Timeless - A Larry Stylinson FanFiction

Chapter 16

It was settled. Four weeks had slid by without much of a nod of the head, life falling back into place for everyone after the holidays. And after just nearly fourteen days passing, Harry had made his decision to go knocking on the Tomlinson’s door that dim Saturday evening, when snow was threatening to fall and the cold had turned from bitter to a tiresome sting, and ask if his pin was there.

Harry had wrapped himself up in a thick winter jacket, collar lifted slightly to keep his pale, open neck area warmer. His Christmas boots had acquired a slightly worn look now, the shiny newness they once held fading off. However, they kept their classy and rather expensive poise, and Harry adored them.

“A pair of boots,” he heard his father say on one of his big time rants just a week after Christmas. “He wanted a pair of goddamn boots, Anne. And we bought them for him!”

Harry stood light on his toes outside of the dining room, where his parents sat in a tired, after-dinner silence seasoned with snippets of chit-chat.

His mum tried cutting in with her usual soft voice of reason, sitting up with graceful posture beside her husband. “Appearance is all the rage these days, Des, you have to understand,” she tried.

“Understand?” he scoffed, an impatience in his voice. Not a tone that proved he did not understand rather that he did not want to try. “Understand what? There’s nothing here to understand!” he shouted, causing Harry, who was not in their vision, to jump.

“Desmond,” Anne hushed him, placing her hand on his forearm as she did when he got frazzled as so. “Children of today... they concern themselves on appearance, you see. Harry just wants to fit in with his friends.”

“When I was a boy, for my sixteenth Christmas I asked for a pocket knife. For my birthday, a new leather satchel for my father’s hunting rifle he gave to me. You see?” he raised up his hand, setting a wrinkled napkin on the plate of settled food scraps in front of him. “Now I’m not trying to imply something here, Anne, but-”

“There is nothing to imply,” Anne said, removing her hand from her husband’s forearm, standing up and brushing off her skirt. “Times have changed, Desmond. That was twenty-five years ago, when you were a boy. Times have surely changed,” she said with a light chuckle that more pleaded peace among the couple rather than cause a lighthearted change in mood. “It’s the new norm,” she added, digging her argument deeper into the conversation. “We are not making implications here, you are understanding that times have changed and we are ending this conversation here." Anne stood up, lifting her and her husband’s plates from the table.

She stormed briskly into the kitchen in silence, still holding a lady-like heir, signaling that topic would no longer be touched upon that night.

Snapping back to the present as quickly as the temperature changed from warm to cold, Harry realized he had just walked through more doors than just the one leading to his house.

He sort of shuffled, rather than walked, through the slushy end-of-winter debris. The snow had seen its day and fallen victim to warming weather, collected in greyish-brown half-melted heaps on the stone curb.

Harry stepped across familiar ground, feeling it sinking in with each footprint. Yet underneath that impressionable land, the earth was still frozen solid.

He stepped with caution, avoiding mud at all costs, for he would just nearly have a cow if his boots were stained. With each step, there was a longing to take a step back. To leave this silly idea for the birds and just head home. Maybe his mum needed him to do some handy work around the house. Or help with dinner. Didn’t he have some schoolwork to complete? Harry could think of just about ten excuses not to go. Ten reasons he should just turn back and go home. What would he tell his mum when she asks where he’d been? Turning down a cobblestone path, Harry was faced with the answer.