mirrors (larry stylinson au)

10: Just put your hand on the glass, I'm here trying to pull you through

I wasn't until three days later, while sitting on a bus in London while Harry was at uni, that Louis saw himself. Or he thought he had seen himself.

He was already almost certain he had died. He had been unable to find any information, any track of himself in Harry's dimension. He had even taken a train to Doncaster to see if people mistook him for the other Louis and he could get some information from there, but people hadn't flinched, not even when he went to that music shop he loved in Donny and bought an Arctic Monkeys CD to the old man behind the counter, who he recognised and who used to know him. It was as if they didn't know him. Maybe he hadn't ever existed.

So he was almost giving up when he saw a shilouette that seemed familiar, and a band T-shirt that seemed familiar, and a hair that seemed familiar. It was only a back getting inside a café, and he only managed to see it for a couple of seconds, but he would recognise himself anywhere. It was either himself or his long lost twin. Which, thinking twice, were basically the same.

He hit the stop button on the bus fast, but the next stop was a couple hundred meters away, so he had to run back at the café when he went down. He stopped a couple meters away, and walked more calmly toward the shop. He didn't want to look like a madman when he met himself at last.

He stopped to look through the shop's mirror, his heart beating fast in his chest. So hard he could hear it in his ears and feel it in his neck.

But in the shop, he couldn't find himself. Using his hands to avoid the glass reflecting the street, he lurked in, checking every customer sitting down, every customer in line, the blonde boy paying at the counter.

He even waited a couple minutes to see if he was in the bathroom, but he saw a bald man come out of the toilet door and decided that was definitely not himself.

So he either had imagined it or Louis 2 had already left the shop.

His phone started vibrating in his jeans. He took it out and looked at the screen. Harry, of course. And now he had to wait for another bus to pass and take him to Harry's dorm. Awesome.

...

Harry is in the lab when his phone starts vibrating furiously on the table a few rows away. He leaves it there until it stops ringing, and stays typing on his computer. The phone starts ringing again, so he types one last piece of data and leaves the program running, while he stands up and walks toward his bag, sighing. Whoever it is, is very insistent.

"Hey, Lou, I'm still working, what's up?"

Harry listens to the voice on the other side of the line, then throws his phone on the bag and runs out o the room, leaving the computer still making calculations on the table.

...

Harry ran through the hospital corridors, until he arrived at the ICU front counter.

"Hey, where's Louis? Louis Tomlinson, he arrived about thirty minutes ago, car crash" he said, eyes wide open, pupils dilated, trying his best not to snap at the nurse who was sitting behind the computer.

"Yeah, he's inside. He's undergoing surgery now, you can pass onto the waiting room and somebody will call you when you can come inside."

Harry nodded, and did as the nurse had said. He let all his weight fall on a chair, and buried his head on his hands, before starting sobbing.

He wasn't alone in the room, but as if he were. He had no idea what had happened, they had just said car crash and hospital and he had simply started running toward the hospital while calling a cab. He hadn't let his mind wander on what had happened, how it had happened or how bad it was. He wasn't trying to get to the hospital fast anymore, he didn't have anything to distract him, he was just sitting there, with too many unanswered questions and enough adrenaline in his blood to make time pass three times slower and his mind three times faster.