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Louis sits in Harry’s chair, wrapped up in a robe that doesn’t quite fit him and slippers that literally served no purpose, as they were worn and holey and patchy. Harry wore them all the time, had worn them out long ago, but he refused to throw them out. They were the twins’ gift to him, the first birthday he’d spent with Louis’ family alongside his own.
Thinking of the twins, a frown pulls down at Louis’ lips. They’re both quite angry with him – Daisy, in particular. All of his sisters are, actually, even though Fizzy promised she understands. He knows he’s being a shit brother – Lottie hadn’t bothered to spare his feelings or her language – but he isn’t down there for the holidays, and he doesn’t plan to go. The twins are only eleven, and not quite sure how to deal with Louis anymore. (Not that Louis even knows how to deal with himself, but.) Christmas should be a fun time for them, no matter how the date is stained, now, with what happened.
The last time he’d talked to his sisters was two weeks ago, on the phone. He’d been on speaker, and hadn’t known, so when he told his mum he wouldn’t be coming down for the break, he’d heard six girls and a boy whine at him, frustrated. Phoebe had moved the fastest, Daisy – as always – in tune with her. They scurried down the hallway and locked themselves in the bathroom, Jay yelling at them to come back with her phone this instant and unlock this door right now.
“Why aren’t you coming, Lou?” Phoebe had asked, breathless, but Louis could hear the sadness in her tone.
“I just don’t think I can stomach it, Pheebs,” he admitted. Even at eleven, they weren’t stupid. They knew what had happened last Christmas.
Phoebe started crying quietly, and Louis heard a massive thump, like someone had thrown something against the wall. Daisy yelled loudly, too many emotions within for such a young girl. “We lost Harry, too, Louis!” She’d shouted, furious. “We loved him, too!”
The phone had clattered to the floor, and he heard the door unlock and open, Jay’s voice shouting-but-not-shouting, and some scruffly static as she picked up the phone and hurried to console him. Before she could speak, Louis had hung up the phone, and he hadn’t talked to any of them since, aside from receiving several text messages and voicemails he didn’t answer.
Liam had come over alone, not two hours after. Louis supposes Jay had called them all, frantic, and as soon as they figured it out, Liam had rushed over, because of all of them, he was the only one who could possibly stomach seeing Louis nearly dead again. Last time, Zayn hadn’t spoken to Louis for nearly a month, only texting him to check in because he wouldn’t ever actually stop caring about Louis’ well-being, and Niall had cried and punched Louis in the gut as soon as he was out of the hospital.
But now, Louis is alone, reading one of Harry’s old books and rolling his eyes despite himself because honestly, a Sioux/white-mixed man, living as a Sioux, falling in love with an Irish mail-order wife and rescuing her from her abusive husband, Harry?
The house is decorated, but only because Liam and Niall had snuck in and done it while Zayn took Louis paintballing. Louis hadn’t minded too terribly, because they’d done it exactly the way Harry would have, ignoring Louis’ superior eye for decorating and cleaning up spectacularly after themselves. Instead, he took a picture and Instagrammed it. He knows he doesn’t owe the fans anything; he knows. But he still loves them, and he was hyper-aware of the fact that if Harry had been there in that moment, it would’ve been all over his account, bursting with adoration towards Louis for “helping” him, publicly so everyone could see. Harry had loved that – showing everyone the truth, so many years after hiding.
So Louis reads on, scoffs as the woman is kidnapped by a man from a Sioux enemy tribe – the Blackfoot, the Lakota, he can’t remember, now, though Harry would have – and the hero fights to save her. And suddenly, there’s a knock on his door, and tears spring to his eyes, because – he doesn’t want to be with anyone.
He doesn’t want to see his friends, because they were Harry’s friends. He doesn’t want to see his family, because they were Harry’s family, and he certainly doesn’t want to see Harry’s family. He doesn’t want to see anyone – can’t. He wants to sit here, in Harry’s stupid, not-cushiony chair, wearing Harry’s giant robe that doesn’t even fucking tie right and his stupid, useless slippers and read his goddamn novelette of a cliché.
