vita post mortem
TITLE: vita post mortem
PAIRING: Harry/Louis
SUMMARY: Wherein Harry has had different ways of coping with Louis' death over the months and finds a new one.
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: They're not mine. All's a work of fiction.
Notes: This is what happens when you've read 'The Fault In Our Stars' way too many times and have had a rather difficult time coping yourself.
Zayn carefully unlocks the door and pokes his head first in through the little opening he’s made to satisfy some hopeful and ridiculous need to check the room, make sure he wasn’t invading anything. He’s done it out of habit, before, you know, the accident. There were things that he didn’t need to see, and a lot of them happened in that living room, from the used condoms and underwear thrown askew on the floor to the actual proceedings taking place on the couches that involved too much naked skin and bucking limbs.
The living room, it turns out, is of course, sinisterly empty and quiet, like death has occurred. (Ha, good one, Malik.) So without trepidation he steps inside and wobbles over to the couches, picking up the stray remote from the floor on the way and placing it carefully on the table sitting in front of the TV, beside four months ago’s Bulletin issue. Zayn likes it, how disorganized everything still is. Back then of course he would frown and kick about the unfolded afghans and the haphazardly piled magazines and newspapers, or the careless way with which the throw pillows were arranged on the couches or the half-eaten doughnuts caught between them. Now he just half-smiles at the familiar sight, reminding him almost nothing’s changed in this place, still the same old messy flat shared by two male teenagers (one actual and one by heart) who were way too busy (having too much fun) being age-stereotypical in the house-keeping department.
He’s about to go into full reminiscence mode when he’s disrupted by a lovely smell coming from the kitchen. Huh. Zayn feels himself smile. He’s cooking again.
He excitedly prances to the adjacent room, unsure of what he’s about to witness, but nonetheless curious. Oven’s timed, something good’s bubbling over the fire, and Harry is frantically moving about, opening and slamming cupboards one after another, yanking and popping open bottles of different uses that Zayn can’t hope to guess because the closest thing he has to a home-cooked meal is scrambled egg, which he slays, thank you very much. Zayn stops and watches him fondly from the threshold, crossing his arms and leaning against the frame, like that’s enough to make his presence known.
“Smells good.” He finally says. “What is it?”
Harry barely looks up from the pot he’s now stirring. “It’s lobster soup with onions and basil leaves.” He says, eyes directed at nothing else.
“And the one on the oven?”
“Chicken, stuffed with mozzarella cheese wrapped in parma ham, what else?” Harry says a little more enthusiastically than Zayn’s heard him in a while.
“Sounds divine, what’s the occasion?” He asks, humoring Harry in a way that doesn’t let the surprise spill from his voice, hands now migrating to his pockets. “Oh and by the way, I hope you don’t mind, I let myself in.” It’s a belated apology, but it always gets a premature acceptance. Harry and Louis never, ever, minded.
Harry makes a noncommittal noise like it can’t bother him any less and places the lid over the pot, letting it simmer, which creates this smell that leaves your mouth unconsciously watering, and Zayn realizes Harry didn’t answer his question. “So are you having people over? Or am I a lucky solo, albeit uninvited, guest?”
Far as he knows, Niall’s on a romantic holiday with Demi in Italy at the moment, and Liam’s spending his weekend over at his parents’ in ‘Hampton, and outside the aforementioned names, Harry has not shown interest in communicating with friends, or anything living in general, lately. He’s become quite an agoraphobic. The only time he lets the sun hit his skin is when he’s yelling at the crowd of pigeons that seem to have developed a curious love for their terrace, and also that one time when a paparazzo was spying idly by outside their gate and Harry got out and attacked him with a fire extinguisher; Zayn would not believe the story but Niall was on the floor wheezing in laughter and hiccupping “on Liam’s life” over and over. His phone’s turned off ninety per cent of the time, and when you do reach him, he has to know if your name is Zayn, Liam, Niall or Anne first, otherwise he’ll hang up. Zayn found about this from Liam when Stan tried to speak to Harry three weeks after the funeral.
The first few weeks were the hardest, though. Between dealing with their own pain and making sure Harry doesn’t kill himself, came a series of emotional breakdowns and panic attack episodes from Harry. He once got out of bed at three in the morning in nothing but pajamas and drove Louis’ car and was found on a ditch three hours outside the city the next morning by the police. Anne almost had a heart attack and yelled at Zayn, who was designated babysitter, longer than he could remember. They were messy: the tantrums, the fits, they came and they went and they came back, an in-and-out nightmare. It was on the fifth month that he got better, in a way that he didn’t self-harm anymore, but remained a recluse. Baby steps, as what Dr. Langdon, the psychiatrist Harry disliked with a passion and had called a dickwad once or twice, had said, were steps nonetheless. So they were hopeful.
