everything god owes us

he didn't really think over where he'd go when he walked out the door; all he knew was that he had to get away before he allowed himself or harry to do something that they'd both regret. he didn't want to be the source of harry's tears. he hated that he had already been on so many occasions. the worth of his entire being wouldn't add up to the worth of a vial of harry's tears.

so he drove. he went as far as the world would take him, hot tears still burning his eyes. but since no one else was with him, he didn't have to hide it. being around harry all the time was exhausting in its own way; feigning okay-ness was a different kind of taxing than just simply not being okay.

he'd never really driven to calm down before. when he felt like this, he'd always find himself slouched in the bathroom trying to find a way to breathe again, to claw at himself as if open wounds would circulate air to his lungs. this was far more liberating, knowing that he could simply pull the steering wheel and everything would be over.

it was nearing two in the morning, but there were still cars out and about; more than louis would have expected. the city was still completely bright, as it always was, outshining the stars with its artificial light. other cars passed, and he became increasingly aware of the fact that each and every person has their own life, their own problems. it was dizzying to imagine; he was never a self-centered person who saw the world as something that revolved around himself, but the idea that there are so many minds working, so many people living and struggling as he was; it scared him.

the night's events played again in his head: harry's voice, shaking like the leaves that had already fallen outside, his fists, balled up and ready to hurt him with just a single neural impulse, his eyes, watery and greener than ever and exuding this painful hatred. toward louis or his illness or himself, he didn't know, but it had terrified him.

he was used to those eyes. jean had showed them to him all the time, though a much colder and bluer version. and it would always result in the same metallic taste in his mouth and the same throbbing in his abdomen.

in truth, for just a split second during that argument, he saw jean standing in front of him, with his slicked-back dark hair and snake-like features telling him that he would be better off as old soil. when the memories began permeating every aspect of his consciousness, it had become too much—the very force that drove him out of his own flat.

harry was not jean, not even close. harry was warm and gentle and everything he didn't deserve, whilst jean was merciless and wintry in the worst way possible; everything he had deserved and everything he still does. comparing the two would be unforgivable.

of course, he didn't run away from harry intending for it to be permanent. but now that he was looking back, his actions felt all the more despicable, irreversible. he could go home in the morning and harry would be gone. he could go home to a harry he wouldn't recognize, a harry that would hit him and tell him he was worthless and call him a whore. he hoped that the former would be the vision to manifest, and not the latter, for a variety of reasons.

the largest one was that it would be proof that he really did ruin everything he allowed near him.

oh, how selfish he was for thinking that this was okay. for thinking that he even deserved to be in harry's presence, to touch him, to speak to him, to look at him, being the scum that he was. he should have warned harry much earlier and more severely, the degree to which he was beyond repair.

he had found himself on a road familiar to him, a place that he would come often when he needed a change of pace. he veered off the highway, turning into a corner of the town many did not know existed at all—an overhang that viewed the a part of the city with all its lights and flaws and smog.

it was beautiful. the air bit his nose and his ears, coaxing goosebumps from under his skin as violent tremors racked his body, but he thoroughly enjoyed it. he enjoyed the sound of the trees behind him as they swayed along with the wind, the smell of nothing but the forces of nature.

this was one of the only places that had an abundant supply of fresh air within a seventy-kilometer radius. he'd discovered it one day after a particularly overwhelming afternoon lecture. the professor was discussing domestic abuse with the class; and he'd felt far too acquainted with the telltale signs splayed on each powerpoint slide. as if they were screaming at him, this is what you went through.

but putting a label on it had felt so constricting and wrong. it's not abuse if he deserved it, right? it's not abuse, it's not violence, it's not pain, if he thought of it all as something that belonged to him. something he wielded like a set of shining armor, so heavy yet so protective.

jean was happy now, and he wasn't about to ruin that with a label as vague and unrelenting as domestic abuse. maybe he was just an ordinary man whose worst sides were brought out by louis' unworldly repulsiveness. it was zayn, in the end, who had dragged him away, begging him to report the man for all that he did to him. but he had refused. the bradford boy even tried giving him an ultimatum as a last-ditch effort; saying that if louis did not report jean, then he would stop being friends with him. but it hadn't worked out. and he didn't have the heart to just leave the boy alone, so he accepted the rut that louis didn't want to move from. he'd rather stay, bathing in the awful memories than seek closure.

it was the frustration that tore the two apart, in a way that was similar to what had happened with harry. they hadn't completely cut each other off, but louis decided that it would be beneficial for the both of them to distance himself a bit, for a while, at least.

