Rain fell fast and heavily that day. It had not rained in a week, and the sun had been scorching hot. It had been so hot, in fact, that Louis couldn't even go outside without melting away to a pile of Lou-goo. He couldn't imagine it being so warm now, and he was shivering. A bird sat in the tree nearby-a starling-and it sung despite the rain. Louis stayed still as he watched old Mrs Morrison walk past his garden and down the road with her purple anorak and over-weight dog. He didn't want her to see him, he didn't want her to see the purple bruise on his cheek, nor did he want her to hear the cracking of another beer bottle opening in the kitchen.

When Mrs Morrison had vanished down the road to return to her loving husband, Louis suddenly felt very alone in the world. Very alone, and very scared. He sat up in the crooked chair by the windowsill and looked to his left. The living room door was open, the corridor with the pealing wallpaper beyond that-dark, and on the other side of it was the kitchen. And in the kitchen was his mother. Louis had never had a father, or at least, one that would stay for longer than just the night, but he'd never wanted one. He just couldn't imagine how terrible of a person he'd be if he were to wish anyone to live with this mother of his. She had not left the house since Louis was fourteen, and that was two and a half years ago. He was now seventeen, would be eighteen in December, and he knew that if he didn't escape by that day, then he'd be trapped with her in this shabby little apartment forever.

"Louis? Darling, where are you?"

Louis leant back in the chair, his hands grasping the sides of it as if letting it go would end him in some terrible fate. He heard footsteps in the kitchen, and then he saw her shadow move across the walls until she poked her head around the doorway. She smiled, beer bottle in hand. "Ah, there you are. I thought you'd ran away again. Good boy." She walked up to him, and Louis froze when her hand ruffled his hair. She kissed him on his forehead. "You won't run away again, will you?"

Louis looked up at her but felt as if staring into those blue eyes was a mistake of which he did not want to face the consequences of. "I never ran away, mother." He said, bowing his head respectfully, "I went to school. I always go to school. I have told you this."

"School?" She repeated, seeming to have heard brand new information. Louis could tell she was smiling at him, "Is it nice there?"

He looked at her. He had her eyes, forget-me-not blue, and both pairs had seen terrible things. The smile on his Mother's face was slowly vanishing, turning into a scowl that her son had seen too many times before.

She grabbed Louis by the hair and yanked him up. He was not as tall as her, and he struggled to keep his feet on the ground. It hurt. She hurt. "Did you forget about mother?" she growled, and the way that her voice wheezed was terrifying, "You think that you can just walk out of here with your so-called friends, and leave me? Is that how you treat your mother?"

Louis tugged on the sleeve of her dress-the one that she'd been wearing for the past two weeks-and she let him go. Louis tumbled to the ground, his head aching, his knees scratched from the uneven floorboards. He did not cry, and the tears that did leave his eyes were from pain, nothing more. He did not see the point of crying, surely because he had seen too much of it over his time, and he had learnt that weakness is punished.

And if one thing was sure in that small and sad world where Louis Tomlinson lived, was that he may have been foolish, unloved, disgusting, and every other word that had replaced his own name, but Hell-he was not weak.

He looked at his knees. They were bleeding. "I am not your tool." He said, but did not move. "I am not something for you to kick aside when you feel like it, but call back when you're alone. Children are not their parents' tools."

He stood up, backed away from her, and with that stare burning into him, he walked around his mother and up the creaking stairs. Half way, he heard her scream, then glass smashed against a wall, and then there was a thud, and he new that his mother had fallen to the ground. He ran up the stairs, into his bedroom, and it was only when he turned the key in the lock that he saw how much his hands were shaking and how his heart seemed to be in his throat.

He listened to his Mother, unable to believe that he had done such a thing. The fear of the consequences were overwhelming; he didn't know if he'd get slapped, strangled, hit over the head with a bottle, pushed down the stairs.. There were many things that could happen, but as for now, the door was locked.

He sighed and turned around. He looked at his bedroom for a while, his mind somewhere else but he wasn't sure where. His room, as expected, was tiny, with navy blue walls and a carpet that had once been cream but was now stained and dirty. His bed was to the right, broken and too small for him, beside it was a chipped bedside table, then an old desk, and beside the window on the opposite wall from him was a mirror. He had no other furniture in his room-no wardrobe or chairs-and yet he did not have many clothes to put away, and they were all folded in the corner of his bedroom beneath the cracked mirror. He walked up to it. There was a horrible breeze coming from the window, and Louis put his hands out to close it, but then noticed that it was not open, and the draught came from a large crack in one of the windowpanes. Mother had been in his bedroom again.

He sighed and looked at his cheek in the mirror. He had great skin, people would always tell him that, but they'd always ask why he always bandaged his neck or stuck mickey mouse Elastoplast plasters on his face. This large purple mark was the reason.

