You Can Hear It In The Silence

Chapter 5

Louis was pissed off. Like really fucking pissed off. Mainly at his two best friends. Harry hadn't come back down after Liam had grilled them about whatever the fuck happened, and Zayn made his stupid comments.

At the time, Louis hadn't thought much of it until the end when the two started talking about... well that.

But obviously, it had bothered Harry.

The others agreed on pizza, and when Louis ordered it, he added the vegetarian one he'd gotten for Harry last time. It had looked foul, with way too many vegetables, but Harry had finished most of it, so Louis figured he must like it.

When the pizzas came, Louis acted like a fucking bell-end and pretended he had no idea where the vegetarian pizza came from. As if it had been a mistake or something. Maybe it would have worked if the fucking receipt wasn't sitting on the boxes and was the first thing Zayn looked at. He knew he'd made it weirder by trying to play it off like that rather than just saying he ordered the pizza for Harry. It probably would have been expected that he would have ordered something for Harry, given that they'd ordered for all of them.

Niall had messaged Harry telling him that dinner was there, but he hadn't come down. Apparently, he was studying, but even if that was true, he still could have come for dinner. He could have come down just to grab his pizza and returned upstairs.

Niall had said he'd take the pizza up to Harry once he'd finished his own, and Louis had found himself biting back his words every time Niall had grabbed another slice. Harry's pizza would be getting cold. Why couldn't Niall run it up and then come back down to eat his own?

If Liam and Zayn weren't still acting so fucking weird, he would have just taken it up himself. Maybe. Probably not, actually.

Because Louis had to admit that it probably was a bit weird. It hadn't felt strange at the time, and it really was Liam and Zayn's fault for pointing out that it was, so it was still their fucking fault, but now it was weird.

Harry obviously thought so, given that he'd just left. Got up and walked away without looking back. It's not that Louis blamed him, not really, anyway. But they could have just moved on if he'd stayed, and they'd sat through it together. Harry hiding out in his room didn't improve the situation at all.

When Niall finally finished eating, and Louis was sure he'd gone out of his way to eat more than he ever had before, he finally took the pizza to Harry. He was up there, presumably in Harry's room, for fifty-seven minutes. Not that Louis was counting. It's just he happened to look at the time. If Liam and Zayn had noticed that he kept glancing at the roof, they hadn't said anything. That was in their best interest, really, because Louis was still so pissed at them.

Niall didn't say anything about Harry when he came back down, but Louis did notice him glancing at him a few times. He had no idea if Niall always looked at him or if it had to do with the hour-long conversation that he'd just had with Harry.

All he knew was there was no fucking way he was going to ask.

Thankfully, Louis had to work all week because if he'd seen Harry, he would probably have been expected to say something, but he had no idea what to say. He didn't want to apologise because he hadn't done anything. He could probably apologise for Liam and Zayn. Perhaps he could just tell Harry to get the fuck over it and stop acting like a prat and ignoring him. Yeah, it was probably for the best that he hadn't seen him.

Louis got home after two on Friday morning as uni students had a pub crawl that ended at his bar. He didn't get into bed until three, but he set his alarm to nine-thirty. That would give him hours to make it normal again. If he acted normal, it would become normal again. They didn't need an extensive drawn-out conversation because nothing needed to be said.