we'll live to tell the tale (l.s.)

the moon woke me and left this heavy feeling in my chest

tw// eating disorder , medical stuff

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the next thirty-six hours were excruciating. zayn, despite not having seen the boy in so long before that day, broke into tears at the sight of louis' emaciated body. harry had already cried so much that no more tears could come. he was walking in a world underwater, where no one's words were clear or enunciated, and bubbles that didn't disappear filled his ears.

he hoped that this was a sick dream that would end soon.

but it didn't. zayn ended up going home for the night as harry fought with tooth and bone to stay by louis' side, eventually getting permission from the doctor, despite not being family. he argued that he was the closest thing to family that louis had who wasn't still in doncaster.

zayn had called louis' mother after receiving news on his wellbeing, but she was still ill and had no way to make it down to london. dan—her husband and louis' stepfather—needed to stay and take care of the girls. so for now, louis had only harry and zayn.

the curly-headed boy wanted to be awake when louis regained consciousness, so he tried to get as little sleep as possible, sitting by his side with a book. he'd taken the week off work to be with louis, and decided that he would skip classes for as long as he had to. the person he loved was more important, after all.

he had finished a pale view of hills after just one night of staying beside the ocean boy. it was nostalgic, a novel about a mother who was grieving the death of her daughter going back and revisiting all these memories and revealing them to be more unsettling than what one would have expected. he didn't quite understand as much about japanese culture as he would have liked, but travelling obviously remained a work in progress during the extent he stayed a student. one day, though, harry imagined, he would take louis to japan and they would go see new places and eat new foods. they would go in april, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, and go on romantic walks during sunset and harry would pick pale pink petals out of louis' hair and it would be perfect.

the thought brought harry into a spiral of fantasies and dreams of where he would take louis after he gets better. they'd kiss at the top of the eiffel tower, where harry would propose, and they could eat wonderful French cuisine and talk about stars while drinking the finest champagne. they'd rent bikes and ride around rome, seeing all of what they'd read about in books and remake the call me by your name wrestling-in-the-grass scene. they'd visit new york, and see broadway plays and go window shopping, and harry would buy anything louis laid his eyes on. they'd love it there so much that they would buy their own little place so that they could go anytime they had the chance; a place with an indoor jacuzzi where they'd cuddle in warm, bubbly water and make silly faces and remind each other that this was all they needed.

harry opened his eyes and was reminded of the cruel reality that he was trapped in. louis was not smiling or holding his hand; louis was not giving him warm kisses and hot sex; louis was not talking wistfully about some philosophical ideal—louis was comatose in a hospital bed with what seemed like hundreds of machines looked up to him with the drone of a heart monitor in the background.

he was a dreamer.

and dreams were only that—dreams. they may never become anything past that, forever remaining stupid made-up fairy tales only fools hope would transpire. and harry didn't want to be a fool.

a day had passed and louis still had not came to. the doctors insisted that this was normal, and that the older boy would wake up anytime between now and tomorrow, but harry was sick of waiting. the longer louis was still in bed made it more real that this was not just a normal sleep—he was so sick that he had a seizure. harry only imagined what it was like seconds after louis had collapsed on the bathroom floor, seizing and convulsing in a way that made his body writhe as if it were no longer human, but a lab rat that had been injected with a drug in some sick experiment, only to slowly become motionless until there was no life left in it.