Cause Minds are Where the Monsters Creep: Part Two
It was after their second-to-last show that it began to needle Harry.
“What are we?” he asked in a daze of lights and sounds, pressed against Louis on the battered couch backstage. It became a sort of chant in his mind, the words spinning round and round his head until he was itching to grab them and break them apart, to smash them to bits against the ground. And Louis cobbled some story about an art dealer and a painting thief and something about a cure for werewolves--he blamed that last one on that MTV show Zayn kept flicking on--and whispered it to Harry like he was reading from a book. He’d always been good at performing, Louis had, even for him.
“No,” Harry interrupted and then he was turning around, and he could feel his eyes going wide as his legs ended up in Louis’ lap. “What are we?”
“I just said that, you twat,” Louis answered, reaching over and swatting Harry’s knee. He was grinning at him, head tilted to the side like they were still playing, but Harry knew better, knew him better. He had seen Louis’ hand falter for a moment before he reached out, had heard that quiet note in his voice that he knew Louis had tried to stamp out. “Weren’t you listening? I’m Benard, and you’re Edmund, and we’re at that fancy museum in New York, y’know, with all those steps out front?”
Harry looked at Louis for a moment before answering. Looked, and wondered if maybe he’d been wrong about their game, if maybe it wasn’t time for growing up and growing out, if maybe there was more to this thing than he thought. “Yeah,” he said finally, ducking his head. “Yeah, sorry, I just, dunno, drifted or something.”
***
They were a few hours away from their last show, less than a day away from getting on a plane and going back home (home, Harry thought automatically, London-flat-home, not hotel-van-stage-home), and Louis was crying. Louis was crying, and that, more than anything, brought Harry back, made him reach out a hand. And he almost wanted to bite out a curse, almost wanted to kick his boots against the wall, because his hand was shaking. His hand was shaking, and it won’t be enough. It’s never enough, he thought, but his fingers curled over Louis’ shoulder anyway, like they knew where they wanted to be and they were bloody well going there. His fingers on Louis’ shoulder, and he can’t tell who’s shaking anymore, and it was silent, and it was strained, but it wasn’t broken, not really, not yet, but it still wasn’t enough.
He could scream. Could scream, but didn’t; bit it back down, swallowed it with half a growl, and his fingers flexed against Louis’ braces, the knuckles going white, Louis still shaking under his touch. He glanced around for a moment, at the window above them, at the half-opened door behind them, at the stairs leading to different places, places where maybe Louis wouldn’t be crying, wouldn’t be shaking under his touch. And it’s almost ironic, he thought, how fucking open they’re being right now. He can still hear Management’s words in his ear, that snide you need to tone your relationship down if you want to make an international impact, and he almost laughed, wondering if screaming and breaking down in a stairwell hours before a show counted as “toning down.”
He almost wondered if the fans would still gape and scream if they could see them now, all bruised and twisted and chewed up in an abandoned stairwell, but he knew they would, knew the words “Larry Stylinson” would be out of their mouths before Louis could turn away, before he could blink, their grasping hands already reaching out to take and take and take.
And suddenly he was angry again--or maybe he’d never really stopped being angry, maybe this was just another wave of the same storm, and he was spinning away from Louis, his hands curled into fists and it’s all he can do to keep himself from punching the walls. He’s not the angry one, he had to remind himself, he’s the charming one, the flirt, and he can’t bloody well go around with scrapes on his knuckles. But then he looked at Louis, huddled at the bottom of the stairs, choking back another sob, and it’s gone, suddenly, all that anger, and he’s back to reaching out a shaking hand.
A lifetime had passed, and they’ve surely missed their show by now, when Louis finally turned around and looked Harry in the eye. And it felt like another lifetime ago that that blue was crinkled and scrunched, a wrinkled ocean that was his to lock away and keep (“see, Haz, the sea is special,” Louis had laughed when Harry drank too much and confessed that he could quite like the sea if it were like his eyes, and he’d filed that away too, the sound of Louis’ laugh, all loud and shattering and his. It came back now, that memory, and he hated it, wanted to smash it with his fists until it was gone. It wasn’t fair, he thought, that he could remember something like that in the middle of all this). But it was different now, and Louis was looking at him without the crinkles and his breath is full of kicks and sputters, and he still wanted, he wanted, he wanted, and his hands were balling into fists again, and his heart was hammering away in his ears like this wasn’t anything, like this was everything.
“I’m sorry,” Louis said, and it wasn’t just his breathing that was full of kicks and sputters; it was his voice too, and Harry’s hand reached out again, like he could smooth it away, like he ever had that power. “I’m sorry,” Louis said again, and somehow it worked, because his voice was smoothed out, but it was quieter, too, and that, Harry thought, was worse.
