#the mold must have came from that vortex underneath

[runaway-dreamers]

I wonder if Eddies Big Lift was the exposure to the So Below. If that is where the mold we see in the workshop unleashed itself. Maybe it started all because of him.

[smrwine]

"ex couple goes to court to discuss alimony and end up getting back together" happy new year!!

My drabbles are never really drabble length are they? I changed up the prompt just a little bit, but I still gave you the getting back together au you asked for. Sorry this is way overdue, but Happy New Year to you too!

“I apologize for my spouse,” Harry voiced with a bitter edge. “He was never really one for being on time.”

The woman beside him sighed as she tapped her impatient nails against the once warm ceramic of her tea cup. Hours of the day dwindled around them as Harry checked his phone for nth time. His outgoing messages remained unread and no new notifications were coming in.

The two of them sat awkward and uncomfortable around the edge of Harry’s dining table. Silence all around them saved for the unyielding tick of the sitting room clock. Harry felt his tendons tighten under the weight of the stillness. The aggravated clench of his jaw was nearly painful by now.

“I just don’t understand why he’s several hours late after fighting so hard for this meeting.” She wondered out loud.

“He’s does this kind of shit on purpose,” Harry answered. “He’ll set up dates where we meet to discuss our end, and he cancels, or never shows up, and he knows it gets under my skin. It’s not like alimony is something either of us can receive anyway, he’s just doing this to waste my time. Everything he does is to spite me, and it’s been this way ever since he left.”

Harry seethed in his seat, making the atmosphere even more tense and rigid than before. The woman beside him adjusted her position and shuffled through her papers as a way of distraction.

Neither of them wanted to be here. Especially not an hour longer than they needed to be.

“I understand your frustrations, Mr. Styles, but I am nothing more than a mediator, and I must remain neutral. I can refer you to counseling if you’d like?”

“No, no. Shit,” Harry mumbled under his breath as his fists clenched around a new wave of aggravation. “Sorry. I’m just—”

“Look, I’m just going to call it a day.” She stood from her seated position and began packing away her belongings. “Between you and I, it seems to me that Mr. Tomlinson is not completely ready to commit to this, but if he chooses to show up after I leave, I strongly advise that you communicate cordially and come up with a date and time that works best for you both.”

“Um….” Harry couldn’t help but be caught off guard. Just a moment ago she was neutral, and now she was offering up her opinion on this all. “Sure, yeah. I’ll um...I’ll see you soon then. I’m so sorry about all of this—for holding up your time.”

“No worries,” she huffed as she tossed her bag over her shoulder “You wouldn’t be the first and definitely won’t be the last.”

Harry stood up slowly and found himself following behind; walking out the very woman hired to mediate the terms of his divorce. As if she were a welcomed guest in his home.

Their home.

A place once brimming with love and affection, and the sounds of moans and laughter, now left in a haunting, dreary silence. Every second spent existing in this space was a cruel reminder of Harry’s reality. A dim, isolated, loveless reality.

With slumped shoulders and careful steps, Harry reached the door of his foyer and pulled it open. Fresh flowers that once adorned the entrance grew lifeless and wilted, and crunched under their feet as they made their way down the steps. Harry was sure she was speaking to him, possibly further advising him on his delicate situation, but he wasn’t present for it at all. Mind set elsewhere and body stiff, he stood motionless at his bottom step, and watched as she vacated the Styles-Tomlinson residence.

Or, what once was.

Harry stayed there long after she found her way down the remote and winding pavement, and long after the lonesomeness settled back into his bones. It was never easy slipping off his brave face and molding back into his desolate state, hoping and praying for a different outcome. He was a fool to build himself up with so much hope, but somehow, the slim chance of seeing familiar headlights pulling up his drive, and the even slimmer chance to see that one familiar face, felt worth it. It was hopeless, and often times he wasn’t conscious to himself doing it, but still, he waited.

It had been so long since he last saw him. Too fucking long, and with nothing but a handwritten letter and an empty house to remember him by, it only kept him curious. What did he look like now? How much better off was he doing? Did he ever fall out of love with the man he once gave his all to?

Before he could allow himself to feel, Harry shook himself from his mind numbing trance, and took himself back indoors. Back into his imminent solitude where his divorce papers awaited him.

Harry didn’t allow himself to miss him for too long. It wouldn’t be fair to Louis or himself. They separated for a reason and Harry agreed.

That’s what he told himself anyway.

