The same night, he finally comes face to face with Robin – who’s a little stiff, and hovers around mum all evening, but Harry can’t blame him – and Gemma, who throws a punch that he only narrowly avoids and then hugs him for over ten minutes.
She doesn’t leave him alone after that. She drags him out to Manchester, takes him shopping, insists that he come with her to work and meet everyone there, and forces him on long, quiet walks around the fields. He pretends to dodge her as much as he can, but he secretly loves every minute of it.
More importantly, he forgets all about Louis, if only for a few minutes at a time. Technically, he should be chasing him for a signature, but he kind of prefers it this way.
Four days in, just as he’s settling into bed to read, Gemma barges into his room and announces that they’re going to the pub.
“But why?” Harry asks, reluctantly taking the clothes that she’s throwing at him. He’d like to take advantage of the tranquility here while he can, thank you very much. The pub’s not really his scene – not this pub, anyway.
It may or may not have something to do with the fact that his mother-in-law is the owner.
He’s avoided it so successfully so far. Leave it to Gemma to throw a wrench into his plans.
“Because,” she says, “I finally have a drinking buddy who doesn’t live an hour away from here. I’m taking advantage while I can.”
“Can we at least go to a different village?” Harry asks, even though he knows it’s futile, and slowly pulls a t-shirt over his head. “I’ll drive, you can drink.”
“Nope,” she grins. “I bet it’s been too long since you had a pint.”
She’s definitely right about that. Harry can’t remember the last time he drank anything other than fancy wine. He’s got a fridge full of it at home – it seems to come with the territory of having moderately famous friends who like house parties.
“What about Barb’s, then?”
She looks at him like he’s grown another head. “Barb’s hasn’t served booze for—wow, probably three or four years.”
“Oh,” he blinks. “What happened?”
“Lost their license,” she shrugs. “They had a bit of a, um. A thing. When Liam worked there, I don’t know if you remember.”
“I do.”
“Yeah. I—I don’t really want to tell you, even though the whole village knows. He wasn’t very well back then.”
Alarm bells start going off in Harry’s head. Liam was fine when he saw him earlier in the week, if a bit sulky, what could have possibly—
“If you want to know, you’ll have to ask him yourself,” Gemma says, pursing her lips at her reflection in the mirror and fixing the line of her lipstick. “I don’t want to be the next village gossip.”
“I think Barbara still has you beat on that,” he reassures her, smiling through his confusion. He buttons his jeans, runs a hand through his hair, and sprays on a bit of cologne even as Gemma makes a face. “Let’s go, then.”
It’s just getting dark outside, but the weather’s finally decided to be warm, and Harry feels surprisingly comfortable walking in his short sleeves. He’s a bit self-conscious about the tattoos, once he catches Gemma looking at them and realises that he didn’t have any when he left.
He and Louis used to talk about them all the time, but—well. Nothing ever came of that.
It’s an unfortunately short walk. He holds the door open for Gemma, trying to delay actually going in for as long as he can. Once it becomes inevitable, he hunches in on himself, and keeps his head down as Gemma finds a free table and beckons for him to follow. Nobody’s actually stopped him on the street yet, or done anything other than ignore him, but paranoia is still prickling on the back of his neck.
Thankfully, his sister seems to pick up on some of his hesitation, because she picks a table that’s tucked into a dark spot, close to the bar but away from all the other patrons.
“I’ll get the drinks,” she says, putting her hands on his shoulders and physically pushing him into a chair. “Pints?”
“Please,” he replies, quite keen on the thought of getting drunk now that he’s here. The overload of being back in Holmes Chapel is slowly getting less extreme, but he could definitely use booze to take some more of the edge off.
He watches her head off to the bar, and looks for Jay’s familiar mop of hair behind it. She’s nowhere to be seen but, as luck would have it, Louis is. Seeing him is barely a shock to Harry anymore.
He smiles at Gemma when she gets his attention, beautiful and bright, and abandons the patrons he was chatting to to make his way to her instead.
Harry can’t hear them, and he thinks that might be a good thing.
“Harry Styles,” a voice pulls him away from the fascinating display. “As I live and breathe.”
He doesn’t recognise the voice, which means he’s already nervous when he looks up.
