You & I Were Made For This - 1D: Louis/Harry - Chapter 7
Title: You & I Were Made For This
Author: Me, imagination55
Pairing: Louis/Harry
Chapter: 7
Rating (by chapter): PG-13
Summary: Sometimes what's in front of you is not what you should be looking for. - Harry is kidnapped whilst One Direction are in Brighton, recording music. With a first hand look at the seedy underbelly surrounding his captor, will Harry ever be found, how are Louis, Liam, Zayn, Niall and his family coping in his absence and, the biggest question of all - if they do, what kind of state will they find him?
Disclaimer: This is not true, made up and not meant to offend. The beauty of fiction.
A/N: Another fairly long wait, no surprise there. I promise this thing will actually move forward soon. It's a difficult thing to pace lol. Comments are always love. <3
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
Harry is really beginning to hate waking up to a pounding headache. This time has some novelty factor though as the pain throbs at the crown of his head instead of his temples. For a moment, he is confused and then he looks over and sees Luka’s darkening silhouette leaning in the doorway as the day turns into early evening. Ankles and arms crossed, Luka smirks then turns to leave and that’s when what happened comes back to Harry.
Luka had been on the phone to someone and Harry couldn’t work out why he was being allowed to hear his conversational dealings before the mobile phone was actually brandished near his face and Luka was demanding he say hello. He’d frowned in still present confusion and annoyance, both of them knowing full well that he couldn’t when his bloodstained mouth was dissected by a dirty rag pulled tight in towards his sore teeth. Apparently that wasn’t good enough and Harry let his voice do whatever it thought of first. He blinked a little in surprise himself at the sound of the whimper, but was spurred on to make it immediately stronger after the first try. A frenzy of need possessed him when Luka’s teasing remarks and talk of sales (or not as it were) made it clear that he was conversing with someone official, an authority figure, maybe even the police themselves. He knew he was probably putting himself in danger beneath a volatile man, but the bone-deep desire to be free fed into his reckless rebelling again and his face contorted into a pained scowl as he rattled his body forcefully within his bonds in the hope that whoever was on the other end of the phone placed on speakerphone would understand his plight. He had the briefest flickering thought about the other boys, that if the police were talking with Luka then that had to mean that they missed Harry and wanted him back and had gone to find help. It was brief because it was the last thing shimmering inside his head before there was swift, brutal darkness.
If Harry could touch his head right now, he guesses he would find a lump or a cut as a result of his head rebounding off the pillar behind him thanks to the punch Luka had given to his face lightning-quick upon hearing the volume of his “hello”, but he knows it’s obvious he can’t and tries to relax his shoulders from the split second effort. His hair feels sticky from more than frustrated sweat and the urge to cry slams into him until he’s forced to take a shaky breath in and bite down on his lip to stop it from happening. He squeezes his eyes shut and wishes he could press his fingers against his eyelids to hide away from the vulnerability, even as he glances sidelong at the men guarding the doorway to find them unseeing and not paying him any attention, like statues, as per usual.
His mother was never opposed to him shedding tears.
It’s actually a shock to think of her. He thought that if he didn’t then he wouldn’t have to remind himself to be brave. If he had no one he loves to be brave for, it would come down to self-preservation, fighting for himself, and that was a lot easier to handle. He pictures her and all he sees is how utterly out of her mind with worry she must be and shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes. It hangs limply in front of his face and it’s all too much. She’s not supposed to ever feel like that. She’s not supposed to be anything but smiling and attracting attention like she owns it and Harry’s somehow inherited the magnetism from her. He has to think of somebody, something, else or who knows what will happen.
The next person in line that comes to mind is Jay. It’s not the surprise it probably should be. As much as he likes her and is slightly giddy that she gets on with his mum as well as he and Louis do, she isn’t his mother herself and consequently it hurts less to think of her. Without the tied to a post and gagged, it would be...nice. But it’s all he’s got and Harry’s usually one to go with the flow, so he does just that. He lets his memories once again take him far, far away. This time, he closes his eyes in the hope that these people will think he’s in another exhausted bout of sleeping and leave him in this alcove of relative peace.
He remembers the first time he met Jay properly, when the competition was done and dusted. Standing in front of Louis’ house in Doncaster, Harry impatiently shook his hair out and pushed it back off his forehead in a practiced move Louis had witnessed a hundred times over. He could feel the other boy’s eyes and amused smile on him then a nudge to his elbow.
“Mate,” he whispered, humouring Harry’s earlier pleading to let them have a moment before they went inside, “don’t look so nervous, okay? You’ve met her before! You’re not asking her permission to marry me or something.”
Harry frowned; shoving Louis back with his own elbow and feeling his expression melt away anyway when Louis laughed gleefully. He reached for the door with a brisk, happy “come on” and Harry knew he couldn’t dawdle anymore and followed him. He worked out early on that it was (perhaps frighteningly) easy to follow Louis’ lead.
“Mum!” he yelled, grinning at a wincing Harry as he made them stand in the hallway, “We’re here!”
“I can see that.” Jay replied calmly as she appeared from a room to their left with a smile that soon brightened.
She hugged her son and kissed him on the cheek in greeting and Harry tried not to smile too big at the simple affection before he was seized with a strange kind of anxiety as Jay turned towards him. He stuck out his hand like a fairly petrified robot with a “Mrs Tomlinson” tumbling from his lips without being able to catch it in time. Jay took his proffered hand warmly in hers but raised an eyebrow at Louis.
“Who’s this guy and what have you done with Harry?”
Louis shook his head at her, “I don’t know,” then pushed at Harry again, “Oi, you’re acting like you’ve never even met my mum - no, worse, like she’s royalty!”
“I’m just being polite.” he mumbled awkwardly.
Jay came to stand by his side and slid her arm around his waist, “There’s politeness, love, and then there’s overkill. Unfortunately, the Mrs T thing was a little too - ”
“ - Old? Redundant?”
She rolled her eyes at Louis’ chip in, “- Formal.” She nudged him also, “What’s the matter? Don’t you fancy me anymore?”
Harry blinked; distracted slightly by the exaggerated retching noises from Louis at his other side. “I - I - ”
But Jay laughed, “Your face is a picture when you’re surprised. Come on. How about we have a cuppa and a catch up? You can tell me all about what happens next.”
“Yes!” Louis announced, walking ahead of them and into the kitchen, “Yorkshire Tea I have missed you!”
After that, Harry knew without a doubt that he didn’t have to mince his words with someone like Jay. He wasn’t scared or nervous around her once she’d bypassed his attempt at not overstepping the mark of familiarity in her own house. She was easy to get along with, made it easy on his mumbling lanky self to open up and he understood perfectly how over the course of the show his mum and Louis’ had become fast friends.
As a consequence, Harry was a lot more comfortable meeting Louis’ brood of sisters again. Following on from a couple hours of lazy conversation with Jay, the rest of the Tomlinsons came barrelling back into his life with a kind of frenetic energy he recognised in Louis whenever he was bored and looking for adventure. Harry was sat next to him on the sofa in the living room when they all heard the door click open and instant chatter. Even Louis sat up a little straighter and Harry reacted stiffly in kind, however pleased he was to see them, until he realised what Louis was doing. One of the twins was halfway to running excitedly straight past them with barely a glance when Louis reached out and caught her around the middle.
