Amaryllis

16

beginning of part 2

*

One could say that things soon go back to normal. Unless, of course, one is Harry Styles. As life goes on, nothing abnormal happens, per se, but Harry starts experiencing…things.

He's back to spending every free moment he has at the house, running through the forest quick and silent with his head hung low. Liam forces him to do yoga almost every other day, Niall keeps bringing him printed out recipes of things he wants Harry to cook, and Louis is really fucking distracting.

And, see, that's the thing. Louis. His general existence suddenly becomes something that Harry can't ignore, no matter how hard he tries. Where he'd deliberately avert his eyes before, he now stares so often even the other boys have started noticing. His gaze gets randomly glued to the sinful line of Louis's arse, the gentle dip of his hips, the spark in his eye when he switches salt for sugar just before dinner. At first, Harry had thought he was just glad that Louis is alive and well, as much of a menace as he was before everything happened.

Except none of it went away. December is in full swing now, Harry has to study for his exams, and still all he can think about is would-be manly scruff and blue eyes. He has no energy to fight it. He's always been a fairly self-aware kind of guy, accepting of his slow speech and weird quirks, cherishing them even, but when he realises where all this has been heading, he's shocked that he hadn't known sooner.

The Thing happens like this:

It's a few days before Harry is set to leave for Christmas break. It's proper freezing out, now, and Liam has finally convinced him to leave the renovations of the outside of the house for the spring, which is why he has now moved to the inside. He has a pile of old picture frames stacked on the kitchen table as he cooks dinner, sorting through them while he waits for his water to boil. He'd dug them up in the attic, buried underneath layers of dust and years of memories, and he's been marking places where he thinks they'd look just wonderful.

The boys are slowly coming home from work one by one, Niall rushing in from his last lecture with red cheeks and a lot of swearing. Everybody's been exhausted, lately, the dark, cold days taking a toll, and they all mostly eat and spend time half-comatose lounging on the sofa. It's very cozy and winter-y, and so good Harry has barely seen the bed in his own hall for the past week.

"I got us matching ugly sweaters!" Louis shouts, the last to arrive, as he sweeps into the kitchen red-nosed and grinning. The fairy lights Harry had hung all over the house paint flecks in his eyes and colour his hair.

Niall shouts something intelligible, throwing himself at the bulking plastic bag Louis is holding. He'd been right – the sweaters are absolutely terrible, all lopsided reindeers, creepy snowmen and blurry snowflakes. There's five of them, every one a different colour, and they immediately start clambering over each other in an attempt to get to the least garish ones first. Harry gets an accidental fist to the eye, and decides to wait it out.

What he's left with is a screaming neon pink monstrosity, big enough that the sleeves fall down over his hands. Harry likes pink, he really does, but he still thinks clothes like this should come with a health hazard warning.

Niall's sweater is puke green, Zayn's an awful, mustard yellow, and Liam was unlucky enough to get the brown one. Louis's is turquoise, andfuck, of course he looks good in it. He's probably the only person on the planet who could.

They all put their sweaters on, even though it's still ages until Christmas (at least as far as Louis is concerned, because time apparently goes slower when one is waiting for their birthday). The wool is surprisingly soft, actually, and Louis boasts about picking out the best ones. Harry has a sudden vision of him standing in the middle of a shop, going through racks and racks of terrible Christmassy attire and touching all of it so he doesn't bring his boys anything scratchy. He doesn't fight it when his mind automatically counts him in. He likes belonging.