One Direction Big Bang - Story 2 - unclean, rotten, endless Part III

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Harry comes back to his dorm only to find the living-room trashed, empty bottles and crumpled scores and La Traviatia blasting at full volume. His cries of "Is there someone here?" go unanswered. He feels like the marrow has been sucked out of his bones; his skin is prickly - he turns off the music, runs to his bed, miraculously unscathed, and sleeps another ten hours.

When he wakes up, the state of the living-room hasn't changed much, but he feels better. Maybe the sun streaming into the room helps, or maybe it's just that it's not yesterday anymore, and not the day before, and that the weight of his grief sits less heavily in his chest, forced by habit to recess down into the trenches of his heart.

"Louis?"

He doesn't need to ask anything else. Louis is sitting in the middle of the living-room, a bottle of vodka in hand. He's rocking, as though to a silent tune, and his mouth seems to be forming words. He's fiddling with a lighter - the little flame darts in the air every few seconds with a metallic sound, and dies just as abruptly, shrinking back into Louis's magician hand.

"Louis, are you okay?"

He's not listening.

"Harry, Hazza, you're back?" he stutters after a few minutes, his eyes blank and unseeing.

He crawls towards Harry on his hands and knees. Louis never looked pathetic to Harry before, only beautiful and flamboyant and glorious, but God, does he now.

"What happened?"

He can guess - he just doesn't want to. Harry doesn't like star-crossed lovers, never has. Louis winds himself around him, his hands trying to grasp but slipping, sluggish and slow.

"You're back, you're back… I missed you, Hazza. Why didn't you answer my calls?"

He tries to imagine Louis calling him with trembling hands, and a momentary pang of guilt tears his stomach as he thinks, maybe I was the only one he could call. But he isn't - he knows. Louis isn't alone, ever.

"I was busy." It's maybe curter than he intended, but he doesn't really care anymore at this point. The lighter stops tittering.

"Oh, right," Louis mopes the sweat off his brow with his palm, "right, it was - the anniversary of your mother's death, right?"

Hearing it like that, so trivial in the mouth of a drunken teenager wrecked by love, sends anger racing through Harry's veins. No, he wants to say, it wasn't. You can't - and stutter like him, shaking with unchecked rage. (It wasn't an anniversary, he wants to say too. Death isn't a celebration.)

But Louis pulls him down, sends him tumbling on his knees and wraps his arms around him, whispering salty apologies into the skin of his neck. Harry remembers a lover he had who looked just like him.

"Come," he says, pulling Louis up. Forgiveness isn't what he's best at, but that's his best friend, above all, the boy who held him without question every time another house of cards collapsed in his ribcage.

He drags Louis to the bathroom and forces him to wash his face. Their framed faces in the mirror look aghast, sunken cheeks and deep, violent eyes.

"What happened to us?" Louis whispers, his eyes wide and blue, blue, blue. Harry wants to come back to the days when drowning in this blue was the only thing that made him happy.

But he can't - and because those days are long gone, lost in the careless warmth of their shared adolescence, because there's nothing else he can do to ease the pain, he bends down and presses a kiss to Louis's mouth. It's reassurance, comfort, body heat - their love is the only one that doesn't hurt as acutely as the others.

He thinks of the things he could say, I love you, it's going to be okay, don't worry, but he doesn't say anything. He puts Louis to bed and falls asleep next to him, a hand pressed to his chest, letting the slow heartbeat spread in both their bodies as he drifts back to black.

*

He wakes up to the smell of burnt pancakes.

The reaction is knee-jerk. "Louis, step away from the pan!"

Louis's apologetic face peeks out from behind the doorjamb. He stifles a cough in his hand as he tries to dismiss the smoke with the other one.

"I just wanted to…" he starts, but has to cough again. Harry can't help but smile.

He pretend-sighs. "Let me put on some pants, okay? I'll cook you something."

