I'd Choose You Again Tomorrow [L.S]

Chapter Five

It's a similar sensation as to when he'd last surfaced. He's unable to determine just exactly what that stretch of time has been but it feels easier to sort through the onslaught of noises, sounds and smells.

His hearing clears first, this time there's no doctor's racing orderly around him, just the sound of quiet voices. He can't make out what they're saying past the insistent, steady beeps of a monitor to his right.

The feeling of heaviness, of being weighed down still courses through him though through it all he can feel a warm, large hand clasped in his. It's comforting, the solid weight which moves fractionally every so often as if the occupant is fidgeting beside him. The skin is smooth in his hand, leaving him longing to be able to run his thumb over it and trace it's lines. A curious desire, seeing as he is yet to open his eyes. He wonders for a moment whether the hand belongs to the woman who'd sat by his side when he'd last been awake, Claire, he thinks her name might have been. But there's a part of him that registers that this feels different, familiar in a way that's both simultaneously intimate and reassuring.

"... and perhaps then you could look at postponing till the latter half of the year. We don't know how this is all gonna turn out yet, it's still far too early to be making these kinds of decisions." A voice trickles in through the muddled mess in his mind, one that sounds achingly familiar to him.

It's the voice which speaks next that makes his breath hitch, "When my head is clearer I'll talk to Liam but for now I'm not going anywhere." He knows that voice, would know it anywhere in anytime and he needs to open his eyes because he's here, he's right there and Louis can't see him.

His hand. He realises in the next moment, that's Harry's hand in his, is the person sitting beside him.

He fights with everything in him, through the thickness clouding his mind and exhaustion coating his limbs he fights up towards the surface. Light filtering in as his senses restart and he feels each part of him come back to life. A twitch, all he needs is to move a fraction to alert Harry that he's here, that he can hear him.

Struggling through a wave of nausea, his head spinning and limbs like a weighted trunk, his index finger presses into the underside of Harry's hand. It's featherlight, a barely there gesture but the talking stops.

"Zayn." He hears Harry speak ever so softly. "Did you..."

"Louis!" The first voice filters through, another hand pressing down lightly on his lower thigh.

"Page Claire!"

There's a muffled sound a feet which drifts around inside his head and in the next moment he feels a painstakingly soft hand caress his check.

"Louis." Harry whispers to him, closer now, as if he's leaning above him. Because this is Harry, his Harry. The man he has loved since he was eighteen years old.

He's been in the dark for so long now, but there's light above him, there's life and he's fighting with everything inside of him to reach for it. It's within his grasp, dangled tauntingly above him waiting for him to surge up towards it. "Louis please, please come back to me."

"Claire he..." Zayn's voice once more.

"Harry tell me what happened." The woman's voice from before rings through.

"Louis, Louis please." Comes Harry's answer, his hand tightly grasped in one hand and his check gently held by the other.

"Harry, petal, what happened?"

"Please Louis, I love you please come back."

He surges up past that last layer and opens his eyes.