***

Lips, teeth, and tongue stained red with wine and body lax against the cool sheets, Harry twisted the edge of Louis’ pillowcase between the bends and folds of his fingers. A place where he use to lay his head to rest, now settled indefinitely with dust and desertion. The cotton still lingered with his scent and Harry clung to all he had left of him.

He didn’t allow his mind to mull over what might have gone wrong between them. He has avoided that conversation with himself for long enough. Instead, he daydreamed.

The sun set around them as they made love in their garden. Earth, desire, and Louis laced between Harry’s limbs and made a home underneath the length of his nails. Their lips were inseparable, just as delight and the crinkles by Louis’ eyes. They only spoke in soft tones. Reminding each other of their love, promises, and how pretty their eyes shimmered when reflected against the sunlight.

In this daze, Louis was still around, and more than just a figment of his imagination. In this daze, they were still together, and not just a cat and mouse game of what day their divorce would be finalized. This daze was more than Harry has now or the lonesome year behind him. He immersed himself in his perfect world and refrained from reaching out for another glass.

Harry? Harry? His familiar sweet voice was distant and fleeting, even as Harry clung to him in his dreams. Are you here?

M’right here, my love. Harry whispered back in a haste, locking his fingers into Louis’ disintegrating frame, and pressing his lips to the center of his head. I’m here, I’m here! He shouted in a panic. Words falling out into a deafening void. I’m not going anywhere, please don’t leave me again! Harry begged and fought against his brain ripping his light away from him. It was agonizing that even in his dreams, Louis’ eyes went vacant and emotionless, and his body whisked away into the vortex of his mind without leaving Harry with another word—

“Harry?”

His voice came from behind the door that led to what once was their bedroom. The same door Harry didn’t think to shut as he curled in on himself, and conjured up his ideal world. His voice was clear and his body was physically present, yet even as Louis walked carefully towards him, Harry didn’t make a move to sit up. His hands still clenched to the fabric of his pillowcase and the short-lived perfection of his dreams.

“...Hey, sorry I’m late.” Louis spoke low and careful as he slowly approached the bedside. “You, uhh, you alright there?”

And only then did it hit Harry that Louis was back in his presence. Speaking, breathing, existing. Teasing him for being visibly shaken by whatever he just slept through. It wasn’t the effects of red wine, and even his favourite dreams could never do him justice. Louis was here. Louis was witnessing Harry pathetically cling to his old bedsheets like a vice.

“No. Haven’t been alright in a while.” Harry answered, unmoving. “But s’good to finally see you again. How the fuck did you get in?”

“Harry,” Louis’ tone was exhausted and somewhat on edge. Same as the sigh that followed and the way he pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Is the mediator even here? I didn’t see anyone downstairs.”

“No,” Harry clipped. “she left because you were over an hour late. She did, however, advise that we cordially come up with a date that actually works for us both.”

“Cordially?” He laughed around a breath of sarcasm. “What, as if we see each other enough to fuss over something as little as a date?”

“Well, you have missed the last few meetings that you set up. So, no, we don’t see each other enough to fuss over it, seeing as that’s the only time you’d come around anyway.”

With a roll of his eyes and a cross of his arms, Louis stepped away from the bedside, letting his aura go cold and frigid. Shoulders stiff and knuckles white, he shrugged with an obvious feign of nonchalance, and let the smile slip right from his face.

“I have more important things to do than finalize our divorce—“

“Then why do you even set it up?” Harry interrupted as he sat up in bed, the fabric of the pillowcase slipping from his fingers. “I’m here, I wait for you, I fucking lose sleep over the idea of us finally being done. But this is what you want, innit? To torment me by tossing around our end as if I don’t need time to heal. Is that why you never come through with these bloody meetings? Is this your way of getting back at me for whatever it is that made you leave?”

“Oh fuck off, Harry, quit convincing yourself of such shit. And you don’t get to give me anything about coming through!” Louis looked through him with raging eyes stemmed deep from pain. Harry has never seen him this livid. Louis never gave him the chance to. “If you want to get this over with so bad, we can do it without the bloody mediator! Is that what you want? Will that give you enough time to bloody heal?”

Harry’s chest stung with the scorch of his scolding and mocking, and his heart broke with every last word that left his mouth. If he had it his way, Louis would have never shown up, and Harry would never have to be ripped from the tender lover in the plot of his dreams. If he had it his way, he wouldn’t have to settle for dreams, and they’d be fully wrapped in each other’s embrace by now.

