butterfingers (l.s mpreg)

sixteen, week 17

Harry had tried to calm himself down. The beep of monitors and the stir of the ICU sounded deafening and Harry's tummy began to ache terribly.

It's funny, he thinks, how fast everything he had been trying to build up was destroyed so unbearably fast. He rested his face in his hands, trying to remain collected. He knows Louis would know what to do, how to calm him down. Yet, this time it was Louis unconscious in the hospital bed, an IV tucked into his hand and a monitor beside him beeping steadily.

Harry squeezed his hand every few minutes, hoping desperately that his big blue eyes would shoot open and he'd miraculously recover, just fast enough to place a chaste kiss on Harry's cold and salty cheek. Then, he'd get up and walk Harry out to the car, driving him home with a soft and warm hand on his thigh. And he'd kiss him, a hand resting on his swollen tummy.

Yet instead there were no kisses, no big blue eyes staring up at him like he was the brightest and most beautiful ray of sunshine (which he was, to Louis.) It was a just a pale version of Louis, arm fastened tightly into a sling and stitches running up his forearm and across his once sun kissed cheekbone, where the airbag had struck him. Motionless and emotionless, both of which Harry had never seen in his Louis. It was odd seeing his thin pink lips lacking a bright smile, with big dark bags under his eyes. He was not dressed in a suit, but a white and blue hospital gown with a white sheet covering his torso.

"Mr. Styles?" The doctor, who had told Harry to call him Liam stood by the door calmly before pulling a clipboard from the slot in the door and a pen from his lab coat pocket.

"Yes?" Harry looked up, sniffling as he took one hand of Louis to place it in his lap.

"I'd really like to ask you a few questions, if you're feeling up to it." Liam said, standing quite tall in front of him.

"Yes." Harry said.

"Well, are you aware if Mr. Tomlinson had been drinking at all?" Liam questioned.

"What? No! Lou would never-" Harry yelped, causing Liam to flinch slightly.

"Calm down please, sir, this is just protocol." Liam soothed.

Harry slowly looked from Louis to Liam, his breathing beginning to stagger. Liam waited quietly before introducing the next question.

"And do you recall the last few minutes before the accident?" Liam asked.

Harry thought for a moment, trying to search through the haze that had grown over the last few hours in his head.

He tells Liam about the ambulance, sitting up with an IV in his arm and a monitor tightly holding onto his tummy.

"We had been listening to music, singing and all that," he began, "discussing baby names and joking around. He started to talk and then I felt this jolt. His arm flew out in front of my belly and when I woke back up he was getting wheeled into an ambulance." Harry finally began to sob, laying his head back down onto the hospital bed and grabbing Louis' hand.

Liam took notes, looking sad and uncomfortable in the situation.

"Well, Mr. Styles, your husband is in good hands." Harry wants to correct him, desperately, yet he lacks any motivation to speak at all, the pain in his throat preventing him from even letting out the slightest noise.

"He's got a broken arm, that we had to put back in place in order for the bone to go back into the body. For that, we had to put him under anesthesia. Despite that, he isn't concussed although the car did hit his side of the car. Your husband is a very lucky man, Harry." Harry nodded, the knot in his stomach untying halfway.

That was, until a woman appeared beside Liam.

Her eyes were a gentle blue, slightly lighter than Louis'. Her hair was dark, a few hues darker than his own. She was adorning a black blazer and a matching pencil skirt, her white blouse contrasting nicely.

He notes her resemblance to the man in the bed beside him, and soon the breath that had recently been moving in and out of his throat nicely was lodged between his lips.

His green eyes widened, and he hoped maybe she was in the wrong room, that maybe she was just roaming the halls searching for a different patient, looking for Liam's help.

Yet when she looked to Liam and mumbled "Jay Tomlinson." Every one of Harry's guesses flew down the drain.

He shook slightly.

"She's not much of a, well, she's kind of rude." He recalls Louis' words the night of dinner at Mary Lou's.

Louis, at the peak of 18 left his mothers home for college and they had barely spoken since. His father had left when he was little, and she had remained bitter since then.

"And who's this?" Her voice called to Liam yet carried over to Harry, causing him to snap back from his hallucination.

"Oh, this is the patient's husband, Miss. did you not-" Liam's brows furrow and Harry gulps loud enough for the room to hear.

"His what?" Jay questioned.

Harry stood, hoping to clear things up yet Jays eyes only looked down to Harry's swollen stomach that hid under his white t shirt.

"What the-" She said.

"I can explain-" Harry said back.

"Jesus, Christ, I, who," she stuttered, sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the bed from where Harry was sitting.

It was silent for a few moments, leaving Harry gripping onto Louis' fingers so tight he could imagine them shattering and falling right off his hand.

Jay sat quietly as well, staring at her son and her son in-law, (she supposed) looking back and forth between the two, her blue eyes wide. She hadn't been able to comprehend it, even in the near silence of the hospital room.

Instead of interrogating the boy, despite her urges to do so, she started with a simple,

"I'm Jay." She was new to this, even though she wouldn't like to admit it. She had lacked what she needed to be a parent then. That was no excuse, even she knew that, yet she had wanted to redeem herself, she really did.

"I'm Harry." The wavy haired pregnant boy said from across from her. He adjusted the string on his sweatshirt, showing the previous spot where the IV had been put inside of his hand.

"Are you alright? I'm assuming you were in the car with him," She said, not wanting to press any further.

He nodded.

She noted the little cuts on places like his chin and hands, his red top lip looking slightly swollen from impact of some sort.

She then looked to Louis, who laid quietly in the bed with one tan arm at his side and another tied up strategically in a sling. His hair was slightly messy but she could tell Harry had been running his hands through it, the front looking combed but the back frizzing to the white pillow.

She was suddenly nervous, her hands sweaty and relatively shaky as she reached out to palm his face.

Harry winced.

It was gentle, though, a small touch with the pad of her thumb to an empty spot on his cheek that lacked trauma.

"Harry?" She asked.

"Yes, miss?" He said politely. Despite what Louis had told him about his mom, he could tell that she did care for him. Harry was so good like that, Louis always told him.

"Could you," she said "perhaps, tell me about him?" Eight years was a long time. She knew.

Harry did too. So did Louis.

Eight hours unconscious was a long time. She knew.

If she could never see him again, she would never even know him. Harry knew.

A/n: kill me this is so horrendous but I needed a sort of filler before it all gets gooooood, or better, should I say. I'm sorry i didn't update as fast as I usually do but this may become the norm since i've just started school and I spend most days napping and wanting to die rather than writing but I promise my love for this story will fuel updates I LOVE YOU.