Untouchable

Chapter 5

Harry's POV

I didn't bother getting up from the sofa for hours. I lay there, shaking and crying. I knew that I'd really hurt Louis. I knew that he was really sensitive when it came to feeling guilty and I'd used it against him.
I heard voices then somebody fumbling to unlock the door. I sat up just as Liam stormed in, supporting a stumbling, drunk Louis.
A very, very drunk Louis.
Liam took one look at me and his expression turned murderous.
He sat Louis down on the other sofa before coming over to me. He jerked me up by my shirt.
"What the hell did you do?" he thundered, "Are you a complete idiot?"
"What's happened?" I asked, "Why are you mad?"
The next thing I knew, I was reeling backwards, the force of Liam's fist knocking me back down onto the couch.
Blood spattered down my shirt and onto the floor. I gaped at him.
"What the fuck?" I snapped.
"Li...Lim. Lim," Louis slurred, pawing at his shorts, "Li-mmm."
I had no idea how Liam understood what Louis was trying to say, but he was hauling Louis to his feet and shoving him towards the kitchen.
The next second, I heard Louis retching violently.
I followed, taking off my shirt and holding it to my bleeding nose. I hissed in pain. I wasn't sure if it was broken or not, but Liam definetely knew how to hit.
Louis was heaving into the sink, Liam simultaneously supporting his body and keeping his hair out of his face.
I grimaced. Liam shot me a glare that made me back away a few steps.
"I had to stop at the fucking hospital to make sure that Louis wouldn't die of alcohol poisoning. They said that he would be fine. They didn't pump his stomach, so I had to stop three different times so he could vomit, you bastard," he hissed, "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything!" I protested.
Louis clumsily wiped his mouth.
He slurred something that I couldn't understand.
"Come on, Lou. Lets get you to bed, okay?" Liam cooed, "I'll put a bin next to your bed in case you need to get sick again."
Louis stumbled, way past being too intoxicated to walk.
"Do you need help?" I asked.
"You fucking think I'm letting you anywhere near him?" Liam spat, "I can handle it."
I nodded, unsure of what else to do. I waited for about fifteen minutes in the kitchen before Liam came flying back downstairs and towards me.
"Now fucking tell me what you did to him," he growled.
"I didn't!" I said.
He grabbed my shirt again.
"Louis has worked so fucking hard to stop drinking. You have no idea how difficult it's been for him to quit. You're the only one with the power to make him go back to that," Liam said, "Now tell me what you did. Or what you said. You've been crying; I can tell. You know you hurt him. So tell me right fucking now what happened."
I swallowed thickly. I was genuinely terrified.
"I...I went to Felix's this morning. And Louis was pissed that I didn't tell him. So. We sort of argued," I tried.
Liam shoved me into the counter, my back digging into the edge painfully.
"You didn't sort of argue. Something triggered him. What did you say?" he roared.
"He said that he cried during the interview because he felt guilty and responsible for everything that happened but that he knew that that isn't true but then I told him that it is all his fault for everything and that I blame him and then he got really upset and I asked where he was going and he said out and I told him to be careful and he said that I don't care about him and then he left," I blurted.
Liam stared at me.
And then I was crumpling to the floor, pain exploding from my face and fresh blood gushing out of my nose. If it hasn't been broken before, it definetely was after the second hit.
"How fucking stupid are you?" Liam yelled.
"I'm sorry," I groaned, spitting out blood that had made its way into my mouth.
"You're going to just turn around and hurt him again tomorrow. You're not sorry; don't give me bullshit! Jesus Christ, get out of my sight before I break something else!" he snarled.
I scrambled away and up the stairs, sprinting to my room and locking the door behind me. I fell to the floor, heaving for air. I deserved the broken nose. I deserved Liam yelling at me.
I threw stuff around my room, trying to find my inhaler.
My lungs forced air in and out, but my throat was closing up. I couldn't breath and my hands shook as I found my inhaler and picked it up.
It hit against my teeth as I shoved it into my mouth.
After I had sufficiently calmed down enough to stand, I crept across the hallway to my bathroom.
Well, fuck.
My nose was definetely broken, splatters of blood across my face and clothes. There was a bump where the cartilage had been broken.
I hissed in pain as I carefully cleared the blood off of me. In another part of the house, I faintly heard Louis getting sick again.


