euphoric (n.s. AU)

f i v e

*Harry's POV*

"Mr. Horan, what happened to your face?" I ask him. He blushes under my gaze and looks down.

"I'll sound stupid..." He admits. I chuckle.

"You wont, I promise."

"Well..." He starts, looking around. "I ran into a wall." He tells me. I laugh slips past my lips before I cover my mouth. He frowns at me before looking down.

"Tragic." I say. He bites his lip and nods.

"Now, there is a new stack of papers over there, if you want to continue what you were doing last time." I tell him, and he turns his head to look. He looks back at me and nods.

"Is this all I'll be doing? Stapling and stamping papers?" He mumbles, walking to collect the things needed to do his task.

"No. For now, yes. Your credits are based off how hard you work and how seriously you take this, not how difficult each job is." I explain to him. He sighs and nods before returning to his duties. I click on an email that I had received before turning my attention back to Niall. I watched as he stapled papers together and then stamped them, moving them to the side and doing it again.

"You have so much potential, why don't you ever show it?" I think aloud. His head shoots up and he furrows his eyebrows.

"What?"

"Why, why do you always put up this," I stop to think of a decent word to use. "This facade. As if you "don't care" what people think about you. That's why you always show up late, isn't it? To prove a point? I mean, Mr. Horan, I can read you like a book. Its not hard to tell that you care quite a bit what people think about you." I say, looking him in the eyes the entire time. He sighs.

"Hah, I guess you're right." He says, scratching the back of his neck. A satisfied smile creeps onto my face, proud that I have figured out the strange, younger boy.

"Why?" I ask. He raises an eyebrow at me.

"I mean, why do you want people to think differently than who you really are?" I rephrase.

"I don't really wanna talk about me." He answers sharply, turning away from me to continue his work. I sigh before shaking my head.

"You're gonna be one tough nut to crack, aren't you?" I ask no one in particular. He turns back to me and narrows his eyes at me.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you're emotionally closed off. Its gonna take a while to break through that wall of yours." I shoot back, smiling widely at him. He chuckles before blushing, one of the first times I've seen a genuine smile from the kid.

"Oh?" He asks. I smile and nod. He rolls his eyes and brings the stack of newly stamped-and stapled-papers to my desk and plops them down.

"Good work!" I praise, and he nods before sitting on a spinny chair that was across from me. I chuckle as he lightly spins and I return to finish my work as quickly as possible, because the atmosphere wasn't very welcoming anymore.