“Yeah, well,” Harry mumbled back, and he was looking at the ground now, scuffing his boots against the carpet, curls falling into his eyes, but fuck he couldn’t think of what else to say. And what could he say, really? Sorry I guess I loved you too much. Sorry, didn’t mean to stop playing and ask you to treat us like a fucking real thing for once. Sorry sorry sorry.
“Is it all ruined now?” Louis asked, and there was something in his voice Harry couldn’t quite place, something fragile and wearied and scared. But he was off and running before Harry could even look closer, pushing his fingers through his hair until it was all waves and tufts. “Is it all ruined now, Haz?” he asked again, and it wasn’t fragile anymore; it was broken, it was shattered, and Harry was left standing amongst the rubble, scuffing at it with his boots.
And he was crossing his arms; he didn’t trust them to be out on their own, didn’t trust where they might go, and he stood in silence for a moment. All the things he didn’t want to say were crowding in between them, and he wondered if Louis could hear them too, if he ever really could, or if they’d already lost that. Sorry the games meant more than the truth. Sorry you listen to Management too well. Sorry I don’t mean enough to you.
He turned to go then, and he hated himself, hated himself for leaving, for letting Louis sit there alone before their last show.
Sorry I can’t play the games anymore. Sorry I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Sorry for ruining stairwells.
Sorry sorry sorry.
***
He left, but that the thing about being an international pop star; there was nowhere for him to go. He considered bunking off the concert for about two seconds before he pictured Paul’s face when he was nowhere to be found, or the phone calls and meetings he’d be pushed into with Management.
Niall was the first person he ran into when he got backstage. “Hey,” he said, catching Harry’s shoulder, talking around a mouthful of pizza, “what’s wrong, mate?”
It took Harry a moment to answer, he was so busy scanning for Louis. “Wha-oh, I just, dunno, Lou and I had a bit of a fight.”
“Doesn’t look like a bit of a fight to me,” Niall said, stepping back and scanning Harry’s face. “You look bloody awful mate, d’you wanna talk about it or something?”
No, I’m fine, we’ll be fine, it’s all fine, thanks anyway. The words were on the tip of his tongue, it had always felt weird including the other boys in his and Louis’ bubble, like he was shoving it in their faces or asking them to take sides. He knew it wasn’t like that, knew that they didn’t feel that way, but still. He opened his mouth to tell Niall that he was fine, but instead he shook his head a bit, wondering if he’d start crying if he tried speaking.
And Niall hugged him--he was a fantastic hugger, really, for such a tiny little bloke, and the fans were always going on about how Niall’s, like, sunshine personified, and this was the first time Harry thought he actually gets it--and got Harry to talk about it, sort of cocking his head to the side and rubbing these small circles on his knee while Harry stumbled through the explanation.
“I just-I shouldn’t have forced him to try and like, label what we are or whatever, but I needed-it’s just so fucking hard sometimes, y’know? And with fucking Management telling us that we can’t, like, tweet each other or be seen in public sometimes or sit next to each other during signings-I needed him to-what if I ruined everything, Ni?” Don’t cry, don’t fucking cry, you’ve your last show in five minutes, don’t fucking cry. “What if-what if we’re done?”
And Niall hugged him again, rubbing his back now, murmuring things like sh, Haz, it’ll be alright, mate, you guys’ll be fine, I bet Lou’s already waiting to fall back into your arms, it’ll be alright and then someone was nodding at the boys and yelling that they had three seconds to get onto stage, and Harry was about to ask Niall if it was too late to skip off and go hide under his duvet until he was back on English soil, and then suddenly, it was their last show and they were all on stage.
***
The show was a bit of a blur, and Harry thought he might have to ask Liam to hide his phone afterwards because he wasn’t sure he could handle what the fans were saying--and he could already picture it, the comments about how he was lackluster and stumbling over lyrics and biting his lip too often to be passed off as sexy or whatever they usually said he was aiming for--but Louis was clear as day to him, prancing about the stage in his fucking braces like this wasn’t anything more than their last show on tour. It hurt, it hurt like hell, to see that, like Harry meant nothing, like the fact that they might be over (oh god, Harry thought, they might be over, and he wondered if this is what was it felt like when your heart was breaking) didn’t faze him at all.
They were greeted backstage with cheers and shoulder claps and Harry shrugged them all off, grabbing Louis and marching him to a corner. He barely caught Niall exchanging looks with Liam and Zayn because he was busy staring at Louis through a mess of curls (“Haz, you need to cut your hair,” Louis had said to him once, leaning down and kissing each curl, “how can you expect me to swoon if I can’t even see your eyes?” and Harry was dragging a hand across his eyes while he stood in a dark corner with a Louis who didn’t even look like he was capable of laughing). “What,” he asked, and his voice was rougher than he’d thought possible, “the hell was that?”