If it weren't for the traces of disaster in the living-room (but Louis seems to have cleaned, so it's mostly okay), it would seem as though nothing had happened yesterday, and this was just another day, easy and cheerful. Harry lets the peace seep into his skin. (He's never been one for re-opening injuries. If he can not hurt - why would he want to?).

Louis laughs. There are bags under his eyes, but he looks better, sounds better. They don't comment on Zayn's absence. "Being naked with me never bothered you before," he leers.

(That was before, Harry doesn’t think.)

"Yeah, well, I don't want to have my dick burned by accident, thank you very much," he answers cheekily.

They end up eating the relatively unburnt pancakes (stress on the 'relatively'), which Louis claims are "tasty" even though he grimaces at every bite, and the ones Harry made who are much more palatable ("You're a genius, Hazza." "Pancakes - a summit of culinary art.").

"I'm sorry," Louis says quietly during a lull in the conversation.

Harry waves his hand. It could mean it's okay or let's not talk about it. He doesn't really know which one it is. Louis half-smiles and doesn't talk about it again.

"I have a class to get to," Harry eventually says, wiping the jam on his mouth, and they part with a kiss, leaving behind them the hidden remnants of the disaster, quietly happy despite everything.

This day seems to hang in a spot of light. No swarm of cloudy darkness approaches him; his violin seems to mold itself in the crook of his neck and chants in harmony with him. He meets Caroline in the corridors and she smiles. He smiles back; she grabs the lapels of his coat and they make out for ten minutes in a deserted classroom, her legs wrapped around his waist, balanced against a desk.

Liam Payne blessedly doesn't appear all day. Harry spares a thought to wonder why, but he doesn't linger on it. His life is better without Liam Payne confusing and enraging him. He even hangs out with Aiden and Matt and Juliette and Niall and watches them be sickeningly in love, gushing at each other as though they were alone, whispering and giggling. It's like a lullaby, he tells himself - he doesn't want to be in love but this soothes him, sends gentle waves rippling through his body.

His teacher tells him that he'll do a piece with a piano student. Harry isn't sure if it pleases him or not - playing with someone else is always frustrating and difficult, but it's a challenge, and the piano player is supposed to be good. He lets the decision roll on his tongue and out of his mouth like a pearl, easy, "Sure." His teacher smiles.

He learns a piece that is witty and quick, something sprightly that buzzes in his throat as he bobs his head. His teacher laughs and praises him. Music is merciful today, takes him in with open arms. Happiness was never out of grasp, after all - it all depends on silly little things, and maybe yesterday seemed like a dead-end but today the path is endless and almost smooth, paved by giants - Debussy and Bach and Mozart and Ravel hand in hand.

Gemma calls him to ask him how it went. He tells her it was okay. In truth he remembers this day as remote and unclear, tattered and faded like a T-shirt that has been washed too many times. It's probably better - he revels in the acuity of his pain but probably couldn't withstand it any longer that he already does, this one day that wears him down, carving new scars into his bones.

"I'm glad," says Gemma.

Harry asks about love, and she laughs. He says he'll come see her and the new guy, whoever he is. She answers that he's welcome to. It makes a shiver run down his spine, for some reason, that someone's arms will always be open for him - this kind of unconditional love, that doesn't ask questions, scares him to no end.

The day fades into another, a week, a month - he keeps being happy. He goes out with Caroline and they laugh in ball glasses of Shiraz, their laughter tinging with the crystal, lips stained with something that isn't blood.

*

Of course, Liam Payne is the piano player. Harry could've guessed he would be - he feels a bit angry to have dared hope that for once, he be spared the confusion and nausea. He tries to backtrack, but it's too late. Liam Payne looks at him like they may have something, but they don't. Harry wants to tell him right now but maybe it's too late for that too. Kisses mean nothing to Harry. The only intimate things he has are those that no one is allowed to see - everyone can have the rest. Liam Payne doesn't get that. He thinks that death and flesh, because they hurt, are privates gems, but to Harry they aren't.

