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and so it is... just how you said it would be...
“This way, sir,”
And Harry follows because he can’t not. He’s not really thinking about what might be at the end of this corridor. He’s not thinking about anything really apart from how his shoes squeak on the once shiny vinyl floor and it’s really bright in here and he always pictured it to be lights flickering, rather dull – if all those TV shows he’s watched were anything to go by. But it’s not. It’s not any of those things and it’s rather a normal looking hallway and a rather non descript door the officer holds open for him with a calm face, no emotion flickering at all. Harry wonders if they teach them that at police school or wherever it is you go to learn how to be a plod and he wonders how it is his brain is coming up with all these random thoughts because.
“Would you like to sit, sir?”
And Harry shakes his head because there is a window in front of him. A window with curtains on the other side and now the female officer who talked to him earlier is standing beside him again after coming through a door to his left. She doesn’t smile either, just stands at his side and he can feel her eyes on him, smell some sickly sweet scent of flowers or musk she must have just reapplied because he would have remembered it from before. Remembered it from when she put her hand on his shoulder when she said.
“Are you sure we can’t get someone-“
He shakes his head again because who would they get to come? His mother is at home and there are the girls to think about and of course, there is Liam but he’s out with Danielle. Niall is in Spain again because he has some girl hidden over there who he thinks they all don’t know about and Zayn, well it’s their break and Harry has no idea where Zayn has got to this time. He could call Nick of course, though he’s more Harry’s friend than.
“Are you ready?”
And Harry says nothing because – can you ever be? Will he ever be? And from the corner of his eye he can see the female officer lick her lips, and then she nods and the curtains open slowly, so fucking slowly.
“Is it?”
And Harry nods or makes a sound that must be what they’re after because they stop asking questions. Or he stops hearing. All he can see is the small space where eyelids don’t quite meet, dark lashes separating enough to show a blue that is not quite the right blue but is the right blue staring back at him but not seeing at all.
Then Harry doesn’t see anything, either.
1.
“Is he alright?”
“What do you think!”
“I think none of us are alright but, he can’t. This can’t be good for him to just-“
“Look, just leave him for tonight. He’s got us. He’s got all of us.”
2.
Warm fingertips trace his brow and softly drag wayward curls behind his ear. He feels that. He can near taste strong tea and something like cigarettes and patchouli at regular intervals when he remembers to breathe in. When his body recalls what it’s supposed to be doing and he chokes every time it does. There’s salt in the air too. A wet scent he can feel on his cheeks, dried to a crust on his lips mixed in with the snot from his nose. He feels these things, knows they are there and the person in front of him, lying so, so close is there to comfort or be comforted but he can’t open his eyes, can’t look because when he does – everything will be wrong again.
“Sweetheart, Harry, I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”
And Harry knows that voice, knows the lilt and clip of vowels that belong to a certain part of the north. He knows he should probably be comforting her, sharing in her pain because it would be worse for her wouldn’t it? He only had him for years, years far too few but she? She had him from birth, from before when he was nothing but a speck on a screen, a beat of a heart so strong it was one of the only things could lull Harry to sleep when they were on a bus or in a hotel in some foreign city. A sound no longer.
“He, he loved you so-“
The air is tinged with salt and Harry can feel the shake of her fingertips, a scattering of drops too warm to be rain falling on his skin.
And he clutches at the ache in his chest that is a growing hollow.
3.
“Hey,” Liam’s smile is too bright. Too filled with teeth and the purple under his red rimmed eyes says everything his grin does not. He’s standing at their oven, skillet on the burner and the scent of bacon and toast fills the air. But the ocean is there too – and Harry can almost taste it.
“Tea?” he asks and Harry nods, lifting himself up on the counter as he watches Liam move about their kitchen in ways familiar yet not as he opens cupboard after cupboard until with a soft “ah ha!” he pulls out two cups. The kettle is still boiling, a soft rumbling sound on the stove that’s out of tune to the sizzle and pop of the bacon frying. Then there is Liam again with more noise as he looks about for where the tea is, finding it and stilling because.
“Oh,”
And Harry knows it’s because there’s only one brand left on the shelf. One familiar box with its red stripe and its block lettering and then Liam is crumpling over the bench and the bacon is burning and Harry lets it.
4.
“The fucking nerve, the fucking nerve!”
