Chapter Text
"I'm not hungry," Louis told them, pushing his fish and chips away.
"You are, though," Harry said without thinking. He could feel the hunger rolling off Louis in waves. It didn't feel like the kind of strong emotion Harry needed to put effort into blocking.
Still, Louis turned accusing eyes on him. Harry said quickly, "I can hear your stomach," because Louis had always been touchy about this. Harry was pretty sure Louis knew Harry would never delve into his thoughts and emotions on purpose, he was just prickly about that. And he was especially prickly today.
Louis let it go, though, although Harry knew he could usually tell when Harry was lying. He played with his fork and knife. He lathered the white plastic edges of the fork with mayonaise.
"Why don't you want to eat?" Liam enquired, frowning. Harry could've told him to not ask, because it wasn't often Louis got like this, quiet and angry and not-eating, not-talking, so far from his usual theatrics when someone had offended his honor or the like, and when he did get like this, he was the last person who'd want to volunteer information about what had got him so upset. But he doubted Liam would've listened. He would've asked anyway, because he worried.
"Leave it," Louis snapped, much more venom than was necessary.
Liam left it.
Lunch was silent after that, neither Zayn nor Niall speaking up either, Harry trying, very hard, to block the constant low-level anger that Louis was emanating. He knew, most probably, that it wasn't directed at any of them, knew that he had to respect what Louis wanted, which was to deal with whatever it was on his own, but it still made Harry so, so jittery, made him want to beg, Louis, let me help. Louis, let me in.
:::
Three hours ago, they'd been at class.
Zayn was doodling something on Louis' notes. Just a stick man, complete with a huge dick. Wanking hard, from what Harry could see on Louis' other side. Louis was sniggering, elbowing Harry, causing Professor Franco to look disapprovingly over his glasses at them but turn back to his notes on the transportation of RNA proteins. Louis mimed the stick man's frozen-on-paper action, and Harry grinned.
The stick man was a cartoon. Zayn didn't draw real, detailed things, except for his private lessons with the mystery dude who came to the Institute twice a week and specialized in Zayn's type of power. When he was younger, Louis had told Harry once, he'd drawn lots of real-looking things, some he hadn't even seen in his mind's eye before he put them on paper. A few months later, he'd realized some were coming true - the worst ones. The girl on the edge of a bridge. The destruction of an island in a hurricane.
Zayn's power, he drew things that were definitely going to happen, but the lessons were so he could use his drawings to alter them here and there. Maybe control the damage, a bit.
Louis had said, Zayn says he hates it.
Does he? Harry had asked.
I think he loves drawing, was all Louis had concluded, and the droplets of water he'd been lazily manipulating from the lake had fallen fresh and quick onto Harry's upturned face, signifying the conversation was over.
Harry had blinked through the blurry wetness in his eyelashes, watching Louis laugh. Eyes the same color as the lake.
So - three hours ago, and Louis had been a-ok. Class had let out, and they'd had Sports next.
Sports at the Institute was basically a whole bunch of kids running around and letting off steam and doing what they wanted, while the teachers in charge tried to prevent mass murder. They didn't have specialized sports teachers, because they weren't an actual Institute. So. Chaos, for an hour.
They walked onto the field and Louis rolled a football over from a few meters away. He passed it to Zayn. Harry settled himself on a nearby bench, because he had no coordination whatsoever, there was no use keeping up any pretense about it. He looked up at the sky. He could sleep like this, with the soft drone of Louis' teasing trash talk on Zayn's football skills.
Niall's face hovered into view, and three things happened in order:
Harry opened his mouth to greet Niall hello;
a golf ball hit Harry's nose, sharp, from where Tom Parker was showing off his mad breathing power to a girl he fancied by blowing golf balls all over the field;
in his dazed and bleeding pathetic state Harry was still aware of Louis', "What the actual fuck," quick crunching of the grass, soft fingers on his face, "Ni, fix him up," and then a furious, "Parker! You and me've got some shit to figure out, mate!!"
