Archive of Our Own

🌼

December 6th 2022

“You’re such a prick.” Zayn laughs, legs tossed up on Gemma’s desk as he throws a grape up into his mouth. 

When Harry turns around in her chair, one hand pressed to his chest and the other gripping a handful of Gemma’s pens, he laughs as he replies, “Thank you!” like he really does appreciate the sentiment. Quietly, he does.

For the last five years, ever since he started shadowing Gemma during his training, Harry’s made it his mission to annoy his older sister at least once a day. They don’t live together anymore, there’s only so much he can do in a school day, his window of opportunity is much more limited. Unluckily for her, it’s made him more creative, more cunning. Granted that messing with her supplies, pens especially, is admittedly one of his more juvenile pranks, it still seems to annoy her just as much as the time he jammed the lock to her office door just to beat her to the lunch queue. 

He can be a nice little brother when he wants to be too, like just yesterday when he baked her a birthday cake with exactly thirty two candles and interrupted her Year 8 English class to give it to her. Neither of them got much cake by the end of her lesson but it made her smile and he saved twenty seven thirteen year olds from reading anymore Shakespeare during their last double period of the day. 

Zayn throws his feet down off of her desk, ripping half the crust off his sandwich and pulls his chair in as Harry reaches to take a grape. He slaps his hand away but Harry still steals it, preening when he opens another one of Gemma’s drawers. He never really expected to find a new friend who was his age at this job, let alone Zayn. They started around the same time and they both just clicked. They both understood each other in a way that made Gemma roll her eyes at their antics and anytime the rest of the staff mention one of them, the other quickly follows. He’s pretty certain some of the students think that they’re dating too. Sometimes, he likes to pretend they are too just to spur the rumours and make his day a little more interesting. 

Not that any day working as an English teacher in a Secondary School is predictable or close to what he considers normal. Every day brings its challenges but he wouldn’t change any of it for the world. When they get to the end of the year and he gets to watch one of his favourite students open their GCSES and pass, after all they put into it, it makes it worth it. 

”How many pens does she need?” He mutters under his breath, taking another handful as he rummages through the drawer. 

“You steal them all.” Zayn points out through a mouthful of bread and cheese. 

Harry firmly nods. “Fair point.” He replies. 

He does steal all of Gemma’s pens and pencils and rulers and sometimes her ID to use the printer. He’s just fulfilling his younger brother duty and making sure everything is right within the universe. He’s not always as prepared as he likes to think he is and now Gemma always is for the both of them. She expects this. So, really, he’s only doing what she expects and keeping her schedule in order. He’s nice and considerate like that. An overall decent human being. The best, actually, he reasons with himself as he opens another drawer and picks his favourite colours for his next Year 10 class. 

If he has to listen to them yawn and complain over A Christmas Carol for the next hour when he doesn’t even want to be teaching it to them then the least he can do to entertain himself is pick his favourite colours to absentmindedly draw Snoopy in his notebook while they pretend to do the task he spent hours picking out for his lesson plan. 

“OK, I have to get back down to the field.” Zayn announces, snapping the lid of his lunch box back down. “I’ve got football with the Year 9’s and I’m dreading it, honestly, right snarky bastards some of them.” He sighs, adjusting his shorts. Why Zayn wears tiny shorts in the middle of winter, he’ll never know. Harry can’t say he hasn’t checked him out a few times like most of the girls in his classes either though. He’s only human after all. 

Harry, with a handful of multicoloured pens clinking together, sarcastically salutes towards him. “Good luck.”

“I’ll need it.” Zayn mutters back under his breath as he repacks his bag and slings it over his shoulder. Luckily, with his next class only being next door to Gemma’s office, he still has another five minutes to spare before the kids slowly start filing upstairs and another five after that before he has to go and unlock the door and let them in. Plenty of time to pick his pens, check his phone and finish off the tiny bit of birthday cake he managed to sneak out from Anne’s after Gemma’s birthday dinner last night. Silver linings. 

It was a nice celebration of close friends and family, nothing too high maintenance, and exactly what Gemma had asked for. Except, apparently turning thirty two is just as depressing to her as when she turned thirty and cried into the cake. 

When he has a small mouthful of chocolate cake and a neat line of blue, purple and red pens placed out on the table, the door rattles open. He locks eyes with Gemma, her phone pressed to her ear between her shoulder and a permanent frown on her mouth.

Harry turns, chocolate smudged at the corner of his lips before his smile widens and he thumbs it away. He supposes he might as well confess, she’s caught him red handed, but for once, she doesn’t look annoyed at him . In one hand she fiddles with her lanyard, keys jingling back and forth. In the other, she flexes her fingers in and out, balling her hand open and closed in the pocket of her pant leg. He knows that nervous move, he knows her, ‘ I’m stressed enough as it is, don’t talk to me right now .’ face and it’s that. 

Sucking chocolate icing from his thumb, Harry spins in the chair as he mouths, “ Who is it? ” to Gemma. 

She doesn’t answer. She takes her hand from her pocket, waving it out in front of Harry to silently and semi politely tell him to shut up. She moves past him to sit down on the nearest desk as she mutters, “Uh-huh. Yeah.” into the phone.

“ What? ” Harry mumbles and scoots closer, digging his fork into another mouthful of cake. If there’s drama involved, he wants to be involved. Well, hear it at least. He’ll stay out of the arguing. He’s never dealt well with shouting, usually he’d just cry. Still, he loves to hear it.

“Okay. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I’ll let him know.” Gemma promises, reaching her hand out to try and push Harry away. When he swerves away from her hit, she kicks out her foot and rolls him back by the chair. He groans and pushes himself back in front of her like the persistent, annoying baby brother he likes to be.

When she stops speaking, she silently lowers the phone down into her lap and blinks a few times, unspeaking. 

“What is it?”

“It’s about Louis.” She says without looking up. Harry thinks he can feel his heart beating up from his chest and into his mouth, can feel every pulse in his throat when she mentions his name. They don’t say his name.

“They’ve found him.” 

“His body?” Harry asks, voice so small that for a short moment he feels like that scared school kid again. 

Swallowing, Gemma shakes her head. “They’ve found him.” She repeats. Harry drops the rest of his cake onto the carpet. 

🌼

February 1st 2012

lou : HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY HARRYBO!!!!!!! 

                                  thank you!!! i love my presents btw x

lou : ofc you do bcs they’re from me

                         are we still going out tonight to celebrate?

lou : FIRST LEGAL CLUB NIGHT !!!!! first round is on me. 

                                      awesome!!! i’ll wear my best outfit

lou : you better. don’t show me up i’m taking you to the best place i know. 

                                      stop flirting w me you weirdooooo

                              get round here so we can go to college

                                                         i don’t want to be late

lou: teacher’s pet

                                        u can’t be mean to me today!!!!!!

                                                              those are the rules

lou: says who?

                                                                                      me.

lou: i’m nearly there!! stop worrying.

🌼

“Hi, Anne.” Louis greets when he walks in through the back door, slinging his bag back around his shoulder and bends down to scratch behind Dusty’s ear as she slinks around his feet. “Hi, Dusty girl.” He coos, quieter. 

“Hi, Darling.” Anne replies from the kitchen, never once looking up from the pan. “Harry’s in the front room, I think.”

“Cool. Thanks.” Louis pulls back and side steps around the cat towards the living room. If anything, Anne would probably be more concerned if he didn’t come in through the back door unannounced every morning before college.  

When he finds Harry, sprawled out on the sofa, he follows his eyeline to where he’s absentmindedly watching the early morning Scooby Doo cartoons. Head on his chest and body slumped across his legs, Max, their border collie lays half asleep on his body. 

“Happy Birthday!” Louis says, crouching down from behind the sofa to cover his eyes with the palm of his hand. At first, he flinches. Then, he sinks back into it while Max’s tail beats against his legs. “Guess who?”

“Real tough one, I don’t know.” He replies, sarcastic.

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” Louis announces. Max, tail still wagging, plods up Harry’s chest until his paws dig into his torso and he reaches out to try and lick along Louis’ cheek. Harry grunts, squirming underneath him but Max, as relentless as ever, stays right where he is. When he ducks away, hand still firmly pressed over Harry’s eyes, Max gives in and licks his hand instead, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth as he sits down right on the top of Harry’s stomach. 

“I’m gonna move my hand. Close your eyes.” He instructs. He doesn’t bother to look back to know that Harry does, digging into his bag again while Max happily pants, his heavy tail bouncing across Harry’s thighs. He doesn’t need to see Harry to know that he’ll follow his instructions, and it’s not like Harry’s the type of boy his teachers would call quiet and well behaved all the time, but when it comes to Louis, he’s pliant. When it comes to Louis, if he said jump he’d take a running head start. 

“Okay.” He puts one hand out between Max and Harry’s face. “Hold your hands out. There, perfect. You can open your eyes now.” 

When he does, a tiny cupcake sits in his open hands, decorated with sloppy buttercream icing and rainbow sprinkles. Max slobbers and tries to push his face against Louis’ hands but he gently pushes him back by his nose until he shuffles down the sofa and Harry protectively cages his cupcake towards his body. 

“The twins helped.” He adds, perching on the arm of the sofa and tosses his legs over. Harry wriggles himself out from underneath Max’s body, eyes still hungrily staring at the cupcake, and sits up against his legs. “Suggested the rainbow sprinkles. I thought chocolate but,” He shrugs, patting Harry on the top of his head while the Scooby gang plans to split off to investigate a supposed haunted fairground. “What do I know?”

“I love it. It’s perfect.” Harry grins back.

Max, whining, scampers up closer towards them both and loudly sniffs, his nose pointing towards the cupcake.

With one hand adjusting the bottom of his jumper and the other awkwardly balancing the cupcake in his hand, Harry nudges Max with his hip. “No, Maxie. It’s not for you.” 

Somehow, like Max knows, he whines even louder and slumps his head down on Harry’s thigh. 

“Did the bad man say you can’t have the cupcake, huh?” Louis coos, voice high pitched when he strokes along Max’s head. 

“Don’t turn against me on my birthday!”

Louis ignores him, stroking behind Max’s ear. “Yeah, he did! I know, he’s so mean.”

Max’s tongue lolls out of his mouth, eyes wide. As Harry opens his mouth to argue, Gemma plods down the stairs in her pyjamas, tying her dressing gown around her waist. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be at college?” She asks suspiciously, glancing over in their direction. 

Harry, like he’s suddenly aware that is where they’re meant to be, jumps up to his feet and slings his backpack over his shoulder as he replies, “Aren’t you supposed to be at University?” in retaliation. 

Scowling, she takes a step closer. “It’s called study leave, dipshit.” She replies, covering his face with her hand and pushes him back down into the sofa before strolling towards the kitchen. 

When she does, the cupcake topples to the carpet. 

Max, seeing his opportunity, launches himself from the sofa and towards the cupcake. Harry tries to grapple with his collar to pull him back, shouting, “Max! No! Don’t!” but he’s too late. 

Louis bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing when Max turns around with a dollop of buttercream across his nose and cake between his paws, the cupcake case shredded on the floor. He sniffs and licks the cream from his nose just as Anne whisper-shouts, “You can’t be mean to your brother on his birthday!” from the kitchen. 

A few seconds later, Gemma shouts, “Happy Birthday, dipshit!” through the door. 

With an annoyed huff, Max buries his snout back into what’s left of the cupcake. Louis can’t help himself this time, his laugh simmering to the surface. Suddenly, Harry starts laughing too. 

🌼

“Is that what you’re wearing out?” Louis asks, ripping his eyes away from Mario Kart to look at Harry’s outfit. Just as quickly, he fiddles with the controller and turns his eyes back to the screen, cursing under his breath when baby Mario slips over a banana peel and spins around. 

“Yeah?” Harry replies, uncertain. He blinks down at his outfit. It doesn’t look that different from something he’d usually wear, tank top, jeans and his favourite pair of trainers. And okay. The mesh shirt is new but he’s eighteen now, he didn’t want to turn up in a plain tee or jumper, it’s a statement. For what he’s not sure though. “Why? Is something wrong with it?”

Louis keeps his eyes on the screen. Harry catches the way his mouth twitches when he replies, “No. No. Nothing’s wrong with it.”

“What is it?” Harry asks, voice more serious. He frowns, resting against the arm of the sofa. “What’s wrong with it?” He’s never been clubbing before, not properly, but he’s heard enough of Louis’ stories. It’s not like he’s actively looking to hook up with anyone tonight but he wouldn’t say no right now either. 

“No,” Louis shakes his head and starts a new game. “Nothing’s wrong with it, Harry.” And then he smiles. “Unless you want everyone to think you’re a massive slut.” 

“Fuck off.” Harry huffs, hitting him in the arm when Louis laughs and clutches onto the controller. 

“You look great, Har.” He promises, finally turning his gaze away from the screen and reaches up to ruffle his hair like the annoying friend he likes to be. “Everyone’s gonna be all over you.” 

Grunting, Harry batts his hand away and smooths his hair back down. 

🌼

The club that Louis takes him to is loud and sweaty and uncomfortable. Half an hour in, Harry decides that he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the amount of people around him, looking at him, how the music thrums through his ears and he has to awkwardly make his way through a maze of bodies to try and get across the room to Louis. 

Louis, his lovely best friend Louis who he’s stuck next to like a scared puppy in this nightclub, seems to have made a new friend. Well. Harry’s not sure he’d call him that. 

He looks older than them, though he can’t tell by how much, his arm slung over Louis’ shoulder by the edge of the dance floor. He moves his hand to brush the fringe of his straight brown hair when he laughs, his face soft, and adjusts his glasses. Harry’s not really sure what Louis’ type is, he’s never gone out with him like this, but this guy looks like everything he’d imagine he isn’t interested in. And Harry won’t say he’s not attractive, but in a…slightly geeky way. 

Jaw set, he ducks around a couple on the dance floor and walks over with their drinks. Louis laughs at something the man says and Harry decides then that he hates him. It’s not like him and Louis are a thing . They never have been, not in that way. Sure, sometimes some of the kids at school would make a joke about them being together all the time but they’re just friends . At least, that’s what Louis always says. 

Harry can’t say he hasn’t thought about kissing him before. He can’t say he hasn’t thought that maybe when people joke they should just start dating now, that they’ve been together for years, that they can’t wait for the wedding, that maybe they should be together, maybe that would all be easier than replying, ‘ We’re just friends.’ every time. 

Still, Louis doesn’t seem interested in him that way, especially not right now, happily laughing along with the man, tucked up against his side. 

“Here’s your drink.” Harry grits through his teeth and passes Louis his glass.

He laughs again, bringing it up to his mouth before he motions out towards the man and swallows. “This is Anthony.” He introduces, nodding his head up towards him. Instead of saying anything, Anthony just laughs and nuzzles his head further into Louis’ neck. Harry’s sure his eye starts twitching but he tries to deflect them both from it, furiously blinking down at the floor. 

When Louis finishes giggling, much to Harry’s dismay, he motions his hand back out towards him, his drink sloshing back and forth against his glass. “Um, this is,” He cuts himself off and laughs again when Anthony whispers something Harry doesn’t catch and nips at his neck with his teeth, Louis’ cheeks flushing pink under the lights. Harry can’t help the jealousy that bubbles in the pit of his stomach, he knows just how difficult it is to make Louis flustered and, somehow, Anthony’s managed to do it with one whispered sentence in the span of thirty minutes.

“This is my friend Harry.” He manages finally, lazily pointing towards him again. Friend. Friend, friend, friend. My friend Harry. 

“Hi.” Anthony replies, lifting his head up. He doesn’t move enough to leave Louis’ shoulder, casually striking out his hand. His voice is deeper than Harry expects it to be as he clumsily tries to shake his hand back and downs half of his glass in the next breath. 

“There you go!” Louis laughs when Anthony’s arm starts to slink down towards his waist. “That’s the spirit, birthday boy.”

He leans forward, placing the palm of his hand flat against the bottom of his glass and tilts it back up until Harry almost chokes, scrambling to hold it properly and swallows. “There, get it down you.”

“It’s your birthday?” Anthony asks, voice louder over the music when he straightens up against Louis’ side. Harry blinks at him. He almost sounds excited at the idea that it’s his birthday. He doesn’t like it. There’s something…odd lingering behind it.

“Yeah.” He deadpans, wiping the corner of his mouth. “Eighteen today.” 

“Happy Birthday!” He shouts back, arm suddenly wrapped around Louis’ waist. “Here,” He digs into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, glancing at his watch before he smiles at them both. The way he does it, casually slipping his card out from his wallet and gesturing his head towards the bar, it’s like he looks at them like they’re kids, like he knows that really they’re just naive, dumb teenagers still.

