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//I still remember the look on your face, lit through the darkness at 1:58.//
There's not much Harry remembers from before the car accident. He just knows that Louis woke him up at some unholy hour and told him to get dressed.
They drove and drove and just fucking drove, but then they weren't driving anymore. Harry woke up in the hospital.
//You told me you loved me so why did you go away?//
Now he's sitting here in the chair next to the love of his life, who they say might not wake up.
//I do recall now, the smell of the rain.//
Louis is in an empty room. It's huge. It looks like it goes on forever and ever. He's the only thing in the room. The he hears it, someone's voice, grainy like there's poor cell phone connection.
"What the fuck?" he says. His voice echoes and bounces off the walls.
A bell rings and Louis goes to ask the question again when it hits him, quite literally. A small cube-shaped thing hits him in the shin and lands at his feet. "What the fuck." he says again, picking the cube up.
PRESS PLAY.
Louis squints at the cube thing and reads the words. Press Play. What the fuck, play where? He turns the cube over in his hands a couple times before he gets it. Without any hesitation, Louis presses play.
Words flash up on the screen and a little voice starts coming through the box. You're in the in between. You have the next six hours to make your choice. Stay, or go.
Then the words are gone.
"This has to be some sort of joke or something," Louis scoffs into the abyss.
A bell rings and Louis is hit again by another cube. PRESS PLAY. He does.
//That July 9th, the beat of your heart.//
A video starts playing. It's of Louis, getting off of a plane and running across the pavement and hitting the figure of someone tall. Voices come through the cube again. "I missed you so much." "I missed you too, Lou."
Who the fuck is that. What the fuck is this. Niall and Harry must be-oh. Harry. Louis can't breathe. It comes back in one giant flash. A snowy road, his boy in the passenger seat.
//But now I'll go sit on the floor wearing your clothes.//
The doctors are confident that Louis won't wake up. He had papers signed that said after 30 days and no improvement, to pull the plug. Today is day 30. Harry's been watching the clock nonstop because he knows there's a specific time before they start setting stuff up. Six hours.
He's sitting now, wearing Louis' NYU sweatshirt and willing the boy to wake up.
//Your name forever the name on my lips.//
Louis is all Harry's known for a really long time. They met years ago and haven't been apart since. Louis just fucking proposed a month ago. They're supposed to get married. There's adoption brochures sitting out on the table at home. Louis is only twenty five, he's not supposed to die. Harry's twenty three, he's not supposed to watch the love of his life die. He wants to get married and adopt beautiful boys and girls and a dog and he wants to have a life. He knows that there won't be a life after Louis. He just has to prepare for it.
But, how do you prepare to lose the one real thing you've ever known?
//I do remember the swing of your step, the life of the party, you're showing off again.//
This time the bell rings and Louis is hit in the fucking head. Why do the cubes have to hit him? PRESS PLAY. Oh-fucking-kay. Louis presses play.
Another video. They're clearly at a wedding this time. And, oh shit Louis remembers this. These are his fucking memories! Wow. Holy shit. Louis can't really think straight but he has to focus at the memory.
{"Louis," Harry whines. "Please come and dance with me."
"Harold you know how much I hate dancing, love."
I roll my eyes and then you pull me in, I'm not much for dancing, but for you I did.
"But you love me, don't you? So come dance."
Louis rolls his eyes because of fucking course he can't say no.}
Sitting in this empty room after watching the memory, Louis remembers that day clearly. It was his mother's wedding, six months ago...? Something like that. The details are fuzzy, he remembers getting drunk. They played Harry's favourite song (he probably requested it, honestly) an Harry had to dance.
Ugh, what the fuck is this place? Why is Louis here? Why does he have six hours to stay or g- oh my god. "Holy shit," Louis says. "No, no. Fuck no."
The first cube called this the in between. So does this mean he has six hours before he fucking dies?
//I love your handshake meeting my father.//
The day Harry brought Louis home his parents were shocked because, one, Louis was eighteen. Harry sixteen. And two, Louis was such a fucking charmer. As soon as Louis was out the door Harry's mother went on and on about how nice Louis was. Louis absolutely charmed their fucking socks off.
//How you kiss me when I was in the middle of saying something.//
You could always kind of tell that Louis and Harry had a thing, even if they didn't necessarily do anything direct to show it. eventually they had matching tattoos, super low key matching. As soon as Harry was allowed to do so he was tatting up his skin like his life depended on it. Louis actually did a couple of them.
Harry was never keen on PDA, so Louis kept it on the DL for the younger boys sake. But, one time, when Harry had finally turned seventeen (he was 17 and 4 days, to be exact), Louis was over for dinner (because Harry's mother fucking loves him). They were sitting in the living room and Harry was talking to Louis about whatever and all of a sudden he wasn't talking anymore, because Louis had kissed him. Right on the lips, right in front of Harry's mother.
And Harry fucking kissed him back. Yeah, it could have been a full on snogging session right in front of Harry's mother.