Harry tried to sit up, but Niall was holding him down, palms cupping his face, and there was a sickening crunch and okay, there, nose fixed.
"You still need t'go to the hospital wing, though," Niall said, looking at him critically.
"Okay," Harry said, "just, tell Lou to leave it-"
"Don't think that's happening, mate," Zayn said, crouching beside him. Harry hadn't noticed his getting there. "Ball could've done some damage to your eyes, or your skull, like."
They all watched Louis swearing at Tom Parker for a bit.
"Yeah, but it doesn't have to -" Harry started, but stopped and sighed at the blow Louis had just dealt Parker, along with what he was very sure was "Next time it'll be a cannon to your balls, a'right?"
Tom Parker and gang looked less than pleased.
"Never mind," said Harry. Zayn and Niall were already jogging there, but Harry was still feeling too dizzy to walk, much less participate in a brawl, which required the kind of coordination he didn't have on his best day. He tried, anyway, and fell on his newly-repaired nose in the dirt.
"Harry?" Liam's voice sounded maybe a few minutes later, and then, "oh, not again."
"Get them to stop it," Harry mumbled into the fresh smelling grass.
"Harry," Liam said, pulling him upright, "when have I ever managed to tell them to do anything? There was this time with Zayn, once, perhaps, when I made him eat his veges, but that's pretty much the scope of it."
There was a crowd already, and Liam was already going over, no matter what he said. Louis and Zayn and Niall ended up in detention, and Liam visited Harry in the hospital wing. They were keeping him under observation for a bit for signs of concussion.
"How're they?" asked Harry. "How's Louis?"
"They're fine, or they'd be here with you, don't you think?" asked Liam, shaking his head. He shifted uncomfortably against the back of the metal hospital chair and Harry remembered he'd had a long training day yesterday, had seen him outlined against the sky with Jade as the sky turned a fiery orange. His wings had been a rich brown against Jade's bright lavender, and the colours in the air had been so, so pretty. They'd been doing laps, Liam had said at dinner, and Louis had laughed, "Training for the London Marathon, then?" and flicked some corn at Liam.
"They seem pretty pleased with themselves," Liam reflected, but he was curving his mouth up probably unintentionally, and Harry knew he would've been right there beside them if he'd arrived a couple of minutes early. "They'll be let out for lunch."
:::
That was three hours ago. This was after lunch, and Louis was striding off to their dorm, not waiting for any of them. Harry had class with Caroline now, but he hovered with indecision.
"What's-"
"I don't know, mate," Zayn said, face creased up in worry that still looked elegantly perfected. "His phone rang, 's all I know. And he went to the loo to take the call, and then the bell rang for lunch. Know as much as you do."
Louis probably wanted to be left alone. But Louis didn't have a great track record with dealing with things that truly upset him. When his grandmother had died in a meaningless car accident, the only adult who called him Tommo and mailed him mocha muffins every month, he'd stoically replied, "I'm good, I swear," for two days before a hundred meters of wire fence separating the field of cows behind the Institute and the Institute was found twisted and mangled, impossible shapes.
Louis hadn't meant to. He'd lost control.
"Tell Caroline I'm still concussed-like," Harry told them, and went after Louis.
:::
"Styles," Louis said, tired-sounding. He was just sitting, back against the desk by his bed, looking out through the window. "You have class. Your head alright?"
Harry went over to him, even if he wasn't sure it was allowed. He settled down beside Louis but didn't touch yet, just stared out at the empty field, the one beyond that where the cows grazed.
"I haven't thanked you for Parker," Harry said. "Although I feel like a princess every time you do that. You didn't have to."
"You /are/ a princess, princess," Louis replied automatically, so that was something, at least. "And Parker had it coming."
"We don't have to talk about it," Harry said.
"I know we don't," Louis told him.
The sun was bright today, and the tiny cows looked like they were sweltering.