“I’m always good for a show, Haz, or hadn’t you heard?” Louis threw at him, and it was vicious, and it stung, the way, Harry was sure, Louis meant it to.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Harry hissed back at him, vaguely aware that everyone was slowly emptying the room behind them like they had “AVOID: TOXIC” slapped on the wall above their heads.
“Ridiculous?” Louis repeated, stepping closer to Harry and fuck he could still pick out Louis’ heartbeat, could still recognize each spike and drop. “Is that a step up or step down from what you said earlier? What was it? Oh right, I remember now, you were telling me that I was using our games as a way to keep from growing up and loving you fully. Does that sound right to you? Or should I repeat it slower and maybe mumble a bit more so you can get it?”
“I hate you,” Harry said. He wished he could take it back the second the words left his mouth because it was stupid, and it was childish, and it was destructive, and he could see the mark the words left on Louis’ skin. But he couldn’t, and so he leaned closer--and they were scarcely a breath apart now, and he wondered what Louis would do if he just closed the gap, wondered if there were any way that would work as a type of solution--and kept talking. “I don’t need you,” he sneered, “you’ve been holding me back, you were just a distraction.”
Stupid, childish, destructive.
He didn’t wait to see Louis’ face, and he wasn’t sure what he was more scared of; that the words would have hurt him, or that they wouldn’t have touched him at all.
***
He told Paul he was sick the next morning, and Paul took one look at him, all pale skin and shaking hands, and let him sit in the front on the way to the airport, arranged for him to sit by himself on the plane. It wasn’t strictly a lie, Harry supposed, drifting in and out of sleep, the world all a bit hazy and blurred, he did spend half the night curled round the toilet like if only he could get rid of the parts of his body that made him do what he did (stupid, childish, destructive, he had thought the entire night, and he woke in the morning faintly surprised that the words hadn’t imprinted themselves on the bathroom tiles, on his skin, on the sky), he’d be able to make everything okay again.
It’ll be okay once I get home, he tried to reassure himself, wrapping his arms around his ribs, tilting his head to glance out the window, and it was sunny up here, above the clouds, and he tried to be mad about that, but it was too late, he was already falling back asleep.
He woke up once more before the plane landed, briefly, to the sound of Liam whispering something to Zayn about how it had just been a long tour, they just needed some time at home to sort themselves out, and it would all be fine. It hit Harry then, how wrecked everything was. Home, he knew, wasn’t really home anymore, not really, and he wondered if it would ever be. He fell asleep before Zayn could answer.
***
He sleepwalked through Heathrow, barely registering the screams and flashes, not waking up until Niall called out a “feel better, yeah?” before reaching over and shutting the van door and he was inside his flat. He turned to his side before dropping his bags, ready with a smile and a quip about how they could finally resume their typical Wednesday traditions, and it took him a moment to get it.
He was alone.
Louis wasn’t next to him.
His bags fell to the floor with a thud and he could vaguely heard his phone going off, and he was tempted to let it go, but what if it was Louis and it had all been a dream and he was locked out? What if, what if, what if?
“Hello?” he said, and he hated it, how eager and hopeful his voice sounded, but it was too late, it was out there and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Haz?” It was Liam. Liam, not Louis, and Harry tried to keep from crying because fuck, he had really wrecked everything. “Haz, listen, I just wanted to let you know because you were pretty out of it today, and I didn’t want you to worry or do anything stupid. But, uh, Louis is going to stay with me for a bit, okay?” Silence. Harry supposed Liam was waiting for him to say something, to reassure him, maybe, that he was fine, they were fine, they just needed a bit of a rest, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth, not trusting what might come out, so just stayed on the line, silent and chewing on his lip. “Right. Well, get some sleep and I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure,” Harry managed to force out before hanging up. He paused and stared at the phone in his hand, all slim and sleek and more Louis’ than his (he had stolen it one night, giggly and drunk and glued to Harry’s side, passing it back after changing his background to a picture of a unicorn, his ringtone to a Spice Girls song, and the other boys’ contact names--Human Garbage Disposal for Niall, DJ Moody Eyes for Zayn, and First Verse Man for Liam; the height of humor, for a drunk Louis). He stared at it, and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, that it hadn’t even been a day and Louis was already the ghost at his elbow, and before he knew it, he was throwing the phone against the wall, sliding to the floor as it cracked and splintered on the ground.
[ part three]