Deep in Thought: A Larry Stylinson Story

A Different Fall

     They were sitting around the table at Liam's, throwing marshmallows at each other and laughing an talking. Niall wanted to go to the park, and Harry and Louis threw both there votes into the let's go category. Liam, wanting to please Niall, as always, went with it, and at that point it didn't matter what Zayn thought because he would be overruled.

     Poor Zayn, Harry thought. Outnumbered because he didn't have a best friend or a boyfriend on his side. Niall being Liam's boyfriend, of course. Harry had to clarify that to himself, because thinking about Louis as his boyfriend was just wrong. Right?

     They walked the four blocks to the park, where Louis, Niall, and Harry went straight to the playground. The other boys laughed at them, but they didn't care. Soon they were swinging like monkeys from the bar, climbing up the outside of the tube slides, and Zayn and Liam had to join it because it looked like so much fun. And it was fun. They kicked up sand- it was one of those playgrounds, the kinds that didn't have wood chips but sand- and threw it. Harry sneaked up behind Louis and and filled his back pocket with sand before he could get away, and then they had a huge "1D Sand Fight." They all collapsed laughing twenty seconds into it, too amused to go on.

     Harry's favourite part of the park was when Niall hide from Liam, and then, when Liam wasn't paying attention, Niall leaped on his back and held on like a koala bear. Liam screamed like a girl and nearly fell to the ground, and it took them all five minutes after that to be able to breathe around their laughter.

     Shortly after that, though, the fun was ruined. It was all anyone's fault, no one else was even near him, though Liam blamed himself after it happened anyway.

     Niall was walking on top of the monkey bars, instead of swinging from bar to bar like a normal person. He was yelling how the Irish had better coordination when they were sober than Brits because they were so steady when they were drunk. Harry didn't see the irony in it until the next morning.

     It was ironic because right after he'd shouted that so the whole park could hear, he fell. He went over the opposite end of the monkey bars. He went head over foot before landing chest down in a place where all the sand had been worn away by children and rain. He cried out, a sound that made all of their stomachs drop like they were on a roller coaster. When the other boys reached him- they had started running when he had started falling- they saw his wrist at an unnatural angle.

     Niall was cursing like a sailor, an Irish sailor, when Harry reached him. Zayn was already there, and Liam was not far after. Louis was the last to arrive, though Niall was still trying to stand when Louis reached his side.

     "Bloody fucking hell," Niall said. "What fucking shit. How am I supposed to fucking play my fucking guitar if my Goddamned wrist is fucking broken as fuck?" He added a few extra fucks at the end of that, just to be sure.

     "This fucking hurts, guys," Niall said. "Hey, twats, you think we should, I don't fucking know, go to a fucking doctor so I can get my fucking wrist not broken as fuck anymore?" Liam called emergency, because they didn't know what else to do. It was another five minutes before the paramedics pulled up, and the boys clambered in the back of the ambulance, the doctor-guys letting them ride along since it was only a broken wrist.

     "By the way he's cursing, you'd think he had a broken femur," said one of them. Niall was keeping a running commentary of fucks, shits, Goddamn its, and colourful things that painted Niall as an Irishman.

     It took twenty minutes to get to the hospital because the medics didn't think it was enough of an emergency to switch on their lights. When they pulled into the unloading at the hospital, Niall was strangely silent, which made all the boys exchange worried looks. The adrenaline rush must have been wearing off, letting the pain get to him. Liam was holding his good hand, and Harry could see Niall squeezing it until his knuckles were white. His face was drained of colour.