Note To Self (Harry Styles AU)

Chapter Twenty One.

Their heated kiss wasn't broken until the front door swung open and the dog barked, startling Harry enough to literally shove Aubry off of him and roll back over onto his front to make it look as though he'd been working the whole time. He could hear his pulse in his ears, his face was hot, and he was positive it was beet red too. He kept his head down when he heard his mother's footsteps at the doorway into the living room, not daring to look up. He feared looking at her, knowing what he'd was doing only moments before had been wrong.

Aubry sat beside him, totally unfazed, but she did pick up her scissors to cut the papers the way she was supposed to have been doing all along.

"What are you up to?" his mother asked, leaning against the doorframe.

"Just doing our project," he answered. His voice wavered slightly, he cringed when he heard it.

"When is it due?" she asked, though she'd already asked before. She was double checking.

"Thursday," he spoke, eyes glued to the pencil he held in his hand. He didn't even have anything to write, it was just the first thing he saw and he grabbed it to make himself look busy.

"Look at me," she requested, and he fought so hard with himself to keep a straight face when he did. She eyed him for a moment, causing him to fidget. "You look guilty," she called him out.

"No I don't," he lied.

"You do," she insisted. "Did I interrupt something?"

"No," he denied. Thank god you did, he thought.

She eyed him for only a moment more. "You're lying," she spoke, and the fact that she could read him like a book made his heart beat even faster with nerves.

"I'm not lying. Why would I lie?" he asked, trying his absolute hardest to make his lie about not lying believable.

"You seem pretty uncomfortable, why is that?" she asked, replying to his question with her own. He didn't have an answer for that. His lips pressed together when he realized he was cornered.

Aubry spoke up for him, her lies far more believable than his own. "He farted, he's embarrassed."

He looked over at her, kind of surprised that she helped bail him out of potentially getting in trouble, while also playing along with her lie by shushing her. "Don't talk about it."

She cracked a smile. "Alright, pink cheeks," she teased, and he caught on to her reference. His mother bought it, thankfully, and dismissed them by telling them to get back to work. As soon as she was gone, Aubry snickered. "You're bad at lying," she told him, keeping her voice low enough not to be overheard.

He wasn't, really. Only when he was nearly caught making out with a girl in the middle of the living room did he falter and his mind go blank for lies to tell. He shushed her again, seriously this time, both because he didn't want his mother to hear and because they'd hardly gotten any work done at all.

Soon after, they were in need of a glue stick and Harry went searching through the house for one. There was a craft box stored in the coat closet that no one ever used, so it was kept up high on the top shelf, pushed to the back behind a bunch of other junk. He struggled to reach it, standing on the tips of his toes and stretching his arm as far as it could go, but only his fingertips brushed the side of it. He jumped, trying to bring it forward just enough to grab, and even resorted to planting his foot on a box to give him a boost.

He wasn't paying much mind to what he was stepping on, and just as he got ahold of the box he wanted, the one he was standing on gave out and his foot went through, causing him to fall and an avalanche of things to come crashing down off the shelf. He held his arms over the top of his head as items and boxes rained down over him, smacking against the floor until the shelf was empty and there was nothing else left to fall. He glanced up, seeing he managed to pull the shelf forward so it no longer sat straight, and then he looked at the mess he made on the floor and was horrified by what he saw.