Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/13542009.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage, Graphic_Depictions_Of
      Violence
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      One_Direction
  Relationship:
      Harry_Styles/Louis_Tomlinson
  Character:
      Louis_Tomlinson, Harry_Styles, Niall_Horan, Liam_Payne, Zayn_Malik, Ed
      Sheeran
  Additional Tags:
      Boarding_School, Minor_Character_Death, Homophobia, Sharing_a_Bed,
      Recreational_Drug_Use, Internalized_Homophobia, Porn_Watching, Bottom
      Louis, Hand_Jobs, Oral_Sex, Anal_Fingering, Anal_Sex
  Stats:
      Published: 2018-02-01 Updated: 2018-03-29 Chapters: 4/? Words: 13380
****** Waterbridge ******
by pointerbrother
Summary
     When 17-year-old Louis' less than loving dad ships him off for a year
     at boarding school, Louis really doesn't know what to expect.
     He definitely doesn't expect Harry Styles.
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
***** Chapter 1 *****
Chapter Notes
     Just wanted to note that the time period in this "universe" is
     intentionally ambiguous, which is why certain behaviours are
     considered "acceptable" in here, which obviously wouldn't be today.
It’s late when they arrive. The sky is a pitchblack blur behind the rain
whipping the windshield. They’ve been driving for hours, or more, Louis’ lost
track of time after dipping in and out of sleep too many times. All he knows is
when they left they were surrounded by row-houses and convenience shops,
chippy’s and concrete and razor-headed bomber-jackets, and now— now they’re
not. Louis can’t see much, even as he pulls his sleeve over his hand and wipes
a clear circle in the fog of the passenger-seat window, but that tells him
enough in itself; they’re far, far out of the city.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” his dad tells him, as the first word spoken in
over three hours. His dad never was much for talking.
“All right,” Louis says, and leans his face against the cool window again, just
as the sky lights up in a flash, illuminating every little raindrop fleeing
down the foggy glass.
Soon after, as the sky roars, Louis catches the first glimpse of light in a
very long while. It’s yellow, a tiny blurry speck in the distance at first, but
soon he realises what it is; a window. He can’t make out the building before
him, even as he feels his dad swerve around something in the gravelly driveway,
maybe a fountain, maybe a statue portraying the school’s founder. When they
park, the headlights point toward the front steps, stretching wide enough to
fit at least twenty grown men at once, and tall enough that Louis can’t see the
top of them at all.
His dad cuts off the lights and everything goes black again.
“This should be it,” he says, unclicking his seatbelt, “come on.”
He leaves the car and Louis unclicks his belt too, slowly, before he steps out
into the stormy night. His dad’s already unloading the boot, not that there’s
much to unload; all of Louis’ belongings, or at least the one’s he needed, fit
fine into a large-sized duffelbag and the backpack that he kept between his
legs all throughout the drive.
He tugs it over his shoulder and waits for his dad to overtake him with the big
duffel before moving toward the massive, rain-plastered staircase before them.
He hasn’t looked up yet. He hasn’t dared to.
He does now.
He tips his head back far as it goes, raindrops springing into his eyes, but he
just blinks them gone. The building is massive. It’s a greyish, maybe once
white, colour, like the front steps, and it’s at least four stories tall. Most
of the windows are darkened, but the two on the sides of the front door are
lit, that yellowish light Louis caught before.
“Louis!” his dad calls out, many steps above him already, “come on, lad, what
are you standing there gaping for?”
Louis ducks his head and begins to run to catch up to him, backpack jumping
against him, sneakers soaking as they splash on the sailing wet steps. It’s a
long way to the top and by the time Louis finally reaches the large dark-wood
door and wonders whether to ring the bell or use the massive golden door-
knocker instead, his dad’s fallen several steps behind.
He waits.
“Why haven’t you rung the bloody bell yet?” his dad pants out, reaching up to
him and dropping the heavy duffel to the spot of dry ground before the door,
“I’m running late, for Christ’s sake.”
“Sorry,” Louis mutters, as his dad presses the doorbell hard and for far too
long considering most of the students, and staff, are probably asleep at this
time of night.
They wait in tense silence.
Not three full seconds have passed before Louis’ dad is moving to ring the bell
again, but then they hear the lock rattle. The door opens with a slow creak.
Behind stands a small, red-haired woman, mouth a tight line, eyes sharp and
dark.
“Tomlinson?” she asks.
Louis glances at his dad, who answers for him, “yes, that’s us. Mrs. Till?”
“Miss,” she corrects, shaking his hand, and then turns to flash something
resembling a smile at Louis. “You must be Louis?”
“Yes,” he says, shaking her hand, “Louis Tomlinson, ma’am.”
“Well, come in, Louis Tomlinson,” she says, moving back so Louis and his dad
finally have a chance to step past the threshold. “Welcome to Waterbridge.”
They step inside a massive foyer, with grey-brown slate-floors and pine green
walls, all panels deep dark wood. A balcony towers above them, balustrade the
colour of the panels, two identical staircases on either side of it, curving in
towards the middle of the foyer. And, in the middle of the foyer, stands a
statue. A statue of a short, square man in pointy-toed boots.
“Angus Waterbridge,” Miss Till says, catching Louis looking, “the school
founder.”
Louis nods. Miss Till clacks her heels across the stone-floors until she
reaches a set of two green velvet-couches, a small console-table in-between.
“Would you like to sit down while your father and I go and deal with the
paperwork, Louis?”
It doesn’t seem like an offer as much as a politely veiled order.
Louis takes a seat and Miss Till presses open a double-door in the wall just
beneath the balcony, gesturing for Louis’ dad to walk through. “We’ll be back
in just a minute,” she tells Louis, and then leaves him alone with his
drenched-wet backpack and duffel.
A minute turns to two, turns to three, turns to at least half an hour. In all
of that time, not a single person walks through. They’re all asleep, save for
Miss Till and his dad. Louis doesn’t get up and have a look at any of
the portraits decorating the walls or the doors leading to unknown places, even
if he is a bit curious. It’s still storm-weather outside and he’s beginning to
feel a little bit scared. This place looks like something out of a horror
movie, at least when he’s sitting all alone, every move of his foot echoing
loudly, the only light in here the heavy chandelier hanging far, far above him.
It’s too quiet in here.
It’s too quiet until, suddenly, he hears footsteps.
They’re not coming from the hall Miss Till and his dad went down, they’re
coming from farther up. They’re coming from the balcony, which Louis is sitting
under, and— and they’re coming down the staircase. They’re not loud or heavy in
any way, but rather suspiciously slow, careful, like they’re actively trying
not to let themselves be heard.
When the footsteps reach the bottom of the staircase, which is within Louis’
line of sight, so does the boy they belong to.
He’s tall, slim, with a thick head of curly dark hair. He’s wearing a dark-
green sweater and joggers, sneakers too, like he’s going out for a run in the
middle of the lightning and thunder. He stops at the final step of the
staircase, staring up at the chandelier, hand cramped round the bottom of the
railing. Then, suddenly, he makes a run for the door Miss Till and dad walked
through. He’s so fast and determined about it that he never sees Louis at all,
but Louis catches a glimpse of him. His skin is pale, much too pale, lips
frayed and eyes underlined with deep dark bags. On the right side of the front
of his sweater, there’s a dark-red ‘W’. 
He’s gone in an instant and, when Miss Till and Louis’ dad arrive back five
minutes later, he’s never mentioned.
“Well, lad,” Louis’ dad says, slapping a hand onto his shoulder in the front
door he’s made an immediate beeline for. “I’ve got to get going, I’m running
very late.”
If there’s one single phrase Louis thinks he’s heard more than anything else
his entire life, it’s that.
“Of course,” he says.
His dad gives his cheek an affectionate pat. “You be good. I’ll see you soon.”
If there’s one single phrase Louis thinks he’s been disappointed by more than
anything else his entire life, it’s that.
“All right, dad.”
His dad gives Louis’ shoulder a last squeeze, then Miss Till, who’s waiting
quietly by the statue of Angus Waterbridge, a goodbye, and then he turns around
and leaves.
Louis watches him disappear into the rainy night.
“You all right?” Miss Till asks him when he turns back and lets the door close
behind him, her voice that of a person who’s been told over and over again to
be more concerned with other people’s feelings than what’s natural to her.
“Yes, ma’am,” Louis replies without having to lie. He’s never anything but
apathetic about watching his dad leave anymore. It’s no use, anything else.
Miss Till takes his backpack, at which Louis is happy because her frail figure
looks as though it’d snap right over if she tried carrying the duffel. It’s
heavy on himself too, mostly from how wet it is, and it’s left a puddle on the
floor where it sat.
