Timeless - A Larry Stylinson FanFiction

Chapter 18

 

Harry’s hand, significantly larger, was then in Louis’. Odd sensation, it was, aside from the fact he was a stranger and mainly the fact he was a man. As was himself. Two men, in one room, hands delicately laced in the heir of the music.

Louis, with such ease and dominance, brought Harry’s hand up to rest just behind his neck, nodding once.

“This suits your fancy?” he asked, voice sounding flat yet his lips held each word carefully.

Harry replied with a half-tentative nod, feeling the slightly wrinkled yet warmed collar of Louis’ shirt.

“Now,” he instructed, reaching a second hand outward, which Harry slowly met with his own cold fingers.

Louis allowed his fingers to fall into the spaces between Harry’s, lifting their joined hands up to his shoulder.

“Almost there,” he chuckled, bringing his left hand over to rest in the small of Harry’s back.

Harry could feel the light pressure applied to his back by the small hand of Louis Tomlinson himself. Dancing with a man, he was dancing with a man. Shouldn’t this feel out of sorts? Shouldn’t he refuse, pulling away and cursing Louis Tomlinson for trying to touch him in a way as intimate as a dance? Shouldn’t he go home now? Surely it was getting late, and this was most certainly not in his taste to be doing something so taboo as to visiting and dancing with a man.

Shouldn’t he not like this?

“Dancing requires not only skill but the movement of one’s feet,” Louis said, chapping pink lips tracing oddly close to Harry’s ear. It was all part of dancing, wasn’t it?

“Ah, right.” With that Harry began to move his feet, step by step he caught onto Louis’ gentle motions and synched his own. In perfect harmony, exceptionally together.

As one, they moved almost wistfully across the dusty carpet, spot of gin now dried, seemingly longing for the next step. It was at that time where the stiffness of both mens’ backs began to limber slightly, arms caressing rather than just holding. It was then that the music flowed within them both, opposed to between them, and the beating of the two hearts became one.

I’m always chasing rainbows,

Watching the clouds drift by.

My schemes are just like all my dreams,

Ending in the sky.

Louis gave Harry a short nod of approval, lined with nothing less than affection. “Now I see you’re getting it,” he said with familiar sarcasm, yet shadowed with an unknown distraction.

The song seemed to be an illusion, spanning three hours rather than three minutes. The literal length wasn’t long nor repetitive, but it lasted a great deal of time. And the funniest part was neither Harry nor Louis wanted it to end.

Believe me,

I’m always chasing rainbows,

Waiting to find the little bluebird in vain.

The end seemed to fall right into place after such an outstretched moment, yet both men felt it came too soon.

Feet stopped abruptly in place as a small ripple from the record machine seemed to tear at the fabric of the atmosphere. Hands were on backs, on shoulders. Fingers were locked perfectly in with one another, slightly perspired but effortlessly filling the voids between. The closeness locked them into place with nobody but each other, the world outside the door meaningless and briefly non-existent.

Skin, warm with the tinge of doubts left in the past and cumbersome thoughts now a memory. Lips with dry ridges molded from cool January air, deep in chapped pink hues, lapped over frequently by wet tongues to regain moisture.

It wasn’t one nor the other who brought their hands down from the shoulder-level interlocking position, fingers falling free to their sides, arms unraveling from the embrace of dance. Nor was it either man who made the choice of tilting his neck forward just the right amount, satisfactory for having weary wintry lips pursing against each other rather than together.

Time itself seemed to blink, sending a deeply phased Harry stumbling back a step, toe of his boot catching on his heel.

Louis, however, maintained his always solemn, proud posture, but his eyes were filled to the brim with a look hardly explainable. Dismay? Shame? Delight, even? It was a heart-wrenching blend of indecisive emotions that seemed to fill not just Louis but Harry as well.

It was a heavy moment, weighing on both men’s shoulders and hearts, air hanging thickly like a fresh molasses, sticking to everything around it. Lungs seemed filled with lead yet breaths were still easily taken, quick from the dance they had shared.

The moment wasn’t like anything either man had experienced before, both of them seemingly overwhelmed with taboo feelings that clouded over any clear thoughts trying to peek through. Their senses seemed dulled, clogged and unclear. But yet again, nothing was clear in that moment.

Another hour seemed to pass before either man spoke.

“Your pin.”

Louis’s voice sliced the air, the overwhelming jumble of distraught emotions filling the room to its brim. He sounded refreshed almost, yet weighed down heavily by the atmosphere.

Harry’s eyes seemed to dance, but not in the way one might think. He resembled a frightened fawn, engulfed in too many emotions to keep steady.

“My pin,” he replied, voice sounding parched and wavering.

Louis then took a step forward, hands locked behind his back. He stepped like a soldier, shoulders high but head hung. He reappeared a moment later, rolling his thumb around the wings of the swallow, as if to memorize the cold outline across his fingertip. With each step toward Harry, the space between them seemed to tug thinner and thinner. He set the pin in the very center of Harry’s overturned and terribly sweaty palm.

The thank you came in a voice seemingly taken by the wind, there in one moment and gone the next.

Louis’ reply was a meek nod, eyes tracing the patterns on the carpet, which were fundamentally meaningless now.

Without another word, glance, nor sound, Harry was out of the dimly lit house in a minute’s time, darting through mazes of shattered belongings, laying purposeless across dark floors. The sun, which had spent the day shadowed behind uneven layers of grey had dared to break itself through, showing as a white crest, blinding rather than illuminating.

The pin had yet again taken its rightful place in his pocket along with a folded playing card he had forgotten to remove two days prior after winning against his father.

“Seven of hearts,” Harry whispered to himself, chuckling under his breath and wondering why the card had stuck around so long. “Christmas Eve card, my mother always called you. It’s a wonder why you’ve stayed in my pocket till this hour.”

Deciding to discard the now crumpled and useless card beneath the lamppost he now stood at, Harry lodged it at the base of the pole in the ice cold snow, bidding the mistletoe hanging from the wood adieu.