"Later, maybe," Louis said eventually, quieter. He looked small, small and sun-bright, when Harry sneaked a sideways glance at him. There was a bruise forming dark and murky on his forearm, where it was wrapped around his legs. Harry knocked his knee against his, and didn't move after that.
:::
At dinner, Louis was back to normal, which meant he performed a not-apology on Liam by rubbing wet cold fingers from the tap under Liam's plaid shirt, making him yelp, and then proceeded to animatedly tell the not-quite-filled-up dining hall about how he'd kicked Tom Parker's skinny arse.
"You didn't, Tomlinson, stop making up atrocities," Parker shouted from across two tables, having entered and caught the tail end of "swear to god, squealed like a stuck pig-". "Rematch anytime you want, let's go."
"I'll pass," said Louis, digging into his mashed potatoes with relish.
"Scared?" Parker taunted.
"Sparing you the humiliation," Louis said lazily. "Horan, pass me the chicken, what're you hogging it for? Don't answer that. Just pass me it."
"Don't want to defend your girlfriend's honor anymore?" Parker asked, because he wouldn't give it up, would he. Harry flushed a bit, he didn't know why. It probably had something to do with the fact that his honor had to be defended in the first place, mishaps and him being as synonymous as they were. Or the use of the word "girlfriend," which wasn't a big deal, since he and Lou - weren't, but.
Louis didn't miss a beat. "True, yeah, I can't speak a lot about honor, considering what /your/ girlfriend screamed in my ear last night."
"Lou," Liam sighed, and Niall sniggered, and Parker gestured at Louis with a drumstick, "Do you want to-"
"Parker, sit down," said Professor Franco, walking into the hall. "Tomlinson, stop aggravating him. Good god, can't we enjoy a nice dinner in peace?"
Harry passed Louis the chicken. Louis grinned at him, tilting his head at Parker. Harry felt himself dimple back, instinctive. So maybe Louis - well, defending his honor made him feel a bit fluttery in his stomach. It wasn't like, he was doing it because Harry was his girlfriend or anything.
Boyfriend, was what he meant.
God.
Fuck Tom Parker.
:::
Louis didn't talk about it for four days and three nights. They had classes as usual, and on Wednesday Professor Rai gave a speech on, like. Times shifting and changing, and overcoming prejudice with peace, doing the right thing, and making decisions with morality. Or something like that. It sounded pretty standard. Liam was listening carefully, but then Liam always listened carefully. Louis was playing Hangman with Zayn on Harry's knee, and the Sharpie tickled where Louis was writing on his skin.
On the fourth night, Louis got into Harry's bed, just after Harry had drifted off to almost- sleep, and whispered, lips cold against the back of Harry's neck, "Haz. Harry, wake up. I want to go to the tower."
It took Harry a minute or two, but he said, groggy, "Why didn't you go after dinner?"
Louis was pouting into Harry's neck, Harry could feel it. "Cause, Haz. Andromeda and Sirius only align in perfect composition to Jupiter at -" he shifts a bit, probably to check the clock - "One sixteen am."
"You're just saying random astronomy terms," Harry sighed, but he let Louis pull him up anyway. He tugged on a beanie and draped a smaller, colorfully-patched blanket over his shoulders, which he was sure had been hand-knitted by Liam's mum.
"So fragile," Louis sighed, waiting for him by the door. He was in his grey hoodie, and the sweatpants he was wearing - Harry's - were rolled up at the ankles. He looked small, and soft, and sleepy, and very determined to be awake. Harry rested his head on his shoulder as they walked as quietly as possible to the tower. Normal rules weren't as strict here as normal boarding schools, responsibility for the powers being the top priority, but obviously wandering around aimlessly at midnight was discouraged, especially if you were two teenage boys and one of you had been in love with the other for three years.
Louis petted at Harry's hair when they let themselves in, Louis having lazily turned the lock from outside with a twist of his fingers in midair. Harry got off and settled onto the floor, and Louis peered through the telescope happily.
"Look, Haz, Claudius is bright tonight," he said.