“Come along,” Miss Till says, not waiting to see if he obliges.
She opts for the same staircase as the one the curly-haired boy came down, and
Louis follows her wordlessly. The first floor looks somewhat similar to the one
downstairs, floors cold stone, walls dark green, but there’s nothing much to
see but doors on either side of the staircases.
“Left door leads down the hall toward our library and exercise room,” Miss Till
tells him, “right leads to the kitchen and dining hall.”
When he asks her about the school, she tells him there’s another building
diagonally across from this one, which Louis didn’t see in the dark.
The second floor looks the same, except it has dark-red carpeting. “On the
left, all of our year ten boys reside,” Miss Till explains, “on the right, all
of year eleven.”
She continues up the next identical staircase and Louis takes a deep breath
before hitching the duffel up and following. The next floor is identical to the
one before. “All of year twelve on your left. Common- and activity rooms on the
right.”
She never actually shows him through to any of those places, but Louis doesn’t
mind. It’s the middle of the night and he’s carrying a bag that feels as heavy
as two of himself. If no one gets assigned to tour him in the morning, which he
seriously doubts would happen, he’ll just have a look around himself.
Finally, they round the fourth and last floor. It looks identical to the past
two.
“Final stop,” Miss Till says, stopping and turning to look at him, forcing
another small smile, “on your left we have the year thirteen dorms. On your
right we have the rest of the year thirteen dorms, as well as a small private
common room for the last-year students. Like yourself.”
Miss Till looks at him just long enough to know that he’s computed the
information, then gestures toward the left door. “Your room is right this way.”
She begins to walk before him, opening a door to a very long, narrow hall,
doors all the way down on either side.
“Ehm,” Louis says slowly, still a bit short of breath from all the stairs, “how
come that— eh… that year thirteen has double the amount of rooms? Isn’t it the
same number of—”
“Voice.” Miss Till stops in front of the seventh door to their right and shoots
Louis a pointed look. “The other boys are sleeping.”
Oh. “Sorry,” Louis murmurs.
“And good question,” she half-whispers after a beat, fishing a key out of her
pocket, “as a sort of last-year student privilege, all year thirteen students
move up to this floor and into a single’s room. So,” she says, finally
unlocking the door, “you arrive at a lucky age.”
His room is small, square and with the same green walls and dark-red carpets as
the hall. There’s a bed in the corner, with a green woolen throw neatly tucked
in around the edges of the mattress, and a nightstand. There’s a desk under a
window and a dresser across from the bed, all in dark wood matching the panels.
There’s a stack of three green sweaters on the bed, as well as plain white
button-downs to wear underneath, and there’s a brief full of papers and a
little pencil-case by it.
“You wear your sweater, as well as one of the shirts provided or one alike it
of your own, to all classes save for gymnastics, and to meals. After dinner,
you’re allowed to dress as you please, unless you’ve been given other
instructions.”
Louis nods, dragging his duffel into the little room. It’s fine in here. Better
than he expected. At least he won’t have to worry about sharing with a complete
stranger. He’ll have privacy. That’s all he needs. 
“Is the ‘W’ for Waterbridge?” Louis asks, tracing the letter on the front of
one of his given sweaters.
“Yes,” Miss Till says, “toilets and showers are at the end of the hall.
Cubicles can be locked from the inside, so if you’re shy, there’s no need to
worry.”
Right. Great. Brilliant. Better than he’d expected.
“So, Louis,” Miss Till says, high-pitched in a way that tells him she’s about
to leave. He turns around. “School-books will be dealt to you by each
individual teacher. I’ve had another last-year student assigned to meet you at
the top of the stairway before breakfast tomorrow morning. He’ll show you
around and answer anything you need answered. In the brief there, you’ll find a
copy of the school rule-book, as well as the schedule for meal times and your
classes.”
He nods.
She forces a smile. “All right, then,” she says, “I know you’ve had a long
drive. I’ll let you sleep.”
“Thanks. And thanks for, eh— staying up and showing me up here.”
“No problem. Lights out soon as you’re ready for bed,” she says, and then she
closes the door behind her.
Louis stands for a moment in the middle of his new bedroom. It’s neither better
nor worse than back in Donny. Well, at least here he doesn’t have to make his
own dinner, he supposes. That’s an upgrade.
He flicks through some of pages in the brief. Alcohol, any kind of drugs, any
kind of sex, anything involving sneaking girls in anywhere, is all strictly
forbidden. Hm. Louis puts down the rule-book and looks at the schedule instead.
His classes start at nine. Breakfast is at eight. Lunch at twelve, then snacks
at three, dinner at six. Hall-time - which he assumes means, don’t leave the
hall-time, at nine on weekdays, ten on weekends, lights out at eleven, always.
It’s far past eleven now. Louis changes into sweats and doesn’t bother
unpacking anything. Well, he empties the big duffel until he reaches the part
of it that makes him love this particular bag; the part with the secret zipper
in the bottom. Under there, he’s smuggled in an entire year’s worth of weed. He
rolls up, then packs everything away again and shoves the duffel under the bed
for the time being. He opens his window and considers smoking out of it, but it
seems too risky. This room is too small and it’ll get stuck in the carpets, the
smell.
He leans over the sill and looks out. The rain hasn’t stilled, but the roof
peeks out enough above him that he doesn’t get hit by a single drop. There’s a
fire escape just a foot to his left.
He crawls into the window, then jumps onto the fire escape, survives - yay -
and sits down and lights his spliff.
As he sits there smoking and watching the rain, sheltered by the roof, he
begins to notice something. It’s too dark out to see the any parts of the
garden, like the grass, if there is grass, or asphalt, if there isn’t, but he
begins to see movement.
He leans in, focuses as hard he can, and the thing comes closer. Closer. And—
it’s a person. It’s a person, running toward the building. He can’t really see
their face, but it must be that boy from earlier, it has to be. He’s running
back - but from where?
Louis watches until he disappears under him, then finishes his spliff and
crawls back into his room. Not long after he’s slipped into bed, does he hear
someone sneaking down the hall and then opening and closing a door just by
Louis’ room.
So. The curly-haired night runner is his next-door neighbour.
***** Chapter 2 *****
The first thing he does when his phone screams and wakes him in the morning, is
panic. Where the fuck is he?
A second later, his memory falls back into place. Then he gets out of bed and
looks out of his window. It’s facing the opposite way that Louis and his dad
came from last night. Diagonally across from his window, very far to the right,
he can see another building, a two-story one built in the same white-ish brick
as the one he’s standing in. That must be the school that Miss Till referred
to. Behind it, he thinks he sees some goal-posts and other outdoor facilities,
which, well— great.
Aside from that and the school-building, though, there’s nothing much to see.
Nothing made by man, anyway.
The boarding school’s “backyard” is a massive grass-field, stretching miles
right and left, no other houses in sight. The field slants down toward a
forest, maybe a mile away, and from there on he can’t see anything. There
aren’t any barbwires, luckily, so Louis writes a mental note to go check out
the forest sometime or another.
He finds out that what he thought was a utility closet in the corner of his
room, is actually hiding a sink and mirror, and feels a bit stupid for running
all the way down the hall to brush his teeth last night.
As he brings out his shaving gear and other toiletries, he begins to hear noise
in the hall. Footsteps running up and down, boy voices shouting at one another,
laughing, bantering. He feels a slight bit of tightness in his gut at the
thought of going out there. They all sound so familiar with one another. Which
they are, presumably. His dad told him he’d been the exception to the rule when
he’d been taken in at age seventeen. Most of these kids have been living
together since they were fourteen years old.
Oh, well. Louis’ never been the shy type. A bit of a loner at times, yes,
but never shy.
He finishes up at the sink, pulls on a pair of plain black trousers, then
buttons up one of his new white shirts, pulls the Waterbridge-sweater over his
head and has a look at himself. He looks like a joke. But so does everyone else
here, he supposes.
He waits out a group of yeller’s passing in the hall, takes in a deep breath,
and then opens his door.
The group of loud boys are all tumbling down the hall, slapping each other over
the back of the head’s and flicking each other’s ears and pinching each other’s
bums, and then, quite ironically, yelling out oh you loved it, you benderwhen
the pinched bum-owner gets cross. They’re all wearing the same school
uniforms as Louis, but they’ve accesorized with flashy trainers and heavy
watches and skinny jeans. Louis doesn’t quite get what they’re peacocking for
at an all-boys boarding school, but perhaps peacocking’s just as much about
impressing other boys as it is the women.
