some resting flower of yesterday's delight
Fandom: One Direction
Pairing: Harry/Louis
Summary: Harry always wanted to see the world, just not like this.
Word Count: 1800+
A/N: For Shyla. Thanks to Betsy for being a brilliant beta. Possible war triggers.
Harry always wanted to see the world, just not like this.
+
They share a foxhole. It’s cramped, cold and damp. It’s the wrong place with the right person and when the line’s empty, when things are quiet, Harry almost dares to think of it as homely. But it could just be that Louis makes it feel that way.
+
Louis likes to think of the bombs as fireworks. It’s easier that way.
The thing about war, Harry thinks, is that you spend an awful amount of time making up reasons to believe that things are different. That every time a friend gets shot down, they’re sleeping. The smell of burnt flesh isn’t really the smell of burnt flesh. They stay awake and alert at night because they want to, not because they could be the next person sent him to a parade of half-mast flags. The red stains on the jackets of the people around him - they’re crushed poppies. If he twists his mind enough he can pretend he’s somewhere else, if only for a while and sometimes that’s enough.
+
France is colder than he dreamed it would be. There are no bright lights and rain soaked alleyways. There’s no French cuisine, no street performers. There’s no way to see the Eiffel Tower from the grey snow covered trees. The closest thing to drumming is the sound of incessant mortars.
+
“You alright for supplies, Sergeant?” Louis whispers.
“I’m not a sergeant yet, Tomlinson,” Harry nudges closer to him, swearing to himself that it’s just to keep warm.
Louis moves closer and Harry knows it’s nothing, they’re just sharing body heat. It’s vital.
“You keep impressing people the way that you have been and one day you will be,” Louis says, “you can boss me around then.”
“I don’t want to move up ranks,” Harry confesses.
“So why are you here then? I can’t see you being the type with a strong will to save the free world.”
“I wanted to see it,” Harry says quietly, “the world, I mean. I wanted to travel.”
There’s a yell in the distance and Louis, always alert, springs to attention and grips his hand around his rifle. His eyes dart to Harry’s, the blue pierces even in the night,
“You seen enough yet?”
+
Harry spends his downtime trying to calculate the distance between here and home. One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred plus miles. He wonders if the meaning of home gets smudged with every step you take away from it.
+
Harry’s sure that Louis has doves inside his lungs, like every breath he takes is a flutter of their wings, like every word he mutters is a protest against the world, a promise that peace is still a possibility.
If they had met somewhere else.
And he’s fighting like the rest of them but there’s a difference between them and Louis - their hollow screams of terror, their one hundred dollar paycheck, their power struggle, their manliness - Louis fights with hope and honour, he screams with a heavy pulse. Between bloodshed and battle, the wounded and the dead, there is a boy who wakes up every morning and he’s still a boy, still full of charm and wonder. He’s still wide-eyed and hasn’t quite lost the will to live - yet.
If they had met somewhere else.
It would have been different. They would have shared the electricity of their bodies for something other than warmth. Maybe Harry wouldn’t think that every touch is one touch closer to the last. Maybe he wouldn’t feel like they were petals torn from something that could have grown.
+
Nothing grows in the snow. The flowers wilt and die. The trees bare their bones. In the silent moments between gunshots, Harry thinks he can hear them shiver. The dead shouldn’t be so deafeningly loud.
+
They lose twelve men in an hour. The snow is too high to pass through, too high for the medics to transport them to the makeshift morgue in the basement of a makeshift hospital. The bodies are stacked.
“Looks like they’re reaching for something,” Louis chimes in, as if a pile of dead bodies is the most casual thing for two boys to be staring at, “you think it’s heaven they’re reaching for?”
And Harry doesn’t want to but the more he wills his lips to stay shut the more they fight to open. And he swears he can see the blood stains on his hands. He swears he can smell the shrapnel on his skin like he’d lost his own smell a long time ago and started to smell like nothing more than a weapon. He is a growing list of things that he’s afraid won’t ever, ever wash away.
“No one’s going to heaven here,” Harry replies.
“All you see when you look in your eyes is death,” Louis snaps, “isn’t it?”
And it’s not a question but if it was Harry would have said that the only place he saw life these days was in Louis’ eyes.
+
The moonlight bends around Louis’ sleeping body like a blanket and he’s beautiful, breathing and alive.
