Night Changes // l.s.

▰ 10 ▰

[i updated three times this week. Wtf is this. this is a little short btw]

When Louis was sixteen, he'd gotten himself arrested. He'd been caught drinking at the oval with some of his mates from school, and was the only one dumb enough to start running away with a beer still in his hand.

The police had carted him home by the scruff of his neck, told him to sit in the car while they spoke to his mother.

His mother had fainted as soon as she'd opened the door, because she'd thought Louis'd been in a car accident. He didn't even get in trouble, not really, because she was too busy crying over the fact that he was just a little drunk and not lying sprawled on a dark road somewhere.

Louis has no idea why this story pops into his head, but he makes a mental note to apologise to her profusely (even if she's not that great of a person to him anymore), because of the many ugly and terrifying moments Louis' experienced in his life, nothing beats last night, uniforms at the door.

He remembers to take a breath.

Harry is not dead.

Those are the four words that keep Louis sitting upright, keep him listening as best he can to the rotating group of CNOs and Lieutenants and officers in Harry's branch that traipse in and out of his flat.

Harry is not dead.

Yet.

And that's the word that has him throwing up for the third time, rushing to the bathroom and holding himself over the toilet, shaking so hard he thinks he might just snap in two.

There was an IED. Just outside the boundary of Bastion where Harry was patrolling. Harry and five other guys, blown halfway to heaven by kilo upon kilo's worth of explosives.

And you better hope it's not the whole way, his brain says before he can stop it, and he wants to switch himself off, go on standby for a bit, because he doesn't think he can do this.

Harry and five other guys. That was the sentence that had Zayn go from best friend to party-with-a-vested-interest in six seconds flat.

"Could you, um," Zayn says, hands not moving from Louis' shoulders. He feels numb all over, like he's not really here. The only reason he's registering this is because Zayn's voice is a welcome change from the droning of the man in front of him. "Could you say who the other five are?"

The Lieutenant shakes his head. "Sorry," he says, "can't release personal information to the public."

"Of course," Zayn says hurriedly, "just. My, our, best friends are on tour in Helmand too. Can you just..." he swallows, "James Corden? He there?" He blinks a few times. "Nick Grimshaw?"

The Lieutenant considers him for a while. Fletcher, his uniform reads. He casts his eyes down the list momentarily.

"No," he says shortly, "not here."

Zayn's shoulders sag in relief, and for the tiniest of flashes, Louis fucking hates him, wants to punch him till his knuckles bleed.

He shudders and sits up straight, extracts himself from Zayn's hands for a moment. He leans forward, runs his hands through his hair.

"Can, you, umm," he says, furrowing his brow, shaking his head slightly. The sun's just rising, an odd cool light. "Is there any news?"

"I'm going to go and place a call at the base now," someone says. Louis' met her before, somehow, although he's no idea where. She touches a hand to his arm that makes him jump.

"Great," Louis says, although what he wants to say is okay, and next time could you've done it five minutes before I ask? but doesn't, because it feels like there's too much and not enough information in his head all at the same time.

"Mr Tomlinson-" the Lieutenant starts, but Louis cuts him off.

"Louis, please," he says, so strange that they still bother with formality.

"Louis," he amends, "is there any reason why you're Lieutenant Styles' next of kin? It's just irregular, is all, to have someone outside of parents or a spouse. We looked for any documentation that said otherwise, there was none."

Louis blinks up at him, confused. "Oh," he says, "yeah. Well. Harry's, umm, family is out of town, some where. Greenland? And he has a sister but we don't know, like, what continent she's on. Africa I think, with uni."

And his favourite colour is blue and on Mondays we get ten pound nachos from that weird place in Notting Hill and I got him tickets to see a Harold Pinter play when he gets home because he's so absurdly cultured and he likes that kind of thing.

"So," he finishes instead, "yeah. Just me."

The Lieutenant nods. All seems to be in order, then, Louis thinks, except for how it's not.

▰

Sophia's sitting a fraction too close, and Louis just needs space, needs all these people out of his apartment and to stop hovering like they're going to need to prop him up.

"Guys," he says, "go home and get some rest."

"I can stay if you want," she says, "I'm here, Lou."

"Us, too," Niall chimes.

No you're not. It's not your boy. It's not your boy it's not your boy it's not your boy.

For the first time, he realises, they don't get it. He can cry and hug and empathise all he wants. It's not their boy. And it shouldn't, but that's seems so, so unfair to Louis. He can't even look at them; the worry in his eyes feels false, trite, surface, because it's not their boy.

"Get some rest," he says quietly, and gradually they slip out five minutes later, closing the door behind them.

▰

From what Louis can gather, Harry's been in surgery for eleven hours. Or a thousand years. Whichever, it's all the same now.

Eleven hours doesn't sound great to Louis. Harry is, apparently, in desperate need of an actual hospital but nowhere near stable enough to survive the trip there.

And God fucking damn it, but Louis would've thought in the however many hundreds of years of the Royal Army, someone might have figured that conundrum out by now.

All he can think about is every World War II film he's ever seen, every half standing, dust covered, understaffed field hospital he's ever glanced at on TV.

He shakes his head, takes a breath.

Lieutenant Fletcher and who he has learnt to be Captain Anderson are talking in hushed tones at the door.

Captain Anderson drops her head, and Louis springs up.

"What happened?" Louis asks immediately, seeing stars, breath shaking. She looks up at him sadly.

"One of the others," she says, "internal bleeding, couldn't stop it. 1218 GMT. 1648 local time."

So. 415, then.

And Louis wishes he could find it within himself to be upset, to furrow his brow and ask for a name, but he can't. The only thing he can think is it's not Harry.

【an; this fic isn't gonna be too long. it's a pretty decent length of fifteen to twenty-something chapters. k?
bh .x】