Drowning || Larry Stylinson

chapter sixteen

A few days after confronting Harry and ending up masturbating to the thought of his bandmate, Louis was still trying to get over his sins. He felt like he had done the worst thing in the world. Getting turned on by the thought of your friend was one thing, but masturbating to the thought of going down on them was a whole other can of worms that Louis was not prepared to open. He batted back and forth the idea of seeing Dr. Marissa again, but Louis knew if he did it now that it was going to just be a waste of time. She was just going to tell him that all of this was normal and that it was okay to have feelings for Harry. That wasn't what Louis wanted to hear, he wanted to be told that none of this was normal and that he just had to get the hell over it. To accept it as a one time occurrence and never think about his feelings ever again. 

For a day or two, Louis thought he was going to have a panic attack again if he thought too hard about Harry and the feelings that were arising. There had been a few times in particular where Harry did something nice for him and Louis just wanted to stand up and kiss him for it. Directly after those moments, Louis felt guilty for having the thought. Especially when he felt like he wasn't exactly being fair to Harry. He wasn't sure how he would feel if someone he cared for was practically all over him one second and then pushing him away the next. 

After the few days had passed, even though Louis had tried his best to be around Harry as normally as possible, he still preferred to be alone in his room but wanted to actually utilize his apartment. It was his home after all and he was starting to feel like the guest in it. And Louis supposed he was being quite a bad host when he left Harry all alone to his own devices. Louis decided after awhile of holing himself up in his bedroom that he should venture out to the living room and spend some time with Harry. Despite the awkwardness that Louis applied to every situation they were both involved in. 

Wanting to plan out something nice for the two of them to do, Louis started to scroll through his social medias and see if there were any events going on in the area. Maybe they could go to a movie or some sort of live event like a comedy club. It was only a week until Halloween, Louis was sure he could find something fun to do. Instead of finding fun things to do on Twitter, Louis instead found multiple pages of notifications to himself. Usually, Louis turned off the notifications and didn't like to scroll through any of them. This time, though, there was an itch inside of Louis's brain that pushed him to click on the thousands of mentions. 

Swallowing thickly, Louis scrolled through them, his eyes skipping past the mean comments that he was already numb to and the random spam. His gaze kept flicking to the ones that mentioned him and Harry, though. There were pictures and fan drawings attached to almost every single tweet, mentioning the fact that Harry had been seen out of the apartment wearing one of Louis's jackets or the fact that the two of them were staying in the same apartment complex. Louis hadn't heard anything from their management, who tried their best to keep rumors like that at bay, but he wouldn't have been surprised if the calls were going to come in soon. 

With his palms sweating and hands shaking, Louis kept scanning tweet after tweet, all talking about how sweet it was that his boyfriend Harry was running errands for him or how awesome Harry was for supporting Louis through a 'tough time'. Louis wasn't sure how it would have gotten out that he was starting to have panic problems, was it truly that obvious? Were there articles coming out about how Louis was having attacks in interviews? 

Louis's breathing hitched as he thought about all of the possibilities. What if fans started to dislike him for something he couldn't control like the panic attacks? What if he had panic attack and couldn't do a signing, would the fans hate him for that? Would they understand if he started to get anxiety on stage and couldn't do a show? Would he have understood if this happened to some artist he enjoyed?