nothing worsens, nothing grows (l.s)

0.5

denver --> austin --> nashville

Louis

The next days following the party, Louis is a mess. On Friday he'd had to stop in at several bathrooms around their stops to calm his fast and shaky breathing, rocking back and forth to calm himself, and yesterday he'd almost given up completely and ordered a bottle of wine from the bar downstairs. Today, Louis is still in bed.

Niall and Liam knew something was up after Harry left early and they found Louis mumbling apologies, cold and asleep with dried tears on his face, on the upstairs balcony where Harry'd left him. They didn't say anything about it, to Louis at least. He doesn't know what he would have said if they had.

It's Monday now, they're in Austin, Texas, and it's taken Louis nearly two and a half days to find the courage to approach Harry about what happened on the balcony. Having to apologize is something Louis would typically avoid at all costs, denying their calls and declining their invitations to hang out in an attempt to make himself feel better about whatever he'd done wrong. Now, however, there's an uncomfortable, heavy weight sitting on his chest that hurts at even the slightest reminder of what happened.

There's also the fact that they're running out of time on this trip, and Louis could potentially be losing the best thing that's ever happened to him.

The more dramatic side of him tells him he's blowing this whole thing out of proportion, and that there's no apology necessary. But when Louis thinks about it, there's never been any point in time when Harry had been deliberately rude, mean, or generally unpleasant toward Louis, and everything that Louis held against him happened to be something or other that he'd heard from someone else that didn't actually know him at all. So, all in all, he figures that there isn't another option here.

Louis' always felt like, while Harry and their friends always had meaning behind their words, Louis just talks. Opens up his mouth and makes sound come out, but there's no point. Nothing he says has any substance. For the longest time now he'd wanted to change that, but he can't figure out how.

The issue isn't necessarily the apology, but more the fact of getting Harry to hear him out for a minute, if at all. The worst part of it is that he isn't even avoiding Louis, he's just going about his day as usual but without the parts that included him. They still ride in the car together, eat together, and go sightseeing together. Louis even had to ask him where the restroom was at one point because he'd been the only one to use it so far and already knew where it was, and Harry had answered him directly, pointing him in the right direction and then continuing to type on his phone.

It hits Louis when he looks over at him just how codependent he's become over the last two weeks. Surely that can't be healthy.

Before they'd left earlier, Niall had come over and shaken Louis awake.

"Alright?"

Louis rubs at his eyes and refuses to meet Niall's, but gave him a small nod.

"Look, I don't want to pry or anything here," Niall hesitates when Louis tenses, "but whatever happened, just, talk to him, yeah? He's pretty open minded."

Liam comes back in after that, before Louis can answer Niall, and they go off to explore the city.

The whole thing just feels a lot like a challenge. Like Harry wants to see if Louis will actually step up and apologize, like he thinks he wouldn't. When he looks at it this way, it's a little less daunting because it just feels like he's proving something, and Louis' great at proving people wrong.

But then again, that isn't right either because Louis wants Harry to know that he means it. That he isn't just apologizing to him because it's awkward to be around him now or because he doesn't want to deal with it.