I Hear You Calling In the Dead of Night

Chapter 4: Confessions in the Dark

~Oh, I feel overjoyed when you listen to my words. I see them sinking in. Oh, I see them crawling underneath your skin...~

I hear you calling in the dead of night

When Harry wakes up Sunday morning, the house is as still and silent as a tomb, dust motes swimming in the slanting shafts of light coming in through his cracked shades. His mum is working the noon to eight shift at the supermarket and according to the hastily scribbled post-it on the fridge, Gemma's out with her boyfriend until late. It used to be when his whole family was out, Harry at least had Dusty to twine between his ankles, purring as he reached down to scratch behind her ears. He never really fully appreciated the warm presence Dusty brought to the house until she was gone. Now there's just an empty food dish in the kitchen and a collar hanging by the door to remind him she was ever there.

Normally, Harry would bury himself in a book all day, but when he tries fleetingly, the words stare out at him from the page - bold and accusing - reminding him of the life he's not living, of the people he's been putting off, of the experiences he's never had because he was afraid. Everywhere he's ever traveled has been in the pages of a book and every person he's ever loved outside his own family has been a character in a book and it's only now that he's realizing what a shame that is. When there are people like Zayn and Niall and Amy and Perrie in the world. When there are people like Louis.

Harry takes a long, indulgent shower, scrubbing the astringent hospital smell and lingering stench of sick from his skin. He dries off with his back to the mirror and dresses in his standard armor - dress shirt buttoned to the top button, a wool patterned sweater-vest, long trousers, sensible brown shoes, oversized glasses. He plasters his hair back into a gleaming helmet, until no hint of his wild curls remains. Once dressed, he sits down at the kitchen table and eats a bowl of Wheetabix, sips a mug a weak, milky tea and reads through the paper just as he does every day at breakfast time. But it doesn't feel right.

Normally, Harry's routines are an exercise in self-soothing. When he feels like the world is spinning madly out of control, it helps to have a system in place, to have rules and customs to abide by. But today, no matter how strictly he follows them, he feels unsettled. A pervasive sense of wrongness clings to him like an ill-fitting winter coat.

Louis comes swimming into his thoughts like a goldfish, shimmering and leaping and impossible to look away from. Louis' bright, mischievous eyes, the expressive shape of his mouth forming words (like his lips are caressing the sounds), his small hands self-consciously smoothing his shirt over his slightly protuberant belly, tugging it down to cover his arse.

These images spur Harry into action. He washes his dish and mug and spoon and sets them in the drying rack. He straightens the kitchen and the living room. He polishes the countertops and surfaces until he can see his reflection in them. Harry can't stand the sight of himself. He doesn't know who he is any longer. He doesn't know what this feeling is inside him, like a caged bird frantically thrumming its wings against the bars of its cage. He feels vaguely queasy.

The steady, relentless tock of the grandfather clock on the mantle in the living room seems overloud, marking the passage of time that until now he's been content to let flow past him. Back when he was nobody. Back when his life meant nothing. Before Louis Tomlinson looked at him like he meant something. Before he started to believe it might be true.

Harry doesn't give himself time to overthink it. Before he quite knows what he's doing, he shrugs into his jacket and stumbles out into the cool autumn afternoon, breaking with routine swiftly and decisively, as if tearing off a bandage. The day is remarkably bright - the sun fractured into prisms by the leafy canopy of trees overhead - and he squints up into it like an animal emerging from a cave after a long period of hibernation. There's a crisp bite in the air that speaks of the coming winter and he absently wishes he'd brought a scarf. But he doesn't dare turn back. He shivers as a cool breeze winds down the lane, stirring a pile of leaves at his feet and nipping at the exposed skin at the back of his neck.