Working with him is unsurprisingly and unbelievably frustrating. Harry can't shake the feeling that they won't ever get anywhere, that they aren’t moving, only stalling and drowning quietly in their lack of connection. But Harry is reckless (sometimes), and his music is the only thing he can't let go of. He won't give up. Liam Payne can go to hell.

It's an afternoon but there isn't sun anymore. It should be like any other day, the air vibrant with the new green, but instead a morose grey light filters through the windows, making them look like the prisoners that they maybe are.

"Stop that," says Harry as Liam Payne dries the piece of its emotion, drop by drop. He didn't look like a torturer.

Liam Payne throws his arms in the air, looking incensed. "What do you want?"

"It's not about what I want, you jackass," Harry sneers. "Can't you try to play this piece and sound like you're not a complete robot?"

A few months ago, Liam Payne would have jumped (Harry knows the look - as though someone had slapped him, face contorted in this sort of would-be noble pain), but he seems to have grown used to Harry's particular brand of cruelty. Harry doesn't know to feel satisfied or annoyed.

"Fuck you," Liam Payne says. (It's only with him that he's this violent, and Harry likes it, likes that he can make his darkness surface and crackle.)

"If it can help you play better…"

Harry just doesn't have any control. The words he wants to say always tumble off his lips, and he never takes them back, even when he wants to.

"Go on, then," Liam Payne says, challenging.

It's a new side of him, the burning brown of his eyes, his legs that he spreads wantonly, the open hands that don't quite reach out to touch, but it's not really new - it's his patience driven mad with want, and for a second Harry feels a spike of victory hit his stomach and tear him in two. This isn't about the music.

"Yeah?" he murmurs as he sets his violin down. The sun seems to have taken a new interest in them, and tries to strip them of their shadows. Harry feels oddly exposed. "That's what you want?"

The answer - yes - hangs at Liam Payne's lips for a second. "It's not about what I want," he spits. His foot is tapping the floor but he doesn't realize, drawing them into his own kind of music, the restlessness of his good-boy flesh.

"Isn't it, though?" Harry asks, but he takes a step further until he’s standing between Liam Payne's legs, back to the piano, a devilish cherub towering above him. Still no shadows, he notices absently, and stashes it at the back of his mind. He sees skin trembling beneath Liam's tentatively arrogant chin.

"Stop that," he croaks. Harry hears the end of the sentence that he doesn't say, if you're not going to go through with it. Harry has been where he is before, skin burning, body taut with the need to jump forward and grab him by the collar, smash their mouths together. Harry would snap. Liam Payne doesn't.

"No," he says. Maybe their music will be better. Maybe not. It doesn't really seem worth it, but it's tempting, tantalizing even, and Harry's never been one to deny himself.

He drops to his knees and smiles when Liam Payne heaves a desperate sigh. He won't ask for permission. He doesn't need to.

"Wait," Liam Payne starts to say, but Harry doesn't want to wait. He presses his mouth against Liam's crotch and mouths hotly against the fabric. His eyes are entirely green, blown to the point of only leaving a thin circle of white around them, washed of darkness. Liam Payne whimpers.

"Play," Harry says as he unzips Liam's trousers, his fingers deft and quick, brushing against the fabric of his boxers. Liam Payne looks down at him, eyes empty of understanding, blackblackblack.

"What do you mean?" he says, his words mashed and unclear.

"Play," Harry repeats, stilling.

"The piano?"

Harry laughs, a little bit cruel. Liam's eyes flicker madly between him, the piano and the fingers tugging at the waistband of his boxers. "Yes."

"I-" he starts.

Harry knows what he wants to say, I can't, but it isn't true, so he shoves a hand down Liam's boxers and takes his dick in hand, squeezing lightly. Liam surges forward in shock - his hand lands on the piano and draw a jumble of messy notes out of it. Harry smirks.

"See," he says conversationally as he starts slowly stroking Liam's cock, enjoying the sight of his flushed face, cheeks red and teeth tugging at his bottom lip. "Easy as pie."