"That's not even a star," Harry said, watching him sleepily. The tower had transparent glass windows from every side, and Louis looked beautiful in starlight.
"Skeptic," Louis tutted. "And there, that's Optimus."
"Yeah?" said Harry, but he wasn't looking through a telescope, so he looked at Louis instead.
"Yeah," Louis confirmed. "That's Julio and that's Tabithius." He stared through the telescope intently. Harry wanted to pull him in by the hood of his jacket, spin him around to kiss and be kissed. "Tabithius was a cat once."
"An orange kitty," Harry mused, arms warm in the blanket curled around him, "with white paws."
"Who's telling the story?" Louis asked. "But okay, orange. White paws. And she caught a lot of mice, like. Hundreds in her lifetime. But her owners threw her out after an incident involving some scratched up sofas and she died on the streets."
"Tabithius," Harry murmured, sad.
"And when she died," Louis said seriously, "the souls of all the mice she'd ever caught rose up to form her outline in the sky."
"I," Harry said, "that's kind of disturbing, maybe." He liked it, though. It was a very Louis story.
"Truth is stranger than fiction," Louis told him. He smiled with one side of his mouth as he turned to look at Harry.
When he looked back, he said, eye pressed to the telescope like he was discussing the shape of another feline constellation, "My dad called the other day."
Harry was quiet, like Louis wanted him to be.
"Y'know, it started off okay," Louis said, "civil, all that. Asked me how you were, how my football was going, Liverpool's latest atrocity at Arsenal. Then he brought up, like, 'so you lot still - there, then?'"
Louis' voice had gone posh and nothing at all like his dad's. He snorted unamusedly.
"Like it was some kind of... like we were in the fucking can, or something, you know? Then I said some things. He said some things. To make a long screaming story short, he still thinks I'm a freak of nature who should've just been put down at birth."
Louis' dad wasn't part of the group of people who were under the impression that one day, soon, the mutants were going to amass their ranks and turn the humans into slaves, and were currently calling for mass execution "before it was too late," but he was part of that larger group of people who were probably even worse, who had brains and mutant family members and would stand by and let the executions happen, if it was, quote unquote, for the greater good.
"Oh, Lou." Harry would've probably thought twice about it in different circumstances. If his blood wasn't boiling and the stars weren't aligned to Jupiter at one sixteen am and Louis wasn't standing there still looking into the telescope, his voice very careless and his pose deliberately standoffish. He knew Louis, and Louis didn't like showing weakness.
If Harry had thought about it twice, he probably wouldn't have gone over and wrapped his arms around Louis, suffocating, and whispered, "Fuck him, fuck him he can fuckingly fuck off, I fucking love you," into Louis' ear.
Harry didn't exactly register what he'd said until after Louis had stiffened in surprise, held still for a long moment during which Harry considered backing off and apologising, and then sighed, wrapped his arms so his fingers met in the small of Harry's back. Then Harry registered the "fucking love you," and had a bit of a panic attack.
It wasn't as if they hadn't said it to each other before. Love you, boo; Is that tea? Fuck, I love you; lov ya!!! .xxx etc. But Harry had meant it, was the thing. Meant it as wide as human thought, felt it core-deep in his bones. How he loved this sunshine-electric-metal boy. He'd never said it remotely like that before.
Thankfully, Louis hadn't seemed to notice, which was a tiny god-given miracle, and Harry relaxed, and held him, and didn't say anything. Later, they curled up into Harry's bed. Louis told him the story of how the mice had gone zombie, ate the people of Tabithius' town.
:::
Harry was in class with Caroline. Technically, Professor Flack, but the first time he'd called her that, she'd winced.
"Caroline, there's a good lad," she'd said. "Not a suggestion, either. I don't want to be made to feel like I'm sixty, not quite yet."
"Okay," Harry had smiled, "Caroline," and she'd been awesome for three years, taught him so much about controlling his telepathy, focusing it, blocking people out, respecting their minds.