Alas, he slipped his hardened face back on, squaring his shoulders and clenching his jaw, and removed himself from off the bed.

“The papers are waiting at the dining table.”

Louis looked up at him through pinched brows and a scowling lip, cheeks lit scarlet in rage. Only up this close did it dawn on Harry, that Louis was dressed in one of his old T-shirts. Threadbare, torn, and ripped at the collar. He remembers that night well. Louis, insatiable and ravenous, and Harry more than eager to slip it off of him. Harry wasn’t even aware he took it with him when he left.

It killed him.

Before Harry could soften his demeanor, Louis was storming out of the room and down the stairs, without bothering to see if Harry was following behind. And for once, he wasn’t. He simmered in the final moments of peace in his home and what he thought could possibly be the last time Louis ever stepped foot in this room. The idea of permanently living with Louis’ ghost weighed heavy on his heart and angered him all the same.

He was never given a chance. They were never given a chance. Louis seemed to decide their fate for them without speaking a word of it, or attempting to fix it at all. The entire situation was bitterly unfair and every time Harry thought about it he became enraged unlike ever before.

Harry stalked out the room and stomped down the stairs to the end of the steps, picking up Louis’ shoes left at the bottom and tossing them far off from the foyer. It was irritating just how comfortable he made himself in home that wasn’t his anymore.

Harry fixed his face into a detached facade, slowly pacing around, rolling his neck and shoulders, bracing himself for the inevitable heartbreak around the corner. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to fucking end on a note like this.

“Have you even taken a look at these?” Louis called out to him with an irksome tone. As if Harry was a child he was getting after.

“I’m not exactly thrilled to flick through my divorce papers.” Harry fumed before moving to take his seat at the head of the table, Louis sat by his side. “I’ve unsurprisingly been avoiding it.”

“So you don’t have any idea of what’s inside or what my reason for leaving you is?”

“No, for fucks sake! No.” Harry sighed with a pull of his brows. “I wasn’t ready to know. I don’t know if I’ll ever be fucking ready to know.”

“Well, time’s about up, it’s best you get on with it.” Louis threw a hand up impatiently. “I’ve given you more than enough time to go over all of this—”

“I’m well aware. We’ve been separated for over a bloody year now.”

The words brought a stifling hush over the room and the two of them. Harry thumbing at the edge of the stacked papers and Louis crossing his arms beneath a bitten lip. Harry didn’t want to read these. He didn’t want the image of the words burned into the back of his eyelids every time he lay his head down to sleep. He’d rather have Louis tell him, himself, so his memory would serve to forget the angered tenor of his voice just as it has done before.

“I want you to tell me, how’s that?” Harry offered. “I don’t want to read over whatever complicated language your lawyers came up. I want to hear it directly from you.”

Louis stared back at him with a nervous twist to his face. “Harry, no—“

“Yes,” he insisted. “I deserve at least that much, don’t you think? You’ve ignored my calls for over a year—you never even gave me a clear explanation on why you left, or what I did wrong. You just fucking up and left without leaving a trace. Do you have any idea how hard that was for me? How hard it still is?”

Louis looked away. Seemingly refusing to confront every wrong he has committed since walking out that door. Harry wished they’d communicate more. Wished he was given a chance to do that a long time ago.

“Just read the fucking papers, please.”

“No!” Harry answered stubbornly, shoving the papers aggressively to the side. “You, tell me what those papers say. Stop hiding behind them and talk to me for once!”

Louis shuddered at his tone and looked back at him through wounded eyes. He still didn’t speak. If anything, he curled in on himself more, and buried his hands in his fringe, nursing the pain that settled beyond his temples.

“Jesus Christ, please,” Harry softened his approach and breathed in deeply. He didn’t feel warm towards Louis anymore and he hated himself for it. “I come home one day to a letter saying you can no longer be with me, and then I never hear from you again? Your bloody lawyers speak to me more often than you do. Where did we go wrong, Lou? What sent you packing before I could even get a word in? We were so happy—“

“That’s how you remember it. I wasn’t happy at all.” Louis’ words cut deep, twisting viciously between the flesh of Harry’s ribs. “I didn’t feel connected to you anymore.”

Harry swallowed around the knot in his throat and darted his eyes away from Louis’ face. His cheeks heat up an uncomfortable shade of pink, one that was completely unnatural and unfamiliar to him.

