with everything in me - l.s

chapter ten

"Pardon my French, but what the fuck is that?" Louis cracked, tossing his hands up in a heated description.

"Well," Gillian commenced, placing a hand on Louis' shoulder and softening his facial expressions. "Glioblastoma is a fatal, malignant tumor that has been affecting your spine and brain. It's been growing inside of you since you were a wee youngin, and there is absolutely no cure."

Louis sat in the atrocity, feeling unexpectedly sick to his stomach. "No-" He choked, his words breaking and his thoughts kicking in faster than they ever have before in his life. Tears. Fucking tears were forming in his bright blue eyes, and his lip was quivering nonetheless. Because holy fuck. Louis discerned he'd be a dead man long before he and Harry even sorted their principles out.

Gillian's hand grabbed tighter onto Louis' shoulder when he noticed the tears welling in the boy's eyes. Louis couldn't look at anything but the ground.

Gillian sighed, "I'm so terribly sorry. You said you play football for Uni? Zayn couldn't stop talking about how badly you guys want to win the title. I'm rooting for you, Louis. Don't let this bring you down-"

Louis' eyes fastened from the floor and up to the man before him in moral revulsion and resentment. "How in the bloody hell am I supposed to not let this affect me? I'm going to die, for fuck's sake." His voice was hazardous and volatile, and he feels himself fighting back the unmentioned desire to hurl a brick at Doctor Gillian's head. There couldn't be a worse way to find out he had a lethal tumor in his brain than how he had just found out.

The doctor's gaze halted, running his hand through the red locks of his own, feeling his heart shatter for the boy screaming on his table at him. "Son, I know. You've got to tell Zayn, though. He will be just as heartbroken as you are, but you need someone to help you through this. You won't start experiencing the immense pains of this tumor until your time's about up. You've got a bit over a month to live without serious complications."

Louis grabbed the paperwork off of the desk beside him and made a v-line out of the exam room with nothing more than that. He reckoned a goodbye or wasn't crucial at that given moment. He raged into the patient's room that Zayn was in and opened the entrance without additional reluctance. "We're leaving. Grab your stuff," announced the flustered Louis, grabbing Zayn's paperwork off of the desk near him.

Zayn saw the tears pooling out of Louis' eyes and questioned the affidavit no more. He had never once caught a glimpse of Louis crying in the whole timeline of being mates with him, so he knew that there was truly no time to waste.

Louis snatched frantically at the slim wrist of Zayn's, pulling him directly out of the room and out the main entrance of the building. He and Zayn already reimbursed pre-visit, so it wasn't like what he was perpetrating was illicit. The hostile look never dropped from Louis' features, making Zayn ever more apprehensive.

Because what the fuck.

Louis was hyperventilating- it was all happening way too damn fast for him to even start to comprehend the situation. All he knew is that he had a month to live successfully before everything would turn to shit, and that was devastating altogether. He motioned for Zayn to unlock the car so they could get in, and Zayn got the memo completely. Once the doors were opened, Zayn sat himself in the driver's seat, and Louis plopped himself down into the passenger's seat. It was only a thirty-minute drive back to their campus, but it was thirty minutes too long. He didn't want to have to deal with the weight of what he was just told with another soul in the car with him.

Exactly what he did not want to do.

Louis hasn't cried in years, and he wasn't planning on doing it in front of his best mate, either. He understood how fucking terribly the information would encompass Zayn, and Louis refuses to see Zayn weep- especially because of him.

Zayn played his cards carefully, getting them out of the parking lot as safely as conceivable. Zayn, in no way, desired to impel anything out of Louis, so he wouldn't. They had mutually reputable thresholds and a bro-code that they would invariably pursue. Zayn's pristine posture was now slumped, and he was clasping his hands so aggressively on the wheel that his knuckles faded white. If it wasn't entirely fucking striking at that juncture, Zayn was losing his fucking brain trying to get a grip of the catastrophe and why Louis' disposition deviated drastically.

"You're gonna tell me," pried Zayn, watching Louis out of his peripherals.

Louis sough, "Yeah, mate."

"What is going on in that pretty brain of yours?"

"So, so much."

"Tell me."

"I've got a malignant tumor in me brain." Louis finally breaks, his hands grasping at the fabric of his own shirt, twisting the cotton-y material in between his index finger and thumb. Zayn's brows morphed, dipping his head mildly as he loitered for a justification.

Louis groaned, pacifying his hands before answering back. "Means 'm gonna die within a month, lad."

Zayn laughed. And he laughed arduously. Because why in the flying fuck would Louis quip about anything of that sort? "Awh, mate- you've always been such a good fiber. Did you just want to get out of there? I know how check-ups can startle you-" Zayn implored quizzically, evaluating Louis' manifestations as he spoke. 

"No. I'm not pissing around, Zayn. I've only been given a month to live, which means need to hold on to you." Louis snarled, smacking his hands downward onto the leather seat be was sat on.

"Holy shit, Lou." Zayn murmured, his right hand now taking Louis' hand in his own. Zayn could feel the back of his throat start to burn, his eyes start to prickle, and his chest start collapsing. Because holy fucking shit. His best mate- soulmate, even- wasn't going to make it to see his next birthday.

Louis nearly had a psychotic fracture at the sense, grabbing at the boy's hand like it would be the last time he could feel him. He couldn't just leave his best mate like that. No fucking way.

Well, fuck.

"Gonna make this the best month of me entire life, mate," Louis whispered, not daring to lock eyes with the figure sitting in the passenger's seat.

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