“You’re not going to-“
“Of course not! This is, this is-“
“He deserves to have this. Fuck what they say. Fuck it all, Liam,”
“You don’t think I agree? You think I want to be the one to tell him he can’t even sit at the front, can’t hold Jay’s hand or be too fucking emotional-“
“Well you didn’t say anything when we were-“
“What could I have said? And for that matter what did you say, Niall? Because you weren’t exactly speaking up either!”
“You’re going to wake him up,”
“Good, maybe this will bloody bring him back to us, it’s like we’ve lost him as well as-“
5.
He wears black and his shoes are not as shiny as they would normally be – and Harry wonders if there is some rule about wearing shiny shoes to these things. He holds his mother’s hand and his sister’s in the other but it’s more they are holding on to him. Harry can’t really remember how to work his hands anymore. Can’t really remember how to feel things either.
He sits where they take him. He stands when he’s supposed to and mouths along to hymns he sang in church years before. He lets words wash over him as he focuses on a piece of lint on Mark’s collar. It’s red or maybe a dark pink and it reminds Harry of the jumper he bought for Phoebe on her last birthday, but maybe not.
There’s more singing, and it’s from a voice he knows and he can hear the pain behind the words. He thought Liam or maybe Niall but it’s Zayn. Harry can hear the breaks that shouldn’t be but are because there’s a thickness there. There’s so much hurt and it only pushes at the hollow in Harry’s chest. Widens the space that is so cold and it squeezes at his lungs until his breath is gone and maybe he’s not breathing anymore.
6.
She says nothing. She sits with him on the floor – and all he can think about is how her pretty black dress will be ruined by all the dust here, because he knows he hasn’t mopped it for – well a long while. She sits there and the sides of their pinky fingers touch and she smells too familiar. She is tangerine tinged with coconuts and tropical things he once loathed on another. But she sits and she is silent and for once, for once the pulsing of the space in his chest stops, stills and isn’t consuming all his organs with its black nothingness.
They sit and they sit and the shadows chase the sun from one side of the room to the other and still she stays and still they make no sound.
“You know what’s the worst?” she asks, and he manages not to jump – albeit soft apart from the recycled air blowing in from above and the low level street sounds from far down below.
“I feel relieved. I feel relieved because I can have my life back and I loved him, I truly did and I hate myself for feeling like there is a positive in all of this.”
Harry is never going to want to go near a beach again because that smell is back and it fills the air and cloys in his throat, lays thick on his tongue as he swallows.
“Every tear, Harry. Every single tear they caught on film, they’re all for you.”
7.
They call it a “hiatus.” They sit them down and Harry just follows Liam because he’s done that since they first were put into a band and it’s all he really can do. They sit in the office where they first signed their contracts and it feels strange seeing a space on the couch three of them would fill. Harry must stare at it for too long because then Naill’s feet cover the seat as he pulls them up, leaning against Zayn who throws his arm around the blond lad in a move so familiar but looks forced. Niall’s smile falters for a microsecond – but long enough for Harry to see and he gets it. The break isn’t just for him. They all feel it.
He hums a bit of a tune in a musical about empty chairs and tables he saw under duress once and doesn’t realise it’s out loud and not just in his head until Niall gets up and walks out – leaving the black leather open and Harry wants to laugh but he can’t. He doesn’t remember how.
8.
Nick drops by and he talks and talks and talks filling the silence Harry is so used to with sound and bright laughter and he talks so much Harry doesn’t feel like Nick wants him to answer. He fills Harry in on what’s happening with their friends, tells Harry about new sounds he’s sure to dig and fills the spaces that are so empty in the flat. Harry follows Nick as he moves from room to room, doesn't notice how Nick is picking up odd socks or magazines or how they end up in the kitchen, Nick at the chopping board waxing lyrical about an interview he just did with Chris Martin. There are more anecdotes and then Nick is at the stove and he’s still talking, frying things and stirring at a pot and then there’s this plate of stuff in front of Harry and Nick is managing to make sound around a mouth filled with food. Harry picks up his spoon and dips it into the chunky broth and doesn’t hesitate to put it in his mouth – Nick is eating it after all.
He also doesn’t hesitate to spit it out a second later because, “Fuck, mate, what is that shite?”
And Nick is crying and smiling and Harry wonders if he purposely poisoned Harry’s food just to get him to speak again?
9.