He gets Liam's dick out of his boxers with a smooth wrist. It's flushed, an angry red, and bigger than Harry would've imagined. He feels an absurd urge to lick his lips, so he does. Okay, so maybe he's a bit of a slut.

"You remember the beginning?" he asks, and Liam looks at him for a second, dazed, before nodding frantically. He probably doesn't, so Harry hums the first few bars. The sound hangs in the air like a foreboding.

Liam sets his fingers on the keys, breathing heavily. He starts playing wordlessly, his notes a little shaky but better already, more forceful. Harry ducks down and licks a stripe up his dick, tip to root, fondling Liam's balls in his hand. The music accelerates. Harry slows down.

It's a game or push and pull after that, Harry teasing and slowing each time Liam's playing gets too fast or too careless, smiling at the odd moan that sometimes flies out of his mouth and pierces the air like a death sentence.

When he eventually takes it all in, hot mouth closing around the salty skin, an angry shout slips out of Liam's lips and his fingers still on the piano. Harry stills too. One of his hands curls around Liam's thigh, tight enough that his nails dig into the flesh. Liam's hips stutter. He wants to thrust up, but he's good, and he does what he's told. Harry laughs a little - he feels Liam's shiver reverberate in his own dick, straining against the flyer of his jeans.

He waits until Liam starts playing again to resume sucking, head bobbing obscenely between Liam's legs, dragging his teeth slightly around the shaft from time to time. Liam sometimes forgets himself and attempts to thrust into Harry's mouth, but Harry holds him in place with a strong hand, clawing at the skin because he wants to, and he can.

The music swirls around them and seeps into their skin. It still isn't perfect, but it's so much better already, Harry thinks, these notes tumbling against each other, sharp and mellow in turns, slammed into the wood, so much better than the careful neutrality Liam Payne always affects. Liam starts talking as Harry picks up speed, sliding his lips around Liam's cock with mewling noises, reveling in his own obscenity. It sounds like lyrics to the piece, as strange and nonrhythmic as it's become under Liam Payne's hands.

"Fuck, Harry - I -," he stutters.

His right hand leaves the keys for a second to try and grab at Harry's hair, but Harry groans threateningly and pushes it back up. Liam bites his lip. Harry hopes he bleeds.

"I'm gonna -"

It's nothing but the usual words, but in Liam's mouth they sound positively filthy, low and gravelly, full of anger. Hearing them is like hearing a secret (but it's because Liam wants them to be). Harry revels in the feeling. The grey light washes over them and shows all the cracks. They aren't looking; it retreats. The piece stutters to an end.

"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck," Liam Payne mutters like a litany, and spills hotly in Harry's throat. Harry smiles before wincing at the taste, hesitating between spitting somewhere (he thinks there's a bin in one of the corners of the room) or swallowing. He swallows - it's easier.

Liam is slumped on the piano stool. His spine looks broken and he hangs there like a rag doll, red high on his cheeks, looking wrecked. His eyes are shut. Harry slips a hand under his chin and kisses him just to make him taste himself, out of some twisted sort of revenge.

"Much better," he whispers against his lips, and leaves.

There's nothing more to say, anyway.

*

The days stutter on. Spring is in full bloom, and the halls flutter with the excitement of the end of the year, stressed students frantically learning in the corridors and strumming frustratedly at their various instruments. It's the strange blend of the finishing school-year, mellowness and joy mixed with an edge of rush, a foreboding of June.

It's the time of the year that Harry likes best. He likes the uncertainty of the fall that won't quite morph into spring and give in to the tenderness of the nascent buds, the scents that overwhelm him and make schoolgirls sneeze, the blooming colors. He feels like these blessed weeks are the point of acme of the giant orchestration of nature, a pagan celebration in the honor of which she has commandeered a modern painter to decorate her skin in vibrant patches of blue sky and violently pink bushes.