Liam, Niall and Zayn decided early on that they would take turns in checking up on him every now and then, to see if he’s eating right and taking his anti-depressants only so much as indicated in Dr. Langdon’s chicken scratch of a prescription. It’s been almost a year, there haven’t been episodes since that last one seven months ago when Anne found him lying unconscious in the tub, and Harry has significantly gotten better. It’s almost as if he’s becoming the old Harry again.
So it’s either he has started talking to people again, or he just wants a big meal tonight.
“Harry…” Zayn wants to ask again but Harry cuts him off with a finger in the air.
“Can you hear that ringing?”
Zayn doesn’t hear a sound. “Uh, I don’t think so.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I guess, I’m just a little, you know, excited.” Harry says and looks down, like he doesn’t want Zayn to see the blush on his face.
“Why?” Zayn is suddenly more interested.
“Louis called this morning to tell me he was just getting back from his trip. I told him I’d love to pick him up from the airport but he insisted on taking a cab.” He shared casually, “Oh Louis, ever the stubborn, selfless child. I’m babbling, what’s new with you?”
Zayn blinks, back suddenly tense. “What did you say?”
“I said, what’s new with you?”
“No, before that.”
“About Louis coming back from his trip? Yeah, didn’t he tell you?”
When Zayn can’t answer, Harry flips him off. “Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise. Oh well, guess his secret’s out now. Oops.”
Zayn closes his eyes and whispers ‘shit’ in his head. No, this isn’t happening. This is certainly new. Harry might have acted like a suicidal maniac for two and a half months and gave them what must have been the greatest scare of their lives, but Zayn realizes now Harry never went through the denial phase. Is it possible for the grieving process to work in reverse? That anger phase happens before the denial phase? He can’t remember Mr. Langdon mentioning anything about that. “Harry…”
“Hold on a sec,” Harry interrupts again, responding to the oven’s timer going off. “It’s ready!” He exclaims with excitement, real excitement that no emotional or mental glitch can easily make up. Harry is genuinely happy. He carefully fishes the tray out, where a rather delightful-looking chicken, just the perfect shade of golden brown, lies atop. He then takes it to the dining table, which Zayn now discovers is also set, candles and flowers and everything, as if a couple is just about to get lost in each other’s eyes over it. Zayn also has a belated realization he’s a third wheel to this while impossible, but wonderful date.
Zayn observes Harry while he thinks of the ways to deal with this new brand of madness. He’d found Harry after locking himself in the bathroom for two days, he’d seen Niall and Liam wrestle a knife out of Harry’s hands in the middle of an attempted self-stabbing incident, he’d held Harry in his arms while he wailed in the hospital restroom, but this. This requires another level of bravery. “Bro, not to ruin your evening or anything but your friend died in a car accident almost a year ago. He couldn’t possibly have called because he’s been dead since. Food looks great, though.” doesn’t seem to hold the kind of benevolent honesty Zayn wants to convey. He’s suddenly thinking of Liam, he’s the one good at this kind of confrontations.
“Now we’ll just have to wait for the man of the hour.” Harry says as he’s putting the final touches and garnish to the stuffed chicken, which of course, Zayn now remembers, was Louis’s favorite meal. “God, it feels like it’s been a year since I last saw him. Isn’t that weird?”
Zayn is never a crier, but he almost cries then.
“Harry, he’s erm, he’s not coming.” He wants to say. It’s on the tip of his tongue, but he can see Harry’s face, how genuinely hopeful and Harry-like it is, and he just doesn’t want to wipe it away like that. Especially since he’s never seen the old Harry for what seems like a long, cold eternity. So he settles for “But he can still be stuck at traffic. You know how London traffic can get, especially at this hour. The food will get cold, man.”
Harry bites his lip. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“So, shall we start without him? I’m quite starving myself.”
“I’ll check on the soup.” Harry says simply and retires back to the kitchen, leaving him hanging.
Zayn slouches on the chair and thinks of calling Liam, to ask for some kind of guidance. This definitely isn’t the recurrence he was hoping for. He decides he doesn’t want to ruin Liam’s holiday. This is going to be his battle and he’s going to win it.
Harry comes back out with a big smile. “Shall we then?” He asks and Zayn wants to hug him. Like, really, really hug him. Not the I’m-sorry-that-life’s-a-shit kind of hug, the one he’s gotten since the accident from everyone in embrace-close range, but the I-miss-you kind of hug. He goes for a nod instead.