Louis glances down his ugliest pair of trousers and worn-out sneaks. He won’t
be impressing anyone today.
Oh, well.
He heads down the hall and stands fidgeting at the top of the staircase,
waiting for his assigned tour-guide.
When the first person who notices him walks out from the hall on the right,
Louis’ stomach jumps. The kid just looks him over, though, like what the fuck
is that, I haven’t seen that before, and then scrunches his nose and turns down
the stairs, like, but whatever, I don’t care enough to ask.
After him, Louis calms down a bit. No one’s out to get him.
No one’s out to get him to feel particularly welcome either, as it turns out.
Groups of boys keep coming through and they all notice Louis, all stop in their
tracks for a millisecond, but not a single person so much as smiles at him, let
alone say hello.
It’s when he looks at the time and it says five past eight that Louis realises
not even the person who’s been forced to talk to him is going to. His assigned
tour-guide isn’t showing up.
He heads downstairs on his own, writing a bitter mental note to rat on whoever
stood him up. The halls are terribly quiet now, everyone already assembled in
the dining hall. He prays that it’s not the sort of dining hall where nobody
talks and everyone turns their heads the second someone walks through the door.
He walks down the wrong hall twice before finally finding his way. Soon as he
comes down toward the double-doors for the dining hall, his gut untightens a
bit. Roars of laughter, yelling and chatting, plates and cutlery clinking,
sound through the walls and, when he walks into the dining hall, not one
person bats an eye.
It’s a massive hall, with square six-seater table’s all the way down both the
longer walls, one long buffet-table in the middle of the room and, at the wall
across from the one Louis walked in through, doors leading out towards what
looks like a kitchen when Louis catches a glimpse of someone walking through
them. There are only a few people up at the buffet, and all tables are
occupied, all students too absorbed in conversation or rubbing their tired
morning-eyes to notice Louis.
He stands at the side of the door he just walked in through for almost an
entire minute, frozen, before someone comes up to him.
“Louis,” Miss Till says, tapping his arm. A whole table of what Louis presumes
are teachers and staff are staring curiously at him. “You’ve missed the morning
announcements. You’ve just been introduced to the students. Where were you?”
“Ehm— I was, I went wrong, I didn’t—” Several boy-heads have turned now,
looking him up and down, poking each other and whispering things. Louis
swallows and looks up at Miss Till. “The person who was supposed to meet with
me never showed.”
Miss Till’s eyes narrow. Then she rolls them. “I’ll take care of that, I’m very
sorry, I thought I could count on the boy,” she says, and then slaps his back,
“you go get yourself some breakfast, it’s not long before your classes.”
He stumbles toward the buffet, grabs a bowl and fills some oatmeal and milk in.
Afterwards, he hovers around the table, pretending to be checking out the
fruits, but really just scouting the room, trying to figure out which table’s
the least dangerous one to impose on. People have already started getting up
and leaving here and there, but not enough that Louis can sit down completely
on his own anywhere - not that he really wants to do that either. Mostly, he
wants to leave this bowl and just make a run back up to his room.
In the end, he zeroes in on a table in the far right corner, mostly empty. In
fact, he thinks it’s fully empty until he walks a bit closer and notices a guy
sitting pressed up as far out of sight as possible. He’s got blonde hair and a
round ruddy face, and he’s got four plates of food on the table before him.
“S’it okay if I sit?” Louis asks him, and the boy’s head snaps up so fast Louis
fears for the health of his neck.
He blinks violently, then looks down at all his plates, filled high with
buttered buns and pastries and fruits. “Ehm— eh— yeah, course. Course, mate. If
you want to.”
Louis nods and then wavers awkwardly, unsure of which chair to pick. In the
end, he goes with the one across from the weird bloke because anything else
would just be bloody ridiculous. They’re the only ones at the table and it’s
not like the guy smells or anything.
“So, eh,” the blonde boy says after having spent a minute tending to his plates
without actually eating anything, “you’re the new kid, aren’t ya? Louis
Thompson?”
“Tomlinson.”
“Yeah, that.”
Louis nods slowly, swallowing a spoonful of oatmeal. “And you are?” he asks
when the kid doesn’t speak again.
“Eh— Niall,” he says, surprised as though he isn’t used to being spoken to at
all. Which, maybe he isn’t, considering he’s sitting here all on his own,
“Niall Horan. Last-year student like yourself.”
“Cool,” Louis says, “is that an Irish accent or—”
“Yeah, actually. Shipped me all the way from Mullingar, my parents.”
“When?” Louis asks, because maybe he isn’t the only new kid after all. That
would explain Niall’s loneliness.
“Three years ago. I’ve been here since year ten.”
Oh. Louis nods, unsure of what to say to that. This kid must be a serial killer
or something. What kind of person goes to a boarding school for three years and
doesn’t make a single friend? “Cool,” he says, “cool.”
They sit for a bit, just munching, eyes on their plates. Well, Niall’s eyes on
one of his many plates, the rest left unattended.
“So, eh— you weren’t there when they introduced you,” Niall says eventually,
“what happened to you?”
Louis looks up, irritation sparking his chatty side. “Well, I was told to meet
someone up at the top of the year thirteen staircase, but the bastard, whoever
he was, never bothered to show. Stood there like a fuckin’ idiot until everyone
else had gone down here, didn’t I? Still don’t know who the hell he was.”
“Oh,” Niall says, and then drops his gaze.
“What?”
“Nothing, I just—”
“What? Spit it out, I’ve got twenty minutes till I’ve gotta be in class and I
need a shower first cause I fuckin’ stink.”
Niall laughs a bit at Louis bluntness and Louis laughs too, relieved that
showing a bit of his true colours hasn’t scared the kid off, and then Niall
says; “I think it was Harry Styles. The guy that stood you up. I overheard Miss
Till assigning him the other day.”
“Who’s Harry Styles?” Louis asks and, when Niall laughs at that like it’s
ridiculous; “why is that so funny?”
“I don’t know, it’s just—” Niall shrugs a shoulder, “don’t think I’ve heard
someone ask that question since year ten or something. Everyone knows who Harry
Styles is. Even the new year ten’s, I’m sure.”
“Well, I don’t know who the fuck Harry Styles is,” Louis says dryly, already
sort of hating the bloke, “but he sounds like a stuck up prick.”
“I don’t know, he’s all right when he wants to be. Well, not to me, but I’m the
school faggot so I can’t really blame him.”
Louis coughs up a bit of oatmeal. He grossly swallows it back down. “Beg your
pardon?”
“He’s all right when he wants to be,” Niall repeats, smiling.
“No, not that part, the part before, about you being the school—”
Niall’s gaze glides up over Louis’ head. “He’s just walked in, actually. Harry
Styles. Looks a bloody nightmare. Think he’s been ill since term started. Not
that I’d know, he wouldn’t speak to me, but—”
The odd Irishman keeps talking, but Louis tunes him out and turns toward the
doors to see this Harry Styles.
It’s the curly-haired night runner.
Although he looks more like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame in the light of day.
His sweater is crinkled and he hasn’t got any buttondown on underneath and he’s
wearing the same joggers and shoes he had on last night, mud and grass clinging
to the trainers. His greasy hair hangs down over his eyes, which doesn’t help
the fact that he looks as though he’s struggling to keep them just the tiniest
bit open.
Behind him, Miss Till walks in. She takes him by the arm, says something with a
sharp look in her eyes, and then she walks back to her own table and lets him
slump along. He heads straight for the pots of tea and coffee, pours two cups
of black coffee for himself and poisons them with six tall teaspoons of sugar
each. Then he takes three banana’s and an orange and heads toward Louis and
Niall.
Fuck. He’s coming to apologise for not showing. He’s coming to talk to Louis.
Louis pushes his shoulders back, preparing to give him a bit of an earful, just
to establish dominance, just to let everyone within earshot know that he won’t
be someone to refer to as “the school faggot” or anything of the sort.
But, Harry Styles doesn’t come to his table. He doesn’t even lift his head high
enough to see Louis. He stops two tables over from Louis’, and sits down with
the group of loud boys Louis saw walk down the hall earlier. They all shout in
greeting, happy to see him, but quickly calm down when they realise he isn’t in
a mood to be spoken to at all. Louis watches him gulp down both steaming hot
coffee-cups in two slurps and then bury into his arms and fall asleep on the
table.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Louis asks, turning back to Niall.
“I don’t know, but I get the slight feeling that he may not be sleeping very
well.”
Louis makes eyes at him. “Ya think?”
