Reasons to be a Nerd: a Larry Stylinson AU fic

Chapter 12

(Harry)

If I have to spend much longer in this hospital bed, I may be in danger of going on a murder spree.

Let’s just combine physical pain in most parts of my body, ranging from annoying ache to feeling like I’m being stabbed, mental and emotional turmoil, and constant soreness and stiffness, pile a ton of meds on top, and not let me move around or go outside or whatever, and get mad whenever the kid is annoyed about it. Mm. Sounds like fun.

“Hey Niall,” I say as the blonde saunters back into the room with a cup of pudding in each hand. He grins as he walks over and plops one of them down in my lap with a spoon. “Hey-o, Hazza,” Niall replies as he flings himself across the chair he’s claimed as his own, limbs going everywhere.

“Can I ask you something?”

He looks up, surprised. “Sure, what’s up?”

“…Why don’t you and Lou get along?”

Niall’s lips purse and he looks down at the floor, taps his fingers against the pudding cup and hums for a long time. “We get on fine,” he says after a while.

I frown. “You might get along ‘fine’ now, but you haven’t for a long time. I just wanna know what happened.”

“Haven’t I told you before?”

“I don’t know,” I say exasperatedly, throwing my shoulders into a wild shrug that sends pain through my sides. “Probably. I don’t know. My memory’s shit without a metric fuckton of medication in my system. If you have, cool, tell me again. If not, cool, tell me in the first place.”

Niall just sighs and lets his head roll back on his shoulders. “I accidentally outed him to our entire school a few years ago. Told everybody he was gay, that is.”

“You what?”

“Yeah…freshman year, after the musical?”

“I missed that day. I heard it was great.”

“Oh. Damn. I guess it was.”

“You’re not getting out of this conversation that easily, Horan. What’d you say? How does that even come up during a flipping musical?”

He sighs again. “I was sort of like, a narrator-emcee-type of guy, and I had a little speech at the end. Louis was the male lead in the play, and while I tried to make a joke about how adorable he and the girl lead were, I managed to compare it to Lou and his boyfriend-at-the-time.” Niall looks absolutely miserable at this point. “We were best friends, you know. Easily as close as you and I are now, if not more so. I was the first person he told, and I was there for moral support when he came out to his parents. He refused to speak to me for weeks, and we barely talked unless we had to until you two started getting to be- friends.”

“Damn, Niall.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me…and then, his boyfriend moved away that summer and they broke it off, so he decided he was on his own from there on out. Except for Christy, of course. She moved here sophomore year and knew nothing about what had happened.”

There are so many more layers to this story than I thought. This is just great. Oh, Louis.

“Harry?”

I look back up from where my hands lay wrapped around the cup. “Yeah?”

“Are you gay?”

I actually, for some reason, physically flinch. “No, I’m not,” I say, frowning.

He nods slowly, looking skeptical.

“No, I’m not,” I repeat again, a little more forcefully. “I don’t know anything about what’s been going on lately, but I’m not gay. He’s…he’s the exception. No other guy is in any way shape or form attractive- not, not that he is, but- there’s something about him that’s just different, I don’t know. Girls are definitely- they’re a-plus. Nothing wrong there. But even- at the party? I was making out with this girl who was an easy nine out of ten, and I was just plain bored. A few months ago that wouldn’t have happened. I probably would’ve banged her, she sure was into it. But I was just bored, and wondering where Louis went. And then I went off to find him.” I pause. “And then ended up kissing him on a dance floor.”