Before, he didn’t look much older and Harry thought maybe he had a few years on them. Now, there’s something about the way he carries himself that makes him think he might be older than what he's letting on. Something about it just feels wrong, like there’s an ulterior motive behind every one of his moves that makes Harry’s skin crawl. 

“I’ll go get you a drink to celebrate.” 

Before he can reply, Anthony walks off towards the bar and Louis happily smiles as he raises his glass back to his mouth.

“Do you like him?” Harry asks after an awkward beat of silence between them, his voice carrying across the space between them along to the beat of a new song. 

“Well, I’m not gonna kick him out of bed.” Louis laughs back, grabbing Harry by both arms. “Lighten up a bit, Harry. Have some fun! It’s your birthday!” When he lets go, he pats him on the shoulder.

Yeah, he thinks, you’ve already said that . In the last half an hour he’s worked out that clubbing might not be his scene though. The people, the smells, the lights. It’s just all a bit too much. Even if he sort of hates it, even if he thinks he’d rather have had a nice dinner and some drinks out with his family and closest friends and then cosied up in bed, the last thing he’s going to do is leave Louis alone with Anthony right now. 

When Anthony comes back, he proudly holds the drink out in one hand. Begrudgingly, Harry takes it. “You’ll like it.” He promises. “Happy birthday.” 

“What is it?” Harry asks, tilting the glass to the side. Whatever it is, it smells strong.

“Just try it.” Anthony insists. “It’s good.”

🌼

Harry’s not sure when he loses Louis in the club. Or where for that matter. He’s not sure when his skin starts to feel prickly either, when his mouth starts to dry and everything starts doubling into two but it does. 

He’s been drunk before, it’s not like this is his first time, but that wasn’t really anything compared to this. That was cheap cans of beer that Sam’s older brother bought for them in the corner shop that they drunk in an empty field until they all had a nice buzz and then Sam vomited and they went home. This feels hazy, his legs stumbling towards a toilet stall to throw up. When he closes his eyes, the dizzying spinning stops for a split second. 

He can feel the sheen of sweat on his upper lip, breathing in sharply when he locks the door and lets himself fall to his knees by the toilet. When he tries to throw up, nothing comes out. Instead, his head starts to spin, a fuzzy noise ringing behind his ears. 

Somehow, he manages to fumble in his pocket for his phone, giving in to how heavy the weight on his neck feels and drops his head to rest against the toilet seat when he dials for Gemma’s number. At least, he thinks it’s Gemma’s number.

He tries rolling the sleeves of his shirt up while he listens to the phone ring, his chest heaving in a deep, trembling breath. They fall back down when he shifts the phone against his ear, his body suddenly burning with heat.

When she picks up, her voice sounds muffled, like it’s sunk low under water. He’s sure he can barely manage a, “What?” in response to whatever her waterlogged voice asks, the words twisting uncomfortably in his mouth to try and get out. 

“ Har?” She asks. “ What’s going on? Where’s Louis?” 

“Don’t know.” He thinks the words come out of his mouth. He thinks it’s him saying it. He tilts his head further down, a low sigh leaving his mouth with a sour taste lingering on the back of his tongue. “Can’t find him.” 

“ What do you mean? Do I need to come and get you? ”

He tries to nod. He tries to say yes. It comes out as a choked sob instead, his arm suddenly too heavy against the phone in his hand. 

He remembers saying, “Gem, I don’t feel well.” He remembers crying into the phone. He remembers the sound his screen made when it fell and shattered, his phone landing upside down on the tiles. He remembers his eyes closing, the world spinning black. 

He doesn’t remember Gemma and a bouncer dragging him out into her car from the toilet stall. He doesn’t remember the sound of her panicked voice on the phone to Anne on the way back home. He doesn’t really remember waking up in a puddle of his own urine and spit in the hospital either. 

He remembers asking, “Where’s Lou?” when he regained some sort of consciousness though. And every waking second of every day, he remembers the look Robin had given him when he replied, “I don’t know. Nobody’s heard anything since yesterday.”

🌼

December 6th 2022

For the next day, Harry had just thought that maybe Louis had a good time with Anthony. Maybe he just went back to his, as much as he didn’t approve of Anthony or at all like him, and they slept together. Maybe his phone had died too, it wouldn’t have been the first time. 

But then Louis didn’t answer his calls. Then Louis didn’t show up to college. Then, before he knew it, Harry was sat in a stuffy room with an officer and a forensic artist trying desperately to remember the colour of Anthony’s eyes. He was almost sure they had been blue. He’d sat awake every night for a week trying to remember if they were blue until he bolted awake one afternoon, mid nap and in a cold sweat when he realised they were brown. They’d always been brown. In the grand scheme of things it didn’t really matter. He went back that same day to tell them and they changed the sketch but it never made a difference. Still, if he could change one tiny piece of information to try and get Louis back to them then he would and he did. 

“Okay.” Gemma starts, opening the passenger door to Harry’s car and sits down, slotting her bag between her legs. “I’ve spoken to Carl, he said to take as much time as we need and I grabbed your bag for you–” She stops, silent. Harry doesn’t notice that she stops. He was never listening to her in the first place. Her voice blurs when she speaks, like every word muddles together into a new language that he can’t understand.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t reply. He grips the wheel and tries to blink back any tears before he can let himself cry. He’s sick of crying, sick of this feeling when he thinks about Louis when it never used to feel that way. The worst thing he thinks he ever thought about Louis before this was that he was jealous of him. He was jealous of how easy life seemed to gravitate towards him, how easy it was for him to meet new people, how he had good grades and everyone loved him and everything in his life seemed near perfect. He quickly realised that was probably because he was in love with him though. Now he spends most of his days blaming himself for that night, for not staying closer to him and Anthony, for not ringing Gemma sooner, for ever leaving him alone to go and get their drinks. 

That night’s still a bit of a blur to him. After he realised he definitely hadn’t had enough alcohol to be drunk and he’d probably been spiked, the uncomfortable thought of, ‘ What’s happened to Louis then?’ has stayed in the back of his head every second since. 

As the years passed, the thoughts in the back of his head never started to simmer down. If anything, they began to race to the forefront instead, even if Anne insisted he talk to a therapist, and even if he did, it didn’t help much. He still left Louis alone, he still never found him again, he still blames himself. He knows it’s irrational. He did his best to stick by Louis that night, he knew something about Anthony was off, he doesn’t even remember why or how he left from his own memories, only the stories they’ve told him. He just knows that he felt like he needed to throw up and he managed to get into a toilet stall before he passed out.

When an officer told them that the most likely scenario was that Louis was dead after so long, and especially once they’d found new evidence of a singular severed finger that matched his DNA, things got even worse. They never even had a body to say goodbye to at the funeral but the days kept getting longer and the months kept stretching on and Johannah decided that she didn’t want the years to slip away next and have everyone forget him. She didn’t want people to brush it all under the carpet before they had a funeral. She wanted him to be their first thought, not their last, and as cruel as it was to endure, she was right. People started to move on with their lives afterwards, they couldn’t stay in that standstill forever. 

At the time, Harry thought the idea of forgetting him was highly unlikely. The idea of ever forgetting Louis was absurd to him. And he never really did. Not really. But he managed to find focus, to channel in on other things and give his mind a rest even if Louis was still lingering there, hidden away in a corner of his brain he didn’t want to visit. Still, he understands why Johannah went ahead with the funeral now and maybe it even brought her some peace. He doubts it. He’s sure she feels the same way that he still does. The funeral never gave him any kind of closure, it never helped, but he can still understand why she did it and he can still agree with that decision now. It never meant that they’d given up, even if it felt that way on the day, it just gave people a chance to make their peace with it if they wanted to, if they could.  

“Harry.” Gemma whispers, her voice softer. He knows this isn’t easy on her either, that Louis was her friend too, to an extent, but she doesn’t have to live every day like he does, she doesn’t have to spend all her time imagining what would have happened if he’d just stayed, if he’d never taken that drink. “Harry, are you okay?”

When she reaches out to touch his arm, he flinches back, a weird choking noise leaving his mouth. 

“Sorry.” He apologises, loosening his grip on the wheel and lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. 

“No, it’s okay.” Gemma shakes her head and squeezes his arm. “It’s a lot, I know. I get it. It’s weird for me too.” 

Harry nods. He lets go of the wheel, bringing his hands up to wipe at his eyes. He doesn’t know when he started crying, or why really, but once he starts it’s like he can’t stop, the sobs heaving out from his chest. 

“It’s okay.” Gemma assures him again, trying to awkwardly wrap her arms around his shoulders from the passenger seat. It doesn’t work, she can’t reach him properly and they look ridiculous. For some reason, it makes Harry laugh but the sound just comes out like an odd gasping noise mixed with a cry. 

“I’m scared.” Harry admits, voice barely a whisper when his hands start to tremor down to his fingertips. “I’m so scared, Gem.” It feels selfish to admit, especially out loud. He’s scared. Louis’ probably been through hell and back over the last ten years and he’s the one claiming he’s scared. 

He’s terrified of the moment, of seeing him again, no matter how awful it sounds. He’s thought about this moment for years, devoured it, obsessed over the idea of it. Each time, every play of it in his head, it’s different. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a murky line in between. At first, Louis would turn up a few days later and it was all just one huge misunderstanding. He had a good night and lost his phone and something kept him at Anthony’s for a few days but he was fine. Harry would be annoyed from the stress he put them all through but mostly, he’d be relieved. Then, when that didn’t happen, he hoped they’d find him soon. They’d trace something back, find more CCTV footage from that night, somebody would come forward with some information, a sighting, something . Louis wouldn’t be the same but he’d be okay and they’d work through it. Now, he dreads to think of how Louis’ coping, how he’ll look, feel, smell, think. Will he still have that infectious smile when he looks at him? Is his favourite shampoo still Summer Citrus? Are Haribos still his favourite sweets because he said they sounded like Harry’s name? Does he still remember how to play the piano?

“I know.” Gemma replies. He thinks she wants to say that it will be okay, it will be fine, but really they both know that’s a lie. Neither of them know how Louis’ going to react, how different he’s going to be, and telling him that everything will be fine will only annoy him more. It won’t be fine, no matter how long he’s waited for and prayed for this day, he’s dreaded it too for the same reason. “Whatever happens, we’ve got each other, yeah?” 

“Do you think he blames me?” Harry asks quietly. It’s something he thinks about a lot, if not every day. He blames himself, he knows that much, but if Louis does too then he’s not sure how he’d be able to stomach that thought. 

For a split second, Gemma doesn’t say anything until she replies, “I don’t see why he would. I still don’t understand why you do.” 

From her point of view, he supposes she has a point. What else was he supposed to do that night? Even if he didn’t have that drink he’s certain Anthony would have found another way to get rid of him, surely he would’ve just spiked another drink he had or gotten him so drunk he couldn’t walk properly, let alone help Louis get away from him. Going to the bar and doing it himself, out of sight, was just the easier option and that night favoured him in that way. And it’s not like anyone from Louis’ family ever blamed him either, they made that clear from the start, but he can’t help but feel that if he were in Johannah’s place, if it had been anyone but him that night, he would blame himself too, even if everyone’s assured him time and time again that nobody blames him. 

“Would you have blamed him?” Harry asks slowly, not daring to turn his head to look at her. If he looks at her, he knows she’ll look back at him with all the pity in the world. He understands why, he just doesn’t need it right now. “If it’d been the other way around and he’d left me and I wasn’t here anymore, would you have blamed him?”

Gemma considers that carefully. She sits back against the seat when she pulls her arms away, nudging the side of her bag with her shoe. “Yes.” She admits. “I think I would’ve. At first. Maybe. I wish I could say no. I think I’d like to say no, that I’m not that type of person, because everyone wants to say that, right? But I probably would have.” She sighs, lifting her head up as she continues on. “I don’t think I would’ve for long though. Especially not now. If it was the other way around I think I would’ve realised it wasn’t his fault and I was just looking for someone to blame pretty quickly.” 

When Harry nods, his bottom lip wobbles. He hates all of this constant crying but he can’t seem to stop right now. 

“I think I should drive.” Gemma insists, motioning her hands out towards the wheel. “Get out and I’ll climb over.”

Without answering, he does. By the time he opens the passenger door she’s already climbed across into the driver's seat. 

When they reach the hospital, they sit in the car park together in silence. Harry blinks ahead at the huge building. He remembers waking up there that night, jeans soiled and head still pounding. He remembers fading in and out, how Robin and Anne had to help change him, much to his embarrassment, and even now he still has a scar from how badly he’d grazed the palm of his hands when Gemma had tried to get him in the car half unconscious and he’d fallen on the pavement. He doesn’t remember falling or how he got to the hospital, it all went black in the toilet stall, slumped on the floor, but when he woke up his hands hurt and his head was still spinning, if only a little slower. 

“I can’t do it.” Harry whispers. Then, he laughs. It feels ridiculous. On any other day he would’ve said he’d give up anything to see Louis, he’d do anything to see Louis safe and here. Now that the opportunity is here, now that it’s actually happening, the idea of seeing him makes him feel physically sick. “Gem, I can’t. I can’t go in there, I can’t see him like that, I can’t—”

“Okay.” Gemma reaches over and rubs the top of his shoulder. He sinks back into it, closing his eyes. Your fault, your fault, your fault, it was your fault. When he opens his eyes again, he leans his hands forward to grip onto the dashboard as another loud sob rips from his throat between a hiccup and a gasp. 

“Okay, deep breath Harry.” Gemma instructs. For a moment, she sounds like she’s talking to him like he’s just another one of her students having a bad day. She presses one hand to his back and the other to the left of his chest, just on top of his heart. “Breathe with me, yeah?” 

So he does. He watches her hand move up and down with his chest, vision blurry, and does his best to try and breathe until his body doesn’t feel as restrained anymore. 

“There.” Gemma murmurs as he lifts his head back up. “Does that feel better?” 

“Yeah.” Harry chokes back, bringing his hands up to swipe at his eyes. “Yeah, a bit. Thanks.” 

“You don’t have to go in.” Gemma assures him. He hates the way she says it. He knows she doesn’t mean for it to sound that way, that realistically it’s probably his own fears sneaking in through her voice, but he can’t help and feel that that’s what everyone expects from him. He’s not sure how to get the idea out of his head, that perfect moment, hugging him again, waiting with open arms. He’s thought it out so many times, planned it down to every last detail that he’s not sure how else he’d react if it wasn’t perfect, if it wasn’t that movie worthy reunion he wished for in his head. 

“Nobody will be mad at you if you do. Nobody will be mad at you if you don’t.”

“I can’t.” He whispers, even quieter. It feels like a betrayal to say it, to admit that he can’t do this one simple thing for somebody he considers his best friend to this very day. Will Louis think he’s a coward? Is he even thinking about him right now? Will he hate him? The thought alone is so dizzying that he doesn’t think he can bear to hear the real answer.

“That’s okay.” Gemma reassures him. “I think…I think I want to though.” She adds, voice smaller. “I want to…it’s— I don’t know. I was there that night too. Is there anything you want me to give him? I’ll just be in and out. I don’t want to take his time away from Jay and everyone right now.” 

Harry doesn’t know why she tries to justify it to him. He can barely justify his own actions, let alone have time to begin to study hers. 

“I have, um,” He swallows thickly, shuffling his feet against the floor before he reaches for his bag in the backseat and pulls it between them, into his lap. “Here. This.” 

He pushes the bag back down onto the floor, holding a faded, fraying teddy bear in his lap. Silently, he tugs on its ear between his fingers, blinking down at it before he clears his throat and turns to hand it to her like he’s just remembered why they’re there. 

“It’s his. When he was younger, I—”

“I know.” Gemma nods and tucks it under her arm when she takes her own bag. Sometimes he forgets that she grew up with him too. They might not have been best friends, it might not be the same, but Louis was a constant presence in her life until that night too. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Tops.”

When she leaves, Harry curls up on his side in the car and buries his head as far into the seat as he can. When he watches her walk through the car park and finally disappear through the double doors, he starts to cry again.

🌼

April 7th 2012

‘ I really wish I had better news.’ 

‘At this stage, we will, um, with the new DNA evidence, we will have to presume that he’s no longer with us.’ 

‘If you’d like to have a funeral or not, that’s completely your choice.’ 

