I'm fine, We're fine [boyxboy]

Eleven p.2

Harry's POV

There are times when my brain fries and dries up like a raisin. It's no excuse, I know, my behavior is my own. I was trying to be good, be the man I know I needed to be, but when the trigger was pulled, I changed. My emotions turned cold, rigid and it was like this black curtain fell over me. It hid what was there, what the truth was and only let me see what it wanted. It showed me the bad, the things that made me spiral down the dark hole I was trying so desperately to get out of. When it did, I saw red. Dark crimson, with a sweet, discreet, metallic scent.

I tried not to look at Louis. His skin had taken the pallor of a corpse and I didn't want to see the beaded, smeared bread-crumb trail of blood that ran from the lobe of his ear down to the curve of his jaw. A few spots dotted the skin of his neck just under. I had hidden it with the hood for a reason.

You've beaten a little obedience into me.

Silence lay between us like a poison. It was eerily unnatural, like a dawn devoid of the song of birds. Whoever said silence was golden? How can that be? I needed to hear him speak, I wanted to hear him say my name, even just a whisper. Speak to me, if only for a moment. I could never be content with his silence and the one between us was stretching thinner, thinner, like a balloon blown big, until the temptation to rupture it became too great to resist.

Speak to me, Lou. If I could just hear his voice, or see a tear, I would be fine. From the corner of my eye, all I saw was his body curled into the door. Louis looked so small, so fragile, like a baby bird teetering on the edge of it's nest. In the reflection of the glass, I could see his face. His features, usually alive with a smile that screamed adore me! were dejected. His shoulders were slumped and his eyes were cast down in a mournful gaze. Muddy tear tracks stained his cheeks, but what got me wasn't his eyes or the helpless way his mouth curved down to a clenched jaw. It was the way he was looking, like he was peeking through the window but not seeing anything that was there. Louis didn't even blink.

I would have described what I felt right then as sadness, like death by a thousand paper cuts, because every time I looked at him or felt the limp way his hand rested in mine, another cut was etched into my already damaged mind. None were enough to kill me, they never were, but over time, their accumulation would bleed me of my humanity. Next came guilt. It was gasoline and acid in my guts. My insides writhed, dying slowly in the toxicity, needing no more than the smallest spark to set it ablaze. It burned me out so badly, there was nothing left but a shell, an outline of a person I was slowly becoming unable to recognize.

The hospital came into sight and I pulled into one of the open spaces about a yard from the emergency room entrance. An ambulance was pulling out of the bay, but other than that, the place didn't seem to be bustling with activity. Pushing the gear shift into park, I clicked my seatbelt and let it slide back into the holster. I didn't say a word as I heard Louis begin to move beside me. His hand left mine and the soft click of the seatbelt that held him against the seat sounded. When the passenger door opened, mine did, too. When the car shifted as Louis' weight left it, so did my side.

We met at the trunk and I hesitated when he took a few steps in the direction of the emergency room doors. The silence, the balloon billowing between us had ruptured and I finally cleared my throat. "...Louis."

The look he turned to me with wasn't one I recognized. Louis' face was void. I don't mean just void of manners or lacking emotion in his eyes. There was nothing there. A vast emptiness stretched across his face and he looked at me with a blank expression, those unblinking eyes with smudged purple circles underneath them. I was at a loss for words and my lips moved mechanically but let nothing out.