“At all?” Harry questioned as he chanced a peek at Louis’ reaction. He received an unsure shrug and a careless blink of the eyes. “Why...why did you never let me know? Why did you agree to spend your life with me in the first place?”

Any hint of vulnerability vanished from the blue of Louis’ eyes as he crossed his arms again, and bit his lips in silence. If Harry knew his ex husband at all, he knew he already convinced himself he didn’t need to explain a thing, and that he was more than struggling to bite his tongue. He was always impossibly stubborn and closed off when anything got under his skin.

“Just tell me, please?”

Harry didn’t intend for a meeting between them to go on quite like this. With him begging for explanations and Louis gone practically mute. He supposed it didn’t matter, though. They needed this more than the space put between them, and if this was the only opportunity they would ever get, Harry was going to take it.

“Jesus, if you don’t want to answer for me, at least do it for yourself.” Harry rolled his eyes, impatient as ever. “I know you want to let me know how badly I cocked up. It’s probably been eating you alive since the minute you walked out that door, huh?”

Louis dug his nails into his own skin, forming red splotches, and angered crescent moons. He physically bit his lip in resistance and tensed up the more Harry poked and prodded with his pleas.

“Saying you were never happy is a crock of shit, Louis. Stop attempting to break me down.” Harry pushed and pushed. “Talk to me,” he insisted. “Don’t be such a bloody coward—“

“Don’t make me do this, Harry—”

“Just spit it out!” Harry demanded as he tightened his grip around the feeling of stress. “Swallowing everything I’ve wanted to say hasn’t been good for me and I can’t imagine it being good for you. Please.”

Louis’ eyes welled with the burning sensation of pent up emotion. His lips quivered and his face contorted into a raw image of pain. Harry wished he could reach out and soothe him like he did when they were younger. Take him right under his arm and press comforting words into the silky fringe of his hair. It wouldn’t be appropriate now. They’ve been strangers for too long.

“Louis—“

“I had only three days to prepare for you leaving!” Louis shouted in the space between them. “Even after I knew you had to have planned it out months in advance, you just sprung it on me as if it wouldn’t directly impact my life. We had never dealt with long distance before and I told myself every lie in the book—“

Louis cut himself off sharply with a quick duck of his head. As long as Harry has known him, he’s never seen Louis struggle to open up quite like this. His old lover’s fingers laced and fidgeted between themselves, and begged Harry to reach out and calm them. It wouldn’t be fair, though. And with that image, Harry finally allowed himself to miss him.

“I told myself you’d call. I told myself you’d put effort into making the long distance work. In a span of six months, I heard from you twice. Twice, Harry.”

“Lou, the first six months I was in the studio for ten to twelve hours a day, and in a completely different time zone. By the time I got down to seven hour days, you stopped replying to me, and another six months later, I come home and you’re gone.”

“Because I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Couldn’t take WHAT anymore?”

“YOU!” Louis’ gentle and closed off resolve crumbled. “Everything you didn’t do. Little shit that added up to the point where I didn’t even know you anymore.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Harry defended.

“It all started the second you decided to go on a year long holiday, with your posh new Hollywood friends, that you never even bothered to introduce me to.”

“I wasn’t on holiday, I was working! And those weren’t friends they’re writers and producers and sound engineers. I can’t help that my label sent me off with them!”

“No but you could help not extending the invite, or at least inviting me out to visit!”

“You were busy filming I didn’t know your schedule—“

“That excuse is rubbish, you never once made the effort to find out either!”

“I was bus—“

“And what about when I did get to hear from you, and you were elsewhere? Always murmuring to someone beyond the line that connected the two of us. I had to beg you to pay attention to me. YOU! My fucking husband! The very person who vowed to put our relationship before everything, and I couldn’t even get you to tell me how your day went.”

“Lou,” Harry voiced low and meek as Louis built up the courage to stand up for himself. “I didn’t...I didn’t know. I—“

“You cut your hair without telling me, you injured yourself without telling me, you never kept me up to date on the progress of your album until your posh little friends began to speak highly about it publicly, and by then you didn’t even realize I was already gone. I was married to a stranger and I felt like I had to leave you before you left me. I had to save myself from the ultimate heartbreak from someone I used to know better than I knew myself.”

Harry clenched his teeth and balled up his fidgeting fists in his lap. All this time he spent angry and confused, and it could only be pinned on himself. He was at fault. In his handwritten vows, Harry promised their love would always come first, and to be hit with the realization that he only abandoned his word, rendered him mind numbingly speechless.

