𝙄𝙉 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘽𝙀𝙂𝙂𝙄𝙉𝙄𝙉𝙂 𝙄𝙏 𝙒𝘼𝙎 𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙏𝙃

𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚎𝚎. 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞

For a few seconds, all three went through a shock. Harry was there... and he looked more flawless than he had ever been in his life. They expected to find a naked body full of autopsy stitches, but instead, the one in front of them seemed to be sleeping the Sleeping Princess' sleep. He was dressed in his favorite suit, a red and black one he had worn only once in his 2018 tour, with a pair of shiny tassels on his feet. The shirt was unbuttoned at the first button to reveal the bird tattoos and a small part of the butterfly. His hair was cut neither long nor short, and his curls were perfectly arranged. Even the rings were in place, with the H and S-shaped ones standing out. The ugliest was a deep scratch on the head of one of the birds on the chest.

Liam took off a glove, reached out, and touched the wound and the tattoo, but he felt his skin wrinkle and he shuddered in fear. The others didn't even think to touch Harry. The image was already too overwhelming, a Hazza so perfectly arranged and so beautiful to simply lie at minus twenty degrees in the morgue of the city... In that city where he had a villa of millions, a girlfriend who was going to be his wife, friends for better or worse, and an impressive number of fans. All that was left of Harry Styles was an inert body. In front of the corpse, they realized that those beautiful hands, adorned with rings, would never hold the microphone again, his pale, bloodless lips would no longer smile and sing, his closed eyes would no longer have the green glow. Louis was the first to give up. Tears welled up on his cheeks, though he struggled to stop them. His lips were bleeding because he had bitten them too much to stop his sobs. Liam and Zayn looked at each other. They weren't in a better mood either, but Liam put his hand on Louis' shoulder, who was crying like the time his mother died. The coroner looked at them with pity, thinking they were the dead man's brothers, then remembered that he had something to do and left the cold room without a word.

Niall was about to go home when the doctor stopped him in the hallway. "Mr. Horan, Mr. Payne, and his brothers are in the basement, in the second room of the morgue," he announced. Niall frowned in confusion, not knowing who those brothers were, but thanked the doctor and almost ran to the sinister underground chamber. What he was doing was not good for him, and he knew it. After sitting next to Camila for hours trying to lift her spirits, he was on the ground, and now he should have been home, in bed, trying to sleep.

See you at my house tomorrow, we'll all go to Simon's, okay?

The memory of Harry's last words made Niall's whole body tremble terribly. He slowed down to get to the morgue and, implicitly, to the corpse, but eventually he was still in the room where he took his robe and gloves. He passed the first room, that of the ordinary dead, and headed for the second with an unpleasant feeling that he was being pursued by those in black sacks. What nonsense, he told himself in an attempt to cheer himself up. His three friends were sitting around the refrigerator. Niall approached them slowly and did the last thing he wanted to do: look at Harry, or rather at his lifeless body. Like Liam, he reached out to touch him. He put his fingers on his white, scratch-free cheek, which was perfectly clean. The skin was cold, repulsive. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerators, and the occasional whimper from Louis. "Is Camila okay?" Zayn asked softly, feeling that he could no longer bear the silence.

"No, but I hope she will be," Niall replied just as slowly, without taking his hand and his gaze from Harry. Zayn looked at the blond's fingers and, in a momentary impulse, took the chalk's cold hand in his. Louis and Liam noticed his gesture and did the same. The last was Niall.

"Friends to death and beyond," Zayn said after a moment's thought. The others nodded in silence and kept their hands on Harry's for a long time. The cold in it was transmitted to them as well.

"We should talk to the warden now to give us the body," said Liam. The doctor, who had returned shortly after calling Niall, heard him and came to them. "We set out to do something," he said without further ado. "From what I understand, Mr." ... he took a look at the label and continued: "Mr. Styles was an important person and the experts said that it would be better to..." he had a short hesitation here too, "to preserve it in nitrogen."

