*

The fire crackled and popped, sending ash to burn out on the tiles. Harry lay on the old, worn sofa, with a woollen blanket over himself. It was itchy, not soft in the slightest, but it held the heat on his body well, and that was why Louis could be found buried beneath it, as well. He lay on Harry, his head on Harry's chest, and he was ever so warm, smelling ever so sweet. Harry wrapped an arm around the boy's waist, holding a mug of hot chocolate in the other, and he kissed the top of Louis' head. That was all he could see, for the rest of the boy was hidden beneath the woollen blanket.

The rainstorm had calmed, and the rain fell less ferociously than before, draining down the gutters and making the moorlands soaked with mud. The sheep had taken shelter in the barn, and Harry could hear them bleating. He was glad that the animals still lived here, even after his Grandparents' deaths. The villagers, despite barely ever seeing the old couple, respected them highly, for their chickens had lain the best eggs, and their cows had produced the finest milk. That was why, every morning, the villagers would wander the moors and let the cattle out, take the chicken eggs, and look after the baby lambs in the spring. They knew Harry, loved him as everyone ever did. Harry had always been loved by everyone that had ever crossed his path, and he loved those people in return, despite not ever showing it.

Harry saw the hot chocolate in his mug begin to tremble, and he lay it down on the tiles as to not drop it. He let out a sound of discomfort, stretched his arm, but no matter how much he did, that pain didn't leave. His hand clenched around Louis' waist, without him realising it. He grimaced out of pain, stretching his left arm and shaking it but nothing ever stopped that pain but the passing of time, and time passed slowly. Ever so slowly.

"Harry?" Louis asked, poking his head out from the blanket. His hand was on his hip, gripping to Harry's fingers that dug into his skin. His face was pink from the heat beneath the blanket, and he had the marks of Harry's shirt on his face. "Are you alright?" He asked, sitting up when he saw how heavily Harry breathed. Harry couldn't reply for a few minutes, his cheeks heated, his breaths heavy, his arm going limp and falling down by the side of the sofa. Occasional splinters of pain crawled through him and it showed on his face. Louis couldn't see what hurt, and he didn't dare to touch any part of Harry's body but his hips which he was straddling already. It scared him to see Harry like this, yet it was not quite as new as that. Harry, for the past few weeks, had been getting slower. His dances were not so perfect. His movements were not so fluid. He'd run out of breath easily, nowadays, would trip more, and he'd struggled to hold Louis in the air for the amount of time that he should have. Everyone had noticed how the King of Ballet was falling, how the crown on his head was slipping, but he denied it. He denied everything wrong with himself, and he danced, with that pain getting deeper, with his self-trust growing thin-he danced, and he never stopped.

"Please, answer me." Louis begged, panic on his own face, "Can you hear me? Harry?"

Harry growled in pain and stretched his back, his head drooping over the armrest, and then he relaxed, groaned, and the lines of his face became less strained. Beads of cold sweat covered his forehead, and he let out one last cry of-not pain-but misery, before looking up at Louis and smiling slightly. "You really are a loud little thing... I hear you." He put a hand out weakly, and fondled a strand of Louis' hair before moving his hand to the boy's nape and pulling him back down. Louis followed, and lay his head on Harry's chest.

His heart was racing, but was it the remains of pain-or was it fear?

Louis didn't know, but Harry did.

"Can I give you a kiss?" Louis asked, looking up with those big blue eyes. Harry saw Louis' need, the one to comfort, and so he nodded. Louis wriggled up Harry's body, and then put his face in the crook of Harry's neck, sniffing the aftershave. He was certain that it was soap. Harry, this time, didn't tell him to stop, and instead, he leaned his head the other way, inviting Louis to his neck, his jawline, and Louis left kisses there. He moved up, marking a path over Harry's skin with love. He reached Harry's cheek, and the man smiled. Louis poked a dimple, then kissed it, and then kissed it again.

Harry's arms came to wrap around Louis' waist, and they stayed like that for a while. Harry felt the ghosts of Louis' lips on his neck, and even though the boy had laid back down on his chest, the tingling feeling still remained on Harry's flushed cheeks.

"I like Dorian Gray." Louis said, squeezing Harry as if he were a huge teddy bear.

Harry looked down at him, "Who?" he asked.

"Dorian Gray." Louis repeated, despite the fact that Harry had heard perfectly well the first time. "He's a beautiful man. As pretty as a portrait."

Harry didn't reply for a moment, but Louis expected him to, so he said, "Ok. That's nice."

Louis looked up, confused by the bland reaction, and he saw a crease between Harry's eyebrows and the stubborn look on his face. He wondered what it meant. "You do know Dorian Gray, right? The Picture of Dorian Gray. It's a book by Oscar Wilde."