Louis's POV

I woke up with bile rising in my throat and my head in absolute agony.
I leaned over the edge of the bed and threw up. There wasn't a whole lot left in my stomach. I was sore, so I assumed that I had gotten sick several times previously.
My head exploded in pain from the movement of rolling over and my vision tunneled as I hung over the side of the bed.
I hardly remembered anything. I remembered leaving the house and driving to the closest pub I could find. I sat in a dark, secluded corner and cried as I knocked back shot after shot of some kind of drink. I had no idea what they were, but they had been strong and that was all that had mattered.
I had no idea how I had gotten home. I really, really hoped that I hadn't called Harry.
My mouth tasted like I had eaten some kind of dead animal and I almost got sick again just from the taste. It felt like the fur was still on my tongue.
Somebody had been nice enough to leave pills and a glass of water by my bed. I doubted that it had been Harry. I didn't think that he knew what the word 'nice' even meant.
The throbbing pain in my head kept me from thinking about what Harry had said. But the pain in my heart kept me from forgetting.
I stayed in bed, wallowing in my own misery and hangover until my bladder and dry mouth demanded otherwise.
I braced myself on the wall as my head spun and my vision blurred. I shuffled to the toilet and relieved myself sitting down.
Christ. I had definetely not missed the hangovers that came with getting drunk.
I finally managed to drag myself downstairs to the kitchen after spending an hour in the shower.
"Louis."
Liam walked into the kitchen, eyeing my skeptically.
"Why're you here?" I asked.
"I took you home last night. I figured that you probably wouldn't remember," he said.
I got myself a glass of water and sipped at it carefully, not wanting to make myself sick again.
"He's not here," Liam said, "He had to go get his nose looked at to see if it needed to be reset."
I stared at him blankly.
"Yeah, you probably don't remember that either. I hit him. Broke his nose," he said, shrugging.
"I don't remember a whole lot," I said quietly.
He sighed.
"If you're going to lecture me, I don't need it. I know I fucked up. I know I did. Just...I just want to be alone for a while," I mumbled.
Liam stepped closer, opening his arms.
"Can I?" he asked.
I nodded, my face crumpling and tears springing to my eyes as I let him hug me.
It felt nice to be comforted, even just for a moment.
"It wasn't your fault, Louis," he murmured, "You know that he was just saying that because he knew that it would upset you."
I shook my head.
"He wouldn't lie to me," I sniffled, "He hates me now; I get it. I just need to adjust to that."
"Christ, you're an idiot," Liam muttered, "He is lying to you. He doesn't blame you at all, Louis, he blames himself if anything. He's trying to push you away. It's what he's been doing ever since the hospital, but now he doesn't have anywhere to hide from you. He's trying to make you stop trying, okay? He loves you more than anything and he doesn't know what to do, so he's taking it out on you."
I shook my head again, but less feverishly.
"Harry can't act for shit, Liam," I argued weakly.
"He's gotten a little better at it over time. He's just channeling all the negative emotions that he feels and directing them at you," Liam said.
"Sounds complicated," I mumbled.
"He is complicated," Liam agreed.
I stepped back and wiped at my eyes.
"My head really hurts. I think I'm going to go back to bed," I said.
He nodded.
"Do you need anything?" he asked.
"No," I sighed.
"I'm worried about you, you know. And Harry. He'll come around eventually, you'll see. He can't resist you for very long. He already slipped up the other night," he said.
"You can keep thinking that, Liam. But it won't happen," I sighed.
He didn't say anything else, just huffed in exasperation at me. I ambled away and up the stairs to go back to my room.
My head throbbed and my body ached as I crawled back into my bed. I got back out of bed to move the bin with bile in it outside of my room.
I'd take care of it later, I told myself.
I curled up underneath my covers. I fell asleep quickly, my headache making it impossible to stay awake.
When I woke up again, it was late evening and my headache had gone down to a dull throb. My nausea was gone and it was replaced by the pangs of hunger.
I wondered if Liam had left. I hoped that he had. I didn't feel like talking.
Fortunately, he had. Unfortunately, Harry was in the kitchen already.
He turned around when he heard me.
I eyed the bruise splashed across his nose.
There was a hard edge to his posture as soon as he noticed me.
I braced myself for him to lash out at me and asked, "What are you making?"
He blinked at me, mild surprise showing on his face.
"Soup. You literally have no food here," he said.
"It's your house too. You can get your own fucking groceries," I retorted.
I built a case made out of his insults and accusations around my heart. I couldn't let him in again. He couldn't know how else to hurt me.
"You're always the one saying that I'm not allowed to go out in public yet," he retorted.
"You're the one that said that I'm not your babysitter. It's obvious that you won't listen if I tell you to do or not to do something, so I decided that I'm not going to try," I said, shrugging.
"Took you long enough," Harry said.
