Close to Nowhere (Larry Stylinson)

nine

...

An hour before sunset they began walking to the car. It was going to take a while to get there and they both accepted the fact that it would be dark on the way back. Harry was worried about the lack of light but Louis figured the moon and stars above would be enough. They were lucky the sky was clear tonight.

They talked about the case for most of the walk but Louis could tell Harry wasn't really paying attention. He was antsy, jittery, like he was waiting for something to happen. And every time Louis looked over at him, he caught him staring at Louis' lips.

That annoyed Louis because it was Harry who decided to kiss him, anyway. He didn't have to act like such a weirdo about it. All through the day there had been a heavy, charged tension between them ever since Harry pressed him up against the side of the house.

Louis couldn't get the thought of Harry's naked body out of his mind, the way it felt pressed against him, holding him up. It was like every time he closed his eyes he saw Harry standing there, cast in shadow with the mountains lit in sunlight behind him, crowding Louis backwards. Gripping his shoulders, slipping a knee between his thighs and pushing upwards. Kissing him soft and sweet but insistent.

Louis would be lying if he said they'd never gotten close to something like that through all these years of knowing each other, despite how much they bickered. Whenever they had dinner together they would always get a little too wine-drunk and dizzy, and whatever space had been between them before would melt into something nonexistent.

If they were sitting on the couch in Louis' apartment, Louis would almost always find himself with his head on Harry's shoulder without ever making the conscious decision to rest it there. Harry would sometimes have his arm around him, a warm, heavy weight over his shoulders and the back of his neck. And then Louis would turn his head up and already find Harry looking down at him, a conflicted expression on his face. And the space between their lips would be so small. It would be so easy to lean forward and press them together.

Nothing ever happened, though. Not until this morning, by the side of the house, standing naked in the mud, dripping wet with freezing cold water. They hadn't had anything to drink. They were both completely lucid. And Harry crowded him against the siding and kissed him for no reason at all.

Louis glanced at Harry again and caught him staring intently, as if he was cataloguing the features of his face for later memory. It was the fifth time in less than twenty minutes and Louis was annoyed with it, feeling a little too on display.

"What?" he finally snapped, and Harry flinched back as if he hadn't realized he was doing it.

"Um, nothing. Sorry. What were you saying?"

Louis rolled his eyes. "It wasn't important." He was just rambling about his vision, trying to figure out what it meant. Obviously Joseph Thomas was a murderer but Louis couldn't figure out much more than that. He needed more background context but they had already gone through every historical document concerning Ashland ranch that they could find, and the facts were few and far between.

When they finally got to the car, everything was just as they left it. It was kind of eerie, seeing the abandoned car on the empty road, no sign of life for miles. Especially under the setting sun, it looked surreal.

"Here, why don't you try to start the car again while I get out stuff from the trunk? Who knows, it might work."

Louis shrugged and took the keys, ignoring the way Harry was acting really strange. Something was off but there was no way for Louis to know what it was without Harry telling him. Unless he concentrated really hard and slipped into the other realm, but they had made an agreement only a few months after they met to never intentionally scry each other's lives. It was a total invasion of privacy and quite frankly Louis was happy to not know what Harry was up to, what he had done in the past and what he would do in the future.