“We’ve rented this space,”
“Well not ‘we’, Liam has,”
“Fine, I have and I just thought maybe-“
“I had no part in this,”
“Zayn –“
“Well I don’t. I don’t think it’s a good idea at all-“
“But the therapist-“
“A fucking therapist knows nothing about us. Nothing about Harry and what Harry feels and how we - how I feel about-“
“It’s not like we’re recording it or anything for fucks sakes! It’s just-“
“No,”
“He hasn’t left the house in months, Zayn. Months. He, Lou-“
10.
Harry opens the door to their room holding his breath all the while. It’s taken him about an hour just to put his hand on the handle. Maybe double that to actually turn it and that time again to push the door open wide. It creaks from being closed so long. He coughs a little when he finally steps over the threshold. Dust motes fill the air and he blinks and blinks until the light is clear. Then he blinks some more because his eyes are stinging for a range of other reasons. The bed is still how they left it, sheets twisted and crumpled to one side because Harry had followed Lou out of his side of the bed when they finally got up. He picks up Louis sleep pants on the floor, nurses them close to his chest as he steps forward again, falling onto the mattress and pushing up on his toes so his face meets Louis’ pillow.
He lets out an agonized sound when all he gets from breathing in is a nose full of dust and the barest trace of Louis under it all. He breathes in and in until he feels his lungs burn because he’s swallowed all the sweat and hair product and dirt or whatever lay on the cover and he’s sucked up the oxygen too. He wonders as he pushes his face in deeper – could he let himself lay here, breathing in nothing but recycled air until there was nothing to breathe anymore? But as he breathes in again – there’s a little less of Louis and a little more of the stale air surrounding him and when there finally is nothing left of the boy he grieves for, Harry rolls over and doesn’t move for hours.
He lies there and he pretends it’s that morning again. He is lying there waiting for Louis to return from the shops with Harry’s favoured brand of tea because they were out. He lies there and he tries to pretend it wasn’t hours later that he finally got up with a giggle because there was a knock at the door and all he could think about was the bollocking he was going to give Louis for forgetting his keys – again. He lies there and pretends that the smile on his face didn’t fall when he found two police officers there with a harried looking doorman behind them instead of Louis and his fringe falling over his face, eyes rolling at whatever quip he knew Harry would have ready for him. He pretends he didn’t fall to the floor the moment the female police officer – Pamela? Petunia? Something starting with P – put her hand on his shoulder and said there had been an accident the moment after they confirmed who he was.
“Aneurism,” and “blood clot” and “nothing anyone could do” and “in the middle of the store” and “you were down as his In Case of Emergency contact” and “we’ll have to get you to come and make a formal identification” and “truly sorry.”
Harry doesn’t cry this time. He’s done all of that before. He picks up his phone and he texts his mum and he texts Jay and then the boys.
9.
He has a box of things taped up and hidden in the back of his new closet. It’s buried under a bag marked “winter coats” and another “Christmas” so he won’t be needing to look at it in a while.
8.
They try it once. A tour is organised – not anything ‘huge’ they say (though three concerts in a major city in each country they’ve visited before plus a host of dates in the UK is apparently what goes for small these days). They practice at Li’s house. He and Danielle had let Harry stay while he found someplace new and helped him settle in and Danielle let Liam sleep over when Harry couldn’t handle feeling so small in his queen sized bed. They practice and they practice and it’s all new sounds Liam and the other’s have been toying with on their own – nothing old. Nothing which requires a five part harmony and Harry pretends not to notice.
They sound good – well that’s what management say and Harry goes along with it because he always loved this part of what had become his life. Singing, music, sound – it was always the buzz under his skin long before. . . well long before anyonething was.
He is quiet through the first round of interviews they have. Management have assured him and the others Louis won’t be brought up. It’s been a year and a bit but still, no.
They do a quiet little acoustic set at a select cafe only a few of their fans that the boys have interacted with over the years are told about. It’s good. The girls cry and they are quiet for the most part, clapping loudly at the end. If anyone notices how Harry kept his eyes on the floor or closed the entire time so he wouldn’t look to his side for a fifth chair then no one said anything about it.
Then it’s the sixth or seventh actual show in front of a packed theatre (they all put their foot down on stadiums) where Harry starts to lose it. He swears he can hear Louis voice. Feel the soft heat of his cheek against Harry’s own during a lull where Niall speaks and Louis would whisper in Harry’s ear. He looks and he looks and his eyes dart across the stage and then his feet are moving and he’s not singing anymore.
Twitter actually collapses for an hour afterward.