“And where have you been, you little monster?” he asked, watching her squirm in his lap as he lightly tickled her in hello.
“I’m not little!” she giggled, ruining her otherwise stern exclamation.
“Alright then, big fat monster!” Louis laughed, weaving away from her hand coming towards his face and grasping her wrist. “You haven’t noticed yet, eh?”
She instantly stopped struggling as curiosity crossed her face. Louis inclined his head to mean Harry and watched as her whole body froze in his arms. Tipping her back into the crook of his elbow and holding her close even though she was getting too big, Louis kissed her forehead with another chuckle and looked at Harry.
“You remember Harry, right?” she glanced up at her brother from her position against his chest in such a grown up, deadpan way Harry had to stifle his own giggle. “Just checking,” Louis defended, briefly tickling her ribs once.
“Hi Daisy.” Harry smiled, feeling slightly odd to be around a set of siblings younger than him when he was so used to being the youngest in his family.
She smiled in a shy hello and was otherwise mute until Louis started tickling her again, her legs kicking accidentally at the side of Harry’s thigh and her shrieks getting louder until Jay popped her head in from the kitchen where Harry presumed the other girls were.
“I would’ve thought you’d have had enough of screaming girls already,” she smirked and Harry felt oddly self-conscious at the realisation of what their life had suddenly become in the last few months.
Louis paused as if in thought then nodded, sitting Daisy up. “Good point. Go on, off you go.”
Glad for the respite and red in the face from exertion, Daisy slipped off her brother’s knees. Harry was expecting her to run off instantly to find her sisters so was entirely stunned when she lunged at him in a hug with arms brushing his neck.
“Hi Harry.” she said then toddled off, not bothered by the fact that Harry could only manage a pat to her slim back before she was gone.
“How is that fair?” Louis complained, but he was smiling underneath it, “I have to practically stop them from running away to get a cuddle and you just sit there like a lemon and get one for free!”
Jay, hovering nearby as she watched her daughter and the two boys in amusement, piped up in mock warning. “Now now, Lou. Jealousy is not a good look on you. Girls? Come and say hello to your jealous big brother!”
Harry looked between them - at Louis’ unaffected sniggering towards his mother’s gleeful sense of humour and the happy fondness in Jay’s eyes to have her first born back home for as long as she was afforded the luxury - and he knew that they were both special. Special to each other and special to him. People he could enjoy the company of and completely rely on. They almost felt like a once in a lifetime family. He hoped they felt the same about his.
--
Louis wakes up to an awful headache and a room that isn’t his. For a moment, he is utterly confused and a little panicky as he rubs his tired eyes into life and tries to remember what happened the last time he was awake. It feels like he has a hangover, complete with cotton mouth and queasy stomach and all he wants to do is roll over and sleep for a decade but none of it makes any sense. It makes even less of one when he tries to get comfortable again and nearly rolls off the edge of the bed. Ah, a room that isn’t his. Bleary eyed, he takes in the single bed and small, blue walls with not much else to the room and slowly it clicks. This had been his room, once. Before a massive house and singing on television every weekend had somehow managed to take over everything he almost took dangerously for granted.
With a pitiful groan that hurts his head and his ears and even his dry throat for making the sound, Louis flops onto his back in weak exhaustion and tries to piece together what’s left as blank holes in his memory. If he was in Doncaster, there had to be a reason why. Of course he could’ve just wanted to see his mum or she him but his face felt tight and tender, like he’d been crying and he’s never been one for happy tears as such and for all intents and purposes he’s a grown man for God’s sake, so simply seeing his mother again was obviously not the cause. He’s not absent in his own head enough to not remember that Harry’s missing, regardless that he guiltily wishes he was that forgetful. It’s the first thing he thinks about in the morning, feels the space like the sudden loss of a limb, and the last thing at night because saying goodnight to three people instead of four isn’t right. Even so, he’s not sure Harry’s disappearance would be the sole reason either. Instead, he tries to put being back in Doncaster with his mother and thoughts of Harry together and eventually two plus two becomes four and Louis remembers one of the key elements.
Anne.
A mother just like his own, Anne had returned Louis’ call the day before. His headache starts to become more insistent in its throbbing presence but he’s frozen. He can’t tumble out of his old bed and go to the bathroom or the kitchen. He can’t do anything except stare unblinkingly at the ceiling and remember with shuddering clarity that the phone call had not been pretty. He’d feared and expected as much, but that didn’t mean it made him feel any less rotten. She’d been worried from the first word because Harry hadn’t been in contact when usually it was fairly regular, even if it was just a text, but she’d tried not to show it in her voice. She chose to be as calm as possible and Louis could feel his heart beating harder than if there had been an immediate demand to know what was going on.
“Louis? Where’s Harry?” His heart twists in his ribcage, making him lose his voice and only able to gawp like a fish out of water for a valuable second. “Louis, please.”
“I’m sorry,” he gasps, blurted out on instinct the only words he really wants to convey.
He sees the other boys swivel their heads to look at him, sat in the living area at dinner time in front of the television, and turns his back to them before thinking more of it. He moves from standing halfway between the armchair just vacated and the doorway and goes through it, straight into the kitchen for some privacy. They probably know who it is from the nervous drain of colour on his skin but he can’t even meet their eyes right now with what he’s been tasked to do.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats as Anne stays blessedly silent, “I wanted to tell you - I really did - I just...” the sigh escapes him before he’s aware of it and tastes like defeat. “...didn’t. Harry’s not here because - because he’s missing.”
He slides into the nearest seat around the kitchen island and leans the elbow with the hand clutching his mobile phone on the smooth, cold surface as she echoes in a dull voice, “Missing?”
“Yes. Well, sort of. We know he’s with someone.”
“So he’s not missing?”
Louis can tell she’s confused and, as he squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose, he doesn’t blame her. “I don’t - I can’t explain this that good. He’s just - he’s not - here.”
“Louis.” Anne entreats, but her voice is different somehow - like just before an animal attacks. “Where is he? Where’s my son?”
“Someone’s got him. We don’t know who or where or why but they’ve taken him and I’m so sorry and the police are trying everything and now he’s not just missing, this is - this is theft and they want to speak to you and I’m so sorry, I should’ve told you sooner but I didn’t know what was wrong and when I did I was so scared, you’ve got to believe me, I’d never want to see Harry hurt or you and - ”
“I’m coming to London.”
Louis realises that he’s been babbling and the hand unwittingly scrunching his hair drops to the counter as those four cutting words sink in. “What? No! I mean, you can’t. You - ”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t do,” she grits out sharply, voice dangerously low, “My son is missing, possibly kidnapped, and you’re sitting around, what? Twiddling your thumbs and deciding whether to tell me?”
“I was - I thought - ”
“No,” Anne interrupts fiercely again, on fire, “that’s the point. You didn’t think. I’m coming to London and I want to know everything, every last little detail, however big or small. You don’t get to decide what to tell me when it concerns my son. Got it?”