Those three sentences rattle around Harry’s brain for hours every day. Again and again and again. If he listens closely enough, he can hear Johannah crying again. He can feel Anne’s arms wrapped around him, see the confused look on Lottie’s face. How could this possibly be happening? How could it be happening to them?

You see these things on the news, watch the documentaries, hear it on the radio. You never, in your wildest dreams, imagine that it’ll happen to you. Because it can’t. It couldn’t. These types of things don’t happen to ordinary, nice people. They just don’t. So it can’t be real. None of this, this fucked up nightmare Harry’s being forced to live, can be real. 

He tells himself that over the rattling, Louis’ favourite childhood teddy bear cradled in his arms. If he closes his eyes tightly enough, he can still see a blurry outline of a smaller Louis, back when they were only toddlers and he used to cry if anyone tried to take his teddy away from him. 

He can’t smell him anymore, not even now he’s curled up in Louis’ bed, the sheets pressed tightly to his nose and head buried into the pillows. It doesn’t smell of him anymore, not even a tiny trace and the thought that he’s disappearing from his life day by day feels more overwhelming than he wants to admit. 

“ Jesus Christ. ” Johannah mutters underneath her breath from the doorway. Harry nearly jumps out of his skin, flinching when he turns onto his back, the teddy bear tucked up to his chin. 

“Sorry.” He immediately apologises, moving to sit up and kick his legs around from the bed. When he doesn’t know where else to go, he usually ends up here. As much as time keeps moving, keeps taking Louis further from him, his room doesn’t, his room still looks the same as it did the night he disappeared and the month before that and the months before that. 

“No, it’s okay.” Johannah shakes her head, holding her arms out to stop him from sitting up. Quietly, he thinks she likes seeing someone in his room even if it isn’t Louis. “You just…you looked like him for a second.”

Harry doesn’t reply. In all honesty, he’s not sure how to. How is he supposed to? What is he even meant to say to that? He’s never thought that he looks like Louis. He doesn’t see it, even if some people have said it before, that they spent so much time together that they started to look alike. Maybe he’s just studied Louis’ face for too long, knows the tiny details that make him so unique too well. 

Silently, Johannah sits next to him. Neither of them speak. He’s not sure if either of them know how to right now. What would be the right thing to say? How would they even start? They’ve both heard the same thing over and over again for the last two months. How are you doing? How are things? I’m so sorry. 

At first, Harry wanted to tell everyone who ever asked him, ‘ Are you okay?’ if he looked okay. He’s always known that the question has only ever come from a place of compassion but the more people have asked him, the more he keeps nodding and pretending he is fine, the more annoyed it makes him. It’s like it’s waiting on the surface for one more person to ask before he can let himself let go and shout at them that the worst thing he could’ve ever imagined could happen has happened so why on earth would they ask him if he’s okay?

“Are you back at college yet?” Johannah asks quietly, gently patting his thigh when he drops his head back down to the pillow and tries to find any trace of Louis. He’s tried before, it’s not there, but he’ll try again even if he knows it’s futile. The day he stops trying, it means it’s all real, he’s not coming back and that tiny piece of him he had left in this bed the morning of his birthday is gone. 

He shakes his head. “Not really. Not properly. I’ve thought about it a few times but I don’t know if I can take everyone looking at me like that.”

She nudges his shoes he kicked off by the bed, the nice, new shiny black pair Anne bought him last week for the funeral that he’s decided he hates, and shuffles further up the bed when she makes the space. She reaches her hand out, stroking his hair. Harry finds that he doesn’t really care if she’s only doing it to feel closer to Louis, if he’s filling some sort of void for her, he finds it comforting too. He’s known Johannah for as long as he’s known Louis, his entire life, and as comfortable as he is around Anne, Robin, and Gemma too, if there’s something he needs to talk about and he doesn’t want to have that conversation with his family, she’s the first person he’ll go to. 

“I think it’d be a good idea for you to go back. When you’re ready. You’re a bright boy, Harry. I don’t want you to give up on that.” 

Harry almost laughs. It’s the least Louis sounding sentence in the world. Louis was the one who would convince him to skip a random lesson because he wanted an ice cream or really, was there a point of going in today? It was their last day before Christmas break and they weren’t doing anything substantial anyway. Louis was fine. His grades were on top without trying too hard. It didn’t matter to him. Harry still had an essay to write at the time but he figured he could pull an all nighter and email it over in the morning because Louis was more important to him and his grades were fine, they weren’t anything of concern, could be better but an easy pass. 

“I’m serious.” She scolds when he actually does start laughing. “You’re a clever boy.” 

When he laughs even harder, he starts to cry. 

“Oh, darling.” She whispers, her hand stilling in his hair.

“Do you think it's my fault?” He blurts out before he can stop himself. It’s a question he’s been too scared to ask over the last two months, one that terrifies him, vibrates beneath his bones because he knows his answer, he knows he blames himself. Every day he does. He’s horrified to think that anyone else does though. It’s one thing to have those thoughts creep into the darkest parts of his brain but to have someone he loves so much, somebody he considers family, think them too feels like a whole other ballgame that he has no idea how to play. 

Johannah frowns. Her hand moves to his face, holding his cheek in her hand when she replies, “Not for a second have I ever thought that, Harry.”

The relief that washes over him feels more like a tsunami, wave after wave crashing over his body until he finally stops sobbing when Johannah cradles him into his arms and kisses the top of his head. 

Later, when Anne goes to find Harry’s coat so they can leave, Johannah brings Louis’ teddy bear downstairs in one hand and the tie he left draped over his pillow in her other hand. 

“Here,” She presses a kiss to his cheek, dropping the tie into his trouser pocket and pushes the bear against his chest until he takes it into his hands. “Have it. Take him with you.” 

🌼

December 6th 2022

Harry wakes up to the sound of the car door rattling, jolting up when Gemma’s keys jingle as they hit the floor. He’s not sure when he fell asleep but from the way his eyes squint against the light and his mouth feels dry and hot, he figures it’s been longer than ten minutes.

“What’s going on?” He asks, voice groggy. When he properly looks at Gemma, he can see she’s been crying, hands trembling as she hurries to sit down in the driver's seat. “What’s wrong? Is something wrong? Is he okay?”

Shut up, Harry , he thinks to himself, of course he’s not okay.

”He just—” She cuts herself off and shakes her head, inhaling sharply to try and stop herself from crying again. “He’s different. He’s so…different.”

Harry never expected him to be the same, not particularly. He thinks the thought was always lingering there that when he thought of this day, Louis was still practically a teenager in his mind and part of him believed that when he came home, one day, he’d be that happy, bubbly presence again and everything would be normal. 

“He won’t talk.” She adds. “He won’t talk to any of us and if he does he just keeps muttering an address. 76 Alpine Street? I think? It’s…strange. It’s so strange, Har. He’s him but he’s not and I just…how could this happen to him? Nobody deserves that! He doesn’t deserve that!”

It was your fault. You left him.

Harry shoves that thought as far down as he can and takes Gemma’s hand in his on top of the steering wheel. When she finally manages to calm down, breathing steady, they put 76 Alpine Street into Google Maps and take a one hour drive out of the county to find the house. 

The first thing he thinks is that it looks normal. A normal, suburban street with rows and rows of normal, suburban houses. Two storey houses, each decorated for the Christmas season with Christmas trees and flashing lights and a children’s play park blanketed in melting snow opposite them all. The road stretches on and on, down a long, steep hill and splits off into rows of more houses each way and a corner shop to the left. At the very bottom, opposite Alpine Street, is a canal that connects back along the houses. If you keep walking down, it leads to the Canal Boat Rides. If you keep going, it leads to a small woodland area, spaced with trees and a twisting path.

It looks like the perfect place to raise a family, the perfect street to leave the kids outside to play with their friends by themselves. Until you reach House 76. Normally, he’d imagine that it fits right in. He can see the Christmas tree in the window, lights still twinkling through the shattered glass. 

In the garden, the white picket fence is splattered with a dark red blood stain. Outside, the officers have it well taped off, warning back a curious couple trying to get a closer look. 

Harry and Gemma don’t speak on the drive back. She turns the car around before they can get any closer, before any officers can ask them to move back and puts her address into her phone. She drives back to Anne and Robin’s instead, even if neither of them live there anymore and they don’t discuss that decision with each other, just silently agree that this is where they need to be right now. 

When everyone heads up to bed, Harry stays in the living room by the landline phone. He thinks about ringing a handful of times until suddenly ten turns into eleven and eleven turns into twelve. Finally, he picks up the phone and dials Johannah’s number. It rings. It rings again. And again. Nobody answers. It goes through to voicemail.

“Um, hi Jay.” He starts awkwardly, shifting his legs from underneath him on the sofa and tries to lower his voice so he doesn’t wake anyone up. “I know you probably won’t listen to this yet, you’ve got other things on your mind right now, I get that. I just wanted to, er, apologise? I guess? Yeah. I think I need to talk to you before I…see him. I did come to the hospital earlier. I don’t know if you spoke to Gemma. She didn’t mention anything really, I just couldn’t— yeah. I’m sorry. Call me back when you can. Bye.” 

Harry puts the phone down, watching the receiver blink back at him. Truthfully, he’s not sure if he wants Johannah to ring him back. If she answers, it means he has to see Louis, a Louis so broken from what he knows that he doesn’t know how to react. He thinks that’s what scares him the most, not the blame, not the guilt, not what he looks like now, he’s terrified that he’ll see someone so utterly broken and different from what he knows that he’ll act completely different around Louis himself, that he won’t know what to do or how to talk to him when that relationship felt so easy ten years ago. Ten years ago he didn’t struggle with what to say or what to do or how to approach him. Louis’ still that eighteen year old in his head from ten years ago and he’s not quite sure how to wrap his head around the fact that he doesn’t exist anymore and he hasn’t for a long time. 

🌼

December 7th 2022

Harry doesn’t sleep for any longer than ten minutes that night. He wakes up at 2 and sits on his phone for half an hour. He wakes up again later and goes downstairs to get a glass of water. He wakes up after that and decides to give in and go to work. He dresses in the spare clothes he always leaves in the guest room in case of emergencies or surprise visits, makes a scalding hot coffee, writes Anne, Robin and Gemma a note that he places on the kitchen table, takes his warmest coat and leaves before anyone wakes up. 

He gets into work before most of his colleagues do and occupies himself in the corner of the staff room upstairs, mindlessly scrolling through his laptop with a stack of his Year 10’s first period class books next to him. 

As Zayn passes, peeking his head in, he almost falls forward over his own feet at the sight of him when he has to do a double take.

“You’re…here?” He asks slowly, the words unsure like Harry isn’t sitting right there, like maybe he’s a figment of his imagination. 

“Yes?” Harry replies, still looking down at his laptop when he scrolls, adjusting it against his thighs. “I work here, if you remember?”

“Yeah, no, I know, it’s just—” Zayn cuts himself off, stepping closer and eyes one of the teachers in the corner. She doesn’t take notice of either of them, her back turned towards them while she fiddles with the coffee machine. 

“I heard.” He rephrases, scooting over on the coffee table to sit down. Harry doesn’t say anything, just keeps scrolling. If he takes the hint, which he hopes Zayn will, he won’t keep talking and none of this is real. Louis never left in the first place and he lives in a world where he’s still his best friend, he can still face him without crumbling because this is his awful reality now and nothing that bad ever happened. “About Louis.” He carries on though, reaching out to touch his knee.

Harry snaps his head up to look at him, unblinking. It feels strange, hearing his name from Zayn’s mouth. Zayn never grew up here, never went to this school, never knew who Louis Tomlinson was. He found out soon enough, when he caught Harry looking at an old book of Louis’. He’d asked if Louis was one of his students and Harry had grumbled back, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ before storming off. Later, he’d asked one of the other teachers, one he knew had taught Harry’s chemistry lessons when he was still here as a student and she’d explained everything. Still, they haven’t spoken about him since that day. 

“I just didn’t think you’d be back so soon, that's all. I was going to ring you last night but decided it was best to wait a bit. I wasn’t sure what you were…” He pauses, trying to find the right words. “Doing. I didn’t want to interrupt.” 

“Yeah,” Harry nods and slams his laptop shut. Right now, all he wanted was to come into work and forget everything was real and happening. As much as he wants to run out, jump into his car and drive straight to Johannah’s, he’s not sure how he’d handle it. The last thing he needs to be for Louis right now is another headache for him to deal with. “Well, I am back. It’s my job. They pay me for it and I’m not leaving these kids alone when they need me.” He snaps back. In one quick move, he gathers all the books up into his arms and walks towards the door. 

“Harry!” Zayn calls after him, spinning around from the coffee table. “I didn’t mean to offend you!” Sighing, he watches him leave and turn the corner, disappearing down the corridor. 

🌼

June 17th 2009

“Give me the protractor.” Louis whispers, leaning backwards on his chair until the front legs flip up in the air and he rests back against Harry’s desk. Silently, he does. He doesn’t even look up from his book. He’s not sure he even hears what Louis says, like the voice is detached from his body, but he passes it to him without thinking. 

“Thanks.” He adds, quiet, and reaches out to pat the top of Harry’s hair with his free hand. With a clatter, he tosses it towards his desk. Nobody hears it over the constant chatter, their stressed substitute teacher looking out of the door and down the hallway to watch Clara fill up her water bottle and usher her back into the class. “And the compass, please.”

“How have you lost yours already?” Harry complains but still reaches out to grab it from the table and holds it up between the both of them. 

“I don’t know.” Louis admits, loosening his tie around his collar. “One minute it was there, now it’s not.” He yawns and takes the compass from his hand, turning his head back to his table, like he’s suddenly deep in thought and really interested in their last mathematics class of the week. 

Harry’s always known that Louis can hold his own, academically speaking. Their teachers are always telling him that he has such potential, that he could go far with the right amount of work and studying. He never seems to do as much work as Harry does, he never seems to study half as much as Harry does but it just comes naturally to him. He scores higher, he doesn’t get as many corrections. It infuriates him, really. Except it doesn’t. It just gives Louis more time to be Louis, that sociable class clown character that he likes to put on and everyone loves. 

“What are you doing?” Harry asks, trying to balance forward on his chair to get a look over Louis’ shoulder. He carefully cages his body though, staring down at the desk with the compass in his hand, a quiet scratching noise vibrating against the metal table legs. “What are you writing?”

“Stop disrupting my work.” He complains, his head bent over towards the desk.

Huffing, Harry sits back and pulls his textbook in closer. 

A few minutes later, when Louis finishes, he proudly turns back around and grins as he pushes his gum over the back of his teeth. “There. You can look now.”

He leans towards the window, shifting his body to show Harry his work. On the table, carved into the wood with the sharpest end of the compass, are both of their initials etched next to each other.

“You’re such an idiot.” Harry scolds but he’s still smiling. “Way to crush the dating rumours though.” 

“Let them.” Louis shrugs. “I don’t really care. You’re stuck with me forever now.” He grins, starting to chew his gum again as he motions his hand towards the carving. 

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” Harry laughs back, nudging his shoulder.

“No, I know.” He shakes his head. “But I might find someone better than you and leave you behind.”

“Fuck off!”

“Boys! Language!” Their substitute snaps from the front. “Can we focus on the work, please?” 

Louis laughs, reaching out to push Harry’s head down towards his book. “Yeah, Harry. Do your work.”

Harry grumbles and pushes his hands down, blushing towards his notebook.

🌼

December 7th 2022

Harry dumps the stack of books in an empty classroom, collapsing back into the chair at the front and scrubs his hands over his face. It feels strange, sitting here while he knows Louis is back at home, back where he should’ve been all this time for the last ten years. He’s waited for this moment and now that it’s here, now that it’s happening, he’s still sitting in a classroom in the morning doing his 9-5. He hates himself for it, still feels like a coward for it. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Everything in his body wants to ignore it and turn his phone off, the fear that it could be Johannah rattling through his body. Instead, he puts it onto the desk, leaning forward. Gemma. For some reason, that seems to settle his nerves and he picks up.

“ Why the hell are you at work?”

“Good morning to you too, Gemma.” He mutters back. 

“ Seriously. What are you doing? You were in bits yesterday. ”

“I’m just doing my job, Gemma. If I stay there, I’ll sit at mum and dad’s and I’ll act miserable all day and I’ll think about him. All I can do is think about him. At least I can think about the kids when I’m here.” 

Gemma takes a sharp breath. “ Are you sure that’s the best idea? It’s just…you two, you spent a lot of time there. There’s a lot of him there. ”

“He’s everywhere, Gemma.” Harry reasons. “This school is full of him, the house is full of him, the parks, the restaurants, everything. This town is full of my memories of him, of us. Wherever I go, it doesn’t make a difference. I’m here. I want to be here.”