“Hi,” he says, into the rough face of a man. He hasn’t got any familiar features about him, nothing that would jog Harry’s memory: square jaw, patchy beard, blue tracksuit. Eyes that seem to see straight through him. “Do we, um. Sorry. Do we know each other?”
He knows asking is a risk, but pretending to know who he’s talking to would probably be worse in the long run.
“Not really,” the man shrugs. His posture’s relaxed, non-threatening, but something about him makes Harry uneasy. “We went to primary together. Johnny?”
“Oh,” Harry frowns as he fishes somewhere deep in his memory. “Oh, I remember!”
He actually does, is the most amazing thing – Johnny MacLeod, who used to be the shortest boy in their class, and constantly refused to wear a tie with his uniform. Harry’s assigned seat used to be right behind him. “I’m afraid I mostly remember the back of your head, but I do remember.”
He laughs. He’s—friendly, Harry thinks, but he’s not sure. Can’t be sure.
“No worries, mate, I didn’t remember much of you either. I only realised we were in the same class after I saw you in the Metro.”
Harry’s cheeks burn a little. He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, not quite sure what to say, but fortunately, he’s saved.
“Johnny,” comes Gemma’s voice, full of fake enthusiasm, “fancy seeing you here. Did you want something, or are you just here to embarrass my brother?”
Johnny immediately takes a step back, plunging his hands even deeper into his pockets.
“Just saying hi. Anyways, Harry, I’ll see you around,” he says, and doesn’t wait for a response before he turns on his heel and flees into the busy depths of the pub.
Gemma sets their pints down, sits, and brushes off the hem of her skirt. “He’s trouble,” she informs Harry, and takes an elegant sip of her beer.
“Okay,” he says, blinking. “Why?”
She looks over her shoulder. Johnny’s blue tracksuit is bright across the room, on the other side of the bar.
“You were quite the big deal here, for a while,” she says, brisk. She’s got a foam moustache, but Harry’s a little afraid to point it out. “Everyone talked about you, and I mean all the time. Everywhere. It was ridiculous.”
“Oh,” Harry says again. He chooses to watch the swirly golden depths of his drink instead of looking at anyone, anything, in the room.
“And Johnny over there was first in line when the reporters came.”
“They came here?” Harry frowns.
“Of course they did. Barbara had to close the bakery for a couple of weeks because they wouldn’t stop bugging her and scaring away customers.”
“Oh my G—“
“That’s not the point, Harry,” Gemma leans forward. “I promise the bakery was fine. I was going to tell you about how you and Johnny, apparently, had a secret secondary school romance.”
Harry chooses that exact inopportune moment to take a swig of beer. He chokes, and only narrowly avoids spitting all over himself.
“We what,” he wheezes, trying to wipe foam off his chin.
“You heard me,” she raises an eyebrow, and looks over her shoulder again. There’s Johnny, still in the same seat on the other side of the room, but the light has changed, and Harry can tell he’s looking right at them. “It backfired for him, obviously, but I still almost killed him after I heard.”
“That’s—such a bizarre thing to lie about,” Harry says, reluctantly amused. He’s seen his fair share of fake stories, and this one definitely falls in the harmless range. “Especially when everyone here knew that,” he pauses then, swallows, angles his body away from the bar.
“That you and Louis were already as good as married in secondary school?”
“Yeah,” he mumbles. “That.”
The music in the background dims a little. Harry instinctively looks up, right as Louis starts on a round around the room, collecting small mountains of empty glasses.
This must be his job now, Harry realises – Jay must have wanted to have more time with her other kids, or something, and it’s fallen on Louis to pick up the slack. That’s why he doesn’t need to be at work during the day.
“Earth to Harry,” Gemma says, impossibly dry, and snaps her fingers in front of his face. “We were having a conversation?”
“Yes!” Harry almost shouts, and turns right back to her. “Yes, we were. Sorry, please continue.”
“I mean, there’s not really much else to say,” she purses her lips contemplatively. “It’s really just that I’d prefer to see Johnny at least five feet away from you at all times, if you don’t mind.”
Harry laughs. “Sure, Gems. You got it.”
She grins and taps him on the nose with a coaster. He grimaces, but lets her.