“But the police,” Louis says, voice small and uncertain as to whether he should bring anything else up, “they’re coming to see you. They were talking about needing photographs and I was going to tell you, I swear, I just - I needed to find the right time - ”
“I’m sorry, Louis, but there’s no such thing as the right time. You should’ve told me.” she pauses and the silence seems to galvanise her practical side because when she speaks again, it’s still firm like steel but quieter, “Tell the police to cancel their visit. I’m coming to them. I’ll have to let everyone know here what’s going on and it’ll take me a couple of hours but I’m coming and that’s the end of it.”
“Okay.” he whispers, knowing it’s entirely fair as he feels his body shiver with pent up emotion, “Okay. Give Paul a ring and he’ll tell you where we are. We’ve got a temporary flat near enough to the station, in case the police need us.”
“No,” she says and her voice cracks as she tries to hang on to the last shreds of the call before she can let the obvious tears fall. “I can’t - I can’t stay with you or near you. I’ll get a room at a hotel for now. I...I didn’t really expect one of the others to call me about Harry, even though that would’ve been nice, but you...”
“I told them I’d do it. I told them I’d call you and let you know.”
“But you, Louis,” she says again, like his defence of his friends doesn’t really matter and frankly he understands why it wouldn’t. “I trusted you. You lied to me. You should’ve told me as soon as you thought something was wrong, however silly it sounded. It’s better to be safe than sorry and now - now I’m sorry.”
“Me too. So much.”
After a curt goodbye is exchanged, Anne hangs up quicker than him and he sits for a moment with the phone pressed to his ear and his head rested on the kitchen counter, listening to the dead sound of the line. When his hand starts to ache, he disconnects the call but keeps his forehead on the cool, hard surface and tries to breathe. He’s expecting the boys to come and find him, but still twitches when he guesses who’s filing in when, Zayn lightly pushing at his shoulder with a fist, Liam’s arm snaking around his back and Niall’s proximity on his other side.
“Are you okay?” Liam. Soft, steady, worried. Louis has no idea how to answer that one. Is he? “I mean,” he amends, clearing his throat, “of course you’re not okay, none of us are, but how was it? That was Anne, yeah?”
Louis sits straight again and nods slowly once as he stares at his hands, flipping the mobile phone around and around. “She’s coming here, to London. And it’s all my fault.”
He raises his eyes in a glance just in time to see Zayn’s face twist in disbelief, “How can you say that? You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s the fault of the sicko who’s got Harry.”
“I should’ve told her.” Louis mumbles low, shaking his head, “She said I should’ve told her sooner. And she’s right.”
“Maybe,” he concedes, “but - ”
“Well, she knows now.” Liam interrupts, “She’s coming here and the police will handle the rest, make sure she gets the proper support. You did good, Lou.”
Louis shrugs out of his grip, slipping off the bar stool like he’s been poked in the back, “How can you say that? I didn’t stop him, I didn’t - I didn’t tell Anne that her only son went missing two bloody days ago and I got my fucking face smashed in because I tried to get off with a silly tart - how is any of that good, Liam? You tell me how any of this mess is good and isn’t my fault ...” he sees his friend valiantly open his mouth to try, but he’s too irritable to listen to the nice explanation he’s no doubt desperately going to formulate, “On second thoughts, don’t. Just - just leave me alone, okay? I need - space.”
Unsure of where he is going but feeling too suffocated by sad eyes that look like his own, Louis briskly stalks into the hallway to pick up his jacket and is out of the door before they can so much as blink. They can probably see slices of his shape in the glass of the front door as he leans there for a moment, breathing, but they don’t come after him. It affords him a faint smile that they’re giving him what he needs or at least what he thinks he needs.
Exhaling shakily in the chill of the evening air, Louis squares his shoulders and pulls out the sunglasses stuck to his jacket pocket before sliding them on. He may instantly draw more attention to himself now, but he’d rather people see those than the fading bruising on his face and slowly healing eye. Besides, he promised the label he’d keep a low profile. He guesses that’ll change anyway once the press get wind of Harry’s disappearance, so to make the most of the quiet he starts to walk.
At first, it’s nowhere in particular until he ends up outside an off-license nearby. Well, it’s better than a pub with women more than willing to distract and men interested in using their fists. He learnt that the hard way. He buys some cheap alcohol that probably won’t taste at all nice because of it and ambles back to the flat with one of the bottles already clamped in his hand. Zayn happens to be halfway down the stairs when he walks in, but Louis squeezes past him still dressed in his jacket and sunglasses.
“Hey.” he says sharply, fingers circling around Louis’ wrist as he stands a step ahead of him, “Talk to me, man.”
Louis shakes his head wordlessly, wriggling out of his hold. Zayn lets him and sighs and it’s a horrible jarring sound and part of him wants to say something, anything, but a bigger part is just focused on falling face first into his room and shutting the door behind him.
“Louis...”
“Just back off, okay?” he snaps, harsher than intended from the way Zayn goes completely still, trying searchingly to work him out even through the sunglasses. “Alone, remember? I just want to be left alone.”
He thunders up the rest of the staircase and the slam of the door echoes between his ears until it’s almost an ache. He carelessly kicks off his shoes and yanks away his jacket. His sunglasses come next, although he looks to place them down before being unsure. There’s not so much room in here on his own and only the essentially furniture, so in a fit of confused desperation, he pulls open the drawer of his underwear (because he’s unlikely to have a whole drawer full of socks) and stuffs the pair in there. They’re safe in there, he muses as the lines of his thoughts already begin to blur from the buzz of alcohol.
It’s low percentage, so it takes a while, but eventually Louis starts to think less about some things and more about others. He hops from deciding the room is all wrong to longing to call Harry up to calling Anne again to apologise some more and back again, over and over until empty bottles are clinking against each other on his bed and his head feels dizzy and woozy. He searches for his phone in the folds of the duvet when he remembers that he left it in the kitchen and obviously now seems like a perfect time to get it.
He’s half hoping the boys will be asleep when he stumbles downstairs, always on the edge of giggling about nothing, but they’re not. He walks past the living area with the glow of the TV flowing out into the hall and can’t tell if he’s being too loud in his movements or not when his ears feel stuffed or as if he’s underwater. His usual love for attention and affection tips into the background and he snatches his phone off the counter before stomping back up to his room, suddenly not caring anymore if they know he’s awake. Louis stops in the doorway. He’s angry too, he realises when he spots the tremble of his fingers. To hide that from view, he leans his body against the jamb and dials Harry’s number with one hand and curls another beer into the other. His throat feels dry even as he crams the alcohol down his throat, like gravel is soaking it up and has stopped giving him the pleasure, like he’s going cold turkey when he has to stand and listen to Harry’s voicemail message, Harry’s voice, tell him what he already knows - that the phone will ring and ring and he won’t be there to pick up. He will admit that there was a nauseating kernel of hope inside him that his captor would take the call instead but there is only a beep then silence. Until Louis speaks.
“Harry.” he croaks, “Harry, please. Your mum’s so angry at me. I can’t face her alone. I know - I know that’s so fucking selfish, but - I just can’t. I need you here. Please.”
