It's Complicated || Larry & Ziam [COMPLETED]

twenty-three

It wasn't hard for Louis to hate his parents.

He'd had to stay late for football practice but never would have blown Harry off at the bakery, so he ended up being even later to his own house. Unfortunately, he was caught at the wrong time.

"What is this we hear about you getting a ninety-one on an exam?"

"Yeah," Louis answered, wanting not to talk about it and to just go up to his room and not talk to them. "I guess the tutoring worked."

"Why did we have to go to extreme measures in order to keep your grades up if you could have been getting straight As in the first place?"

"I can't get straight As. I've tried, and I keep trying. That's the first A I've gotten in years, and it happened to be on a major test."

His parents exchanged glances. "We should have been a bit more strict. We've let you run off and do your own things for long enough. If you can get a high grade on a test, I expect you do get the same grades on normal assignments. We should have made you get that job we discussed earlier."

Louis was suddenly brought back to when he first started actually talking to Harry, back when he needed the job before. It hadn't been very long — it wasn't even December yet — but Louis felt like it was ages ago. Wow.

"I'm almost eighteen. Once I'm an adult, I can be trusted to be responsible for my own wellbeing," he countered.

His father shook his head. "You can't. You're still in high school. You don't know what the real world is like."

"May I be excused?" Louis asked.

"No," his mother answered sharply. "You may not. We're going to talk about this."

After two hours of being lectured by parents who never seemed to care until he was nearly an adult, Louis felt like he was going to cry. These people in front of him weren't his family — they didn't know a single thing about him. He hated how they spoke to him and he hated how they treated him when they did speak to him.

Finally, after several sarcastic remarks, his mother sighed deeply in exasperation and stalked off to another part of the large house. His father remained to give him a stern look.

"You shouldn't speak to your mother that way."

"Why not?"

"She's responsible for your life."

"That means absolutely nothing if she doesn't properly parent me."

"Your mother didn't even want children!" His father burst out. "People who don't want kids don't just change their minds. You have to understand how having a child made her feel. You are, after all, almost an adult."

Louis could feel a hard pound in his chest, knocking the breath out of him and making tears that had threatened to spill fall down his cheeks. He didn't even excuse himself as he grabbed his coat he'd dropped on the floor and walked out the front door.

It was raining hard, making the sky dark and difficult to drive in. Still, the tears half-blocking his vision posed more of a problem, but he didn't care. He just sat in the front seat and cried, driving with his instincts.

When he pulled up to Harry's house, he wasn't even surprised. He knew that it would be Harry in the end. He wiped the tears from his eyes and walked through the cascading rain, knocking on the door and shivering once.

He longed to see Harry answer the door, but still wasn't all that disappointed to see Anne's puzzled face. Her expression soon turned from bewildered to concerned as she called out nervously, "Harry?"

"What, mum?" Louis heard Harry's annoyed voice and choked out another sob. He hated his life sometimes. Truly hated it.

That was when Harry appeared from around the corner, his eyes landing on the soaking wet figure outside the door. "Lou?"

"Come in, love," Anne said worriedly. Louis attempted to smile at her as a substitution for a thank-you out loud since he didn't think he could speak, but it didn't work. Harry helped him take off the wet coat and engulfed him in a hug.

Louis hugged back, crying even harder into his shoulder. He felt a rush of gratitude as Harry didn't try to move or ask him what was wrong.

"Can I get you anything?" Anne asked him.

Louis only shook his head. He felt bad enough, coming uninvited to her house when they least expected it just because he couldn't handle his own problems, without asking her of anything more.

She seemed to take the unspoken hint that Louis didn't want to talk about it. "Alright. I'll be in my room if you need anything."

"Thanks, mum," Harry said, lightly caressing Louis's back every couple of seconds. When Louis finally deemed himself emotionally capable of being let go from Harry's comforting grip, he pulled back. "You okay?"

"Just peachy," Louis said in return.

Harry brushed off a stray tear from Louis's cheek. "Seems like it. Never seen you look quite this happy before."

Louis chuckled even though he didn't feel like laughing. Harry managed to put him in a slightly better mood each time he talked to him.

"I won't ask why, but what or who caused this?"

"Parents," Louis said.

"Ah," Harry murmured, stroking Louis's hair in an attempt to comfort him. He'd heard enough rants from Louis to know at least basic knowledge about his parents.

"They never even wanted kids," Louis muttered mostly to himself, leaning into Harry's chest. "I'm just a mistake. They never wanted me."

"Their opinions don't matter. You weren't a mistake. They aren't your real family."

"Yeah, I know. Liam and Zayn and you." Louis let his troubled thoughts take over. "You want to know what the first thing I thought when they told me they were together was?" He didn't wait for Harry to answer. "I thought, 'They won't have as much time for me if they're dating.' It's horrible. I legitimately thought that they wouldn't have time for me. I thought they'd just drop me like that, since they had each other. It wouldn't be bad for them if they did, anyway."

"Hey," Harry said, tilting Louis's head up to meet his stern gaze. "They wouldn't stop being your best friends just because they decided they liked each other. You aren't a nuisance to Liam, or Zayn, or me. And that should really be all that matters — that the people who you care about care about you back. A while ago, when Liam and I had just begun being friends, he told me that you meant just as much to him as Zayn and his family. You're important, Louis. If not to your parents, then to me. You're really damn important."

Louis didn't say anything after that, letting the words sink in and letting himself lean into Harry even more. Harry cared about him, and Liam cared about him, and Zayn cared about him, and for a moment, Louis didn't care about anyone else. The people closest to him had no intentions of not being close to him anymore and that was all that mattered.

"Thank you," he said raspily, his voice messed up from the crying. He didn't care that Harry had seen him cry, for some reason. It bothered him when other people saw him cry, but with Harry, things were different. Everything was different when it came to Harry.

"Are you spending the night?" The taller boy asked.

"I don't want to—"

"If you're about to say that you don't want to intrude or overstay your welcome, don't. You know I'm happy to have you here, and you know my mum loves you. Don't worry. Would you like to spend the night?"

"Yes, please," Louis replied with a little laugh.

A short while later, as they were falling asleep, Louis whispered, "Thank you."

He heard another soft voice answer back. "You're welcome, Lou."