Night Changes // l.s.

▰ 12 ▰

[thanks for 1.05k reads guys like fr
also
idk abt you but louis tomlinson is goals]

Harry wakes up ten days, two hours, and forty-seven minutes after the bomb.

Louis finds out twenty-two minutes later.

"Shit," he breathes, laughs tiredly and humourlessly into his fist, "shit."

"It's good, Louis," Nick says; he's come to deliver the news. "Not out of the woods. But it's good."

He calls Harry's mother, his sister, their friends, because he wants to share this. Wants to tell anyone who'll listen, because maybe if everyone knows, whoever's up there pulling the strings might just spare him.

▰

Harry's awake and Harry's weak and Harry's asleep, a lot, actually, for someone who's being spoken of as awake, but whatever.

Louis doesn't get to talk to him.

He begs, just for five minutes, just to hear his voice. But it's a blanket no, they can't get his heart rate up because he absolutely cannot start bleeding again, nothing can throw off the all too fragile balance his body is trying to hold onto right now. They're keeping him sedated a lot of the time anyhow, just to maintain that. They promise that Louis won't want to speak to him right now, anyway, he's delirious from the drugs, body exhausted, his voice is probably shot, they say.

Louis' briefly furious, irrationally so. He refuses to speak to anyone for an hour, then realizes he's being a twat.

They need him to sign some forms, he's one of Harry's medical proxies after all. So he puts his game face on and opens the door, walks back out to the living room that more or less resembles a small army base now.

They smile at him, pitifully. He fucking hates that, like he's a kid throwing a temper tantrum.

"Sorry," he says, and he hopes it's convincing.

▰

Louis isn't exactly sure how he was suppose to feel when his mother was standing at his door two days later. He was more angered than surprised. He remembers reading that stupid letter he got from her after not going to her wedding months ago, complaining that he didn't show up, but then it went on about how she missed him and he thinks that's the part that pissed him off most.

"Louis, hi sweetie. May we come in?"

Sweetie. Sweetie. Who the hell does this lady think she is? Louis thinks. He was already furious that she had shown up; now, and now she called his sweetie? To hell with sweetie.

"I don't know. I might be too gay for you," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Might rub off on you. Might suffocate in my gay air."

"Louis," his mothers says, "please? I would just like to talk. And I'd love for you to meet Dan. And your sisters are coming up. Please?"

God, if Harry was here..

"Fine," he says sliding out the way. Louis suddenly gets this wave of nostalgia and he tries his hardest to suppress it, but if he's being honest, he's living off these memories.

Louis notices how his mother seems smaller than she was; not exactly size wise, but in the sense of power. She wasn't looming over Louis like she would have years before. He found this strange and very unbelievable. She's gonna attack him once he lets his guard down. He knows it.

"Why are their so many, um, military people here?" Jay asks in a hushed whispers, trying her best not to attract attention.

"Harry's in the hospital, well kinda," he mumbles.