Tattoos Together || Larry Stylinson

Chapter 14

"Are you done Louis?" I heard Harry outside the bathroom door. "Niall wrote that he would be there in half an hour."

After we came back from the cemetery, I decided to take a quick shower. Now I was standing in front of the sink, staring at the skin on my arms, a towel wrapped around my waist. The entire room was filled with water vapor, the mirror fogged up, the air heavy.

I always showered very warm. But today it was a little too warm. My thoughts were completely wandered and were only intensified by the water that was constantly pouring down on my body. - At least that's what I imagined.

The more the initially harmless thoughts gave way to self-doubt, I regulated the temperature up. Self-doubt because I wasn't sure if telling Harry at such an early point in our relationship was the right thing to do with my little secret.

I had felt the self-pity slowly gain the upper hand when I asked myself the 'why' one more time in my life and at some point, all the thoughts in my head had become so unbearable that the hot water alone no longer helped

I could still feel the after-effects of my fingernails on my battered skin. How they began to scratch relentlessly, as if it had done the slightest bit of improvement. I had scratched my skin as if there was an opportunity to get the cancer cells to emerge from my bloodstream, leave my body.

"Lou? Are you okay?" I heard the curly haired ask worriedly from outside, because he still hadn't received an answer from me

I wanted to answer yes, but I was very focused on breathing in and out calmly. -My circulation didn't like the warm and wet room.

"Louis?" He sounded like he was dying of worry.

"I'm coming in now, okay?" He asked, knocking lightly on the door with his knuckle, before he carefully pushed the door open.

At first, he looked around in the room,disoriented and probably confused, at the front of fog that was coming towards him. Then he spotted me.

As I stood there. Pathetic. Only dressed in my towel, with my forearms scratched up.

"Louis, what the hell did you do?" He came over to me and put a palm on my cheek without hesitation.

His facial expression changed from deeply concerned to absolutely shocked. The next thing he did was take a look in the shower to confirm his suspicions.

"Have you gone crazy? you are completely overheated." The emotional being, whose silhouette looked even more angelic in the white steam, with its curls, lifted me up without further ado, like a bridegroom a bride and placed my limp body back under the shower.

He took the shower head out of its holder and knelt next to me as I was crouching on the floor, leaning against the wall so as not to tip over.

The towel was still tied around my waist, preventing from making the moment any more awkward.

Harry's hand was on my chest, with the other he directed the jet of water at my body and slowly regulated the temperature down to gently bring me back to normal body heat without running the risk of suffering a shock.

When he was sure that the situation was no longer quite as critical, he dared to exhale heartily and, as a precaution, to check my skin again on other areas than just my chest.

I just let him do it. I felt too drained to protest.

"What's this?" Harry asked suddenly as he eyed my arm after I sniffed a sharp breath at his touch.

"I just scratched myself a little, nothing bad." I replied, inwardly rolling my eyes.

"I don't know what your definition of bad is, but I can see individual pieces of skin detaching from your arm, and sore secretion oozes from the scratches ... Everything is red and I could say that, even without any specialist knowledge that will certainly ignite if we do nothing. "