Larry Stylinson One Shots

Watch Me Fall Apart

summary: Harry is falling, hard. Will Louis be there to catch him as he does?

TRIGGER WARNING: Eating disorder and self hate.

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It's not that Harry hated food or anything. On the contrary, he loved to eat. He loved fast food: nuggets, fries, thick mint chocolate chip shakes. He loved pigging out with the lads, eating greasy pizza and crisps. He was the type of lad who would shove packaged cookies and brownies in his school bag in case he got hungry or bored throughout the day. Yes, he really did love food.

It's just, he loved being thin even more, even more than his endless hunger for all those foods.

He lusted for collarbones that would show through his thin T-Shirts. He desired the flatness of his tummy, revealing sharp, lovely hip bones. He loved how delicate his wrists looked, dark blue veins prominent through pale flesh. He became addicted to the way he could feel his bones, showing under skin stretched tight; addicted to being able to count his ribs with shaking fingers. He'd look in the mirror he and Louis shared and would just touch, all over, feeling how skinny he was starting to become.

While Harry loved to eat, he knew that he would never become perfect if he continued on the way that he was.

He set up meetings with a personal trainer and came up with his own strict diet and exercise plan. He would grin whenever he stepped onto his new little digital scale - the number was always lower than the previous time he'd checked.

At first, he had almost no self control. He would be just finishing off a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream before he even realized what was happening. Those were the days that he would force himself to throw it all back up, an event so unpleasant that he eventually beat the urge to eat until he couldn't eat anymore. He was finding that he didn't want any of the foods he did before; he didn't really want any food, to be honest.

All he wanted was to be beautiful.

In that process though, he was hurting the people that he loved the most.

Take Louis, for example.

At first, Louis had tried to ignore it, figuring that Harry knew what he was doing. Although Harry obviously had no plans of stopping, Louis didn't want to say anything. He felt like it wasn't his place to do so, right?

And so Harry continued to get smaller and smaller, a ghost of the boy he had once been. He grew more and more joyous at his success, and more and more withdrawn from the ones that loved him.

*

Eventually, Harry fainted at rehearsals. He had been feeling a bit more light-headed than usual, but tried to ignore it, he wanted to become perfect, and would just have to get used to it, he figured.

He was in the middle of singing his solo in Little Things (how ironic, yeah?) and just fainted, falling bodily to the unforgiving floor.

Instantly all his bandmates rushed over, Louis the quickest of them all. Zayn was freaking out, yelling harshly for someone to call a damn ambulance. Liam complied, taking his iPhone out of his back pocket, tapping in 999 with shaky fingers. Niall was shaking as well, eyes tearing up and his hands over his mouth in shock.

As soon as Louis was by Harry's side, he dropped to the floor as well, gently cradling the younger boy's head in his lap. He pushed back the curls from Harry's startlingly pale face, unable to hold back his tears.

*

He could hear the faint sound of the ambulance finally arriving, but he all he focused on was Harry. Harry, and arms. Arms? He could see the arms pulling Harry away from him. He was confused, and as if in a daze, went to reach for the younger lad again, when he felt someone holding him back, keeping him away from Harry.