“ Okay… ” She replies slowly, unsure. For a second, he’s slightly taken aback by the idea that she’s given in this quickly. Sure, he’s not a shy child scared of talking to people and she doesn’t baby him like she might have used to, but sometimes she still likes to make his decisions for him or push him in the direction of what she thinks is the best choice. “ If you’re sure that’s what you want. ”

Is it? He’s not sure what he wants, honestly. In a perfect world, Louis would be visiting him during his break because nothing ever happened and maybe they finally spoke about what they were and started dating. 

“Yeah,” He nods to himself. Maybe he’s just trying to convince himself, maybe that’s what this whole thing is, either way he thinks he’s made the right choice. “Yeah, that’s what I want.”

“ Okay .” She repeats, sounding more confident this time. “ Okay, if you need me to come and pick you up then ring me. Don’t push yourself. If you need to leave then leave. ” 

“Love you,” Harry blurts out, anxiously pinching his lower lip between his fingers. “I’ll call you if I need to.”

“ Love you too. Take care of yourself. ” 

“I will. Bye, Gem.”

“ Bye, H. ” 

For his first class, he has his favourite group of Year 10’s. Even they can’t seem to cheer him up though, but he doesn’t try to change that, instead he just sits back in the chair and lets them get on with their work while he tosses a tiny stress ball back and forth in his hands. He picks up on how all the students seem to act differently around him, an awkward air settling between them. Louis’ case was never huge, it never made the national news, it never really left the county. But for the town, it was big. Things like that didn’t happen here, not in a tiny, sleepy English town. And ever since yesterday, ever since the news broke that he was found safely, people keep talking about it. He can feel them whispering, glancing in his direction, throwing looks they probably try to do discreetly but fail miserably. Especially here. He’s not the only student to come back to teach and he’s not the only member of staff that knew Louis from a boy to a man. 

“Sir, I don’t get it.” Ashleigh complains, groaning when she lifts her head up from her desk. Usually he’d be able to spot a student half asleep in his class in under a minute. He’d listen to them complain but ask them to lift their head back up and usually, if they’re in a good enough mood, they begrudgingly will. He’s not sure how long she’s been slumped with her head on top of her book, eyes closed and grumbling for, but he’s sure it’s been more than a minute. 

“Show me.” He replies, standing up. “I’ll help.” He shrugs. “Or I’ll try to anyway.”  

He likes to think he’s a good teacher, that he gets along with the kids and they all like him. It’s a fine line though and as much as he loves them all, and on some level he does want them to feel like they’re friends, he wants them to know there’s an authority difference too, that he can’t really be friends with them. 

He takes the empty seat next to her, crossing one leg over the other while Ashleigh claims that she hates poetry and thinks it’s the worst thing in the world. In all honesty, poetry has never been Harry’s forte either. It’s not his favourite thing in the world, he hated learning about it at their age and teaching it doesn’t feel much better, but at least he has a good grip of it, feels like he can help the kids understand it to some degree. He likes Ashleigh too, even if she does his head in with the chatting sometimes, he likes her a lot and all he really wants is to see her succeed. He wants to see them all succeed and he likes all of his students really but there’s always a few in each year that need a little more attention to get to the next step in their life. 

In a weird way, she reminds him of Louis, chatty, witty, beyond capable, friends with everyone. 

Quietly, they sit together until she starts to understand it a little more and he promises to send her home with some worksheets he thinks might help. She might not be able to understand it that much better and she might still complain that she hates poetry, but she seems to get the task now and he thinks, even if she won’t admit it, she does somewhat enjoy it. And for ten minutes, Harry doesn’t let the thoughts of Louis cripple him into a panic attack. So he sees that as a win for the both of them.

Until he sees the faded LT carved into the wood on the side of the table, silently reaching towards it to trace over the letters with his thumb. Sometimes they swap around the tables from room to room or switch his rooms without telling him but he’s only found Louis’ table once. When he went back to check it a few weeks later, they’d moved it again. 

“Sir.” Ashleigh whispers from beside him. He snatches his hand back from the table and meets her gaze.

“Yeah?”

“I heard about your friend.” She whispers back. Harry’s sure he can feel his heart clench in his chest. They don’t talk about Louis. That’s one thing that his students don’t talk about even if he knows that a large handful of them know. With the news from yesterday, how could they not? It’s consumed the town now as much as it did when he went missing and as much as it did the weekend of the funeral. “I’m glad he’s back.” 

“Thank you.” The words don’t feel like they leave his mouth. Everything about it feels like an out of body experience, that anyone’s even talking to him about Louis being safe and home after all of these years, let alone one of his students. “Me too. Let’s get on with the work now though, okay? I’ll go and get those worksheets for you.” 

He stands back up, stretching his arm behind his head and eyes the classroom. “You’ll all be good if I step outside for a minute, yeah? Everyone on their best behaviour? Good.” 

Outside, by the printer, he faces the wall and stares down at his phone once he glances around the corridors. A missed call from Johannah, a voicemail and one text.

Jay: Ring me back when you can x Stop apologising for things.

“Harry!” Zayn calls from further down the hallway. Harry almost drops his phone, his knees buckling as he shoves it back into his trouser pocket and spins around when Zayn picks up into a jog. 

“Thank God you’re here.” He continues when he comes to a stop, reaching out to touch Harry’s shoulder. “I wanted to apologise for earlier. I never meant to upset you, it was just a bit of a shock seeing you sitting there. If I can do anything, let me know.” 

“You didn’t–” Harry sighs and scrubs his hand over his face. The printer beeps. “You didn’t offend me. I’m just in a foul mood because I didn’t sleep properly and I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s like, I thought about this moment for so long and now that it’s here…” He shrugs, staring down at his shoes and fiddles with his lanyard between his fingers so he doesn’t have to look Zayn in the eyes. Doing that feels more intimidating than admitting anything else right now and he thinks it’s because of the reaction, because of the pity, because of how everyone’s spoken to him for ten years now. “I’m terrified of it. I’m terrified of seeing him and realising that he’s not the Louis I grew up with. It’s lost on you, I know, you never knew him. It’s just…it’s just a lot.” 

“I know. I know I never knew him, I know this is a lot and quite honestly, I don’t know what to say because I’ve never been in this situation before but whatever you need, I’m here for you. A hug or a chat, I don’t mind. I love you, man.” 

Laughing, Harry opens his arms. Zayn nearly pushes him into the wall from how harshly he wraps him into a hug, rocking him from side to side. 

“I love you too.” Harry murmurs back into his shoulder.

🌼

“Hi, Jay.” Harry says into his phone, climbing into the driver's seat. “Sorry I called so late last night. I couldn’t sleep so I just…yeah.” 

“ Stop apologising .” Johannah scowls on the other end. “ Anne said that you went back to work today. ”

“Uh, yeah.” He scratches the back of his neck and stares out towards the road. The school’s quiet now, he hung back with Zayn for a few hours while they sat and talked about anything and everything until most people had decided to go home and even Zayn gave in to his tiredness. “I just thought it’d be a good distraction from thinking too much. It worked, actually, sort of. Gave me something to occupy myself with.” 

Silence. Harry’s mind races. Did he say the wrong thing? Would that offend her? 

“ I’m glad. Anne told me yesterday wasn’t…great for you. Do you want to see him, Sweetheart? I know it’s a lot. I know. He’s…okay though. He’s doing okay. As much as he can and I really do think it would benefit both of you to see each other right now. ”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do want to see him. Of course I do. It’s just…yes. Yeah. Sorry.”

“ Harry .” She deadpans. 

Harry smiles to himself, leaning his arm against the window and cradles the phone to his ear. He never felt like he needed another mother figure in his life, it wasn’t something he was actively looking for, especially with Anne and Gemma, but Johannah certainly feels like another mother to him. Especially after everything, somehow it seemed to push them closer together. A roast dinner on Sunday or baking a cake for a special birthday, a trip out with the younger girls to the zoo and the thousands of phone calls they’ve exchanged. If there’s one tiny thing he’s liked since Louis went missing, it’s how much closer it’s brought him to Johannah. 

“ Obviously it’s a lot, I know that. And he’s not the same, you know? It’s going to take time. He doesn’t like talking right now but that’s okay. He’s here and he’s okay and it won’t ever be the same but… ” She goes silent on the other end of the line. Harry lets out a long breath. “ He’s here. ” She sounds choked when she says it, quietly sniffling when her voice becomes more distant, clearly moving the phone away so Harry can’t hear her cry properly. She’s always tried not to cry in front of him but given the circumstances, it’s a losing battle. It wouldn’t be the first time either.

“Was it Anthony?” Harry asks, the words jumbled together. He’s tried to steer clear of the news but it’s a question that‘s been gnawing away at him. He’s not sure if it would be a relief if it wasn’t, if the realisation that it was never Anthony he needed to be wary of would make him come to terms with the idea that he never should’ve been blaming himself all these years or if that only makes it all feel more his fault; he left even when he thought something was wrong with Anthony and maybe in reality he was just fine, just a bit jealous, but then somebody else managed to dig their claws into his skin instead.

“ Jamie .” Johannah replies, voice cold. “ His real name’s Jamie. ” 

Harry blinks. He thinks he wants to throw up. All these years he’s been telling them his name was Anthony, to look for an Anthony, to please just find Anthony because he could pick him out of a lineup and this awful nightmare would be over. The idea that that wasn’t his name never crossed Harry’s mind, as naive as he’s been, a fake name wasn’t even on his radar. 

“Did they arrest him?”

Johannah clears her throat. He realises she probably doesn’t want to talk about him. Neither does Harry truthfully but this seems important. 

“ He’s dead. Lou won’t talk about it. From what they think, he knew it was over. He…he killed himself, they think.” 

Harry’s sure he can actually feel the anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach. He blinks out into the darkness, gripping the steering wheel. It makes sense, he took the coward's way out, knew he wouldn’t survive a sentence in prison for very long when people inside found out what he’d done, why he was there. Still, the idea that Louis will never get justice, Jamie will never get to rot in a cell where he should be, feels like more to process than his emotions can handle right now. 

“Does he want to see me? Louis?” 

Silence. Again. “ It’s hard to read him now .” Johannah admits. Something about the way she says it stings. He knows she’s not doing it to offend him, that she’s only telling him the truth so he doesn’t go into this blindsided, but the idea that Louis’ not bothered to see him or not hurts more than he wants to admit.

“ I mentioned you though. He…softened. It put him more at ease. I’m not an expert but I know my son, even now, I think it’d do you both good. ” 

“Tomorrow.” Harry replies without thinking. “I’ll come tomorrow. Around lunch time?” 

“ Oh! Yeah, yes, that’s perfect. We’ll see you tomorrow. ”

“Yeah.” Harry swallows. “I’ll see you both tomorrow.” 

🌼

The second Harry walks through the door he’s bombarded by his family. ‘ Are you okay?’ ‘We were worried about you!’ ‘You should’ve stayed at home today.’

He replies, ‘I’m fine.’ ‘I’m staying home tomorrow.’ and ‘I’m going for a shower now.’ before disappearing upstairs. Even when he’s by the bathroom, peeking out into the hallway with the shower running and a towel loosely wrapped around his waist, he can still hear them all whispering in the living room.

He shakes off their conversation, drops the towel and steps into the shower. Him and Gemma staying at Anne and Robin’s has almost been an unspoken agreement between everyone. As long as they need to be there, Anne and Robin are happy to host them. 

He scrubs shampoo through his hair and stares up at the shower head. He hates thinking about it, thinking about Louis like this, and the shower always seems to be the time the deepest thoughts scratch to the surface of his brain. How long did he have to suffer for? Were some days easier than others? How much freedom did he have? Did Jamie beat him? Did it leave scars? Did Louis, in his own fucked up way, love Jamie? 

After he dresses and dries his hair, he shuffles along to Gemma’s old room and knocks on the door. “You decent?” He asks, slowly creaking it open. As a kid, he might’ve just barged in no matter the circumstances, his issues seemed more important at the age of six. Now, he likes to think he’s a respectful, nice older brother, albeit annoying. Most of the time at least.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She replies, sitting cross legged on the bed with a book in her lap, hair neatly tied up into a ponytail and pyjamas on. She nudges up on the covers, pushing out her hand to pat the empty space on the covers next to her. “ What’s up? Something on your mind?”

“I’m seeing Louis tomorrow.” He replies, gaze averted to the sheets. He hates how terrified he is of saying it, thinking about it, looking at anyone when he says it. “I spoke to Jay earlier. She thinks it’ll be good for both of us.”

“Yeah.” Gemma agrees, nodding her head. “I think it will be. I hope. Are you nervous?”

“Shitting myself.” Harry admits around a laugh. “I’ve missed him so much.” When he says it, his voice cracks.

“I know.” She whispers back, reaching out her hand to thread through his hair. 

Silently, he drops his head to rest on her shoulder before he asks, “Can I sleep in here tonight?”

Without missing a beat she replies, "Of course you can.” 

Fifteen minutes later, he falls asleep curled up on his side with one of Gemma’s pillows tucked between his arms. 

🌼

December 8th 2022

Harry wakes up at 6AM. He slips out of Gemma’s bed after ten minutes of staring into the abyss and tries not to wake her up, tiptoeing down the hall to his old room. 

He dresses, decides he hates his outfit, redresses, tries to stomach some breakfast and leaves another note in the kitchen for Anne and Robin. He circles around Louis’ street three times before he finally stops in front of Johannah’s house, eyeing Louis’ old room. Louis’ room . He’s there now. It doesn’t have to be his old room anymore. He’s there and he’s safe and he’s with them and he’s sure the light is on his room. He’s not sure why that, of all things, makes him cry but it does.

Five minutes later, while the engine’s still running, Johannah hesitantly comes outside wrapped up in an old dressing down. Begrudgingly, Harry lowers the window when she walks down the garden path. Getting out of the car makes this real. Getting out and setting foot in that house means it’s real and it happened and Louis went through hell for a decade while Harry sat at home, in restaurants, in lectures, in classrooms and thought he was dead. He can’t work out if that’s worse than if he had been dead. 

“Are you coming inside, darling?” She asks softly. It’s a final warning. A final back out. He can say no. He can say he can’t do this right now and turn around and drive back home where he’ll lay in a pit of self pity in his bed for the rest of the day. Instead, he nods. 

They don’t speak again until Harry finally climbs out of the car and refuses to look up at the house, up towards Louis’ bedroom. 

“I don’t want you to be offended if he starts acting differently from how you remember him.” Johannah murmurs like she’s practiced this script a hundred times over. Harry grips the handle and checks the lock. She keeps talking. “He’s not doing it because he doesn’t like you or he blames you or he doesn’t trust you, I promise. He’s just…it’s a lot. He’s still adjusting.”

Harry nods back. “I know.” He swallows. “I’m nervous.”

“I know.” Johannah parrots, reaching out to touch his hand. Gently, she squeezes. “You’ll be okay. I know you will. It's not as bad as you think.” 

When she says it, she almost sounds guilty. In a weird way, to Harry at least, it’s reassuring. She was scared of seeing him again too, as much as she was probably overjoyed as well, it’s a moment they’ve both longed for and built up in their heads for so long that the fear of it overtakes the excitement. 

He hovers in the hallway once they get inside, cautiously eyeing the living room and paces back and forth with his coat tightly bundled in his hand. Finally, he stills, bundling the coat over his arm and quietly asks, “Is he in there?”

Johannah nods her head. Harry stares down at his shoes. His nice, new black loafers that Gemma bought him as an early Christmas present after he pestered her for long enough. His nice, new black loafers that, right now, remind him too much of the funeral shoes he tried to burn in the garden years ago. 

“Has he spoken?” He asks, voice a whisper. “At all? To anyone? Apart from the address and the police?” It feels weird to think of a Louis that shies away from attention, a Louis who’s too afraid to speak. He struggled to get Louis to shut up when they were little, though he never really minded, he always liked to listen to him speak. Louis was the talkative one, the one who would make new friends and talk to new people for Harry because he got too anxious to try. It feels strange that now he might not want to acknowledge him, he might not want to sit and have a conversation for hours on end again.

Johannah looks like she doesn’t want to reply. She looks at him with that guilty stare like maybe if she looks long enough he’ll just drop the question and they’ll move on without having to answer.

“No.”