It takes less than ten seconds for it to escalate into a full-on coaster fight; they’re flying from one side of the table to the other as the two of them try to score – ten points for the nose, five for the cheek, two for the chin, just like old times. Harry almost gets his ear cut off by one that’s shaped like Great Britain.
He starts laughing, though it barely registers, and doesn’t stop until he’s out of breath, giggling tiredly as he lines up for a winning shot at Gemma’s forehead.
She ducks, and the coaster splats to the floor. It sets both of them off again.
“Look at him,” someone says across the room, deliberately loud. “Writes one song, and thinks he can leave a mess everywhere he goes.”
They both turn that way, with smiles still frozen on their faces. It’s the table Johnny sat at, and of course it is – a group of boys around Harry’s age, all looking at him with a cruel kind of spark in their eyes.
“We’ll obviously clean up after ourselves,” says Gemma. They laugh.
“Please,” another one says. “Mr Popstar probably hires people to wipe his arse—“
“I mean, he pays someone to dress him, and to do his make up—“
“Is that what they do in America? Teach you how to be a bird?”
The content bubble of happiness in Harry’s chest pops and disappears. Gemma stares into the darkness with her mouth hanging open, lost for words. The other patrons are just as quiet as they watch the scene unfold.
Harry, for some reason, looks around the room to find Louis. He’s standing still behind the bar, a crumpled dishtowel in one hand, looking at the ground with his jaw set. He must feel Harry’s gaze on him – he looks up, and their eyes meet for just a second.
“I bet he was a bird this entire time, what with being a poof—“
There’s a crash. Then Louis is zipping across the room, and tearing the men’s glasses out of their hands.
“I think that’s enough, lads” he says, ice cold. The tone makes Harry want to curl into himself. “Get out.”
“I paid for that!” Johnny screams, and one of his friends immediately joins in.
Another two stand up, but one of them turns around and gets right into Louis’s space, looming over him, trying to get him to back away. Louis stands his ground.
“This is illegal,” he says.
Across from Harry, Gemma snorts.
“This is my pub, Gary,” Louis smiles. “I can kick out whoever I want.”
“Didn’t know it was a gay one,” Gary spits back. Gemma snorts again, throwing back the last of her pint. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have come in the first place.”
“Well,” says Louis, and sets the glasses back on the table to roll up his sleeves. “Unless you want my gay fist in your face, get out of my gay pub.”
Gary tries to make a grab for him, but he’s clearly had one too many to drink: Louis grabs him by the wrist, and twists it in his grip.
“You absolute wanker,” he hisses. “Walk away.”
“Come on, G,” says Johnny, pulling him by the hood. The rest of their friends have already made it out the door. “You’re embarrassing yourself, mate.”
Gary makes a somewhat constipated face, then spits on the ground. He narrowly misses Louis’s foot.
“Charming,” Louis raises an eyebrow. “Get out. Don’t come back again.”
He mumbles some more swears, but Johnny renews his efforts to pull him away and finally manages to get him out.
It’s only as he watches them leave that Harry realises he’s halfway out of his seat, his hands curled around the edge of the table, ready to run to Louis’s aid.
Stupid.
“Anyone else want to have a go?” Louis asks, throwing his arms out with two pint glasses clutched in each hand, spilling beer on the floor.
It’s silent.
“Good,” he says, and takes a mocking little bow. “Don’t be arseholes, everybody. Let people drink in peace.”
Then he turns on his heel. Harry relaxes back into his seat, but he’s still jittery, and he can’t, can’t take his eyes off Louis.
“H, he’s fine,” Gemma says, squeezing his elbow. Her soft touch feels startling on his skin. “He can hold his own, you know that.”
When he turns to her, she gives him a look that’s more knowing that he’d like.
Louis wasn’t holding his own. He was standing up for Harry – protecting him.
“Yeah,” he says, and clears his throat. “Yeah, I know.”
Louis chooses that moment to come over to collect their glasses. He very skillfully avoids Harry’s eyes, even as he’s standing right above him.
“Lou, could we get two more?” Gemma asks.
“Of course, love,” he smiles. Harry’s heart lurches. “Give me a minute though, I’ve got some glass to sweep up over there,” he tilts his chin toward the bar.
“That’s fine,” she smiles back, and Louis turns to leave.
Harry—Harry can’t let him.