Everything is muted, here, of course - because they're so close to town, and the gray buildings won't quite let the greenery step onto their territory, probably for fear that they won't get it back after the onslaught - but there are still hints, the grass of the park that's turned a vivid green, the bronze sky tinged with vermillion when Harry goes to sleep. Liam Payne probably hates it, he thinks - too uncertain, too speculative.

Just like the other students, Harry can't quite bring himself to study even though he should, instead choosing to stare longingly at the outside from the school chairs, dreaming of clear water streams and the caress of the sun on his skin. He doesn't tan well, always turns red as a tomato after a few hours spent in the baking heat, but there's nothing he loves more than this complete immersion in the jubilation of nature, the closeness he feels with her soulless magnificence.

He tries not to pay too much attention to everything that's going on around him, the background chaos of Louis and Zayn's tumultuous affair, but he can't keep pieces of their sadness from filtering under his bedroom door and creeping under his skin. He doesn't really mind (but he does) - he always thought that a bit of sadness was necessary in every situation, be it only to understand just how profound and precious beauty is.

(But sometimes it's too much, and he closes his eyes, screws them shut as hard as he can, as though the black before his eyes, marred by the painful dots of color, could stop their pain from touching him, could stop the yelling from filtering through the walls and the breaking from breaking him too.)

From the hesitant stories he heard from Louis, the words crushed between his lips like pomegranate, and what he guesses or half-sees, Zayn is just the sort of beautiful wreck that Harry always hoped Louis would steer clear of. He's distantly aware that he's one of these himself (and what would have happened if they'd fallen in love? It was so close, for a moment - they would have combusted and left nothing but ashes) and the realization wakes up something fervent in his breast, a fierce need to protect. But he can't do anything, or maybe he doesn't want to, who knows, so he opts for living in periphery, far enough that he can't be touched by the stones and nails that fly off their construction disaster.

Something in the way they kiss, sometimes with gentle lips, brushing and soft, and sometimes with the bruising hurtfulness of young, desperate love, makes something twist in his gut. He read Romeo & Juliette in school too, with the dutiful seriousness of a hidden literature aficionado, and he has a cavity in his chest that he can't ignore and that yearns for the ecstasy that comes with being a star-crossed lover. But he loves his life too much to sacrifice everything he has - and he suspects he couldn't do that, devote himself so completely, selflessly give away the entirety of his being with no promises that he'll get it back. He loves himself too much - it isn't a default, maybe even a lifeguard.

And so he wanders in the corridors, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, searching for entertainment where he can, in the profiles of the students that he glances at through half-open doors, in the changing strings of his beloved violin, in Niall and Juliette's company or, more rarely, Matt and Aiden's. They fill him with a doubt that he wouldn't know how to describe, and that is the exact opposite of his aching for passion - the need of a connection that doesn't destroy but builds, the gentle simmer of shared love.

Caroline brings him a kind of sweaty peace that he likes too. He likes her unapologetic bluntness, the way she kisses him with unbrushed teeth, her raucous laughter and the tales she tells with humor and a bit of cynicism. He likes that he can be with her without fearing for the potential future or having to keep on his toes, afraid to be caught unaware. He likes her - she's easy.

For some reason Niall, as oblivious as ever, decides that they need to have diner - all of them together, as if they were a group and not random bits and pieces too worn to even try to fit together. Harry accepts mostly out of boredom, not wanting to get back to fiddling with his violin on the off chance of it actually feeling like he's learning, and curiosity. Zayn and Louis say yes too, their avid gazes fixed on each other. Harry is mildly irritated.

He goes anyway, hands thrust deep in his pockets. His thoughts flutter wildly in his head, and he doesn't try to stop them, lets them swirl until he gets a bit queasy. He kind of likes the feeling.