Harry swallows. In the depths of his head, in the selfish parts, maybe he’d like to be the hero, maybe he’d like to be the one who says, ‘He’s talking now! He’s talking because of me!’ In reality, the little shadowy parts crawl back in, dragging their way through his brain and clawing up from the quicksand he tries to sink those thoughts into while they remind him that this is his fault, he’s the reason Louis’ not talking, he’s the reason Louis’ been dragged through hell and back. 

“Darling, if you don’t want to see him today then that’s okay.” Johannah whispers. She takes a step forward, reaching out her hand and tightly holds it over the top of his underneath his coat. 

“I want to see him.” Harry whispers back, voice low. She squeezes his hand and nods. 

Silently, he hangs up his coat, balling his hands into his pockets and picks at the skin around his thumb as she leads him into the living room. 

The twins are both sprawled out on the sofa, playing on their phones, while Lottie has a sleepy new-born Lucky in her lap, all three of them keeping a fair distance from him. 

In the corner of the living room, curled up into the side of the sofa, Louis sits with his head cradled against a pillow, staring straight ahead at the television, legs tucked up against the side of the chair. 

He looks…small. He doesn’t look that different, not really, not in the way that Harry expected him to, he just looks small and frightened, dressed in a massive fluffy, cream jumper and a loose pair of joggers. He’s not sure whose they were or where they came from, if they’re an old pair he wore hundreds of times or a pair Johannah bought just in case he ever needed them, if the day ever came, but they’re still too big on him either way. They still droop around the waistband. His face still looks more sunken, more defeated. When Harry looks closely enough, he has a light scar running from just above his left eye to the curve of his cheek. 

Johannah pats him on the back, almost to say that it’s okay to get closer, it’s okay to want to talk to him even if he won’t respond. 

“Hi.” Harry manages, practically a whisper when he takes a step closer. Louis flinches. His arm almost slips off the armrest on the side of the sofa as he scrambles to sit up straight. And then he sees it, the missing finger, his missing little finger that made them all think he was dead for the last decade. It takes everything in him not to start crying when Louis hurriedly pulls his sleeves up over his hands and cages himself in to try and look even smaller with a blank expression.  

Swallowing, he gestures out towards the empty seat next to him. “Is it okay if I sit there?”

He expects a shake of the head. Maybe a weird look. Louis slowly raises his eyebrows before they crease together and he nods down towards the empty spot. He won’t talk but it’s recognition, a tiny bit of recognition that he trusts Harry enough to sit next to him, that he can’t truly blame him for this if he wants him that close while he seems to have kept his own sisters and nephew as far away as he can in this room.

Relief floods over him, his head suddenly dizzy. He swallows, closes his eyes for a few seconds to steady himself, and sits down. He can’t cry in front of him, not now, not when Louis needs him the most in this moment. 

For a long time, they don’t look at each other. The twins don’t look too phased, like the grumpy teenage facade is still there even now and Louis being back is normal to them, even if the last time he was actually there they were both still toddlers. 

Harry follows his eyeline towards the TV, an old episode of What’s New, Scooby-Doo? playing. It makes him want to cry again, how normal it all seems. They could’ve done this years ago, they did do this years ago, sitting around watching kids TV shows with his little sisters or Gemma, making a mess and having Johannah or Anne complain at them until they finally cleared it up hours later. 

“Are you okay?” Johannah asks quietly when she walks over behind them. Harry almost says yes. Almost. Then he sees her hand thread through Louis’ hair and realises she was never talking to him in the first place. “Hungry? Do you want a drink? No?” 

He shakes his head and motions down towards the almost full bottle of water tucked next to his knee. 

“Okay,” She nods, leaning down to kiss the top of his head. Harry would be lying if he said he didn’t feel jealous. Louis doesn’t flinch. He almost looks calm when she touches him. The moment Louis saw him though he nearly fell off the sofa. He knows that it’s not a him thing, that really it’s not his fault that Louis reacts like that to any movement but his own mothers, but it’s still a hard pill to swallow. 

“I’m going to jump in the shower then. You’ll be okay down here, won’t you?” 

Yawning, he nods. Harry doesn’t know what he expected. He’s not sure how he thought Louis would react to all of this, to everyone around him. Him being calm, seeming relatively normal, is the last thing he thought would happen. He thinks deeper, underneath, Louis’ just hiding how he really feels, like he’s trying to put a barrier up between them and he’s too afraid that if he knocks it down then they’ll all look at him like he’s a freak. 

On the way past, Johannah reaches out to squeeze Harry’s shoulder before she ushers the twins upstairs with her and they disappear to their rooms. After an awkward beat of silence between them, Lottie announces that she’s going back to her apartment across town until the morning because her boyfriend finishes work soon and swiftly leaves with baby Lucky in his pushchair. In reality, Harry knows that they’re all just trying to give him and Louis some time alone, that they’re hoping he can somehow start to chip away at that stone-like exterior. 

While Louis blankly watches the Scooby gang try to capture two ‘ghosts’ in a water park, Harry watches Louis’ chest rise and fall, how his breaths even out and he cosies further into the cushion with tired eyes. 

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you.” Harry whispers, turning his gaze down to stare at his lap. From the corner of his eye, he can see the way Louis’ feet shuffle against his body like he’s trying to sink into himself, trying to make himself impossibly smaller. “You don’t have to answer me, that’s okay.” He reasons to himself, twirling his ring around his finger. “I just…this is weird, I’m not denying that. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable with me, that’s the last thing I want, but this is weird.” 

When Louis doesn’t answer, he keeps talking.

“I think part of me expected you to come back and be eighteen again.” He laughs into his hands. It all feels ridiculous, the whole thing, and he can’t help but feel that all he wants is his Louis back, his best friend, and suddenly he realises how selfish that is all at once. “I don’t know why. I’m hardly eighteen still.” 

“No.” Louis whispers back. It’s so quiet that he almost misses it. Harry’s head whips up towards him, eyes blurry as he rests his elbows forward on his knees. “You don’t look it.” 

And really, Harry never considered that. Louis might look different to him, might act differently than how he remembers, but for him that’s just one person, it’s just Louis he has to sit and think about and watch and see the differences. For Louis, everyone’s changed. Harry’s not a dumb teenager anymore, the twins aren’t babies anymore, Johannah’s older, Lottie’s moved out, he has a nephew, Max had to be put down five years ago and Gemma’s engaged now. These people that were a part of his childhood have all broken off into their own lives and left the memory of an eighteen year old Louis behind. Now he has no choice but to sit and watch how every single one of them have changed, have moved on without him while he was stuck in that house, convincing himself that he could get through the next hour, let alone the next day. 

“Are you calling me old?” Harry teases. He almost feels lightheaded from how easy it is to slip back into this, how easy it is to feel like Louis never left and it’s always been this way even if he has the scars, mental and physical, and a missing finger to prove it. 

“I’m older than you.” Louis points out around the tiniest of laughs.

“Yeah, by like two months!” 

This time, Louis really laughs. He laughs into the side of the cushion before the laugh starts to turn into a cry and the cry starts to turn into a sob when his whole body starts to tremble with him. 

Later, when Johannah comes back downstairs to check on them after her shower, Louis’ fast asleep with his head in Harry’s lap, legs curled up tightly to his chest while Harry gently brushes his fingers back through his hair. He can see everything closer like this, how jagged the scar by his eye is, how broken he really seems. He doesn’t want to look at Louis like a victim, he doesn’t just want to look at him and see pity, to be reminded of that time all over again. He knows what it’s like to have people look at you like that, to know that they can’t look at you without thinking of awful, terrible things that you’d rather forget yourself. He doesn’t want to be that burden for Louis, he’s sure enough people already will be. 

“He sleeps a lot now.” Johannah says, voice hushed as she sits down next to them. “Not at night. He can’t sleep at night. Not yet, anyway. I don’t know if it’ll change. I hope it does.” She pauses, eyes nervously flicking up to meet Harry’s. “For him, I mean. I stay up when he does. I don’t mind, it’s nice to see him even if he doesn’t want to talk.”

Harry looks back down at his lap when Louis turns, his mouth turned down into a permanent frown and eyebrows uncomfortably creased. Would it be wrong to tell her Louis has talked? That they had what he thinks is close to a conversation. Would it be wrong not to tell her? He hates the idea of upsetting Johannah, that maybe Louis just doesn’t want to talk to her right now because everything’s so fragile, she’s fragile and the last thing he wants to do is upset his mum by saying something wrong, something she won’t want to hear. 

“I think it’ll get better.” He admits quietly, his hand still hovering in Louis’ hair. “Just slowly. He just needs time. Even if he doesn’t though, like it doesn’t do much in a year or two or three, he’s still Louis you know? He’s still our Louis. He’s just our Louis who’s had a rough time.”

Johannah smiles, leaning back. She reaches out to pat the top of Harry’s hand resting in Louis’ hair and whispers, “He’s always been our Louis. That’s not changing now.”

🌼

December 24th 2022

For the next two weeks, Harry makes the effort to go to Johannah’s at least once a day to see Louis. Sometimes they sit in the garden even when the cold bites at them underneath two old blankets layered over each other. Sometimes Louis doesn’t speak at all. Sometimes he does. Sometimes Harry stays for dinner. Sometimes they go for walks through the park. Sometimes Anne comes over with Gemma, Robin, and a grumpy looking Dusty who the twins obsess over. 

Louis mostly sleeps through the day. A lot of the time he curls up in Harry’s lap like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible. He doesn’t talk much, not often at all really, but when he feels like it, he does. At first, it was just to Harry, just in their lonely, shared moments late at night. Then, he started speaking to Johannah. Then, eventually, Anne. Then, slowly, he eased up around everyone else. It’s only little progress in the grand scheme of things and it’s never longer sentences, it’s never what they fully long for, but still, it’s progress nonetheless. 

On his birthday, the twins come into Louis’ room early in the morning to surprise him, to try and cheer him up.

When they find him, curled up on his side with his hands caged over the back of his head, violently trembling and skin clammy, Phoebe screams for Johannah so loudly that she thinks something awful must have happened, that her worst possible fear had come true. Louis spends that morning cuddled up against her until the shaking stops and she cradles him like her little baby boy again. They don’t talk about the nightmare, he doesn’t tell her the awful, disgusting details because he knows exactly how she’d react. Saying it’s just a nightmare, that it never really happened, it’s easier for everyone. To admit that it was real and he has to live with that every day of his life is dreadful enough for himself, he won’t burden that onto his mother too. Instead, she sits and tells him that it’s okay now, whatever happened then won’t happen now, that he’s safe and everything will be just fine. For a split second, he almost believes her. 

Later, after lunch, everyone comes around the house for his birthday. To celebrate, apparently. The last time Louis celebrated a birthday, he can’t remember. Not in a way that he wants to anyway. 

Harry sits in the corner with Louis and Lucky, who happily rolls around on his play mat, while Louis sits propped against the leg of the sofa. He softens around them both, like maybe Harry and babies are Louis’ weaknesses, and truthfully, maybe they are. Babies won’t ask you if you’re okay, babies won’t look at you and think ‘ poor him.’ or whisper behind your back about your mental health and conspire about what really happened inside 76 Alpine Street. Even if Harry has to admit he is guilty of doing some of those things, he’s tried hard to steer from doing any of that in front of Louis, to not let him see into the selfish, horrible thoughts in the depths of his brain. He’s sure Louis has enough of his own before he has to try and figure out what Harry might be thinking too. Especially when he seems so eager to forget. 

“What do you do?” Louis asks, a hint of confusion behind his voice as he rests his hand out to stop Lucky from falling backwards. He babbles, blowing a spit bubble at the side of his mouth when he flops onto his back. “Like, as a job?”

“ Oh .” Harry clears his throat, adjusting. Louis talking isn’t as rare as it might have been two weeks ago, at least for him, and it’s not like it’s miraculously perfect, nothing’s close to how it used to be, but he can hold a short conversation with Louis now. They talk about the mundane and old school friends usually, family, Max, Dusty, anything that seems gentle enough for him to handle right now. They haven’t spoken about his job before, they haven’t much spoken about how his life has moved on since he was eighteen. Harry gets it, he’s not sure he’d want to know how everyone else got to carry on their perfectly normal lives if his was in such a painful standstill for so long. 

The question catches him off guard and he’s not sure he really wants to answer. He’s not sure how Louis will react to the idea that he teaches in their school, the place they grew up in and spent the most time together, that in a way he kept his life in that standstill with Louis’. He’s spent years punishing himself for his mistakes from that night at the club, he’s never been able to figure out if deciding to teach there was the easy decision to try and feel closer to Louis or if it was a constant source of punishment, forcing the reminder of what happened because of him into his body day after day after day. 

“I’m a teacher.” He answers carefully, gaze turned down towards the carpet. “English teacher.”

Louis bursts out laughing. It’s the loudest he’s heard him laugh in years, the belly shaking, tear jerking kind that makes everyone else fall silent. 

“No, seriously. What do you do?” He asks when he stops laughing, wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his hoodie. “Shit. You’re serious?”

“Why’s that so hard to believe?” Harry laughs back, lifting his head up. Eventually, everyone goes back to their own conversations even if they can both notice the difference, the switch in atmosphere at hearing Louis sound that happy for the first time in so long. He doesn’t have to turn to know that Johannah’s staring at them, intently watching Louis’ every move, her stare burning into the back of his head.

“You’re just not the teacher type.” Louis replies, the corners of his mouth turning up into a grin. “You weren’t, anyway, not to me.”

“Yeah?” Harry tries not to dwell on the idea that Louis doesn’t really know him anymore. Sure, even he surprised himself when he floated the idea that he wanted to be a teacher, but for years now he’s realised that was always the right choice for him and as difficult as it is, he thrives in it as a career. “What did you think I’d be doing then?”

“I don’t know.” Louis shrugs. “Like, in a tree eating acorns or something.” 

“Hey!” Harry laughs, reaching out to push him by the shoulder. Lucky kicks his feet in the air, squealing. “I’m not a freak!”

“I didn’t say you were!” Louis chuckles, bringing the drawstring of his hoodie up to rest in his mouth. “You just sorta give me, I don’t know, a free spirit kind of vibe. You always felt so easy going to me, so easy to talk to.”

Harry scrunches his brows together. He gave Louis that vibe? If anything, he always thought he was the opposite, like a spring all coiled up, constantly tense and following him around like an obedient sheep lost from his herd, far from straying and free spirited.

“ I felt easy to talk to?” Harry deadpans.

“Always.” Louis shrugs. “Still do.”

Harry blushes down at the floor. Lucky, like he wants to make his complaints for their lack of attention heard, loudly grunts and wriggles around, arms and feet kicking until Louis coos and leans forward to tickle his tummy. 

After dinner, Harry sneaks a few chocolates in from the kitchen. He subtly tries to pass them towards the twins, sprawled out on the floor, and slides over to join Louis on the sofa. He knows Louis struggles with eating, that it’s a bit taboo to him now after everything, and he’d never want to push him too far but things seem to be progressing. He’s never seen a terrified Louis though, he always relaxes around him, the worst he saw was that first day when he was twitchy and adjusting and he recognised the idea that seeing an older him might have been a bit too much for Louis to handle at that point. 

“Saved you the best.” He boasts, opening his palm towards Louis’ lap. Flat in his hand is a wrapped up malteser from the celebration box. 

“This is almost as good as a proposal.” Louis teases back, knocking the bottom of his hand up and catches the chocolate when it’s mid air. Harry chooses not to mention how he tucks it into the pocket of his hoodie instead of eating it and leans down to rest his head against Louis’ shoulder. Its muscle memory really, it feels so normal, even if he hears Louis’ breath hitch sharply when he does. 

He thinks sometimes he forgets that Louis’ not the best with touching anymore, he can’t just pull him around with him how he likes, Louis won’t just hold onto his shoulders or try and drag him down during a play fight anymore. In a way, he can tell Louis likes that. He likes that he sees him as a regular person, he still sees him as Louis in these moments, he’s not broken to him. 

“Sorry.” He apologises, whispering as he lifts his head back up. “I forgot that—”

“No.” Louis shakes his head and flattens his hand against the side of Harry’s hair until he nuzzles his head back down into the crook of Louis’ neck. “It’s fine. You’re warm.”

Hesitantly, Harry slinks his arm along Louis’ waist as he shuffles further down into the sofa to sink into his grip. Opposite them, the twins stay glued to their phones, The Snowman playing in the background of the TV. For a moment, it feels like they’re kids again. They’re kids who convinced their parents to spend their first Christmas Eve together (and how could they say no on Louis’ birthday?) and they had no idea what the world was capable of, how dark things would become. 