“He’s been getting worse and worse every day,” Niall says, after laughing a bit
too generously at Louis’ sarcasm - not that Louis minded, nothing to boost his
ego like an easy crowd, “fell asleep in the middle of class the other day,
knocked his head into the table so everyone turned around and he woke himself
and screamed, it was fuckin’ hilarious. I ended up laughing my bleedin’ arse
off and he nearly punched me for it, but I couldn’t help it.”
“Right,” Louis says, struggling to follow Niall’s blabbering. For a supposed
school faggot and outcast, he’s awfully talkative. “Well, I think I might know
why he’s tired.”
“Why?”
“Well, I saw him going for a run in the middle of the night when I arrived. If
he’s doing that every night, he’s probably losing a few hours of sleep.”
“Ah,” Niall says, biting his lip, “that’s odd.”
“Yep. Maybe he’s got an eating disorder or something, trying to burn off extra
calories and that.”
Niall laughs, then slaps the table and gets up. “So,” he says, “are you gonna
help me smuggle this out of here?”
“What do you mean?”
Niall doesn’t answer him, but instead pulls a crumbled-up plastic bag out of
his pocket and begins to stuff it with the food off his plates. When it’s
filled, he pulls another from his other pocket and fills that as well. There’s
a banana left that Louis quickly snatches, just to feel like he’s helping out.
Niall’s the only student who’s spoken to him so far; he’d better make a good
impression.
“Why are we smuggling food?” he asks when they’re heading up the stairs,
holding one of Niall’s bags each.
“I like food,” Niall says.
“All right, then,” Louis replies, afraid to offend.
It turns out Niall’s in the same hall as Louis, first door on the right. His
room looks exactly like Louis’, except his desk is covered in a mountain of
schoolbooks and papers, his dresser’s got a guitar lying on top of it and his
nightstand’s got an open box of Kleenex and a half-empty bottle of hand lotion
standing on it.
“Get dry hands and sniffles a lot?” Louis asks with a grin as they drop the
food-bags on Niall’s bed.
“No, I just wank all the fuckin’ time,” Niall replies.
“Oh. Okay.”
He stands for a moment longer, until he realises Niall is wavering in the
middle of the room, silent, too polite to verbally ask him to leave.
“Well,” Louis says, clapping his hands together and turning around, “I better
go hop in that shower.”
“Have fun.”
“Eh, thanks,” school-faggot, “I’ll see you around.”  
Louis heads out then, and Niall hauls the door in and locks it the second he’s
passed the threshold. Odd bloke. But nice, though. Easy crowd, easy-going, easy
enough to make friends with. Louis writes a mental note to go and force
friendship upon the Irish lad if he gets bored later on.
He heads back to his room, grabs a towel and lays his clothes out, then hurries
down the hall and into the bathrooms. There are several blokes walking about,
doing their business, more or less dressed, more or less awake. Louis walks
past unnoticed and has his shower behind a locked door.
When he comes out again, though, there’s only one person standing in the
bathrooms. The curly-haired night runner.
Well, he isn’t so curly-haired right now, as he’s just jumped out of the shower
too, coming out of the cubicle across from Louis’. His arms are covered in
goosebumps and his nipples are hard, his lips purplish, like he’s been
showering at freezing temperature. He’s shaking, too, but at least he looks a
bit more alive than he did down in the dining hall.
When he notices Louis, he fastens the towel round his waist, and says, in the
deepest rasp of a voice Louis’ ever heard come out of a seventeen year old boy;
“new kid, in’you?”
“Yeah,” Louis says, pushing his shoulders back, puffing up his chest. Harry
Styles is a bit too tall for his liking. “The kid who was supposed to have met
me at the top of the stairs this morning, in’you?”
Harry Styles blinks at him, terribly slow. “Yeah,” he says, “I slept in.”
And then, before Louis has a chance to pry an apology or at least just the
recognition that he did something wrong, out of him, Harry Styles turns around
and leaves.
Yep. A stuck up prick.
 
*
 
Louis doesn’t make any friends in his classes, hopefully for lack of trying,
probably for lack of likability. Anyway, he doesn’t make any friends, he hopes,
because he doesn’t have a fucking second to focus on talking to anyone. He’s
arrived a week late into term and he’s struggling to keep up already. After
every class, he pulls the teacher aside and half-forces them into an
interrogation on last weeks teaching’s. Resulting in him missing any chance he
had to chat to anyone in the hallways.
When he’s finally finished his last class of the day, math of all things, he’s
too tired to even make it down for afternoon snacks. He goes straight up to his
room, face-plants his bed and falls right asleep.
He wakes when someone’s walked directly into his room without knocking and
started violently poking him between the shoulderblades.
“You didn’t show up for dinner so I was told to go and get you,” Niall says,
smile so oblivious and non-threatening that Louis doesn’t have it in him to be
you-woke-me-from-a-great-dream-you-soulless-bastard-angry at him, “Miss Till
saw us sit together at breakfast so now she thinks we’re friends.”
“Oh.” Louis smooths out the crinkles in his sweater and follows Niall down the
quiet hall. “Aren’t we friends?” he asks after his head’s woken properly up and
he actually processes Niall’s words.
Niall barks a laugh. “I don’t have any friends. I’m the school faggot.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Louis mutters, “but so long as you don’t try anything, I
won’t hate you for it. Besides, are you even really bent or is it just
something they think?”
Niall shrugs a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter if I am or not. It just matters
that they think I am,” he says, “but if you’ll help me smuggle more food out
tonight, we can be friends.”
“Deal.”
Niall and Louis sit together with a mute year eleven-kid for dinner. The food
is all right and Niall talks so much shit that Louis ends up having a pretty
good time, but he still can’t stop looking over at the loud boy-table. The loud
boys have dragged about four chairs too many to their table and they’re all
scream-laughing and shouting, making sure not a soul misses how big and bad
they all are, how much they love the sounds of their own voices.
All of them except for Harry Styles.
When he’s up getting food, he drops a glass and then a fork, twice, and he
scoops a mountain of peas onto his plate only to have them all roll off while
he loses focus trying to poor himself some milk. When he’s down at the table,
he’s not even touching his food. He’s either staring deadly into thin air or
he’s lying like he did at breakfast, face in his arms. The lads around him poke
a bit of fun, but seem to have a weird sort of respect for him that doesn’t
apply to anybody else, seem to leave him be soon as he gives them the slightest
look.
He’s not even that buff. Louis doesn’t get it.
“I think he does have an eating disorder,” Louis says, cutting Niall off in the
middle of a sentence. He doesn’t seem to mind. A lot of the time he talks just
to talk, Louis thinks. “Harry Styles. He runs about all night, he never eats at
mealtimes. He’s starving himself, I called it.”
Niall glances over at the loud boy-table and then back at Louis, skeptical.
“Doubt it,” he says, “he’s too buff to be starving.”
“He’s not that buff,” Louis mutters, and Niall’s eyes glide up and down him
like look who’s talking, and Louis flexes his biceps and changes the topic.
 
*
 
Niall and Louis hang out in Niall’s room for a while after they’ve brought up
more smuggled food. Niall turns out to be hiding a weed-stash that would make
Louis’ look like a tiny plant beside a forest in comparison. There’s a fire
escape close to Niall’s window, too, and they smoke out there while watching a
flock of the year ten’s fuck around with a remote-controlled airplane down in
the garden area.
“I get why you steal so much food now,” Louis says to Niall, “you smoke up
every night?”
Niall looks over at him and then laughs. “Yeah,” he says, “get the crazy
munchies.”
“How are you not fat?”
“Lucky metabolism.”
“Bastard,” Louis mutters, slapping at his little belly. It’s not too bad, but
he was planning on starting with the sit-ups again at some point. Then again,
going to an all-boys boarding school doesn’t exactly motivate the part of him
that yearns to look desirable. “Any hot female teachers at this school at all?”
“Depends what you define as hot,” Niall says.
“Right, so they’re all mingers, then.”
“Depends what you define as mingers,” Niall grins. He shrugs a shoulder. “Miss
Till has her days.”
“Miss Till is, like, fifty.”
“Fifty year old women are hot sometimes.”
“Yeah, to fifty year old men, not to us,” Louis says, “isn’t there, like, a
cute art teacher or a swimming instructor or summat?”
“The swimming instructor’s actually quite all right. Think she’s only thirty or
something.”
“Well, Niall,” Louis says, getting up and slapping his shoulder, “you’ve just
helped me decide which extra-curricular sport to sign up for. Thanks for the
spliff, I’m going to bed.”
“G’night, mate.”
Louis can still hear him cackling from the fire escape when he reaches the
door. He shakes his head at that crazy, weed-smoking idiot, smiling to himself
as he heads down the hall.
