Solace

Chapter Six

Just as one tear slipped, a soft knock sounded from the door.

Louis cursed. 

Deep breath in, deep breath out, Louis followed his silent directions in his head, in attempt to calm himself. Pulling at the sleeves of his hoodie, he wiped that one tear and a few others from his cheeks and rubbed his eyes with his fists. 

One deep breath later, he was already on the way to the door. He stood right in front of it, pondering the options; to open it or not to open it. He leaned forward so that his forehead was essentially against the door. Louis stood still until another knock made him jump back, having nearly gotten a heart attack.

For fuck sakes. He thought and rolled his eyes.

Just as the person on the other side was about to knock again, Louis swung the door open and a breath hitched in his throat because he, of all people, was standing right in front of him.

When the door opened, Harry took a step back just in case Louis had the plan of storming out of the room and to do that, he would've obviously needed the space but that's only what Harry thought would happen. What did happen was quite different.

Louis held the door open with one hand and his other was hidden in his trouser pocket. His breathing was kind of heavy and cheeks a bit flushed. Harry also couldn't help but notice the small amount of redness in the corners of his eyes, signifying the tears which had slipped just moments before.

Harry was speechless because there was quite a high possibility that he himself was the reason as to why Louis had cried and shuddered at the thought as soon as it came into his head.

Louis raised his eyebrows and waited for the lad opposite him to speak so that he could say whatever he wanted to and leave Louis alone because all Harry had done to Louis is introduce a stronger feeling than hate to him; surely this weird feeling in his stomach meant hate, right?

"Hey, look, sorry for whatever happened down at my mum's office," Harry spoke up, looking Louis directly in the eyes, "She told me to give you this form to fill in and that she'll see you some other day when or if you're ready."

Louis nodded slowly, taking each word in. Harry gave him a piece of paper in a plastic wallet and smiled lightly.

The corners of Louis' lips twitched in the smallest of a 'thank you' smile because he couldn't exactly say thank you to Harry. The curly haired boy waved at Louis and turned to his left, walking down the long corridor.

Louis sluggishly closed the door, taking a deep breath in for almost no reason at all. It's just that-Harry made him feel sick to the pit of his stomach; he was far too nice and it smelt fishy, like he would change within a second and do the same thing to Louis that the people back in Doncaster did. He was scared of Harry almost.

He closed the door quietly because there was no point of slamming it and walked towards his bed and sat on it with his legs crossed and his back against the wall.

The plastic wallet he was holding was soon put to one side and his fuzzy eyes were reading the black writing on the paper.

Name: Louis Tomlinson, the top of the page read.

His eyes scanned the questions on the paper and seeing that Anne had put dotted lines underneath each question, he would have to answer each and every single one of them. Basically, that meant opening up to the woman he had only just met. Louis would have to eventually tell her about everything going on in his life; she already knew about the abuse he'd been getting from the bullies and soon enough, he knew, that Anne would find out about the cutting.