Harry’s singing “I love you, baby”, Zayn jumping in for the second voice, while Harry pours a considerate amount of soup into each one of the bowls. Zayn remembers those bowls - they were presents from Jay on the house-Christening day. Zayn got them a lifesize Teletubby doll as a joke, and he remembers how Harry laughed and smacked him and how Louis made a comment about building a secret stash for the sex toys in their household, at which point Jay shook her head and Harry admonished him with a hip bump. Zayn wonders where that toy is now. Has it left Harry like Louis did?
There’s a nice kind of quiet as they eat their food. Zayn realizes how much he’s missed Harry’s cooking. He’s always been the best at this. The king of the kitchen, Louis lovingly referred to him. Zayn realizes how much he’s missed Louis, too.
After a while, Harry checks his watch. “Shit, it’s almost 9, he’s not here yet. Do you think something’s happened to him? Do you think I should call him?”
“I’m sure he’s fine.” Zayn says as the mashed potato suddenly turns sour in his mouth.
“I should call him.”
“Harry, don’t.”
Harry’s already dialing.
“Harry, he won’t pick up.”
Harry’s already putting the phone against his right ear. A frown appears on his face from what Zayn can only guess is the answering machine telling him his friend is dead. Or something.
“That’s weird.” Harry says, only faintly alarmed. “It says his number is not in use.”
Zayn just watches Harry struggle with his confusion and fumble with the screen of his phone. He tries one more time. Harry shoots a puzzled look at him as the answering machine on the other end gives him the same sad monotonic answer as before. He gives up.
“Maybe I should try Jay.”
Zayn seethes with a bloody strong urge to wrench the phone from his hand, only he knows better to aggravate this Harry, not the Normal Harry, but the perpetually-mourning-drowned-in-his-own-pool-of-depression Harry. God knows what happened the last time they antagonized him. Which he shouldn’t be worrying about now, because Harry’s gotten better, he’s gotten better. “Harry, please stop.”
Again, Harry’s already typing away, fingers tapping speedily on his screen, ignoring Zayn, like he has been ignoring everyone around him for the past eleven months.
It’s when Harry clutches the phone close to his ear that Zayn loses it. “I said Harry that’s enough!!!”
Harry gapes at him with knitted eyebrows that mean the sudden outburst confuses him but wordlessly puts down the phone.
A good part of Zayn wants to say “I’m sorry for raising my voice, let’s just wait until Louis gets here” but a better - not better, a nobler - part of him wants to say “You’re fucking mental, mate.” He goes with the latter because he knows Liam would’ve done the same. “Louis is dead, okay? He’s been dead for months.”
“What?” Harry examines him like he’s the fucking lunatic.
“You were there! You were in the driver’s seat, Harry!” Zayn already knows he’s not going to stop there, that he’s not going to give Harry the satisfaction. “You saw how the truck smashed into your R8! You were the one who pulled Louis out and called 112! You saw everything! He’s dead! He’s not coming back from some trip and he most certainly did not call you today!”
Harry’s face goes blank, wiped out of everything that made him Harry, the ever-smiling, ever-jubilant, ever-Harry Harry, like a canvass of human features but not exactly human itself. He clears his throat and gets up from his chair slowly, mindfully placing his napkin on the table next to his half-empty plate, face still lifeless and saunters off. Zayn shifts in his seat so he can watch Harry disappear into the kitchen like a mannequin with a battery lodged in his spine.
Zayn closes his eyes and waits for it.
He counts down from 10, and when he’s just about to hit 6, he hears plates and glasses hitting walls and breaking and scattering to the floor in pieces, he hears a scream followed by a soft wailing, the sound that comes out of the slow death of a fading life. He winces, hit after hit. That’s the sound he will never get used to.
Zayn thinks it’s unfair. All of this is unfair. Why does Harry get special treatment? As far as he knows, they lost a friend too. He wasn’t even given enough time to properly grieve yet he was already tasked to take care of a patient who was too uninterested in continuing his life and expressed very empathically that he didn’t want to be taken care of in the first place. What about his feelings? Did anyone ever care to ask him how he was taking it? Not be blunt or anything, but he was fucking hurting, too.
The fact that he even had to ask only depresses him more. He knows exactly why Harry gets special treatment, like he knows Harry knew Louis hated green peppers and would yell at the pizza boy if he forgot to remove the green peppers from their order, he knows why like he knows Harry would hold Louis and rub his back when he hurled into the loo after a crazy night, he knows why like he knows Harry would condemn each and one of them if they forgot Louis’s birthday, he knows why like he knows Harry would cook Louis’ favorite meal even if he was tired sick to even lift a hand, he knows why like he knows Harry would welcome Louis into his room after every fight he and Eleanor ever had, he knows why like he knows Harry was there to witness the person he loved more than humanly possible die right in front of him.
