Bound by Pages | larry

two

"I don't know, but in my experience, bullets don't simply go through a tree!" Harry exclaimed.

"In my experience-" Liam repeated in a deep voice, mocking his friend, but that's about as far as he got before bursting into another fit of laughter. Harry playfully punched Liam in the arm but didn't get a response. So Harry did the most logical thing, he punched Liam harder.

"Stop! You're shit anyways," Liam pouted while grabbing his friend's arm. Harry frowned.

He knew that Liam was talking about the game and that it probably a joke anyway, but Harry didn't know why the words meant so much to him. As he walked home, he heard the three words bouncing around in his head.

"You're shit anyways..."

~

The next day, Harry followed his usual routine of tripping on the last step of the stairs. His parents once again called him over to the kitchen. He reluctantly walked into the kitchen where he saw his parents waiting for his at the table. Today was not the day for this.

Harry spun around and made his way over to the front door. In the background, his mother's voice could be faintly heard speaking to his father.

"He used to be such a good kid, why is he so cold to us now?"

Harry took a deep breath and resisted all urge to go back and use his famous sarcastic tone against her. He chewed on his lip as the realization came that the message probably wasn't meant to be heard by him. Harry walked out of the house and heavily closed the door behind him.

The entire walk to school was filled with the things he could've said. The things he would've said. Looking back at the situation, Harry probably should've said something, or at least not let his mother get away with that comment.

All of his regrets melted away when he saw a little grey beanie working away inside the English room. Well, it was the person wearing the beanie obviously, and not the beanie itself. Obviously.

Harry glanced at the time on his phone, frowning when he saw that it was another hour until school started. Maybe Louis was working on the assignment?

~

The familiar bell rang through the school after an hour of Harry waiting for his best friend, who never arrived. Harry mumbled under his breath as he walked into Mr Wikards' classroom.

"Dammit, Liam." Harry sighed again.

"Excuse me?" His teacher looked at him with a confused glare. "My name is actually Paul."

Harry looked at Mr Wikards to see if he was being serious. The older man had him completely convinced until a chuckle escaped his lips. Harry walked over to his desk a little weirded out by the interaction he just had.

In class, they were just continuing their assignments, so he knew it was going to be a chill time. Louis came back to sit next to the older boy, and Harry offered a little smile. Louis did not respond. Harry frowned, but pulled out his notes from the night before.

"Did you do any research on our topic or anything?" Harry looked at the smaller boy and presented his notes. Louis shook his head slightly and mouthed a 'no'.

"Well, that okay. I did a ton." Harry squinted at the chicken scratch he had produced on his paper, barely able to read it. "I think somewhere around 1 in 10 teenage guys harm themselves at least once a year, or something crazy like that."

Louis' breath hitched in his throat and he responded quietly. "It's 2 in 10."

"Sorry what?" Harry wasn't sure that had heard the other boy correctly.

"2 in 10. Two in ten teenage males harm themselves every year. Its 3 in 10 for females." Louis repeated himself a little louder. Then Harry caught a small frown on the boy's lips that disappeared quickly. "Or I could be wrong."

Harry looked at his note sheet a little harder and saw that Louis was indeed correct. Harry gave another one of those reassuring but not too reassuring smiles to the younger boy.

"You're right of course, I just can't read my own writing half the time." Harry looked at the boy on his left with a chuckle. Louis didn't react, but Harry was itching to hear that angelic laugh again. He looked at Louis, who immediately looked down at Harry's notes.

"I guess we could go over these, just to make sure I didn't make another mistake or anything..." Harry let his voice trail off as he looked for emotion in Louis' face. His face remained the same, but he let out a shrug and took the sheets.

The class flew by, with the two boys writing, rewriting, and sorting out the information that Harry had gathered up. Louis was expertly writing out the structure of the debate and the essay.

Once in a while, Harry would let his hand sweep past the hand of the other boy, and Harry would blush with no fail every time. Louis never noticed Harry staring at his eyelashes as he mouthed the words he was writing. Harry didn't want to ruin the comfortable silence between him and Louis, but his curiosity got the better of him.

"Louis." He said quietly. The smaller boy looked at him. "Why are you failing English?"

Louis shrugged. "My mark is below a fifty."

"But why?"

"I guess my work just isn't good enough." Louis sighed and got back to work. Harry frowned. Having heard the conversation between Louis and Mr Wikards yesterday, he knew this was a blatant lie. Harry wanted to question it so badly, but he didn't let the words slip out of his mouth. Instead, he just kept watching as the beautiful boy in front of him worked away at transforming the mess Harry had made on his paper into art.

The end of the period was approaching, but one thing still didn't make sense to the curious boy. Louis had created a basically unbeatable argument about mental health in an hour, but it didn't really add up to what the boy had said earlier.

"Louis." Harry breathed once again, and once again, Louis looked up at him.

"I thought you said you didn't do any research."

"Oh." Louis looked confused for a second, then frowned.

"I didn't"

Continue?