17BLACK

Chapter 27

Louis' POV:

I'm wheeling the cart to the side when I hear a sharp cry from the bathroom, like Harry had fallen. I abandon the cart and sprint to the bathroom.

I knock. "Harry? Are you okay?" There's no answer. I wiggle the knob and it turns; he must have forgotten to lock it. He did seem in a hurry to get to the shower for some reason.

I put my hand over my eyes. "Harry?" I have difficulty breathing with the amount of steam. I hear - panting? - and then a sliding glass door open.

"Louis! What are you doing in here?" I begin backing away towards the door.

"I heard you shout and thought you were hurt but I guess not-" And then it hits me. Harry and I making out on the couch, his boner during breakfast, his rush to the shower and the excuse to go get my piercing today. I laugh.

"Harry Styles were you jacking off?" I bend over from laughing hysterically. My eyes squint shut and my stomach cramps.

"It's not funny," he mumbles. I hear the sliding door close and I try controlling myself. I regain my composure and then open my eyes, I can't see inside the shower due to the high amount of fog. I knock on the door.

"You could have said something," I chuckle. 

Harry smears his hand across the glass, clearing off some steam and allowing me to see his face. "Well it's too late for that I guess." He allows the steam to cover the view he just made.

"So you like the lip piercing idea?" I wasn't so sure about it before but now I'm positive. I hear a shampoo bottle opening.

I can imagine Harry's smirk as he speaks. "Yeah I do." I sit down on the edge of the bathtub.

I shut the door to prevent more steam from spreading throughout the penthouse. "Lou? Are you still in here?"

I sit back down. "Right here."

Harry laughs. I raise an eyebrow, even though he can't see me. "What are you going on about?"

"Well, it seems like I've known you forever. But I don't know nearly anything about you."

I frown. "You know tons. You know that I play football, how I like my coffee, you know my favorite color-"

"None of them," Harry interrupts. "You like them all." 

I laugh as Harry spits water at the me, leaving a trail of shower water and Harry saliva down the glass. "Most of that's average things. What about your dreams and ambitions, your greatest fear and why, that kind of stuff."

I sigh, thinking. "Being a famous football player, going to mars, and the end of the world."

Harry giggles, the sound reaching my ears over the running water. "You can't be a football player and go to mars, you'd have to be an astronaut to do that."

"Hey now, you're the one that asked. Didn't your mother ever teach you that shooting down people's dreams is wrong?" I say, gasping when I realize what I just said. Idiot, I scold myself. Why did I have to bring up mothers to a motherless child?

"Harry, I'm sorry." I apologize, not getting a response. I mentally slap myself.

I hear him take a shaky breath. "It's... okay..." The air around us immediately becomes thick, and it's not because of the heat.

There's a pause. "So you're afraid of the end of the world? Why?"

"No one knows when it's going to happen, how it's going to end, what or who will cause it to end, it's just scary to think about it. Will it just end like - that?" I snap my fingers. "Or will it end in fire, ice, a plague? An apocalypse? Will it be slow or quick? Maybe it will be peaceful. Or it couldn't. No one knows. It's the unknown."