The Brother I Never Wanted (Larry AU)

Chapter 3

The sound of thin, small fingers drumming against the black steering wheel fills the silence of the car, gradually becoming more and more annoying and distracting as the anxiety builds in his stomach. Eventually it becomes enough that he has the inescapable urge to reach out and tweak the knob to the radio, turning it up to an audible murmur in the background. Where the fuck is he?

He growls when the tall, lean mop of curls finally bounds out the front door and slides into the passenger side of his car. Does it really take him this long to get ready? This is absurd. If he insists on taking this long, he's going to make him walk from now on.

"Took you long enough," he snarls darkly, shifting gears harshly to back out of the driveway. "I was going to just leave you and make you walk to school."

Harry rolls his gorgeous eyes, flipping down the visor. Louis has to refrain from rolling his own eyes when he opens the mirror to fluff up his hair again. Did he not just do that in the bathroom for thirty fucking minutes? What could he possibly be fixing now? His hair is already perfect. Well, better than Louis' messy fringe anyway. But, to be fair, Louis didn't spend thirty minutes on his hair.

Louis exhales heavily. He doesn't understand why his dad thought it'd be a good idea to drive his new stepbrother to school. He's obnoxious and acts like the very stereotype of a rich, spoiled brat. Now don't get him wrong, Harry's family does have money, but not as much as he would make you believe. And he knows very fucking well that they get along about as well as a cat and a dog fighting over meat scraps. So Louis really has no idea what was going through his mind when he forced Louis to agree to the arrangement. At least it's a fairly short ride.

The visor in the corner of his vision is flipped up to hit the ceiling. He briefly lets his gaze flit over to the passenger side. Harry pulls the sunglasses from where they hung on the collar of his white t-shirt and places them on his nose. He may act like the stereotypical, obnoxious rich jerk, but, damn, he makes it look good.

Louis turns his gaze back to the road, running his finger over the steering wheel and tapping his thumb to the rhythm of the music in the background. Maybe it's just him, but the awkwardness seems to be suffocating him. It's hard to say what Harry is feeling with those dark lenses shading his eyes. He's just sitting there quietly, every now and then reaching up to scratch under his eye. It's bizarre. He expected more of a fight from him.

After a couple of minutes, Harry reaches out, nose scrunching, and turns the knob that controls the radio station. Louis ignores it, not really caring. He wasn't really listening to the radio anyway.

But then Harry would pick a station, turn up the music, sit back, and then he'd reach out and change it again. This went on for several minutes. Annoyance builds in the pit of Louis' stomach, his knuckles turning white. He manages to stay silent for a little while before he can't take it anymore.

"Pick one!" he snaps irritably.

Harry snorts, turning it once more just to spite him. "What's stuck up your arse?" His voice is slightly gruffer than he remembers, low from the lack of use since yesterday.

"The fact that I have quite possibly the most annoying step-brother in existence," he retorts hotly. Thankfully, the high school comes into sight then, and Louis turns the wheel sharply to pull into the parking lot.

The right side of his mouth twitches up in a smirk so that that damned crescent indent pops on his cheek. He ruffles his curls cockily, darting a tongue out to lick over his bottom lip. "Your stepbrother is up your arse?"

Louis growls. "Not like that, you fucking pervert."

Harry just hums lowly in response, a grin slowly replacing his smirk. Louis quickly averts his eyes to swing into an empty parking spot. He really needs to convince his step mom to get Harry his own car or he's going to crash into something just to get Harry to shut up.