I felt the thunder, Mr. Don't Look So Scared.

an apartment

"He wouldn't dare do it," Harry swore under his breath, though his hands were shaking like his instinct was telling him otherwise. He was biting down on his lips, his eyes hidden from the smaller boy who was standing on the roof of his friend's apartment. Harry always hated Zayn, but Niall seemed to trust him with everything.

His eyes widened as Niall took a step forward, the loud city on the ground still going about the night like there wasn't a seventeen year old kid about to lunge himself from the top of a building known for a number of suicides. He moved as quietly as he could, squinting his eyes and licking his lips, the sweet blood nearly staining his teeth and tongue with red.

"Don't do it, Horan." He could already feel Osiris breathing down his neck about how useless humans were. They're only for fun, he'd say as his eyes began to brighten with yet another life he'd take, Beautiful toys that break under pressure. And when the world gets tired of them like a child gets tired of their toys, they must be got rid of. Why do you think that is? Harry could already hear the bitter amusement as he answered the question himself. Because things that must go must go.

"Can't save you if you do it. Can't save people who don't want to save themselves." He watched with his eyes wide as Niall shook his head and breathed calmly. He never understood why some people were so okay with dying if they weren't certain of what happened after death. He'd heard a few of their theories: Riding in a chariot with whom they called Death, lingering the earth with just a soul and no body, floating through the ceiling into the sky and whatever goes beyond that, living in a utopia if you've been a nice boy or girl, or sitting with the Devil if you've been naughty your whole life.

The door behind Niall opened and out walked Zayn, cigarette lit and brown eyes amused. He tapped Niall on the shoulder and Harry frowned as the blonde seventeen year old smiled at him and shook his head. Just thinking, he mouthed. About ending it, Harry wanted to finish.

Zayn shrugged and held out the lit Lucky Strike. Harry went back to worrying when Niall took the small nicotine stick and held it between his teeth. "Son of a-" He stopped himself and rolled his eyes at the sky, not wanting anyone lingering around to hear anything he wouldn't have said in front of his mother. "What a loser."

Niall coughed and Harry smiled, only slightly amused by his reaction. He knew he'd get used to it; get used to blackening his lungs and shortening his breath until he could only breathe through a tube. The only good thing that came with Zayn always being around Niall was the fact that he managed to keep him alive.

He would have to thank him for that in some kind of way.