They go to a restaurant near uni, a quiet little thing. Laughter filters from under the front door, coupled with this kind of clever light that makes everyone feel welcome, a bronze, englobing warmth that smells of Italy. Niall and Juliette laugh at a private joke, heads bent, bodies turned towards each other. Niall darts a glance at the rest of them, maybe feeling guilty for excluding them from their little bubble, but not enough that he doesn't smile when Juliette grabs his hand and pulls their entangled fingers against her knit sweater, a small, intimate smile that makes Harry look away, feeling burned.

He's too bored or too mellow to feel anything with true acuity. He notices Louis and Zayn's hesitant shadows against the wall with a sort of remote aesthetic interest. Matt and Aiden attempt to talk with Niall and Juliette, the conversation drying each time one of the couples gets too wrapped in each other and starting back up on regular intervals, probably spurned by a feeling of social adequacy that they feel they need to conform to.

Only the sight of Liam Payne's long and lonely silhouette, leaning against the brick wall, looking glumly at his plate, startles something out of him - surprise at his presence, maybe, at his perseverance in existing around Harry, and contentment at his looking so uncomfortable when he himself feels so mellow, settled deep into his seat.

Harry can't help but find that there is something oddly fascinating about Louis and Zayn - the stray tenderness in the smile tugging at the corner of Zayn's mouth, Louis's hand squeezing his thigh under the table... Their relationship is as disproportionate as it's curiously well-balanced; the push and pull of a careless equilibrium, draining the remaining chubbiness of their quickly fading youth. They seem to subsist merely on love, as stupid as that sounds, probably as much to Louis as to himself; there's no denying that the love-handles have been replaced on Louis's body (Harry loved the child-like quality of it - more to cherish, he used to say at the time, and he meant it; he does love this good-natured flesh, free from the worry that he sees slowly wearing Zayn and Louis down) by a feral spark that gleams in their black-circled eyes.

Harry doesn't know if he envies them. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Liam Payne's fingers drumming clumsily on the table, as though he were a kid that hasn't learnt to play the piano but is aching to. It takes him a minute to recognize the regular pattern of the Pachelbell canon, but once he does, it's almost hypnotic, the trickle of the notes that he can hear so very clearly coordinating with the idle movement of Liam Payne's hands. He stashes the image away for later.

Harry finds it interesting to study the shades that love can take, presented before him in such blatant display - the early stages of puppy love; the already mature, more profound affection; and the explosive destructiveness of passion. Harry likes standing there in placid spectatorship - he feels like he holds some sort of power over them by understanding the ins and outs of their respective relationships so well.

He looks over at Liam Payne and wonders - does he feel the same way? Does he feel included in their so-called 'unity', or is that look on his face (as inscrutable as ever, Harry reflects - he remembers a distant whisper of master of masks) only a sign of boredom? Is his brain as blank, empty of thoughts, as it seems to Harry? Harry can't help but feel disbelieving when he hears things like that - how could someone not think? He sometimes wishes that he were able to be thoughtless, to stop the sizzling flood of things that rush towards his neuroses at every minute, unstoppable.

For some reason, he can't tear his thoughts away from him. Maybe it's his position, sitting at the other end of the table, his soft features sharpened by the shadows, or maybe the fact that they seem to be so often associated of late. The learning of their piece is going at a snail's pace (Harry wouldn't be so presumptuous as to believe that a blowjob, as fantastic as he doesn't doubt it was for Liam, unlocked some kind of musical genius potential in him). They do seem to be making some sort of progress, though - but it's as small as it is slow, and Harry isn't a patient person by nature.

"Pass the salt, please?"

The voice is small and sweet - Juliette's - but it startles them nonetheless, shocking them back into awareness. They aren't united.

"Sure."

Aiden gives her the shaker with a small smile, and it makes Harry's sharp gaze skim over his features for a second. He's maybe the best of them (he thinks about a French play and something about crowning a king amongst thieves and liars) in that he doesn't seem to care about any of it, unbothered by the crippling awkwardness that makes the rest them mute.

