fic; all the kings horses (harry/louis...sort of)
summary: When it happens, it happens quickly. There’s no build up, no slow noticing of changes, not a single warning sign. Just a random day, a Thursday of all days, and Harry doesn’t show up to school.
notes/warnings: warnings on suicide attempts and depression, drugs and alcohol (indirectly). that pretty much covers it. au fic in which harry takes a turn for the worst and louis can't do anything to help him.
*****
When it happens, it happens quickly. There’s no build up, no slow noticing of changes, not a single warning sign.
Sometimes life gives no warnings, sometimes things happen in the time it takes to blink, the space between words; the silence between heartbeats. One day you think you know somebody and the next they never speak to you again. You roll out of bed and see the sunshine when you double take it’s pouring with rain and you can’t even pinpoint when the change came. Sometimes the universe sets things in motion and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them, or change them, and all you can do is wait and watch and wonder why.
-
Just a random day, a Thursday of all days, and Harry doesn’t show up to school.
And no one really worries, because no one really cares; one day missed isn’t a big deal, but Louis sends a short text saying ‘you alright mate?’ at the end of the day just to make sure he’s not dying or anything.
Harry doesn’t reply.
-
Harry doesn’t show up Friday, Harry doesn’t answer Louis calls, or texts or facebook messages.
Louis sends text after text on Friday night and there’s no reply and he’s wondering if Harry’s even still alive or what because it’s just so unlike him to not reply to messages - especially to Lou’s messages - and Louis can’t imagine there’d be anything serious to worry about because it’s Harry, Harry’s always ok, he must have a good reason.
He gives up and resolves to call him again in the morning.
-
He calls, and Anne answers Harry’s phone.
‘He just won’t do anything,’ she says, and Louis isn’t quite sure he understands. ‘He won’t leave his room; he hasn’t slept except for during the day. He won’t speak, he won’t eat, he just shrugs me off, I don’t know what to do.’
Louis is gobsmacked because yes, of course Harry’s always been reserved and quiet most of the time and it’s always taken a bit to coax him out of his shell and get him laughing along with the rest of them but in all the years he’s known the boy, Harry has never been like this.
Anne says maybe he’ll respond to Louis, and he says he’ll be right over.
-
Harry’s bedroom is dark and the curtains are shut tight and there’s a soft light but not much noise coming from the tv in the corner and Harry’s rolled up in his duvet in the middle of his bed and he’s not moving or even focusing on anything in particular, just staring and staring and Louis doesn’t understand.
‘Harry?’
No response.
Louis moves towards the bed, sitting down on the corner, and Harry doesn’t even seem to notice. Or care. And it hurts because he’s been Louis’ best friend since forever - their families were friends before they were - and not once has Harry ever ignored him like this.
Not even the time when Louis started dating that girl when he was fifteen and Harry was thirteen and they were so wrapped up in each other and hung out all the time and Harry got... jealous, for lack of better word, and barely spoke to him for a few weeks. Even then he’d still mumbled and groaned and tried hard not to laugh when Louis cracked jokes to break the tension. None of that felt as serious as this did; none of their petty fights over the years have ever come close to the atmosphere in the room and it terrifies Louis.
Louis sighs, not really knowing what to do, and finally says ‘I’m not leaving this room until you talk to me.’
And it turns out to be the worst thing he could have said, because he knows he has to follow through, and ends up staying at Harry’s place all weekend, because the boy just won’t say anything. He gets out of bed every now and then, for food, or bathroom breaks, but always returns to lying in silence and shutting the whole world out.
-
Louis resolves to go back to Harry’s on the Monday after school, and when he enters Harry’s... cave, the boy rolls over to face him.
‘You’re back,’ he says, and that’s all he says. His tone is curious but almost sarcastic and it makes the question seem almost rhetorical and Louis doesn’t really know whether Harry really wants an answer or whether it was simply a statement of his presence. Harry’s face is grey and his curly hair has gone flat and oily and it’s an absolute mess and he looks like he hasn’t showered in a week. His too-wide-smile and pink lips and cheeks are just faded into a grey pallor and he just looks so--
Louis can’t put his finger on it.
-
At 10:28pm Louis says he has to leave, and he does - there’s so much homework he hasn’t done and he knows his mum wants him home - but if Harry won’t talk to him he’ll be back the following afternoon.
He stands, and as he does so, Harry speaks.
‘Do you ever not want to wake up in the morning, Lou?’ he says, voice scratchy and hoarse from days of silence.
And Louis is shocked and can only mumble out ‘What?’ and sound like a total twat because Harry just shakes his head and says ‘Never mind,’ and goes back to staring. And Louis finally puts his finger on it.
