Got The Sunshine On My Shoulders || larry stylinson

PART 8

“Harry,” Niall says, urgently. “Harry, mate, please breathe. We can deal with this, we will, I won’t let them hurt you or your career—“

“They know,” he repeats again, holding on to it until they become the only words he knows. He can hear, vaguely, his breathing getting faster, louder.

“Listen to me,” Niall is saying, somewhere far in the distance. “I’ve got a full day of meetings starting at six, all the major newspapers are willing to work with us, it’s going to be okay. Nobody’ll find out.”

“I,” Harry tries to say, but it dissolves into something between a sob and a scream. He presses his knees against his head, tries to remember Louis’s hands on him, the soothing rhythm of in and out. It only makes him more afraid; if he gets Louis’s name in the papers because of something awful that he did, he can forget—everything. Anything. “Niall.”

Niall’s yelling a little, now, and banging around with something, but the sound sinks further and further away, like an invisible force is pulling Harry across the room. It’s not, or so Harry thinks. The ground is still there, solid under him.

“I’m fine,” he tries to say, but it doesn’t come out. He’s so very, abjectly not fine. He needs to move, needs to get help—

“Harry,” someone says, someone who’s not Niall, not behind a speaker. A familiar scent hits Harry’s nose, grounds him a little, but it’s one that he can’t place. “Not again, come on.”

Louis, it’s—Louis—Harry takes a heaving, empty breath.

Strong fingers wrap around his wrists, get into his clenched fists to loosen them. Harry doesn’t need to be told this time, he knows how to breathe, still remembers the ocean rhythm of Louis’s chest, rising and falling, in and out. He feels it, he thinks, pressed against him though he can’t quite tell where, like the only grounding point in a world of spinning shadows.

“You’re all right, love. Hey.”

He’s got to be hallucinating now.

He tries to get in a slow breath through his teeth, to charge his lungs and apologise, but it escapes him too soon. Louis keeps holding him, somehow everywhere at once, his hands on Harry’s hands, but also in his hair, on the feverish skin of his face.

Niall’s still shouting something on his end of the line. Harry registers Louis taking the phone out of his hand, and then not much else. Everything is blackness, spinning colours, looking for Louis’s voice amongst the white noise while he tries to remember how to breathe.

Every time this happens, it’s like a fog that seeps into the spaces in-between his bones, straight into his head, that clouds over his vision and his thoughts until he’s surrounded by a void. With every breath of air now, that same fog clears away. Shadows and shapes come into focus from one blink to the next: still the exact same spot in the guest room where he fell out of bed, the looming silhouette of the wardrobe. Louis’s hand covering both of Harry’s wrists, pressing them to his chest. Harry follows the line of his arm to where Louis is kneeling on the ground next to him, Harry’s mobile pressed to his ear and a wobbly smile on his face.

“Yeah, mate, don’t worry. Nice to meet you as well, do you want to talk to Harry again?”

Niall must say yes, because the next thing Harry knows, Louis is holding the phone up to his ear. Harry thinks he’d be able to hold it there himself – his fingertips are tingling, but otherwise back to normal – but he doesn’t make a move to do it. Louis’s fingers are touching the side of his face just so, warm, soft.

It might be the closest they’ve been in half a decade.

He clears his throat. “Hello?” he says into the phone.