Chapter Text
“—my god ,” Niall finished, having started his exclamation before Louis had even opened the door.
“Is that a good thing?” Louis laughed, heaving himself up into the passenger seat and brushing the light trickle of snow off his shoulders. Let the record show that it was the first of May, winter was supposed to be over, but Idaho rarely listens.
“I can’t believe how greedy you are for keeping that mansion all to yourself!” Niall said, tsk ing him like he was a toddler who had just written on the walls with permanent marker.
“What can I say? He’s a private person,” Louis said flippantly, lurching forward when the truck did while Niall flailed his gear stick around so it would lock in place.
“Sorry,” he said, finally getting the truck into first gear and keeping it there. “And my ass! He sang a song for you in front of everyone!”
“I can’t deny that…” Louis trailed, the topic of Greensleeves stirring a peculiar hum within his mind, like something was subtly kindling in his brain and if handled a certain way, it could ignite a flame. He shifted his thoughts away before he caught on fire and turned the conversation over on Niall, who had many things to explain. “How was Zayn?” he asked, biting his lips in amusement when his best friend almost moaned in response to the name.
“Zayn,” Niall repeated, a starry-eyed look on his face the likes of which Louis had never seen. “Zayn was amazing.”
“Well?” Louis pressed urgently, lightly punching Niall on the arm with his knuckles. “That’s not nearly good enough! What happened after you left?”
“After I left,” Niall drawled, a dreamy sigh taking over before he could continue. “He carried me to my truck, like I weighed absolutely nothing, and then we talked a bit and flirted and I’ll just get right into it, he kissed me!” he gushed, Louis clapping as they giggled like they’d been given laughing gas at the dentist.
“I know, I know! Then I went home and got chewed out by Maura, but I couldn’t even care. I could still feel him on my lips...still can, even,” he said dreamily, brushing his fingers across said lips.
Louis had expected Zayn to do something of the sort, but he hadn’t realized how serious he was about winning his best friend over. The amount of effort he had put into wooing Niall was pleasing to Louis. If someone was going to go after his best friend of all time, they’d better do it chivalrously. “You’re so smitten,” he said, unable to get too much on Niall’s case because he’d been the exact same way about Harry. Worse, even.
“Oh, shut up, Lou. You go googly eyed any time Harry’s name is mentioned, and you know it,” Niall said, stealing the very thought from Louis’ mind.
“I...yeah, I know. Guilty,” Louis laughed, simply happy that they both had love interests to gush to each other about—even if Zayn’s species was still presently a secret.
“I’ll say this, though...” Niall said in an ambiguous tone, visibly considering how he would word whatever he had to say. “There’s something weird about those boys. Martin, too. Not weird in a bad way necessarily...but different. Like something is off with them that you and I are separate from. Like they know something we don’t,” he said, looking at Louis to maybe have his suspicions confirmed.
Louis laughed shortly and covered his face, shaking his head in disappointment at the vampires’ horrid acting abilities. If they were being obvious enough that Niall picked up on it, then they really needed to tighten some screws. “I’d love to see what you come up with,” he chuckled, staring out the windshield with purpose and ignoring every glance that Niall sent his way.
“I’m being serious!” Niall pressed, nowhere near the point of giving this subject up.
“I know you are, cat,” Louis said, giving Niall a pat on the shoulder for his apt skills of deduction. “I just can’t wait for you to start guessing.”
“Oh, I’ll figure it out,” Niall said surely, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “You just wait. I’ll uncover all of this.”
“I’m sure you will,” Louis said, refusing to break eye contact with the sky and its distracting vastness.
Zayn will slip up eventually, and when he does, I’m gonna be there.
They reached the sorry institution they call a high school and opened the truck doors to descend into the parking lot, and they were interrupted almost immediately upon arrival. How nice.
“Great going, faggot.”
There was nothing like Troy first thing in the morning.
“Leave him alone,” Niall snapped, chasing Troy away from the bed of his truck with his math textbook raised over his head like a sledgehammer.
“Shut up, you city faggot,” Troy growled back, a step above his usual snark this morning.
“What do you want?” Louis asked warily, peering over Niall’s shoulder and subtly grabbing the back of his shirt for moral support.
“I just wanted to fucking congratulate you on making us lose Dante as the wide receiver...Yeah!” he suddenly yelled, regarding both Louis and Niall’s looks of utter shock and confusion. “Yeah, he fucking quit! Said he didn’t want to mess up his career and that he needed to focus on his studies before he worried about ‘silly little things like sports!’” he roared, one snarl away from being eligible for a rabies shot.
Louis was speechless—Dante quit the Badgers football team? He realized that Troy was actually blaming him for it, and he scoffed at the mere notion. “You think I had anything to do with Dante quitting your stupid little football team?” he asked, putting a large amount of fake sympathy into his tone.
“Of course you did! You hypnotize everyone! I know you did something that day at the assembly. He stared into those freaky eyes of yours and fell under your spell or some shit, and now he’s gone. He won’t even return my calls,” he said tightly, obviously trying to hide the fact that Dante’s absence was actually affecting him and his usually hidden emotions.
“I did nothing to Dante for him to turn over a new leaf. He just realized how big of a hypocrite he was being and changed his life to be more accountable and responsible. Not my goddamn fault. I don’t put spells on anyone; you’re just in love with me,” he sneered, linking his arm through Niall’s and dragging him away from the scene. “ And my freaky eyes.”
“You’re just gonna walk away from me?” Troy shouted, following closely behind so he didn’t look desperate to anyone passing by. “You fuckin’ wish I was in love with you,” he tried to say, the shake in his voice really doing him in, though.
“No,” Louis laughed brightly, quickening his and Niall’s pace. “No, I really don’t.”
---
Louis walked into his second period class with a curious and over-active mind, strolling right up to Dante’s desk and practically sitting down on top of it to demand his attention.
“Hey, Louis,” Dante said somewhat carefully, still managing to give him a small smile regardless.
“Dante,” Louis greeted cordially, cocking his head to the back of the class and swiftly moving to the area, expecting Dante to follow—which he did.
“What’s up, Lou?” the former bully asked in a hushed tone, following the incoming students with his eyes before meeting Louis’.
“Okay...no nicknames. Ever,” Louis said as he bobbed his neck back, physically shaking off the idea before continuing. “I just wanted to run something by you, ‘cuz I got stopped by Troy this morning and he had some interesting things to—”
“I quit the team,” Dante verified immediately, sinking down into his shoulders when the whole back half of the class whipped their heads at him in shock.
“But why?” Louis asked, turning so that Dante had to give his back to the class’s prying eyes to face him.
“Because I realized that football isn’t my future. I never had any intention of playing it in college, I was never willing to let my grades suffer for it, and I didn’t like—”
“If you say ‘what Troy was doing,’ I will backhand you so hard, you’ll get a detention for it,” Louis warned, actually getting a bright and crinkly eyed smile in response.