Harry looks broken.
And Louis feels like he should press the issue further; that he should ask what Harry meant, ask if he’s sad, if there’s anything Louis could possibly do to make things better. He wants to know if the kid is serious, about not wanting to get up, or even wake up, and he wants to know why, but it feels out of his depth and he just isn’t sure if he should be the one to do anything about it.
He leans over and gives Harry’s arm a small squeeze before leaving the house and heading for home.
-
There are moments where the universe sets things in motion, but there are also times where entire lives come to a standstill. When the glass shatters and hearts stop and the little pieces that hold a person together seem to explode and fly away. When time freezes and the walls fall down and everything grinds to a halt. There are moments when nothing feels real, where you try to convince your own mind that you’re dreaming, or listening to a very detailed story, and you almost believe it except that you don’t because lying to yourself is like trying to catch fog in a jar. Every time you get close and slam the lid shut you realize that it’s a hopeless case and that no matter how fast or slow you move or how careful you are or how tight you screw on the lid, you’re never going to see the cloudy air inside the bottle; you’re never going to believe the lie. The human mind is far too clever to get caught up in the lies we tell ourselves.
The lie Louis told himself was ‘this isn’t real,’ but it was. It had to be, because there was a sharp stabbing pain that twisted in his chest with every breath and if it wasn’t real then how does one explain the sensation?
Thursday, only a week after Harry’s first day off and Louis’ mum shows up at school at lunch time and she’s crying and he can’t even begin to understand why. And first he thinks of his sisters and starts interrogating her and asking after each one of them and praying to god that they’re all ok but his mother shakes her head and suddenly he’s confused.
But in the moment of silence before she speaks he suddenly knows the answer.
‘It’s Harry,’ she says, confirming the sick feeling that’s slowly growing in his stomach, and yet he’s absolutely baffled, because he saw the boy yesterday and as much as he wasn’t exactly happy, he seemed content to lie in bed and mumble out responses to Louis constant rambling.
He asks her ‘What?’ and she starts shaking, her hands fumbling for something to hold, and the sick feeling is growing stronger by the minute.
‘He’s tried...’ she begins, and Louis knows the next words out of her mouth are going to stop time all together.
He whispers no under his breath but it’s absolutely no use.
‘He’s tried... he’s tried to kill himself, Louis, he’s in the hospital.’ The words come out barely louder than a whisper, but they’re reverberating around in Louis head like a million people speaking all at once, and it’s terrifying, and he feels his heart skipping beats and the walls around his life crumbling down and the earth stopping and no longer rotating around the sun and being thrown off its orbit into deep unknown space.
Because this is not something that should have ever happened; it’s not something that makes sense.
And it’s somehow incapacitating because Louis can’t even stop himself falling to his knees.
-
Harry was always happy.
Quiet, of course, but still happy. He had to be happy. He laughed at Louis’ jokes and acted like a total idiot and made Louis laugh too.
Of course he was happy.
Was he really happy?
Louis can’t help but feel like he’s been overlooking a small, yet ever growing detail in Harry’s personality.
And that he’s a total idiot for letting it go this far.
-
Harry’s lying in the bed and he looks dead and Louis’ afraid to touch him, like the whole world might shatter or the constant beeping of the heart monitor will stop.
Apparently it was a dangerous concoction of various drugs - the kind you’d use for headaches and what not, he’d apparently got them from the medicine cabinet - and alcohol that he must of stolen from the bar fridge in his house because he’s still just a fucking kid, to Louis he’s just a kid and it’s not fair that he’d ever want to do this to himself and he feels so responsible, so responsible for everything because he walked out of that bedroom and he didn’t save him.
They say they’re pumping his stomach.
They say he’ll be fine.
But Louis knows that he’s not fine because he’s lying in a god damned hospital bed and he put himself there and his face is grey and his lips are grey and his skin is cold and he’s dead, but he’s not.
-
Depression is complex and sudden and slow and so much sadder than sad and Louis doesn’t even want to say the word out loud; he doesn’t want to believe his best friend is sadder than sad, or that he let his best friend be so heartbreakingly miserable, so he just sits and waits and watching and sings made up words in time with the beating of Harry’s dormant heart.
-
When Harry wakes, the earth gives an almighty shake and the planets align and the world starts turning again, and Louis can breathe because he’s alive.
Though of course, it’s only the beginning.
And nobody knows how or why it came to this, and so suddenly too; three months down the track and Harry hasn’t spoken it aloud and they don’t know if he ever will to anyone other than a therapist, and while everybody’s sitting and waiting and hoping for the best, Louis knows it’s going to take all of the kings horses and all the kings men to put the broken boy back together again.