Breaking Away

Five

"Cheat! You're a cheat!" Louis yells, glaring at Harry with a finger pointed at him like a child.

It's the next weekend, officially one week post-accident, and Harry and Louis are both keeping Niall company whilst Dad works a short shift a few floors down and Papa has gone home to take a shower and grab a few of the things that Niall has requested be brought in — a couple of his favourite books, some DVDs for the portable TV that hangs from the arm in the corner, the lava lamp from his bedside table.

He figures he's gonna be here for a while and there's not much he can do about it other than make it feel a little more like home. The last couple of days haven't been entirely terrible, but that's only because he's had a lot of distractions that have prevented him from spending every spare minute crying.

He's had a meeting with a psychologist, though he hated every second of that and was thoroughly relieved when Papa had stormed in and demanded that the woman leave since nobody had spoken to any of them about it beforehand. He's seen a lot of Tina, she slips him sweets from the front pocket of the plastic apron that she has to wear when she's here to shift his legs around a little, and she always keeps him talking so that he's not thinking about the fact that he can't feel any of it. He's had a bunch more scans that nobody really tells him much about, and Louis and Harry have been coming over after school to catch up with him and keep his spirits high for a few hours before Papa drops them back off at Uncle Cal's.

But it's the tiny spaces in between, before he drifts off into medicine-induced sleep, where everything hits him and he feels so heavy that he's surprised that the bed can even hold him up. All the sudden reminders of the fall and the damage that it's caused, and it makes him want to cry all over again because this is his life now. Confined to a bed, entirely useless. He'll never be normal again. He's too tired to even cry about it, though, so he just sleeps instead.

He'd asked for the pain meds that are still filtering through the IV to be lessened a little this morning, in the hopes of staying awake for his brothers' visit. Only now he's starting to think that was a bad idea, because his ribs ache with every jarring movement of the bed whenever his brothers shift even the smallest amount, and his chest is tight and his lower back throbs, deep into the tissue and muscle and bone beneath.

Harry rolls his eyes on the other side of the bed where he sits; the three of them cramped onto the small mattress with the rail guards down, the wheeled table separating Niall from his brothers, board game halfway finished in between them.

"Lou, it's literally snakes and ladders. How the hell am I meant to be cheating?" He asks, sounding exasperated by the accusation.

Louis glares harder, whilst Niall feels his lips tug up into a small smile as he sinks into the pillows behind him, one hand holding onto his blanket beneath the duvet, basking in the normalcy that the scene presents.

"You moved six squares instead of five, so you should've landed on a snake, which would take you all the way back down to the bottom of the board," he says, and Harry blinks then huffs, grumbling under his breath as he moves his counter back down to the start.

Louis looks proud of himself for a moment, before they both turn to Niall expectantly. Harry nods toward the dice. "Your go."

Lifting his arm to scoop up the object seems to take all of his energy, and he grimaces at the sharp pang that the action sets across his side. His older brother looks concerned, green eyes softening.

"You okay?" He asks, and Niall resist the urge to huff because he's too tired to even lie.

He just drops his arm down and and lets his head rest back on his pillows. "Tired, s'all," he mumbles, managing to lift his hand once more to rub at one of his eyes.