Tattoos Together || Larry Stylinson

Chapter 20

"Please, Harry." I whimpered as my headache brought me to my knees.

A blink of an eye earlier we met each other's eyes. Harry's jaw had dropped and I saw that my warning had done nothing in the least.

Now he knelt in front of me, pulled his shirt over his head and gave it to me so that I could use it to catch the bleeding.

"I'll call an ambulance." He said when he saw how the shirt had turned almost completely red within a few minutes.

"No. Don't, Haz, I don't want..." I whined in a pathetic thin voice and interrupted myself with a cough, as the metallic-tasting liquid ran down my throat noticeably slowly and disgustingly warm.

He looked at me as if to ask if I had lost my mind. When he got up anyway, I grabbed his wrist and gave him a pleading look.

I knew he wanted my best, but by now I was also very certain that this wasn't just a really bad and after all simple cold I would recover from within a week or something, but the event I had been waiting for since my diagnosis.

I would have loved to just sit it out. At some point it would have stopped. I thought. At some point it would have been over.

If he were about to call an ambulance now, that would be the beginning of the end. The cornerstone of a dreary passing away. The start of physical and mental suffering. The first step on the way, which led into the absolutely uncertain, into the strange.

Why did it have to happen now? Now that I've been so happy. Wouldn't it have had to be a few more years? Or better yet, couldn't it have happened much earlier? Before that fateful day in the school toilet, before our first meeting. Then we would never have met and fell in love and Harry would never have to experience the day when I just wouldn't wake up anymore. -He would have experienced it, but without shedding any tears, because he would never have noticed that I, a complete stranger, had passed away.

These thoughts rushed through my head within seconds and it felt like it was going to explode until everything went black for a moment.

When I opened my eyes again, my head was lying on Harry's lap. My boyfriend was sitting with his back against the wall, in the midst of the pool of blood that slowly seeped into the carpet, gently pressing the t-shirt onto my seemingly still bleeding nose and with the other hand he held his cell phone to his ear.

How much have I lost? Would I bleed to death? Was that possible with a simple nosebleed?

I heard everything around me like underwater. As if I were still in the bathtub and submerged.

Maybe I was dreaming. But every attempt to wake up failed. It was real. I lived a nightmare.

The curly haired noticed that I had opened my eyes again and was staring apathetically at the ceiling.

"He's back in consciousness." Harry breathed out relieved and looked at me, sick with worry.

I wondered who he was talking to on the phone. Had he called an ambulance against my will?

He ended his call, carelessly and frustratedly dropped the cell phone next to him and buried both hands in my hair.

Hot tears ran down his cheeks, dripped onto his bare torso and faded on the butterfly tattoo.

He knew.

I wanted to comfort him, wanted to tell him everything would be fine, but I didn't want to lie to him. Even when it wasn't helping anyone, I let my tears flow. The salty liquid mixed with the blood and made the whole situation look worse.

With every sob he clung his slender fingers tighter into my hair and I was afraid he would pull them out. For a moment I wondered if I would even mind, after all, in the worst case, I would lose them anyway.

It had to be a disturbing image of the tall boy sitting on the once blue carpet, desperately clinging to my body, which was completely soaked with red liquid.

At some point he got up without a word, but first sat me leaning against the wall with my back, in his own previous position.

I watched him go wordlessly as he disappeared and came back shortly afterwards with a pair of boxers and one of his hoodies.

He himself was wearing something on his upper body again.

"It was Mark on the phone. He'll be there in a few minutes. We'll go to the hospital together. You should get dressed babe."

I was too exhausted to react.

Harry seemed to understand. He came up to me and helped me get dressed. The scenario from the shower played out in front of my inner eye. When he saw me undressed for the first time and I wanted to die of shame.

Our relationship had changed.

In a good direction. In the best possible direction.

There was no longer any shame. It wasn't embarrassing, at least not for the reason it was back then.

-Rather, because I felt kind of... dependent.

When he finished, he looked at me intensely.

The nosebleed had clearly subsided, but was still present. He pulled me into a hug and rubbed his hand over my back.

Then the doorbell rang.

Harry didn't leave my side. He even insisted on coming into the treatment room and holding my hand when a doctor with very bad English clogged the ruptured blood vessel and told us about the results of a quick blood test.

Mark was on the phone with colleagues in his clinic and Mason and Lottie went to a nearby playground with Félicité.

The little one did not understand the seriousness of the situation. She saw that I was doing very badly and had also asked what was going on, but in the end, no one had the heart to confront her with the truth.

The truth was, I should be relocated back to England as soon as possible for important examinations, the results of which I already knew, because they would all point out that it ends.

The only question was when and how.

Harry caressed the inside of my wrist as a bag of blood was pumped into my body through a vein in my arm.

-I had lost a serious amount of blood. It had been dangerous indeed

"Run Harry." I whispered.

"It's too late to run Louis."

He smiled. His mouth did. His eyes looked sad and wandered up to the infusion dispenser to avoid my gaze.

"We have to remain optimistic. We'll be going back home soon, you will receive therapy, the final word has not yet been spoken."

He squeezed my hand, lowered his head on my chest. "I love you, Louis. I'll always be there for you, until the bitter end, we can do it together, okay?"

"What have I done to deserve you? I have to be God's favourite." I smiled a little, even if I didn't feel like it.

I withdrew my hand from him to put it on his back and push him closer to me.

I needed his proximity. I needed him.

"I wish I could offer you more Hazza. What you deserve. I wish I could always be there for you, but my always is finite."