ocean eyes [ l.s ]

~4~

Harry was extra careful before he entered his room. There was a lingering trauma from this afternoon he'd probably process for a really long time.

Niall was in the same position he was in more than 2 hours earlier. But he was also surrounded by a lot of junk food, empty packets scattered around him and an unfinished cheeseburger laying on his stomach on top of the wrapper.

"Back so soon?" he wondered, not taking his eyes off the screen and tapping the controller frantically.

"It's been over two hours," Harry stated simply, sitting down on the edge of his bed and dragging a box of clothes towards him.

"Has it?! Shit. I have an unfinished assignment for History. You any good at that?"

"I've known you all of five minutes and you want me to finish your history assignment so you can kill a few brain cells while playing that game?" Harry raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, but with a hint of teasing in his tone.

"Yeah, you're the winner here," Niall shrugged and grinned unabashedly.

"No thanks," Harry deadpanned, hanging a few jackets in the wardrobe, "'m busy" he gestured towards the boxes and started filling his drawers with slow movements, just slightly reluctant with the amount of clothing left to unpack.

His phone was going off like crazy. He knew all his "friends" were checking up on him, but he really didn't feel like explaining himself any more or reading another fake heartfelt message about how they'd be missing him.

Harry had a lot of friends and acquaintances but he still felt lonely in a crowd of people. Everybody loved him but he'd always felt like he didn't quite belong. He'd always felt different. The girls were always chasing him but he was never interested. Never even looked at them twice. A lot of his friends had a really narrow view of life to say the least. He felt so trapped at parties. It was only the closest of his friends who knew the real him and they were very supportive.

"Hey Curly-" Niall interrupted his thoughts.

"It's Harry."

"Fine. Harry. You wanna play?"

Since Harry had nothing better to do anyway, except procrastinate his unpacking task, he decided to squeeze himself next to Niall, pushing some empty wrappers aside.

"It stinks here," he complained, looking at the blonde babyface who had the eyes of utter innocence. Like there was nothing in the world that could faze him.

"Welcome to Niall's crib. Here's the controller. There's the mini-fridge if you ever fancy a snack or a beer. Feel free to help yourself," Niall handed Harry a controller and motioned towards the corner of his side of the room.

And just like that, they started a game of FIFA and Harry found himself thinking he really likes this messy, carefree and chaotic ball of energy.

It was way past midnight and their lights out curfew when Niall finally was happy with the result of the game.

"Alright, let's get to sleep," he yawned without bothering to cover his mouth and stretched his long and scrawny limbs out.

Harry pushed himself off the bed and set an alarm on his phone. He stripped down to his boxers and climbed under the covers. The bed squeaked a little under his weight. He really missed his own bed. And home. His mum, his best friends. Even Robin.

Niall pushed all the rubbish off the bed and burped loudly, stretching again and getting into bed then.

"You'll clean all that up, right?" Harry asked, looking at all the rubbish on the floor pointedly.