He ends the call then rings Harry’s mobile again, his voice filtering through happily as Louis stares at his small surroundings and feels hollow. It’s all wrong. This room is all wrong, his life is all wrong, all their lives are wrong. Before he can catch up to what he’s actually doing, Louis drops his phone still playing Harry’s voice and stamps on it. The plastic splinters and reminds him of the toothbrush and then suddenly, to him, everything should be stamped on, crushed, malfunctioning, as the voice gurgles then quickly stops. He wonders if that’s what happened to Harry - talking and then not. He eyes the lamp and, in a flash, that goes crashing to the floor in a wide, quick arc, he pulls the bed free of its neat bedclothes and stuffs them messily in the corner. Next, it’s a struggle to move the wardrobe so he’s pulling at the doors instead and knows they won’t come off, but jumps out of the way just in time when the universe intervenes to make the furniture overbalance and fall forward. It’s a loud cacophony of noise and the ache in his ears is solidified until his palms are pressed against the side of his head and his breathing pumps erratic along with the throbbing spike of his heartbeat. He hears the startled footsteps of his friends and panics, using the strength he has left in rubber limbs to push the small chest of drawers over onto its side and scraping the carpet to act as a barrier. Sunglasses, he thinks woozily, holding on for balance until someone is banging on the door. He jumps out of the way like he did with the wardrobe, breathless and caught red handed if only they could see. They’re screaming his name and he wants to leave but he’s blocked his only way out.
“Louis!” they chorus together before Liam demands, “Open the door! Are you okay? Are you hurt? What’s going on in there?”
Blinking furiously and red in the face from a raging frustration that makes his arms windmill with nowhere to fly, Louis glances between the doorway and the empty bottles on the bare mattress. In a split second, they all hear the sound of splintering glass as a bottle hurtles into the door and showers down onto the carpet upon impact. Louis can almost hear the gasp of shock or fright from the other side.
“Go away!” he yells, voice cracking weakly and tripping over his feet until he drops into the far corner of the room. “Just - just go away.”
Knees drawn up to his chest, he listens for the sounds of Liam or anyone else on the other side of the door but blissfully hears nothing more. The frustration returns to a simmer but he still can’t bring himself to push the chest of drawers out of the way again, so he stays where he is, surveying the chaotic damage of his previously still neat room. He can feel tears well up in his eyes, exhausted and apologetic and so scared for wherever Harry might be now. In this aftermath, everything seems quiet again and Louis hopes the others have gone back downstairs as he pulls his now cracked phone from his pocket.
“Mum?” he whispers when Jay picks up, the urge to sprawl in a heap and cry rolling towards him, “Something really bad s’happened.”
He tells her the bare bones of the mess they’re in. “Louis, listen to me. Get in your car and drive up. You should be here.”
Louis does listen to her, voice firm but somehow soothing like only a mother knows how to be both at once but then hesitates, a slow blink wetting his cheek. “I can’t. I - I’ve been drinking.”
“Oh, Lou.” she breathes sympathetically, “Get the train then. You shouldn’t be on your own.”
“I’m not.”
“I know the boys are there, but you’re drinking by yourself...?”
His defensiveness gives way suddenly to confusion, “How did you - ?”
“I can’t hear laughter or conversation or - ”
“Okay.” he cuts her off in a small voice, “I’ll come up tomorrow.”
But that doesn’t seem to satisfy her and her tone loses its soft approach, like she knows him all too well.
“No, Louis. Don’t let this become an issue. You’ll brush it off by morning and try to carry on, but it won’t work, not for this. We need to have a proper talk.”
“I don’t need you to look after me anymore.”
“You’re on your own, drinking yourself stupid because your best friend is missing.” she reminds him gently, “I can hear it in your voice that you’ve been crying.”
“Please, Mum - ” he sniffs, angrily wiping his face with the back of his hand, wondering whether it was a good idea to worry her like this.
“I’m not doing any of this to hurt you, babe. It’s the opposite. I want to see my son. Is that too much to ask?”
With a sigh, he knows she’s playing the age old guilt card and he’s never felt so far away from her and everything important so eventually he agrees to get a bag together and leave as soon as he can. He expects the conversation with his friends to be as awkward or even as confrontational as the one he had with Anne earlier on that evening, but they simply stare at him from the sofa, not quite knowing what to say or do or whether to try and stop him once he’s told them where he’s going. Zayn gets up from the armchair and goes to Louis as he hovers uncertainly between the living area and the cramped hallway. His breath hitches painfully in his chest when a hand comes round the back of his neck and pulls him in to a hug that he doesn’t have time to think about reciprocating with one arm before Zayn is coming out of it.
“Do what you need to do,” he says quietly, attempting a comforting smile but no one’s reaches their eyes these days.
“Thanks.”
“But,” he adds warningly, trying to hold Louis’ gaze hard even though his aviators close him off, “remember Anne’s coming. Don’t - don’t take too long.”
Louis vows that he won’t, guiltily unsure about whether he’s telling the truth or if he’s going to keep his promise.
It doesn’t help that once the torture of the evening train journey is over and Jay opens the door, all of Louis’ fragmenting emotions crumble into dust and he’s never been as glad that she could catch him than in that moment. It almost feels like she bears the physical weight too, ushering him inside without a second’s hesitation when his shoulders slump miserably and his face clouds with uncertainty.
“Mum,” he croaks, but quietens as soon as she squeezes him to her side, standing in the hallway with a rucksack still on his back.
“Shh now. You’ve told me enough tonight. We can talk more in the morning. How about a cuppa?”
He can tell she’s surprised to see the bruises on his face as her eyes carefully study him and he knows that she believes he should sober up and that’s probably true, but he’s not so intoxicated that he doesn’t already know that himself or can’t feel a thing (like he hoped).
“I’m not drunk,” he says and she nods silently, still holding onto him, “I just - I wanted to be safe and I didn’t - ”
“It’s alright, Lou,” she interrupts softly, “Come on, let’s go into the kitchen.”
Lying in his old bed, in his old room, with little idea of how long he’s slept except that it’s at least daylight, Louis tries to calm his mind from the snowball that was the previous day’s events. It feels like everything aches, his whole world pulsing with the sensation, but he has some idea now that it can’t possibly be as bad as what Harry might be feeling at the same time. The memory of urgent noises replacing Harry’s aimless drawl and then the shock of cruel silence tries to crawl its way back into his head so, fighting it, Louis rolls over onto his side, pulling the duvet underneath his arms and clinging onto a corner as he remembers instead how he’d reciprocated the bungalow stay with Harry with his own offering and how, come night time, Harry had slotted so easily along his spine and knees, close and resting the same way but not touching with arms. Louis hadn’t even thought to offer to sleep on the floor or downstairs and he certainly wasn’t expecting or going to force his best friend to do so and thus, like everything in their friendship, it was wordlessly agreed upon that they could soberly and willingly sleep in the same bed. It almost felt like being a child again, although Louis knew he’d never felt so intuitively close to anyone else before who weren’t blood related. Harry’s warmth and secure presence was like a lullaby, blocking out the craziness of the prior weeks until there was nothing to do but give in to dreams. Now where was he? Was he alone? Cold? Scared? Or passed out one too many times to grasp what was going on anymore?
Restless, Louis turns onto his back again with the covers twisting around his legs and his hand clamped to his mouth. He can’t quite work out through the still-half-asleep fog of his mind if another torrent of emotion is about to hit him square in the face or if his hangover is worse than he thought until the memories and the yearning and utter helplessness crash together in a rolling wave after wave of guilt. They keep coming, even as he tries to breathe, but quickly they tower high enough that it turns to genuine nausea and Louis’ making a run for the bathroom, the door slamming carelessly behind him.
tbc.