Someone told Harry that he used to be an intense, reserved kid, and that he only came out of his shell after meeting Matt. It makes sense now - he seems to swim in the silence with a kind of alien grace, his cool eyes always trained on Matt, like he's relying on him for the warmth and the politeness, following in his footsteps with a hand slotted in Matt's. It's an infuriating kind of beautiful.

It's a strange night for everyone, but it isn't as bad as it could've been. Even if they aren't anything together, they manage to be something separately, and the intersections can be surprising, in a good way. Juliette will never play Ophelia, but she doesn't really care; Harry discovers in her something sparkling and a profound love of the way words sound in her mouth when she plays, the strangeness of being someone else, what she calls 'the safest way to be schizophrenic', laughing.

Strange and tentative alliances are formed. Even Louis and Zayn disentangle from each other for a moment, their lips still stained with bruising kisses, and smile brightly, as though they weren't hurting. Harry's gaze darts to Liam Payne from time to time, but he's not as interesting now that he has fallen into the easy pattern of conversation, his face open and careful and polite and everything Harry hates.

They come back to their respective dorms when yawns start to stretch their faces. Niall is smiling with the satisfaction of a job well-done in the moonlight, and for a second Harry wonders if he knows more than he seems to, if he's more perceptive or deeper, but the feeling fades as quick as it's come, and Harry forgets it. Forgetfulness comes easily to him.

They exchange flying kisses and 'see you later's that Harry watches like a stranger, lazy eyes hooded with something that might be tiredness and that might be boredom. Zayn and Louis and Liam Payne join him to walk back to their dorms, and they walk in a line, unconsciously, like soldiers, as the others fade in the night in the other direction.

Louis slips an arm around Harry's waist. Harry's too tired to think about it, so he leans into the embrace, breathing deep the familiar smell of skin and sweat and salmon pasta with this after-taste of Zayn that he's had to learn to tolerate.

The night is easy. Liam Payne is walking alongside them, sometimes saying a quick word to Zayn who nods, looking at them with something hovering between tenderness and jealousy.

They leave him at his dorm with a farewell and walk into theirs with a common sigh. Harry flops on his bed almost immediately, and falls asleep to the sound of Louis's laughing voice, "Sleep well, sweetums." He doesn't dream; it's just as well, really.

*

It's three weeks later, and he's awakened by a yell.

It isn't the best way to wake up. The sheets stick to his skin with sweat, and he's tired, a heavy weariness that sits deep in his bones. He's worried that he's almost growing used to it by now. He wants to split them up, or forget it never happened. He's tired of picking Louis up only to watch him hurl himself at the wall again.

He can never tell when they're having sex and when they're fighting, which is disturbing in itself. But he can relate to a passion that throws you against the furniture and wants to devour you, so he doesn't say anything, lets Louis wince when he sit at the breakfast table and doesn't comment on the teeth marks on Zayn's wrist.

The problem with Harry is that he doesn't know too far for himself - how would he know it for others? It's only too far when you're dead, someone told him once, and it’s stupid but it stuck with him, nestled in some nasty little place in his brain. He doesn't say anything. It's their problem. They'll get over it.

(The worst is that he doesn't even get what's wrong with them, if there is something at the core of their inability to function together, commitment issues or something stupid like that, or if it's just that they don't work, simple as that. It's impossible to decipher - Harry suspects the truth is tangled somewhere in their lies, but when he asks and Louis can't answer he thinks that maybe there isn't one.)

He wants to shake Louis and tell him, you're so beautiful and you'll break your voice, because if there is something that can make him stop it can only be that, the fear that his voice will wilt and die. He wants to tell Zayn, get out of here, not because he's the bad guy or because it's his fault but because there's still something in him that can be saved, too, even if there are scars that he'll keep, that won't ever disappear. Harry doesn't have anything against scars. (He has some himself, that he keeps hidden - he likes the way they feel under his fingers and remind him of the wounds, what he'll do again and what he isn't ready to sacrifice.)