The crease between Harry's eyebrows disappeared and a small smile turned the corners of his mouth upwards. "I don't read." he admitted. "Do you like books, Louis?"

Louis nodded eagerly. He loved to travel, to escape Mother without the punishment, and reading was the only way that he knew how. Harry smiled and patted Louis to make him get off the sofa. He did, and watched Harry walk away, up the stairs. He returned shortly after with a book in his hands. "I was looking for a story, and it seems as if I've found Dorian for you. You can have it, if you want."

Louis took the book from Harry and opened it. He smelt the pages. They were worn with age, dusty, turning yellow, but it was a story, and Louis had always loved stories. He sat back down on the sofa, Harry sat beside him, and they looked at the book in Louis' hands. "Can I read it to you?" Louis asked.

"Of course." Harry pulled the blanket over Louis' shoulders, then over his own, and the boy shuffled up to him. He opened the book, and smiled.

"The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim-" Louis read. Harry watched his eyes move across the page, the small smile that he had when he spoke, and it may have been a little cruel, but Harry completely forgot to listen to the words that were being read, just for him. He heard them, alright, in a light and peaceful voice, one that spoke with no doubt nor hesitation, with no stumble nor stutter, and yet Harry made no sense of the words. He just listened to the flow of Louis' voice, and it grounded him.

They grounded each other.

Louis suddenly paused, thoughtful over a sentence in the book. "All art is quite useless." He repeated, "Is it? Is it really so useless?" He didn't ask Harry, but a million thoughts ran through his mind that made his voice even softer when he spoke. "If it were useless, we'd never have met. If it were useless, you'd have never leant how let Rosaline go. Art to be admired is useless, for sure, but art within yourself is precious beyond all things." He trailed off, holding the open book, in deep thought. He started when Harry called out his name, and then he fell back to reality and smiled. "I've just realised, Rosaline is a beautiful name."

Harry nodded, love in his heart and dripped from the green of his eyes. "She was French, it's an old name. She was named after a character from Romeo and Juliet. She was clever like you, you know, always with her nose stuck in a book. She was a romantic, only read love stories with happy endings, and she used to choreograph her own dances to tell those stories."

"When did you meet her?" Louis asked, folding the corner of the book cover.

Harry paused for a moment, but said, "I met her in high school. She was girl that everyone admired, the one to turn heads when she'd pass the door. Her beauty was something that you couldn't miss, but she'd never looked back to those who'd stared. She always kept her nose buried in a book, and would only put that book down to tie her ballet slippers and dance with the school's ballet club. That's where I met her. I was the captain of the basketball team that trained on one side of the gym. Of course, there was a lot of flirting going on at that time. The dancers were the swans, tall and beautiful, and the basketball players were the huntsmen, and we chased those swans. Some of us were lucky, we won the girls hearts, and I was the luckiest of them all to be loved by her."

"She made you start ballet lessons, didn't she?"

Harry nodded. His heart was heavy, ever so heavy.

"She's a beautiful person. Far more beautiful than Odette."

"You don't know her." Harry said.

Louis looked up at him, wide eyes. "I don't need to." He said, "You smile when you think of her."

Harry watched Louis fidget. He was tugging on a loose string in the blanket, unravelling it. Harry took his hands and pulled them away. He held them for a while. Both of Louis' hands could fit in just one of his. "You're doing it again, comparing yourself to her. You've been doing that a lot lately."

Louis looked down. He pulled his hands from Harry's grasp to stick the large pink and white plaster back onto his knee. The corners bounced back up. Harry looked at him, concerned. "You don't need to compare yourself to others. You aren't Rosaline, and that doesn't make you any less of a person. People love you for who you are. You're a wonderful boy, Louis, just give yourself the chance to accept it."

"What if I can't?" Louis asked, "What if I don't see what you do? I may be a wonder to you, but when I look in the mirror, I see something like a parasite. I grew up feeling like a lodger in my own home, like something unwanted. I hope that this doesn't sound weird or anything, please don't judge me.. When I was eight, Mother tried to shoot me."

He look up then, and there were terrifying memories etched all over his face. Harry saw a child then, just a child who'd had no one to love him. "It was on my birthday and we were locked in an attic somewhere. It wasn't my home. There was banging on the front door, men shouting on the other side. Mother was crying and that made me cry too. She kissed my head, and pointed a gun where where her lips had touched me, and she was telling me that she loved me, that I'd sleep well. She said 'goodnight' over and over, but she didn't shoot the gun. She wanted to kill me."