Author: Me, imagination55
Pairing: Louis/Harry
Chapter: 7
Rating (by chapter): PG-13
Summary: Sometimes what's in front of you is not what you should be looking for. - Harry is kidnapped whilst One Direction are in Brighton, recording music. With a first hand look at the seedy underbelly surrounding his captor, will Harry ever be found, how are Louis, Liam, Zayn, Niall and his family coping in his absence and, the biggest question of all - if they do, what kind of state will they find him?
Disclaimer: This is not true, made up and not meant to offend. The beauty of fiction.
A/N: Another fairly long wait, no surprise there. I promise this thing will actually move forward soon. It's a difficult thing to pace lol. Comments are always love. <3
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
Harry is really beginning to hate waking up to a pounding headache. This time has some novelty factor though as the pain throbs at the crown of his head instead of his temples. For a moment, he is confused and then he looks over and sees Luka’s darkening silhouette leaning in the doorway as the day turns into early evening. Ankles and arms crossed, Luka smirks then turns to leave and that’s when what happened comes back to Harry.
Luka had been on the phone to someone and Harry couldn’t work out why he was being allowed to hear his conversational dealings before the mobile phone was actually brandished near his face and Luka was demanding he say hello. He’d frowned in still present confusion and annoyance, both of them knowing full well that he couldn’t when his bloodstained mouth was dissected by a dirty rag pulled tight in towards his sore teeth. Apparently that wasn’t good enough and Harry let his voice do whatever it thought of first. He blinked a little in surprise himself at the sound of the whimper, but was spurred on to make it immediately stronger after the first try. A frenzy of need possessed him when Luka’s teasing remarks and talk of sales (or not as it were) made it clear that he was conversing with someone official, an authority figure, maybe even the police themselves. He knew he was probably putting himself in danger beneath a volatile man, but the bone-deep desire to be free fed into his reckless rebelling again and his face contorted into a pained scowl as he rattled his body forcefully within his bonds in the hope that whoever was on the other end of the phone placed on speakerphone would understand his plight. He had the briefest flickering thought about the other boys, that if the police were talking with Luka then that had to mean that they missed Harry and wanted him back and had gone to find help. It was brief because it was the last thing shimmering inside his head before there was swift, brutal darkness.
If Harry could touch his head right now, he guesses he would find a lump or a cut as a result of his head rebounding off the pillar behind him thanks to the punch Luka had given to his face lightning-quick upon hearing the volume of his “hello”, but he knows it’s obvious he can’t and tries to relax his shoulders from the split second effort. His hair feels sticky from more than frustrated sweat and the urge to cry slams into him until he’s forced to take a shaky breath in and bite down on his lip to stop it from happening. He squeezes his eyes shut and wishes he could press his fingers against his eyelids to hide away from the vulnerability, even as he glances sidelong at the men guarding the doorway to find them unseeing and not paying him any attention, like statues, as per usual.
His mother was never opposed to him shedding tears.
It’s actually a shock to think of her. He thought that if he didn’t then he wouldn’t have to remind himself to be brave. If he had no one he loves to be brave for, it would come down to self-preservation, fighting for himself, and that was a lot easier to handle. He pictures her and all he sees is how utterly out of her mind with worry she must be and shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes. It hangs limply in front of his face and it’s all too much. She’s not supposed to ever feel like that. She’s not supposed to be anything but smiling and attracting attention like she owns it and Harry’s somehow inherited the magnetism from her. He has to think of somebody, something, else or who knows what will happen.
The next person in line that comes to mind is Jay. It’s not the surprise it probably should be. As much as he likes her and is slightly giddy that she gets on with his mum as well as he and Louis do, she isn’t his mother herself and consequently it hurts less to think of her. Without the tied to a post and gagged, it would be...nice. But it’s all he’s got and Harry’s usually one to go with the flow, so he does just that. He lets his memories once again take him far, far away. This time, he closes his eyes in the hope that these people will think he’s in another exhausted bout of sleeping and leave him in this alcove of relative peace.
He remembers the first time he met Jay properly, when the competition was done and dusted. Standing in front of Louis’ house in Doncaster, Harry impatiently shook his hair out and pushed it back off his forehead in a practiced move Louis had witnessed a hundred times over. He could feel the other boy’s eyes and amused smile on him then a nudge to his elbow.
“Mate,” he whispered, humouring Harry’s earlier pleading to let them have a moment before they went inside, “don’t look so nervous, okay? You’ve met her before! You’re not asking her permission to marry me or something.”
Harry frowned; shoving Louis back with his own elbow and feeling his expression melt away anyway when Louis laughed gleefully. He reached for the door with a brisk, happy “come on” and Harry knew he couldn’t dawdle anymore and followed him. He worked out early on that it was (perhaps frighteningly) easy to follow Louis’ lead.
“Mum!” he yelled, grinning at a wincing Harry as he made them stand in the hallway, “We’re here!”
“I can see that.” Jay replied calmly as she appeared from a room to their left with a smile that soon brightened.
She hugged her son and kissed him on the cheek in greeting and Harry tried not to smile too big at the simple affection before he was seized with a strange kind of anxiety as Jay turned towards him. He stuck out his hand like a fairly petrified robot with a “Mrs Tomlinson” tumbling from his lips without being able to catch it in time. Jay took his proffered hand warmly in hers but raised an eyebrow at Louis.
“Who’s this guy and what have you done with Harry?”
Louis shook his head at her, “I don’t know,” then pushed at Harry again, “Oi, you’re acting like you’ve never even met my mum - no, worse, like she’s royalty!”
“I’m just being polite.” he mumbled awkwardly.
Jay came to stand by his side and slid her arm around his waist, “There’s politeness, love, and then there’s overkill. Unfortunately, the Mrs T thing was a little too - ”
“ - Old? Redundant?”
She rolled her eyes at Louis’ chip in, “- Formal.” She nudged him also, “What’s the matter? Don’t you fancy me anymore?”
Harry blinked; distracted slightly by the exaggerated retching noises from Louis at his other side. “I - I - ”
But Jay laughed, “Your face is a picture when you’re surprised. Come on. How about we have a cuppa and a catch up? You can tell me all about what happens next.”
“Yes!” Louis announced, walking ahead of them and into the kitchen, “Yorkshire Tea I have missed you!”
After that, Harry knew without a doubt that he didn’t have to mince his words with someone like Jay. He wasn’t scared or nervous around her once she’d bypassed his attempt at not overstepping the mark of familiarity in her own house. She was easy to get along with, made it easy on his mumbling lanky self to open up and he understood perfectly how over the course of the show his mum and Louis’ had become fast friends.
As a consequence, Harry was a lot more comfortable meeting Louis’ brood of sisters again. Following on from a couple hours of lazy conversation with Jay, the rest of the Tomlinsons came barrelling back into his life with a kind of frenetic energy he recognised in Louis whenever he was bored and looking for adventure. Harry was sat next to him on the sofa in the living room when they all heard the door click open and instant chatter. Even Louis sat up a little straighter and Harry reacted stiffly in kind, however pleased he was to see them, until he realised what Louis was doing. One of the twins was halfway to running excitedly straight past them with barely a glance when Louis reached out and caught her around the middle.
