Larry Stylinson ~ Poor Little Rich Boy AU

16.

Chapter Sixteen:

“Hey, stranger!”

At the sound of Stan’s voice, Louis instantly flinched, stopping dead, but he didn’t turn around, kept his back turned. It had been days since he’d so much as waved at Stan from across the courtyard, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if Stan had been sharp with him. He didn’t sound like he was annoyed about it, and holding grudges wasn’t Stan’s way, but Louis still felt a little cautious anyway; Harry had been blossoming so well lately that Louis was hoping he might bring the subject of his friends back up again soon, and that wouldn’t work if Stan was going to be ratty with him. If he was going to blame Harry for effectively stealing his best friend for most of the holiday, Louis wanted the chance to smooth things over before he tried to introduce them.

Stan was still calling after him, jogging towards him from beside the fountain. He didn’t sound mad. “Wait up, I want a word with you! I thought you’d taken the cab home and done a disappearing act on us; you’ve been disappointingly absent. Missing in action!”

“Yeah, sorry.” Louis turned and bravely made eye contact with him, to find that Stan seemed just the same as he always did, if a little breathless from running. It was a pleasant surprise. “How’s things with you?”

“Same old, same old. Hot chicks in abundance, and I managed to find myself some giant sunglasses so I can ogle without being caught. What about you? Any luck with your little curly haired summer-project?”

Louis was about to downplay it, and pretend that he and Harry had just become close friends, but then he figured, why bother? It wasn’t hard to see the way that they looked at each other; he’d started avoiding reflective surfaces lately due to the goofy, extremely gooey looks he was in the habit of throwing Harry’s way which made him feel very stupid when he spotted them on his face. Stan knew him too well; he’d catch on easily, and then want to know why Louis had denied it. And he was about to get given fifty quid, if he admitted it.

“Well, actually –”

~*~

Harry hoped Louis would find it cute and not stalker-ish that he had been tailing him around for the last forty minutes.

They’d arranged to meet up later, but Harry had dared to venture out of his room and come across Louis in the stairwell, and he’d been covertly following him around the hotel for more than half an hour, enjoying the opportunity to see a side of Louis which wasn’t all banter and sex-hair and teasing expressions. Thinking that he wouldn’t have to be presentable for another couple of hours, Louis had been wandering around wearing an old threadbare hoodie, ripped and muddy espadrilles and what looked like plaid pyjama pants, with his hair hastily shoved off his face and looking like he might not have brushed it – a true bed head, and Harry most definitely liked it.

After their first extremely successful attempt at sex, they’d done it four more times, leaving Louis with hair which had clearly had Harry’s long fingers run through it with immense satisfaction – he’d smoothed it down a bit after they’d woken up and scampered back off to their respective rooms so that their travelling companions wouldn’t notice anything amiss, but somehow it had become a rumpled mess again, and Harry nodded approvingly. He liked it.

Here he was, following Louis around like it was a kind of game, seeing how he reacted with other people. He waved at the staff, grinned tiredly at people who greeted him as he walked by (apparently everyone in the hotel knew Louis, and gave him a warm salutation, even the old lady who smelt of cats who’d been coming to the hotel annually for as long as Harry could remember, and usually kept her fuchsia-painted lips in a stern line and never spoke a word to anyone). He was clearly tired out, but not at all snappy, and as he shuffled through the corridors and across the courtyard, he looked happy. Harry had made him feel that way, and he enjoyed knowing that the ridiculous goofy grin on Louis’ face had not only been put there by him, but was being kept there by him as well. It felt amazing.