“I would deserve it. Look, I’m not gonna say I didn’t get sick pleasure from beating you around, because I did. But I also know that it’s because my mind is a rather twisted place. I don’t think it’s okay—Troy thinks he has a reason, but I don’t care. I don’t care who you love. I just have something wrong with me,” he confessed, doing a pretty good job of convincing Louis that his eyes held nothing but sincerity.
“That’s just about as self-aware as I’ve ever seen a sociopath get,” Louis said as nicely as he could, giving a small smile to show that his words were devoid of fire.
“Am I a sociopath?” Dante asked seriously, looking a little worried.
“Ask a psychologist...look, it’s all in the past. If you keep it that way. I just hope you realize that what you did actually made Troy that much more volatile to me. So if you want to be more helpful, maybe stop him from murdering me in cold blood?” Louis sighed, crossing his arms and one ankle over the other.
“I think the Badgers kind of disowned me after I quit, but if I ever see him getting on your case, I promise I’ll try to stop him,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.
“Will you two take your seats, please?” Mr. Chilton huffed.
Louis met Dante’s eyes once more and slowly backed away, turning over his right shoulder with a tiny smirk and walking to his seat.
An arduous and coma-inducing fifty minutes later, the bell rang, and Louis almost snorted as he was jarred out of a state that was precariously bordering on permanent sleep.
“And don’t forget to read chapter twenty-four tonight. I want those vocab pages in tomorrow, so slacking will only hinder yourself,” Mr. Chilton said, eyes following Louis like an attack dog. “Not you, Louis. You stay,” he called, stopping him in his tracks of escape.
Louis suppressed his groan and turned back around, wondering what he could have possibly done wrong in the class, but that’s when he remembered—Harry’s essay. He gulped audibly and shuffled his heavy feet to Mr. Chilton’s podium, praying that Harry’s words wouldn’t get him a week’s worth of detention.
“Here,” Mr. Chilton said carefully, handing the essay back in its original envelope and furrowing his brows at it the whole time.
“Uh...thank you,” Louis said meekly, taking the item in his hands and feeling goosebumps creep over his body in nervous preparation for what lay inside its papery folds.
“This is hardly what I asked for,” Mr. Chilton added, still pinching the corner of the assignment before he would let Louis leave. “But I will admit I wasn’t expecting something of this magnitude, either.”
“Ah-hah. Yeah. Thanks,” Louis stammered, almost stumbling back once the teacher let go of the square essay because he’d been subconsciously leaning away from the awkward situation.
“Go to class,” he grumbled, taking a piece of chalk to his board and fully ignoring him.
“Right-o,” Louis quipped to his back, whipping out of the class and rushing to the first bench he saw, crashing down onto his butt as he flipped the top of the envelope open and yanked the papers out to shove his nose into.
C+
Louis cackled out loud at the red marker grade he’d been given at the top of the front page, and he couldn’t wait to delve into why. He looked around to make sure he was completely alone and then he set sights on the first line, his heart pounding as he began to fill in the blanks of Harry’s mysterious life.
Dear Sir Chilton,
Since I am unusually involved in the affairs of Hadrian, allow me to write this mandatory report in his first-person perspective for a bit of creative fun. Please be assured that the facts and the interpretations of those facts within this accord are entirely truthful.
My name is Publius Aelius Hadrianus of Rome. But of course my regnal name is Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus. I was born on the 24th of January in the year 76 a.d. I had a father called Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer, and a mother called Domitia Paulina. I loved them both dearly. Unknown to history in my family was my twin brother, Publius Aelius Auronius, intentionally subdued and overshadowed by the character of Aelia Domitia Paulina, a sister who never existed. The rewritings of the Annales Maximi were not without cause. Auronius had been born with an unstable mind, and my parents wanted nothing more than to save face to the Rome of the future. The aggressive ailment which impeded his successorship to our second uncle Trajan’s throne thus fell to me instead, and the baggage of history was hidden behind Aelia Domitia Paulina, a girl who never could have ruled to begin with.
When I was eleven years of age, there was a Gaul attack upon the inner areas of our city, and both my parents' lives were lost in our home while I was away. The evidence of their murder was valiantly covered up by the subsequent burning of my home, but the proof of their stabbing endured. It gave me a good idea of who might be behind the attack, for my brother was nowhere to be found that day and had been acting strange and distant for months. My parents had recently put out an assassination attempt on him, and that was most certainly his payback. I couldn’t accept it at the time, but I feel his hurt strongly today. It is not sympathy I offer him, but begrudging pity.
Following this loss, Trajan took both of us in as his sons. Living in the Palatine meant I was supplied with the best possible training, and I took every rigorous dueling session possible to gain unbeatable power, surpassing my peers by fifteen years of age. It was with excitement that I trained as a future leader of Rome, but with it came responsibilities I did not wish to be saddled with.
By the age of sixteen, I was forcibly married to a girl called Vibia Sabina to protect the bloodline of Trajan and my own. She was the daughter of Trajan’s niece, Matidia Augusta, and though she was sought after by all noble bachelors in Rome, to me at the time, she was an obstacle who had unexpectedly sprung onto my path. It would be quite a while until I was to become emperor and need to produce an heir, and I was frustrated over having to deal with that kind of bond so preemptively.
For at that same time, I was already in a relationship with a boy by the name of Antinous, with whom I’d grown up beside and fallen for early on in our lives. He frequently attempted to convince me that forfeiting my reluctance and conceiving a child with Sabina was what was best for me, but I was difficult to persuade. And he found it most difficult to maintain that acceptance himself. Yet over time, I ultimately did develop my own relationship to Sabina, and that love’s child was technically in existence for a time.
Unfortunately for us all, our dreams would never see the light. It was to my utter devastation at age twenty-three upon returning from a trip to hear of their deaths; Antinous, Sabina, and our unborn child. I was pointedly led to believe that they both drowned from accidentally falling off the ledge of a ship, and though that end result is factual, what went unsaid was that Auronius had been the cause of this tragedy, too.
Shortly after receiving the knowledge that my wife, child, and my most cherished lover were deceased, I was conscripted to a mission to acquire stolen battle plans that the Greeks had looted from the Gauls. We’d agreed to meet on the small island of Dokos, a very rocky and uninhabitable cough of land that didn’t serve much else of a purpose. While en route in my ship, we were commandeered by a fleet attack from the Gauls, who had obviously been tipped off by one of the Greeks in our company. The success of the battle plan mission was immediately compromised, and I knew the odds were not to be in our favor if we chose to retaliate, so I let them take me, the asset they wanted most. They killed the crew and sank the ship anyway.
I was bound and thrown into a brig of reprehensible condition and sailed all the way back to what is now called France and Germany to be held captive and used as a bartering chip against Trajan to ensure their territory security. It was no secret and certainly not honest to deny that my dearest Roman Empire took great joy in widening our stretch of territory, and problems with the neighboring Gauls had always been, and always would be, a topic of importance.
By capturing me that day, though, they ended up getting a great deal more than they asked for.