“Hey, Louis,” he says – too quiet, he thinks, there’s no way Louis is going to hear it when he’s already halfway to the bar. To Harry’s surprise, he freezes on the spot and turns around.
His eyes land carefully on Harry’s face. He looks—afraid.
“Thank you.”
Louis blinks. Then, slowly, thoroughly, he nods. Harry smiles at him, even as he watches him turn around and walk away.
His cheeks burn a little when he faces Gemma. She’s watching him with both eyebrows raised.
“I thought you hated him,” she says.
“I do,” Harry says, digging one of his nails into a coaster. “I think.”
And isn’t that the root of all his fucking problems. He’s gone too soft, under the onslaught of memories that this place brings with it.
“You don’t have to, you know,” she says, and also takes a coaster off the table to flip between her fingers. “You can divorce him anyway. Plenty of separated couples get along.”
Harry rolls his eyes a little. As if he didn’t grow up the child of divorced parents.
“I don’t want to, though,” he replies. “I don’t want to—to not hate him. He hurt me. He stole years of my life, and I’m not ready to forgive that.”
“That’s not how any of us remember it,” she says. “No offense, Harry, you’re my brother and I love you, but I think you’ve convinced yourself of something that isn’t there.”
Harry stars shaking his head before she’s done speaking. “Why would I do that?”
“I mean—don’t you remember how devastated you were back then? You were inconsolable, you even pushed Louis away for a while, I can’t help thinking—“
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he interrupts. He knows, though. He knows.
He’s just pushed it out at every available opportunity. Ran away from it all the way to London as soon as he got the call, threw himself into work so he wouldn’t have to think about it, avoided speaking to anyone who knew for—well, five years.
He can’t talk about it, he can’t. She wouldn’t understand. Nobody would, except. Except maybe Louis.
“Harry, please. Did you ever deal with it? Did you ever mourn?”
“Nobody died,” he replies, too sharp. She pulls back a little.
“That doesn’t mean it can’t hurt,” she says. “Even after all these years.”
She gets up to get their pints, leaves him to think about it. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to.
As soon as she hands him his beer, he tips his head back and chugs more than half of it. It’s not the strongest thing, but he’s not a big drinker, and he hopes it’s enough to get his mind a little fuzzier, to bring a bit of relief.
“Did you become an alcoholic too?” she asks, just this side of cool.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he replies.
“You have to.”
“I don’t. I’ve gone five years without so much as thinking about it, and I’d like it to stay that way.”
“Harry,” she says, and pries his hand off his glass to take it in hers. “That’s not how you heal, okay? You can’t repress things and hope they go away. They never do.”
“I forgot you have a psychology degree,” he mumbles miserably. “I can’t do it, Gems. Not tonight, not—not here.”
As if on cue, Louis walks by with a crate of empty bottles. He stirs up a breeze that plays with the tips of Harry’s hair.
“Maybe you don’t need to talk, then,” Gemma says. “Just—think about it. Let yourself do that.”
She’s holding his hand, keeping him anchored to the here and now; that’s the only reason he lets his mind wander, carefully, gingerly, toward all the doors he usually keeps closed.
“We were so close,” he says, in a voice that can’t possibly belong to him. “We were—we had the bedroom ready and everything. They promised us, Gems, they said we were a shoo-in.”
“I know,” she whispers.
“I just—we were ready, Gems. We would’ve—“
He can’t quite finish through the lump in his throat. The words get stuck somewhere deep down inside him, half-formed because he doesn’t know what he wants to say.
“I know,” she repeats. He curls his fingers around her palm, grateful, even if he hates that she’s made him think about it. “You don’t—you don’t have to talk about it now, not with me, just. Take your time.”
“I don’t want to,” he says, truthfully. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s fine,” she sighs. “Just don’t try to forget. You’re not going to, it’s always going to be there.”
Harry braces his forehead against one of his hands, and closes his eyes. He’s unlocked a whole vault of memories, all of them devastatingly sad.
“I—yeah. I’ll do that.”
“Good,” she grins. “Now, what do you say we get pissed?”
⚜
And pissed they get. Louis lets them stay past closing time, until he’s literally about to lock up, watching their antics with a reluctant smile on his face.