"Ow.." Louis said when he stuck a plaster over it. He turned to his knees and stuck two of the largest mickey mouse plasters that he could find over them. One of them was red with black spots, the other was with Mickey's face. Louis smiled a little bit-the plasters made him a little happier, and he'd spent all of his pocket money on them. He stood back up, pulled his shorts up, and his tee-shirt down, and then looked at himself a little longer.

He was small, perhaps a little too small for his age, very light, and very malnourished. On weekends, he would get one meal a day, and that meal would be a sandwich. Sometimes, when Mother slept, he could sneak down and steal a cereal bar from the cupboard, but he feared to do so ever since she had caught him.

He looked tired, as well, but perhaps that was because his clothes were far too big for him and looked like pyjamas, and his hair was a complete mess again. He turned away from himself, deciding that there were better things to look at, and his gaze rested on the only things that distinguished his room from a prison cell.

Posters lined the walls, pictures, quotes scribbled onto scraps of old paper. The posters were of dancers, the pictures were of the Royal Ballet shows, and the quotes were ones to remind him that he could do anything if he put his heart into it. Above his bed was his favourite poster, a huge one that he'd found in an old magazine, with the words "Swan Lake, the new beginning." written on it, and above that was a photograph of a ballet dancer's feet, except that one of the feet was a prosthetic. Beneath the title in the cursive writing, there was a featured name, and that name said, 'The King of Ballet'.

The Ballet show was advertised for the upcoming winter, and Louis-despite knowing that there was no possible way that he could go-had imagined himself over and over and over again on the stage. And he'd wondered over and over and over again who this King of Ballet was.

He put his arms out in front of him, pointed his fingers like the Ballet dancers pointed theirs, and he put his foot out in front of him. He pulled his back straight, and then looked ahead. And then, moving his foot back around, he hopped in the air, and slipped on the carpet, and fell.

He landed with a thump and a quiet "Ouch," and mother began to shout again.

"Louis, my dear?" She shouted up the stairs. Her voice, wheezing and hollow, slurred. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

Louis froze, but she did not come up the stairs, "No, mother." He said back, his eyes watering from the scratch that he'd got from the floorboards downstairs. He could hear the creaking of the floor and knew that his mother was waiting for something, "I love you." He said, but those words were like poison on his tongue,

"I love you, too. Mother loves you."

And she walked away, and Louis did not feel the love. He felt obsession.

Mother was obsessed with him, always had been. She was possessive, overprotective, and built her whole sad and pathetic life around her son. There was no love there. Just obsession.

*

Louis watched Zayn's car drive away down the road as it always did. Only this time, Louis was not at school, but he was standing alone in front of a very tall brick building tuck a little too tightly between the baker's and a car repair garage. The only person besides from Zayn that he had seen in the area was a boy in a Burberry coat who looked quite like him, in fact, and yet he'd got onto a motorbike belonging to a man with long raspberry-rose hair. They had long gone, and now Louis was alone. He looked up at the building. It was made of red bricks and nothing war there to see but a small window on the top floor. He turned his gaze down to the blue gate that showed the entrance to the building, and walked up to it. It was one of those gates to enter a private building, and Louis began to push the pin number in that he'd scribbled on one of his plasters. It opened, and as he closed the gate behind him, he felt safer.

He walked up the metal stairs, his shoes clinking on the way. On one occasion, he tripped and fell, but picked himself back up. At the top of the stairs was a small platform where Louis could imagine many people hiding away in to snog or something of the sorts, and in front of him was a pink door with the words 'Ballet School' printed onto it in white letters.

He knocked, and no sooner as his fist hit the door, a dark-skinned woman in a white leotard and pink tights pulled it open. Louis looked her up and down and blushed.

"Hello, you must be Louis." She said, grinning at him. She stepped aside, and Louis glanced behind him before entering the room. And when he saw the mirrors lined across the walls and the shine of the floorboards and the dazzling white lights in the ceiling, he smiled, and he hadn't smiled like that in years. "You seem happy." The woman said, pushing him into the room. "I am sure that you'll do well."

Louis looked at her, still clutching his bag protectively to his chest. "Ah-" He said, feeling as if it were his turn to speak but he had nothing to say. The woman's eyes widened and then she laughed. She took Louis' hand and shook it energetically. "I am so sorry, I get carried away with newbies. Not many of them stay so I like to make them feel welcome. My name is Maria. I am the manager and one of the coaches. The other coaches are Angela and Robin. They will be teaching you. You will have a dance partner to teach you the basic steps."

Louis nodded slowly, blushing, but Maria continued to speak.

"Your dancing partner will be Lilly-Ann. She is about your age but has been dancing since she was a child. She is one of the best students we have had."