7.
“And Harry, we all know how close you were with Louis, how are you coping now it’s coming up to a year since his death?”
“That’s something private we won’t be talking about, sorry.”
“Fine that’s fine. But there has been a lot of interest in some sort of public event to mark the occasion? Louis had a lot of fans out there,”
“Did you hear what Liam said, mate?”
“Niall-“
“Louis’ grave has become a bit of a memorial hasn’t it? Very reminiscent of Jim Morrison’s-“
“We said we weren’t talking about it.”
“Louis was-“ . . . “You hit me! He hit me! I’ll sue! I’ll fucking have you Harry Styles!”
“Try it, mate. Just try.”
6.
Harry doesn’t do interviews anymore – unless they’re with Sugarscape who’ve been good to him all along. The tour goes on until they’re back in England and then they’re on that stupid bus again and it’s their downfall. It’s not the same coach. It’s not even like their other one at all – this being all high tech and whiz bang and new but Harry feels it all the same. The bunk is too big – even though he can barely fit his gangly torso in if he lays on his back – has to lie on his side all curled up because it’s just not made for someone as tall as him and Harry has always like to spread out when he sleeps.
That’s not it though.
There’s this quiet sometimes – this halt in conversation where Louis would previously have filled it and Harry knows he’s not the only one who can tell. He sees it in how Zayn has taken up smoking again. He feels it in how quiet Niall has become on the road, how his jokes and laughter don’t ring through the enclosed space and then Niall isn’t there at all – travelling on the band bus and spending more time with Josh who still can’t find words apart from apologies to speak to Harry. And Liam?
Liam is so busy trying to hold them all together - he doesn’t even notice how he’s falling apart.
5.
“-thank all the fans for being what we’ve always known them to be, the greatest in the world. We truly have loved every minute of being together but we feel it’s time to move on, like we’ve always said – it would be impossible to be One Direction without one of us and we hope you understand why that rings true now more than ever. Our Greatest Hits album will be available on March 10 worldwide with all proceeds going to Louis’ favourite charity-“
4.
Harry sells his apartment, and theirs.
He moves inland, where the smell of the sea can’t find him.
And when it does – because it always does. He moves again.
3.
Three years and he still wakes up rolling into an empty space that’s cold to the touch.
Five years and he gives up, buys a sofa wide enough for one to sleep on. He hasn’t much use for a bed.
Six and he brings a boy home – drunk and laughing and happy and handsy – he forgets his name, forgets the boys name, forgets everything. Until. . . until he has his mouth around the boys cock and he moans and it sounds so much like Louis that he locks himself in the bathroom, not caring if the boy sells his story to the press.
Not that there would be much interest. He hasn’t been addressed as Hermit Harry in a while after all.
2.
“Haz, Harry? You home mate?”
“Harry, Harry you need to pick up the phone, your mum called me and said she hasn’t-“
“Harry-“
“You have no new messages.”
1.
He see’s Jay in a bakery one morning. Well, not exactly see’s – he virtually runs into her as he is walking in and she is walking out. She’s got her arms full of bread and a bag or three with what looks like cream buns and caramel tarts (Daisy always tended to like the sweet things). He apologises profusely, bending down to pick up what’s fallen and he only stops running at the mouth when her hand rests on his shoulder and he looks up and into eyes he hasn’t seen in years because they reminded him of a pair he saw once that were cold, cold, cold.
And then everything is either dropped or squashed between them as she wraps her arms around him. He cries like he hasn’t done in near ten years and she holds him and shushes him with words she uttered once while curled up with him on the floor of a flat which a bunch of someone else’s have lived in now. He cries and cries and she just holds him and she smells the same and all he can hear in his head is Louis, Louis, Louis, louislouislouis.
But all he’s saying is “sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry”. And then “it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have made him go. I should have just had one bloody cup of Yorkshire tea and I would have been there. He wouldn’t have been alone. I would have been with him!” And then more sorry’s and she’s shushing him until his words are just sobs and then silent tears and he doesn’t care if they are blocking the door and people are probably staring.
Because being here and having Louis mum tell him it’s going to be alright and that she loves him that Louis loved him is all he needs to hear. And it’s as if that black space, that emptiness shrinks and shrinks and shrinks as she hugs him until it’s nothing. Nothing at all.
. . .
“This song, this one isn’t on my album. This is just for him. The boy I loved and lost too young,”
I can't take my mind off of you...