Larry fics

All I ask

He is so, so beautiful.

It’s all he is in Harry’s eyes: planes of golden skin and rippling muscles and blue, blue eyes that stare right into his soul.

Of course, it’s not what Louis sees. Louis sees too much skin and a big bum, rolls on his stomach that make him want to puke.

So he does.

It’s not all the time, though, he convinces himself. Only when he eats too much or feels his tummy press against the waistband of his trousers and that’s when he knows that it all needs to go and it needs to go now.

Sometimes the five of them eat together, like when the bus stops at a fast food restaurant. Louis can usually manage holding it in until everybody’s passing the time in their own ways. That or he just gets one of the packaged salads full of limp romaine and processed cheese. The other times, when they eat on their own, Louis hardly gets anything at all.

Under Harry’s eyes, he is beautiful even though his cheeks begin to hollow out and his hipbones look like they could cut through glass.

Harry notices that Louis is losing weight, yeah. Harry watches everything that Louis does and Louis glows when he notices the weighty gaze. But Harry shifts the blame to stress and long waking hours, because they’ve all honestly lost weight with the twenty-hour days and the constant rehearsals. And because it’s easier than, well, any other answer he can come up with.

So he doesn’t say anything.

There’s one day when Louis drinks with Liam, Zayn, and Niall and eats a full meal and it’s like it’s begging, pleading to come up. He excuses himself with a gotta have a wee, probably gonna go to bed too, good night lads and they all cheerily wave him off. He smiles on a job well done for himself and a silent thank you to the boys for eating up the lie and unlocks his hotel room door.

Louis rids himself of his trousers, slings them over his bed, and conveniently doesn’t notice the significant lack of a Harry in their shared room. He makes his way over to the bathroom door, fingers twitching and the back of his throat aching for the burn of bile, and pushes the already-cracked open door.

Walks in on his lovely guardian angel, always watching, sitting on the porcelain tiles with a blade held delicately between his long fingers and red lines weaving across his arm.

Louis isn’t stupid, you know. He knows that flushing his half-digested dinner down the toilet isn’t healthy. But with a bleeding boy in front of him, he decides that his problem is not like Harry’s, not at all.

Harry looks up at his best friend with wide green eyes, the same ones that watch Louis when he leaves the room or curls up for a nap instead of a meal. He’s still holding the blade while he brings his knees up to his chest and tucks his chin over them. Louis shuffles over and plops down in front of him, sitting with his legs in a pretzel twist (the very kind he turned down from Paul earlier today), and gently pries the blade from Harry’s fingers, mindful of his own fingertips.

Wild green eyes follow his hands, and Harry asks, “What are you - where are you putting it?” with thinly-veiled panic in his voice.

Louis looks at him in the eye and says, “I’m going to leave it on the counter. What you do with it after I leave this bathroom is up to you.”

Harry swallows. “And what about right now?”

The razor settles on the granite countertop with a tinny clink!, and Louis regards Harry’s abstract art masterpiece that he’s made on his arm without an ounce of judgment in his eyes. “You and I,” he says, “we’re going to talk.”