A/N: So I’m a crappy person, because it’s been four months and I haven’t been able to come up with anything even slightly acceptable until now. Not sure how I feel about it, but I hope you guys like this. Much love to all for reading.
-Monique xxxx
****
Harry is getting nowhere.
Louis is sitting there, nose buried in his elbow. All Harry can see of his face are his eyes, flitting back and forth and staring at nothing.
Harry suppresses a sigh.
“So do you like meeting here better than in the hospital?” Harry asks quietly, in an attempt to distract Louis from himself and his thoughts.
(And maybe to distract Harry a bit too, from Louis’ hypnotic blues.)
Louis freezes for a moment, but then his shoulders relax again. He sighs, setting his feet on the floor and sitting up straight. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t like having all those wires attached to me. Plus, everything smells really bad there. Sterilized.”
Harry tries not to show Louis how pleased he is about actually (finally) getting a decent response out of the boy. “We can just meet here in my office then, from now on.”
Louis looks at him curiously for a moment, and then nods, pursing his lips. “Okay. Cool.”
Silence consumes the room again.
****
This is how it goes, for the rest of the week.
Every day, Louis meets him at his office, brought over by Jay. Every day, they sit in silence, except for a few pointless exchanges here and there. Every day, Louis leaves without a word.
Harry doesn’t know if it’s helping, or making things worse. The only reason Louis still turns up is because Jay’s paying for this, and Harry’s not even making any progress. He doesn’t know how much longer this is going to take.
And so this is what he’s thinking about as he sits in his living room, with his hand wrapped around a bottle of wine and trashy reality shows playing on his television. He has no idea what to do with himself.
He could ask Nick for help, but he wants to show Nick (and himself) that he can do this on his own. It can’t be that hard, right?
Lou sighs from where she’s curled up on his lap. He pets her soft fur, sighing himself. “I feel the same, little Lou.”
His phone rings.
He takes another swig from his bottle of wine before leaning forward in his seat, reaching for where his phone is buzzing on the coffee table. Lou jumps from where she’d been sitting, clearly displeased with the way Harry jostled her. Harry rolls his eyes and picks his phone up, answering it without checking the Caller ID.
“Hello?” he asks sleepily. (It’s only 9:30 in the evening and he’s already tired – can you get much more pathetic than that?)
“Oh, hello. Is this, um, is this Harry?”
Harry’s eyes widen and he nearly drops his wine, catching himself just in time. He sets in on the coffee table quickly and clears his throat, straightening the books on the table in the process even though he knows that no one but him and Lou can see them.
Shit.
“Yes,” is all he manages to get out, his voice cracking slightly. He hopes it’s not noticeable.
“Hey, it’s Louis. I just, um. Just wanted to know how open you were to having a quick session, um, now. I know it’s last minute, and I know we already had a session today, but. Um.” There’s a long pause. “But, I don’t know,” Louis continues, voice clearer now, sounding less timid. It’s almost like he’s trying to seem tough, which is. Interesting. “It’s not like I have anything else to do. Hospitals are boring.”
Harry swallows thickly. He’s drunk. He can’t drive. “I mean, I can’t – I can’t drive over there right now, but I can stay on the phone with you if you want. Did you want – did you want to talk about something?”
Another long pause.
“You know what –“ Louis then says, voice sounding bitter. “Just – forget I ever fucking asked. Never mind.”
The line goes dead.
****
Harry wants to try out a new approach this time.
He’s waiting in his office, for Louis to knock on the door. He’s nervous, mostly because of the conversation they had on the phone the night before. He doesn’t want the slight (miniscule, more like) progress he’d made to be ruined because of it, for Louis to go back to the cold exterior that he was on the day they first met.
Except the knock never comes.
Instead, the door just bursts open, Louis walking in without any other sort of introduction. He leaves the door open as he sits on the chair, kicking his feet up onto Harry’s desk and eyeing him with that challenging glimmer back in his eye.
Harry says nothing.
Louis sits like that for ten minutes, watching Harry. Harry’s gaze, however, shifts around the room awkwardly, trying to draw attention away from Louis’ anger in hopes that it will somehow fade away.
He doesn’t think that it does, at any point.
“I got a cat the other day,” Harry blurts out, in another attempt to relieve the tension.
Louis simply raises an eyebrow, and Harry takes that as a cue to continue. “Yeah, she’s got black fur and blue eyes. Really cute tiny thing.”
Louis doesn’t respond.
Harry coughs into his fist. That didn’t work then. New approach?
“I was talking to my mum the other day,” Harry starts instead, and Louis scratches his nose. “She was telling me about how she wants to get a new phone, and doesn’t know which kind to get. She’s not really aware of how to use smartphones, in that mum way, you know?”
Harry might be imagining it, but he thinks he sees Louis’ chin move downward slightly, in a small nod. It encourages him to continue. “So I was like, I dunno, something that’s easy for you to use. But then she was being indecisive and whining about how I was no help, and then hung up to ask my sister instead.”
Silence.
“That was a pretty shitty story.”
Harry looks up suddenly from where he’d been staring at his hands in his lap, up into Louis’ eyes. He notices that they don’t look as harsh or biting as he had expected them to. There are still walls up, but there are also cracks.
“Tell another one.”
Harry furrows his brow. “Sorry?”
“Another one. Story, I mean. Tell another shitty story.”
Harry just stares at him.
Louis pushes his long fringe out of his eyes and gives Harry an exasperated look. “Well? Are you just going to gape at me or are you going to tell me another story like I said?”
Stammering, Harry comes back to life. “Oh, um. Yeah, yeah I can do that. Um. I bought cat litter a few days ago. For, um, for my cat.”
Louis nods, as if to tell Harry to continue. So he does.
And so it goes, Harry telling story after pointless story, until the hour’s up and Louis is slipping out the door and Harry is wondering how the fuck he’s managed to land himself a patient like Louis Tomlinson.
YOU ARE READING
shattered skies ➸ larry stylinson
Fanfiction❝he's always said to himself that the most important thing about his line of work is never letting anyone down. he refuses to fail, because his failure would mean who knows what to the patients. he started all of this to help people. hell if he's go...
