You Make Me Strong

Chapter 6 - The argument

Harry had just stumbled out of the shower, a pair of shorts hanging from his thin frame as he made his way downstairs to the kitchen where he found Zayn making up their breakfast smoothies.

"Hey Haz, you sleep well?"

Harry rubs his eye with a fist as he slowly walks over to the counter where he sits on one of the bar stools they have.

"How'd I get in a bed?" He mumbles in confusion, his voice low and raspy from the early morning.

Zayn let's a small laugh. "I carried you, babes." He says as he passed Harry one of the glasses of smoothie.

"Oh." Harry replies dumbly, sucking the straw in his glass to finally get some food in his stomach. "Sorry."

"What're you apologizing for?" Zayn asks softly, sitting in the bar stool across from Harry and really, why did they need to many bar stools in their apartment?

" M'heavy. You don't, you could've left me on the sofa..." Harry trails off, guiltily swirling his smoothie around with the straw, his legs swinging softly from where they dangled off the edge of the glass.

Zayn sighed and took a sip of his own smoothie, deciding to just let the topic go. Sometimes Harry needed to apologize for what seemed like nothing, and Zayn had learnt to just accept it for what it was.

"Louis was there last night, by the way." Zayn offers inconspicuously, carefully watching Harry's face for his reaction.

"I know, you already said." Harry mumbles, confused as to why Zayn was bringing it up again.

"No, I meant like he came to pub after, he asked about you." Zayn explains carefully.

Harry perks up at this new information. "Really! What did he say?"

Zayn sighs. "Just wondering where you were." He says shortly.

Harry feels a warm feeling grow in his tummy grow at this. It could, maybe, possibly mean Louis was interested. Like a tiny bit. It probably didn't mean that and Louis was probably trying to make some small talk with Zayn cause that's just the kind of nice guy he was. But still. There was a chance.

"I really like him, Z. I wish, I wish I could just talk to him, you know? Like a normal person." Harry trails off, stirring his smoothie thoughtfully again.

Zayn pauses before letting out a heavy sigh and finally talking his mind. 

"Look, H, don't take this the wrong way but you need to be careful, babes. This is the first time you've, like, had anything to do with someone since...before, I don't want you getting hurt."

Harry looks down at the floor and says in a very small voice "I can look after myself Z."

"I know, Haz. But I don't want to see you go back to the way you were before-"

"Zayn, I get where your coming from but, but I'm not a little kid anymore. I can make my own decisions. I understand that maybe over the last few months I made myself appear to be this useless loser who couldn't manage to get out of a bed everyday, and the idea of going back to that really scares me but I don't want to live my life by fear, I like Louis and I-"