that's what he would do with harry, he'd decided. he'd go back and apologize and act as if everything were normal, but never allow the boy to be as close to him as he had before. he wouldn't sleep over or cook for him or hold the smaller boy close as they fell asleep to some brainless movie playing in the background. the thought made him feel more lonely than he'd ever had, but it was necessary. for himself and for harry.

he sat at the bench, unmoving except for the shivers that still took over him with every gust of wind. the tears had stopped, but not the feelings or the flashbacks. they were the kind that he hated more than anything else, but was more accustomed to—the type that left him feeling empty, moments playing through his head so foreign as if they hadn't happened to him, forcing him to watch everything unwind. he'd flinch as if jean were standing there, hand raised at him, but he didn't actually feel anything. all he could do was sit, fish-eyed, waiting for the memories to pass.

things unfolded in his mind until jean had disappeared and he instead was back in high school, in a gym locker room, where the floors were sticky with who-knows-what, and there were huge boys in rugby uniforms bent over him, and he knew that the quickest way for things to pass was to close his eyes and pretend he was somewhere else as they had unzipped-

he realized that he'd been scratching at his wrists, which had become red and raw and bumpy from the irritation. the birds had come back to life as a sliver of the sun emerged from the horizon. most lights in the city were off at this point, quiet, in the six a.m. sunrise. city-goers tended to rise closer to midday, he realized, when he first moved him from doncaster.

he sighed, suddenly aware of the exhaustion that had come over him in the past four hours. the shakiness was from a mixture of the cold and the lack of food in his body along with the energy he'd expelled from his body working to keep itself warm. he begrudgingly dragged himself to his car, moving with difficulty, as if his bones had been replaced by some kind of konjac jelly, the low calorie type that he'd buy in bulk and funnel down his throat, hoping in vain that it'd make him any less hungry (it hadn't; all it did was slosh inside of him, making his organs feel nothing like organs at all).

when he looked in the small mirror on his car's visor, he'd noticed how blue his lips had become, a shade only slightly darker than the color of his eyes. it gave him this gaunt appearance that made him look even sicker than he was. like jack frost, or another one of those creatures from children's stories. maybe one day, he'll be peter pan.

the drive back was excruciating. all he could do was recite in his head what he'd say—"hey, sorry for everything that happened, but i'm fine, and i just don't feel comfortable with our relationship anymore. i'm okay with being regular friends but please don't try to force your way into my life again." all he had to do was say those two sentence, and it'd all be over. hopefully, he'd learn from this experience and never make the same mistake of trusting someone like he did harry ever again. maybe once harry stopped looking after him, then god would decide that it was his time, and take him in his sleep or when he's bent over the same moldy toilet.

before he knew it, he was at his own front door, knowing that harry would be behind it. he knew this, because harry's car was still parked in the apartment's parking garage, its pale pink exterior and stupid little trinkets and all. ironically, his own home didn't feel like home at all.

nevertheless, he found the courage to slide the keys in and turn the door. it was quiet, so quiet that he wondered whether harry was there are all. he couldn't hear the space heater's whir that he always heard. it was always a sense of stagnancy in the midst of uncertainty, so it was odd that harry hadn't turned it on or anything.

he wanted to make a beeline to the bathroom, but instead he walked cautiously into the bedroom, where he found harry sleeping face-down on his side of the bed. he wasn't sure whether to wake the boy up from his seemingly peaceful slumber, or to just leave a note for harry to find when he woke up. he settled for the latter, deciding that it was a safer option, knowing that harry's eyes alone were enough to kick down the resolve he'd worked so hard to build up on the drive back.

when he reached his desk, one of the notebooks that he'd been gifted by his mother years back but had never gotten around to using, was splayed open with messy writing scrawled all over it. harry's handwriting.

he'd never really paid much mind to the boy's handwriting before, he realized, the way he looped his f's and his q's, how his letters seemed to merge together.

we're always told that loving is losing

and thinking is feeling

while those feelings

are nowhere to be found

you're still in my heart but you're not around

every night i think about you and how profound it is;

each breath you take you have me burning at the stake

it chains me to my seat and you've chained yourself to me

his reading was interrupted by the sound of harry clearing his throat. "um, hi," the younger boy said awkwardly, standing behind him as louis nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise.

"holy- holy shit, harry. you scared me."

"sorry," he laughed humorlessly. "we need to talk."

nononono. this wasn't how it was supposed to end, he was supposed to be the one to cut harry off, not the other way around. he hadn't planned for this. but he just exhaled the breath he didn't know he was holding and nodded. "we do. i was thinking, i was thinking the same thing."

