Fall into your gravity (larry AU by Zarah5)

10

Fall Into Your Gravity - X.

Distantly, through the wall of sound he's erected around himself, Harry hears someone pounding on the door. Notching the volume on his headphones up, Harry rolls over, his back to the door, and curls his body around one of the pillows that came with the hotel bed. Four pillows. King-size bed. One enormous duvet that he, alone, could get lost under.

His choked laughter must sound strange in the empty room, but the music that surrounds him prevents him from having to hear it. It's almost enough to drown out his thoughts.

At the painful silence between one song and the next, his stomach gives a strange lurch. He thinks it might be hunger, but getting up, even just picking up the phone to order room service, seems like too much of a hassle.

Belatedly, he realises that the pounding on his door must have stopped at some point.

Whatever.

--

Harry starts at the sudden brightness flooding the room. When he jerks into a sitting position, Niall is frowning at him, a keycard pinched between thumb and forefinger, but it isn't until Niall takes two quick steps forward and tugs Harry's headphones off that Harry tunes in to the string of swear words which Niall is muttering under his breath.

"What," Harry says, even voice and no inflection, while the headphones are still blaring, a tinny echo now that they're just lying there on the bed.

"Bloody hell." Niall narrows his eyes at the headphones as if they have personally offended him. He switches Harry's iPod off, the one which Louis had returned to him with a wildly random selection of music added to the list. "Are you attempting to blast your eardrums to dust?" Niall continues. "Because I think it might be working, the way you ignored me. Prick."

"Pillock," Harry replies automatically. "What are you doing here? And who gave you my keycard?"

"Lovely girl at reception knew who I was. Her sister's a fan." Niall's smirk is brief, and Harry returns it on impulse because yeah, the sister, it'salways the sister. Then Harry remembers the first time he met Louis, how some of Harry's first words to Louis were, "Let me guess, you're only here for your sister," and Louis had stared at him in genuine confusion.

Louis' sister. Louis' sister, who released what was supposed to be a very private moment for the world to see.

Oh, fuck.

Throwing an arm over his eyes, Harry blindly gropes for Niall's hand to pull him down onto the bed. For all that Harry thought he didn't want to see anyone, now that Niall's here, he doesn't want him to leave.

"What are you doing here?" Harry repeats, tugging, and Niall doesn't even hesitate in climbing onto the bed beside him. He wraps himself around Harry like the wonderful, perfect person he is, pulls the duvet up so that it covers them both up to the chin and replies only when they've come to an arrangement that suits them both.

"I'm checking whether you're still alive or passed out with alcohol poisoning or running headfirst into walls or whatever."

"'m not suicidal," Harry protests.

"Sure, mate." Niall squeezes Harry's waist, and Harry focuses on the warmth of his touch, tries to forget everything that lies beyond this makeshift cocoon. "You're also not wallowing in self-pity or anything, nope."

"I'm lovesick," Harry says, and he means for it to come out like a joke, but his tongue trips over the sentence and he barely manages to push it out into the open. It's stupid, it's so fucking stupid because he hasn't lost Louis, not yet, it's just... a temporary time-out, just until Harry's head stops spinning and the world slows to a pace he can handle.