"If you weren't real I'd make you up"

CHAPTER 2

"Just you then?" Catharine asks him, her brown eyes tired as she grabs a menu from the stack.

He shakes his head, giving her his best smile and sneaking a look back at Louis who's lingering by the door. "No, table for two."

"Sure." She gives him what he thinks is probably supposed to be a cheerful grin, but she always looks so sad when she does it, and he thinks maybe one day he'll ask her why she always looks at him like that.

He's been coming here for months now, since his mom works late weekdays and it's either this or hot pockets. He likes it, the bustle of the dining room, and he likes not being alone. It's even better now that Louis comes, because he can cajole food past his lips and hold his hand on the table.

"I'll be with you in a minute." She says as she puts them at their usual table in the back.

"So what are you ordering this week?" Louis asks, resting his elbows on the table.

"Not sure." Harry replies, scanning the menu. "Maybe I'll just get a big plate of onion rings. That's a meal, right?"

"Not even close." Louis says, a half smile resting on his lips.

"You're an expert on eating then?" Harry asks, narrowing his eyes at him.

"I'm an expert on food. Avoiding it, hiding it, normal things." Louis says flippantly, but Harry is used to his brush offs at this point. Louis doesn't just have an eating disorder, he's good at it.

"Don't turn it into a joke." Harry says, because Louis is great at having a laugh at his body's expense and he shouldn't. "Hurting yourself isn't funny."

Louis shrugs. "I can either laugh or cry about it, babe."

"I just wish you'd take it more seriously. I take it seriously." Harry says, because he's a worrier. It's just another facet of his lovely cocktail of neurosis.

"Harry, do I tell you not to hallucinate?" He asks, reaching to take Harry's hands so he knows Louis is being kind.

"No." He answers quietly.

"Do I tell you that the voices will go away if you want it hard enough?" He asks, running his fingers across the back of Harry's hands.

"No."

"I'm sick Harry, just like you are. I have to deal with it somehow." Louis says softly, his eyes going all sad, and Harry feels the sadness too, caught up in his bloodstream. "I'd rather laugh than cry."

"I just wish I could make you better, so you wouldn't have to deal with it." Harry says, because he doesn't know how to fix Louis but Louis fixes him a little and that doesn't seem fair.

"You can't and you know that better than anyone." Louis says with a shrug. "I'll always have to deal with it, all you can do is deal with it with me."

"Are you ready to order?" Harry looks up with a start, finding Catharine staring down at him with her notepad in hand. "I can come back...?"

He shakes his head. "No, sorry. A plate of onion rings please?

She gives him a bit of a look, but writes it down. "Is that it?"

"Two waters?"

She nods, scrawling it on the paper. "It'll be out in a few minutes."

"Thanks." He replies, and he wonders if she's picked up on the fact that Louis never eats, if she remembers the time he had an episode that time she was in his physics class. He wonders what he must look like to everyone else; lanky and strange and broken.