His smile fades when he sees Harry Styles coming out of the bathroom. From the
looks of his lips and nipples, he’s had himself another one of those icy
showers, and he drops his keys twice trying to unlock his bedroom door.
Which results in Louis standing arm-to-arm with him as they both fiddle with
their locks.
Harry groans loudly when he drops his keys a third time. Louis glances over at
him. His hands are shaking so badly Louis can’t help but feel bad for him,
stuck up prick or not. He bends down to get his keys off the floor for him, but
just as he does, Harry bends too, and their foreheads knock together.
“Argh, what the fuck?!” Harry groans, shoving out at Louis before he sees what
hit him. Which is semi-forgivable, but then he straightens up - well, for
Hunchback of Notre-Dame-standards - and blinks his droopy eyes open and shoves
Louis again. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Louis regains his balance, having stumbled backwards a few steps from the hard
shove. Maybe Harry is a little bit buff. “Jesus, calm down,” he exclaims, “ever
heard of a fuckin’ accident, mate, I was trying to do you a favour?”
“What, by headbutting me?”
“No, by picking your bloody keys up, jitter-hands.”
“How the fuck do you help someone pick their bloody keys up by headbutting
them?” Harry shouts, and his eyes are half-closed, his keys still on the floor,
hands still shaking so badly Louis can’t keep his eyes off of them.
“Jesus, mate, just let me pick the bloody keys up,” Louis sighs, bending down
again.
Just as he touches his fingertips to the keys, he receives a hard shove to his
head. He loses balance completely this time, falling onto his bum on the
hallway floor.
“Don’t patronize me, I can help myself,” Harry hisses, violently scraping the
keys off the floor and somehow magically managing to jam them properly into
this lock. “Mind your own goddamned business,” he says, and slams his bedroom
door behind him.
Louis’ hands are shaking too, once he manages to get up, but not from sleep-
deprivation or starving himself.
From fucking hating this stuck-up prick.
***** Chapter 3 *****
He considers telling Miss Till about Harry Styles’ unacceptable behavior, and
maybe also the fact that he looks as though he’s recently gone cold turkey on a
serious drug addiction, and the fact that someone continues to be running
across the lawn after light’s out every single night and Louis is ninety-nine
point nine percent certain it’s Harry Styles, too. He considers it, but then
thinks better of it; it’s never a good idea to risk making yourself out as a
snitch when you’re the new kid at school. Instead, he keeps his mouth shut and
goes and signs up for swimming as his extra-curricular sport. Niall, who
prefers getting his workouts in at the gym so as not to get “accidentally”
drowned by one of his bullies, school-faggot and all, told him that the swim
instructor was quite all right looking and, about that, he was right.
Which would explain why Harry Fucking Styles has signed up too.
Louis and a flock of year twelve and thirteen’s are all standing in their
school-provided Speedo’s at the side of the school’s indoor pool, having their
names called, but, of course, when Miss Flack calls Harry’s name, there’s no
response.
“Harry Styles?” she says again, looking round the group. “Anyone know if he’s
running late?”
“I saw him in the changing rooms,” one of the lads who came running in last
minute says, “he’d just gone to the loo when I walked out.”
“All right, well… all right, you all go ahead and jump in the pool, then.”
They crawl into the lukewarm pool one by one, treading water and watching Miss
Flack write instructions up on the board. She’s wearing knee-length red swim
trunks, a navy-blue bathing suit underneath and she has her brown hair up in a
bun. Louis wonders if she’s going to take off the trunks and come in the water
with them at some point, but, as he does, he forgets to tread water and his
head dips under the surface. When he comes back up for air, the other’s have
been instructed to swim down toward the shallow end of the pool.
“Mr. Tomlinson,” she says, frowning down at him, “what are you doing, get a
move on.”
“Yeah, I— yeah, sorry,” he says, and begins to doggy paddle his way after the
others, only then remembering that he can’t actually swim. No one ever taught
him to.
He begins to drown again.
“Mr. Tomlinson!” Miss Flack is shouting when he comes up again. She’s crouched
at the side of the pool, hands on her knees, staring at him. “You do know this
isn’t a beginner’s class?”
“Yeah, I’m not a— I—” he pants, and does a jumpy move to get to the edge before
he falls underwater again. “I’m not a beginner,” he says, clutching the edge.
Miss Flack doesn’t look convinced. She opens her mouth to argue him on it, but
then she sees something across the pool that makes her forget about him.
Louis turns around too, elbows over the edge, and watches Harry Styles come out
of the boy’s changing rooms. He’s in the same black Speedo’s as everyone else,
but apart from that he looks nothing like the rest of them. He’s hunched over
completely, his face nearly see-through, dried-out, under-eyes so dark and
baggy they might very well be what’s weighing his head down, and he’s forgotten
both to wetten his hair so as to look like he washed it before coming in here
and to bring his goggles. He looks horrendous without clothes on, emaciated yet
flabby around the middle due to his crappy posture, skin so white it hurts to
look at him.
“Mr. Styles!” Miss Flack yells, so loudly Louis jumps at it because she’s
sitting right behind his head, and he loses his grip on the pool-edge and falls
underwater again.
When he comes up gasping for air for the third embarrassing time in less than
five minutes, Harry Styles has made his way to the shallow end of the pool and
the rest of the boys. Miss Flack is there too, giving him an earful for being
late and forgetting his goggles and looking shit, and he’s just nodding,
looking at her like he doesn’t actually see her, and then slumping down to sit.
He slowly melts into the water, like a blob of vanilla pudding slapped against
the edge of the pool.
Then Miss Flack turns to Louis and shouts; “Mr. Tomlinson, if you don’t get off
your arse and come down here in the next three seconds, you’re off the team!”
He nearly drowns himself four times, but makes it down there.
They start off with eight lanes of crawl to warm up. Louis attempts, he really
does, but halfway down the first lane, the guy behind him swims straight up
into his balls and Louis yells and turns around to drown him, but then drops
underwater while trying and drowns himself instead.
Miss Flack kicks him off the team after that.
He’s handed over his goggles and is doing the walk of shame around the pool
toward the changing rooms when he hears another round of shouting and splashing
and turns to see Miss Flack jumping into the water, swim trunks and all.
She grabs a big white whale of a body from behind, arm hooked across his chest
and then does crawl-takes on her back, hauling him to the edge. Two of the
other boys help shove the boy’s bum upward while she pulls him out of the
pool and then she throws him onto his back and slaps him in the face, twice,
before he opens his eyes.
He rolls over, coughing and spluttering.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Miss Flack hisses while slapping his back to
help him cough up any water he swallowed, “what happened?”
“Nothing, I just— lost focus, fell underwater,” Harry Styles begins to rasp out
between coughs, “I don’t know, I—”
“He fell asleep while swimming,” one of the year twelve-lads says, and everyone
turns to give him dagger-eyes and he lifts his hands in defense and says;
“sorry, but that’s just what it looked like.”
Miss Flack pulls Harry up to sit and asks him a couple times if he’s going to
be all right. Then she sends him Louis’ way. Louis quickly turns, rushing to
the changing rooms.
He’s just stepped under one of the shower’s when Harry walks in. Louis pretends
not to notice him, turning into the wall and closing his eyes under the cold-
ish rays.
“Hey,” Harry rasps at him, and Louis mutters it back without turning. He can
hear Harry flick on the shower just beside himself, and feel the ice-cold
temperature he likes to keep his water at spray up his side as Harry jumps
around under it. “New kid. New kid. New ki—”
“Yes?” Louis hisses, just as his own water cuts off.
“You want soap?” Harry asks, because he’s standing by the soap-dispenser and
Louis isn’t.
Louis looks at him skeptically, unsure if he’s up to something, but his eyes
are so close to drooping closed that Louis doubts he has the capacity to think
out evil pranks right now. “Yeah, thanks,” he mutters, and Harry pumps out a
gunk for him and smears it into his hand.
Louis turns away from him as he soaps himself up, but Harry doesn’t leave it at
that. “Why would you sign up if you can’t swim?” he asks.
“I can swim,” Louis says, “she just didn’t give me a chance.”
“But, like,” Harry drawls, and then doesn’t say anything for a full thirty
seconds, “but, uhm, why would you splash around and try and drown yourself like
that, then?” he asks, when he’s finally regained consciousness.
Louis turns his shower back on and closes his eyes as the soap washes down his
body. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Wha’?”
Louis’ water cuts off and he steps out of the shower, glancing back at Harry,
who’s still fighting to keep his eyes open. “I said, I could ask you the same
thing.”
