One Direction Bromance One Shots

Psychosis Or Something Like That - Narry

                  They’re going to kill him.

                Niall doesn’t know who they are, what they are, how they are. But they’re going to kill him, they’re going to tear him limb from limb. They’re going to stab into his pupils with nails and gouge out his eyes. They’re going to rip him into pieces. They’re hiding outside his flat, they’re waiting. They disguise themselves as people he knows- his boyfriend, Harry, his friends, Liam, Zayn, and Louis. They bang on his door with a vengeance, begging him to come outside or go to university or have a cup of coffee but Niall doesn’t listen, Niall is too smart for them.

                He locks all of his doors and windows and checks them twice a night. The TV stays off because maybe they’ll hear and then he can’t pretend to not exist anymore. If they hear him, he exists, he is real. So he stops talking, too.

                The screams he bites back build up inside of his chest and one day he just snaps. He breaks the TV and the computer and the clock and the mirror. He bangs his head against the wall over and over and he prays that he’ll break his skull, too. If he dies they’ll leave him alone, they’ll go the fuck away, and that is all he wants. Suddenly doors are being torn down and sirens are banging in his ears and someone is screaming I love you, stop, I love you, don’t, I love you, I love you, I love you, I’m so sorry, I love you. It’s them! They’ve come to kill him!

                Niall just bangs his head even harder and suddenly his eyes are closing, bathed in the maroon red of his own blood.

~~~~~

                Harry thinks Niall looks beautiful when he sleeps.

                He wishes Niall wasn’t hooked up to wire after wire and that his body wasn’t pumped full of sedatives, but he is still so, so beautiful. There are bags under Niall’s eyes and bandages wrapped around his skull. But that’s okay. Harry just wishes Niall was okay, too.

                The doctors throw around terms like PTSD and abuse and rape and psychosis and Harry doesn’t know what to think. Maybe he hasn’t been there enough. Maybe he has been there too much.

            Harry is a simple man, he doesn’t need much. If you stripped him down layer by layer, muscle by muscle, bone by bone, he is sure that nothing would remain except for his fragile heart, beating for anything outside of himself. It scares him at times, the fact that if Harry had nothing, if he didn’t have Niall or his friends or school that his fragile heart would have nothing to beat for. Harry himself is not the solution; he is simply the parentheses in the equation of his existence. He could be taken away and things would still be exactly the same.

                The doctors and their tests make Harry uncomfortable. Blood tests, MRI’S, CAT scans. The nurses are too happy and the doctors too solemn. On the slightly okay side, the hospital cafeteria serves pretty good grilled cheese sandwiches.

                Zayn drops by with Liam and they ask Harry almost hourly, like clockwork, if he’s okay, if he needs to talk. Harry tells them that he doesn’t really know, to be honest. He just wants to know that Niall is going to be alright, even if the words are simply reassurances to help him sleep at night.

                Louis drops by with McDonald’s and doesn’t really say anything because he knows it won’t mean much. He talks about idle things, like how cold it is in Cheshire nowadays or how he really needs to clean out the gutters because Eleanor’s getting irritated with him. He talks about how he likes the name William for his upcoming child, who is only four months away from being in his arms. He talks about everything except for the obvious things, and Harry appreciates it more than he can say.

                Harry sleeps two nights at the hospital and they feel like years.

                Niall finally wakes up and Harry is there by his side instantly, picking songs from his brain that Niall likes to play around his home to hum in Niall’s ear. He should say something, something like you’re okay, or we’re okay, or everything’s okay, but he hasn’t slept in 48 hours and the best he can do is hum. He hopes it’s enough.

                Niall is tired and weak and he knows that they still want to kill him; they’re going to get him. He can’t hide in the hospital, he can’t hide under the sheets or in the hallways or in the bathroom or anywhere and they are going to destroy him. He wants to scream or run back to his flat but all he can do is cry silently and whimper out phrases that Harry can barely understand.

                “They’re coming for me,” he wails. “They’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me,” the same words slip past his lips over and over. Harry just runs his fingers through Niall’s hair and hums Flume by Bon Iver louder. He looks into Niall’s deep blue eyes and wonders what is happening. His own curly hair is a disheveled mess, and he vaguely thinks about getting a haircut. Maybe after things pan out.

                Niall eventually falls back asleep and the doctors have more tests ready. Harry is drained but he waits, because he wants Niall back. It can be the Niall that is whole, the Niall who wakes up to Justin Bieber and falls asleep to Ed Sheeran. Or it can be this broken Niall, the Niall who thinks someone is going to kill him. He just wants Niall back, no matter what Niall he gets.

                The nurses are still too happy and the doctors too solemn, and Harry finds himself somewhere in the middle.

~~~~~

                Niall is diagnosed with something along the lines of temporary psychosis triggered by a traumatic shift of events in his life or something like that. Harry doesn’t remember but it doesn’t matter, because the doctors promise that Niall will be okay.

                Niall takes his pills and soon enough he is waking up once again to Justin Bieber and falling asleep in Harry’s arms to Ed Sheeran.

                Harry’s fragile heart beats with a passion he didn’t know he possessed, and Niall’s slightly stronger heart intertwines with Harry’s and they whisper promises of forever and love and everything will be okay.

                They wake up every morning for the rest of their lives loving each other a little bit more than the day before, and in the end, everything truly is okay. Just like they promised.