The day had already been monumentally shitty. The worst of the worst days. An absolute steaming-pile-of-crap day. So, really, it was only natural to finish it with a perfect cherry on top - his call from Death-Cast.
He was alone when the unmistakabl...
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𝙻𝚘𝚞𝚒𝚜 𝙳𝚎𝚌𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛 𝟸𝟷𝚜𝚝, 𝟷𝟷:𝟶𝟷𝚙𝚖
The woods were cold and wet and seemed to be unending. It was like they'd eaten Louis alive and refused to spit him out again. He wandered until his feet ached, but there was no end in sight. He wanted to give up. He wanted to lay down and stay there until he faded away to nothing - maybe sprout a pretty flower after he'd decomposed - but something kept him moving forward.
He was scared of stopping. He wasn't scared of being stopped, but he was terrified of doing it himself. What would people think when they found him? What would the boys think? Calum, he was just a kid. What would it do to him to experience the fourth loss of the day? And Niall... Well, Niall didn't have much outside of work. Louis knew that. If he was gone, all Niall would have left was Zayn and Calum.
But the undeniable pain that was eating away at Louis' every organ, every skin cell, every pore. He couldn't stand it. It was the worst thing he'd ever felt before in his thirty-two years of living. He'd lost people, of course - people he was close to. But this? This was worse than anything he ever could have imagined. Harry was gone. His husband, his partner, his best friend since he was eighteen - he was gone forever. Louis had no one to fall asleep next to, no one to wake up and kiss in the morning, no one to hold hands with in the car, no one to fight over movies with, no one to love. His love was gone and there was no doubt in his mind that he wouldn't get it back again.
Was life even worth living without love? Did he even have a choice? If it was all fated, how did any decisions Louis made matter? If he was destined to live, he would live. He could sit right down on the floor of the forest and someone would come to save him. He wasn't allowed to die. Or, on the other hand, he was. He could give into his urges and stop. He could sit there and feel his limbs slowly go numb until the cold finally took him for good. He could join Harry and the boys wherever they went. No one would come to help because they simply weren't supposed to. God or whatever higher being decided a long time ago that this was how he was supposed to go.
Only, that wasn't true because, if it was, Louis would have gotten his call with the rest of his family.
Rummaging snapped Louis from his thoughts. He looked up, dazed and disoriented, to see lights in the distance. He was close to home, somehow. But what was that noise? It sounded like an animal but the only animals that lived in these woods would surely be taking shelter from the cold.
Louis searched around, training his eyes, until he spotted a strange-looking silhouette. A suspiciously human-looking silhouette. Louis took a silent step closer to the shape slowly trudging away from him, narrowing his gaze on it. He recognized the lanky, too-tall frame in a heartbeat and anger blazed through his body.
"Hemmings!" he yelled before he could even think about what he was doing. He saw the silhouette freeze and he took it as his opportunity to run after it. He didn't know what he was going to do but, whatever it was, he knew he should've done it a long time ago.
