crack the shutters. | larry & niam.

Chapter 16 - Eating habits.

“Now you think I’m crazy, don’t you?”, Harry asked and looked up, meeting Louis’ eyes, and Louis just looked back to Harry.

His thoughts were spinning. What did Harry mean? What was he talking about?  Why was his sister such a sensitive topic for him?

“So you don’t have the desire to meet her? To talk to her? Maybe you guys are so similar to each other, you’d be surprised.”, he said, and Harry chuckled.

“You don’t listen right? You want to see me freak out, is this what you want? Seeing me freak out to go and tell your little friends about it?” He looked into Louis’ eyes, searching for a sign to find out what Louis wanted to reach, but the ocean-blue eyes were unreadable.

“No.”, Louis simply stated. “I don’t. I just want to get to know you; you seem to have an interesting personality.”

“And by interesting you mean what?”, Harry spat back. “Weird? Freaky? Strange? Outlandish? “

“Neither.” Louis tried his best to not break eye contact with Harry. “I mean interesting, not weird. I would’ve used the word “weird” if that was what I was talking about. I mean that you’re interesting, a challenge, not someone who trusts people easily. You’re not easy to read, I like that.”

Harry swallowed and looked down at his lap. He totally forgot his cigarette and the ash fell off the ground, and it was burnt to the end, there was no chance to smoke that fag.

Harry sighed and threw away the cigarette and looked back to the older lad whose eyes followed his every move.

“You know that you’re the only person that has the guts to talk to me for longer than two minutes, right?”

“Yes, you mentioned it before.”, Louis said and his lips formed a weak smile. “I enjoy your company. I’m not afraid of you, I don’t think you’d hurt me.”

“You’re wrong on so many levels.” , Harry said emotionless. “What makes you think I won’t hurt you?”

Louis shrugged. “I trust you.”

Harry’s eyes widened as he heard those three words escape Louis’ mouth. It’s been ages since someone used that words and directed them towards Harry.

Harry swallowed. “Thank you.”, he mumbled under his breath, just loud enough so Louis heard the words.

“People normally don’t trust you, right?” The older boy looked at Harry who shook his head. “No.”, he whispered.

“Come here.”, Louis said as he stood up. He walked over to Harry, grabbed his hand, pulled him up so he was no standing and pulled him into a hug. Harry smiled and enjoyed to be close to a human and buried his face into Louis’ neck as a single tear escaped Harry’s eyes, which ran down his cheek and slowly fell down on Louis’ skin.

Louis started to rub Harrys back soothingly as Harrys body started to tremble and a quiet sob escaped the younger boys lips.

~

The next morning.

“You have to eat.”, Laura exclaimed and placed a plate with food in front of Niall. “You need the energy for the day; I won’t let you come home earlier again. You can’t miss school; it’s your senior year after all.”

Niall nodded abstracted and started at the food and thought about a possible way to get out of eating this, but he saw none so he slowly raised his fork and put a little bite of the food into his mouth and slowly started to chew it, and then swallowed it.

“See, it’s not that hard.” Laura smiled at Niall as she sat down across of him and started to eat her cereal, and she watched Niall eating the entire plate.