Harry drinks much, much more than he usually would. He feels a little ill by the time they stumble through the front door, arms around each other and giggling about something Gemma has just said – interestingly, he can’t remember what it was.
“Goodnight, Gems,” he whispers when they arrive at the foot of the stairs; her bedroom is on the ground floor now.
“Night,” she laughs, and continues on, her black dress disappearing in the darkness.
Harry solves the issue of stairs like any inebriated twenty-five-year-old: on all fours. He makes it up to his room surprisingly fast, and tries to crawl all the way to the bed, but he gets tangled in his jacket, still on the ground after the last time he took it off.
He solves that issue, too: he wraps it around his shoulders and lies down, covering himself with it instead of a blanket.
After the amount of booze he’s had, he’s not sleepy at all, but he’s too woozy to do anything other than stay in bed. He rolls over, hoping the fact that it’s three in the morning will register with his body soon, when he hears the unmistakable crunch of paper.
He startles, patting the sheets underneath him to try and rescue whatever song draft he’s probably rolled onto, but finds nothing.
Then, he remembers he’s still got something in this pocket that doesn’t belong to him.
Or maybe it does, technically, because his name was on the envelope, but—nevermind.
Either way, his drunken brain thinks it’s a good idea to read it just then. Harry doesn’t resist for once; maybe it’s the fact that Louis defended him earlier, or those couple of looks they shared where he didn’t look like he wanted to strangle Harry where he stood.
He pulls it out of the jacket pocket. He’s put a few creases in it, but it’s perfectly readable still. Unfortunately.
He has to blink a few times to get his eyes to adjust in the semi-darkness. Then, he reads.
Love, it says on the top, instead of something formal and stupid like “dear Harry”.
Where are you? I know your phone’s probably off on purpose, and you’re ignoring emails on purpose too, but I’m so worried. Anne said you didn’t tell her anything about leaving, either.
Come home, please. I know you’re hurting, I am, too, but it has to be easier if we try and get through it together, right? Everything’s always been easy with you and me.
Please, Harry. It’s only been a week, and I don’t know if this will ever reach you, but—I can’t sleep without you. I can’t do anything, really, I’m a mess. I’m not used to living life without you, I have no idea what to do with myself. I almost burned the kitchen down today because it’s been so long since I last cooked something, which is really embarrassing and I shouldn’t tell you, but I’m secretly hoping you’ll take pity on me.
Remember how the agency said they’d send a letter to explain why we got rejected? It got here yesterday, but I don’t want to open it without you. I bet it’s something stupid. I bet we can try again soon, yeah? It’ll be hard for a while, but I will always, always be there for you – you know that.
I know this is the most difficult thing we’ve ever had to go through, but we promised, remember? I, Louis Tomlinson, choose you above all to share my life. That’s what I said, and you told me the same thing. We need to honour that now more than ever. I need you here to help me through the pain, and I think – I hope – that you need me, too.
You can’t do it alone, darling, nobody can. Please come back home to me.
Yours,
Louis
Harry blinks as he watches the shaky lines of Louis’s name blur right in front of his eyes. He barely notices the tears as they slip out, too busy hanging on to the words, re-reading them until he thinks he’s committed them to memory.
He runs a finger over the first word, written a little jerkily, like Louis was hesitant.
Love, it says. Love.
All this time, Harry has been certain that Louis never loved him, not really. He still is – he has to be – but his resolve has been thoroughly shaken.
But—that’s what the agent had said, just days before he and Louis were rejected, days before Harry finally packed up and left, after half a year of reluctance. You don’t deserve to rot in this town. You don’t deserve to be tied down to someone who only married you because you were the convenient choice. Come down to London. Let’s make a record. Let’s make you a star.
I, Louis Tomlinson, choose you above all to share my life.
This—this isn’t the Louis he’s made himself remember, the one who always had to have his way.
He’s stubborn, sure. He never backs down if he knows he’s right.
But he always, always put Harry first.
It might be the alcohol that makes the memories come back so vividly. They’re all but alive in front of him, and closes his eyes to let them play out on the inside of his eyelids.
There’s Louis, probably around six, giving up his seat on the swing so Harry could have a go.
There’s Louis, leaning against their tree, and there’s Harry right next to him, reaching out a tentative hand to run his thumb over Louis’s bottom lip.
