Timeless - A Larry Stylinson FanFiction

Chapter 8

Louis slipped on his coat, fastening the buttons one by one with trembling fingers as he fought back the tears he had just so recently been overcome with. He knew he shouldn’t stay at his empty home much longer if he wanted to keep what little scraps of sanity he was still tightly holding onto.

You don’t belong here anymore, Lou, a petite voice in the back of his mind nagged him as his numb toes found the welcoming confines of his worn grey loafers. They’ve been gone for years now, what makes you think they’re coming back?

“I’ve got to get out of here,” he whispered aloud to himself, shoving his hands in black mittens and slamming the creaky wood door behind him, nearly tripping over the uneven cobblestone path in his haste.

Images of himself chasing after the twins flooded his mind, as he ran at the same pace he would in order to catch up with the little balls of blonde hair usually wrapped snuggly in coats of pinks and purples. He could almost hear the jingling chorus of laughs, the small pixie-like giggles proving to be just a tad bit louder than the dull ringing that encompassed his eardrums along with the rhythmic pounding of his heartbeat in his listening orifice.

Standing at the tall lamppost that stood at the base of the walkway, Louis could almost hear his mother calling from the open door of the stout cottage to his father only a short ways away returning from work, feet sore and leaning tiredly against the post, a fragment of a smile spread across his features.

“Come inside dear, you’ll surely fall ill standing out there in such cold,” she always said, making Louis’ father feel as though now was the best time as ever to steady himself on his feet and walk up the pathway to rejoin his family.

Just keep running, Louis’ mind kept encouraging him. There’s no point in remembering, they’ll never be anything more than those tiny memories anyways.

Letting out a shaky breath, Louis’ feet slapped the pavement as he picked up speed, beginning to hear the sound of Lottie’s gentle voice dancing gracefully just out of reach. It was like he was straining to hear her words from somewhere far underwater. Sentences of perfect clarity were flying from her lips shining with the latest color of Maybelline lipstick she most likely stole from mum’s clutch just above the surface of the ocean, but Louis was stuck drowning and deaf at the bottom of the vast blue sea.

He begged the memories to flee his mind, to escape and float wistfully out of his body only to be frostbitten and extinguished by the frigid air of late December. Or maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t the memories that needed extinguishing. Maybe it was himself.

Breathing heavily as he sprinted toward the hustle and bustle of the town, the main throb of Huntingdon within a single mile radius, Louis could see his breath curl through the air in front of him, the mist hitting his nose with each stride.

He stopped just on the outskirts of the market square, resting the weight of his body against a black lamppost with a flickering light. The glass was coated in cobwebs and a bit of mistletoe was suspended from the structure.

Seeing no purpose to continue forward any longer, the lonely Louis Tomlinson laid his body down in the depths of the snow and disappeared under the light of the lamppost as his memories consumed his last glimmer of happiness.