“If we get out of here,” Harry whispers, “I’ll take care you,” and it’s more of a cut-throat prayer than a promise.
+
The line advances. They’re marching into enemy territory. Harry’s afraid and trying his best not to show it because when you show it you start to crack, he’s sure of that. He’s afraid of losing, of the madness he’s seen consume strong men, he’s afraid that this is worth nothing, that he’ll grasp too tightly and the little that he does have will fade away.
Louis knows it, of course, because no one knows him quite like Louis does. He moves closer, sways his body towards Harry’s as they march forward and it’s not a lot but Harry knows it’s the best he can do.
“This is what we’re fighting for,” Louis says, punching Harry’s arm playfully, “greater good and all that.”
Harry’s not sure why he’s fighting.
If they’re fighting for anything at all.
+
The forest is like a nightmare that they can only step through, a steep cloud with no clearing. Every footstep feels like a breadcrumb, like a piece of childhood that’s scattered and lost.
This is how boys become men. This is where men are made.
+
“Droughts don’t last forever, you know?” Louis says, he’s crouched behind a wall, pointing his gun towards a door, waiting for someone in an opposite coloured uniform to walk out, “because the rain always comes back around.”
And it’s like that with Louis, always thinking beyond the reality of what’s really happening.
“Do you ever feel guilty? They’re the same as us, just taking orders, killing for some fucking system that none of us understand,” Harry asks. “Sometimes I think about what their first names are.”
Louis’ head drops for a moment. “I’ve lovingly named them all Adolf, makes it easier when I’m wiping their blood off my boots,” he says.
This is the place where innocence has been scraped from the barrels of their hearts, where smiles are found between clenched fists and guns. Harry wonders if there is a place outside of here where they will ever smile together. If there is a place where they will ever understand each other again.
+
Louis gets hit and he’s gone.
+
“Maybe I was here to hurt you,” Harry thinks as the medics drive Louis away. Louis or what’s left of Louis. No one will tell him, they’ve got a job to do and a number is just a number. Louis is just a number, a patch on a uniform, a statistic.
There’s an officer towering over him, telling him he was lazy, a good trooper is always alert. A good trooper always puts himself out there to save someone else in his unit. A good trooper doesn’t let their best friend get hit.
Of course it was his fault.
Harry stares at the ground because it’s all he can do. His eyes burning the spot where Louis fell. He wonders if it’s still warm, if he laid down in the dirt would he still feel him, would his blood stains ever wash away.
It’s like holding love in your palms and watching it flee because you held on too tight or not tight enough.
+
If a prayer is like a promise then Harry curses himself for breaking his.
+
Harry hates this, hates being without Louis. The rain always comes back around, the rain always comes back around, he repeats to himself but nothing stops making him want to rip the sky down from its rafters. Nothing stops the anger, the hatred of this, all of this and himself. He prods at his bones, prying his fingernails into his skin, and nothing makes him feel any more alive, any less like death.
He hates himself for this. For drying out the sun, for taking away the one thing that the moonlight would hug in a battlefield, and he wants to twist himself inside out to find anything that’s left of Louis and share it with the scenery because he’s made everything so ugly.
The snow is melting and Harry thinks he might be too.
+
Louis comes back and Harry thinks it’s the first time he’s seen a budding flower in a year.
+
He’s all battle wounds and scars, stories about nurses and men who’ve lost more than both of them could ever imagine. He says he’s lucky. He says he’s sorry for making Harry think it was
his fault.
They’re in a field, it’s warm, like the sun has finally decided to be kind and Harry swears that every flower leans its head towards Louis like he’s their only source of life. The smell of dust, blood and shrapnel is washed away and the world finally feels clean. Harry thinks that maybe, maybe those bodies were reaching for heaven.
Louis throws his arm around Harry’s shoulder. “I missed you, every day I thought about getting better so I could be beside you again. I know it’s stupid to wish to be back in the midst of all this but, you were the reason I was fighting, you know? If there was a reason for all of this, it was so people like you could see what the world looks when this is over,” Louis’ voices fades out.
And Harry does the only thing that feels right. He kisses him. He kisses him and it all floats away, like his lips were always reaching for something, like maybe this is heaven.
“Don’t think about it,” Louis says as he pulls away, “don’t think about the flowers dying.”