There’s Louis, folded in the back of the Clio, blinking at Harry with startled eyes after he accidentally slipped an I love you into his mouth.
There’s Louis, standing next to him in front of the officiant, crying his eyes out because he’s so happy, then laughing as he fumbles with the ring that refused to go on Harry’s finger.
There’s Louis, slumped in the corner of the sofa, looking like the weight of the world rests on his shoulders, and still opening his arms so Harry could curl up in his embrace.
There’s them, weaving like an unbroken thread through every single moment of Harry’s life.
They were in love.
Oh God, they were in love.
And this—this is what Harry made of it.
He wishes this didn’t come now, of all times, when he’s in his childhood house in the middle of the night, and everyone else is asleep. He has to turn his face into the pillow so nobody can hear him cry, drowning in his drunken misery.
It’s a lot, after five years of nonstop praise from friends and strangers alike, after five years of feeling like he’s on top of the world. It’s a lot to realise how wrong he’d been.
And—and the things he’s said to Louis, fuck. It’s no wonder Louis hates him.
Harry has a sudden urge to scramble for his phone, to call Louis right now and let him know he’s realised, that he’s sorry, that he knows how much he’s asking now.
He can’t find it anywhere, though – and he’s sure he’ll be grateful when he wakes up tomorrow morning, but now, it makes him even more upset.
He’s crushing the corner of the pillow with one of his hands, and it’s gone ice cold under his cheek where all the tears have pooled. He’s trembling, but he’s not sure why.
He wraps the jacket tighter around his shoulders, the letter still crumpled between his fingers, and rummages around on the bed until he finds his actual duvet, too. It doesn’t help with the shivers, but it does make him feel a little more alone, a little less like he’s imposing this nervous breakdown on everyone else in the house.
Sleep finds him there, eventually, sneaking up on him. It softens the sharp edges of the memories, makes them blur into one another and fade to black until his mind is somewhat blank.
But, even as he nods off with sticky tears still clinging to his cheeks, the words haunt him in the greyness of the room.
Yours,
Louis.
⚜
He wakes up at – Jesus, eight in the morning – to his phone ringing. He frowns a little as he paws around on his bed trying to silence it, and it takes him a few seconds to register the time.
It’s late back home; it’s probably bad news.
He almost strangles himself with the duvet trying to get it then, and finally spots it on the ground, kicked halfway under the bed.
He barely registers his splitting headache as he looks at the screen.
Marcus, it says, alongside no fewer than eight heart emojis.
“Hello?” Harry picks up, panting.
“Babe,” Marcus’ voice comes through the line. He doesn’t sound hurt or worried or—anything, really, other than cheerful. “Were you just on a run?”
A run. Right. Because Harry likes to do that in the mornings, at least when his life is not being turned upside down.
He tries to slow down his heart, and in turn his breathing.
“No,” he replies. “Just got a bit scared, isn’t it midnight over there?”
“Oh,” Marcus laughs. Harry can hear his friends making a ruckus in the background. “I guess it is. We’re just on the move, and we had reception for a bit, and I just missed you so much, so I talked Johnny into lending me his phone.”
Right. Right. He’s on another retreat. Wilderness in the middle of nowhere, his mates, a couple of guitars, writing. That’s what he does, and that’s why he hasn’t called.
Harry hasn’t really had time to miss him yet, but he doesn’t want to think about that.
“It’s good to hear your voice,” he says instead, and it’s the truth. He feels immediately relaxed, and he falls back into the sheets with his limbs splayed. “When are you coming home?”
He asks someone in the background, or at least that’s how it sounds. “Is it Saturday today?” he asks.
“Uh,” Harry blinks. He has absolutely no concept of time. “I think so?”
“Right,” Marcus laughs. He’s—very happy. “If it is, then Wednesday afternoon. Do you think you’ll be back yet?”
Harry bites his lip. “Probably not, I’m sorry.”
He says something to someone else again. “That’s okay, don’t worry about it. I told you you wouldn’t want to leave when you saw your family after so long.”
His family. That’s right, Harry, remember the lie you told your fiancé about why you’re flying out here?
“Yeah, it’s just—yeah. It’s really nice to be back.”
“How are they?” Marcus asks. He sounds so interested, and Harry doesn’t have the heart to tell him no. “Did they miss you a lot?”
