Stand By Me ~Zouis Family

Seventeen

 Zayn arrived home at half past three, having gotten Louis’ text asking him to pick Niall up from school and was met at the door by Louis’ mum who informed him that she would be taking Niall and Liam to her place for dinner but would bring them back later. Zayn was confused, but nevertheless he allowed her to take Niall from him and continued into the house.

He found Louis in the kitchen and the look on his face was heart breaking, so Zayn walked over and pulled him into his arms. Louis didn’t hug back he just fell limp against his husband’s body, though he didn’t cry he’d done quite enough of that for one afternoon.

“What’s going on?” Zayn asked, gently rubbing circles on Louis’ back not really sure if he was providing comfort, but he continued to do so anyway.

Louis pulled away and looked into Zayn’s eyes, “Harry has something he needs to talk to us about.”

Harry hadn’t really gone into detail with Louis about what had happened because he knew he’d only have to repeat it to Zayn and he didn’t know if he could do that. It was hard enough just to get the basics out to Louis and he was terrified as to how Zayn might react. 

Zayn allowed Louis to loosely take his hand and pull him into the lounge where Harry was sat, angled more to the left as it hurt less, his head down fiddling with one of Niall’s little toy cars in his hands.

Harry looked up as he heard Louis and Zayn enter the room and watched as Zayn’s features hardened at the sight of his face. Harry let out a deep sigh as Louis and Zayn came to sit next to him, Louis placing his hand comfortingly on his knee.

“What’s going on?” Zayn inquired, the heavy silence was killing him and really didn’t like being left out of the loop.

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but his words caught in his throat and his mouth very quickly snapped shut. He looked up to Louis with pleading eyes, “Please don’t make me say it again.” His voice was small and vulnerable and it broke not only Louis’ heart, but Zayn’s as well.

Louis nodded gently and Zayn looked expectantly at his husband, though the words that came from his mouth were not what Zayn had been expecting. To be fair, Zayn didn’t really know what he was expecting but it was certainly not that his son had, had his innocence stolen from him and Zayn blinked a few times as he stared at Louis, his body not moving, his mind blank of all thoughts and it felt to him like his heart stopped beating and his chest was collapsing and crushing his lungs for a few seconds before his hands balled into fists, his blood boiled, though his expression remained soft as he turned to Harry.

“When?” He inquired, there were so many other things he could have said, so many words he could have used to comfort the boy; and he planned to use them. Just as soon as he got to the bottom of the situation.

Harry swallowed the ever growing lump in his throat, “Twice. Last week and today.” his voice was tiny and he felt Louis wrap an arm around him, though he didn’t move him, not wanting to hurt the poor boy any further.

Zayn closed his eyes, his brain trying to process everything. This all felt so surreal, like a horrid nightmare and he just wanted to scream himself awake.

Zayn stood from where he was sitting, he really didn’t want to hear any more, he couldn’t bare the thought of it and the look on Harry’s face was a lot like the day he and Louis had first brought him home. Louis had been making dinner and dropped a plate on the floor, Harry was sitting at the dinner table reading a little book and Zayn and wandered in, seen the mess, and gave Louis a shove as his bare foot was about step on piece of porcelain that the elder hadn’t seen. Zayn remembered the look of terror on Harry’s face as his body began to tremble, thinking the Zayn was going to treat Louis the way he’d been treated throughout his whole childhood.