Louis, Louis wasn't quite as fond of her as Harry was. The other boys didn't really know her and didn't quite care, but Louis was always sort of stand-offish when Harry talked about her. He'd want to hear about Harry's lessons, but not about the funny thing Caroline had said about pizza. Which was a bit odd, as Harry didn't think they'd had much interaction since ever, if at all.
He'd mentioned it to the rest, once; Zayn had rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded a lot like "dumbasses" under his breath, Liam had said, "Um, I don't want to interfere, but it's glaringly obvious," which had made Harry want to shake him, and Niall had laughed, "Nope, mate, Tommo'd kill me," which. Which. Had not helped. At all.
Harry needed new friends.
He focused back on Caroline, who was saying, "good, Harry," after Harry had picked out an individual childhood memory, from just an incomplete phrase she'd let him read in her mind: tax returns on the eighteenth of May-. Nine-year-old Caroline, spindly legs and curious eyes, on the train to Manchester and reading about the world of finance from the thoughts of the suited man sitting across from her.
"Very good," she repeated. "Well. Have some tea, love."
Harry's vision still felt fuzzy, like it always did after he delved into other people's worlds, like the images he was looking at right now were still just memories, flashes of remembrance. He accepted the tea, grateful. They sipped it in silence for a minute.
"Harry," said Caroline, suddenly, "you heard what Delph said last week?"
She called other professors by just their names, too, which was why Harry took a moment to recall that Delph was Prof Rai.
"Yeah," he said, slowly, "um..." He needed Liam for this. "Making good choices. Doing the right thing when it's not easy. Same thing, really. With great power cones great responsibility, and all that."
"Mmm," said Caroline, her voice serious. Harry looked at her, but she was looking out of the window. Her features were lit in the afternoon sun. She had nice eyes, crinkles at the side like Louis.
"What," Harry said blankly, "what'd I do."
"Nothing, love," said Caroline, smiling over at him. "I know you'll heed that advice, all right? Just, use those curls to influence your friends to act the same. It might not be as easy for them, they might feel like making different choices based on what they feel is right." She paused, and there was a lot more unsaid in between her words than she was letting on. "The other side, they're convinced they're doing the right thing, too. They're, it's their own version of wanting to look out for us, they feel it's only a matter of time before we all get sacrificed trying to protect those who're only human. Do you get it, love?"
Harry rubbed a thumb along the handle of his teacup.
People's minds worked so alike, and so differently. They could believe in the exact same thing, and kill each other over the proper way of going about it.
"Think I do," Harry told her. "A bit, at least."
"All I'm asking for, kid," Caroline said. "Now please, go run along before Louis starts a fire because I'm keeping you here too long." There was a look in her eyes, gently amused like Liam's, and Harry was about to ask-
"Oh, no," she said, laughing, and Harry sometimes forgot she was one of the greatest telepaths of her time. "You figure it out yourself, love."
:::
"Enjoy yourself?" asked Louis at dinner. "Ran a bit overtime, there."
The question was easy, if you didn't know Louis. Zayn, who did, was already looking up.
"It was okay," Harry said, careful not to mention Caroline much, "managed to pick out individual memories, was great, Lou, it was like playing Memory and you just know which two cards you've got to pick up, before this it was like, lucky guess if you managed to get two right but today, I managed to hone in, and Lou, it was amazing-"
Louis listened to Harry ramble, smiling, making normally snarky remarks. He was okay when it came to the actual lessons. Zayn turned his attention back onto Liam and Niall's nonsensical conversation about whether or not Iron Man should build The Hulk some wings.
"Absolutely terrifying," Zayn said.
"Yeah, but," Niall gestured flapping with his hands, "fucking awesome."
Louis cut in, "You don't know what you're talking about, Payno. Fucking flying monster. Awesome." He waved his bit of sausage at Liam indignantly.
Harry still wondered, but knew better than to ask, knew so, so much better than to try to seek it out in his head.
:::