“And where have you been, you little monster?” he asked, watching her squirm in his lap as he lightly tickled her in hello.
“I’m not little!” she giggled, ruining her otherwise stern exclamation.
“Alright then, big fat monster!” Louis laughed, weaving away from her hand coming towards his face and grasping her wrist. “You haven’t noticed yet, eh?”
She instantly stopped struggling as curiosity crossed her face. Louis inclined his head to mean Harry and watched as her whole body froze in his arms. Tipping her back into the crook of his elbow and holding her close even though she was getting too big, Louis kissed her forehead with another chuckle and looked at Harry.
“You remember Harry, right?” she glanced up at her brother from her position against his chest in such a grown up, deadpan way Harry had to stifle his own giggle. “Just checking,” Louis defended, briefly tickling her ribs once.
“Hi Daisy.” Harry smiled, feeling slightly odd to be around a set of siblings younger than him when he was so used to being the youngest in his family.
She smiled in a shy hello and was otherwise mute until Louis started tickling her again, her legs kicking accidentally at the side of Harry’s thigh and her shrieks getting louder until Jay popped her head in from the kitchen where Harry presumed the other girls were.
“I would’ve thought you’d have had enough of screaming girls already,” she smirked and Harry felt oddly self-conscious at the realisation of what their life had suddenly become in the last few months.
Louis paused as if in thought then nodded, sitting Daisy up. “Good point. Go on, off you go.”
Glad for the respite and red in the face from exertion, Daisy slipped off her brother’s knees. Harry was expecting her to run off instantly to find her sisters so was entirely stunned when she lunged at him in a hug with arms brushing his neck.
“Hi Harry.” she said then toddled off, not bothered by the fact that Harry could only manage a pat to her slim back before she was gone.
“How is that fair?” Louis complained, but he was smiling underneath it, “I have to practically stop them from running away to get a cuddle and you just sit there like a lemon and get one for free!”
Jay, hovering nearby as she watched her daughter and the two boys in amusement, piped up in mock warning. “Now now, Lou. Jealousy is not a good look on you. Girls? Come and say hello to your jealous big brother!”
Harry looked between them - at Louis’ unaffected sniggering towards his mother’s gleeful sense of humour and the happy fondness in Jay’s eyes to have her first born back home for as long as she was afforded the luxury - and he knew that they were both special. Special to each other and special to him. People he could enjoy the company of and completely rely on. They almost felt like a once in a lifetime family. He hoped they felt the same about his.
--
Louis wakes up to an awful headache and a room that isn’t his. For a moment, he is utterly confused and a little panicky as he rubs his tired eyes into life and tries to remember what happened the last time he was awake. It feels like he has a hangover, complete with cotton mouth and queasy stomach and all he wants to do is roll over and sleep for a decade but none of it makes any sense. It makes even less of one when he tries to get comfortable again and nearly rolls off the edge of the bed. Ah, a room that isn’t his. Bleary eyed, he takes in the single bed and small, blue walls with not much else to the room and slowly it clicks. This had been his room, once. Before a massive house and singing on television every weekend had somehow managed to take over everything he almost took dangerously for granted.
With a pitiful groan that hurts his head and his ears and even his dry throat for making the sound, Louis flops onto his back in weak exhaustion and tries to piece together what’s left as blank holes in his memory. If he was in Doncaster, there had to be a reason why. Of course he could’ve just wanted to see his mum or she him but his face felt tight and tender, like he’d been crying and he’s never been one for happy tears as such and for all intents and purposes he’s a grown man for God’s sake, so simply seeing his mother again was obviously not the cause. He’s not absent in his own head enough to not remember that Harry’s missing, regardless that he guiltily wishes he was that forgetful. It’s the first thing he thinks about in the morning, feels the space like the sudden loss of a limb, and the last thing at night because saying goodnight to three people instead of four isn’t right. Even so, he’s not sure Harry’s disappearance would be the sole reason either. Instead, he tries to put being back in Doncaster with his mother and thoughts of Harry together and eventually two plus two becomes four and Louis remembers one of the key elements.
Anne.
A mother just like his own, Anne had returned Louis’ call the day before. His headache starts to become more insistent in its throbbing presence but he’s frozen. He can’t tumble out of his old bed and go to the bathroom or the kitchen. He can’t do anything except stare unblinkingly at the ceiling and remember with shuddering clarity that the phone call had not been pretty. He’d feared and expected as much, but that didn’t mean it made him feel any less rotten. She’d been worried from the first word because Harry hadn’t been in contact when usually it was fairly regular, even if it was just a text, but she’d tried not to show it in her voice. She chose to be as calm as possible and Louis could feel his heart beating harder than if there had been an immediate demand to know what was going on.
“Louis? Where’s Harry?” His heart twists in his ribcage, making him lose his voice and only able to gawp like a fish out of water for a valuable second. “Louis, please.”
“I’m sorry,” he gasps, blurted out on instinct the only words he really wants to convey.
He sees the other boys swivel their heads to look at him, sat in the living area at dinner time in front of the television, and turns his back to them before thinking more of it. He moves from standing halfway between the armchair just vacated and the doorway and goes through it, straight into the kitchen for some privacy. They probably know who it is from the nervous drain of colour on his skin but he can’t even meet their eyes right now with what he’s been tasked to do.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats as Anne stays blessedly silent, “I wanted to tell you - I really did - I just...” the sigh escapes him before he’s aware of it and tastes like defeat. “...didn’t. Harry’s not here because - because he’s missing.”
He slides into the nearest seat around the kitchen island and leans the elbow with the hand clutching his mobile phone on the smooth, cold surface as she echoes in a dull voice, “Missing?”
“Yes. Well, sort of. We know he’s with someone.”
“So he’s not missing?”
Louis can tell she’s confused and, as he squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose, he doesn’t blame her. “I don’t - I can’t explain this that good. He’s just - he’s not - here.”
“Louis.” Anne entreats, but her voice is different somehow - like just before an animal attacks. “Where is he? Where’s my son?”
“Someone’s got him. We don’t know who or where or why but they’ve taken him and I’m so sorry and the police are trying everything and now he’s not just missing, this is - this is theft and they want to speak to you and I’m so sorry, I should’ve told you sooner but I didn’t know what was wrong and when I did I was so scared, you’ve got to believe me, I’d never want to see Harry hurt or you and - ”
“I’m coming to London.”
Louis realises that he’s been babbling and the hand unwittingly scrunching his hair drops to the counter as those four cutting words sink in. “What? No! I mean, you can’t. You - ”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t do,” she grits out sharply, voice dangerously low, “My son is missing, possibly kidnapped, and you’re sitting around, what? Twiddling your thumbs and deciding whether to tell me?”
“I was - I thought - ”
“No,” Anne interrupts fiercely again, on fire, “that’s the point. You didn’t think. I’m coming to London and I want to know everything, every last little detail, however big or small. You don’t get to decide what to tell me when it concerns my son. Got it?”
“But the police,” Louis says, voice small and uncertain as to whether he should bring anything else up, “they’re coming to see you. They were talking about needing photographs and I was going to tell you, I swear, I just - I needed to find the right time - ”
“I’m sorry, Louis, but there’s no such thing as the right time. You should’ve told me.” she pauses and the silence seems to galvanise her practical side because when she speaks again, it’s still firm like steel but quieter, “Tell the police to cancel their visit. I’m coming to them. I’ll have to let everyone know here what’s going on and it’ll take me a couple of hours but I’m coming and that’s the end of it.”