"Why?" Louis asked shocked. "No, for what good? We want to give him a proper burial, not keep it as a piece of meat."

"Calm down," Niall said. "Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, but we need to talk to Simon and Harry's family."

"I don't think Simon would care too much about all this, he fears the dead bodies," Liam replied. "As for Gemma and her parents..."

"They already agree, we talked on the phone," the doctor said quickly, eager to seize the opportunity. "However, they also wanted to hear your opinion as ... brothers, I guess? I didn't understand very well."

"We're not brothers, please, not in that sense," Zayn muttered to clear the confusion. "We don't even look alike." Hearing his words, the doctor looked at the four of them one by one and then at the dead man. Ironically, the carefully prepared corpse looked better than the living. With their purple and slightly weaker circles, they could not compete with Harry, whose only defect was the wounds, like strange models, with no reddish colors around. Even the pallor suited him — it made him look aristocratic.

"Since the family agrees, I don't see why we shouldn't agree too," said Niall, who liked the idea of cryopreservation from the first second. He couldn't stand the thought that Harry's body will be eaten by worms. He had read a few articles on the Internet before and even seen a documentary about it and saw no problem.

"He wouldn't be the only one, there are several celebrities preserved like this," the doctor argued. "In addition, almost everything is ready, two weeks were enough. I think it's stupid to bury him."

The boys looked at each other, shrugged, but in a low voice said they all agreed. The doctor smiled kindly and stood beside them, a sign that he should leave.With a heavy heart and sorrow in their souls, one by one they stepped away from the cold coffin, resisting the urge to return and remain there, bursting into tears. Even if they were men, the pain was too big. Behind them, the doctor was still talking about nitrogen and its scientific consequences, but no one was listening. Liam was the only one who heard that the trial would begin tomorrow morning, and in a week's time they would be able to see the preserved body through a window. Liam already knew none of them would want to see him.

"Did you go to the hospital?" Simon greeted them from the entrance.

"Yes, we saw him. He looks alive," said Louis reluctantly, and disappeared from the room, probably to the bathroom or elsewhere.

"The doctor told us he is going to be preserved. I don't know how, with nitrogen or something, the idea is that his corpse won't be buried," Liam explained. "His family agreed, so why not us too?"

"What the hell? But I've prepared almost everything," Simon snapped.

"Doesn't matter, okay? I can't bear to think of him as being six feet under ground," Niall said without letting him finish. "We decided, we were his closest friends."

"What does Camila think about this?" Simon used his last chance."She doesn't know, and I don't even think she cares," Zayn said. "All that matters to her is that she will never see him again. And with that I think I'm done, Harry will not be buried or cremated, his body will be preserved because he was too important for everyone."

Simon shrugged resignedly.

"The truth is,... Harry doesn't deserve to disappear forever"

☆☆☆

"Hello? Everything is fine, Mom," Gemma said, trying to suppress her sighs. "I don't think he'll be buried."

On the other side of the line, in Holmes Chapel, Anne began to cry again, so she couldn't say another word. Harry's sister hung up, knowing there was nothing left to say, and crouched on the park bench. It was inexplicably cold, it was about nineteen or twenty degrees outside, but he blamed it on his sadness. She and Hazz had been the best brothers possible, and she was grateful he hadn't forgotten her when he became famous. And now, the imminent news of an accident could only bring her to despair. Anne and Desmond weren't in a better situation either. The atmosphere in their town was in line with them, the first autumn rain came earlier, and now it was cold and light. They were both dressed in black, faithful to mourning. All the relatives had wandered around their house hoping that the coffin with the dead body would be brought here, but they had lost interest when it was seen that the house was empty. Anna didn't care about the coffin or her relatives anyway, only Desmond seemed to have the strength to do so. She was in the worst pain in the world: her son had died before her, and for a mother, it was heartbreaking.