There For You {Back For You - Prequel}

12 - It Just Wasn't Worth It

AN - okay this is very short but its late and Im sleepy and yeah, I hope its okay!!

ALSO BTW GUYS I WENT TO A GIG ON SATURDAY NIGHT AND MET THE SINGER I AM WEEING I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS COULD BE VERY TRIGGERING, MENTIONS OF SELF HARM AND HOMOPHOBIA

As always guys, I do hope you like it, despite its rather sad theme, and yeah! Do all of the usual lovely things like voting and commenting and following if you want! Then we can all be buds.

Love you all my sweetums!!!

“Louis!” Jay snapped, knocking loudly on the bathroom door, impatience rising in her as Louis adamantly refused to open the door, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Louis’ voice came muffled through the door again, for approximately the tenth time.

Jay sighed, leaning back against the door, her work blazer hanging from her arm as she tried and failed to coax something, anything, out of her son, “Well, hon, you still have to go to school whether you tell me what’s wrong or not, okay?”

There was silence from the bathroom.

“Louis?” Jay repeated, tapping her fingernails against the pine wood.

“Yes?” Louis mumbled.

“Was it something that happened last night? You went straight up to your room when you came home…”

There was silence again, and Jay took this as an affirmative, “Well, I need to go to work and I expect you to get yourself to school, okay? You can tell me all about this when I get home, alright?”

When a third silence followed, Jay just sighed, and left for work.

~-~

Pretty much immediately after his announcement about his ‘girlfriend’, Louis made quick excuses, and called a taxi home – using the money his Mum had given him for drinks to pay for the fare. Niall and Liam gave him quick hugs and a questioning glance, whilst Harry hung back and pretended he didn’t even realise Louis was leaving, despite the fact that he had been glued to Louis’ side the entire evening.

When he reached his home, Louis stuffed the money into the cabbies hand, threw a ‘Thanks’ over his shoulder and hurried up his front path, he unlocked his front door with shaking fingers, and ran up the stairs and closed himself away in his bedroom before his mother even had the chance to ask him if he had had a nice time.

Once he was burrowed away in the safety of his duvet, Louis began to cry.

He felt his throat close up tight when he thought about Harry, about how Harry had put himself out to include him, Louis, the reject, and Harry made Louis feel like he meant something again. He felt his eyes begin to burn when he thought about Stan and Derek – fucking Derek – because shit Stan was his best friend and now he’s gone and Louis had never felt so much rejection in his life, and Derek, whom he didn’t even care for, who had kissed him in a youth club and flipped his entire life upside down, and now means nothing apart from being the start to the downfall, being the creator of the whirlpool that is dragging Louis underwater where he can’t breathe. He felt his lower lips tremble when he thought about the bullies, how they kick him and kick him and kick him and they do it all without giving a shit, and Louis takes every kick with a grimace of acceptance because he obviously fucking deserves it otherwise it wouldn’t be happening, right? He felt the tears begin to fall, and chase each other in jagged courses down his cheeks when he thought about the situation, because really, if Louis just didn’t like boys like that, then no-one would have deserted him, no-one would ever kick him, and things would be dandy. And he felt his fingers itch for the blade he hides in his bedside drawer, because fuck Harry tried to kiss him, Harry tried to kiss him, and Louis wanted him too.

That’s the worst part.

Louis wanted with all of his heart for Harry to press his lips against his own, but he knew he couldn’t let him. Louis couldn’t let himself be the cause of the demise of Harry Styles, beautiful, too beautiful, Harry Styles who is so lovely and too lovely to be gay in a world where gay is wrong and the only type of love that ‘counts’ is a man and a woman - no matter the amount of adoration felt; the love shown; the kisses shared; the tears shed; it doesn’t seem to matter if it is between man and man or woman and woman, and Harry deserves a love that counts, and Louis isn’t about to stand in his way of that, even though Harry was drunk, intoxicated from alcohol and dancing, a simple kiss caught by someone who wants to cause damage could just be the first domino to fall and drag Harry down with Louis. Louis didn’t want to kick the domino.

So instead Louis kicked his duvet to the floor, wiped his face angrily because tears mar the faces of the weak, and he reached into his bedside table and pulled out the blade he had stolen from the DT department when this whole thing started, and he pulled off his jumper that Harry had kept burying his nose in, and set the blade firmly against his hip.

“One because Harry tried to help me and I was ungrateful…” Louis caught his lower lip between his teeth as he dragged the blade along, and he reached for a tissue and caught it in his jeans to catch the blood as it trickled down, “One because not even my best friend gives a shit about me... Maybe another... One because the guy who started this all isn’t even worth all of the shit… One, okay two, okay four, because it’s what the bullies would want… One because I’m gay… I like boys… Another one… Another one… Another one…” Louis began to panic as his head spun, and he could see red spreading like a tie-die across his crisp, white bed sheet, “Fuck it’s dripping on my sheets, fuck, fuck… One because I can… One because I want to… One because I deserve it…” And then Louis just sat.

He wiped the blade with a tissue and dropped it into a drawer.

He grabbed another couple of tissues and held them to his hip to stem the flow of his blood, and he just, sat…

To say he wasn’t crying would be a lie, but it wasn’t shaking him, it wasn’t wracking through him like before. Instead, now the tears were just sitting, blurring his vision and keeping him trapped in his world where he is utterly worthless.

~-~

Eventually Louis had gotten up and stumbled to the bathroom to bandage himself properly; he had then stripped his bed sheets from his bed and padded downstairs (relieved that everyone was now asleep) and washed his sheet, and as he sat and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed at his sheets, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Once the sheets were in the washing machine, Louis wiped his hands clean and opened the text.

From Harry (2:49am): I was a dick tonight. I’m sorry. I care about you, I don’t want you to feel lonely. Xxx

Louis laughed bitterly, and shoved his phone back into his back pocket without replying. Instead he put his sheets into the dryer, waited until they were done, collected them and trudged upstairs to pass out on his bed.

~-~

When morning came around, Louis hid in the bathroom until his Mum left for work and his sisters left for school; and he ignored the second and third and fourth text Harry sent him, and instead clambered back into bed to just sleep.

It just wasn’t worth it.