Instead, though, he places the bookmark in the right spot and stands, smoothing his hair, and as he scrapes the inside of his shirt against his not-brushed teeth, he takes a deep breath. Pasting on a smile, he opens the door, and there stands the one person he literally never thought he would see again, tall and dressed down in a way Louis had never seen him.
Nick Grimshaw looks rough. He’s unshaven, clutching a giant bag filled to the brim with bottles of various alcohols, and his eyes are red-rimmed and glassy. His lips are red-raw and he’s grinding his teeth, waiting for Louis to send him away. His hands are shaking.
“Are you high?” Louis finds himself asking hollowly. He doesn’t hate Nick Grimshaw; never did. Never liked him, before, but if there’s anyone now who could ever understand even a tenth of what Louis’ feeling right now, it’s Nick, whose entire body looks sad.
Nick shakes his head, and it’s not like Louis really cares, anyway, but looking the man in the face, Louis remembers the first Christmas with Harry, who’d demanded one of his friends to come back to Holmes Chapel, because he couldn’t imagine spending Christmas alone. One flash of Harry’s sixteen-year-old horrified and pitying face has Louis moving to the side, letting Nick come in, because apparently, both of them were alone for the day.
They sit in the living room, and Louis tosses Nick the remote because he doesn’t really care what they watch, but it would feel weird to sit and read with Nick there. Nick tosses a bottle across the couch to Louis, who catches it deftly and twists it open.
“I didn’t come here to, like, settle our shit once and for all,” Nick says after minutes of mostly-silence.
Louis snaps back to reality and looks over at him, a little taken aback. “I didn’t think you had,” he says honestly, and Nick nods, though Louis can tell he isn’t surprised.
“I just thought – he, you know.” Nick swallows, hesitating. “He loved me, too, as a mate. And he – he wouldn’t want –”
He gives up, then, and scratches at his nose, his mouth turned down so much it’d be comical in any other situation. Louis clears his throat, nodding, because he knows Nick’s being honest and isn’t here to fight. “He wouldn’t want us to be alone today,” he finishes for the man, who nods, swallowing hard.
Nick looks up at him, then, and Louis tries to make himself smile. It’s weird, and off, and it’s definitely a Bad Day, but Nick has a similar look on him and that makes it a tiny bit easier. They smile at each other a beat too long, and Louis swallows as he looks back at the TV, something he’s not familiar with currently on. It’s a shaky, pathetic excuse for a bond, but Louis will take what he can get, feeling like Harry’s a bit closer to him in this moment, with two of his favorite people in the same room – on the same couch, even.
“He would come in his pants right now, if he were here,” Nick muses quietly, after a comfortable sort of silence as settled.
Louis just chuckles instead of grinding his teeth the way he would have a year and a day ago. “He would,” he agrees out loud, wondering how Nick had been thinking the same thing he had been thinking. “Both of us, same couch and not even fighting?” Louis shakes his head incredulously. Never thought I’d see the day, he wants to admit, but that seems too harsh, and he’s learned his boundaries. “Rest of the lads, too,” he says instead, and Nick chuckles as he raises the neck of his beer, like a toast.
Louis watches as the man drinks, drinking from his own bottle, and he licks his lips in thought only a moment before he asks, “Do you do this a lot, then? Drink? Get high?”
Nick peers at him, considering, and says, “Drink often? Not too much. Get high? No.”
Louis nods, not sure if he’s being truthful, but he supposes so because Nick waits a few moments before he adds, quietly, “Losing Amy was a huge wakeup call to all that shit.”
Louis thinks to himself that losing Harry was the rudest awakening he’d ever had, and he didn’t even have much to wake up from. “I’m sorry,” he says, but Nick nods somberly, tipping his beer neck again.
