FINGERTIPS ║ Larry Stylinson

20 ║ Just A Little Crush

August 16th

Louis sighed loudly before collapsing on the mattress, his thin body bouncing gently before he kicked his shoes off his feet and brought the soft covers over his already shivering body. The young boy rolled around on his stomach and held the pillow tightly in between his arms, burying his face in the fabric. The moonlight was barely piercing through the shutters and the room was plunged in almost total darkness. The silence he had wanted to disappear into for hours was a bit broken with the low voices coming from the living-room. It was his sister's birthday and they had spent the evening celebrating at a fancy restaurant some miles away. He was exhausted. He didn't really know if it was from all the loud talking he had to go through or the loud voices screaming at him, perfectly hidden in his brain, and most probably imaginary. Louis felt like going crazy. But deep down he knew. He knew it was his own voice repeating to himself he was eating too much, he would gain weight, become fatter all over again. He knew he hadn't the strength to silence them that one night. They were loud, painful, heavy on his chest. The words were pressing down his stomach and making it hard to swallow and think about something else than the food in his body. But Louis was tired, he didn't want to fight himself, hate himself, judge himself tonight. It was too much, to much to go through and he didn't know if he wanted to.
Earlier, when his family had group hugged before taking the usual birthday picture, he had felt sick. He had felt huge and heavier than he had ever felt. And as he was worrying about letting his sisters feel the fat on his body, the aforesaid sisters felt the bones through their older brother's shirt. It had worried them. A bag of bones, his body felt like a bag of bones when they had wrapped their arms around him. Each one of them had silently questioned it, maybe they had imagined it, maybe he had simply dropped some pounds. But Félicité and Lottie knew it wasn't the case. When Lottie took her sister to the room they were sharing for the holidays, she wanted her opinion on something, but the conversation had slowly drifted from Lottie's love life to their brother's health. At first they simply asked each other's opinion. Before actually sharing their worries. They both knew something was wrong with Louis. They knew he wasn't himself lately. He was spending most of his day in bed, they were not talking much anymore, he wasn't really smiling and he looked exhausted all the time. The dark circles around his blue eyes were so dark it always seemed like he could collapse of tiredness at any moment. Louis loved swimming, however he hadn't set foot in the private pool of the villa like he should have. He was different, so different he didn't even act like their brother anymore, they didn't get any hug for a while, he hadn't watched movies with any of them for what seemed like ages. They didn't know if they could actually talk to him about it. It was hard and Louis didn't like to confess to anyone, they knew he wanted to keep everything to himself like he was strong enough to fix everything, like he never needed any help. Louis wanted to be a man. A strong independent man who wouldn't need to talk to anyone to understand how to fix the situation. But recently, he had questioned that. Did he really want to keep every single thing to himself? Yes. Did he need it? Yes. Would he be able to fix it himself? He wasn't so sure anymore. He thought the pain would be gone by now. It felt like the longest agony he would ever have to go through. There was no end, no light at the end of the tunnel. Each day, he would have to list all the reasons why he needed to leave his bed, recently he only managed to find one. He didn't want to alarm his family. He didn't want them to worry about him, he knew he had already worried them a lot recently and he hated himself for that. He wished he could hide the pain better, he wished he could lie better even if he was already really good at it. That's why he was getting up each morning. It was probably the only reason why he was leaving the heat of his bed every day, trying to get ready and face the world no matter if he didn't feel like he was strong enough anymore. Because he needed them to think he was okay, that everything was fine. That was why he plastered a perfect smile on his face, no matter if inside his heart was bleeding and his brain was drowning in tears.
Louis was lying in bed and answering one of Zayn's message when three knocks on the door broke the silence. Ernest and Doris were asleep for a while now and it was only him and his thoughts. The door opened, the moonbeam brushed Lottie's slightly tanned face and reflected on her light blond hair. She didn't say a word when she silently walked up to the bed and sat down in front of Louis. It was silence for a while, only the children's breaths could be heard in the dark room. Lottie seemed nervous or embarrassed, he couldn't really tell. She was biting her long pink nails and was looking down at her laps.