For when I was hauled into that dungeon cell, I was coincidentally accompanied by a man of incredible strength who took an immediate interest in me. He pledged that he would share with me his power to help me defeat the Gauls and get back to Rome so that I may take my rightful place as emperor. How foolish I was to accept without a second thought, but what else could I have ever wanted? It was inevitable that I would make that choice, and I still do not think I would choose differently now, even knowing what I do.
Over the next couple of months spent with him in the mountains, I came to learn by whispers of townsfolk that Auronius had returned to Rome after hearing of my disappearance and was to seize the throne if my absence proved to be a permanent one. I discovered that Trajan had fallen quite ill from the stress of my apparent death, and a time limit on my return had been set.
With such knowledge came the much needed reminder of exactly who I was, and what I needed to do. I finally found myself after losing all traces of my identity from the violent rampages I enacted with that unnamed man from the dungeon.
I returned to Rome with haste and went right to Trajan’s chambers to witness his deathly body atop his bed. I was shocked to find that Auronius had somehow come upon the same strength I had since last I’d seen him. I was far less shocked, however, to see that he’d been blatantly awaiting Trajan’s death in order to steal the throne. Alas, Trajan was conscious enough to re-declare me the first and only successor to his throne, and the fire in Auronius's eyes from that weak announcement still burns my face to this day.
My brother made a valiant attempt to kill me that night, but we were never equal to each other before, so being granted the same strength did nothing to balance the differences between us. He failed rather miserably and fled with a string of passionate threats to always and without fail destroy everything I would ever come to love. I really should have listened.
With Trajan’s death, I became the emperor of Rome. I believe it was October 16th,100 a.d., but I can’t be sure. Something surely unknown to history was that within the first week of my reign, I developed a blazingly passionate infatuation with one of my claimed servant boys. It wasn’t long until the infatuation grew to be a small form of love, and he was my cherished outlet for the life I had lost ever since I was put in that dungeon man’s path. He made me feel alive in ways you cannot even begin to fathom, and I made the decision that I would eventually give him my strength as well so that we could have a forever together. His name was Damianos, a Greek name that was given by his Britannian mother that essentially meant ‘to tame.’ Fitting, though you can’t understand why.
He remained at my side until I was technically twenty-eight years of age, though I had truthfully not aged a day over twenty-three, and it was clear to me that no future made sense without him in it, so naturally, fate would have him dead. This time, Auronius left bigger hints that it had been his doing. I never saw my brother after that until many centuries later.
After the loss of Damianos, a death I probably could have prevented if I’d just made up my mind and given him my strength earlier, I lost every shred of will to be a good and responsible leader to my empire, and I faked my own untimely death with the help of my former mentor Marcius so I would be free from the shackles of my duties.
I waited around in the shadows watching from afar, assisting my aging armies in their battles under all of my successors until 457, when the Vandals took on the Roman Empire with an army led by a rather formidable advantage: Alexander. I fell hard for that formidable man of Macedon and I stayed at his side until the turning of the seventeenth century in 1599 precisely, when Auronius took him from me too.
This was far more information than you deserve, Sir, but I am always happy to clarify and set right any misunderstandings about my life. I’m sure you weren’t expecting this content in the essay prompt you initially assigned, but you really did open a can of worms by dropping this assignment on Louis’ plate. The irony is lost on you, truly.
A word of advice. Don’t punish people for standing up for others when they are made a mockery of, Sir Chilton. Those people change the world.
All the love,
Aelius Hadrianus of Rome.
Louis sat with his thoughts for a long time, and he knew the bell had rung and he was late for his next class, but he couldn’t care at the moment. Harry’s life had always been such a mystery, and upon reading this essay, part of him understood implicitly why that was. Some of this stuff must be hard to talk about, regardless of their romantic ties. Who would want to bring up their loved ones dying?
He also couldn’t believe how underplayed Auron’s role in Harry’s life had been; sure, he’d killed Alexander, but finding out he’d killed every other lover Harry had had and their own parents on top of it…it was a lot to take in. Aelius Auronius was truly, in every way, a villain.
It was also a shock to find out that Harry had been married to a woman, had loved her, and had lost a child in the end. That was something that most of the world agreed was unthinkable—the worst of the worst of anything anyone could experience—and Harry had lived it. It positively broke Louis’ heart.
Louis held the pages to his chest, his eyes stinging with tears as he fully processed and took in all of Hadrian’s truth. It was heavy, and it was profound, and he decided he wouldn’t go immediately asking him about any of it. He wouldn’t lie and tell Harry he hadn’t read the essay, but he wouldn’t try to further his understanding of any of these events, either.
If Harry wanted him to know all about these dark events in his past, then he would tell him, and Louis would gladly hear him out for hours. But until such time, he was going to lock these secrets away in his heart.
He folded the papers and put them back in their envelope and then into his notebook, only leaving the bench when a teacher he didn’t know stuck their head out from their classroom door and barked at him to get to class.
---
“Hey, I forgot to mention it this morning, but my parents want to take you out to dinner tonight,” Niall said, the pair of them scarfing down food at the lunch table. “To celebrate you winning the school competition and all. And before you refuse ‘cuz you wanna be with Harry instead, remember who my parents are. They cannot be refused.”
“ No , they cannot,” Louis admitted, sighing into the table as he ruled out the option of politely declining—they’d hold it against him forever. Niall’s parents were perfectly nice and all, and that was precisely why they were undeniable. Thinking of hurt faces on the Horans was most unpleasant.
“So you’re coming, right? Don’t make me try to explain why you’re not—”
“I’ll come for sure. We just need to do something first,” he informed, hoping Niall knew how lucky he was that he was skipping out on time with Harry to see his parents instead.
“What do we gotta do?” Niall asked.
“I need to stop at home and leave a note for Harry when he wakes up. I have to let him know where I am or he’ll worry about me,” he said, catching Dante’s eye from the corner of his and allowing himself to give him a smile. “I don’t want him thinking that I’m out getting beaten up or something.”
“Sure, that’s no problem. Just meet me by the racks. Are you ever planning on getting your bike back? Not like I mind giving you rides or anything, it’s just that—wait!” he suddenly shouted, his eyes darting back and forth along the surface of the table like there was an invisible math equation written in the air before him. “Did you say ‘when he wakes up?’”
“Did I?” Louis countered, pursing his lips in fake thought.
“Wakes up in the morning? I’m taking you back tonight,” Niall said, apparently figuring that maybe Louis had gotten the wrong idea about tonight’s schedule.
“I know,” Louis said entirely too quickly, his plan to sneak out of suspicion crumbling around him because he lacked the skills to think ahead fast enough.
“So...why would he be waking up at night?” Niall asked.
“He works night shifts,” Louis said with a casual wave of his arm, taking more interest in the bag of pretzels than he did Niall’s face—he’d already tripped up far enough.
“Bullshit!” Niall cried, shaking his head fervently. “You said he worked days, and that’s why he came late last night! Needless to say, the first time I ever asked, you said he worked from home!” he said, now squinting his eyes in unassailable suspicion because it was starting to look really bad.
