By Another Name

Chapter 4.

HARRY.

I can't be in here anymore, it's just too hurtful. Tease will take care of her, she'll get the lot gathered and they'll all take care of her. I am overwhelmed, and I could try to be helpful, but I am too close to the situation, I don't want to say something wrong.

So I close the door to my hotel room and traipse down the hall with Niall to his to hide out and just try to process the last few days. Last week or so in, I don't know, Tulsa? El Paso? Louis confided in me again, like he has not in years. It was a bit overwhelming but he asked to speak with me in private. It was late and I could tell he was a bit blown, but when he began to tell me, I realized he was not just high and paranoid, he was hurting. Lottie told me he was not being himself, and now he decided that I should know why, and I listened.

"I am not sure how to be," he started. "I can't be like this anymore. With her, with Al." Al was his name for her, because the first mention he ever saw that listed them as a couple, they had gotten her name wrong as Alice. He found it charming, so he called her that, and the reason for the Tuna thing I am sure has to do with sandwiches, but no one really knows. That's their thing.

"Alright?"

"It's not though, Harry. You know I've asked her. I've asked her for peace and she keeps not giving it to me."

"Marriage, really then? She keeps saying no does she?"

"It's because she knows my secret. The same one that you know, that I have no business here in this place with this success, never have had, and chuck it, I am a pretender...she won't have a liar."

I dipped my head into my hands and just couldn't bear to look at him. He still feels this way, after four years of success and harmony and great and awful fans, and the journey we have been on. I have been letting him drift, and all this time he hasn't ever accepted who he is and how much he means to the rest of us. I am just not sure what to say.

"That is absolutely not true Lou. She loves you and I know it, and you know it," is finally all I have. But honestly, I don't really know it. I see affection and I see desire and I see many things between them, but they are not like Liam and S or Zayn and P, and I truly have no idea why, because honestly, Al keeps her own counsel and has for a long time.

"And your self-doubt is bullocks. Just words dancing in your head, Lou, that you need to say to get them out of there. Say all of them to me...right now, and get them out." We had a late night ritual the two of us, where he would just pour out all his doubt and I would listen, and just not judge or say anything and then we'd have tea, and he would feel better. And so he did, for 45 minutes, he said every awful and terrible thing he thought about himself to me and I took it and I listened and it was painful to hear my friend feel this way. It was an old aching feeling that I felt like maybe he had gotten past, but he had not. He finished with this;

"I need someone who believes in me, Harry." And I know exactly what he means, and it's why everyone is always trying to turn my friends into my lovers all over the media. I have my doubts too. Would any woman ever actually know me, and not HARRY STYLES? Hasn't happened yet. Once when I was younger, I thought older women were better to understand it. Less star struck, maybe? But that turned out not to be true, so my trust is just gone, and my choices are for shit. Liam has lucked into it, and Zayn simply plows ahead and is fearless in his passion, as usual.

"I can't speak for her, you know Lou."

"I know."

"Tea?"

"Yep," and a small grin.

"Your head is messed up, Lou. It's shit. You're crazy as hell," I tease.

"Yep," a bigger grin.

"You blank in there now again? For a bit?"

"Blank. But I need someone else," he says very sure and firm. Aw crap, this is going to be ugly.