crack the shutters. | larry & niam.

Chapter 12 - Terrible.

It's not that long since I snuck on the internet. Being grounded without internet fucking sucks -.-

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Louis was confused.

He walked down the school hallway; his eyes glued on the ground in front of him, his thoughts were racing.

What was wrong with Niall? What happened with him? And why wouldn’t he tell Louis? Didn’t he trust him?

And Louis still hasn’t found out what was wrong with Harry, and he had no idea whose secret to find out first.

He cared about both, he badly wanted to fix both, but he had no idea why. He had never dealt with anyone suffering from depression or whatever Harry was suffering from.

Louis sighed as he entered the classroom and walked over to his seat, sitting down next to Liam, who turned his head and eyed Louis.

“Everything okay, mate?”, he asked concerned, and Louis looked up, meeting the bigger boys eyes, and nodded.

“Just… a bit off. Weird day, I guess, don’t worry though.”, Louis replied, shooting Liam a smile before he looked to the front where the teacher just cleared his throat to get the class’ attention.

~

As the bell rang, signaling that lunch had begun, Louis jumped up from his seat, stuffed everything he had on his table into his bag, swung it on his shoulder and walked out of the class, heading to the cafeteria.

He had waited for lunch the entire day, he wanted to use the break to talk to Niall who seemed to be avoiding Louis the entire day, and Louis had no clue why he would do that, but he was determined to find out.

Louis entered the room, and looked around a room filled with tables, chairs and groups of teenagers; everyone was there, everyone from freshmans to seniors.

He spotted his friends sitting at a table at the back, and Louis made his way over to them, sitting down between Liam and Zayn so he sat across from Niall.

“Hey Lou.”, Danielle cheered happily, and leaned against Liams shoulder. Liam slung his arm around Danielle, kissing her hair.

“Hey, Dani.”, Louis replied, giving her a weak smile before he turned to Niall. “Oi, irish one, why have you been avoiding me?”

Niall looked at Louis, his eyebrows raised. “I haven’t been avoiding you? What made you think that?”, he questioned, and Louis rolled his eyes.

“Maybe because every time we met in the hallway, you started walking faster, pretending you hasn’t seen me when you even looked me in the eye thrice!”

Louis looked at Niall, who just looked down at the table in front of him, staring at it, and Louis noticed there wasn’t a plate standing in front of Niall, and raised his eyebrows.

“Aren’t you eating anything, Niall?”, he asked, and Nialls breath hitched for a moment, and he looked up, and Louis could easily tell Niall was nervous.

“N-No… I had a big breakfast, you know. Not hungry right now.”, he explained, giving Louis a smile, trying to make him believe his story, but the brown haired boy just shook his head, looking at his Irish friend in disbelief.

“It never mattered to you; you were always eating, like, if I made hundred random photos of you one day, you’d be eating on 98 of them. On the other two you’d be standing in a line to get food. Niall, what the fuck is wrong with you lately?”

Niall furrowed his eyebrows and his facial expression turned into an angry one as he looked at Louis.

“Nothing is wrong, I fucking told you! I told you yesterday, I told you this morning and I fucking tell you NOW! I’m fucking fine, my life is okay, I AM okay, there’s nothing to worry about! Why the fuck won’t you understand that?!”, he snapped, before he stood up, and walked away.

“YEAH, YOU TOLD ME THAT WHEN I CATCHED YOU CRYING YESTERDAY!”, Louis yelled after Niall but he doubted he heard it, and he buried his face into his hands, taking deep breaths to calm down.

“What was that about?”, Zayn carefully asked as he looked at Louis in confusion.

“It’s… nothing, I’ll explain later.”, Louis said, pushed himself of the chair and walked over to Harry and sat down next to him.

Harry looked up, and the cold expression on his face faded a little bit as he regnonized Louis.

“Tomlinson.”, he said quietly, almost whispering. “Let me guess, Niall screamed at you as you confronted him with anything concerning his-“ Louis let out a sigh and nodded. “How’d you know?”

Harry chuckled slightly.

“Dude, I’m a human, I do have eyes and ears, and he didn’t really made effort to keep his shouting private.”

Louis shrugged, and laid his head on the table, taking a deep breath and sighed again.

“You do know that you can’t just confront people with problems like that. You have to cautiously approach everything. He won’t just admit his problems to you.”

Louis turned his head, and looked at Harry. “And how the fuck should I do that? I’m fucking terrible at those things.”

“You’ll find a way, little one.”, Harry explained as he stood up because the bell just rang, and walked away.

Louis looked after Harry, confused about what he said, confused about “little one”, and mostly confused about what he should do with Niall. And Harry. Basically both of them.

~

Niall decided to skip the last classes, he didn’t felt like going to them, so he took the bus home.

He was walking down the small path that was leading to his house. He liked to use this abbreviation because he was home faster and mostly because he was on his own.

He felt a little dizzy due to the lack of eating mixed with emotional stress. He knew it was wrong to starve himself, but he couldn’t help him. If he couldn’t be one of the pretty boys, he at least wanted to be one of the skinny ones.

Niall sighed and opened the front door, stepped into the house and closed the door behind him.

He stripped off his shoes and walked into the kitchen, and Laura smiled at him. “I thought you wouldn’t be home until 5?”

Niall sat down on the couch. “I usually wouldn’t but I wasn’t feeling well. I guess I catched a cold or something.”

Laura looked at him in concern, and laid her hand on his forehead. “You’re not hot, are you sure it’s a cold?” She looked at her nephew, and he shrugged.

“Maybe it’s something else, I just wasn’t feeling well, I think a bit of sleep will help.” He smiled at his aunt as he got up, but Laura stopped him.

“Have you eaten enough? You left the house this morning before I could offer breakfast.”

Niall nodded. “I had a really big lunch at school today, it’s okay.”, he lied and turned around, walking up the stairs to his room, stepped into it and locked the door behind him.

He threw himself on his bed, and screamed into the pillow but no one could hear the scream, the pillow muffled it.

Niall felt terrible.

Terrible for not eating.

Terrible for putting himself through so much pain even though he couldn’t help himself.

Terrible for lying to everyone, including his aunt.

Terrible because he knew he was getting bad again, but he wasn’t telling anyone.