“Of course they did,” Harry smiles, drawing mindless shapes into the wrinkled duvet. His finger catches on a sheet of paper, and his thoughts stutter. “It’s been a few years. I’m worried they won’t let me go back.”
“Just call me if you need saving,” Marcus laughs. “I don’t want my first time meeting them to be when I have to tell them off for hogging you so long, but if I need to do it, I will.”
“My hero,” Harry says, ignoring the barely-there edge to Marcus’ voice. They’ve been together for two years, and Marcus took him to meet his parents only a few months in.
They don’t like Harry, but that’s beside the point. Marcus clearly wants him to return the favour, and it’s only right that he should. They’re getting married soon, for Christ’s sake.
“Anything for you, honey,” he says. Harry blushes a little, uncomfortable. “Listen, I have to go—“
“Already?” Harry pouts. This is the first time they’ve talked in almost a week. Now that he was able to stop, and think about his fiancé, he’s greedy for his attention.
“I’m sorry. We’re trying to get to this campsite before they close, so we’ve got to move.”
“All right,” Harry says. One of his hands is still resting on the letter that’s next to him in bed; it feels like he’s being unfaithful, somehow. “Hurry, then. I don’t want you to sleep in a forest.”
“I’m not afraid of a forest,” he laughs. “I can kill a bear with my bare hands, you know.”
“Of course you can,” Harry smiles up at the ceiling.
“Bye, babe. I love you.”
“Love you too. I’ll talk to you on Wednesday?”
“Hopefully,” Marcus laughs. “Bye.”
“Bye,” Harry says into silence.
He disconnects his end of the call, and closes his eyes. Smiling, he burrows back into the pillows in hopes of falling back asleep. He imagines reuniting with Marcus, going back to their house in the hills, being surrounded by things that are beautifully familiar.
He already knows it’s not going to happen, though. Not when the letter is all but burning a hole into his palm; not when the memory of what happened last night is imminent, just hanging about the edge of his consciousness, poking its head in and out of the room and waiting to pounce.
He opens his eyes, and sits up. It’s cool in the room, and the air runs up his back quick like fingertips, leavings goosebumps behind. Outside, it looks like a beautiful day.
That’s why, of course, Harry has the worst hangover he remembers having. He feels dizzy even when he’s not moving, and his stomach is dangerously wobbly. The sun outside is bright, painfully so.
“Great,” he mumbles and – surprise – his mouth also feels like it’s full of cotton balls.
And he stinks, Jesus.
He needs to take a shower. Rationally, he knows this, but it’s way too early to be doing real things. He’s just going to—lie down. Let his mind wander.
Think about Louis, inevitably.
He lifts the letter to his eyes again, and guiltily fixes a corner he must have bent in his sleep.
He fixates on the loops and lines that look the same, traces every single I, watches them lean this way then the other. He picks out every pet name, all the words he’s heard come from Louis’s mouth before, and fights not to remember the way they sounded, the way they felt against his skin. They tangle in his sheets and wrap around him like ghosts, fragments of whispers, keeping him from falling asleep and from waking all the way up.
He knows exactly what he needs to do if he wants to get rid of them all, if he wants to untwist his thoughts. Right now, he seems to be grabbing pieces of himself that don’t fit and trying to force them together. He needs help.
He rolls out of bed wrapped in his duvet, too lazy to put on a t-shirt, and wanders out into the house. It’s quiet, peaceful; lit through with that ethereal kind of light that only exists in the mornings.
“Hello?” he calls. There’s no answer – but when he gets to the kitchen, he sees Dusty sitting right in the middle of the table, grooming herself like she’s not got a care in the world.
“Hey, you,” he smiles, and reaches out to scratch her behind an ear. She tenses the second he touches her, making up her mind about him, but eventually lets him do it.
Harry enjoys the softness of her fur. He’d always had pets growing up, but he doesn’t have time for one now. Their house feels hollow for it, sometimes, but Harry figures it’s just a stepping stone to a real home.
“I thought you didn’t live here anymore,” he says to the cat, because he can’t go ten seconds without bringing up Louis, apparently. “Where’d you leave him?”
He’s not being serious, except.
Except.
