7up || larry stylinson au ||

Part III: The Middle Years

You will always
be beautiful,
before and after today.

When our days have seen age.
Two tired souls.
Two tired hearts.

We have been through it all,
through the fire,
and still,
what once was will always remain.

You will always be inside me.

Never forget that.

Never forget how much I lived
for you, how much I exhausted my hours
to watch you grow.

Never forget how much I loved,
and above all,
never forget me for how
my bones made to love yours
every time I saw you walk away.

-- RM Drake

September
Age 35

Harry and Louis are sat in the kitchen, Louis mindlessly stirring his spoon in his teacup. He looks up at Harry. "You ready?"

He shrugs. "I guess so. It'll be weird to do an interview since becoming parents. I feel like all our answers will be totally different than they used to be."

Louis smiles. "Well, my goals for now include getting a full six hours of sleep without the interruption of a child poking me in the face or screaming from the room over, and my goals for the future include, one day, not tripping over a fucking pair of tiny shoes on my way out the door."

Harry laughs and holds up his own teacup. "Cheers to that."

They agree to take the kids out of the house while the crew is filming. It shouldn't be more than an hour and a half maximum per interview, but they figure it'll be easier to keep them separate. However, once Lucy catches on to what's going on, she has an endless string of questions.

"You started doing The Up Series when you were seven?" she asks, while Louis helps her shrug into her sweater.

Louis nods. "Mhmm. We were just about your age when this whole thing began."

"Wow!"

"Wow is right."

"What kind of questions do they ask you?"

Harry bends down to tie Alex's shoelaces. "We talk about things in our lives, and things we hope happens in our lives. Boring adult stuff, mostly."

Louis grumbles under his breath. "I'll fucking say... What a pain in the arse this process is, who signed me up for this shit..."

Lucy cuts him off. "Will I ever be able to see your interviews?"

Harry doesn't know what Louis' interviews are like in comparison to his, but the idea of his kids seeing him so vulnerable and raw is somehow worse than the entire world seeing him that way. He looks up and finds Louis already staring back. "Maybe one day, Luce."

The house is free of Louis and kids when Harry begins the interview. He runs his fingers through his hair - significantly shorter and less curly since the last time he was interviewed - and squints at the lights shining directly into his eyes.

"'m Harry Styles, I'm 35, and I don't think I'm ever going to get used to how fucking bright these lights are." A few chuckles go around the room. Augustus rolls his eyes, fighting a smile. "Anyway, the last time we talked, I was teaching and Louis and I had just got married. We, uh, we've been married for eight years now and we have two kids, Lucy and Alexander. We adopted Lucy when we were 29 and Al when we were 33. They were both tiny little babies when we got them. I miss those days, when they couldn't fight back." He pauses to think. "I don't teach anymore. I decided I wanted to stay home with Luce when she was a baby and then just never went back. Maybe eventually I'll go back. I dunno." He scratches his nose. "Louis got his degree in business, if I've never mentioned that. I'm sure he has at some point. Anyway, he and Niall opened up a bar the same year we got married, a few months after we did our last interview. It's called Route 7, appropriately named for how we met." The look on Harry's face is wistful when he says, "Proper sap, that one. It keeps him busy, though. Both him and Niall. I think I've forgotten what they look like, to be honest." He isn't kidding, actually. In fact, he's really playing off how much he hates that fucking bar.