancing. Maybe it’s just my generation, he thought. Maybe we need a change. Just as he was starting to get into it, a sparkling water in his right hand, his left taking hold of his sisters as she danced to the music beside him, it stopped.

At first there was quiet murmuring, but that too was halted once a loud fanfare pierced the night time environment and it was time to watch the soldiers take their final march down main street. Each one prouder than the last, the rugged men ached of exhaustion and smelled of whiskey and rum and another scent Harry couldn’t quite place. A smile curved at his lips as he saw Warren give him a proud wink as he walked, back straight as a board, knees lifted just so, face nearly expressionless. Taking a long sip of his sparkling water, he pushed his way forward in the crowd, skinny frame slipping through the hustle and bustle of the crowd, sound only dying down again as a booming voice nearly shook the seemingly frozen air.

“Thank you all for coming out here tonight,” a voice bellowed, a voice belonging to none other than Clint Humphreys, a man just as wide as he was tall but always dressed sharp as a tack. Plaid overcoats and shoes you could see yourself in, a glossy wooden cane held carefully in his blocky fingertips. He was the town chairman, in charge of any events that have to do with the gathering of the townspeople, and that was just about it for all Harry was concerned. “Nah, nah, I’m not up here for long today,” he said in his thick, croaky voice everyone in town had learned to love (or deal with for that matter). “All I have to say today,” he paused, but only for a moment to adjust his stance on the wooden platform he was glorified upon, taking a posture with a higher representation of pride and gratitude as he cleared his throat before beginning to speak once again. “Is welcome home boys!” With a jerk of his wrist, sending his glass of champagne high above his head, the entire crowd erupted into hoots and hollers and cheers of all pitches. Cheers of relief, cheers of accomplishment, but mostly cheers of pure joy that twelve men from Huntingdon went to fight for their country and twelve men came back home. Sure, bumps, bruises, and wounds deeper than just skin have come back with them, but they were all alive, and that, above all, was what really mattered.

The twelve men stood with a certain air that demanded such respect, and boy did they get it. In the midst of the clapping and whistling and celebratory clinking of glasses followed by a few drops of overflowed whiskey from the ridge, time seemed to slow itself. Harry began to get that certain feeling, like when you came down ill as a child and your ears would fill with so much fluid all you heard was a watery version of what was being said to you. The cheers were muted to a dull roar in a second and Harry’s vision became twice as clear. While searching the proudly-postured row of twelve to come across his cousin, Harry saw another face that he instantly recognized.

As though by an unknown instinct, his hand gravitated to his coat pocket, fingers tracing the outline of the pin he now owned, the swallow dancing and thrusting its wings, burning to be released from the depths of the fabric. The pin, like his fingers, was taken over by the deep-hanging chill of the early December night. Deciding to keep his hand in his pocket, doing the same to the other, he caught a glimpse of the stranger’s eyes as he swiveled on his heels. Not just any stranger either. Harry happened to lock eyes with the petite bloke he’d seen this morning, the one who had given him the pin. His eyes? Blue. Not just blue but... blue. And no, it didn’t matter because no, it shouldn’t matter. But it did. This stranger’s eyes were blue and it mattered because it was a blue like none other. Just a flicker of green seeming to hold his perfectly round pupil in its spot, surrounded by a wash of Emerald-tinted blue, a warm sort of cool blue, if that made any sense at all. Sure, a look similar to Warren’s seemed to be clouding these two blue eyes, dull and hurt, having seen things nobody should see and feel things nobody should feel, but none of that mattered in the incredibly brief moment that their eyes met. From thirty-five feet away and not even a second long, the locking of eyes between two people can and will change a life. Even after that mere half-second, when the stranger’s eyes continued to scan the crowd, Harry stood breathless, unsure of the near tornado that had seemed to gone through his insides, the chilled night air now not so cold, for his heart was beating so quickly.