nothing // larry stylinson au

Chapter Fourteen

Four AM. It's the earliest Louis willingly wakes up in the morning and the only time he is alone. It is four hours before Eleanor wakes up and leaves the house with more makeup than necessary to meet with her friends and go shopping with money they don't have. It is five hours before Harry wakes up and realizes how cold and empty the bed is and sleepily drags his feet into the living room to cuddle with the warm man who is everything to him.

At four AM, Louis sits lonely in a silent room with a cup of coffee between his hands and a blanket draped over his shoulders. Every once in awhile he'll pick up his phone to read a text he received from one of his friends, one being from Liam who was excited about his wife's due date being a month from now and another from Zayn about his new job as a DJ. Louis wouldn't respond, though. Between four and eight AM, it is his time and only his time.

You'd think it would get boring, sitting there in a room with the only sounds being the ticks of the clock on the wall and his quiet breathing, but his thoughts seemed loud enough to wake everybody in the house. Even when he tried not to think, the haunting thoughts would creep up on him again and surprise attack him and again he would be thinking over everything too deeply to the point where he didn't know how he felt anymore. He didn't know how he felt about anything.

Sometimes the thoughts become too much and he curls into a ball after setting his coffee off to the side. He'll stuff his face into the blanket, crying silently. It's all a bit too much. Before, he used to roll though his life like it was nothing, same routine everyday; provide for wife, please wife, please parents by having wife, write songs no one will hear, miss the days when life was something... Life was nothing. He felt empty. Then, someone came along and made it something. Dreams were dancing within his eyes again.

"You make me very happy," Louis whispered to the boy in his arms one morning on the couch. Harry had his head on Louis' broad shoulder, fitting it perfectly into the crook of his neck. He'd deeply breath in his scent of vanilla and aftershave, two smells Harry has grown to adore.

"Does Eleanor make you happy?" whispered Harry. A blush still lingered on his cheeks from what Louis had said.

Louis sighed. "She is my wife."

"Does that matter?"

"Would you marry someone who doesn't make you happy?"

"No," simply answered Harry. Tighter, he wrapped his arm around Louis. "Isn't that the point of marriage, to be with someone who puts light in your eyes and makes you feel real?"

"How do you know so much?"

"I've had too much time to think."

Louis could say the same about the last month and a half. An entire month and a half of this has gone on, waking up at four AM to simply think about everything. For an entire month and a half, Eleanor and him barely spoke to one another. He no longer wraps his arms around her in the middle of the night in an attempt to make her feel safe and she no longer complains about how little of money he makes. They still murmur "I love you" in the morning and "make love" in the afternoon. She is too afraid of saying the wrong words after what she did to him. He is too afraid of doing the wrong things after what she did to him and what he did to her.

Harry only wonders more and more everyday why Louis would stay with her. Occasionally he wonders if he never came along if all of these conflicts would have occurred or if Louis would have ever noticed how poorly he has been treated.

At around five AM, Louis calls his dad when he knows he is getting ready for work. He tells him everything is good. He fakes laughs and sends pictures. He ends up telling him about Harry. Over the phone, he can hear his curious hums when he is trying to understand. He is trying to understand as well, but he never tries too hard. He may not need to understand. He may just keep rolling on through life like a loose stone.