Stutter || Larry Stylinson

Chapter Two

When Louis was young, he always read. Most of the time, it was to try to fix his stutter. But his reading habits continued even though he knew reading out loud wasn't going to help his stuttering. Most kids his age wanted to go outside and play. But Louis wanted to stay inside and read by a window. His favorite books were ones about an unlikely hero who was seen as weak who ended up saving the heroine. He also liked fairy tale books from medieval times and from places he never had even heard of.

But as Louis grew older, he found himself learning more about history, and he dived into the young adult fiction and fantasy. There, he found himself deep inside romance novels that he would never admit to reading and coming-of-age stories that made him feel a bit more educated. With books, Louis found friends that he didn't have before. When he would read a book, he could feel himself being almost sucked into the story. Every action the main character did, he found himself imagining what it would be like.

Through one book, Speak, he found himself wondering how many girls and even guys had gone through something as tragic as Melinda had. Through another called The Perks of Being a Wallflower, he imagined himself in his bad situation trying to find true love. Although, Louis was happy that his situation wasn't as bad as Charlie's.

Louis felt like he could for once be happy in a world that treated him like shit. And that's how Louis ended up with Ralph in the library everyday before school started, after Louis was finished with lunch, and after school had ended. There, he was able to find any book he ever wanted. Size and topic be damned, he was going to read anything he could in that library. And Ralph made sure that Louis read every great book in the library. From classics to psychology books, Louis was going to read every single one he wanted.

At the current moment, Louis was leaning against the arm of the couch, the heels of his feet just barely digging into Harry's. They had already finished their lunch at they were on break. Louis had been reading a book called Peter and the Star-catchers, but while he was looking around the OuTkAsTs room, he noticed an interesting book called An Abundance of Katherines sitting on the shelf. As he read his book, Harry was playing with the ends of his trousers, pulling at the ends until Louis peeked over the edge of the pages to stare at him pointedly.

"Wh-what do you-ou th-think you're doing-ing?" Louis asked, digging one of his heels deep into Harry's thigh, making the boy yelp and jump in his spot. Harry glared at him and flicked Louis' left big toe, making Louis drop the book onto his lap. "Great th-the page-ge is probably-ly l-lost," Louis groaned, smacking Harry lightly on the arm.

He was quite impressed at how quickly Harry and him had hit it off. It was like they were meant to become best friends. After only three days, Louis was already making himself very comfortable with the group. They, of course, had accepted him with open arms and wide smiles, but they were quite surprised by the sudden adaptation. Harry especially, who wasn't really close to anyone, except for Louis now.

"Well, I'm sorry for losing your spot," Harry said, muttering the same sentence afterwards. Louis sighed and shook his head, picking the book back up to place onto the table in front of him. When he had placed it down, Liam had picked it back up, running over to the bookshelf to put it back where it belonged. Anyone else would have rolled their eyes at how ridiculous Liam was acting, but the boys knew better than to make Liam's OCD look like something meaningless. They knew how much Liam struggled with his compulsions.

"It does-sn't re-really-ly m-matter n-now," Louis muttered, shrugging.

"You know, we should do something this weekend," Zayn announced, making Niall, who was curled up into his side lift up his head to grin.

"Yeah, I think we should. We haven't done anything special in awhile. And now we have Louis in our little group. It'd be nice to go out and see a movie or something, get something to eat," Niall suggested, picking at his nails. Zayn nodded, lifting his head to look over the back of the couch at Liam, who was rubbing hand sanitizer into his hands. Liam gave Zayn a small, hesitant smile.