‹ Prequel: Burn
Status: Hiatus

Whispers

'Cause I'm standing here alone

“You realize this is insane?” Liam asked, sighing and leaning back. They were all sitting on the floor. It was night time, pizza boxes covering the entire floor and cups of various liquids covering the table tops. Everyone was gathered around, listening as Niall, Harry and Anderson went over their plan. “Do you think we’re from Oceans Eleven? That is a movie, you know?”

“Don’t be silly,” Anderson rolled his eyes. “Leon’s house isn’t a casino and you’re not good looking enough to be George Clooney. Now, are we all in for this or not?

Trystan shook her head. “How do you know Leon has been cutting Sean’s budget without him knowing? What makes you credible? And for that matter, what makes you think that if you throw that in Sean’s face he’ll turn on Leon.”

Harry raised his hand as though he were in school. Trystan rolled her eyes and gestured for him to speak. “Remember when I said that Sean did all of Leon’s dirty work?” Everyone nodded. “He was only doing that because he trusted Leon enough to handle budgets. That night when I went out with Sean when I had my…” He glanced at Rae. “Relapse, of sorts, Sean told me that he was unhappy with Leon gone. He was running Leon’s kingdom, his first taste without his brother. The foundations are already there.”

“I want to know how you know Leon is cutting Sean out of deals.”

Anderson rolled his eyes. “Thorough, Blondie.” She glared. “I know because Leon turned on me when I stuck up for Sean. Started cutting me out of money too.”

“So that’s why you’re here?” Zayn asked. Rae glanced at him, surprised he had even spoken up. “Because you weren’t getting the money you wanted. How the hell do we know you aren’t going to screw us, Anderson.”

Harry held up a piece of paper then. “Signed contract between us with a notary signature.” Harry grinned then. “I may not be a lawyer, but I’ve picked up a few things. If Anderson in any way or form turns our break in over to Leon or to the authorities, he forfeits the right to several forged checks and documents that Niall got a hold of.”

“The Irish strike again,” Niall muttered crossly, folding his hands over his chest. He had glasses on the bridge of his nose and there were circles under his eyes. He looked exhausted. “As always.”

Niall still hadn’t told anyone about the job offer, Rae was sure. She gave him a soft smile. He tried to return it but failed, turning it into a yawn. Rae was tired too. She just wanted to be done with the back and forth. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen. It was too dramatic, too drawn out. But the law system didn’t always work. Where the law failed, they would improvise.

“But that’s beside the point.” Zayn leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. He used his hands to talk, trying to explain his point to Harry. “My point is that why are we going to put away Leon for him to take up where Leon left off.”

Anderson put his hand against his chest, feigning hurt. “I’m offended, Zayn. But really, I just want to get my money and move. Maybe to somewhere like Tahiti. Proper good beaches there, I’ve heard.”
Louis made a face. “Do you even know where Tahiti is?”

“Lads!” Harry said forcefully, making everyone stop talking. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked tired too, but then again, he always looked tired to Rae lately. Ever since his father’s death, Harry had been dragging. The only time he seemed alive was when they were alone or when he had his nose stuck in a book. “Please. I have tried putting Leon in jail. I have tried testifying against him, I have tried to have him arrested. The problem with going through legal issues now is probable cause, warrants, a mess of things that we do not have in our power.”

“So what, we become a vigilante team?” Louis asked. “At what cost, mate?”

“At his. If you don’t want to do this, I understand. But I need my life back, Rae needs her life back. She’s barely spoken to her family, she’s trying to take art classes and I’m trying to study to become an English professor.” An audible confusion went around the room and Rae grinned. “I didn’t want to mention it, but I would very much like to do something with it, perhaps. The point is, I’ve got to do something uncanny things to get rid of my issues first.”

“What about your mental ones?” Harry smiled at Louis, who leaned against the couch. “I get it, I do. I just think that this is absolutely insane. A few months ago we would have laughed at this travesty. But if it’s going to be permanent…” he shrugged, then. “Fine.”

Harry glanced around the group. “You know I’m with you,” Zayn said softly. “I just wish that this was more reliable than it is. But I’m with you. I did break into a ware house, for you. And dump about thousands of dollars worth of drugs.”

Everyone laughed. “You’re y brother,” Liam stated, getting up from his seat on the floor. “And if you kill Zayn, I’m going to have to find a roommate, so either we both go down or not at all.”

“Thrilling, Liam.” Zayn shook his head.

“Well,” Rae said, clapping her hands together. “Go team go!”

Everyone groaned and dispersed, agreeing to meet in the morning and go over supplies and the plan again. It wasn’t relying on much, but it certainly could work. Rae hoped it did. She wanted to be done. She wanted to lay in the back yard while Harry read so she could paint him. She wanted him to teach Lily how to read, and she wanted to have small dinners with her family.

Rae wanted a life with Harry without the drama.