“Wha’?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Louis turns and yanks his towel off the hanger, then
turns again as he starts to dry himself, “I said, I could ask you the same
thing. Why’d you sign up for swimming only to try and drown yourself like
that?”
Harry looks Louis up and down, except he only looks him down and then his eyes
never open again. His head nods forward a few times before it drops down
between his shoulders completely and his legs start to give out.
“Shit!” Louis leaps forward, stepping right under the icy rays and grabbing the
boy under the arms. “Fuckin’ hell, wake up, I can’t support your fat weight,
mate, you—”  he slaps Harry in the face and Harry blinks violently before his
eyes blow wide.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he exclaims, voice still too broken to be
yelling, but brows just as angry and furrowed as they were when he shoved Louis
onto his arse the other day. “Get the fuck off of me, you fucking bender.”
Louis stumbles backwards, incredulous. “You were falling a fucking sleep, you
were about to crack your skull open on the tile, you ungrateful fuckin’—” he
shakes his head and throws a hand out dismissively, “never mind, I’ll leave you
here to nod off and die, it’s not my problem.”
He marches into the lockerroom, dries his himself agressively enough that his
skin starts to burn, then rips his locker open and digs out his pants.
“Calm down, Mary,” Harry drawls, padding in after him, “s’not my fault I don’t
like dick.”
Louis doesn’t answer him, just yanks his pants up and finds his shirt.
“And, you know, just for another time,” Harry goes on from where he’s pulling
his clothes on at the bench behind Louis, “good idea to ask before you jump
naked into the, uhm… the shower, with another, ehm… another bloke.”
Louis still doesn’t answer him, just leaves him and his foggy frog-head be and
buttons up his shirt, tugs up his trousers and pulls his sweater over his head.
He shoves his swim gear back into the plastic bag he came with and passes Harry
Styles on the bench without so much as a nod in his direction.
 
*
 
He’s in his room about ten minutes later, half trying to figure out why the
hell it seems like every single pornsite’s been blocked by the school’s
internet provider and how to get around that issue, and half trying to pull
himself together to go down and pick up some afternoon-snacks, when he hears
noise right outside. Or, more specifically, when he hears someone slamming down
the door next to his own, groaning and cursing at it.
“What the bloody hell is going on out here?” he hisses, ripping his door open.
It’s Harry Styles. Of course it is.
He’s standing in front of his own door, swim bag by his feet and hair still
damp, hand shaking around the handle of his door. He yanks at it weakly a few
more times, then drops his forehead to the door with a long sigh and lets his
eyes flutter closed.
“I don’t know where my keys are,” he slurs out, “I thought I had them, but… I
thought I did, but now I… now I…”
And then his hand slips off the handle, and his forehead starts to slide
downwards.
“Fuck, not again,” Louis groans, but Harry starts to stumble blindly, legs
wobbling, and Louis can’t stop himself from charging forward, grabbing him
around the waist to hold him up. “What’s going on?” he breathes out, trying to
steady Harry against the wall, but he’s too tall, he keeps drooping forward,
making Louis lose balance, “mate, what the fuck is going on, are you ill, do I
need to— come on, let me take you to the nurse, you’re obviously—”
“No, no, no, I just, no,” Harry grumbles, chin rested over Louis’ shoulder, “I
just don’t want… I just want to sleep, I don’t want… I can’t in my room, it’s…”
“Yeah, your keys are gone, I get it, but… oh god, you’re a big boy,” Louis
groans, “jesus, I—” there’s no one in the hall to help, all either in the
gym for their obligatory sessions or at their extra-curricular sports. “Okay,
come on,” he sighs, and ends up shoving Harry backwards into his own room. He
manages to keep him on his feet until he can drop him backwards onto the bed.
He clutches his own hips, catching his breath, and studies the long boy lying
stretched out on his bed, greasy dark hair falling over his eyes.
“Jesus, why don’t you sleep at night,” he mutters, not really expecting a
response.
He turns to go and get Harry’s sports bag from the hall, but soon as he takes
one step over the threshold, Harry whines out, “where are you going?”
Louis doesn’t answer him, just gets the bag first and comes back in, closing
the door behind himself.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asks.
Harry’s eyes keep closing and opening again, closing and opening, his head
swaying in all different directions. “Please,” he gets out, “can you, uhm…
please.”
“What?”
“Are you gonna go?” he asks, completely delirious.
Louis crosses his arms over his chest. “What do you mean, am I gonna go? I was
planning on getting a staff-member to come and see what the hell is going on
with you, yeah, but—”
“Please don’t,” Harry murmurs, slapping the bed, “can you please just… please,
I promise I’ll be better, but… please just stay in here. Just stay in here
while I sleep. Please. Please.”
“Listen, mate, I’m not trying to get in the way of your sleep, but I think you
need to talk to a—”
Harry opens his eyes widely and looks straight at him. “Please,” he exclaims,
“please, can you just… sit in… in here and,” he falls back down again, smacking
his lips and patting the bed, “please, can you, please, please…” his voice goes
so whiny Louis fears he’s actually going to start crying like a baby, and if
there’s one thing Louis doesn’t know how to deal with it’s big boys crying like
babies in front of him.
“Okay,” he exclaims exasperatedly, and turns to lock his door because this
could look wrong to anyone walking in, “okay, then. You absolute freak.”
Louis wavers for a bit, then sits down on the rug by the bed, resting back
against the side of it as he finds his headphones and a movie on his laptop.
Before he’s plugged the headphones in, though, he feels a hand slap the top of
his head. Or rather, pat it, sort of like a dog.
“Thank you,” Harry murmurs between long snoring breaths, “thank you, stay in
here, thank you…”
“That’s, eh— that’s all right, mate. You just… you have a kip and I’ll be, eh—
I’ll be sitting right here.”  
“Mhm,” Harry murmurs, patting Louis’ head once more before turning over, “sleep
well, Harry...”
Louis glances back at him, frowning, but it’s no use because Harry’s too far
gone. “Yeah, sleep well,” he mutters, “Harry.”
Harry smiles into his pillow, and then murmurs his last words before dozing off
completely; “I love you, mummy.”
Louis’ headphones drop out of his hands. What. The. Actual. Fuck.
***** Chapter 4 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Harry Styles sleeps restlessly, tosses and turns and even kicks Louis in the
back of the head a couple of times. Several times, Louis takes out an earbud
and hears him murmuring things like mummm and yes mummy and missed you, mummy.
Needless to say, Louis tries to keep both earbuds in at all times. When his
second movie ends, though, and it’s about dinner-time and Harry Styles still
lies face-down on his bed, cradling his pillow and snoring around his own
thumb, Louis takes his earbuds out, swings them like a lasso and whips him
up the side of the face.
His hand flies up to clutch hischeek with a hiss, brows snapping together. He
mutters something nonsensical, then turns over, revealing a pear-shaped drool-
mark on Louis’ pillowcase under where his mouth had been.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Louis stares at the back of Harry Styles’ curly head for
a while, then stomps his bare feet, useless against the carpeted floor, then
yells, “wake up!”
“Hmmph.”
“Wake the fuck up!”
Harry’s mouth opens, but not to respond, only to fold around the corner of
Louis’ pillow, soaking that in his vomitous mouth-water too. Louis takes a deep
breath in, then swings his lasso again, swatting Harry sharply across the
cheek. This time he whines loudly, clutching his face, then coughs a couple
times, scrunches his nose and opens his eyes.
“Oh, great.” Louis rolls his earphones up calmly. “You woke up. Just in time
for dinner.”
Harry rubs at his cheek, rolling over. His eyes catch on the earphones. “Did
you just smack me with those?”
“No.”
“Yes you did.”
“Can’t help you here, mate, sorry. Wasn’t me.”
Louis turns, fully expecting Harry to call him out on his bullshit, or at least
just kick out at the backs of his knees to make him budge over and crumble in
on the carpet, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, as Louis draws off his
sweatshirt to spray himself under the pits with one of the one-hundred
deodorants he brought here, Harry sits up and tells him; “thanks for this. Feel
better than I have in weeks right now.”
“Oh.” Louis glances over his shoulder. Harry’s sitting up now, long legs over
the edge of the bed, eyes darting from Louis and over to the nightstand when
Louis looks back at him. “No problem, I suppose.” Louis turns back around,
scouting his carpet for a half-clean button-down, “although you do have a bit
of explaining to do.”
“Why’ve you got five different deodorants?”
Pulling the sleeve of a button-down, which he just sprayed wet under the pits
with Calvin Klein’s Eternity to cover the slight smell of stale four-day-old
sweat, up one arm, Louis turns back around. Harry’s picked one of his
deodorants off the nightstand, the gold one, and is now holding it in his big
hand like one might hold their own dick when they were tugging themselves off.