Suddenly, he smirked and leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms.
"So, theoretically. If I wanted to cut myself, you wouldn't tell me not to?" he asked.
I cringed and Harry noticed.
"If I didn't want to eat, you wouldn't make me? If I forced myself to throw up, you wouldn't keep me from doing it?"
I bit my lip. I had thought that I would manage to gain some kind of leverage, but he was taking my words and throwing them back at me.
Harry pushed off of the counter and walked towards me. The smirk on his mouth vanished, his eyes darkening. I backed up. He followed me.
My back hit the wall and he towered over me, one hand on the wall to brace himself.
He leaned down, close enough that his breath fanned over my face.
He was so close and so frightening that I lost control of my grip on reality for a brief moment. It was long enough that his face was able to blur into Ben's before I jerked myself back into my own mind.
"If I were to go try and kill myself, you wouldn't stop me?" he hissed.
I was frozen, fear racing through me.
"Please don't," I squeaked.
He whirled around and took a few steps away from me. When he turned around, his teeth were bared viciously.
"Please don't?" he snapped, "Please don't? That's all you have to say? I bet you'd watch me do it, wouldn't you? You wouldn't do a fucking thing."
"That's not what I fucking meant, Harry, and you know that! Jesus, I know you're trying to piss me off, but don't even say I wouldn't do a thing. Don't ever say that," I snarled, surprising both of us.
"You didn't stop me the first time," he said quietly, his anger vanishing.
There was a moment where he looked almost vulnerable. I blinked at it vanished.
"I didn't know the first time," I said, "I should have. But I didn't."
He darted forwards and grabbed me by my biceps. His grip was hard and it hurt, but I didn't struggle.
"Why didn't you do anything?" he asked, his eyes and his voice wild and desperate, "You could have fixed me, why didn't you?"
I stared up at him.
"Because I couldn't. Not back then," I whispered.
He shook his head viciously.
"Why couldn't you see it? Everyone else could," he insisted, shaking me.
"You didn't want me to know," I replied, struggling to control my voice.
My arms were throbbing where his hands were gripping me, but I didn't tell him to stop. He was touching me and I never wanted him to let go.
"It was so much easier when you didn't know," he whispered, "I was trying to protect you. I didn't want you to get hurt because of me."
Suddenly, I was pushing him away, wrenching out of his grip.
I fixed him with the deadliest glare that I could make.
"Really? You have the nerve to tell me that you didn't want me to get hurt because of you? After you intentionally hurt me every single fucking day?" I spat.
He shook himself, his mask slipping back on.
"Well, excuse me if you've become incredibly fucking annoying. I can't imaging why I ever thought that I was in love with you," he retorted.
Okay. That hurt.
I stared at him, my arms crossed.
Then finally, "Your soup is boiling over," I said, keeping my voice cool.
He swore and dashed towards the stove, turning the heat down.
I used the distraction to disappear from the kitchen and into the shower.
It was the second time I'd showered, but the way that Harry had cornered me against the wall brought back memories and feelings that I tried to escape from.
I scrubbed at my skin until it was red. It was a routine that I barely ever noticed myself doing. I was just desperate to get rid of the feelings of Ben touching me and his sweat slick and heavy against my skin. No matter how many times I washed myself, I knew that I would never stop being disgusting and worthless. Nobody would ever want somebody like me, used and broken goods.
I stayed in the shower until it ran cold, something that I had also grown used to.
When I was done, I pulled on the first clothes that I found on the floor of my room and collapsed in bed.
Despite my vicious hangover, I found myself craving something to drink.
I groaned and pulled myself out of bed and crept downstairs. Harry wasn't in the kitchen.
I got myself a glass of water and drank it quickly. It did absolutely nothing.
I pulled at my hair and paced the kitchen. It had been a horrible mistake to drink. The cravings were at least a thousand times worse than they had been after they had been sated for a brief amount of time.
I drank another glass of water. I needed some kind of relief.
Furious that the glass held water instead of alcohol, I whipped it as hard as I could at the wall. It shattered upon impact.
I waited for Harry to hear it and come down to see what had happened.
He didn't.
Frustrated and angry, I swept my arm across our table, knocking everything that had been on it off. Some mail, some sort of calorie chart for Harry, and my phone fell to the floor.
My phone didn't break, which almost disappointed me.
"I want a fucking drink!" I screamed at it, kicking it across the room.
It was loud enough that I knew that Harry would have had to have heard.
I wanted him to come down to check on me, to at least showed that he cared a little bit.
I kicked the shattered glass, scattering it everywhere. It cut the bottom of my foot and I screamed again in pain and anger.
I collapsed in the middle of the kitchen, sobbing. I tore at my hair and my skin.
I needed a drink.
I needed Harry.