//I don't know how to be something you'll miss.//
Making the decision to stay or go is a very tough one. Louis only has two memories. Maybe his life on earth isn't even that great of one. Maybe it's not worth going back. Maybe-
"Fuck!" another motherfucking cube cuts Louis' thoughts off. PRESS PLAY.
Louis does.
{"It's not that big of a fucking deal, Louis." Harry shouts.
"Of course it's a big deal. You skipped an entire day of school to bum around with me."
"You fucking let me!"
"Because you told me you didn't have classes! How many other times have you done it, H?"
"School fucking sucks anyway, Louis. I'd rather spend my day with you rather than that shitty place."
"First of all, stop cursing. Just cause you're seventeen and barely even live at home anymore doesn't mean it's cool, okay? Stop cursing."
"You curse all the time." Harry points out, crossing his arms over his chest.
"That's because I'm nineteen and I can do whatever the fuck I want to do. You're seventeen and still have classes and scholarly responsibilities to take care of! You can't keep skipping entire days of school and conning me into thinking that you actually don't have class!" And, yeah, Louis could check the school schedule but he never thinks to.
Harry mumbles something that in-memory Louis can hear because he's got a response for it.
"I'm not fucking going anywhere without you, Harry. I'm not even going to NYU until you graduate next year. I'm waiting for you. I'm not going anywhere any time soon."
Harry slams the bedroom door shut, and Louis sleeps on the couch.}
//So I'll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep.//
Just as the cube finishes, another one comes out of nowhere. What the fuck is this, seriously. Why is Louis being pelted with cubes. Why can't they just, like, come up from the floor or something. Sighing, Louis picks up the cube. PRESS PLAY. Louis does. A slideshow plays to the song I Was Made For Loving You by Tori Kelly and Ed Sheeran. Jesus, that fucking song.
It's a bunch of pictures of Louis and Harry. Some are old, some are new. Louis is crying by the end of it.
Once the song is over Louis notices how the faint, grainy voice that was filling the room has stopped. It's silent.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do? I stay here and I leave this kid whom I've clearly had a hell of a lot of history with or I leave here and go back out there into the real fucking world where I don't even know what's waiting for me. How the fuck am I supposed to make that decision when I don't even remember half the shit that happened outside of here except through these fucking weird ass cubes that you keep hitting me with?"
//And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe.//
The light in the room dims. "Now you're fucking dimming the lights. What the fuck."
A crackling sound fills the room and one of the walls comes to life. Louis curses, jumping. "He's letting go," a voice comes clear through the speaker. "He's giving up."
"What?"
A video comes up on the wall, of Harry. He's sitting in some type of cafeteria, talking to someone. Louis recognizes the blonde head immediately, as surprising as that is. It's Niall. He needs to redye his hair, Christ.
"An hour," Harry's saying, staring at his coffee cup. "In an hour they're going to start shutting stuff down."
Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.
Niall reaches out and touches Harry's hand. "I'm so sorry, H. I wish there was something I could do."
"I keep thinking he's gonna wake up, you know? He's always had a flare for the dramatic." Harry smiles a little.
The voice in the room speaks again, "The cubes were to help you make your decision, they weren't supposed to make it harder. Harry has been sitting by your bed for the past thirty days--"
"It's been thirty days?" Louis shouts. "What the fuck?"
The voice doesn't falter. "But every day he's been slipping. He realizes that you're not going to come back, so he's finally letting go. That's why the lights dimmed. His love was keeping you here, and now everything is slipping."
The video feed on the wall disappears and Louis is left in the dark, even darker than it was prior to the video. Louis curses, throwing the cube clutched in his fist across the room.
//you can plan for a change in weather and time.//
Harry still hasn't figured out how everything ended up the way it did. One night he was cuddled up next to Louis in bed and the next they were out driving around in the snow and now Louis is laying here and they're literally about to turn off his machines.
He wasn't expecting this. How do you prepare for such a tragedy? One day you're looking at adoption brochures and the next the love of your life isn't going to wake up ever again.
//Never imagine we'd end like this.//
"So how do I fix it, then?" Louis asks the pitch black fucking room and this stupid over-the-speaker voice.
"When they unplug your machines think about the one thing that you have a reason to stay for, close your eyes and breathe."
"Just breathe?"
"If you don't want to leave that boy hanging like this, yes. Think about something you have to stay for, close your eyes, and just breathe."
Forever the name on my lips.
Harry stares at Louis' unmoving body while the nurse turns off the machines.
Louis stands in the center of the big empty dark room and closes his eyes. He can feel it, the moment everything is turned off. It's like this weight is lifted off of his shoulders and his body feels like it could float away to the clouds.
He closes his eyes tight and thinks about the one person he can't stand to leave behind and he breathes. He's blinded by lights and for a second he thinks that the random voice hasn't worked. But then he hears it, the crying, and he feels someone clutching his hand and he realizes that this is it, this is real. He breathes again, deeper this time. The person just cries harder. He hears his name, over and over again. It's loud, everything is loud, loud. But he's fucking breathing.