“My reason for leaving you was abandonment. Every last one of my lawyers said it would hold up in court, or they would find a way,” Louis paused to look Harry in the eyes, unblinking, and rimmed red with hurt. “We were so happy, Harry. Then you found a side of life that made you happier than I ever did, and I was tired of playing your mistress.”

“What?” Harry felt the blood vanish from his face. “What do you mean?”

“Music is your only love, and I can’t give you what your label can. I was tired of competing with rich sods that whisked you away to private islands and gave you the world at your beck and call. I was tired of coming second to your studio sessions with names far bigger than mine—I can’t tell you how much of a fool I felt everytime one of my calls to you went unanswered or sent to voicemail. Of course you wouldn’t answer. S’only me, and what did I have to offer?”

“Louis, none of that means anything—”

“It meant something!” he yelled. “It must have meant a great fucking deal if you chose to have it all over your husband!”

“That’s your own perception and not at all how it went down! Everything I did out there was for you!” Harry felt his blood boil up to his cheeks in a vigorous and infuriated pace. “Every word, every chord, every bloody retake of every shitty song I wrote, was for you! It was all about you. Over two hundred songs made perfect for the only man I’ve ever loved, and you dare say you were a mistress to the music? Have you even given my album a listen?”

“Why the fuck would I do that—“

“If you did you’d know you were there through the entire process. You were the inspiration. You were the motivation. The entire project revolved and existed around you!”

“It was about the bloody idea of me, I was never there! You romanticized me do death and couldn’t even be arsed to pick up a phone and call.”

“I did call!”

“And by then it was too fucking late!”

Harry was stunned into silence by the strike of Louis’ voice. His hurt mirrored the miserable expression unmasked across from him. Mouth quivering, eyes welling. The mounted clock on the wall mocked them with every tick of silence gone by between them. Harry figured he’d have to be the first one to speak—

“I was so fucking envious. Music and fame got the good side of you and I was left here with nothing. You were mine before they got their hands on you. Mine. It wasn’t just some line in song, it was real.”

“We are real, baby—“

“Stop,” Louis seethed. “Don’t you dare try to charm me with your baby’s and sweetheart’s, just talk to me like the partner you once were.”

“Fine! I fucked up, Louis!” Harry exclaimed with a fist to the table. “I always knew you’d be upset after I left, and I knew you would be just as upset with me for dodging your calls when I was busy, but I also figured I could make it up to you with this album. I wanted to surprise you with every verse, title, and melody written with you in mind. I thought it would be worth it in the end but I could have never imagined it would send you packing!”

“All I wanted was your attention, I don’t need albums, or soundtracks, or people singing along to my song, I just need you. I need love.”

Attention and love. One in the same with a soul as vividly complex as Louis’. Harry always knew this. He always knew Louis demanded the attention of any room with his boisterous, alluring, electricity, and demanded the same intense focus with love and being tender. It’s just how he worked. And Harry obliged from his rightful place wrapped around his finger.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he leant his clammy forehead against his knuckles. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Or, I don’t know—”

Harry held on for as long as he could, biting his quivering lip to distract himself from the heartache. His chest burned with it, his throat closed up around it, his eyes settled on the holes in his old t-shirt draped around Louis’ bones. He felt so ashamed. So embarrassed. An uncomfortable warmth settled in his stomach and made his vision spin with nausea.

By now, he wished he had just read the papers instead. He’d rather live with contrived language from someone else rather than the humiliation he’s left with—

“I miss you, you know.” Louis’ voice was small and meek and his mumbling lips made it hard to decipher. “I think about us all the time and how I’ve been so lonely without you.”

Harry let his welled up eyes meet the sheen of Louis’ own. He shrugged his shoulders with his fidgeting hands in his lap, and Harry has never seen him look so small, or out of his comfort zone.

“I’m more miserable now than I was when I left.” Louis confessed. His voice edged on desperate and his cheeks flushed a deep shade of red. Harry’s throat bobbed at the sight of him. “I thought moving on from you would get easier with time, but here we are, a year in, and I still want you, and I still feel like I ruined the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Lou, you had every right—“

“Do you really think we might still have time?” Louis interrupted with wide, pleading, eyes. “Like you said earlier?”

