You Can Hear It In The Silence

Chapter 23

"You know," Niall said, glaring at the road like he had been for the last two hours, "I really want to turn this car around."

"I do know that, yes." If Harry hadn't known he was the one talking, he wouldn't have recognised his own voice. He didn't recognise much about himself today.

"I'm only doing this because you threatened to get a fucking train if I didn't."

Harry continued to stare out the window, seeing nothing because his vision had been blurry since eleven fifty-five the night before and the lack of sleep and excess tears hadn't helped. He didn't point out that he had wanted to get the train but Niall wouldn't let him. Instead, he made a noise that he hoped might sound something resembling enough agreeance to satisfy Niall.

"I'm going to turn around!" Niall declared. It wasn't likely because they were in the middle of a motorway with no exits nearby.

"You're not," Harry muttered. This trip had never in his life seemed so relentlessly slow. Even on the car trips to and from his parent's house with Louis, it wasn't this bad, and they weren't even talking.

At least Louis was there, then. Harry could have reached out and touched him if he had wanted to. He should have. He was the one who ruined the entire trip back. That was three hours of his life he'd spent ignoring Louis when he should have been lapping up every millisecond when he'd had the chance to.

He couldn't pay enough attention to hear what Niall was saying, but he knew he was whining about something. Harry should have left and got on a train before Niall had woken up. Or Niall should have been a normal person and gotten black-out drunk for New Year's Eve so that he couldn't drive.

"There's a train station like ten minutes away from here," Harry murmured. "Just drop me off there." As far as Harry knew, there was not a train station ten minutes away, but he figured that it might stop Niall's incessant criticisms.

Niall groaned. "I'm not letting you get a train!"

"Then stop fucking talking about it," Harry sighed.

Harry rested his head on his hand against the window. He stretched his fingers around the side of his face to wipe away some fallen tears and tried to blink back the ones threatening to free themselves.

Turns out Niall only had two minutes of silence in him, "You know this is fucked up, right?"

Niall had no fucking idea how fucked up Harry knew it was, and as much as he wanted to tell Niall just that, he needed to use all his energy to hold back his tears.

"He's going to wake up, and you're just not going to be there," Niall muttered. "Happy Fucking New Year."

"He ended it," Harry choked out, eyes remaining unfocused, staring out his window.

"What?" Niall asked.

"He ended it," Harry repeated, voice cracking throughout. 'It'. One of the most devastating things was he still didn't know what it was. It would have felt much easier to mourn and understand if it had a name. He could say he had an ex-boyfriend, not an ex-...almost. How was he meant to get over an almost? He had no idea how he was meant to move on from a broken heart when he broke his own by letting himself get wrapped up in something that would never end any other way.

"What do you mean?" Niall asked, and Harry took comfort in the softened tone he used.

"He said it was over." The lump in his throat that he was trying to ignore made his voice so tight that it was painful to talk. "He ended it."