But he doesn't do any of that, and one day he wakes to a yell - he hears the muffled moans and then a loud thump, a strangled cry, something breaking, maybe china or that little doll Phoebe gave Louis when he turned seventeen or maybe Zayn and Louis. And Harry screws his eyes shut, tighter - he won't rush there, he won't, it's just not his love to carry and he has enough on his plate.

He can't fall asleep, so he just lies there with open eyes, trying not to listen to the groans and the thuds but listening anyway. He tries to imagine them on a stave, tiny and precise on the black thread, curled on the sheet, looking harmless. He'd like to say that music doesn't break ribs and draw blood, but it does.

There must be some flavor of wrong in the way he falls asleep to their heavy, labored breathing, but it's too late to care. He doesn't even startle when something lands heavily against the opposite wall, only lets out a small sigh and closes his eyes, tiny dancers fighting with unfurled fingers beneath his eyelids.

He wakes up again at four with a dry throat and to the smell of blood. Panic fills his chest like a sea, choking him.

"Louis?" he asks to his empty room, but of course Louis isn't there, so he puts on sweatpants and scrambles outside. Everything is eerily silent. Harry can't breathe.

When he finally finds Louis, he's lying on the floor, whimpering slowly, his head cradled in his hands, and it's the most terrifying thing Harry's ever seen, his cheek open and bleeding, his mouth curled in something that's somewhere between human and animal, sadness and grief, anger and pain.

"Louis?"

He drops to his knees next to Louis but he doesn't even seem to notice him. His fingers are moving in his lap, tugging at the hem of his ripped T-shirt; sometimes they still in the air, flicking on and off an invisible lighter or maybe stroking an invisible harp.

It's only then that he notices Zayn on the floor next to Louis, unmoving. His breath hitches in his throat, and the pounding in his head increases, this isn't happening, this isn't happening, this can't be happening. Louis looks at him with a blank stare when he lets out something that might be a squeal, and for a second Harry hates him with all his heart.

"What happened?" he asks as he scrambles up and searches his jeans for his phone, frantically punching Liam's number on the keys.

"Don't leave me," Louis says with wide bloodshot eyes, and he pulls Harry back down to the floor, kisses his jaw. "Don'tleavemedon'tleavemdon'tleaveme I swear I didn't want to it wasn't my fault don't leave me," he stutters, wrecked and pathetic and everything Harry never wants to become.

He's so angry - the panic soars in his chest and tries to strangle him with ropes of fire.

"Hello?" says Liam on the other end of the phone. His voice is raw and throaty, and for a stray second Harry almost regrets that they'll never love each other, because there's a tiny, microscopic chance that it would have been good and maybe even more than that.

"You need to come here. It's Zayn," Harry says, struggling to keep his voice steady. He tries to push Louis away, but he's murmuring in his chest, his hands fisted in Harry's T-shirt, staining the cloth with tears and slobber.

"Don't move," Liam says. "I'll be here in ten."

Harry breathes out a sigh. He tries to coat the blood that's flowing from Louis's cheek but Louis keeps flailing, smearing blood all over his face like warpaint.

Harry thinks he's forgotten how to breathe when Liam finally knocks, and he leaps into his arms, tugging at his hair and trying to hurt him too, sobbing hysterically in his neck, "It's Zayn, he's..."

But he doesn't know what Zayn is, so he lets Liam hug him and wills the embrace to crush his bones.

They kneel next to Zayn's body. Liam has called 911 and they can't do anything but wait - Zayn is breathing but it's so tiny and fluttering and his heartbeat is like a baby's heart and it's so fucking terrifying and Harry never wants to have to do that ever again ever again.

Liam hooks an arm around his shoulders and Harry doesn't shrug him off but doesn't relax into the embrace either, because there's Zayn face in front of him and his eyes are shut and Louis did this, for God's sake, what happened to them?

They're silent when the ambulance gets there. They drag Louis away, clinging to Zayn's body and spluttering incoherently; Harry looks at them, at Liam who's answering their questions, and he closes his eyes and tries to drown.

PART IV