A Piece of His Heart / larry uni AU

chapter five

              The following afternoon, Louis makes it all the way to the theatre's front doors without letting his soap-operaesque revelation to enter his mind.

Louis' been on a roll, if you'd ask him—breezing right past Zayn's questions when he got in the night before, ignoring Niall's texts this morning, and heading right out to rehearsal like nothing had changed.

"Because nothing has," Louis whispers to himself, biting on his thumbnail incessantly, yanking the door open with the other, "It's fine. It's great. So what if he studied your every move for a year. So what if he knows more about you than you'd thought. So what if you had no idea. It's fine—"

"Wait up!"

Louis nearly falls through the doorway. He steadies himself on the door handle as the words finally register in his mind, and he would be mad not to recognize that voice now.

So he dives behind the nearest object.

It's a short potted plant, the nearest object, and as Louis kneels behind the porcelain pot, his crossbody falls from his shoulder and lands by his feet. The sound of a latching door and rushed footsteps interrupts Louis' silent prayer, and when Louis looks up, a familiar pair of eyes is looking down at him.

"Louis, I'm so sorry about last night." Harry gushes, treating him quite like a spooked animal, much less the victim of unsuccessful avoidance.

Louis scrubs his hands over his eyes. "No, uh—no need to apologize." He declares, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment longer.

Harry's nose twitches. "Yes, there is." He says, quietly.

Louis looks up at him, then. The boy's peering down with the most endearing of inquisitive eyes, big and round and absolutely startlingly green compared to the redness of his cheeks—complementary colours, aren't they? If Louis had learned anything in the arts, it's that green and red look best when they're beside each other, bring out the best in each other, especially whilst dancing across this boy's face.

He looks beautifully frostbitten. Perhaps teachers don't lie when they say you'll be seeing the criteria again.

"No," Louis shrugs. "There isn't. A need."

Harry pops out a hip, dragging a hand through the mass of matted curls upon his head. "So, why did you dart behind a potted plant when you saw me?" He crosses his arms over his chest, the least intimidating motion Louis thinks he's ever seen.

"I didn't dart—"

"Okay, sidestepped hastily."

"I don't know what you're on about, Harry." Is what Louis settles for, and it's only then that his mind registers the immense height difference. Of course, Louis has become accustomed to the difference in sightlines between him and the boy—he can describe the underside of Harry's chin on demand—but god, does he ever feel like a child when he's eye level with knees.

Louis debates standing up.

"You know exactly what I'm on about. It was unprofessional of me." Harry murmurs, crossing his arms.

Louis crosses his arms instead. "Unprofessional? I barged in on you," He says matter-of-factly, his tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip, "It just threw me seeing you in Niall's dorm. Like that."

"It threw me too."

A moment passes.

Louis groans a little too wholeheartedly, shutting his eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?" He asks.