Louis looked around in irritation at all the heads Niall was turning with his outburst, and he leaned in closer so he would get the idea and lower his volume. “He got a new job.”
“Overnight?” Niall pressed dubiously.
Louis opened his mouth to spout a few more defensive lies, but the bell reared its shrill head and his freedom came with an eject-like blow. “Gotta dash, see ya later!” he called, scuttling out of the cafeteria before Niall followed or he was blocked by an unmoving crowd of people.
“Louis, wait!” Niall shouted after him.
You’ll find out soon enough, cat. Don’t you worry.
---
Louis played Harry’s unfinished song like his life depended on it. He had considered going with a piece entitled Ocean Bark , but he’d taken one look at it and come to the conclusion that it was far too advanced for him, so he went with the notorious Vie à L'Intérieur instead—which was a challenge in and of itself.
Even though the first song was out of the question, he couldn’t help his puzzlement over the first one’s title. What did it mean?
Our eyes, you fool , the familiar voice sighed in his head, this time having no dramatic effect other than making Louis purse his lips in consideration—he was getting all too used to Alexander’s mental intrusions.
“So that’s it,” he said aloud, pounding his fingers on the keys even harder because he was filled with determination to create an ending and finish with a bang. He shot his arm out to flip over the last page and retract it like a spring, not a cough of hesitation in his playing. He then did away with the notebook entirely and threw it over his shoulder, letting the song's completion come from within his soul alone.
He realized with a breathy laugh that all Hadrian had needed to do to keep this piece going was just that—keep going. He'd gotten undeniably frustrated with some part of this, but Louis thought it was fine the way it was. He followed the theme that had been laid as foundation and brought it to an eventual close that made much more sense than Year Endless initially had.
Louis noticed when he finished, since the only sounds in the room now were coming from a group of flute players in the back corner, but when he turned his head to get a look at his classmates, they all instantly went back to their own playing like they hadn’t been staring at him at all. He turned his head to find Mr. Carey offering him his discarded notebook, and he took it with a shy grin, setting it back on the music rack where it belonged. He smirked to himself and turned Vie à L'Intérieur back to the front to see what he could do to make it even better, but Mr. Carey was on him in a flash.
“I will never tire of you in this room,” Mr. Carey gushed quietly, giving him a warm smile of encouragement and pride.
“Was it that good?” Louis asked unsurely, impressively hiding the fact that he already knew it was brilliant.
“It was brilliant! And you finished it on the spot!” Mr. Carey exclaimed.
See?
“Thank you, I’m never sure,” Louis said, milking the compliments simply because he could.
“Keep practicing, and I hate to say it, but maybe a little quieter. Everyone is working on their finals, but the piano is especially loud,” Mr. Carey said with a wink, floating away to another section of the room to survey his teaching domain.
Louis went right back to it, expertly following the orders of the time signatures and defying them when he thought he could improve its overall sound, writing in his own continuations when he needed to. Harry had talent, and Louis would never say that he didn’t, but the old Roman tended to color inside the lines far too much for Louis’ adventurous tastes. Louis lived to break the rules and bend the guidelines, and it had never led him astray...kind of...point is, music is exactly the same in that regard. Sheet music served for polite suggestions, never unbreakable codes of conduct.
This piece, in comparison to Year Endless , was much more fulfilled than the other’s beautiful choppiness; this one flowed like a downstream river, cascading up and down the keys like a rollercoaster, but that didn’t make it easier. In fact, this piece was far more strenuous—physically and otherwise—than the first, than anything else Louis had ever attempted.
For starters, the mid-beginning of the song required Louis to play a repetitive waltz rhythm with his left hand—at a quicker pace than danceable waltzes tend to be—with a single note for the first beat, and two repeated chords for the rest of it, which changed with every segment. Easy in itself when that’s all you need to do, but then you add the very-much-not-waltz tempo with the right hand and things get tricky.
Even still, he could do this just fine. It was the middle, crescendoing section of the piece that tripped him up, even if he'd been the one to create it. The left hand forfeited the waltz to dance up and down the scales as if the keys were a see-saw, back and forth with rapid speed from the far left to the equal middle of the instrument and then back down. A mere slip-up of one of these keys, a single accidental time, would stand out like an elephant in a haystack, so it was very shifty business to corral his small hands into being bigger than they were for the song.
But wait, there’s more! His right hand was splitting its priorities all the while, with his mere pinky pressing the needed keys to make one succinct melody, and his thumb and three following fingers throwing in their own individual party...at three times the tempo. Three very distinct melodies that sounded complete on their own, smushed together to play simultaneously, is a challenge that only he would ever set for himself, but he was glad to take it. Regardless of its level of difficulty, when done flawlessly, this piece was hauntingly beautiful, and he was honored to be the one who would perfect it.
He had his fun all class long until the bell rang, scribbling his final editor’s note onto the sheet music while his classmates rushed out like it was officially summer vacation. Louis will never understand why people wanted to leave campus so badly at the end of the day; the circus-like parking lot was always backed up, no matter the precautions taken.
“Have you written your piece yet?” Mr. Carey asked behind his desk, his nose buried in his paperwork, but his ears clearly dedicated to Louis.
“No, not quite yet,” Louis admitted, sighing because for how easy high school seemed, not everything was attainable to finish quickly with the home life he had, pre- or post-mansion.
“No pressure; you have quite a while to worry about it. I know how long the writing process can take. That’s why I assigned it in April when school lets out in June. I just don’t want anyone getting blindsided by the deadline. It can come sooner than it looks,” he said.
“It’s on the tip-top of my to-do list,” Louis pledged, wondering if maybe Alexander could be of help.
Did you hear that? he asked, a nerve getting hit when silence resounded. So you just wanna talk when it’s convenient for you, huh? Don’t wanna play by my rules? Well, that’s just not gonna work, ‘cuz if you haven’t noticed—
“Louis?” Mr. Carey asked, jarring him out of his mental lecture to a negligent second party.
“Yeah,” he said with a tense voice, still fixated on trying to talk to Alexander.
“I said have a good day,” Mr. Carey chuckled, his hands full of his satchels and folders as he gave a patient point to the door to get Louis on the move.
“Oh! Sorry, I’m holding everything up, aren’t I?” Louis laughed, holding the door open for the teacher as he walked out and painting fabricated neutrality onto his demeanor with the broadest brush he could find.
“See you tomorrow, Lou. Keep working at that self-composition,” Mr. Carey said, trying to sip the coffee cup between his thumb and index finger grip without dropping everything else.
“I will,” Louis said, full of determination to get this done, with or without Alexander’s sporadic assistance.
I don’t need you to write a damn song, Alex. You just sit back and watch.
---
“You sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Niall asked as Louis began to step out of the car.
“Zayn isn’t here, Niall,” Louis chuckled.
“I know that, dammit. It’s just a long walk is all,” Niall said defensively, turning the dial on his truck to try to find a decent tune on the static-prone radio.