“Okay.” he whispers, knowing it’s entirely fair as he feels his body shiver with pent up emotion, “Okay. Give Paul a ring and he’ll tell you where we are. We’ve got a temporary flat near enough to the station, in case the police need us.”
“No,” she says and her voice cracks as she tries to hang on to the last shreds of the call before she can let the obvious tears fall. “I can’t - I can’t stay with you or near you. I’ll get a room at a hotel for now. I...I didn’t really expect one of the others to call me about Harry, even though that would’ve been nice, but you...”
“I told them I’d do it. I told them I’d call you and let you know.”
“But you, Louis,” she says again, like his defence of his friends doesn’t really matter and frankly he understands why it wouldn’t. “I trusted you. You lied to me. You should’ve told me as soon as you thought something was wrong, however silly it sounded. It’s better to be safe than sorry and now - now I’m sorry.”
“Me too. So much.”
After a curt goodbye is exchanged, Anne hangs up quicker than him and he sits for a moment with the phone pressed to his ear and his head rested on the kitchen counter, listening to the dead sound of the line. When his hand starts to ache, he disconnects the call but keeps his forehead on the cool, hard surface and tries to breathe. He’s expecting the boys to come and find him, but still twitches when he guesses who’s filing in when, Zayn lightly pushing at his shoulder with a fist, Liam’s arm snaking around his back and Niall’s proximity on his other side.
“Are you okay?” Liam. Soft, steady, worried. Louis has no idea how to answer that one. Is he? “I mean,” he amends, clearing his throat, “of course you’re not okay, none of us are, but how was it? That was Anne, yeah?”
Louis sits straight again and nods slowly once as he stares at his hands, flipping the mobile phone around and around. “She’s coming here, to London. And it’s all my fault.”
He raises his eyes in a glance just in time to see Zayn’s face twist in disbelief, “How can you say that? You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s the fault of the sicko who’s got Harry.”
“I should’ve told her.” Louis mumbles low, shaking his head, “She said I should’ve told her sooner. And she’s right.”
“Maybe,” he concedes, “but - ”
“Well, she knows now.” Liam interrupts, “She’s coming here and the police will handle the rest, make sure she gets the proper support. You did good, Lou.”
Louis shrugs out of his grip, slipping off the bar stool like he’s been poked in the back, “How can you say that? I didn’t stop him, I didn’t - I didn’t tell Anne that her only son went missing two bloody days ago and I got my fucking face smashed in because I tried to get off with a silly tart - how is any of that good, Liam? You tell me how any of this mess is good and isn’t my fault ...” he sees his friend valiantly open his mouth to try, but he’s too irritable to listen to the nice explanation he’s no doubt desperately going to formulate, “On second thoughts, don’t. Just - just leave me alone, okay? I need - space.”
Unsure of where he is going but feeling too suffocated by sad eyes that look like his own, Louis briskly stalks into the hallway to pick up his jacket and is out of the door before they can so much as blink. They can probably see slices of his shape in the glass of the front door as he leans there for a moment, breathing, but they don’t come after him. It affords him a faint smile that they’re giving him what he needs or at least what he thinks he needs.
Exhaling shakily in the chill of the evening air, Louis squares his shoulders and pulls out the sunglasses stuck to his jacket pocket before sliding them on. He may instantly draw more attention to himself now, but he’d rather people see those than the fading bruising on his face and slowly healing eye. Besides, he promised the label he’d keep a low profile. He guesses that’ll change anyway once the press get wind of Harry’s disappearance, so to make the most of the quiet he starts to walk.
At first, it’s nowhere in particular until he ends up outside an off-license nearby. Well, it’s better than a pub with women more than willing to distract and men interested in using their fists. He learnt that the hard way. He buys some cheap alcohol that probably won’t taste at all nice because of it and ambles back to the flat with one of the bottles already clamped in his hand. Zayn happens to be halfway down the stairs when he walks in, but Louis squeezes past him still dressed in his jacket and sunglasses.
“Hey.” he says sharply, fingers circling around Louis’ wrist as he stands a step ahead of him, “Talk to me, man.”
Louis shakes his head wordlessly, wriggling out of his hold. Zayn lets him and sighs and it’s a horrible jarring sound and part of him wants to say something, anything, but a bigger part is just focused on falling face first into his room and shutting the door behind him.
“Louis...”
“Just back off, okay?” he snaps, harsher than intended from the way Zayn goes completely still, trying searchingly to work him out even through the sunglasses. “Alone, remember? I just want to be left alone.”
He thunders up the rest of the staircase and the slam of the door echoes between his ears until it’s almost an ache. He carelessly kicks off his shoes and yanks away his jacket. His sunglasses come next, although he looks to place them down before being unsure. There’s not so much room in here on his own and only the essentially furniture, so in a fit of confused desperation, he pulls open the drawer of his underwear (because he’s unlikely to have a whole drawer full of socks) and stuffs the pair in there. They’re safe in there, he muses as the lines of his thoughts already begin to blur from the buzz of alcohol.
It’s low percentage, so it takes a while, but eventually Louis starts to think less about some things and more about others. He hops from deciding the room is all wrong to longing to call Harry up to calling Anne again to apologise some more and back again, over and over until empty bottles are clinking against each other on his bed and his head feels dizzy and woozy. He searches for his phone in the folds of the duvet when he remembers that he left it in the kitchen and obviously now seems like a perfect time to get it.
He’s half hoping the boys will be asleep when he stumbles downstairs, always on the edge of giggling about nothing, but they’re not. He walks past the living area with the glow of the TV flowing out into the hall and can’t tell if he’s being too loud in his movements or not when his ears feel stuffed or as if he’s underwater. His usual love for attention and affection tips into the background and he snatches his phone off the counter before stomping back up to his room, suddenly not caring anymore if they know he’s awake. Louis stops in the doorway. He’s angry too, he realises when he spots the tremble of his fingers. To hide that from view, he leans his body against the jamb and dials Harry’s number with one hand and curls another beer into the other. His throat feels dry even as he crams the alcohol down his throat, like gravel is soaking it up and has stopped giving him the pleasure, like he’s going cold turkey when he has to stand and listen to Harry’s voicemail message, Harry’s voice, tell him what he already knows - that the phone will ring and ring and he won’t be there to pick up. He will admit that there was a nauseating kernel of hope inside him that his captor would take the call instead but there is only a beep then silence. Until Louis speaks.
“Harry.” he croaks, “Harry, please. Your mum’s so angry at me. I can’t face her alone. I know - I know that’s so fucking selfish, but - I just can’t. I need you here. Please.”
