Hide and Seek

Chapter 23

I have an impeccable desire.......to call you mine and know that it is undoubtedly true.

*LOUIS' POV*

My throat is dry and feeling inflamed, my back shot straight up into a seating position. The

nightmare has not only destroyed my slumber, but also rid my mind and of any motivation to try

closing my eyes again. My breaths are shallow and loud in the dark, a lost part of me suspecting

that the hellish occurrence is yet to end.

I run my fingers - chubby with a little lot of baby hairs between the second knuckle and first -

through my head of hair and it comes back damp. Tiny remnants of full salt water droplets across

my pale palm like a battleground after the war to indicate the sweaty condition.

Deep breaths are taken as I fight to contain my shivers and forget the image of a decaying, brown

corpse that walks and takes over bodies. That's what happened, isn't it? Whatever the moral of my

dream was - don't drink and not pee before bed - the bottom line would be that something fucking

twisted went on in that house that day.

I wrestle with my comforter for the whole of two minutes before realising that it isn't gravity at 9.8

that is fighting me back. It's Harry's arm splayed - possessively? - across my waist over the

bedsheet. I carefully take hold of his fingers, using my grasp to free myself from claustrophobia.

Except, Harry's sleeping conscious has its own agenda. His fingers curl around my side and force

me on my side, my back against his bare chest as he hides his face where I cannot see.

Attempts at prying him off me are futile so I stay still and dry to ignore my predominant desire to

wet my throat with water. Harry mumbles something and glues himself to my body, that I know

note with strange enthusiasm. His body has the ability to wrap around mine until I'm a small ball

off comfort nestled between him and the duvet.

We're in the lounge, in front of a muted television, on the mattress we'd been too unwilling to shift

back into the bedroom.

"You're shaking." I gasp, my heart skipping a beat twice when Harry speaks against my neck.

"Y-Yeah." I stutter in response as my heart returns to its normal rhythm.

My neck strains so that I can look at him, in all his sleepy and tousled hair glory.

"Why are you shaking?" He rephrases the accusation into a question so that it is no longer

rhetorical and demands a response worthy of acknowledgement.

"Nightmare." I settle back on my side, hand shoved under my pillow and eyes wide awake.

"Do you want to-"

"No."

"Fine. Yeah."

Instead of resuming his former position draped across me and defeating the purpose of a blanket,

he turns to have his back facing my own. I can't help but feel dismissed or rejected, which also

cuts deeper knowing I made him angry. I sigh in irritation at myself. I'm such a prick sometimes.