“I’ll make it quick,” Louis promised, shutting the door and carefully jogging down the hill. He really wanted to go to the basement and give his sleeping Harry a bunch of kisses, but Niall would huff and puff if he had to wait too long, so Louis would have to display large amounts of self-control if he was gonna make this snappy.
He reached the bottom of the hill and climbed back up after rounding the fence, offhandedly thinking that Martin should somehow build a second gate into the fence at the top of the slope so that Louis didn’t have to put in so much work. Or he just needed to learn where the opposing road entrance was to the driveway… Whatever.
He reached the front doors and opened them with haste, jogging with a shuffle to the refrigerator and getting his papers from his bag to make a note for Harry or Martin to find. He ripped a page from his notebook and fished around for a pencil, holding the piece of paper against the fridge door as he wrote:
Harry, I’m going with Niall to have dinner with his parents. They invited me, so I can’t refuse. I’ll be back probably around 8? I can’t be sure. But I’m okay. I’ll be home eventually..
I love you.
He thought about signing his name, but it was obvious he’d been the one to write it, so he changed his mind. He noticed there weren’t any magnets around to tack the note to the fridge with, so he left it on the kitchen table instead.
But what if Harry doesn’t sit at the table?
He sighed loudly and ran up the multiple staircases that would take him to the fourth floor, flying down the hall and walking into the mirror room to leave it there, where he knew it would be seen. He set the note down in front of the trapdoor and used every ounce of his strength to turn back and walk the other way.
Once he retrieved his backpack from the kitchen, he forcibly took his feet outside the mansion and closed the door behind him, bracing himself for the high climb back to Niall’s truck, feeling like he’d just tackled Mt. Everest when he finally got there.
“Now we good?” Niall asked, turning down the sweet sounds of Summer Breeze by Seals & Croft—of which he’d been belting at the top of his lungs—to hear Louis’ response.
“Yeah, groovy,” Louis grunted. He noticed that Niall was having quite the time with himself trying to resist the urge of asking the follow-up question, so Louis beat him to it. “No, Zayn was not in there,” he said, biting back a snort when Niall’s face fell so solemnly one would think his puppy had just died.
“That’s fine,” Niall choked with a shrug, pulling away from the curb to drive home and get the two of them ready for a Horan dinner outing.
Louis wanted so badly to poke fun at Niall for the pouty way he was acting, but he knew in his heart that he wasn’t much better off. He’d done a hearty amount of sulking during his walk to the truck because he hadn’t gotten to sneak a glance at Harry—or a creepy touch—so he understood all too well how his best friend was feeling.
Vampires , Louis thought grudgingly. They sure know how to suck you in.
---
“Louuuiiis,” Mrs. Horan greeted in adoration, pulling him into a hug the second he walked through the door.
“Hi Maura,” he replied kindly, returning the embrace with a single but enthusiastic arm.
“We’re so proud of you, dearie,” she gushed, leading him into their living room while Mr. Horan offered to take his coat. This family had always been the only functioning one Louis had ever seen, and they knew how deeply they played that role—so they overplayed it.
“Thanks, but I really don’t think I’m all that great—”
“Absolute nonsense; he’s the best. Here, come over here,” Niall said, grabbing Louis by the arm and dragging him toward the grand piano that sat unplayed in their den.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t—”
“You can and you will; they wanna hear it,” Niall whispered into his ear, quiet enough to remain undetected by Niall’s parents, who were following them in but loud enough that the words seared straight through Louis’ ear canal and into his brain.
“Niall has been talking nonstop about the song that gave you the big win at the concert. You wouldn’t mind playing it, would you?” Niall’s father, Bobby, asked excitedly, blissfully unaware of Louis’ racking nerves.
Louis wasn’t nervous because he had any insecurities over the quality of his playing, or that he didn’t do well playing for people in general; his worries stemmed from something a bit more credible: Alexander had an infuriating habit of taking over him while he worked with a piano, and if he decided now would be a good time to reign supreme, Louis was going to have problems. “Of course not,” he said flippantly in disregard of all of his very real fears, taking a seat on the uncushioned stool and waiting until the Horans were all arranged on their couches to form his tiny audience. They stopped their fussy fidgeting and made their undivided attention known, three pairs of bluer-than-sky eyes gluing onto Louis with the strength of tree sap.
He inaudibly sighed and turned back around, trying his best to ignore their gazes as he commenced Year Endless by heart, barely using time to think of the next note because it had already been played by the time it popped up into his head. He kept his focus as present as he could and didn’t let himself get as lost in the music as he usually does—maybe that would keep his brain in his own possession and not under the control of Hadrian’s bossy lover from history.
He found it to be working out in his favor and he played around with the tempo of the end, realizing that he needn’t rush or slow to keep his consciousness intact. He gave the song the artistic edge that he wanted here and there, and he was proud of himself for conjuring an ending such as this by his own means of talent and creativity.
See? he taunted to Alexander, though not in the snooty and jeering way that he might have tinged it in before. With regard to Alexander, the long dead vampire was beginning to feel like a friend to Louis, a presence that would always be with him, meaning that no matter what, he was never truly alone. Who wouldn’t want someone like that?
He didn’t notice he was done with the song until he’d been frozen for seven seconds at least; it was the thunderous applause from the living room that jarred him out of his piano-mode, amazing him that such loud praise could come from only three people at once.
“That was wonderful!” Maura gasped, shuffling her little kitten heels across the fluffy brown carpet to give him another hug.
“Was it?” he asked innocently, full of pride over his execution.
“Well done, well done. It’s no surprise why they picked you. Why...you might just win the whole dang competition,” Bobby said jovially, amusing Louis with his aversion to cursing even when it came to such a small word like ‘damn.’
“Thanks, Mr. Horan, that’s really nice of you,” Louis said bashfully, looking to Niall to free him from this tug-o-war of compliments.
“Alright, guys!” Niall announced, taking control over the situation because he’d always had that ability. “Who’s ready for sushi?”
The group left at once, taking the family car to a sushi restaurant on the outskirts of town and rushing inside. Louis didn’t exactly know what to order because he wasn’t used to such fancy cuisine—especially from another culture—but Niall helped a ton by asking what ingredients sounded good and ordering a roll with the answers Louis provided.
Small talk was made as they waited for their food, and Louis found himself staring off into space. The restaurant, called The Red Sun , gave the feeling of truly being in another country. There were Japanese ferns everywhere lining every short table row—of which there were five—in the establishment, the seats were pillows on the floor right beside the long tables that seemed to stretch forever and had no visible breaks, and at the very end of the tables was a stone waterfall that provided the perfect ambience to give the illusion of being outdoors. There were opened scrolls with Japanese-style art beautifully painted on them, hung up by a nail at every dark, forest green pillar, and Louis was enraptured, his wide eyes sparkling in the incredibly dim lighting of the room.
Just as he was beginning to panic after shifting his attention to his utensils—or lack thereof—their food had been prepared and was being ushered in front of their noses. Louis took his plate of a roll with a shy, “Thank you,” and waited for further instruction from Niall on how to eat it.