“Quit touching my stuff.”
“I like this one,” Harry sprays a bit out in the air in front of himself, then
sticks his face forward, sniffing it in like a homosexual French perfume-
salesman,  “Paco Rabanne.”
“Wha’?” Reaching up to the dip between his collarbones, Louis realises he’s
buttoned his entire shirt crookedly. He stifles the slight urge to rip the
whole thing to shreds, Hulk-style, instead slowly breathing out through his
nostrils and starting over. “Paco Ra-what?”
“You don’t even look at the names of the deodorants you buy?” Harry’s brows
furrow, but he doesn’t spare Louis a look, just goes for the next bottle,
spraying that directly into the Paco Ra-what fog he just created, then sniffing
that too. “But you’ve got so many, it’s like you collect them. Oh, I don’t like
this one. Had this one once. Mum said I smelled like one of her pervy exes that
used to wear, like, a fanny-pack.”
“Ew.”
“Unironically.”
“Ew.”
“Yeah.” He picks a third one up and goes through the motions once more. “Why’ve
you got so many, though?”
Louis, who’d been putting off answering the question, hoping it’d get left and
forgotten, sighs. He turns to find his sweater, mostly just to avoid looking
Harry in the eye - although that shouldn’t be that much of an issue, seeing as
Harry’s face is now entrapped by a large, blurry cloud of cheap spray-
deodorant.
“Just do,” Louis mutters, “easy access. Like to smell nice.”
“Hm. Seems weird.”
“Well. Suppose I am a bit.”
“What?”
“Weird.”
Harry looks up at him, brows a bit arched.
Had Louis been an honest person, he’d have just answered the question. Well, he
doesn’t consider himself directly dishonest either, it’s not as though he
enjoys telling untruths, and he’d never lie about the big things. The small
things, he doesn’t much like lying about either, if he can get out of it, but
the thing about the small things is that, if talked about honestly, they might
lead to talking about the bigger things, too. And since he’d never lie about
the big things, but also doesn’t have the slightest desire what so ever to be
talking about the big things honestly, it’s often easiest just to lie about the
small things before anything comes to that. It tends to work out best. Easiest.
“Okay.” Harry’s head drops again and so does Louis’ shoulders. “Okay, then, new
kid.”
It’s not that there’s a big horrible backstory to the collection of cheap
deodorants Louis’ got standing on his nightstand. It’s just that if he talked
about the fact that every single one of those bottles are Christmas presents,
birthday presents, ‘sorry I went away for months on end’-presents and ‘sorry I
will again soon and soon after that and soon after that’-presents, he might
also have to talk about the fact that his dad buys every single one of his
presents ever, important or lesser so, at the airport. That his dad not only
doesn’t know him well enough to know what else to buy him but a random bottle
of pit-freshener, but also has absolutely no time, nor desire to attempt to
change that fact.
He might have to talk about the fact that, despite knowing all of that, he
still keeps every single one of those bottles out on display, in lieu of the
family photo’s they never found the time to take. 
“Christ, it smells like a whore’s handbag in here.” Louis shoves the windows
open. “Just, bit of life advice for you mate; try not to spray five different
deodorants out in someone’s tiny bedroom without asking first.”
“Gee, thanks,” Harry Styles mutters.
Louis leans back against the window-sill, looking him over. “We’ve got dinner
in a minute. Better go and find one of your sweaters if you don’t want an
earful off Miss Till.”
“Hm?” Harry glances down at the white shirt he’s got on, buttons popped open
down to his sternum. It’s identical to the one Louis’ got on underneath his
sweater, save for the tiny little emblem of a polo-player on horse, of course.
“Oh. No, I’ve got it in there.”
He nods toward the sportsbag that Louis kicked into the corner by the door and
left there.
“Right.” Louis taps his fingers at the cool underside of his window-sill. “All
right, well—”
“You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?”
Harry’s eyes are wide, bottom lip caught behind his teeth.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t know what to tell,” Louis says, studying the other boy.
He’s still got heavy bags under his eyes, but they’re puffier now, slightly
less dark than they were before. His hands aren’t shaking anymore. “Why ‘aven’t
you been sleeping?”
“I have been—”
“Right, well, if you’re just going to lie then I’ll have no problem going
straight down and telling Miss Till that you just—”
“No, fuck off,” Harry hisses, and Louis’ mouth snaps shut, “fuck off, I— okay,
I,” he drags a hand through his hair, easily smoothing back from his pale face
with how greasy it is, “okay, all right, I— I don’t know. I just can’t. I just
haven’t been— I just can’t sleep in my own room.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t. I don’t know. I just don’t like it.”    
“You just don’t like it?” Louis gives him a sceptic look, but his gaze is
pinned to his hands now, which he’s taken to wringing around in his lap, so
it’s no use. “That makes zero sense. And besides, I know you run around outside
every night. I see you from up here, it’s not that hard once you know what to
look for.”
Finally, Harry looks up. His brows a drawn together, a deep furrow between
them. “Not every night,” he says, “I’ve done it, like, a couple times.”
Louis snorts. “Every single night, mate.”
“’ve you been stalking me or something, you bent fuck?”
“Bloody hell, you’re really touchy about this, aren’t you?” Louis laughs.
“Christ. Why get so defensive, what’ve you got to hide? Where do you go at
night? Meeting a secret forest-lover out there or summat?”
“I don’t get—” Harry’s mouth is round, his brows deeply furrowed. He shakes his
head. “I don’t get you, I’ve told you I only go night-running once in a while,
I don’t—” he shakes his head again, slapping his thighs. “Right, fuck this.
Fuck this, I don’t have the patience.”
He gets up, pushing his shoulders back, and suddenly he’s quite a bit taller
than Louis remembered him.
“Listen, I’ve tried being nice, but you’re being a pain in the fuckin’ arse so,
like— listen. If you so much as hint at me coming in here, at any of this
happening or at me running out at night, I will,” he steps closer, Louis
backing up against the window-sill, “have to remind you that I am not above
spreading lies about you.”
He steps in closer, the stench of five different deodorants and the chlorine he
never bothered to wash from his hair engulfing Louis.
“And I’m not above making sure no one here ever, ever fucking talks to you
again, not even your little Irish friend.”
He reaches over and rests a hand on the window-sill just by Louis’ and, in that
moment, Louis becomes terribly aware that Harry Styles is, in fact, quite buff.
“And, uhm, also,” he says, low and soft as though he hasn’t got Louis pressed
hard up against an open window, “I am not at all above violence.” He looks up,
eyes dark, “and neither are any of my mates. And I’ve got a hell of a lot more
of them here than you do. I own this fucking school.”
He doesn’t blink for several seconds, just holds Louis’ gaze, stares at him
until Louis gives in and absolutely has to let go of the breath he’d been
holding. It falls from his nostrils, shaky, and Harry drops his gaze, pleased.
He taps his fingers on the sill a few times. “So, you won’t tell anyone, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Louis breathes, knuckles white, trembling, where his hands clutch the
edge of the sill, “yeah.”
Harry nods, smiling a little. “Yeah.”
Then he turns around and saunters off.
Louis stays presses back against the window, cold air from outside hitting him
in hard strokes, going straight down the back of his shirt, raising the few
hairs left on him that don’t already stand up stiffly. He watches Harry Styles
crouch down before his bag, rummage around and then go, “oh, yay! Nice, I found
my key”, then grab the bag, haul himself up and leave the room without so much
as a goodbye.
It isn’t until he’s heard the door to Harry’s own room open and close again,
that Louis falls back onto flat feet and loosens his death-grip on the window-
sill. Then he knocks every single stupid deodorant off of his nightstand and
rips the sheets off his bed in a fury.
 
*
 
He switches to working out in the school gym as his extracurricular activity.
“Almost there,” Niall mutters as Louis waits by his door, watching him attempt
to pull a pair of bright green tights up over his thighs. So far as Louis’
understood it, the school gym is open for free use between twelve and half past
eight pm all days, but on Thursdays, like today, which is extracurricular
activity-day for all year thirteens, there’s a designated time they’ve got to
be clocking in down there.
Which is five minutes ago.
“Hurry up already.”
“Just a sec, aaaalmost there.”
Niall throws himself back on his bed, grunting and red-faced as he fights to
pull the stupid tights on. Niall isn’t particularly big and burly, nor round
and jiggly, so there’s only one possible explanation as to why pulling the
bloody tights on makes him sound and look as though he’s trying to shit out a
bowel movement the size of Britain; “your tights are too fucking small, mate.”
