You Can Hear It In The Silence

Chapter 8

If someone had told him when he woke up that morning that he'd be comforting Harry less than an hour later, Louis probably wouldn't have believed them. Harry had pissed him the fuck off the night before. Louis had known that Harry had thought a lot of pretty shitty things about him. Still, even at the start, even when it was awful between them, he would have been hurt if Harry had thought he was homophobic. But after all the time they'd spent together, the fact that Harry still thought that there was even a possibility that he could be was honestly the biggest slap in the face.

He'd started to think they'd gotten somewhere. He'd thought they were friends or at least something like friends. But Harry obviously hadn't felt that way because there was no way that Harry would be friends with someone who was a homophobic piece of shit.

Louis hated that he even went up the stairs to check on Harry when he realised he was no longer in the living room. He'd just had a feeling something was wrong.

It turned out something was really fucking wrong. As soon as Louis reached the landing, he saw Harry packing bags through his open door. For a minute, he thought he must have misread the situation because there was abso-fucking-lutely no chance that Harry could be leaving.

The closer he got, the clearer it was that Harry was packing.

In almost any other circumstance, he would have just let Harry leave. He knew that people who wanted to go just would. He had no interest in begging people to stay. But these weren't normal circumstances.

When he'd decided to call Niall, he'd planned just to give Harry the phone and let Niall talk some fucking sense into Harry. Even if Niall couldn't, Louis still felt like he owed Niall a heads-up about his stupid best friend's plan.

Given Louis had never rung Niall, he assumed that Niall would immediately think Harry had another seizure or something. Louis had been prepared to lead by telling Niall that he wasn't calling about that.

But he hadn't needed to because Niall answered the call with "Fuck, Lou, do not let him leave."

At first, Louis thought that Harry must have told Niall that he was planning on leaving. But, during their brief conversation as Louis took the phone upstairs to Harry, it seemed clear that Harry hadn't contacted Niall and something else was happening.

Out of all the things he'd expected to see when he walked back into Harry's room, Harry curled into himself violently sobbing was not one of them.

Obviously, seeing anyone like that would have broken Louis' heart. But somehow, and for more reasons than Louis could name, he felt like his heart was ripped out of his chest and repeatedly stabbed because it was Harry.

Louis had never really claimed to be good at comforting people. He was good at providing distractions, making jokes, and helping them get drunk so they'd forget. But not so good at the whole 'comforting when a friend is in the middle of a fucking crisis' thing.

He decided to do what felt right, and what felt right was sitting on the floor, stroking his back and trying to hold back his own tears while he watched Harry go through whatever it was he was going through.

It's possible that a few tears slipped anyway, but that's neither here nor there.

It took Harry about twenty minutes to go from hyperventilating, shuddering (heartbreaking) sobs to the occasional hitched breath and stray tear.

When Harry finally looked up at Louis, Harry's body encompassed by Louis', Louis' heart shattered a little more. If he had ever had to imagine what Harry would look like upset, it wouldn't have come close to the tragically beautiful mess in front of him.