Untouchable

Chapter 17

Harry's POV

What Louis and I had was weird.
It varied depending on how we felt each day. Sometimes he edged away when I put my arm around him and sometimes he leaned into it, every bit like the Louis I'd always known.
During a break one of our rehearsals, he dragged me out into the hallway, hand clamping down hard on my wrist.
"I just need to breathe," he said quietly before throwing his arms around me and hugging me tightly.
"I know," I replied and that was really all I could say.
I really did know. I'd gotten time to get used to everything after is gotten out of rehab. I'd gotten even longer because Louis had left. He was okay, but it was all happening quickly for him. Even I wasn't used to the fans again quite yet. He was allowed breaks when he needed them and he wasn't pushed to do anything beyond what he was completely comfortable with. It was nice, how our management was letting he and I have a form of control over what we did.
I could feel his heart fluttering against my chest.
"Hey, we can stop if you need to," I said, "You can go home."
He sighed, long and shaky.
"I've been talking. With my um, therapist," Louis started.
He'd never explicitly mentioned his therapist before. He saw him three times a week but he'd never talked about it.
"Like...you're really important to me, yeah? You've gotta...gotta take care of me, okay? I can't like, do this without you. You need to...you know I don't like to seem like, weak or whatever. You need to help me," he mumbled, voice small and shy, "I'm good, I think. Right now. I just need...I need you? Like, if you know I'm getting overwhelmed, can you like, make me stop?"
He all but shrank in my arms, unaccustomed to being so open.
"Of course, Louis. You can talk to me too, you know. You can't do this by yourself but neither can I," I said.
Louis nodded.
We stood in silence, the only sounds being his careful, meditative breathing.
The door to the rehearsing studio opened and Zayn stuck his head out.
Louis jolted and wrenched away from me. He ran his fingers through his still uneven hair and shoved past Zayn.
His affection towards me was usually reserved to private moments in hallways or in his house. I wasn't sure why he wasn't comfortable hugging me around the others but I went along with it.
"Is he okay?" Zayn murmured.
I shrugged.
"I think so. He's just...it's a lot for him, even just rehearsing. He needs to breathe sometimes," I said.
Zayn nodded.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah. Just worried, really," I sighed.
He nodded again.
"It's easy to forget about yourself when you're worrying about somebody else. You can't afford to do that, Harry," he warned.
"I know," I said.
Zayn stared at me for several long seconds before turning back and holding the door open for me as we returned to rehearsal.
Louis was never loud, never the life of everything like he had used to be. Everybody tried to talk louder, laugh more to make up for the absence of his voice, even if they did it unconsciously.
Louis stood in the corner quietly, observing as Niall poured a bottle of water on Liam's head, the corners of his mouth only quirking up slightly at Liam's yelp.
He looked tiny, swimming in a shirt that had used to fit him perfectly. His arms were crossed over his chest and his choppy hair fell into his face. I'd never seen him look so young before. I'd never seen him look so old before.
I wasn't sure if he wanted me to go over to him or not. I was saved from the decision by him padding over to me, pressing against my side.
"You should...you should come home with me," Louis murmured.
I considered it. I wasn't sure if Felix had any plans or if he wanted me to watch Addy. I decided to text him to tell him that I wouldn't be available.
"Okay," I agreed.
Within the next hour, we decided to call it quits. Louis looked increasingly stressed and uncomfortable, staring at the ground and looking like he was going to cry when he simply tripped over the words in a song, and I knew that he was done.
We left separately, but we got to his house at the same time.
He immediately tugged me inside and threw his arms around me again.
Ever since we had established that we wanted to be friends, Louis had gotten clingy, for lack of a better word. I didn't mind it, I loved him being close to me, but I knew that the boys found it strange. He always managed to find a way to press himself against me, like he needed to always be touching me.
I knew that I was like his security blanket or like a weight keeping him tethered to the ground. He'd mumbled once that I made him feel safe and that he felt like he wouldn't get hurt if I was near him.
Which, truly, was pretty stupid. I'd hurt him more than anybody. I didn't understand how his mind worked but neither did he, so.
I ended up cooking for him. He didn't say anything, but his presence was loud enough.
He perched on the counter, swinging his legs and drumming his heels against the side.
No matter how much time I spent with him, his quietness always made me slightly uncomfortable.
Louis just wasn't a quite person. He talked loudly, he laughed loudly, he lived loudly. His presence was always noticeable even before he walked into a room. He was always independent and the times he let his guard down were few and very far between.
I had to turn around to make sure he was still there when he stopped kicking the counter.
It was just weird and it threw everything off. We hadn't done an interview since the one before he and I had fought, but I knew that when we inevitably did, everybody would be able to see the difference in him. Even before he'd left they'd been able to; I had seen posts and tweets regarding his weird behavior.
I put the food on two plates and motioned to him to get off the counter and sit in an actual chair.