“I–yes. Of course I do, love—“

“But how?” Louis wailed in disbelief. “How could you ever forgive me? I left because I wasn’t the center of attention, I pretty much expected you to read my mind from three time zones away, and I’ve gone and threatened you with divorce—How can you ever move past that? I left you in such a cowardly way and never once opened up to you about what was bothering me. I purposely made you as miserable as I made myself, and I was just a jealous prick, h-how could you ever forgive that—“

His breathing became hindered and Harry pushed from his chair to kneel by his side, succumbing to every last instinct to soothe the man he loves. Still.

“Hey, hey,” Harry pulled him in, running his hands carefully across the blades of his shoulders, and providing a familiar and gentle relief. “Stop trying to justify your guilt by berating yourself, yeah? Just breathe for me.”

“I—I can’t,” Louis huffed into the shell of Harry’s ear, wheezing to the unsteady pound of his chest. “Can you hold me? Just hold me. Please.”

Never one to deny him, Harry crouched forward and let himself forget about his heartache, and the fucked up situation they were both swimming in. It wasn’t worth it to be prideful now.

“M’right here,” he whispered as he thread his fingers securely though Louis’ hair, and just for a moment let himself indulge in the feel of them. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Harry held his trembling little love tight and safe, calming him thoroughly with silence and the warmth of his body. It all felt so natural. Both of them a perfect fit in the swell of Harry’s arms. He missed this more than he initially imagined.

“I miss you, too.” Harry murmured against the curve of his ear. Lips caressing around every word. “I always miss you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Louis croaked against Harry’s neck.

“No?” Harry pulled back gently, hands still solidly cupped around the contours of his face. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know—you must be so angry. Or conflicted. I can’t imagine you’d miss me.”

“Conflicted?” Harry quirked. “About what?”

“Us, this meetup, the purpose of me being here,” Louis paused hesitantly. “Our future.”

“I’m not conflicted.” Harry answered surely. “I never wanted any of this and I’m sure you didn’t either.”

“Then why did you agree to this?”

“I didn’t,” Harry laughed bitterly. “All those calls you dodged from me in the beginning? That was my way of fully disagreeing and trying to convince you the same. But as time went on, and you stayed so stubbornly adamant, I had to respect what you wanted. Or what I thought you wanted.”

Guilt fled over Louis’ features as he sighed exhaustedly amongst himself. “I’m sorry,” he gripped on to Harry’s wrists. “I was an idiot to think we could go on without each other.”

“You’re not an idiot. We did,” Harry reminded. “We just weren’t all that happy.”

Louis twisted his lips into an attempted smile and let the corners wobble back down into a frown. His fingertips slid against the blue and green trails of Harry’s veins, tracing up to his steady pulse and back down against the ink of his skin. Harry shivered with it, and let his thumbs caress over the scruff of Louis’ cheekbones.

The clock didn’t seem to mock them now. If anything, time stood still.

“Do you still want me?” Louis asked, guarded and careful. “Even after all I’ve done?”

“‘Course I do.” Harry promised. “I want all of the struggle that comes along with you, too.”

Harry dropped his hands from Louis’ face and gathered Louis’ own between his. Their gaze didn’t break even as Louis looked slightly saddened by the reality of Harry’s words.

None of this would be easy and both of them knew it.

“Do you still want me?” Harry asked with the same careful tone. “Even after all I’ve done?”

The silence between them grew heavy and still as Louis considered his options and left Harry awaiting his answer. It should have scared him. It should have made Harry much more uncomfortable. But hope coursed through his veins, and that’s more than he’s felt in a long time.

“Yeah, I do,” Louis whispered. “I want all the bickering and tears, too.”

They stared back at each other through comfortable silence and misty eyes. Both afraid of the future but choosing to trust each other through the process. Louis ducked his head within Harry’s hold and blossomed under the radiant heat of his own pink blush. The type of pretty bashfulness Harry has conjured up in his dreams and missed every second of his days.

“‘Til death do us part, yeah?” Harry asked around a grin. “As long as there’s therapy involved?”

“Therapy and you.” Louis smiled. It read perfectly as a promise. “Can we go to bed on a note this sweet? I haven’t known rest since I last laid with you.”

Harry chuckled under his breath as he stood up and brought Louis with him. The cuddle that followed came naturally. Along with their sigh of relief and their hands clutching to the fleshiest parts of each other.

“Of course, my love.” Harry thought back to all the sleepless nights spent alone in this house, and how Louis endured the same elsewhere. At least now, they could be restless together. “Let’s get some sleep.”