Birds || (One Direction; BxB/AU)

Chapter Two

Life is about the way that you handle situations; life is about the way that you take the time to realize that you are not your mistakes. You are not the ways that people have hurt you, or the things that you've dime. You're human, and once you realize that, that's when you'll start living.

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Once again, Niall was getting ready to be in the same exact position he had been in many times before. Going to one of those shitty sessions that he and the doctors knew were not helping at all. It all seemed like a clock, ticking by and no one realized the time going until after it was already dry and done with. Tick, tick, tick. Niall's head flicked up to check the time, which read 4:20. He sighed, feeling the heavy weight of the world set on his shoulders once more, harder and more weight then before.

"Niall! Take a seat, " The head Psychiatrist told him with a grin. Niall gently closed the door behind him and took an ungraceful plop into one of the hard, uncomfortable plastic chairs. "We are going to do a particularly different... exercise today." The excitement in his voice gave Niall a moment's hesitation.

Niall looked around for the first time since he entered the room and noticed there were four other patients in the room as well. Seeing as his sessions were usually individual, Niall was curious as to who they were. His eyes wondered the figures, but no faces were shown because their heads were all down. All that were visible were hair, short and bob, brown, black, and a color that looked like a dyed maroon shade. Niall smiled on the inside, happy that they were all boys. He didn't do very well by girls, he'd never been uncomfortable talking to them, just got a small tick, a need, almost, to feel self conscious.

In the middle of the room there was a small, sleek, coffee table that had five cards on it. "Everyone take a card of your choice," the doctor instructed. Everyone but Niall immediately got up, but he waited, pausing. He hated being near more then two people at once. He had panic attacks when someone touched his skin, felt invisible bugs crawl in his arms when he felt their nasty hands touch him. He shivered in his mind, getting up and grabbing the remaining card from the table swiftly, and quickly sitting back down. "Flip the card over, raise your hand, and tell me what you see."

Niall flipped his card over. Anybody else would have looked at the group and saw five people looking at a bunch of blobs and ink spots. But that's not what Niall saw at all. No; what he saw was birds. Yet, not only did he see birds, he also saw him; his little flightless memory.

Niall felt his heart clench and splutter out the boy's name, as if trying to sound out the words that every one knew he wanted to say. He felt his heart break for the hundreth time in forever, felt his stomach seep out of his everything, felt his throat close.

He stood up, earning glares from the people in the room, but in that moment, he didn't care. He didn't care about the words that they were muttering under their breath as he fled, didn't bother to turn as he felt the hands roam his back. Didn't care. But he did. And that was part of the problem.

His feet hit the contrete with power, emotion in his actions and spreading along the belly of anything he could. He was back to his confines, his room, out of breath and rushed to leave his mind by their own limits. He twisted the door knob in a swift motion, walking in slower now. He didn't have a worry. His therapist had said they were able to leave when they wanted. But that didn't mean he didn't feel like his storm out was too attention seeking.

He could hear the nurses he had passed asking him to open up. With a loud sigh, he laid on his bed and drowned out the sounds of continuous knocking against his door, people calling his name, and the nurses telling him to come out and back to the session. He eventually drive them all away by either ignoring them or telling them to piss off in an annoyed voice.