Red Brick Heart

13

He's cold, and lonely, and he's sent Louis four texts and tried calling him five times and he won't speak to him at all so, Harry thinks viciously, December has started off just great.

The morning after Louis leaves he resolves to not mention it until someone asks, and it isn't until dinner that night – when Leigh-Anne innocently asks if Louis was eating at the flat tonight because she had some gossip she has to share with him – that Harry finally snaps. He just bursts into tears right there at the stove, causing Jesy and Leigh-Anne to immediately flank him, handing him wine and chocolate and sequestering him away Leigh-Anne's room (which is very purple and always smells fruity and wonderful) as he furiously wipes at his eyes, to little success. He'd burned the fajitas but they take care of him well, and later when Niall and Liam come back from the pub they all watch Scarface in Liam's room, which helps take his mind of it for a bit.

Doesn't help that he has to go to sleep in a too-big (well, it's still pretty small) bed and too-cold and too-big room, though.

After that the word spreads quickly; nobody says anything to his face but he's sure they're all furiously whispering about it behind his back. Thanks to Perrie he's sure that everyone knows that he and Louis were dating – or whatever the bloody hell those few days of bliss were – and they probably just don't want to hurt him, but this is worse. He just wants to pretend as if nothing's happened.

He's sitting in his room on a cold afternoon three days after Louis had left – and three days after he completely stopped talking to him – when there's a soft knock on his door. He almost leaves it – at this stage he would rather wallow in his own self-pity, thank you very much – but in the end he gets up and answers it to Perrie.

"Hi, babe," she says, smiling softly at him. "Can I come in?"

Harry shrugs, leaving the door open as he collapses back on his bed. She perches up on the pillow, leaning against the wall and crossing her legs under her, and Harry gets an uncharacteristic hot flush of jealousy at the fact she's wearing Zayn's beanie.

"How are you doing?" she asks. He rubs his nose, reminds himself that jealousy is a very unattractive trait and he shouldn't take his own failures out on Perrie, and shrugs.

"Been better."

"Have you spoken to him?"

"Not even a drunken snapchat," Harry says quietly. Perrie reaches over and rubs his knee.

"It was Mark, you know. When you asked me about those things before, after the show?" Harry remembers quite well, thinking blackly back on the times he'd come back home to a warm room, a warm best friend with soft lips on his, fringe tickling his forehead as he knelt over him as kissed him like it was the only thing that mattered in the entire world. "He told me ages ago, before Halloween, that there was this straight guy he was kind of involved with. I told him he should tell you about it, because he's always banging on about how good you are at giving advice-" Harry can't even raise a smile at this "-and he kept saying he would, but I s'pose he never did."

"I made a huge deal out of it," he says quietly, lump rising in his throat, and fuck, he has cried enough, but his body doesn't seem to get the message. "I – when Nick told me I just, I overreacted. I made it into a drama when I shouldn't have. I-" He screws his eyes tight shut, lower lip wobbling traitorously.

"This isn't your fault, Harry, it isn't at all – don't put it on yourself. Oh, love, come here."

He can't help it – the tears spill silently out of his closed eyelids, and then Perrie's warm, perfumed arms are around him, hands rubbing his back and his upper arms and her soft, faded pink hair tickling his nose.