Drowning || Larry Stylinson

chapter four

bro·ken

/brōkən/

adjective

(of a person) having given up all hope; despairing.

"he went to his grave a broken man"

synonyms:    defeated, beaten, subdued

Pressing his thighs together, Louis sat as close to the end of the couch, keeping an inch distance between Harry and him. They were sat in an interview waiting for the host of the show, Louis couldn't remember which one they were on, to come in and ask them some questions. For some reason, the PR team thought it would be good if Harry and Louis were sat next to each other. Something about fans thinking they had lost their spark. Louis wanted to badly say that of course they had, Harry and him weren't supposed to have a spark. They were coworkers, and people who work with each other don't have sparks for each other.

It had been a month, a fucking month, and Harry was still acting like he had lost nothing. In the eyes of the boys and the public, nothing had happened. Maybe they looked like they had grown apart just a bit, but all friends had their falling out's, and that's what everyone assumed this was. Just a small, short thing that happened because everyone has them.

But Harry and Louis weren't everyone.

Louis turned his head to the side, watching as Niall got his hair fixed up for the camera. When he turned his head completely, he met Harry's eyes. Quickly, the green eyes diverted, moving to look at Niall as well. Louis swallowed thickly and then looked down at his lap, trying to sit as natural as possible. It was hard to do when he wasn't sitting naturally. And he couldn't cross his legs or anything, he had always been insecure about that, remembering when fans made fun of him for it for months. He sighed, leaning into the side of the couch and putting his chin on his hand as he waited for the host, not caring that the stylist started to glare at him. Probably for ruining the perfect angle of his hair or something stupid.

It was then that Louis thought of a couple of tweets he had seen from the fans. About how unnatural him and Harry looked around each other. There was a photoshoot they had done, and the pictures were leaked out by the magazine's PR. The five of them were expected to look all buddy-buddy, hanging off of each other. Louis had remembered that he had went to wrap his arm around Harry, but the boy had met his dull eyes and Louis backed off. He wasn't allowed to touch the latter.

Touching wasn't a co-worker type of thing to do, now was it?

So Louis just acted like he was about to wrap his arm around Harry instead. Made it look like they didn't have some sort of riff between them. Made it look like Louis didn't go to his hotel room every night instead of hang out with the boys, because he didn't want to make things awkward. Not for the other boys, they didn't do anything wrong.

They weren't doing anything wrong by existing.

After that photoshoot fans went insane, talking about it like someone discovered there was a way to make ice cream appear out of thin air. Everyone was positive about it, talking about how good they all looked. How One Direction was going nowhere because they were at their prime. But then there was one fan Louis had followed two years before who made it her duty to point out that Louis and Harry weren't touching at all. She pointed out that any time they've could've, or should have, been touching, Louis' hands were inches away. People in the retweets and mentions started giving their own theories. About how it related to Larry being real, like PR really gave a shit that they touched each other. About how it meant Louis really wanted to touch Harry, because he was in love or something, but was too worried about homophobia to do so. Louis couldn't help but to roll his eyes at every single theory, because where were these people pulling these ideas?