Love From Yours Truly

Chapter 9 - Without You

Louis's POV

The cheers were deafening, as always. It always brought a smile to his face but this time it was a small half smile that didn't reach his eyes. He stepped out with the boys and he honestly didn't know how they were going to deal with this. The first performance without Harry present. How were their fans going to react? He didn't know. He truly didn't know.

As he stood where his mic was, he got out his phone and loaded up Twitter. He, Niall, Liam and Zayn were all going to do separate tweets that connected as one. The message was this: "It's not the same without you. We love you. Our hearts are with you, H. Love from yours truly" Nodding at each other, they pressed send.

Louis coughed into the mic. "If you could all check Twitter, that would be great." He hated how he sounded nervous as he saw the crowd get their phones out. As they did, Louis nervously spoke. "This is a song Harry wrote." He coughed as the music started playing, wiping his eyes as he saw the reactions from the fans. Most looked confused, all of them looked concerned and there was some fear in their eyes.

Louis started singing the intro to 'If I could fly". Harry had chosen him to be the one to sing most of it and Louis was surprised at first when Harry said that was what he wanted. But after a while he understood why.

His voice cracked half way through the second verse and a quiet sob sniffed into his mic, wiping his eyes. Niall took over, which Louis was both surprised and thankful for. He guessed Harry knew that Louis wouldn't be able to manage all of it so he asked Niall to take over. He didn't mind. It just meant his husband was thinking of him and taking care of him even if he wasn't on the stage with him.

Niall's voice was actually shining throughout the song, there was a lot of emotion behind his voice and Louis was certain that was the best they had ever heard Niall sing so far. Louis walked over to Niall, put a supportive hand on his shoulder and sang the last verse with him. He wasn't sure why Zayn and Liam hadn't joined in, perhaps they knew it meant a lot to Louis and didn't want to spoil it for him. But the boys could never spoil it.

Louis saw the tears in Niall's eyes and Louis nodded once as they finished. For once, the crowd was completely silent for a minute. His phone went ping and so did the rest of the boys. Looking, they saw a hashtag going round and a tweet from Harry himself. The hashtag was '#greenhearts' again and Louis's breath hitched. It was also, '#sendingloveH' as second, third, however, was '#bluehearts'. Then, Louis was brave enough to look at Harry's tweet.

Louis Styles and Niall Horan sung my song better than I ever would. Don't cry, boys. It's not over yet. To the fans, thank you for the love. I am so sorry I'm not there right now, I received some news last month related to the accident. I have brain cancer that's spreading a lot faster than the doctors know how to deal with. Don't let this news get you down. Love from yours truly, H

Louis liked and retweeted. He looked at the after message from Harry too.

It wasn't a typo. Love, H

He frowned, what did he mean, it wasn't a typo? Louis's eyes then widened in shock as he reread the message. Harry had called him Louis Styles. For the whole world to see. Fuck. Shit. Louis was sure his face was bright red as he very shakily retweeted the second tweet. The fans were still silent, he noticed as he looked up from his phone. Putting it away, he then nodded to Zayn, Niall and Liam. They needed to distract everyone. One of their new songs would work for that.

Zayn sang the intro for the first verse.

"You gotta help me, I'm losing my mind
Keep getting the feeling you wanna leave this all behind
Thought we were going strong
I thought we were holding on
Aren't we?