"you start, then."

his breathing was already beginning to become shallow, much shallower than the deep gulps of air he needed to do this. he needed so much more to sever off the best thing that'd happened to him. he went over the lines he recited in his head, words jumbling and slurring together into a single incoherent phrase. "wecan'tdothisanymore,ican'tdothisanymore,let'sjustpretendnoneofthiseverhappened."

"i'm sorry, what?"

his stomach twisted uncomfortably, and he felt like he was going to be sick right on the shitty carpet beneath him. "let's not do this anymore, haz."

harry winced at the nickname. "what do you mean?"

"this. everything. we've been spending every night together. just- i just think that it's not going to work out."

"is that all you have to say?"

"i mean, yeah. yeah, i guess so."

"well, i was going to say-"

"you were going to say the same thing?"

"god, lou. no. let me talk, love."

"sorry." he looked down in shame.

"it's okay. are you okay? you look like you're still freezing. and you haven't gotten any sleep, have you?"

"neither have you, by the looks of it. but i'm fine. what were you going to say?"

"i just wanted to say i'm sorry. for pushing you so hard so early on. i know that you need time and i know that there are other underlying issues we haven���t talked about yet. last night was my fault."

"is this the end?"

harry's eyes widened. "no! god, no. i spoke in present tense for a reason. we can still fix this."

"harry, there's nothing to fix. this is how it has been since the beginning. this isn't a normal relationship. you shouldn't have to deal with me and take of me like this. i haven't been giving you anything back. and i think we've reached the end of the line; it's just destined to be over soon, anyway."

"since when have we ever had a normal relationship? lou, this doesn't have to fit one of your fucked up perceptions of what a relationship is. we're not even in a relationship, as much as i would like to be. you said no, and i chose to respect that. i don't know what you think you do or don't deserve, but whatever it is, it's not true. i know this for a fact."

"you don't," he snapped. fuck. this isn't where he this to go. he wanted to slice harry off like he was some kind of strange appendage that had grown on an inconvenient part of his body: painful, but not impossible.

"i do. you don't know how much you're worth."

"i do."

"you don't, louis. fucking look me in the eyes and tell me you're worthy of happiness."

"i, i can't, harry. you know i fucking can't."

"that rests my case then. christ, louis. i can't believe it's been months and you're still trying to push me away."

"i can't believe it's been months and you're still trying to convince yourself that i'm fixable."

"you are, though. but that's not the point. i'm not trying to fix you, lou. i'm trying to help you fix yourself."

"i'm not a fucking project for you to work on for service hours or some shit!"

"that's, that's not what i'm saying, lou. i'm saying that i would have left much earlier if i didn't care about you."

"you're going to grow to hate me."

"try me."

"fuck, harry. i'm so fucking tired." he didn't even want to fight the boy anymore. god, why were they so stubborn?

"i know, love. i know."

the curly-haired boy held louis in his arms now, and he was so cold. his small, shaking shoulders ready to cave in at any moment.

"fuck, did you spend the entire night outside? why are you freezing?"

"yeah, i mean. where could i go?"

"you could have come back earlier? or stayed in your fucking car?"

"too stuffy." louis let out a ragged breath. "why isn't the space heater on in the bedroom?"

"the real question is, why do you still have that old thing? it wouldn't turn on when i tried last night."

"you've got to give it a kick every once in a while."

"just buy a new one. they're not expensive." harry laughed, shaking his head at the boy.

"too much work." he murmured, burying his face in harry's chest. he'd failed again, he'd given in to the boy's warmth again.

they stood, pressed together for a while, as heat returned to louis' body. "are you ever going to tell me what happened, though? why you are the way you are?"

"i don't know. it might just be something that'll disappear on its own."

"it won't, and you know that."

"i guess so."

"where even were you all night?"

"you know. just an overhang where you can view the city in its entirety. it's peaceful."

"i was so scared, you know," the younger boy's voice was shaking, to louis' surprise. "i'm still scared. i'm scared that i'll wake up one day and you'll be gone, or i'll find you again like i found you that afternoon, but you'd be cold and lifeless and too far gone."

"i'm sorry."

"god, you better be. i almost had a heart attack," he laughed in attempt to lighten the mood. "but seriously. please, just keep trying. for yourself and for me both."

"harry-"

"i don't want to hear it. not if you're just going to try to push me away again."

louis fell silent. everything that was going on had branched so far from his plans, he gave up on trying to salvage them.

"do you love me?" the taller asked, tightening his grip on the ocean boy. "because i love you."

"i… i don't know."

"are you willing to try?"

"i don't know."

"what do you want us to be?"

"we're… we're friends. i don't know anything past that. i'm scared."

"i know, love. but you know, i'd take care of you. give it some thought, okay?"

"haven't i given it enough thought?"

"just a bit more."

"alright."