Niall reached over and broke his chopsticks apart to try to position his fingers around them correctly. He demonstrated how they were intended to be used with his own and lifted a section of his roll patiently as Louis tried to replicate the action. It wasn’t going great, but it wasn’t a disaster yet.
After dropping his roll six times, Niall gave up and told him to eat close to the table so he wouldn’t need to lift anything too high. Louis felt like an idiot while shoveling sushi into his widely opened mouth, hovering over his plate, but he soon realized it was all worth it—the sushi was outstandingly delicious. He had ordered something with salmon, avocado, shrimp, and seaweed—which Niall had suggested and he’d reluctantly accepted—and a mysterious sauce had been spritzed over the whole presentation. It was one of the best tasting things Louis had ever had the pleasure of eating, no matter the level of difficulty that came with actually eating it.
“So boys. Any big projects coming up?” Bobby asked, somehow picking up thin pieces of meat with his chopsticks and dipping them into a bowl of sauce before guiding them expertly into his mouth.
Louis thickly swallowed the sticky rice in his throat and reached out to sip on the complimentary water before trying to answer. When he’d coaxed his mouthful down, he let a deep breath out and turned to Bobby. “My final for music has already been assigned,” he said, picking at his remaining sections and deciding which one would be next.
“Oh yeah? What is it?” Bobby pressed with interest, still maneuvering his food like he’d grown up in an Asian country and used the sticks his entire life.
“You basically have to create one flowing song out of three. Like...you have to pick two that sound similar, but not too similar, and then compose something that fits the theme of the other two. Find out how to best combine all of them,” he said, his mind taking him to the doorstep of uncertainty—how the hell was he supposed to pull this off? “I mean, some people are writing all three...but the bare minimum is one written one, so that’s what I did,” he added, much to the amusement of his company.
“Oh, did you write the song you played at the house? I’d never heard it before,” Maura said, picking at a food dish that had Louis’ toes crawling. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say it was still alive.
“No, that one wasn’t mine.”
“Who does it? It was beautiful ,” she praised, her husband nodding beside her.
“The composer’s name is...is...Hadrian,” he decided on, wondering why he’d hesitated so much on Harry. He knew that Niall had figured the music had come from the mansion, and he’d met Hadrian as ‘Harry,’ so what was he covering for?
“Huh…” Maura hummed curiously, going back to her food because it seemed that particular conversation had reached its end.
Louis could see Niall glancing at him from the corner of his eye, but he diverted all his focus into his remaining roll sections, picking them up with the sticks to finish and having a rather easier time than before. Maybe it was possible to eat with these.
Talk after that was mostly orchestrated by the insatiable Niall, never happy with silences or breaks in conversations. He came up with every new subject, and Louis went along seamlessly, simply relieved he didn’t have to deal with anything on his own.
He was missing Harry more with every second, and all his wandering mind seemed to land on was cuddling up in bed with him after this was over. He felt rude and ungrateful to be wishing he were somewhere else, but can he be blamed? Harry, when fed, was the most comfortable cuddle partner in the world, and sitting on this cushion was really starting to hurt his back.
The time came for the cheque to be requested, and Louis scarfed down his last section, patting his stomach dramatically and leaning into Niall for support. Niall’s parents had no idea that their son was gay, so no red flags went up at the teenagers’ proximity. Which was good, because they weren’t romantically inclined at all, but if they knew Niall was gay, they might not be so sure about what Louis’ relationship to him was.
Louis was patient and polite as the final preparations were made to leave, and they piled into the car to get out of the cold, singing like maniacs to Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ that was for some terrible reason, still frequently playing on the radio in 1973. It’s one of those songs one hates to love but can’t seem to stop loving regardless.
They made it home within twenty minutes of leaving The Red Sun , and Niall took Louis straight up to his room before his parents could goad him into more performances in the living room. That didn’t mean he didn’t have requests of his own, though. “Louis, I really gotta talk to you before I take you back,” he said seriously, Louis holding in his groan.
“Yeah?” Louis asked, reading all the emotions swimming around in Niall’s face and dreading this conversation. “Are you any closer?” he asked, pulling a small loveseat up to the side of Niall’s bed that Niall had just sat in so they both had good views of each other. He slipped his shoes off and crossed his legs, heaving them up on the bed while he crossed his arms and leaned back in the seat.
Niall simply stared and sat on his hip, his supporting arm promptly giving out in defeat and causing him to flop onto his side under the weight of the question. “Closer to what?” he asked.
“To finding out why the boys are so weird,” Louis said without missing a beat, prepared to jump through any extra hoops that Niall put in the way—this was important.
“No...I can’t get all my thoughts in order. I feel like I need all the information in front of my face. Like a murder board, you know? With thumbtacks and string to connect the dots,” Niall said, tossing his stuffed hippo into the air and catching it several times in a row.
Louis hummed in consideration and leaned over the chair to grab his backpack, taking his notebook out to create said murder board. The act caused every paper he’d shoved in it to crash all over the floor, and he blindly picked them back up and stuffed them into his bag as he opened the spiral cover. He snapped his fingers for the pen at Niall’s bedside table and Niall tossed it over, dropping his hippo in the act. “Okay, this will be your board,” he announced, flipping to an empty page and pressing the pen to the beginning of the first line.
Niall sat up attentively and crossed his ankles, pulling them into his body to be criss-cross-applesauce. “How do we start?” he asked.
“Just list out all the things that are weird about them. You’re a world-renowned detective right now, and this is the case of the century,” Louis said, looking at Niall expectantly.
Niall pursed his lips and thought long and hard about what to say, pointing a finger up when he evidently came to something. “They all talk like they’ve seen everything in the world there is to see.”
“So...odd knowledge?” Louis suggested, already writing the trait onto the page.
“And odd vocabulary sometimes,” Niall added, using his hands to shift himself over his legs and lie on his stomach, splaying his legs out behind him like a starfish.
“Mmkay,” Louis said distractedly, finishing the line and looking back at Niall.
“Both Zayn and Martin had cold hands at first, but they got warmer later. It would have made sense with Zayn because he came in from outside, but Martin had been inside,” he said.
“Uh...irregular body temperature?” Louis guessed, amazed that Niall had noticed something so minuscule.
“Just unusual.”
“Got it.”
“Which leads me to my next point.”
“Ooh do tell!”
“They all looked different at the beginning of the night than they did at the end,” Niall said with obvious confusion, a noticeable vein popping up on his temple from thinking so hard.
“What do you mean exactly?” Louis asked knowingly, trying to keep up the appearance of being objective and curious like any interviewer would, instead of giddy with the knowledge of the hidden truth like he actually was.
“I mean, take Zayn, for example. No, Martin,” Niall immediately corrected, “Martin came downstairs, and he was pale as shit, with greyish blue eyes. Really cold skin. Harry takes him into the kitchen and then Martin comes out with a blush on his cheeks and really vibrant blue eyes. When I kissed his face, it was really warm,” he recounted, hanging over the edge of the bed while he squeezed his eyes shut, his brain definitely in knots.