He burst into tears, and Harry wrapped his arms around Louis' shoulders and pulled him to his chest. The number of times that he'd had to do this was far too many for a boy like Louis. Harry wanted to make an offer, wanted Louis to live with him, to escape the city and live forever in this little farmhouse of theirs. But he couldn't.

The endless throbbing in his left arm stopped him. The endless ache in his legs told him "don't.".

"What happened after that?" Harry asked when Louis began to calm down. He regretted asking that question but then he didn't. Louis had the stern eyes of a soldier, and the strong heart of one, too.

"After that, the angry men broke the door down, and mother pushed me back. She left the attic, locked me in.. I don't know what happened after that, I was unconscious because of the dust. All that I remember is waking up in my own home, on the sofa, to see mother's smiling face and her hand stroking my forehead. Her cheek was cut and bruised, one of her eyes swollen shut. She never opened the curtains or went outside again."

*

There were new plasters on Louis' arm when he walked into school the next day. He'd got home just a little too late, just five minutes after his curfew, and all of those five minutes had earned him a nail scar each. He looked tired, sad, perhaps, and he didn't carry his head as high as he usually would. Nothing had particularly happened to Louis, other than the fact that the day before had been one of his favourites, and he was sad that it had ended, but that wasn't the reason why his head hung so low, now. In fact, he couldn't think of a reason, it was just a bad day-one of those where he didn't feel quite like himself. It was only when Shawn walked up to him and called him by his new name, 'Louis', that he smiled.

Shawn walked up to him, his ginger hair a mess, his shirt buttoned up wrong, and his tie loose. His friends stood smoking by the gates, chatting to each other and whistling to Shawn. Louis looked away from them when the boy stopped in front of him. "Hello." Shawn said.

"What do you want from me?" Louis asked suspiciously, "You want my sandwich, don't you? Take it, it's in the same pocket of my bag as it always is." He said, turning around and offering his bag to Shawn.

Shawn appeared taken aback, then puzzled, and finally, he shook his head and spun Louis back around. "No, no, it's yours. Keep it. I was wondering if you'd like to come to the park with me. Your lessons start in an hour, right? We have the time."

"Why?" Louis asked.

Shawn rubbed his neck and looked back at his friends rather desperately. They gave him a mixture of middle fingers and thumbs up, and Shawn turned back to Louis. "There's a lake there, with swans. I thought that you'd like to see them."

"I've seen them before." Louis said, "But alright. You're not going to push me in, are you? You're not going to fill my bag with rocks and push me into the water, are you? You don't have anyone waiting at the park gates to ambush me and beat me, do you? What if I go there and you have a dog waiting to attack me, or what if-"

"Louis!"

Louis looked up from the ground and saw the shock pass over Shawn's face. "I would never do any of those things."

Louis mumbled a quick, "Not anymore..", before agreeing to Shawn's offer cautiously. If he were to wait here, he'd be alone for an hour anyway because Niall always arrived at nine on Tuesdays.

*

Louis sat on a swing, and it creaked when he swung gently on it, sucking on an ice cream. He had a hundreds-and-thousands, and Shawn had chosen a vanilla ice-cream with a chocolate flake in it. He now sat on the swing beside Louis, his backpack on the floor, eating his ice cream without a care in the world.

"Where are you going next year?" He asked, licking the vanilla from around his lips.

Louis licked a trail of strawberry juice that ran down his arm and shrugged. "I wanted to go to university to study biological sciences. I wanted to then go to Nasa, or the European Space Agency; that's how people become astronauts, you know.. But I can't."

"Because of your mum?" Shawn asked, and Louis nodded.

"But imagine if I were an astronaut. I would go to the moon and float around in space, and I'd collect moon rocks to give to all of my friends. I'd give you one, and you could keep it on your bedside table at night to have dreams about aliens."

Shawn laughed and lit a cigarette. With it tucked between his lips, he said, "You sure have great ambitions. Dreamers like you make people like me seem boring. It's not such a bad thing. They say that realists are here to ground dreamers, but I would rather see you fly with your dreams. Realists are just a pathetic excuse to cut the wings of dreamers."

"I think that you could be a dreamer, you know. I think that if you want to live, to be happy, then you become a dreamer. I want to live, I want to meet aliens and travel the world and fly to the moon. I want to go to America and then to France and also to Australia. I want to give moon rocks to people and then meet the Queen. There's a lot of things that I need to do, if I were to die soon, then I'd die sad. I couldn't imagine dying now, there's too much that I have left to do."

Shawn smiled, blowing the smoke from his cigarette out through his nose. "You'll go far, Louis. You can do anything that you want. I promise you that, and I never break my promises."

*

What did you think of the chapter?

My love, Lucy. Xx