He ends the call then rings Harry’s mobile again, his voice filtering through happily as Louis stares at his small surroundings and feels hollow. It’s all wrong. This room is all wrong, his life is all wrong, all their lives are wrong. Before he can catch up to what he’s actually doing, Louis drops his phone still playing Harry’s voice and stamps on it. The plastic splinters and reminds him of the toothbrush and then suddenly, to him, everything should be stamped on, crushed, malfunctioning, as the voice gurgles then quickly stops. He wonders if that’s what happened to Harry - talking and then not. He eyes the lamp and, in a flash, that goes crashing to the floor in a wide, quick arc, he pulls the bed free of its neat bedclothes and stuffs them messily in the corner. Next, it’s a struggle to move the wardrobe so he’s pulling at the doors instead and knows they won’t come off, but jumps out of the way just in time when the universe intervenes to make the furniture overbalance and fall forward. It’s a loud cacophony of noise and the ache in his ears is solidified until his palms are pressed against the side of his head and his breathing pumps erratic along with the throbbing spike of his heartbeat. He hears the startled footsteps of his friends and panics, using the strength he has left in rubber limbs to push the small chest of drawers over onto its side and scraping the carpet to act as a barrier. Sunglasses, he thinks woozily, holding on for balance until someone is banging on the door. He jumps out of the way like he did with the wardrobe, breathless and caught red handed if only they could see. They’re screaming his name and he wants to leave but he’s blocked his only way out.
“Louis!” they chorus together before Liam demands, “Open the door! Are you okay? Are you hurt? What’s going on in there?”
Blinking furiously and red in the face from a raging frustration that makes his arms windmill with nowhere to fly, Louis glances between the doorway and the empty bottles on the bare mattress. In a split second, they all hear the sound of splintering glass as a bottle hurtles into the door and showers down onto the carpet upon impact. Louis can almost hear the gasp of shock or fright from the other side.
“Go away!” he yells, voice cracking weakly and tripping over his feet until he drops into the far corner of the room. “Just - just go away.”
Knees drawn up to his chest, he listens for the sounds of Liam or anyone else on the other side of the door but blissfully hears nothing more. The frustration returns to a simmer but he still can’t bring himself to push the chest of drawers out of the way again, so he stays where he is, surveying the chaotic damage of his previously still neat room. He can feel tears well up in his eyes, exhausted and apologetic and so scared for wherever Harry might be now. In this aftermath, everything seems quiet again and Louis hopes the others have gone back downstairs as he pulls his now cracked phone from his pocket.
“Mum?” he whispers when Jay picks up, the urge to sprawl in a heap and cry rolling towards him, “Something really bad s’happened.”
He tells her the bare bones of the mess they’re in. “Louis, listen to me. Get in your car and drive up. You should be here.”
Louis does listen to her, voice firm but somehow soothing like only a mother knows how to be both at once but then hesitates, a slow blink wetting his cheek. “I can’t. I - I’ve been drinking.”
“Oh, Lou.” she breathes sympathetically, “Get the train then. You shouldn’t be on your own.”
“I’m not.”
“I know the boys are there, but you’re drinking by yourself...?”
His defensiveness gives way suddenly to confusion, “How did you - ?”
“I can’t hear laughter or conversation or - ”
“Okay.” he cuts her off in a small voice, “I’ll come up tomorrow.”
But that doesn’t seem to satisfy her and her tone loses its soft approach, like she knows him all too well.
“No, Louis. Don’t let this become an issue. You’ll brush it off by morning and try to carry on, but it won’t work, not for this. We need to have a proper talk.”
“I don’t need you to look after me anymore.”
“You’re on your own, drinking yourself stupid because your best friend is missing.” she reminds him gently, “I can hear it in your voice that you’ve been crying.”
“Please, Mum - ” he sniffs, angrily wiping his face with the back of his hand, wondering whether it was a good idea to worry her like this.
“I’m not doing any of this to hurt you, babe. It’s the opposite. I want to see my son. Is that too much to ask?”
With a sigh, he knows she’s playing the age old guilt card and he’s never felt so far away from her and everything important so eventually he agrees to get a bag together and leave as soon as he can. He expects the conversation with his friends to be as awkward or even as confrontational as the one he had with Anne earlier on that evening, but they simply stare at him from the sofa, not quite knowing what to say or do or whether to try and stop him once he’s told them where he’s going. Zayn gets up from the armchair and goes to Louis as he hovers uncertainly between the living area and the cramped hallway. His breath hitches painfully in his chest when a hand comes round the back of his neck and pulls him in to a hug that he doesn’t have time to think about reciprocating with one arm before Zayn is coming out of it.
“Do what you need to do,” he says quietly, attempting a comforting smile but no one’s reaches their eyes these days.
“Thanks.”
“But,” he adds warningly, trying to hold Louis’ gaze hard even though his aviators close him off, “remember Anne’s coming. Don’t - don’t take too long.”
Louis vows that he won’t, guiltily unsure about whether he’s telling the truth or if he’s going to keep his promise.
It doesn’t help that once the torture of the evening train journey is over and Jay opens the door, all of Louis’ fragmenting emotions crumble into dust and he’s never been as glad that she could catch him than in that moment. It almost feels like she bears the physical weight too, ushering him inside without a second’s hesitation when his shoulders slump miserably and his face clouds with uncertainty.
“Mum,” he croaks, but quietens as soon as she squeezes him to her side, standing in the hallway with a rucksack still on his back.
“Shh now. You’ve told me enough tonight. We can talk more in the morning. How about a cuppa?”
He can tell she’s surprised to see the bruises on his face as her eyes carefully study him and he knows that she believes he should sober up and that’s probably true, but he’s not so intoxicated that he doesn’t already know that himself or can’t feel a thing (like he hoped).
“I’m not drunk,” he says and she nods silently, still holding onto him, “I just - I wanted to be safe and I didn’t - ”
“It’s alright, Lou,” she interrupts softly, “Come on, let’s go into the kitchen.”
Lying in his old bed, in his old room, with little idea of how long he’s slept except that it’s at least daylight, Louis tries to calm his mind from the snowball that was the previous day’s events. It feels like everything aches, his whole world pulsing with the sensation, but he has some idea now that it can’t possibly be as bad as what Harry might be feeling at the same time. The memory of urgent noises replacing Harry’s aimless drawl and then the shock of cruel silence tries to crawl its way back into his head so, fighting it, Louis rolls over onto his side, pulling the duvet underneath his arms and clinging onto a corner as he remembers instead how he’d reciprocated the bungalow stay with Harry with his own offering and how, come night time, Harry had slotted so easily along his spine and knees, close and resting the same way but not touching with arms. Louis hadn’t even thought to offer to sleep on the floor or downstairs and he certainly wasn’t expecting or going to force his best friend to do so and thus, like everything in their friendship, it was wordlessly agreed upon that they could soberly and willingly sleep in the same bed. It almost felt like being a child again, although Louis knew he’d never felt so intuitively close to anyone else before who weren’t blood related. Harry’s warmth and secure presence was like a lullaby, blocking out the craziness of the prior weeks until there was nothing to do but give in to dreams. Now where was he? Was he alone? Cold? Scared? Or passed out one too many times to grasp what was going on anymore?
Restless, Louis turns onto his back again with the covers twisting around his legs and his hand clamped to his mouth. He can’t quite work out through the still-half-asleep fog of his mind if another torrent of emotion is about to hit him square in the face or if his hangover is worse than he thought until the memories and the yearning and utter helplessness crash together in a rolling wave after wave of guilt. They keep coming, even as he tries to breathe, but quickly they tower high enough that it turns to genuine nausea and Louis’ making a run for the bathroom, the door slamming carelessly behind him.
tbc.