The Freak-Family (Zianourry)

Chapter 16

Sorry it's been so long, but I've been sick and school is a lot more work than it was last year. I hope I can update more regularly from now on, but I don't dare to make promises yet..

Harry had met up with the boys a couple of times after that and everything was fine. Nobody had episodes, Harry was only slightly unnerved at times, saving up the real panic to sink in when he was in the safe confines of his home. They got to know each other better and learned that Harry had a very witty kind of humour once he opened up to someone. So they spent hours laughing and talking and it was very easy to think it would always be like this.

But at the times that Harry was back home again, things always changed. 

The three boys would fall quiet once the door was closed, individually analyzing the entire day and pointing out everything that could’ve been taken the wrong way to themselves. They would drag themselves to bed, or sometimes drop a very broody Zayn off at home with reluctance first, and stay quiet and secretly falling apart as they dozed off. 

And then, always then, in the moment before they’d really fall asleep, they’d feel safe enough to speak the words, half-heartedly hoping the others were already sleeping, but knowing they weren’t. Someone would suddenly speak up, breaking the pressing silence, or Zayn would call and his voice would resonate through the room, and they would share all their worries, everything they’d done wrong, all the reasons why that time would probably be the last time they’d see Harry, because that time they’d really scared him off. 

And they would shut each other up, stopping the tracks of thoughts and pointing out each others’ irrationality and soon they would change the conversation towards a more loving vocabulary, reassuring each other to no ends. 

The three lovers always found a way to calm each other, make sure everybody fell asleep peacefully that night. Because maybe they couldn’t to themselves, but they could surely tell each other that they could do no wrong and that they weren’t scary or rude. In moments like those, they felt so blessed to have each other.

Harry, on the other side, was alone. Alone with his doubts and insecurities about his acts of a day, having all the time in the world to talk himself into depths he’d never found himself in before. Every little look or movement was recalled and more often than not, Harry found himself crying because he was so scared the boys would someday just stop calling him, that Louis would stop dropping by when he was working for his mother, that they would decided that it was too much of an effort to be nice to him, because that’s what most people realised around Harry quite quickly. 

Sometimes, his mother would find him curled up in his bed, halfway through a lonely panic attack,  and she would calm him down, dragging him up her lap and stroking through his hair as she talked to him for hours, occasionally getting short answers back. Those were the times that Harry didn’t want to discuss it, didn’t want to hear his mother’s words of reassurance because that day would be a bad day and on bad days he didn’t do reassurance or comfort. 

Other times though, he would quietly make his way to his mother’s room, crawling into bed with her like he did when he was younger and nestling against her, secretly wishing for her to wake up. She would do just that, softly running her fingers through her son’s curls until he’d speak.  She’d wait patiently until he found enough strength to will his mouth to translate his thoughts into words. It’d vary from things he thought he’d done wrong, to hypothetic questions about relationships and how that is supposed to work, especially with four people. It’d be about his panic attacks and how he would ever be able to handle them without his mom, how he’d ever be able to tell the boys about everything that made him feel uncomfortable or angsty or distressed. How to trust them.