“You don’t say…” Louis said with a mischievous grin, but Niall didn’t notice at all. He wrote ‘inconsistent bodily appearances’ down onto the paper and hoped that accurately described what they were both thinking of, adding a very detailed note in parentheses to really drive the point home.
“Then Zayn. Same thing,” Niall grunted as he flipped over and stared hard at the ceiling. “Comes out of the kitchen like a different person. Happier? Almost drunkenly so...but I never smelled any alcohol on him. He almost looked high, but for some reason, I doubt that any drugs were involved.”
“No, they weren’t,” Louis confirmed, keeping Niall on the right track.
“So you know exactly why all of this is,” Niall said in an accusatory tone, narrowing his eyes at him.
“Yes. Keep investigating,” Louis said with a passive wave of his arm, making it clear that Niall was onto something, but that he had to figure it out for himself.
“Ugh...they kept telling me I smelled good. Not so much Harry, but he seemed really nervous and desperate to shut them up about it. Interrupting them every time and dragging them into the kitchen,” he said, rubbing at his face in thought.
“Mhm,” Louis quipped, writing ‘heightened senses’ into the list.
“And then! Harry dragged you into the kitchen. And he came out looking different, too.”
“That’s true,” Louis said, still in shock that Niall had been documenting so many minor details in his usually distracted mind. How astute of the tennis captain. Ten million gold stars.
“So either there’s something in the kitchen, or it’s something about them. And then, Zayn’s superhuman strength, carrying me up the hill like that. Didn’t even take one deep or labored breath. Not one !”
“‘Kay.”
“The tavern story about the woman and the cat. Why in the world would some random lady accuse them of being demons? I mean, that can’t be true, necessarily, but there’s absolutely something more to that. That doesn’t just happen.”
“Okay,” Louis said with a snort—he’d just known that story would come back to bite them in the ass. Just like this list would come back and finish the job. “I think we’re done for now,” he said, looking over the list and deciding it was incriminating enough to leave unfinished for the time being. “Read this over later and think hard about it. I gotta go home now; it’s almost nine.”
“Sure thing, I’ll get my keys,” Niall said, springing off the bed like a popcorn kernel and stopping at the toilet to piss first.
Louis held back the comment about whether or not he’d piss out his keys and tore the page from the notebook, guiding it under Niall’s pillow in case Maura happened across it while dropping off laundry or something. He pointed at it once Niall emerged from the bathroom, and Niall nodded to show his understanding. He’d have quite the night trying to figure out what it all meant, and Louis couldn’t wait to hear the influx of theories.
---
“Tell them thanks for dinner. I totally forgot to,” Louis said, standing outside the truck with the door hanging open.
“It’s okay, when they start movie time, they don’t come out of it until the credits are done,” Niall said, reaching over the seats to pound his fist with Louis’. “Catch ya later, Lou,” he said with a wave.
“Bye, cat,” Louis said, shutting the door shortly thereafter.
Louis couldn’t contain his smile as he ran down the hill, bypassing his usual gripe about how there should be a gate in the back because he wouldn’t be coming back up until tomorrow morning, and that was a comforting thought. He zoned out and envisioned bedtime with Harry to quicken his walk, and he giggled with anticipation when he finally opened the doors, walking in like he’d come from a long day of work and dropping his backpack down as if it was his business briefcase. “Harry?” he called, skipping forward until he saw a glum-looking Martin creep out of the kitchen. “Hey, Martin. Where’s Harry?” he asked, full of sudden confusion.
“Harry’s gone out with Zayn for a...an errand of sorts,” Martin stuttered, wringing his hands together with nerves and retreating back into the kitchen. “Would you like some tea?” he asked, as Louis followed him into the kitchen and took a seat at the table.
“Uh...sure, I’ll take some. What do you mean ‘errand?’” he asked dubiously, wondering what on earth the two would have Martin blatantly lying about.
“This is not an errand, I believe, that either wanted to make,” Martin said vaguely, making the tea in heavy silence.
“I don’t get it,” Louis said after a while, accepting the cup from Martin’s gloved hand and blowing on its contents.
“Yes, well… It is my understanding that they are looking for someone,” Martin said, looking like he already regretted saying what little he had. “They’ll tell you about it,” he added, not appearing sure of that either.
Louis regrettably accepted the oddities and sipped at his plain black tea as he formulated how he’d corner Harry for information when he returned. “How long ago did they leave?” he asked, hoping that a time stamp was something Martin could freely disclose.
“Harry rose at around seven thirty and was out the door with Zayn by eight,” Martin said, checking the grandfather clock behind him.
“So they’ve been gone an hour and a half,” he said to himself, meeting Martin’s eyes again. “When do you think they’re getting back?” he asked.
“That really isn’t something I can accurately judge. My guess is after they make their rounds, they will return to decide the next course of action...but I’m sorry, I really can’t say any more. Please feel free to anything you see,” Martin said, taking a rather hasty leave. Louis could understand why Martin wouldn’t want to be interrogated, but he just couldn’t accept all this weirdness. It’s not that he felt he deserved to know—although part of his brain was trying to tell him that—he was just worried about what this meant. It really didn’t sound good.
Louis sighed in frustration and sat alone at the table with his tea, deciding he might as well work on his homework while he waited. He did as much as he could until the words began to mold together and his concentration was rendered a thing of the past. He grumbled and walked off to the living room couch, wrapping himself in the blanket that always hung off the back and crashing down on his side while he thought.
If Harry had left for something important, why wouldn’t he make a note just as Louis had to inform him of the details? Maybe it was so serious that he didn’t have time? But surely he had to wait for Zayn...right? So why couldn’t he—
“Agh!” he roared, rubbing his tired eyes and hooking his hands behind his head as he stared at the front door. He would lie here like a stone until Harry and Zayn opened that thing, and then he would get his answers. He would not sleep a wink until he asked the question...he would not close his eyes even for one second...he would not sleep...until...would not...sleep…
---
“—idea of what we’re actually fucking dealing with!” Harry bellowed as he slammed the front door open, waking Louis with quite the start as he scrambled up off the couch. He hadn’t heard the first part of the sentence, but he didn’t need to. Harry was livid.
“We have to go to The Sharp Tongue tomorrow if we want more information,” Zayn said, obviously in a manner of careful appeasement. “No one could lure immortals into subservience like you can.”
“Not a shit-load at one time,” Harry negated, walking straight into the kitchen and ignoring Louis completely. Louis definitely followed them, though.
“So you’d rather be in the dark?” Zayn asked, running straight to the fridge as Martin appeared through the dining room and turned the stove on. Louis watched as Zayn gave the butler a loaded look of shared sympathy and took five bags out, tossing them into his arms and turning his attention back on the silent and brooding Harry. “The only other immortal around here you trust is the one that’s most confused, and he was there in Brimsville,” he snapped, violently shrugging his shoulders. “You’re the only one that can actually find anything out.”
“Just shut up for a second!” Harry snapped, his hands balled into fists on the table.
