Secret Love Story (narry) (boyxboy)

Chapter 34

The humdrum of the night was interrupted by the excitable crowd that was drifting from the party to their respective hotels. Clicking heels and barely coherent slurs of the drunken hoodlums drifted through the chilly air of the night.

The spontaneous hoots of laughter were robust and liberated but they still couldn't be heard over Harry chortling in the room. Harry seemed unaffected by the tension in the room, in fact, his laugh had a list of relief in it. With his pants discarded earlier, he was half-naked from the bottom and yet he made no move to get dressed.

Niall didn't have any feeling left in his body. All the heat he had seemed to generate had evaporated somehow. He was pale unmoving in the sallow light of the room. He could hardly breathe. He didn't want to move. Maybe if he pretended to be part of the decor, he would disappear from this moment.

The banging of the closing door behind him said otherwise though. He closed his eyes in horror. He really wished that Louis had not seen any of this. Not because it was embarrassing but because he wasn't ready to face the responsibility of those he loved. Would he ever be ready? He didn't know but all he knew that he wasn't ready at that moment. "Did you know that he was coming!?" Niall shakily asks Harry.

"Of course not," Harry says, sobering a little bit after seeing how shaken Niall was.

Niall shakes his head for no apparent reason and wipes the sweat he had somehow managed to work out despite how icy cold he felt. "Go after him."

Harry observed Niall and noted the green hue that was spreading evenly over his countenance. It was better than the ghostly paleness but still worrying. Harry sobered further. "Why?"

"Because we just cannot allow him to leave like that," Niall says raising a shaky hand up to his brow.

"And what will we say to him about all this?" Harry questions as he stands up to search for his boxers. When that proves to be futile he goes to find his pants instead.

"The truth," Niall utters his voice barely above a whisper. Yet in the quiet of the room that simple statement sounded like it had been a bomb going off. Harry looks over at Niall and the sheer fear of the whole situation is written clearly over his face. Though he is slightly relieved that they were taking steps to come out, he needed Niall to be okay.

He stops up from the bed and somehow found his pants. Reaching into the bar, he got a bottle of water and makes his way towards Niall. Clasping his clammy face in between his hand, he looked deep into Niall eyes that were filled with despair."We don't have to do anything that you aren't ready to do."

Briefly closing his eyes, Niall took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Better now than never."

Harry studies the resignation that clouded Niall's gaze and he knew there was no way that he could change his mind. He just wanted to get this over with. "I will be right here with you, okay."

"I know," Niall says as he leans into Harry's hands, taking comfort from the firm strong hands and then planting a small brief kiss on his calloused thumb as a silent thank you. "Let's go and find Louis."

They both hastily put on their clothes. Niall is pretty sure he has on Harry's boxers. He can tell by the way it is kind of loose around the thighs but small around the waist. Harry is kind of taking secret pleasure in noting that Niall didn't have time to button his shirt so it flaps as they jog down the corridor in hopes of finding Louis.

The calm, hell mirth, which flooded Harry when he met Louis eyes back in his room, astonished even him. He was distinctly aware of what was happening around him, the crunch of soft carpet that muffles their pitfalls, Niall's laboured breathing giving away that he hasn't been exercising as he told him he was. So he knew that he wasn't operating on autopilot.