“I won’t.”
Pairing: Harry/Louis
Summary: Harry always wanted to see the world, just not like this.
Word Count: 1800+
A/N: For Shyla. Thanks to Betsy for being a brilliant beta. Possible war triggers.
Harry always wanted to see the world, just not like this.
+
They share a foxhole. It’s cramped, cold and damp. It’s the wrong place with the right person and when the line’s empty, when things are quiet, Harry almost dares to think of it as homely. But it could just be that Louis makes it feel that way.
+
Louis likes to think of the bombs as fireworks. It’s easier that way.
The thing about war, Harry thinks, is that you spend an awful amount of time making up reasons to believe that things are different. That every time a friend gets shot down, they’re sleeping. The smell of burnt flesh isn’t really the smell of burnt flesh. They stay awake and alert at night because they want to, not because they could be the next person sent him to a parade of half-mast flags. The red stains on the jackets of the people around him - they’re crushed poppies. If he twists his mind enough he can pretend he’s somewhere else, if only for a while and sometimes that’s enough.
+
France is colder than he dreamed it would be. There are no bright lights and rain soaked alleyways. There’s no French cuisine, no street performers. There’s no way to see the Eiffel Tower from the grey snow covered trees. The closest thing to drumming is the sound of incessant mortars.
+
“You alright for supplies, Sergeant?” Louis whispers.
“I’m not a sergeant yet, Tomlinson,” Harry nudges closer to him, swearing to himself that it’s just to keep warm.
Louis moves closer and Harry knows it’s nothing, they’re just sharing body heat. It’s vital.
“You keep impressing people the way that you have been and one day you will be,” Louis says, “you can boss me around then.”
“I don’t want to move up ranks,” Harry confesses.
“So why are you here then? I can’t see you being the type with a strong will to save the free world.”
“I wanted to see it,” Harry says quietly, “the world, I mean. I wanted to travel.”
There’s a yell in the distance and Louis, always alert, springs to attention and grips his hand around his rifle. His eyes dart to Harry’s, the blue pierces even in the night,
“You seen enough yet?”
+
Harry spends his downtime trying to calculate the distance between here and home. One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred plus miles. He wonders if the meaning of home gets smudged with every step you take away from it.
+
Harry’s sure that Louis has doves inside his lungs, like every breath he takes is a flutter of their wings, like every word he mutters is a protest against the world, a promise that peace is still a possibility.
If they had met somewhere else.
And he’s fighting like the rest of them but there’s a difference between them and Louis - their hollow screams of terror, their one hundred dollar paycheck, their power struggle, their manliness - Louis fights with hope and honour, he screams with a heavy pulse. Between bloodshed and battle, the wounded and the dead, there is a boy who wakes up every morning and he’s still a boy, still full of charm and wonder. He’s still wide-eyed and hasn’t quite lost the will to live - yet.
If they had met somewhere else.
It would have been different. They would have shared the electricity of their bodies for something other than warmth. Maybe Harry wouldn’t think that every touch is one touch closer to the last. Maybe he wouldn’t feel like they were petals torn from something that could have grown.
+
Nothing grows in the snow. The flowers wilt and die. The trees bare their bones. In the silent moments between gunshots, Harry thinks he can hear them shiver. The dead shouldn’t be so deafeningly loud.
+
They lose twelve men in an hour. The snow is too high to pass through, too high for the medics to transport them to the makeshift morgue in the basement of a makeshift hospital. The bodies are stacked.
“Looks like they’re reaching for something,” Louis chimes in, as if a pile of dead bodies is the most casual thing for two boys to be staring at, “you think it’s heaven they’re reaching for?”
And Harry doesn’t want to but the more he wills his lips to stay shut the more they fight to open. And he swears he can see the blood stains on his hands. He swears he can smell the shrapnel on his skin like he’d lost his own smell a long time ago and started to smell like nothing more than a weapon. He is a growing list of things that he’s afraid won’t ever, ever wash away.
“No one’s going to heaven here,” Harry replies.
“All you see when you look in your eyes is death,” Louis snaps, “isn’t it?”
And it’s not a question but if it was Harry would have said that the only place he saw life these days was in Louis’ eyes.
+
The moonlight bends around Louis’ sleeping body like a blanket and he’s beautiful, breathing and alive.