When The Snowman finishes and the twins go up to bed, next door starts their yearly tradition of Christmas Eve fireworks. As a child, Louis had thought that it’d been for him, that they were celebrating his birthday as much as he was. After that, he spent every year watching them fly up into the sky from the window. When the neighbours finally found out that he thought it was for his birthday, they started to play along with it too. Even the year he turned eighteen, a few months before everything changed, he still made the effort to go outside to watch them even if  he understood they weren’t really for him now. Although maybe, after everything, they were. On his nineteenth birthday, although he never knew and likely never will, they never used any fireworks that year. The year after, after the funeral, they started up again. 

The first one goes off with a loud bang right outside the kitchen window. At first, Louis doesn’t react, he just stares blankly down at Harry’s arm wrapped around his waist, at every tattoo scattered up from his wrist and towards his elbow and studies every little piece of his life that he’s missed inked onto his skin. 

By the third, which is somehow louder even when it’s smothered by a flash of red, he roughly pushes Harry’s arm away and bursts into tears. Harry’s seen him cry, when he was little and fell over, when he got too frustrated with his schoolwork that he couldn’t figure out, when he thought he’d lost the ring that his grandma had given him, just a few weeks ago when he saw him again for the first time. He’s never seen him cry like this though, his entire body shaking through to the tips of his fingers. 

It feels like a blur to him, how quickly Louis tries to move but almost looks drunk, like he can’t keep himself up and steady on his own feet, like maybe somebody’s replaced them with their own that he doesn’t know how to steer and a constant loud, piercing noise rings through his ears until he sinks to his knees. Harry tries to reach out for him, tries to think about how he can make this all better but he can’t . He doesn’t know how to, he’s tried treading lightly, he’s tried doing everything that he thinks is the right way. What even is the right way? How is he supposed to act in this situation? There’s not exactly a handbook for it. 

When he looks back, Louis’ firmly pressed down against the door by the hallway, Johannah crouched with her hands on his knees. He can’t catch what she whispers but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to help. He just cries a little louder and a little harder, his nails harshly digging into the side of his head as he tries to press his palms over his ears. 

It’s such a stark difference to the Louis he used to know that it almost makes him feel nauseous. To think that one person, one lonely, evil little man, could bend his personality to his will and leave him like this is a little more than he can handle right now. When he stops crying, his body still violently shaking and his arms protectively holding himself in fear of being hit or kicked or whatever other unthinkable things Jamie used to do to him, he pleads with Johannah not to touch him and shoves her hands away, somewhere between that house, between 76 Alpine Street, and reality. 

It’s like deep down he knows where he is, he knows that Jamie’s dead and can never get to him again and he knows that his lovely, lovely mother is trying to convince him this is all real but a part of his brain has flicked on to tell him that none of this is true, that it’s just another fantasy that he’s making up to try and get through the day. He can’t be with his family and he can’t be celebrating a birthday for the first time in years because he’s in that house, he’s always in that house and Jamie told him he was going to die there. And he believed that. A part of him already did, a part of him still haunts 76 Alpine Street. 

Johannah looks a little hurt when he tries to push her away again, albeit understanding. This situation isn’t anything they’re used to and why fireworks would set him off Harry has no idea but none of them do, not one of them can say they relate to an ounce of what Louis’ thinking. It’s hard enough to try and understand how he’s feeling in this situation, let alone trying to begin to grasp how Louis might be feeling. 

When the fireworks stop, his head tucked down to rest on his thighs, he calms down. Johannah leans closer again, whispering. Louis makes a noise, something close to a whimper, and nods his head. Eventually, he lifts his head, his eyes dark and swollen, and goes upstairs without looking back towards Harry. He can’t say it doesn’t sting, that it doesn’t feel like the twist of the knife. It’s such a small thing, tiny really, but Louis never would’ve walked away without ranting to him first or at least saying goodbye. 

“Have you thought about taking him to a therapist?” Anne asks from across the room. Nobody says anything.

“I’ve…spoken to him about the idea.” Johannah admits. “He just shakes his head or gets annoyed at me. I don’t think he realises how bad it is. I think he’s trying to suppress it so it doesn’t seem as overwhelming as it is but it’s not…I can only do so much, I can only take so much.” 

When she starts to cry too, Anne batts her hand out towards Harry and points to the hallway. “Go and get your coat. We’ll go soon. Gemma, Lottie, come with me.” 

Obediently, he does, closing the door behind him while Anne takes Johannah into the kitchen with Gemma and Lottie. He buttons up the coat and wraps the belt around his waist, trying not to think too much about the last ten minutes when he notices a pair of white socks shuffling against the corner of the stairs. Hesitantly, he climbs further up the steps, Louis’ head slouched against the wall and his knees pressed to his chest while he hides around the corner, close enough to keep listening but far enough to stay out of sight — apart from his feet. 

“Hey,” He murmurs, sitting down on the step below him. Louis doesn’t move. He doesn’t lift his head, doesn’t look at him, just keeps picking at the plaster crumbling off the wall. “How are you feeling?”

“I know it’s bad.” He grumbles under his breath. “I’m not stupid.”

“Nobody’s calling you stupid.” 

Louis huffs. Harry leans towards the banister, suspiciously eyeing up towards the bedrooms to make sure the twins aren’t trying to get a listen in. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Harry asks carefully, turning back towards Louis. He breathes in sharply through his nose, pressing his hand flat against the wall. 

“No. I see it all when I close my eyes every single night. I live that nightmare every fucking night, why should I talk about it in the day too?”

Harry nods. “That’s fair. That’s your choice. Someone though, someone like a professional maybe, might be able to help. I’m not promising anything, I just think it might—”

“Everyone says that.” Louis laughs. It’s sharp and horrible and sounds nothing like that warm, bubbly laugh he’s known for so long. “Everyone wants to help. Nobody knows how bad it was though, nobody lived through that but me. Nobody can help. How can I look someone in the eye, tell them what happened to me, and expect them to help?”

Harry chews on his bottom lip and stares down at his shoes, treading lightly over his next words. “I just think that a professional might have the better capacity to understand you more than we could. Your mum’s only trying to help.”

“To help what?” Louis snaps, suddenly defensive as he lifts his head off the wall. “To help fix me? I can’t fix anything! Do you think I want to be like this?! Do you think I enjoy watching this tear my family apart day by day?!”

“No, of course not. I just—”

“Because I’m not fucking thick, Harry!” He snaps again, jumping up to his feet. “I can see what I’m doing to everyone! I don’t want to be this way either!”

Before Harry can open his mouth again, before he can try to calm Louis down, he storms off to his old room and loudly slams the door behind him, the floor rattling under his feet. Harry can’t say he’s sure if it’s a smart decision or not, but he leaves him alone, sludges back down the stairs and waits out in the car for Anne to drive him home. 

The next day, on Christmas morning, Louis calls on the landline at Anne’s and they spend an hour talking. That afternoon they spend two hours walking through the park, while nobody’s around except the children on their new bikes or playing with their new footballs, until the sun dies down and Louis gets so cold that he steals Harry’s beanie to tug over his head. Harry finds that he doesn’t seem to mind much but he figures that he never really has. 

🌼

July 3rd 2006

The first year that Johannah, Anne, and Robin decide to take everyone on holiday together, Lottie’s not in the picture yet and neither of them remember much of it, not now that every year since has blended together. 

Now though, Lottie’s four and a moody teenage version of Gemma begrudges coming along with them every year. 

Sometimes they’ll go away in the campervan, Johannah insists that she will never try and set up a tent again, once they even decided to jet off to Spain, they’ll never make that mistake with a crying baby on board, but this year an eleven year old Louis picked the beach for everyone, a week away at the seaside. 

He’s always loved the sea, anyone that even remotely knows him knows that. Really, he’s not sure where it stemmed from, he never grew up by it even if he supposes he was always a water baby. He grew up around swimming pools and rivers, even forced Harry to come with him to swim classes at their local pool until they were eight. Harry never questioned it, never put up a fight even if he didn’t seem to enjoy it half as much as Louis did. 

Anne offered up the beach house she owns, and inherited from her parents, down in Dorset as their annual Tomlinson-Styles getaway summer trip, even if it might be a little cramped between all of them. Louis quickly realised he didn’t really mind if that meant having to share a bed with Harry a long time ago. So they packed up, drove down in the night, and Louis was the first one awake and on the sand the next morning. 

The whole time, Harry hesitantly stands by the edge of the sea while the others unpack for the day, anxiously splashing at a wave with his toes. Max happily runs around in looping circles behind him, barking up towards the deck at Robin like he’s trying to entice him down too. When he doesn’t budge, arms crossed and sunglasses firmly on, Max gives up and runs towards Louis through the waves, his tail wagging back and forth as he splashes water back at Harry’s legs. 

“See!” Louis shouts over the waves. He brings his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. “He wants you to get in too! Stop being such a baby! Come on, it’s fun!” 

Harry scrunches his brows and makes a face. Pools he can deal with, even paddling around in the river by the back of his house is fine for him but there’s something about the sea that unsettles him. It stretches on further than he can see and he knows how easily it could sweep him away if he loses track of things, which he seems to do a lot, his mind likes to wander. 

“I won’t take you in too far, I promise.” He shouts again, bending down to ruffle Max’s fur when he pants, bouncing through the water. 

Harry makes a low noise, watching them both, and tentatively steps closer as the sea crashes over his feet. 

Max, like he knows, runs back further out, stops right next to Harry’s legs and shakes his body until the water sprays over him. Harry squeals, trying to nudge his foot out to move Max away by his belly but he just swings his head towards his legs instead until he nearly topples. 

Louis reaches his arms out to catch him, carefully dragging him back by his armpits until they topple into the sea together, squealing and laughing.

When he props his head up from the waves, nose twitching and spitting sea water, he can already hear Louis’ hysterical laughter while Max barks in time from the sand. He huffs, splashing his hands down and out towards Louis but even that doesn’t stop him from laughing. Eventually, after miserably failing to slick back his wet curls, he starts laughing too. 

For the rest of the day, and the rest of that week, they spend it in and out of the sea or the sand. Eventually, they even manage to coax Gemma in. She says it’s mostly because of Max and absolutely not them. Harry silently thinks that they both know it’s because of Louis. He has a way of enticing people, of pulling them in, even if Gemma doesn’t want to admit that. 

🌼

June 19th 2023

For two long, straight months after Christmas day, Louis insists that he doesn’t want to see a therapist. He lives with the burden of his memories, why force that onto somebody new? He doesn’t want to relive it every time he sits down in a chair opposite a stuffy old man. One month after that, he finally decides that giving it a go can’t be the worst idea in the world. He stays cooped up in his room most of the time, carefully planning his every next move. Sometimes he goes for coffee with Harry. Sometimes he goes for walks with Lottie and Lucky through the park. Sometimes Johannah takes him out to get ice cream like he’s a little boy again. Once a week, he sits in a chair opposite his therapist and barely admits that for over ten years, his life did suck, those things did happen.

Sometimes he has good days, days where Harry can touch him without asking, days where he isn’t purged with nightmare after nightmare, days where he’s glad he never went through with some of his darkest, deepest thoughts back in that house, back in 76 Alpine Street, because feeling the sun on the back of his neck just makes it all feel worth it for one day. Sometimes though, sometimes he has bad days. Days where he screams all night until his throat is red raw, days where he can still taste a bloodied rag stuffed in his mouth and hear the clinking of a cuff on his right wrist attached to the kitchen cabinet when Jamie had told him to be quiet before he’d found the butchers knife in the kitchen drawer, days where he sleeps curled up in the side of Johannah’s bed for hours on end. 

A few weeks later, when Anne and Johannah start planning the Dorset weekend trip, his therapist suggests volunteering. Animals, libraries, charities, the local hall. Anything to occupy his mind, to meet new people. He mules over the idea for weeks, every night, every day. As much as he loves these people, adores them even, they all remind him of Jamie, they all tie him back to that overwhelming guilt of worrying about them for those ten years, thinking about how they were coping. Did they care? Were they still looking? How did they feel? Were their lives as awful as his? Was he just another figure to them now? A sad statistic?

Eventually, two months before the Dorset weekend trip, he waits for the twins to go to school and Johannah to head off to her shift at work before he sneaks off to the closest dog shelter and asks if he can help out. When he tells Johannah, she seems wary. When he tells his therapist, she seems elated. When he tells Harry, he asks if he needs a lift and what time he should pick him up on the way back from work. 

On his first day, he meets Niall. Quickly, he realises Niall doesn’t know who he is, he doesn’t know what happened, he doesn’t know that the day he finally escaped that Jamie, in a frenzied state, drove his own car into the house and killed himself. Unlike everyone else in this town, everyone he talks to and loves so dearly, Niall doesn’t know any of it. He’s not too sure how he feels about that in all honesty, eventually he’ll find out, eventually he won’t look at him the same way he does right now, but at least he doesn’t yet. For now, he can savour the idea that somebody will treat him like a normal person, like none of that ever happened. To Niall he was never in that house. Maybe he could tell him that he went to university with Harry like they’d always talked about, maybe he could tell him that he took a gap year and went travelling, maybe he could tell him that he finally told Harry that he was desperately and hopelessly in love with him and had been since he could remember. 

He’s not sure why he picked the dog shelter out of all of this, maybe it’s because he secretly misses Max more than he cares to admit, maybe it’s because it makes him feel like a kid again. He thinks, truthfully, it’s because Harry just lights up every time he comes to pick him up and gets to see the dogs, that he knows he passes the building on his way to work. 

“Your boy’s at the front desk.” Niall announces when he walks back in, arms folded over his chest and leans against the wall. After Harry came to pick him up the third time, Niall started calling him that. Louis doesn’t hate it.  Actually, he loves it. “Want me to let him back here?”

“Er, yeah, go on. He’ll probably lose his mind if he doesn’t get to see a dog soon.”

Niall chuckles, unfolding his arms. “Well I’ve got plenty of those to go around.” He teases, walking back out. He comes back with Harry two minutes later, no doubt they both got wrapped up in conversation, Harry could impress a stone with his talking skills now if he tried. Louis doesn’t really like to think about how much he’s changed from that shy little boy he used to know all those years ago. 

“Oh my goodness!” Harry cries in his best, high pitched puppy voice (because, yeah, that’s a thing Louis’ noticed now) and sinks down to his knees to pet the black labrador lazily slumped over Louis’ legs. “You look just like my Maxie!” He coos, holding the dog's face in his hands. “Yes you do!” 

“You have a dog?” Niall asks, perking up, suddenly interested. 

“When we were kids.” Harry explains, motioning back and forth between himself and Louis. The dog happily raises his head, his thick tongue rolling out of his mouth as he snuggles into Harry’s hands. “Old age. He lived a good life, long for his breed. We didn’t get another one after. I think mum just thought we were all too old and she didn’t want the hassle with the cats around too. I haven’t had time but I’d….” Harry pauses, mulling his words over in his head before he ruffles his hands along the dogs fur and firmly nods. “Yeah. I’d love to get one at some point for my own place.”

Laughing, Niall motions out his hands again. “Take your pick.”

“He’ll leave with all of them.” Louis warns, patting the dog on the back. “Pups in his pockets and everything.”

Harry grins down at the dog, putting on his best puppy voice again when he asks, “I can’t fit you in my pocket can I? You’re just a big, lovely, softie huh?”

“Seriously man.” Niall starts when Harry shifts his weight to turn around and stand back up while Louis takes care of the dog. “If you want to look into it or anything, come by anytime, I’d be happy to help. Your boy doesn’t even have to be helping out.”

“Yeah.” Harry laughs, nervously rubbing the back of his neck when Niall says it again, your boy . “I might just take you up on that.” 

“Alright,” Niall starts, pointing down towards the hallway. “Get out of my face you two. I don’t want to see you around here until next week, I’ve had enough of staring at your mugs now. Enjoy your weekend away.”

“Always a pleasure to see you, Niall.” Harry drawls when he walks back towards the hallway. He gestures his arm back without looking and without thinking, Louis walks forward and hooks his little finger around Harry’s as he guides him out into reception.

Physical touch is still hit and miss with him and he wishes that he knew why. He can’t start to make sense of it himself though, why sometimes the littlest touches make him want to tear his skin off his body until he’s raw, so he can hardly explain it to someone else. Even if that someone is Harry. Other days though, like today, it feels welcoming, it feels like the first time he hugged his mother in the hospital that evening. 

“Have fun!” Niall calls, whistling between his teeth when they make a beeline to leave.

“Thanks!” Harry shouts back, nudging the door open with his hip. When he gets to the car, he finally lets go as Louis climbs into the passenger side and cranks the window down. 

