Cause Minds are Where the Monsters Creep: Part Three
It was hard, living in a world haunted by Louis.
It had been weeks, and there were still bits of Louis scattered and draped all over the flat, like he had snuck in while Harry was sleeping and forgotten pieces of himself everywhere. He’d spent a lot of time with the boys in the beginning, never all of them at once, one of them was always with Louis, it seemed, and it hadn’t helped. Zayn just clinked beer bottles with Harry while they moaned about love over whatever arty movie Zayn had flicked on in the background. Or else he jumped around until Harry agreed to pull on some trousers and go out with him, to some run-down bar where they would have maybe an hour of peace. And Niall usually just banged on the door while juggling four or five different take-outs, and Harry actually felt better when Niall was with him, like he was less broken, but it always rushed back the second Niall left. Liam was the worst though, and secretly Harry was grateful he always seemed to be the one on Louis duty. It was Liam, with the narrowed eyes and clasped hands that was the hardest to lie to, the hardest to put on a brave face for.
Because it was hard, it was fucking bloody difficult, and Harry didn’t want to be the first one to fall to pieces.
But he already had, he knew; pieces of him had been breaking off and crashing to the ground, melting against the shards of Louis that had cluttered in the corners, alongside the walls, until the flat glittered with them, the fragments of the boys who had been more wholes than halves.
Or maybe that had just been Harry, maybe it had always been Harry, and he was too caught up in it to realize.
He was alone, sitting amongst the splintered pieces, when he told himself that he’d had enough, that he was fine, he was over it, everything was okay, and that he was going out.
***
The bar was loud, and that was just the way Harry liked it. He was alone, and he swallowed that with a gulp of whatever the bartender had made him, something icy and clear, the idea that he was alone for the first time in months, in years.
It took longer than he’d expected to get recognized; maybe people were in a bit of a shock, seeing him alone, maybe they thought he was someone else, just an ordinary kid who looked quite a bit like that pop star. And he liked that too, the idea that he could still be an ordinary kid.
“D’you fancy a dance?” He couldn’t remember her name, the girl who was leaning over him and asking him for a dance, but he didn’t think it mattered; he looked at her, and all he could see was legs that went on for miles and eyes that were as far from blue as could be.
“Sure,” he answered, mouth curving into a grin, hand gesturing towards the center of the bar. “After you.”
The dazzling lights of the club turned into the muted silence of a cab and then into the expectant hush of the girl’s--and Harry was almost certain her name started with an S; Samantha, maybe, or Serena--empty flat. And then she was giggling and he was stumbling into her bedroom, anchored only by her hand, and then they were falling onto the bed and kissing.
And then it was flesh on flesh and it felt wrong somehow, like he was cheating, or like this wasn’t where he was meant to be, but he was already there and it was too late, so he kept at it and before long, they were asleep on the bed and all he could hear was the heartbeat that wasn’t there.
Harry woke up before she did, blindingly early, really, propping himself up on an elbow to squint at the clock. The sun wasn’t even out yet, and he considered flopping back down and going back to sleep, but he remembered other mornings, Louis pouncing on him to demand tea and cereal and a better radio station because his all sounded like he was trying too hard, and then he was up and scrounging around for his trousers and blazer.
He left without leaving a note, and he briefly paused to wonder if it would get around, him sleeping and ditching, before deciding that he didn’t fucking care anymore.
***
He wasn’t sleeping, kept waking up to Louis’ voice whispering in his ear, to Louis’ fingers reaching down and lacing with his. He kept waking up in the middle of the night, sheets twisted around his legs, his body already turning towards someone who wasn’t there. He still couldn’t believe it when he saw the empty side of the bed.
It felt as if he was walking through a nightmare, like the word was draped in darkness, tangled in it, choked on it, and he was stuck, the darkness was coiling itself around his legs, his arms, his chest, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He remembered one afternoon--and he couldn’t remember where they were, so he liked to imagine that they were in London, and his and Louis’ flat, and maybe there was a storm raging outside, but it didn’t matter, because they had each other, and they were safe--and Niall was going on about some rumor, whipping out his phone to tweet something about how he would always be a member of One Direction and he would be buried in a One Direction shirt, something stupid and impulsive because it was Niall. He had been giggling about it, Harry remembered, shoulder pressing into Zayn’s chest, and Harry was sitting next to Louis, and it felt, it felt like maybe he was on the verge of exploding, like his veins were lined with a fire, and he was turning this into his new prayer, the feeling of Louis next to him.
And he wondered now, curled under his duvet, shaking hands pulling it closer closer closer, if this is what life untethered felt like. Harry tried to imagine what that prayer would have looked like, braided in the air between him and Louis; it would be bright, he thought, and shining, gold maybe, and he wondered if it was ragged now, if it was even still there.
(He remembered another time too; him and Louis alone during a thunderstorm, and he remembered how his bedroom felt like an entire universe. Remembered how Louis had pressed a whisper to his collarbone like a present; you love too much darling, he had whispered, it’s like a flood, or a blizzard. Are you caught in it, he had whispered back, the words falling into Louis’ hair, messed, for once, not gelled to perfection. Maybe a bit, he had said, and it had felt like a promise)
***
The days melted into weeks, the weeks into months, and still the world was blurred and tinged with red, still Harry felt he was only half awake and half in a nightmare.