“If we get out of here,” Harry whispers, “I’ll take care you,” and it’s more of a cut-throat prayer than a promise.
+
The line advances. They’re marching into enemy territory. Harry’s afraid and trying his best not to show it because when you show it you start to crack, he’s sure of that. He’s afraid of losing, of the madness he’s seen consume strong men, he’s afraid that this is worth nothing, that he’ll grasp too tightly and the little that he does have will fade away.
Louis knows it, of course, because no one knows him quite like Louis does. He moves closer, sways his body towards Harry’s as they march forward and it’s not a lot but Harry knows it’s the best he can do.
“This is what we’re fighting for,” Louis says, punching Harry’s arm playfully, “greater good and all that.”
Harry’s not sure why he’s fighting.
If they’re fighting for anything at all.
+
The forest is like a nightmare that they can only step through, a steep cloud with no clearing. Every footstep feels like a breadcrumb, like a piece of childhood that’s scattered and lost.
This is how boys become men. This is where men are made.
+
“Droughts don’t last forever, you know?” Louis says, he’s crouched behind a wall, pointing his gun towards a door, waiting for someone in an opposite coloured uniform to walk out, “because the rain always comes back around.”
And it’s like that with Louis, always thinking beyond the reality of what’s really happening.
“Do you ever feel guilty? They’re the same as us, just taking orders, killing for some fucking system that none of us understand,” Harry asks. “Sometimes I think about what their first names are.”
Louis’ head drops for a moment. “I’ve lovingly named them all Adolf, makes it easier when I’m wiping their blood off my boots,” he says.
This is the place where innocence has been scraped from the barrels of their hearts, where smiles are found between clenched fists and guns. Harry wonders if there is a place outside of here where they will ever smile together. If there is a place where they will ever understand each other again.
+
Louis gets hit and he’s gone.
+
“Maybe I was here to hurt you,” Harry thinks as the medics drive Louis away. Louis or what’s left of Louis. No one will tell him, they’ve got a job to do and a number is just a number. Louis is just a number, a patch on a uniform, a statistic.
There’s an officer towering over him, telling him he was lazy, a good trooper is always alert. A good trooper always puts himself out there to save someone else in his unit. A good trooper doesn’t let their best friend get hit.
Of course it was his fault.
Harry stares at the ground because it’s all he can do. His eyes burning the spot where Louis fell. He wonders if it’s still warm, if he laid down in the dirt would he still feel him, would his blood stains ever wash away.
It’s like holding love in your palms and watching it flee because you held on too tight or not tight enough.
+
If a prayer is like a promise then Harry curses himself for breaking his.
+
Harry hates this, hates being without Louis. The rain always comes back around, the rain always comes back around, he repeats to himself but nothing stops making him want to rip the sky down from its rafters. Nothing stops the anger, the hatred of this, all of this and himself. He prods at his bones, prying his fingernails into his skin, and nothing makes him feel any more alive, any less like death.
He hates himself for this. For drying out the sun, for taking away the one thing that the moonlight would hug in a battlefield, and he wants to twist himself inside out to find anything that’s left of Louis and share it with the scenery because he’s made everything so ugly.
The snow is melting and Harry thinks he might be too.
+
Louis comes back and Harry thinks it’s the first time he’s seen a budding flower in a year.
+
He’s all battle wounds and scars, stories about nurses and men who’ve lost more than both of them could ever imagine. He says he’s lucky. He says he’s sorry for making Harry think it was
his fault.
They’re in a field, it’s warm, like the sun has finally decided to be kind and Harry swears that every flower leans its head towards Louis like he’s their only source of life. The smell of dust, blood and shrapnel is washed away and the world finally feels clean. Harry thinks that maybe, maybe those bodies were reaching for heaven.
Louis throws his arm around Harry’s shoulder. “I missed you, every day I thought about getting better so I could be beside you again. I know it’s stupid to wish to be back in the midst of all this but, you were the reason I was fighting, you know? If there was a reason for all of this, it was so people like you could see what the world looks when this is over,” Louis’ voices fades out.
And Harry does the only thing that feels right. He kisses him. He kisses him and it all floats away, like his lips were always reaching for something, like maybe this is heaven.
“Don’t think about it,” Louis says as he pulls away, “don’t think about the flowers dying.”
“I won’t.”