“No no, I always wear ‘em.”
“I’ve never seen you wear them.”
Niall huffs out a sharp breath, lifting his hips off the mattress. “I mean to—”
he grunts breathlessly, “to the gym, I always wear ‘em.”
“All right, well, just because you always do something doesn’t necessarily make
it right.”
“Who are you to judge?”
“Just saying, you’re not exactly helping the whole ‘school faggot’ thing
wearing those.”
“They’re, ungh, they’re fucking fine, just—”  
Louis scratches at the hem of his own loose-flailing, knee-length shorts. “Just
trying to help you, that’s all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life and
one thing only, it’s that if trying to put your trousers on makes you look like
you’re in the midst of childbirth, those trousers may be slightly too small.”
“Nope!” Niall jumps off the bed, tights so tight around his stomach it’s making
him look like one of those fat women in make-over programs who get pressed
inside any random brightly coloured sack and then squeezed to death over the
middle with a stomach-belt so as to accentuate their ‘natural hourglass-shape’.
“Just fine,” he croaks.
They head downstairs wordlessly.
Waterbridge’s gym is a large square room, walls the same pine green colour as
the rest of the building, floor charcoal-grey and rubbery. Simple black
speakers stream a low, indistinguishable pop-tune from the corners of the
ceiling. Along the left wall stand a row of treadmills and ellipticals, along
the right a string of different torture-instruments, more commonly known as
“weight-machines”. The wall across from the door lines up a selection of
various free weights and supplies for erotic asphyxiation - or perhaps just
jump ropes and resistance bands.
In the middle of the room hangs a large leather punching bag. Beside it,
punching from under red boxing gloves, stands Harry Styles. Because of course
he does. He’s in short red shorts, a sweat-soaked white t-shirt and has pulled
the fronts of his hair into the tiniest little man-bun, tons of little curls
still springing out around his face, clinging to the edges of it. His skin is
dripping wet, blotchy red from his chest to his temples, his mouth slack, wet,
colouredlike the inside of a perfectly ripe cherry.
He looks like shit.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Louis mutters to Niall, who’s signing them in
with the green-haired teacher who’s name is either miss Glass or miss Grass.
Could be either or, but Louis’ inclined to believe it’s the latter for hair-
related reasons. “He was on the swim team just last week.”
“Well, didn’t you say he was kicked off?”
“Yeah, but— yeah. Fuck. Would’ve just been nice to be free of him here.”  
Niall shrugs, offering miss Grass a quick ‘ey, your hair matches my tights,
ain’t that funny? followed by a much, much too loud laugh for what the quip was
worth, at which she bares her teeth and forces her shoulders to vibrate so as
to look like she’s laughing too. She looks utterly relieved when Niall turns
back to Louis.
“He’s always in here anyway. Harry Styles. Every single day of the week if he
can manage. Well, not so much lately, since he’s been ill or whatever the
fuck’s been going on with him, but he’s here a lot, still. You don’t get that
buff just from sitting on your arse, smoking weed and watching ancient episodes
of Naruto while chowing down Milky Ways and non-diet coke.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Hey, I didn’t mention any names,” Niall lifts his hands in defense, “you took
that to describe yourself. Says more about your self-esteem than anything that
you’d just automatically assume—”  
“You literally walked in on me just last night doing exactlyall of tho—
nevermind.” Louis shakes his head. “Nevermind.”
“Anyway, you’d better get used to seeing him round here. If you wanna get buff,
like you said last night after you’d borrowed my scale and ran out crying—”
“I did not run out cry—”
“-- then you’d better get used to seeing him round here. You can’t get buff
just from lifting a bit on Thursdays. You’ve got to put more hours in. You’ve
got to be coming here at the very least as often as Harry Styles does if you
want to gain any slight bit of muscle mass before end of term.”
Louis feels his own bicep. “Well, I’ve already got a decent amount to start off
with.”
Niall barks a screaming laugh, slapping himself on his tightly tighted thighs,
then wanders off toward the treadmills.
Louis decides to warm up on his own. Fetching a jump rope, he positions himself
in the farthest corner of the room and starts to jump. He trips himself within
two jumps and lands with his nose on someone’s toes.
“You all right?” the guy asks.
It’s one of the loud boys, the tall-ish one with the wide shoulders, wide nose
and brown eyes. He talks a lot it seems, but never loud enough that Louis’ ever
heard his actual voice over any of the other loud boys. He has a pleasant
looking face, one of those which you wouldn’t ever in a million years expect to
cause you any intentional harm, but Louis prepares himself for a mean-spirited
mocking regardless; he is one of Harry Styles’ friends, after all.
“I’m fine.”
The guy chuckles a bit, while Louis scrambles to get up, and it sounds as
though he’s about to say something when another two loud boys join him,
snickering. One of them is taller than Pleasant Face, dark-haired and squinty-
eyed, the other is shorter, ginger-haired and of the slightly… fluffier
variety.
“Fuckin’ hell, mate, aren’t people like you supposed to be good at that shit?”
the tall one asks.
Louis gathers the jump rope up in his hands, deciding he’s done with that for
today. “What do you mean?”
“Just, like—” he laughs as another loud boy joins him, one with blonde Justin
Biebery-hair and a disproportionately large mouth, and then another, with
tattoos all up his arms and a jaw like he could crush bricks between his teeth.
“Aren’t little girls supposed to be good at jump skipping and that?”
The boys all burst out laughing.
“Oh, piss off,” Louis mutters, throwing the rope of toward the shelf he took it
off and marching off, the back of his neck burning as the group no doubt
watches him, still snickering, muttering stuff.
He plops down in the seat of what he thinks is a chest-press machine, but the
guy by his side, another loud boy, he thinks, starts laughing at him soon as he
tries to push the handles forward.
“Think you’re supposed to adjust the weight according to your own physical
limits, pal,” he says, grinning like he’s fighting not to burst out laughing
harder. “Let me give you a hand.”
“No, it’s fine, I’ll—”
The guy reaches down, fixing the weights, then gestures for Louis to push
again.
“What’ve you done?”
“Nothing. Just fixed yours weights according to what you seem physically able
to push.”
Louis glares at him for another few seconds, then turns and starts to push. His
arms swing forward, the machine giving a huge pling!, making most every head in
the room turn his way. The loud boys from before have already gathered around
the machine on his other side, barking loud laughs, bantering back and forth
with the guy who ‘fixed his weights’ like Louis isn’t sitting right between
them. Like he’s thin air with occasional entertainment value.
“Ha. Ha,” Louis says dryly. “Fucking hilarious, that. Not putting any weights
on at all. That’s a bloody masterpiece right there, you should drop the A
levels and go straight into the entertainment business, mate, you’re fucking
made for it.”
The guy just looks him over like he’s some kind of rare, slightly gross-looking
animal, then bursts out laughing again. “Isn’t she cuuuute,” he sings, reaching
out and grabbing Louis’ cheek, pinching it hard and ruffling his face around
harder. “All stroppy when she’s got her period.”
The loud boys laugh harder, the weight-fucker laughs harder, everyone laughs
except for Louis. For an insane second he considers fighting them all, but then
he remembers that, as little as he does feel it right at this particular
moment, he would sort of like to continue living.
So he jumps out of his chair and marches off.
“You done already?” a voice rumbles from the punching bag as he crosses
diagonally through the room toward the door, “hardly got much of a workout in,
did you?”
“Fuck off!” Louis whirls around, pointing a finger at Harry, who’s slouching
against the punching bag, eyes half-lidded, smile lazy and infuriating, “fuck
the fuck off, I’m not fucking scared of you, mum’s boy!”
In a split-second, Harry’s entire face hardens. “Do not fucking mention my
mum!” he screams, like some absolutely ridiculous tough-guy parody. Except he
means it. Everything about the look in his eyes says he means it and Louis -
Louis apparently didn’t mean it quite as much when he said he wasn’t scared of
him.
He backs up. “All right, all right, calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” he charges forward and Louis stumbles backwards.
“You do not ever fucking mention my mum, you understand that? You do not ever—”
Louis glances to his side, where miss Grass is fucking missing, the green-
haired traitor, then back at Harry, face blood-red and twitching with anger.
He spins on his heel and runs out of the room like his arse is on fire, not
missing the violent roar of loud boy-laughter that ensues.
So. The curly-haired night runner owns this fucking school.
Chapter End Notes
     Just wanted to note that the time period in this "universe" is
     intentionally ambiguous, which is why certain behaviours are
     considered "acceptable" in here, which obviously wouldn't be today.
End Notes
     My tumblr is pointerbrotherblog :)
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