Louis nodded again, and Maria finally let go of his hand. "Louis, we shall start today. Did you bring some ballet shoes?"

"Ah, no." Louis said, awkwardly. "I can't afford them.." He admitted, and bowed his head. Maria put a hand out to him. "Don't worry," She said, "we have some spares. Just tell me your shoe size and we'll find some for you."

*

A few moments later, Louis found himself standing in the middle of the ballet room with a pair of woman's pointe shoes on his feet. Both he and Maria looked at them. "Well, they'll have to do for now." she said, "I didn't expect you to have such small feet. You can keep them to hang on your wall at home."

Louis looked at them for a while longer, tried to wriggle his toes but found out that he couldn't, and then he looked up and grinned so truthfully that it made Maria's mouth open in surprise. "Thank you." He said, "Thank you."

"Are you Louis Tomlinson?" a voice asked from the doorway. Louis glanced behind Maria to see an asian girl who looked barely 5'3, with hair tied into a bun and a pink leotard on. She looked like a perfect ballet dancer, and even the way that she walked up to Louis and Maria was elegant. "My name is Lilly-Ann." she said, putting a hand out for Louis. Louis shook it, and then realised too late that she hand wanted him to kiss it as all ballet dancers that Louis had seen, seemed to insist upon. "You haven't danced before, have you?" She asked. She had a stern voice, and very little expression. Louis felt intimidated, and it took him a long time to finally say, "Never."

Lilly-Ann nodded. She then grabbed Louis' hand and placed his other on her back. Louis yelped in surprise, and then blushed when he realised that she was not wearing a bra. "First, I want to see how well you can dance." she said, unaware of how uncomfortable Louis felt with a girl so close to him. "Do you know the waltz?" she added, but gave him no time to answer when she began to move her feet. Louis was confused, and didn't understand what he was doing, but he moved with her guidance. She frowned at him, and he closed his eyes. He could feel their feet moving together, the air move around their bodies, and he felt happy then, as if he'd entered a place of comfort that he'd been searching for.

But then someone's hand grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him away from Lilly-Ann. He choked and was pulled up. "Poor posture, wrong steps, and you're wearing woman's pointe shoes."

Louis looked up to see who was scolding him, and he saw a man there. He was taller than Louis by a lot, yet he only seemed to be a few years older. His dark brown, curly hair was tied into a bun, his green eyes were vicious and judgemental, and he wore a black leotard beneath a pair of jogging trousers. He had trainers on, not the ballet slippers that Louis had been expecting.

Louis's gaze followed that body back up until he met the face of the man. "Hello." He said, hoping that someone would gzt him out of the situation, but no one, not even Maria, seemed to be at the rescue. They all stood aside and let the man speak his mind.

He put his hand out to Louis, slipped it in the space between his ribs and his arm, and rested it on the dip of his back. He took Louis' other hand in his, and then he was pressing their bodies together. He leant over Louis, and Louis' feet rose from the ground until he stood of tiptoe. "This is good posture. Keep your head up, and your back straight. Ballet dancers are lions, not kittens."

Louis nodded, and the man let him go. He tried to remain as upright as he was told, but it was painful.

The man turned to Lilly-Ann. "You expect to teach a kid like this to dance like us? There is no way that he could do something that good. He's got clumsiness written all over him."

"I can try!" Louis shouted, and everyone turned to him in surprise. He seemed even surprised at himself, and he looked down for a few moments before turning back to the man. "I may be clumsy but I can try."

He had certainty in his stare, and the man frowned at him. "Do you really think that you have what it takes to be a dancer? I have seen endless people like you coming in here and thinking that they'll be the best dancer in the world. They all leave disappointed, so what is it that would make me believe that you'd stay?"

Louis bit his lip. "I don't want to be the best. I don't want to be the star of the show. I just want to dance."

"It takes hard work. Commitment. I don't see commitment in you. I'll give it three weeks and you'll quit."

Louis was becoming agitated, and it showed on his face and in the way that he fidgeted with the loose string on his shirt. "Mother didn't raise a quitter."

The man looked at him for a long while then, and Maria finally came to the rescue, pulling Louis aside so that he could pay for the lessons. She handed him a sheet, and he looked at the price, and his heart sank. "I-" he started, looking at the balance. "I can't afford it." he admitted.

"What about in instalments?" Maria asked, "I realise that you're still at school."

Louis shook his head and put the paper down. He looked at his ballet shoes, and it was strange, but realising that he'd have to give them up was something that set needles through his heart. "Even in instalments, I could never afford this."

"I'll pay for him."

Louis turned around. Thos vicious eyes were on him, but within them, there was something that hadn't been there before. "I'll pay for everything on the condition that you prove me wrong. Prove to me that you aren't a quitter."

*

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Written with my love, Lucy