He even ate quietly. Every so often his fork would scrape the plate or his mouth would make a little smacking noise but that was about it.
He knew how it worked with us. I wouldn't let him move until he ate everything and I knew that if I so much left a crumb, he'd fix me with a heavy glare until I ate it.
He picked at his food, eating small amounts at a time, but he finished eventually and looked up at me expectantly. I cleaned up the kitchen and put all of our dishes in his dishwasher.
A few minutes later, he was all but crawling into my lap in his bed. I'd figured out that he was always, always completely exhausted after rehearsal and I had to carry him to bed any time we were in any other room. His television was on but I wasn't paying attention.
Zayn was smart and I had to give him credit. It was easy to forget about myself when I had Louis relying on me like he did.
At the same time, it hurt still. Louis wasn't making it easy, always needing to be so close to me. I knew that he wouldn't stop me if I tried to take advantage of him being so weak and open and it scared me. In his mind, he needed me so badly that he couldn't refuse me in the fear that he could lose me if he did. I'd never try to take advantage of him, but it was absolutely terrifying to me that he wouldn't even TRY to stop me if I did. I didn't know what to do. I needed him to see that his dependence on me wasn't healthy and it wouldn't lead anywhere good. I couldn't refuse him though, the same way he couldn't refuse me.
I was fiercely protective of him and I was so, so in love still. It made my head swim and there were times when it almost became too much. Almost.
I barely repressed a shiver as his fingers started to trace the scars on my wrist. I saw him looking at them from time to time but he'd never said anything about them. Most of them were still prominent, almost like they had just healed. I'd cut deep when I'd tried to kill myself and I'd layered cuts over old ones, so many that there was hardly any visible skin around them. I didn't remember most of it, which was probably a good thing. Most of the cuts had been deep enough that the scars would probably never completely go away.
He was about halfway down my wrist, fingers light and careful.
"Do you ever still want to?" he asked.
I jumped slightly, not expecting him to speak.
"Hmm?" I asked.
"Do you ever still want to cut?" he murmured.
It was hard to concentrate on what he was saying when his fingers were sending little bolts of lightning through me.
"Yeah," I managed, my voice only wavering a little bit, "All the time. Quitting cold-turkey, it's hard. It's an addiction. I did it so much, months before you even found out. I depended on it. If I'm ever stressed out or upset, it's still the first thing my mind turns to. The only difference is that I don't do it even when my mind tell me I need it."
He nodded, his thumb pressing into the big vertical scars.
"Can you stop?" I blurted, probably a little too aggressively.
Louis immediately stopped touching me. He stopped touching me anywhere. He scrambled as far away from me on the bed as he could get.
"I didn't mean..," I sighed, "Get over here, you tit."
I sat up and all but dragged him back. He sprawled out on top of me and he laughed in my ear, all quiet and breathy-like.
He situated himself so that he was essentially straddling me, his eyes bright as he looked at me.
I swallowed hard and almost choked with how dry my mouth had gone.
The teenager in me was very, very aware of the pressure of his arse on my crotch. Very aware. I was closer to twenty than eighteen and I had about the same amount of control that a hormonal adolescent did.
"I'm sorry," Louis whispered.
I supposed that I could be thankful that he was completely still and not squirming around.
It would have been so easy to kiss him. He was so close that his hair tickled the sides of my face. His nose couldn't have been more than half a centimeter away from mine.
"S'okay. Just...I can only handle so much," I rasped.
How he was situated right then was beyond way too much.
Louis nodded.
It occurred to me that if anybody were to walk in, not that anybody would, Louis' house was very secure, they would never believe us if we tried to tell them that it was a completely platonic position.
For him, it really was.
For me, not so much.
He didn't say anything, just looked at me and didn't move a muscle. I concentrated on trying not to get hard. It was very pathetic. It was also a lost cause.
"Louis, you gotta, um, get off of me," I croaked.
I wondered if he could feel the minute twitch of my hips when he leaned back on his knees.
He closed his eyes and swung his leg over so that he wasn't on top of me.
"I'm sorry," he repeated for what felt like the hundredth time in the week, "Shit, I'm so selfish. I forget...how you feel about me."
Louis balled his hands into fists and rubbed at his eyes.
"Louis, listen. I don't want you to always be thinking about it when we're together. I want us to be friends and if you're always afraid to act normally with me because of it, we've got to figure something out," I sighed.
He sat up nodded, hands still digging into his eyes. When he took them away, I noticed that his eyes looked suspiciously shiny.
"I know you're afraid, Louis. Don't you know that I'm scared too? Nearly a year ago, I thought I'd not even be alive right now! I didn't want to be alive for months and finally I couldn't stand the thought of living! Don't you think that scares me too, knowing how easy it would be to go back to that point? It's easy, Louis, to relapse. That's why we've got to fight it, okay? You too. You've got to fight this," I said, tapping the side of his head, "You used to be the strongest, most stubborn person I knew. You still are; you're still Louis. You've just got to find that again."
He squeezed his eyes shut and tears leaked out and slid down his face.
"You have to want to find that again."