Save Myself // Larry Stylinson

Chapter 9

Chapter 9: IX

Summary:

My biggest inspiration during this chapter was "Lay it all on Me" by Rudimental and my beloved Ed Sheeran.

———————————————————————————
Normally, sleep was one of those things that Louis wasn't very good at. He'd always been the sort of person who woke a million times through the night, and that's why he'd kept books stuffed under his pillows as long as he could remember. He could never just fall back to sleep after nightmares, so he'd always pull out a book and read until his eyes burned and he had no choice but to fall back to sleep.

But, after the level of mental exhaustion that he'd felt from the previous day, Louis was not surprised when he finally rolled over and looked at his phone and it told him it was half nine. He was really only awake because he'd heard a knock on his door.

"Louis? Are you up?" It was Lottie, thankfully. She was probably the only person in the world he would have opened the door for in that moment.

Even after sleeping three times his typical amount, Louis felt like he could have slept for hours longer. But he dragged himself out of bed, pulled on some clothes and opened his door. Lottie smiled at him, holding a tray with two platefuls on pancakes.

"You promised you'd have breakfast with me, so I made pancakes,"

They sat next to each other on Louis' sofa and ate quietly. Neither of them really had much to say after the fit their mother had thrown last night. He didn't mind so much. There was a kinship in their silence. They lived under the same roof, and while their upbringings had differed drastically, they still understood each other on a level that anyone out side of the front door could not.

"What are you going to do today?" Lottie asked while she stacked their dishes together on the tray.

Louis looked longingly at his bed, "Nothing that I know of,"

"You're not seeing Harry?" Her voice sounded innocent enough, but her smile said something different.

They watched each other closely, but Louis didn't answer the question. Harry probably felt suffocated by the emotions that Louis had dumped all over him the previous night. There probably was going to be very little Harry in his life, aside from Biology Lab. He couldn't see Harry asking for his presence willingly. Louis felt ashamed and embarrassed and looking back on things just made it worse and worse. It had been so easy to accept Harry's kindness as a fact that he'd forgotten to guard himself against the aftermath. He'd gotten so foolishly lost in the whole thing that it was just another thing on his long list of social faux-pas and regrets.

"I liked him," said Lottie, "he seems nice,"

Well, yeah. Harry was nice. Of course she liked him. He imagined everyone that met Harry liked him. It wasn't hard to see that. She wasn't going to stop at that though.

"Not like Matt,"

"You don't even know Matt,"

"Thank Christ for that," she snapped back, "I don't need to know him to know Harry's a better choice. I bet Harry won't beat you up and get you arrested,"

Okay, wow. Where did Lottie get this information? Who was telling her these things. She was just a kid. How could she possibly understand the complexity of the situation? She didn't. It was as simple as that. She was a child and she might have heard things from who knew who, but she didn't know the deeper parts.

"Its not that simple, Lots,"

"Because you insist on making it difficult. You don't need Matt, so I don't get why you keep doing it,"