“She’d take the piss if she found out,” he says, voice a bit slurred. It’s settling in, now. “If she found out I stopped getting high when she died. ‘Don’t be a pussy’,” Nick suddenly drawled in the strange, scratchy voice Louis knew to be an impression of Amy Winehouse’s. “’So what, I kicked it; get over it and take some fucking E, get a fucking cock up your arse, for Christ’s sake.’ That’s what she’d say,” he says, laughing a bit as he returns to his normal voice. He shakes his head. “She was too fucking crazy for this world,” he says quieter, fondly.
Louis nods, even though he never knew the woman. “So was he,” Louis says, jerking his chin slowly towards the picture he has framed of them, looking gay and happy as could be on their first real date.
He expects Nick to argue, maybe – tell Louis that Harry wasn’t too-anything, was the perfect amounts of everything, but he doesn’t. He just laughs quietly, smiling down at his bottle. “Here’s to being crazy,” he says, then, and Louis leans forward, reaching to clink their bottles together.
They spend the day quietly with each other, and Nick doesn’t Instagram anything, not even once. He does look through his feed at an alarming frequency, along with twitter, but he doesn’t say anything about spending time with Louis, and Louis doesn’t ask if their fans have any theories on how either of them are spending the first anniversary of Harry’s sudden death.
Louis makes them some macaroni and cheese – the noodles are still a bit hard, but Nick eats them and doesn’t complain, so Louis doesn’t worry about it, even if Nick won’t shit for a week – and once they’re done, Nick stares at him for a moment. He opens his mouth and hesitates, making Louis roll his head over to the side to get a good look at him without moving too much. He ate too much macaroni and cheese.
“Are you – do you…” He putters off, like he’s run out of steam for his curiosity, but he gestures something meaningful with his hand, and Louis swallows.
“Didn’t see a doctor for eight months,” he says. There’s no point in lying, now. He doesn’t feel the need to one-up this man, anymore. “Then, after I –” He almost says after I tried to kill myself, but changes track in time, hoping Nick won’t notice. Nobody knew about that, not even his sisters. Only the lads and his mum. “I got sick, enough that the lads proper freaked out, so. But yeah, I nearly went ballistic when they tried to inject me with a sedative.”
He had, too. Nobody had ever known Harry had any allergies to medication. Hay, grass, yes, but never medication. He’d gotten in a car wreck – he wasn’t all that hurt, but he was in a lot of pain with his back, so they administered him pain killers through an IV. Not two hours later, Harry had died, having a silent allergic reaction to the medication. Nobody had gotten to say goodbye.
Nick isn’t looking at him, which helps, because Louis is brave enough to say, “Every time I see IVs or even think about pain killers…” He shakes his head, not knowing even what he was meaning to say, but Nick must know, because he nods.
“Me, too,” he says, his voice a little hoarse.
Louis hasn’t talked about this part of Harry in months. It’s not that the lads won’t talk about it; they’d be more than happy to talk about it with Louis. He just never wanted to talk about it until now.
Surprisingly, Nick sticks around, not talking much about Harry but about other little things – nonsensical things, trivial things, work things, the lot – and Louis finds himself actually almost smiling genuinely for the first time in a year. It’s late when he finally stands, stretching and expecting a cab to be waiting outside. Louis almost asks him to stay – just for a few more hours, maybe even crash on the couch, or they have a guest bedroom – but he doesn’t.
He walks Nick to the door and quietly wishes him a happy Christmas, even though they both know it won’t happen any time soon again. As he closes the door, he leans up against it briefly, only to lock it back and head back to Harry’s awful chair.
He has calls and texts on his phone, probably, from the lads, but he’ll get to them later and tell them about Nick. Or maybe, he won’t. He hasn’t decided yet.
When he goes to bed that night, his throat burns and he’s drunk as hell and there are sad songs playing on his iPhone. He cries when he sees Harry’s side of the bed is still empty, and for the umpteenth time, he wants to burn down the hospital Harry died in, and he falls asleep missing his boy.