Harry tilts his watch towards himself when he starts the car, tapping his fingers on the wheel. “We’re meeting them all there. If you want to sleep or anything, feel free. I won’t be offended.” He pauses, turning his head back to look over his shoulder. “Well, unless I’m telling a really good story, then—”

Louis cuts him off with a loud snore.

“Hey!” Harry complains around a laugh, batting his hand out to playfully slap his thigh. Louis laughs into the side of his arm, turning his head down to look at his shoes

Sometimes, for a few minutes, he feels relatively normal, he feels like he never left and this would’ve been how his life worked out if he’d never met Jamie that night. Usually that moment passes pretty quickly. For now, he sits with the thought of that while Harry drives, propping his head up to rest against the side of the window he didn’t roll down.

Halfway through the drive, he falls asleep. For the first time in months, he doesn’t have any nightmares. Harry doesn’t try to wake him, or at least if he does, Louis doesn’t realise. Two hours later, when they get to Dorset, he slowly blinks awake when Harry taps him on the shoulder. He groans and wipes the drool from the corner of his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie. 

By the time they unpack the car, the last ferry to the beach has long gone so they decide to risk it and make the forty minute walk through the forest while the sun’s still out and Harry texts Robin to meet them halfway.

At first, neither of them say anything. Eventually, Harry adjusts the strap of his backpack as he swings the other bag in his hand. “So, are you actually going to carry anything?” He teases, wiggling his eyebrows with the question.

Sarcastically, Louis raises his water bottle in the air. “It’s very heavy.”

Harry grunts. “Uh-huh. I’m sure it is.”

The more they keep walking, the quieter they become, the birds barely chirping as the sun starts to set. Louis swings the bottle around his hand, the metal hitting against the side of his wrist when he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, desperate to try and stop the dizzying thoughts that run back through his head. 

It’s always like this in his head. No matter what pills his therapist prescribes him, no matter what anyone tries to say or how many days go by since he last saw Jamie, since he last saw that house, it always circles back into survival mode. One moment of happiness always ends in a panic attack that at least triples in pain. 

The woods he ran through when he left wasn’t as dense as this forest, wasn’t as shrouded with trees and full of winding pathways that split off in different directions. It was one twisting path that he’d sprinted down until he could hear his lungs beating in his ears. As soon as Jamie had seen him, had realised what he was doing, Louis knew he had one chance to pull this off. It was run now or be dragged back and killed. He took the chance. 

Jamie had smashed a window when he’d tried to throw a vase towards him from a distance, the shards spattering out into the garden as Louis had fumbled with the lock and fallen out onto the steps. Jamie had clawed at his ankle in the garden when they’d both fallen down, like even now that they were outside and people could see, people would realise, he didn’t care as long as he dragged him back inside and kept him buried in those walls no matter how much he wailed and screeched. He’d tried to attack him with the little strength he had left, squirming and screaming until he kicked his foot back into his face. Jamie had screamed right back, clambering to his feet with a bloodied hand pressed to his nose to try and chase after him. Louis had been quicker though, more desperate, and he’d sprinted down the road and past the river barefoot, shards of glass pinching at the soles of his feet until all he had left of Jamie was his loud cry of, “Fuck!” ringing through his ears when he must have realised the game was finally up. Louis had kept running though, he’d kept running until he couldn’t feel the balls of his feet, his throat burning, and he’d sprinted past the river canal and into the woods through the last patches of morning snow with half a broken cuff still dangling around his wrist. 

He remembers blacking out some time around there, when he’d seen a woman and her dog that looked an awful lot of what he remembered of Max. After that, he’d woken up in a hospital bed, his mother’s hand stroking through his hair, and they told him that Jamie had killed himself. He sobbed into her hand for twenty minutes. To this day, he’s still not sure if what he felt was relief or anger. 

“Lou?” He hears Harry’s voice break through whatever daze he’s been in, crouched down on the floor with his hands pressed against the dirt.

“Can you feel this?” Harry asks, one hand firmly pressing to his back between short, desperate gasps for breath. Somehow, mind caught between flashes of Harry and Jamie, he nods. Then, just as quickly, Harry brings his other hand to rest on his chest, sinking into a crouch behind him.

“Watch my hand.” He instructs. Even if he tries to stay calm, Louis can hear the flicker of panic in his voice when he slides back onto his knees, body starting to tremble. “Breathe with me, Lou. Watch my hand, yeah?”

Vision blurry, he tilts his head down and tucks his chin in against the top of his chest to watch Harry’s hand. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Slowly, his breathing evens out.

“That’s it. There you go. That’s better.” 

When he gets his bearings and they eventually get to the beach house, he spends the rest of the night curled up into Johannah’s side with a nice white wine buzz by 10PM. That night, he shares the double bed in the attic with Harry and they talk for hours, just like they had when they were kids and they would talk into the dark until the middle of the night when they’d start to drift asleep. 

🌼

In the morning, Louis wakes up to the feeling of Harry’s elbow awkwardly jabbed against his ribcage, sprawled out over his side of the bed. He grunts, turning over, but can’t help from smiling at the sight of him. Waking up with this feeling, the sun barely peeking through the curtains in his best friends mother’s beach house halfway down the country wasn’t something he ever expected to experience again. 

Carefully, he wriggles down and out of the makeshift bed when he decides that Harry looks too peaceful to disrupt. He carefully strips off his shirt and boxers, groaning lowly when he rolls his shoulder and pats his hand around in the dark for a clean pair of clothes instead. He tries not to think too much about the scars he still knows are littered along his back. Not many, not as red and angry anymore, but still there, each carrying their own little story of defiance. 

After he clumsily dresses, Harry rolls over, a soft snore leaving his mouth but never wakes up. Louis slips away while he sleeps, pottering around the kitchen with Anne and Robin while they make breakfast. 

Eventually, Harry comes downstairs with the twins and they have breakfast together once everyone’s awake. Somehow, Louis gets roped into making beaded friendship bracelets with the twins, Gemma and Harry until well past lunch when they get bored and decide they want to go down to the beach with the others. A few years ago, Louis probably would’ve been the first one there, the first one in the sea. Now, as much as he wants to venture back down, he’s more than a little apprehensive just by the idea of being in the water. 

Still, Harry manages to coax him down from the deck with the promise of splitting an ice cream and the pair of tiny, pink swim shorts snapped comfortably around his waist. It’s funny, really. Years ago Louis would’ve been down there, he would’ve been trying to convince Harry to get into the waves with him. He knows how they all feared he’d come back changed, a different person. And he is. But maybe not as much as they expected him to be in the long run. He thought about it too though. Even if he’s never said it aloud, the idea that he would come back to a put together best friend, a little sister with a family, a mother who could barely hold herself together after his disappearance; it all gnawed away at him day after day. Even now, it still does. They worried about him and at the same time, he worried about them. In a strange way, it washes a sense of calm over him. Maybe once or twice, maybe even more times than that, he was thinking about his loved ones while they were thinking about him. That doesn’t make them feel as far apart as they did once, like they were the ends of the earth away. They couldn’t have been that far if their thoughts were still interconnected. 

This time, he anxiously watches the waves while Harry plays with the twins, throwing Phoebe up on his shoulders with an overdramatic groan that might not be that unrealistic when he mutters, “Christ! You two are so much older now.” 

Louis thinks it’s a small miracle that he managed to get them away and off their phones for this long in the first place, let alone actually entertain them. That’s something he hasn’t really learnt to do since they were toddlers. 

“Are you coming in?!” Daisy shouts from beside Harry, her arms wrapped around his waist when Phoebe kicks her foot out to push her away by her shoulder. 

Do not let him have this power over you. Especially not now. Not when he’s dead. Say yes. 

“Um…” Louis rubs the back of his neck, peering back down at the waves as the twins start to bicker with each other. Just say yes. “Do you want me to?” He asks, shielding his eyes from the sun when he looks back over at them. They stop fighting, all three of them looking over at once.

At the same time, they all reply, “Yes!” like they planned this all from the start, this was their way to get him back into the water. Slowly, he treads towards them, ignoring the sinking feeling around his hips, even when his tee clings to his stomach and strains against his chest. Thankfully, for him at least, the twins haven’t questioned why he wanted to wear a shirt in the sea. It’s not like he cares much anymore, he thinks that every scar is a part of him and if anything it just shows a story of how he survived rather than how weak he felt through it all. Still, he doesn’t want the girls to see that, not when they’re still so young. If he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t want Harry to see them too. Even if he’s not ashamed of them, he doesn’t want to start boasting them to the world either. 

Daisy tosses herself up into his arms like she’s ready to compete with Harry and Phoebe. For what, he’s not sure. He’s willing to help though, propping her up when he sinks further down in the water. For a while, they make up stupid games and test them out, battling to try and win a competition that none of them really understand how to win or lose between each other. When a rough wave washes over them, Louis’ head disappearing underneath the water, he lets himself sink for a second. Letting go always felt like an easier option, for a long time he tried every way he could to try and let go but Jamie was always one step ahead of him. He underestimated him the first time they met. He looked at him that night and saw a shy, attractive, loveable little dork who was blushing just from Louis’ teasing. Jamie was anything but that. That night, he was at least ten steps ahead of him. 

🌼

August 23rd 2014

Louis has sick fantasies. Maybe they’re not sick. Maybe some people would hear them and think they were. Maybe other people would encourage him. He thinks most people would call them nightmares. He calls them daydreams. 

In one he repeatedly hits Jamie’s head into the kitchen wall until it cracks, bloody bubbles spilling from the side of his mouth. In another, he holds him underneath a full bathtub, writhing and flailing, until his body falls limp. In his favourite, he smothers him with a pillow on and off, watching him gasp and cry and plead until, finally, his body starts to twitch and his arms sag at his sides. Just for good measure, he presses down harder on the pillow and counts to twenty before he checks his pulse. Dead. He smiles. Then, he comes to. 

Then, Jamie’s standing in front of him and very much alive as he paces back and forth across the carpet, running the side of his finger across the blade of a bloodied butchers knife Louis just tried to stab him with. 

That’s a fantasy he hasn’t thought much about. He doesn’t like the idea of how messy it is, how he’d have to keep stabbing him, that it would get on his hands. But Jamie had left the drawer in the kitchen unlocked by accident and for the first time in over two years, Louis had free access to something that could kill him. He decided not to give up that chance so easily. 

He drew blood, he dug the tip into the top of his thigh and tried to slice it down, his hand shaking until Jamie had snapped his arm back with a crack at his wrist and the knife had landed with a clutter. He had his one chance and he blew it. So now, he keeps watching him pace across in front of him, completely silent. He hates the silence. He’d rather be screamed at by him or beaten, at least then it would be over by now, at least he could say he was used to it and it’s not as terrifying as it used to seem. Silence means he’s thinking though, he’s figuring out what he wants to do. When it’s new, it can’t be good. Somehow everything new he seems to conjure up is worse than the last. 

“I am so nice to you.” He sneers, breaking the silence between them when he turns around, gripping the knife. Louis wants to punch him. He doesn’t really have the energy for that though and Jamie has the knife, Jamie has the upper hand. It wouldn’t be his smartest move. So instead, the word ‘ nice’ runs laps around his head. Was ‘nice’ drugging his best friend so he could pull him away? Was ‘nice’ snatching him from his mother, his sisters, his friends? Was ‘nice’ the first time that he whispered he was fine and he could take it while he blankly stared at the ceiling and gave in? Was ‘nice’ when he cut off his finger in the kitchen no matter how loudly he screamed and pleaded?

If those things are nice, then sure, Jamie’s been plenty nice. 

“And this is how you want to repay me?”

No, he thinks, I wanted to kill you. That was barely a scrape. 

He says nothing. Jamie doesn’t move. If anything, Louis just wishes that he’d put him out of his misery now, stop delaying the inevitable. At first, he thought that he might be able to take Jamie, as naive as he had been. Jamie was a lot smarter those first few days than he ever considered though. Stronger, too. He guesses that was it. Play the shy, weak flirt so nobody would suspect a thing. It worked on him for the first twenty four hours. It worked on him when they slept together that night, even when he thought his grip on his wrist was tighter than it needed to be. It worked on him until the next morning, until he said he should probably get back now because his mother was going to kill him for disappearing so far away without telling anyone. But he’d been drunk and his phone ran out of battery and ‘Anthony’ seemed nice enough for a one night stand.

He never questioned why he’d driven so far out to go to a club, just settled on the idea that there couldn’t be any better ones near him. Now, looking back on it, he wishes he’d tried to get out of the car, been a little smarter, tried to put up a better fight, wishes he’d never seen him in the first place. 

“I thought we could have matching.” Louis replies finally, voice dull. Jamie still doesn’t say anything. He lifts up his leg and points to the scar on the side of his thigh. It’s tiny really, it was an accident rather than something Jamie ever tried to give to him as a permanent reminder of his misbehaviour. “Romantic, right? Just like you want.” 

He can see the flash in his eyes, the change from impatient to infuriated when he lunges forward, wraps one hand around his throat and drags him down onto the floor until they’re eye to eye with the knife pressed down flat on top of Louis’ scar. 

“I could kill you.” He hisses, dropping his grip around his neck. When Louis tries to turn his gaze away, staring towards a photo of Jamie, his mother and his little brother hung up on the wall, he grabs him by the chin and turns him back. It almost scares him how normal he seems, how if Jamie wasn’t a raging psychopath he’d just be an average guy with an average, loving family. He’d leave for his average, boring job at nine in the morning and come back at five. He’d see his little brother on the weekends and go on trips to the seaside and the zoo. He’d keep up with his hobbies, Louis’ learnt he likes swimming and comic books, and enjoy watching new movies in the cinema. He would do all of that if he wasn’t keeping a twenty year old he snatched in the middle of the night in his basement. He thinks the most chilling thought is that nothing seems inherently wrong with him, that Jamie had a very happy childhood and still has a family that cares for him now as much as they did then. 

“I could kill you a million times over.” He warns, his grip still painfully strong. “I could have, if I wanted to.” 

“Do it then.” Louis challenges. “Do it. Kill me.” 

“No.” Suddenly, he smiles. “No, that would be too easy. That’s what you want.” 

He pulls back, keeping Louis pinned to the floor with the heel of his shoe pressing into his ankle. He throws the knife across the room until it slides into the kitchen and onto the tiles, grabs him by his probably broken wrist and ignores his cry of pain as he tugs him up the stairs.

No matter how much Louis complains, he keeps dragging him up until they reach the bathroom. He’s almost certain he hears his wrist crack again when he throws him down by the tub. Louis grits his teeth and turns onto his stomach, pushing himself back up by his knees. 

“Start the bath.”

When Louis doesn’t, Jamie kicks his foot out between his thighs until he slumps back down and shouts, “Christ! Are you deaf now as well as stupid? Hurry up!”

He scrambles up to his knees when he throws another kick towards his leg, this one gentler, and reaches over to the tap to start running it. 

“Thank you.” He sighs, biceps flexing when he runs his hands back through his hair. “Was it that hard?”

Louis doesn’t reply. He just watches the water run out in ripples and tries to ignore the pain shooting up from his wrist. Jamie’s certainly not going to fix it. Not right now anyway. Eventually. When he feels a little kinder. 

“Turn it off.” He instructs, peering over him once it’s almost full. “I’m going to ask you something. You’re going to answer me honestly, okay?”

For a second, he almost sounds sincere. He almost sounds like he’s trying to be human again. 

“Okay.” Louis nods back. He could lie and he considers it for a long beat but Jamie would know. Somehow he always does. 

“Would you rather die than be with me?”

“Yes.”

The answer slips out quicker than he can stop himself, like his mouth moves before he can think about what he’s saying. Yes. Yes, yes, yes . He’s given up the hope of being able to leave, of ever escaping. His only way out is death and he thinks he’d take that now over living through this for the next fifty years. Or whenever Jamie feels bored of him and goes to look for someone new, someone fresh, someone young. 

Jamie nods, jaw set. “Fine.” He decides, his hand moving to the back of Louis’ neck in one swift motion. He tightens his grip, nails digging into his skin as he hoists him up over the side of the tub. 

Panic rushes through his body. This is it. He’s really going to drown him. This is how he dies and nobody but him and Jamie will ever know. He can’t hurt him after this though. He’ll struggle and he’ll kick and he’ll try to fight, he’s sure he will, but in the end Jamie will win and he’ll be nothing but a useless, lifeless body to him. At least he won’t have to suffer any longer. 

“Let’s see how it feels then.” 