Standing, Rae looked up to Harry who was beckoning her. She followed him to the back and out of the sliding glass door. It was chilly outside. There were no clouds in the sky, but there was a single, waxing moon. He gestured to the ladder propped against the side of the building, making her look at him questioningly.

“What, afraid of heights?”

“Yes!”

He laughed loudly, the sound thick in his chest. “I didn’t know that!”

“Yeah- well, we haven’t had much time to discuss fears, dreams and fantasies lately. If you haven’t noticed, our life had turned into one of those American produced heist movies.”

“Ah, American films.”

Rae put her hands on both sides of the ladder. The metal was cold to the touch. She began to climb, sticking one foot higher and higher. She reached the top of the shingled roof, placing her palms flat on the surface and pushing up, hauling her stomach flat onto the roof before wiggling her way onto the very top.

A single blanket and a large body pillow were waiting for her. She shook her head, laughing lightly as Harry hauled himself onto the roof with ease. She hated his muscles in that moment. She had to slither onto the roof like and inchworm and yet it was completely effortless to him, much like everything he did.

“Sure,” Rae said, pulling herself so that she was sitting under the blanket. He sat next to her, laying back so that he was looking up and then pulling some of the blanket onto himself. “Just hulk you’re way up here.”

“Maybe you should work out.”

“I do!”

“Step it up, Rambo!”

“Whatever. You know you can’t see the stars, right? City lights and-"

“Shh,” he hushed her, stretching his arm to press his finger against her lips to shut her up. She gave him a narrow-eyed look before he removed his hand and wrapped it around her, pulling her into the crook of his arm. “This is supposed to be romantic.”

“The shingle is bruise my butt.”

“I’m going to bruise your butt if you don’t stop busting my balls.”

Rae grinned, pressing a small kiss on his cheek. “It’s my favorite past time.”

“Okay, so how about we do a thing,” he suggested, looking down at her. Apparently I didn’t know you were afraid of heights, so let’s just list off facts in a rapid fire that we think the other is unaware of.”

“Fine,” Rae huffed. “I’m afraid of heights.”

“Well I know that now.”

“Whatever, don’t be greedy. You’re turn.”

He thought. “I hate cotton balls.”

Rae looked up at him. He was totally serious for a moment, looking up at the sky. His lips started to twitch then and she grinned as Harry tried to fight a smile until he couldn’t’ anymore, the curve of his lips overpowering his need to be serious as he laughed. Seeing him trying to fight the smile and failing was one of the most beautiful acts his face had ever done, Rae thought. “Are you really?”

“Yes! They look like cotton candy but they’re not.”

“You’re ridiculous. I secretly love cream cheese. Sometimes I just eat it from a spoon.”

“Oh, I knew that already.” She gave him a look. “What? I did! You think I didn’t notice how quickly my cream cheese was vanishing? I don’t put much on my bagels and you hate my onion bagels.”

“Huh.” His eyes were dark enough to reflect the moon. They looked ominous with the silver light in them. “How annoyingly observant of you.”

“I thought girls liked when boys noticed little things about them.”

“Not when they’re guilty pleasures, Harold!”

“Fine!” He pursed his lips. His thumb rubbed her shoulder gently, moving in consistent circles. “I don’t like to use new pens.”

“What? What kind of weird fetish is that?”

“It isn’t a fetish, Rae Bastian! There is a perfectly logical reason behind it, thank you. I just feel as though pens carry stories. You write all sorts of things with pens; novels, lists, signatures, eulogies, poems. Pens carry these insane pasts and I don’t like to start new ones because… well.”

“Because why?”

“Because I don’t want to give it a nasty history, or anything.” Rae was puzzled. She understood what he meant, in a sense, but she also didn’t understand at all. Harry was full of complexities that made her head and heart hurt on occasion. “I don’t want to be responsible for starting off that story on a bad foot. I like to think that if I’ve got used pens, I can either fix the history of it by using them in books, or I can carry on whatever it was doing before me. I just don’t like starting the story.”

After a long silence, Rae sighed. “Harry Styles, do you mean to tell me, that ever since you’ve come up with this ideology in your head, all these years of thinking about pens and stories, you have become a notorious pen stealer?”

He breathed out a chuckle. “Yes.”

“You better not be stealing my paper mates.” She turned in his arms and pressed herself close to Harry’s side. She was so close that she could feel his ribcage, the very thing that protected his heart. She liked to think she was his metaphorical ribcage as well, protecting his heart from anyone out to hurt it. “Those are my good pens. Steal Trystan’s.”

“Pen hoarder.”

“Yes.” She pressed a kiss to the side of his mouth then. “Rae Bastian, Hoarder of Pens, Afraid of Heights, and Queen of Cream Cheese.”

“Baroness of my Heart.”

Rae looked at him. His cheeks were flushed from the chill but he was smiling. She was happy, in that moment. He looked alive again, as they lay there on the rooftop. “King of the Doofuses.”
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Two chapters, one epilogue left