Louis stayed right where he was behind the wall, not making any noise and only glancing around it into the kitchen for short spurts of time. He wanted to know—he needed to know—but should he ask? Can he ask? It was times like these that Louis suddenly remembered just who Harry was. He showed only the best sides of himself to Louis, but there was no denying that Harry was first and foremost a rather dangerous vampire elder. He didn’t want to test his patience; he wasn’t afraid for himself, but he still didn’t need to cross that line.
“I trust Harlock with my life, surely more than I can trust The Sharp Tongue patrons ,” Harry said with blatant emphasis on the last part, glaring at Zayn for the mere suggestion of going there.
“You could lure them into telling the truth! And more to the point, how sure are we that Harlock truly saw what he said he saw? What if it’s a false alarm? If it’s not, then there’s gotta be immortals at The Sharp Tongue who have seen him in the area, and they could give it to you straight. They could even expose motive and plan if they’re in the inner circle. It’s worth a shot—unless, of course, you just want to sit around and wait for the strike because you didn’t care to find out what was coming,” Zayn snapped, helping Martin pour the glasses once the blood was heated enough. Louis thought that Zayn was being particularly brave for being so short with Harry, and he prayed (for Zayn’s sake) that Harry would keep tolerating it. “Inaction is bad in either case. And there’s certainly no point uprooting the humans and escaping to Allah-knows-where if this wasn’t a real problem to begin with,” he added, downing his blood as he dropped a glass on the table for Harry.
Harry’s eyes skewered the glass placed in front of him and he downed the liquid instantly, unknowingly stomping over Louis’ feelings as he did so.
Louis couldn’t take it anymore. “Harry?” he meekly asked, appearing around the corner and walking into the light of the kitchen.
Harry’s gaze shot to Louis and it softened a fraction, but his mood could clearly not be entirely lifted. “Stay there, Louis,” he said sternly, snapping his fingers for another glass. “I can’t trust myself right now. I’m sorry about the blood; just deal with it for now,” he said as gently as he could probably manage. Louis’ face fell, but he nodded immediately, trying to be as understanding as possible. He knew this wasn’t the time or place to complain about feeling cheated on.
“Here,” Martin said as he dropped another glass on the table for Harry, downing one himself and pacing around the kitchen.
Zayn stood silently leaning against the counter, eyes trained on Harry as he swung his glass around like the blood was wine. Everyone was waiting for Harry’s take on the matter.
Harry took the blood and Louis averted his eyes, only looking back when he heard it dropped back on the surface. Harry seemed ready to talk now. “I trust Harlock, like I said…but I do need proof of my own. Especially to leave Fortwright,” he said, Louis’ heart leaping in his chest upon hearing those words. He could leave Fortwright? “But we can’t go blindly walking into a trap, either. If he’s in Idaho at all, he’s here for a carefully calculated reason, and is without a doubt toying with me. Nothing else explains his location; this isn’t random. It’s very, very intentional,” he said with a bite to his words, running a hand through his hair and fluffing it up absently as he stewed in his anxiety.
“So, what do we do?” Zayn asked, kicking off the lower cabinets to walk into Harry’s line of sight. “We either leave like fools without the whole story or we use your elder status to go infiltrate the club and find out all we can before making any rash decisions. Seems like a simple choice to me,” he said, Harry sinking down into his chair as he closed his eyes.
“Harry, I think we should go to the club, too,” Martin said, Harry’s eyes opening to find him. “I think it would be safe considering who you are, and it would clear things up. I remember you telling me about all the connections he has—someone would definitely be there that you could manipulate into unveiling this madness,” he said, Harry heaving a heavy sigh and running both hands down his face.
“And if he’s literally there when we go?” Harry challenged, Martin shrugging like he thought it wasn’t an issue.
“No one would smell him faster than you,” he said, finishing his glass and placing it in the sink. “If you got a whiff on the road, then we’d leave town. No questions asked,” he said, Harry slowly nodding with a furrowed brow.
“Louis, I’m feeling better now. Please come here,” he said, reaching out for him.
Louis hurried over in relief, clambering onto the wall bench that ran along the back wall of the kitchen and sliding into Harry’s side, sighing when a warm arm wrapped around him. It wasn’t warm with his blood, but again, time and place. “Can you tell me what’s going on?” he asked, boring desperate eyes into Harry’s side profile.
Harry glanced over and ran his hand down Louis’ cheek, his face displaying just how crushed he really felt. Louis wanted to cry. “Harlock told me that he spotted someone in a blood club in Brimsville. I didn't stay on the phone long enough to find out exactly where, but I don’t need to know. It’s far too close already. If the information turns out to be accurate, then we’re all in trouble. We might all need to leave town, your graduation be damned. I’m actually worried about you leaving this house at all,” he said, holding him tighter to demonstrate how close he wanted to keep him.
“Who is it?” Louis asked, Alexander in his head screaming the answer at him already, but he needed to hear it. He looked back and forth between all three vampires and their expressions confirmed it for him, too. He knew exactly what Harry would say, but nothing could have prepared him for how it actually sounded when he said it out loud.
“Auron.”
~~~
Niall climbed up the stairs to his room and flicked on the light when he got there. It had begun to downpour on the drive home, and just the walk from the driveway had soaked him in water. He shrugged out of his jacket and was hanging it on the back of his door when his peripherals caught it.
There, under his bed on the floor, was the unmistakable corner of an envelope. He walked over and carefully examined it, realizing it must have been from when Louis dropped all his papers. He set it on his bed and quickly changed into his pajamas, flopping down once he was warm and dry and pulling out the murder board list out from under his pillow to look at first.
He flipped the paper over first and read through the characteristics that had been listed with a troubled mind:
- Weird, uncommon knowledge & vocabulary. Like from different eras.
- Irregular body temperature. Changes fast.
- Inconsistent body appearances (color of skin/eyes, moods, energy)
- Heightened senses: sight, hearing, sense of SMELL.
- Incredible strength. Almost inhuman.
- Nocturnal sleep schedules.
Niall stared at the words and scratched his head; some of it Niall hadn’t even mentioned, and it was clearly Louis trying to fill in blanks for him, but that didn’t mean it made more sense. All these points seemed to accuse Martin, Zayn, and Harry of being somehow not human. But that was impossible. Supernatural things were just stories...so why did this make sense at the same time? Why was it believable for those three?
He huffed in irritation at his impossible thought train and opened the envelope next, taking out a bunch of papers that appeared to be a C+ essay written by Louis, but it wasn’t even close to his handwriting. His eyes widened as he took in the first line, and he remained motionless until he finished all five and a half pages of inconceivably breathtaking words.
He reread both the list and the essay until it was midnight, wondering if Harry and Hadrian were somehow the same person. He felt so stupid for even entertaining the thought. This was completely impossible, but it almost seemed to be happening before his very eyes. If those three were somehow immortal, it would knock off a lot of oddities, and if they happened to be vampires like ‘logic’ was suggesting, then that would cross off the rest. “Oh, my sweet Louis. Just what have you gotten us into?”