Eager to reach his families expectations, Louis lives a life of secrecy and denial. In one of the most respected households in Doncaster, there's no room for mistake.
But when Louis meets Harry styles in his first year of boarding school, it seems...
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Song: Prey by The Neighbourhood
It was a muffled scream that woke Louis up in the early hours of the morning, a high pitched noise that that sounded so close yet so far away in his hazy mind.
He ignored it at first, making the assumption that whatever the strange noise was, it must have come from his drowsy imagination.
But then he heard it again.
He turned his head away from his pillow and slowly opened his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the darkness of the room. The silence was like static. He thought he may be going mad. Maybe he's dreaming?
He heard it again.
It wasn't the same this time, sounding more like a sob that had barely made it past a persons lips, strangled and painful. The sob was accompanied by the sound of sheets rustling, slow at first, hardly any movement, until it became erratic and violent.
Louis finally sat up, his brows pinched and his eyes squinted, his ears perked as if trying to locate the noise.
"Mum! Dad!"
He had heard a scream, a sob, and now Harry's voice. His tone was thick with sleep and gruff like it sounded every morning, but there was a tremble to it that gave away his pain. It was almost childlike in the way he said it, like those were the exacts same words he had screamed the day he found his parents.
Louis bolted to the side of his bed and he perched there for a few moments, his heart thrumming away in his chest and a sinking feeling in his stomach that made him feel sick. He didn't know what to do. Normally he was the one to kick and scream in his sleep.
"Mum! Dad! No!"
Get yourself together Louis!
He flicked on the lamp when it became too much. Harry had built up a pace of screams that barely left room for breaths. A continuous sound that pounded Louis' ears and caused his hands to tremble.
"Help! Mum, Dad, somebody help!"
Louis shot out of bed on shaky legs and padded across the room towards Harry's bed. The light seeping from the lamp only just reached the boy, and Louis could see the sheen of sweat across Harry's forehead, his eyes squeezed shut tight as if in pain, and his hands fisting the sheets until his knuckles turned white.
"Help me! Please!"
Louis sat down on the edge of Harry's bed and hesitated before smoothing his fingers over the his hands, gently coaxing them to release the duvet. He heard doors opening in the hallway but paid no mind to it.
"Mum! Dad! Wake up!"
Harry was thrashing so hard besides him that it shook the bed wildly. Louis' body swayed with the movement as he held both Harry's wrists in one hand whilst the other swept Harry's damp hair away from his forehead.