He hoists him further up and then pushes him down by the back of his head. It surprises Louis how quickly he wants to fight, pressing his arms out on the tub to try and stop his body from inching any closer. Jamie’s stronger though, standing with his legs spread between Louis’ feet and his arms slip from underneath him when he grabs onto his wrists in his other hand. His head plummets under, ears muffling as he tries to kick his legs and push him off, his head shaking back and forth when he gasps and chokes in a mouthful of water. 

Suddenly, Jamie yanks his head up by his hair as he gasps for breath between coughs and splutters. Just as quickly, he dunks his head back under. In, out. In, out. Again. And again. And again.  

Eventually he manages to keep him still, straining his head further down into the water until Louis gives in to any of the fight he had left at the beginning of this. The panic subsides, a weird sense of calm soaking over him. Jamie won’t ever hurt him again now. It can all finally stop. At the last moment, when he starts to see black dots in his vision, lungs burning, nostrils twitching, arms limp, Jamie pulls him back up and throws him to the side of the bathmat. 

He shivers, the pain throbbing in his wrist and through to his fingertips as a mixture of water and snot drips down from his nose, hysterical crying noises ringing through his ears. He’s not sure where the crying’s coming from, his vision blurry as he tries to look up at Jamie. No. Not crying, not him. Slowly, while he twitches, he realises that it’s him who’s crying. Without a word, Jamie leans down, opens his mouth by his jaw and shoves two fingers down his throat until he gags and vomits over himself. 

He pulls the plug of the bathtub and leaves him alone, curled up on the floor and covered in a puddle of his own vomit, snot and spit.

🌼

June 20th 2023

“Half an ice cream.” Harry says, sliding down beside Louis while he picks at blades of grass between his fingers from a dead patch beside his legs on the hill. “Just as promised.”

Louis drops his hand, leans forward and licks the side of it. Sharing food with Louis is the least of his concerns right now, they got into that habit as children, whether they were sharing germs or not. Honestly, Harry never minded much. If Louis was off sick then so was he and that was better for everyone, that was what they both wanted. It wasn’t like they didn't have other friends at school to hang out with either, they just stuck together so much that even their teachers always said they would walk around glued at the hip within their little group of friends. 

“Nice?” Harry asks to break the tension between them, tilting the cone back towards himself. 

Louis nods. He starts picking at the grass again. They sit in silence for a few minutes, occasionally taking turns at eating the ice cream until they get down to the cone. 

Seeing Louis earlier, when he started to have a panic attack in the sea and for a quick moment Harry thought he might be drowning, it was an excruciating reminder that their lives are not normal and they never will be after the last decade. Louis will never move past it, every moment of peace they have, the memory of the last decade will always linger in the background. But he can learn to live with it too. It doesn’t have to be this constant dark cloud above their heads all the time. At least Harry doesn’t want Louis to feel that way, he doesn’t want him to keep going through life with the idea that for every good experience he has it has to be overshadowed by Jamie time and time again. He got this far, he came back home, he doesn’t have to let him have control now too.

“I think I’m in love with you.” Louis blurts out, his eyebrows scrunched up as he stares out towards the sea, his legs pulled up to his chest.

Harry drops the cone in his lap, the last tiny bit of vanilla whip ice cream dribbling out onto his shorts. 

“You’re— you’re in love.” He chokes on his own saliva and reaches for the ice cream cone, trying to swipe up the mess on his shorts with his thumb before he asks, even quieter, “With me?” and sucks the ice cream from his hand.

“Yeah.” Louis replies plainly, nodding his head. “Since I was a kid, I think.” He keeps staring out towards the sea, unblinking, like this is the most normal conversation in the world and not something Harry’s pined for for years and years and never thought Louis would reciprocate. 

“I can’t pinpoint an exact moment.” He continues, still not looking. “But I think if I have to, it was when we were six. You kept walking down your garden path and bending down and digging in the dirt and I had no idea what you were doing. I thought you were mad. I asked. You said, ‘ I’m making sure the cats don’t eat them.’ and so I looked closer. You were picking up every worm in that garden and digging them back into little holes in the grass. I just thought that was so…nice. I don’t know. I guess I found you endearing. Maybe that wasn’t love, not at that point, but I knew I wanted to spend every day with you, watching you protect these worms, for the rest of my life. Well, as long as my attention span could hold at that point. But still, for the rest of the afternoon it sounded a pretty good deal to me.”

Harry swipes at his eyes, laughing underneath his breath. 

“It’s fine if you don’t feel the same way.” Louis turns his head to look at him and flattens his hand against the grass. “I don’t even expect you to. I just spent so long thinking about it all, it consumed me really when I was there and I never thought I’d be able to tell you. So I just want to tell you now, which I have the chance, and it’s okay if—”

”Can I kiss you?” Harry asks, cutting him off. He slides his hands up along his thigh, his thumb resting on the tiny scar. He’s dreamt of this moment time and time again, played it over in his head on repeat. And just like Louis never thought he’d be able to confess his feelings, Harry never thought he’d have the chance to kiss him again.

Baffled, Louis stares at him. Then, he nods.

“If you want me to stop, I’ll stop.” Harry promises. “This isn’t something that I—”

Louis pulls him in by the face, his hands resting on the sides of his neck when he leans in and barely brushes their lips together. It’s slow, hesitant at first, like Louis doesn’t know if he really should go in, if being this intimate and vulnerable with somebody who isn’t Jamie is something that thrills him or terrifies him. 

Harry’s tongue pokes out the corner of his mouth, barely wetting his lower lip as he closes his eyes and feels Louis against him, almost trying ask Louis for permission to explore further. 

Nodding, Louis’ mouth parts, his nose pressing to Harry‘s as he softly brushes them back and forth before he sinks into the kiss. He relaxes, shoulders dropping, and presses his mouth against his more firmly. As it deepens, he pulls Harry down by his face until he lands in a heap on top of him, laughing into his mouth. 

🌼

July 14th 2023

Every Friday evening, if they don’t have other plans, Harry and Zayn take an hour to themselves after they finish work to go to the local sports centre by town and play whatever game they feel like. Their relationship is built off of that hour. That hour is free range for them to say whatever they want. Harry’s spoken about Louis during that hour for a lot longer than he’d like to admit, even during the days that he wasn’t there, even more now that he is.

This week, while they gear up for the last week of work before the summer holidays officially kick in, they decide on tennis. 

“I’ve been thinking about asking Louis to move in with me.” Harry admits, tossing the ball up in his hand. Zayn trips over his bag and nearly faceplants into a pile of rackets before he manages to steady himself. 

“Shit, man. That’s a big deal.”

“I know.” He throws the ball down this time, catching it in his hand. “I’ve been thinking about it since last month, since Dorset. Since we made it official. It’s not something I’m taking lightly.”

Zayn nods back. “Have you spoken to him about it?”

Harry hesitates, glancing back over his shoulder before he shakes his head and starts to walk backwards. “No. Not yet. I need to speak to Johannah too. I don’t want to freak anyone out but I’m not really sure how to approach it either.” 

He bounces the ball up and down a few times, each one heavier in the palm of his hand until he throws it up, swings the racket back and hits it. “It’s just…” He grunts when Zayn slams it back, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Zayn has always been the competitive one between them both and he usually always wins. “It’s awkward.” Another grunt. “You know?”

“Well,” Zayn races to one end of the court, shouting over the sound of the racket and their shoes. “Not really. But I get what you mean.”

“It’s like I don’t mind if he says no. Not really. I get it. It’ll still sting a little though.” 

“Of course it will.” Zayn nods back, jogging over to one side of the court to pick up the ball when he misses. “I get it. It’s weird circumstances but of course you want it to be a yes. Who wouldn’t? You wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t want a yes.”

Harry supposes he has a point. Zayn throws the ball in the air and swings with so much power that Harry immediately misses. 

“Where is Louis anyway?” He asks, walking closer to the net. Sometimes Harry cancels on him to go out with Louis, to spend a few more hours with him on a Friday night even if he goes to see him every day after work anyway. Ever since they started dating, things have changed though. For the better, he thinks. He hopes so anyway. From what Louis’ said about his time with his therapist and what she thinks, it certainly seems to be. 

“He said he was going for dinner with Niall or something like that.”

“They’re really getting along, aren’t they?”

“I think he likes having someone to talk to who doesn’t know anything about what happened.” Harry shrugs, tossing the ball back up. “Or if he does actually know then he doesn’t care.”

“Or he’s a good actor.” Zayn muses. 

Harry doesn’t think he minds either way. As long as he doesn’t hurt Louis he seems happy enough to believe that Niall doesn’t know what happened to him and won’t for a long, long time if Louis can help it. 

“So when are you going to ask him?” Zayn asks after Harry misses the ball again through their short rally back and forth. 

“I think I’m going to talk to Jay tonight.” He explains, switching the racket from hand to hand when they set up again. “Hash everything out, see what she thinks while he’s at dinner. Then I’ll ask him tomorrow maybe? Next week? I don’t know. Whenever the time feels right.”

Unsurprisingly, Zayn wins and manages to convince him to go out for drinks afterwards. 

When he tells Johannah that he wants to ask Louis to move in with him, she cries. He’s not sure what he expected from her but maybe, in the back of his head, he did expect this. As much as Louis was ripped away from him as a best friend, Johannah lost her baby that day and letting him go for the second time can’t be easy. 

They sit and talk about it all, work out the logistics and how to explain it to the twins, until Louis comes back with Niall, tipsy and giggling. 

“Someone had a good night.” He teases when Louis slumps down in his lap, curling into his side like a baby bird. He huffs out a soft breath, nuzzling his head into his neck. 

“He had a few.” Niall laughs, car keys still dangling from his finger. “Thought I should make sure he made it back okay.”

“Do you want something to drink?” Johannah asks, standing up from beside them when Louis snuggles impossibly closer into his body. 

“No, it’s alright, I—”

Johannah cuts him off by clearing her throat and motions her head towards the kitchen, eyebrows raised with that look. She might not be Niall’s mother but he certainly knows what that look means from his own. 

“Oh. Yeah! Okay. I’ll have something.”

She reaches out to ruffle Louis’ hair on the way past, guiding Niall into the kitchen and pulls the door shut behind her. 

“Did you have a good time?” Harry rephrases, resting his chin down on the top of Louis’ head. He hums back and nods, arms slinking around his waist. 

“Yeah? Good. I wanted to ask you something, actually.”

“Yeah?” He murmurs. 

“I was thinking, maybe, we could live together? Like…I don’t know, it doesn’t have to be straight away. And you don’t have to say yes. I just wanted to ask because I like you a lot, you know? So, yeah. You don’t have to—”

Louis pulls his head back, one arm still tucked around Harry’s waist, and leans up to kiss him. 

“I’m guessing that’s a yes then?” He laughs back when they finally pull away. 

Louis playfully rolls his eyes, sinking closer into Harry’s body and murmurs back, “Well it’d be a horrible way to say no.” 

Three weeks later, Louis officially moves in. 

🌼

November 1st 2023

har <3 : i miss u :(

                                                                  i miss you too :(

                          dogs are too cute to leave though sorryyy

har <3 : i’m so jealous. this meeting sucks.

                                                               i’ll see you soon!!!

har <3 : i know just miss u now. i’m too impatient

                                                                   trust me i know.

                            niall’s just got back. i’ll see you in a bit :)

har <3 : can’t wait i can’t stop thinking about you today.

             love u sm. hope everything is ok with niall. 

🌼

“Are you okay?” Louis asks, walking back out to the front desk when he hears the door slam. He finds Niall with his jacket pulled over his head, drenched from head to toe when he adjusts his arms and shrugs the jacket away to reveal a tiny, scruffy puppy cradled in his hand, its entire body shivering and its leg wrapped up in bandages. 

Its eyes droop down, barely being able to bring itself to move further into Niall’s arm as it lets out a sad mewling sound.

“I found her tied to a lamppost in a little patch of flowers. Whoever left her was obviously trying to hide her. She was bleeding and soaked, poor thing. Took her to the vets and they said her leg was broken and gave me some meds for her.” 

He cradles her closer, frowning when he kisses the top of her head. She starts to shake even more.

“I think I’ll stay with her tonight. Just in case she takes a turn for the worse.” 

And suddenly Louis is that eighteen year old boy again, alone and terrified and restrained to the shower while Jamie beats him until he vomits blood. 

“Can I…” He swallows. “Can I stay with her too? I think she could use a friend right now.” 

“Of course you can.” Niall mumbles back, gently stroking across her ears as she starts to settle down. “Call Harry when he finishes, we can just camp out here for the night. Make her feel at home.” 

When Harry finishes his meeting at the school, Louis calls him and tries not to cry when he tells him what the little puppy went through. Harry says he’ll join them before he even has to ask. Later, he turns up with blankets and they order a takeaway while the puppy patters between them and falls asleep curled up in the fluffiest blanket she can find, tucked up with her head against Louis’ thigh. 

“She needs a name.” Harry whispers, trying to silently crunch on a nacho. 

“Mabel?” Niall suggests, sprawled out on the floor. 

“Penny?” 

“We’ve already got a Penny.”

“Posie?” Louis whispers, voice hushed. “I mean, you said you found her in some flowers so I just thought that was…I don’t know. Cute.” He shrugs.

“Posie.” Harry repeats quietly. The puppy lets out a string of yips, turning over on Louis’ thigh. 

“I think she likes it.” Niall laughs under his breath, reaching forward to stroke her belly. “Huh, Posie?” She swishes her tail back and forth, deep in sleep.

“Posie it is then.” Harry decides, reaching for another nacho. 

Louis angles his head down, resting so only Posie can hear him and places a gentle kiss near her ear. “Hi, Posie. It’s okay, I’ve got you.” He promises, fingertips barely brushing her fur. “I know how you feel. I’ve got you now.” 

🌼

December 24th 2023

“Keep your eyes closed!” Harry instructs as he shouts down the stairs. 

Louis keeps his legs crossed underneath himself, eyes firmly shut and holds his hands out just like Harry told him to. He’s barely been awake for twenty minutes, peppered with morning kisses and a happy birthday call from his mum, before he was sent downstairs to wait for his first surprise present. 

He listens to Harry’s feet on the floorboards, how he excitedly races across the landing and slowly creaks down every step. Maybe he thinks he’s being sly, making his way down the stairs without being detected, but Louis can feel his every move and knows exactly when he’s standing in front of him. 

“Can I open my eyes now?” He asks, hands still cupped out. 

Harry lets out an annoyed huff. “No. Stretch your arms forward.”

Hesitantly, he leans out with them outstretched. 

He feels the little legs kicking first, his eyebrows creasing inwards in confusion when Harry lowers his gift into his hands. 

“Okay! Open them!” 

Louis does. He’s greeted by Posie, tongue flopping out of her mouth as she stares up at Louis with her big, brown eyes. 

“Happy Birthday!” Harry sings from behind the dog, hair askew from barely being out of bed and his pyjamas still messily buttoned up. “She’s all ours. The start of our little family.”

“I love you so much.” Louis chokes out, laughing as Posie wags her tail, impatiently pawing at his jumper until Louis brings her up to his face and she licks a long stripe along his cheek. 

“I love you too.” Harry replies, smiling. He flops down next to him, rolling onto his side to press his face to Louis’ shoulder and drops a kiss even through the jumper. “Always.” He promises. 

“Always.” Louis nods back, arms wrapped around Posie as she tries to clamber all over them, jumping from lap to lap and climbing their bodies. 

Later, when their families and closest friends come over, Harry brings out his cake that he baked himself while they butcher singing happy birthday. As he closes his eyes, every birthday flashes by. 

When he was four and tried to eat the cake before he’d even attempted to blow out the candles, manically grinning with a nose covered in frosting as he proudly announced that his wish to have the cake all to himself had come true. When he was twelve and decided paintball would be a good idea that year and then wished to never play paintball again. When he was eighteen and his mum took him to the pub for his first legal drink and he wished to do well in his exams. When he was twenty three and spent it shivering, curled up in Jamie’s bed while he told him everything that was wrong with him, everything he was going to fix and he wished more than anything he could just go home. When he was twenty six and he wished that he’d die before he could make it to twenty seven because he couldn’t spend another year like this. Now, at thirty, when he blows out the candles and opens his eyes, he has his wish right there with him. A loving family, caring friends, a boyfriend he’s always not so secretly pined over and an excited Posie scrambling to eat his cake, her nose already buried in the frosting, all happily tucked away in 64 Parkway Avenue where 76 Alpine Street can never reach him again. 

THE END.