That’s why Harry gets special treatment. Zayn knows it like he knows the morning has become less sunny since Louis went.
When he can’t stand it anymore, Zayn gets on his feet in a furious determination, sending his chair sliding across the room at the impact, and rushes to the kitchen to find Harry smashing a handful of Chinas against whatever surface they’ll land on, this isn’t the first time he’s taken out his anger on kitchen utensils, Zayn mentally takes note to put ‘Chinas’ on his grocery list, before scrambling his way over to Harry and hugging him from behind, seizing the objects with a potential projectile collision against tiled walls from his grip. “Harry, it’s okay. It’s okay, I got you. I got you.” He whisper-chants into Harry’s ear, steadying him, trying to soothe him with overspoken words.
Harry squirms out of his hold and shoves him away, and it does send him shuffling backward. Zayn feels a sense of relief, that after all this time, Harry still has the strength for that. Harry lets the plates freefall from his hands but spins around to throw Zayn the most unexpected punch to the jaw he’s ever taken in his life. Next thing he knows he’s face down and spitting blood on the floor and trying to get himself up in unsteady arms. His brain is vibrating, like somewhere inside a pendulum was triggered, and now he’s watching Harry fall on himself as he cowers back and blindly searches behind him for some semblance of support. He eventually finds the floor and plops himself down on it, leaning against the bottom wooden cupboard, head lulling.
Zayn crawls next to him, assumes his position, back against the cupboard, legs bent in front of them. He tips his head back to avoid more bleeding. The punch actually feels good. The at least it feels so much better than the pain he’s been hiding away in his chest. Zayn needed that, he needed the distraction. Maybe he should punch Harry too. Then maybe they can start a fight club. Louis would have loved to be a part of that.
Zayn looks at Harry with a hand shoved up his nose, he’s no longer crying but he looks like he’s been ripped apart, in every sense.
“I just never got the chance to tell him.” His voice sounds broken, unused. Technically, Harry hardly ever talks about his feelings nowadays, his real, unprecedented feelings, as opposed to feelings his mind has conjured up, so the voice for that must have been rusty.
“Tell him what?” Zayn knows what. Harry knows he knows too because he doesn’t say anything after that.
“Harry, he knows.” Zayn hopes his words still mean something, anything, to Harry. But he guesses if the wound is too deep, a dash of penicillin just won’t do the trick anymore. And Harry’s wound is pretty fatal. “He knows.” He tries again.
“I just miss him so much, Zayn. I just… I just wanna wake up from this nightmare.”
This will be the first time Harry has said something he actually felt.
“I want to open my eyes and wake up to a world with Louis in it, bringing me breakfast in bed.” Harry sounds so torn his voice travels in fragmented spaces, echoing in different frequencies. “He always was the worst cook but I loved his eggs Benedict. They were burned because he always left them on for a little too long, but he never listened. And that’s why I loved his eggs Benedict, they were very much Louis to the last bite, stubborn yet addicting.”
Zayn feels it, that low tug in his stomach, the one that makes him feel like he’s been shot. Imagine that pain, multiplied by a thousand, that’s the kind of pain Harry’s dealing with, has dealt with for so long. There’s only so much pain and aching a man can take - Harry knows exactly just how much.
“I just… I just wish I didn’t feel a damn thing.” He finishes with a little choke and this time Zayn does hug him, in the most honest way he knows. He doesn’t know what to say to Harry anymore. So much has been said already, that another lie won’t make the previous one true.
So he just lets Harry nuzzle into his neck in their half-embrace, while Harry hiccups. He probably can’t cry anymore because he’s sobbed the last of his tears like, 7 months ago. Zayn suspects that every human being is allotted with only a limited amount of tears for one lifetime, and Harry’s used up all of his.
That’s the last thing Zayn thinks of before drifting off to sleep on the tiled, blood-tainted kitchen floor.
-
Morning comes and Harry greets him happily, announcing that he’s making breakfast for three.
Zayn mentally panics because Harry might start talking about how Louis wasn’t able to make it last night but should be here any minute now and Zayn doesn’t think he can handle another episode, not fucking again.
Until he hears the sound of the back door opening and Liam’s voice yelling out Harry’s name. “Yo, Harry, I’m back!”
“We’re in the kitchen!” Harry smiles transcendently down onto the eggs Benedict making a soft sizzle on the pan, like he’s seeing something else. “You know, Louis would have loved to see this.” He muses quietly as Liam proceeds to where they are and ghosts a soft kiss on Harry’s temple.
“Missed you, babe.” Liam ruffles his curls. “And you too, buddy.” He nods to Zayn, who can breathe again. He has never been happier to see Liam.