Harry's POV

"I want a fucking drink!"
I froze.
Louis's angry yell had come from somewhere downstairs; I had to assume the kitchen.
A few moments later, he screamed again.
I got out of my bed and crept downstairs. I peeked my head into the kitchen.
There were papers scattered on the floor and shattered glass everywhere.
In the center of it all was Louis.
He was yanking at his hair as his chest heaved with his sobbing.
He was chanting something through his tears and I strained myself to hear better.
"Wannadrinkwannadrinkwannadrink," he gasped.
I was all but paralyzed.
If he looked up, he'd see me, but I didn't care.
I watched him for what felt like a long time. He rocked back and forth, crying hard.
His foot was bleeding. Seeing the broken glass, I assumed he'd stepped on it.
I sat down against the wall, twisting and peering out from the doorframe.
After a good hour, his crying slowed to hiccups and he picked himself up off of the floor. I ducked behind the wall before he could see me.
"Fuck," he mumbled.
I hated hearing how upset he sounded. I hated knowing that I'd driven him to drinking; that I'd created an addict out of him.
I listened to him clean up the glass, occasionally sniffling. He picked up the papers from the floor and set them back onto the table.
I quickly scrambled to the living room. He'd see me if I tried to escape up the stairs.
Louis ended up seeing me anyways.
He froze, staring at me.
"You've been right here the whole time," he said, his voice thick and rough.
"Since you took a shower, yeah," I lied.
He narrowed his bloodshot eyes.
"You didn't bother to maybe see what was wrong?" he hissed.
"No," I said simply.
I braced myself for his reaction.
Louis's face crumpled.
"Fucking bastard!" he sobbed before whirling around and stumbling up the stairs.
I heard a door slam a few moments later.
I ran my hands over my face and through my hair.
I knew that I was trying to make him hate me, but it wasn't what I wanted.
Hurting him was killing me. It was so hard to act indifferent as I watched him destruct in front of me.
I tipped my head back and swallowed my own tears. I got up and went upstairs.
I paused outside of Louis's door. I could hear him crying inside.
I reached out and rested my hand on the handle.
I came so close to opening it and going inside to comfort him.
But I didn't.
I just kept walking.