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There’s soft, whispering lips against the shell of Louis’ ear. Louis’ body aches, or will ache, when he moves, he knows, and so he doesn’t do much but wiggle his toes and twist his wrists.
“Morning, love,” Harry says. His breath curves into the architecture, the spiralling cartilage, of Louis’ ear. His body is still too asleep and too warm under the heavy hotel duvet to produce goosebumps, but he would if he could.
“Gonna go work out, yeah? See you in an hour and a half or so. Love you, sweet dreams.” There’s a kiss pressed to Louis’ temple, the soft padding of feet on ugly patterned hotel carpet, and the soft click of a door.
Louis lets himself sink back down into the heavy warmth of sleep, until he hears the entrance to their hotel room click shut, and his eyes snap open.
He’s suddenly very aware of how alone he is, and how much that makes his chest hurt.
He should just go back to sleep. Sometimes, if he catches it early enough, when he wakes up again later it’s already gone. But he can’t even get himself to close his eyes.
He shifts slightly, and suddenly his whole body hurts. But it’s not even a real, physical pain, it’s like Schrodinger's pain. Pain that could be or could not, he can’t tell if it’s there or not.
“Harry,” he croaks, uselessly. Harry’s halfway to the hotel gym by this point. He could call Harry, and he knows he’d turn right back around, make Louis some tea, grab his pizza socks, and cuddle up to him in bed in silence for as long as he needs. But. His phone is on the nightstand. Reaching for it is absolutely too much.
So he doesn’t, and instead stares at the ugly painting on the wall.
/
An hour and a half later, Louis’ staring at the same painting, and yet he doesn’t see it at all. He’s moved, at least, if only slightly. He’s now curled in on himself, pulling his feet up closer to his body to keep them safe. He’s on his left side, and his left arm is bent and hooked over his right shoulder. Occasionally he traces patterns into his own skin absentmindedly. His right hand is unaccounted for, he hasn’t taken notice of where it is. Tucked into his chest, maybe.
His eyes feel hot. They’ve been brimming with tears for a while now, but only one has spilled over, and even then it rests on the ledge that the bridge of his nose makes, wobbling there but too light to fall.
His thoughts are moving too fast for him to grab, and when he does there’s a second and a third and a fourth all going over it. He’s fairly certain he has a song stuck in his head, one of the sad ones Harry likes so much, but when he goes to grab a lyric there’s another thought in the way. He just wants to be asleep, to get out of this overwhelming hell. The hotel walls are too white, the floor too busy, the painting too ugly. The ceiling is too far to turn his head, his eyelids have too many thoughts behind them. Everything is too, too, too.
The front door clicks open. The squeak of Harry’s highlighter trainers. Soft click.
“Hey, sleepy head.” Too much.
“Time to start the day, wakey wakey eggs and bakey!” Oh, too much. He’s got to say something before that tear on his nose has the force behind it to drop, before more spill over.
“Pizza socks,” he says, softly. It’s not a demand, a want, it’s the only way he can let Harry know what he’s feeling. Though Louis can’t see him, he can feel the way Harry changes instantly.
“Of course, love.” Harry’s voice is much softer now. Louis hears his suitcase being zipped open, some rustling.
Harry walks around the bed to Louis’ side.
“Can you put them on, or do you need me to do it?” Harry asks. Louis squeezes his eyes shut, and the tear is finally pushed over onto the pillow. He feels so fucking pathetic, completely fucking useless. He can’t put his own damn socks on.
“That’s alright, babe, can you get your feet out of the covers for me, then?” Harry asks, crouching down. It takes a minute, and Harry waits patiently. Eventually, Louis manages to get his knees and ankles to work, even though it makes the ghost pain flare up. His feet find their way out of the warmth of the bed, and Harry slides a sock on them, respectively. Louis pulls his feet back in and opens his eyes.
Harry’s looking up at him from his crouching position with those jade ripples. Those forest skies. Those autumn grass worlds. His mouth, rose, is curved down in the slightest. Wood eyebrows are knitted together in the middle.
“Sorry,” Louis manages. His voice is raw and scratchy, small. He feels like the smallest thing in the world.
“Oh, love, don’t be. It’s okay that you feel like this, yeah? Please don’t be sorry.”
Louis might shake his head. He means too, but he’s not sure if he does. “Sorry.”
Harry’s face crumples slightly, if only for a moment, before he stands up and walks around the other side of the bed. Louis hears him toe off his shoes, and then there’s cold air under the blankets and a weight behind Louis.
“You alright for cuddling?” Harry asks. Raindrops, petals.
“Yeah.” A breeze.
There’s arms around his middle, the sun on his back.
“Love you more than anything.”
“Sorry.”
“Best thing that ever happened to me was meeting you, you know that?”
Louis squeezes his eyes shut tight again.
“Too much, just a little, please,” he whispers. There’s a kiss on the top of his head. He wants those lips to pull all the thoughts out of his skull, to keep them from his mind until he has the capacity to handle them.
“You look like a storm on the sea, like this.”
It wrangles a small laugh from Louis’ splintering chest. “Write a song.”
“Maybe I will.”
“About me?”
“Is that so hard to believe? There’s already loads.”
“Sad ones, though.”
“Different time now, no more hiding. I can write a happy song for you now.”
No more hiding. That used to be what would send Louis off spiralling, thinking about no more hiding. They say facing your fears helps you conquer them, and they’re not wrong. But now he gets these things, these episodes, instead of panic attacks. Sometimes something makes it happen, scrolling through twitter too much perhaps. Sometimes, like this morning, it’s just there, lurking, waiting, ghosting.
“Okay.” A sunbeam.
“Yeah, you want a happy song?” Harry asks. He’s so warm against Louis’ body. He could melt like chocolate.
Louis’ eyes are closed when he says, “We can write it together.”
There’s a smile in the air when Harry says, “Excellent idea.”
But Louis is asleep.