Liam called him once, trying to convince him to go to one of the meetings Management kept forcing down their throats. “C’mon Haz, this is important, we’re still here, you know,” he pleaded through the phone. “You’re-you’re not alone, and we need you, and-”
“It doesn’t matter,” Harry interrupted, and it almost scared him, how quiet his voice was, how smooth, and on the other end, Liam was quiet. “Nothing fucking matters anymore,” he said, and he hung up before Liam could say anything.
He wasn’t asked to any more meetings, but Management kept him in the loop; throwing texts and voicemails and emails at him that he only skimmed, and it felt like he was peeking over the hedge into someone else’s life because this, this certainly wasn’t him. And he knew, too, how the other boys were doing, knew without being told because he could feel it, in a way. Liam had run a theory past them one night when they’d all stayed up too late and it was almost sunrise and they were running on Red Bull and the sort of energy that comes only when you’re young and you feel like you’re invincible, about how they were all phantom limbs of each other. “Check it,” he had said, and Zayn had teased him, telling him he sounded more like a mall cop than a kid, and he’d only laughed when Liam leaned over and swatted his shoulder. “No, but listen,” he’d insisted, and Harry had only half-listened, really, caring more about the way Louis’ arm fit around his waist than anything else (I was constructed for you, and you were molded for me, he remembered singing to Louis one night after a show, off-key and in between greedy kisses, and it was almost cruel, he thought now, afterwards, how neatly they fit together). But it came back to him now, floating just outside his reach, and he could feel it for the first time, could feel Zayn’s quiet uncertainty, Niall’s worrying locked under a layer of optimism, Liam’s hopefulness that was edged in desperation. He couldn’t feel Louis, couldn’t tell where he would fit anymore, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to, or because Louis had flicked some switch back when Harry had looked around the flat and didn’t see Louis.
One Direction was officially on a hiatus, he was informed later through a flurry of texts and emails, the words sitting there on the surface, because all he could think of was Louis and if it were possible to lose a phantom limb.
He switched his phone off, in the end, not sure if he could handle the world, not sure if he ever really could.
***
It’s been months, and Louis is still the ghost at his elbow.
A CD caught the sunlight one afternoon, and it made a rainbow, briefly, shining onto his wall, and he turned over in his bed and traced it even as it was fading. We should turn the CD over, Haz, Louis has said to him once upon a time. Maybe we’ll find a tiny little pot of gold, eh? We could use it to invest in some scissors to cut that mop you call a hairdo. And he had laughed, pulling Louis’ away from his hair and kissing his fingertips, making his way up to Louis’ shoulder, his neck, his mouth. The rainbow had vanished by the time they stopped, but Louis still made it a point to flip over the CD before they left the room.
He heard the back half of Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend,” an old song by now, and he’s pulled back to a morning when Louis had wrapped his arms around his chest, singing the lyrics in his ear like they were poetry. If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go, keep you on my arm, Curly, you’d never be alone. And then he spun away, twirling around the kitchen while Harry had stood in the middle, hand reaching out for Louis. I can be a gentleman, anything you want, if I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go, I’d never let you go. He’d stopping singing then, because Harry had caught him with one arm, as if it could ever be so easy to contain Louis, and then his mouth was busy doing things other than singing.
He was everywhere still, and a part of Harry wanted to kick himself for ever thinking that he wouldn’t be. He was like the sun, Louis was, like the sun and the stars and the moon and Harry was only the earth, really, something that gravitated towards Louis, rotated around him, depended on him.
He thought about the Leeds bracelet he’d finally torn off, thought about how he’d always imagined he would feel it somehow when he finally threw it away, how he believed, like a child, that Louis would know somehow, that he would call him up and demand an explanation, would maybe even show up, and pound on the door. And it would somehow be okay in the end, because they’d laugh over it, how foolish they were to build something on top of such a flimsy little thing, and they’d build new structures, new cities they could call their own, and it would be all cement and concrete and stone, things that would be standing for years and years to come.
And then he was curling over his counter, fists clenched, jaw tightening, because it was over, it was over, and he was playing the festival back over in his mind, and it hurt, it stabbed and jabbed and pricked at him until he didn’t think he could hold it together any longer. His breathing was shaky and jagged and he was remembering dragging Louis to the Noah and the Whale set, because he’d loved them and he wanted Louis to love them too, and he remembered playing some stuff of theirs for Louis on his iPod later, in a hushed corner of their tour bus, remembered Louis pressing a kiss to his temple and telling him that if he kept listening to heartbreak music, he’d turn into a walking romantic comedy.
And it was blasting in his head now, over everything, and he was falling to the ground, hunched over, folded into himself, and now his fists were beating patterns onto his legs, his stomach, his chest.
In a year, it’s gonna be better. In a year I’m gonna be happy.
If he played it back enough times, he thought, it might just become true.
[ outtake]