Take Me Home

Chapter Twenty

The boys were given a week off of school to give them time to settle into their new home.

Monday was their first day of living with the two men who they knew and trusted. However, the sudden change and the stress was getting to the three boys and so they weren't as excited about the move as Zayn and Liam were.

As much as Harry was glad to be fostered for the first time since he had been in care, by two men whom he knew and loved alongside the two boys that he thought of as brothers, he couldn't seem to shake the darkness that seemed to be suffocating everything within him, all of the time.

He wanted to be happy, but he just couldn't seem to be. And alongside the voices telling him how disgusting that he was and how much everyone hated him and was better off without him, there was another voice blaming him for everything. He blamed himself for Niall getting so sick, because he had stolen the attention from him when he needed it most - and this had in turn made Louis run away again because he had been ignored too. And now there was this burning guilt in his chest about the fire, the fire that he hadn't done anything to stop, the fire that had terrified the two younger boys. They shouldn't have had to experience that. No kid should.

He had his own room in Liam's house. He wasn't sure how long they would be staying there, so he hadn't bothered to fully unpack yet. He didn't have to worry about Niall and Louis catching him doing it anymore. He had so much more privacy to do it. So he did it, again and again, until the scars from the fire on his arms and his stomach were covered by bright red slashes and the burns were invisible and he felt a little less disgusting for a little while. Then he had to clean up, cover up, and try to ignore the urge to carry on.

Daniel and the others weren't really commenting on the status anymore. It was old news, the trolls had moved onto another target and he had been forgotten about. He had even bumped into Daniel and a few of the main culprits a few times at school, and they hadn't said a single thing to him, like they didn't think that they had done anything wrong, or maybe they just didn't care. But he cared, he knew what they thought of him now and their words haunted him from the moment he woke up in the mornings to the moment he went to bed.

He hated school. He sat alone most days. Sometimes Ashton would come and sit by him but they wouldn't talk. He would read a book to distract his mind from the evil screams and Ashton would eat a sandwich and then they would go their separate ways to class. Feeling alone whilst surrounded by people was so much worse than anything else.

He wished he could ignore the harsh words in his head and just get on with things. He wished he could go back to being normal. But he guessed that he never really was normal, and maybe he never would be. It was just something he would have to accept, another bad thing atop of a pile of bad things.

He spent his first evening in his new home in his oversized bed in his oversized room, and found himself wishing that Louis and Niall were there with him so that he could hear their gentle snores and reassure himself that he wasn't alone, that he had people there who wanted him, that Liam and Zayn were just downstairs and that they had fostered him so they must want him...

But no amount of reassurance seemed to settle the darkness inside of him.

#

Meanwhile, Niall was also having trouble settling down into yet another new place.

He wasn't entirely sure what being fostered entailed, but in his mind, Liam and Zayn were already their carers in the other home. He wasn't sure why everything had to change now, but he didn't like it. It frightened him, though he would never admit it. He was terrified by the idea of sleeping in a room alone now, in an unfamiliar neighbourhood, in a strange and scarily big house, when Keith was still out there and maybe now that he would be alone all night in his own bedroom, the man would come and get him whilst everyone else was sleeping.