A set of keys rattles in the lock, a little clumsily. At first, Harry has no reason to be suspicious: other people live in this house, and it’s a beautiful morning for a walk.
Then, Louis walks in.
Not only that: Louis walks in wearing joggers and a jumper, soft and sleep-ruffled, and holding a child. He freezes in the doorway the second he sees Harry; Harry, for his part, is immediately self-conscious about his near-nakedness.
“Uh,” says Louis. “Hello.”
“Hi,” Harry whispers, through the cotton balls in his mouth. It’s suddenly very cold in the kitchen; he starts trembling, just a little. “What, um. What are you doing here?”
“Dropping off these ones,” he says, and playfully jostles the child in his arms. Then he turns back in the doorway – had his neck always been this long? – and shouts: “Ernie, get in here. Auntie Anne can show you all the flowers later, but we have to ask first.”
Auntie Anne. What?
Louis doesn’t seem to notice Harry’s building confusion – he doesn’t seem to pay Harry much mind, really, and just goes about the kitchen like it was his own. He opens the cupboards one-handed, rummaging through until he finds all the fixings for tea.
Harry watches him up until something – someone – very small barrels into the room and crashes right into his legs. Dusty jumps in surprise.
On instinct, Harry reaches out to steady the tiny human. It’s a little boy, with blond curls and eyes that are an all-familiar shade of blue. He grins as soon as he looks Harry in the face.
“’Lo,” he says confidently, his teeth peeking out.
“Hello,” Harry replies, utterly charmed. “Are you okay?”
Before the boy has a chance to respond, Louis unsubtly slides in-between them, and puts a hand between his shoulderblades.
“Have a seat, come on,” he says, and holds one of the kitchen chairs still until the boy has climbed up. “Good boy, Ernie. Stay right there.”
“Tee?” he asks, watching Louis with eyes as big as saucers.
“Tea,” Louis replies, in what is surely the softest, fondest tone of voice a human being has ever produced. “I’m making you some, but you have to wait a minute, okay?”
“Wait,” Ernie repeats confidently. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Louis replies. Harry catches a look at him from the corner of his eye, and really wishes he hadn’t.
Now that he’s looking, though, he might as well keep at it. With one eye on Ernie, just in case he’d look close to falling, he watches Louis treat his mum’s kitchen like home, tearing off a decaf tea packet and dropping it into one of the God-awful olive green cups that Harry got Gemma for Christmas when he was twelve.
His movements are sure, practiced even though he’s only using one hand. When it comes to putting the kettle on, though, he bites his lip and looks worriedly at the toddler in his arms.
“I can do it,” Harry offers without thinking. Louis’s eyes snap to him, startled. “The water,” he says, pointing. “I’ll put it on, you have a seat.”
He realises, then, that there was a silence between them for a few minutes, maybe by some unspoken mutual agreement, and he’s just broken it.
“If you don’t mind,” Louis finally says, but he looks reluctant to have his routine disrupted.
Harry gets up in answer, holding the blanket around himself like a cape. He silently thanks his last night self for having the mental capacity to put on some pyjama bottoms.
He runs the water a little too quick, hoping it’ll drown out Louis’s soft, mostly one-sided conversation with the kids. He needs time to let his mind race, to think—he’d recognise the eyes anywhere, but it can’t be. Surely it can’t.
Once the kettle is on, he fiddles with the cups, lines them up handle first then handle in the back, adding the saucers and spoons before he realises toddlers probably shouldn’t be around any more breakable objects than strictly necessary. It does buy him enough time for the water to boil, after which he pours it in, and then he has to have a seat.
He sits back in his chair, leveling Louis with a look that’s returned right back. They’re not—hostile, necessarily. Harry thinks they’ve got past the screaming part for now.
Still, he doesn’t feel particularly welcome, even though it’s his own house.
“So, um,” he starts, with no idea where he’s taking the sentence next. “How’s your morning been?”
He only just resists the urge to smash his head against the table. How’s your morning, really?
“Moh-ning!” Ernest yells, banging a small fist against the table.
Harry just—finds it adorable, if he’s honest. Louis grimaces.
It’s then that Harry realises the other toddler had been asleep, and is now very much awake. She slowly pulls away from Louis’s chest, blinking up at him with eyes just as big and blue as Ernest’s.
“Hi, beautiful,” Louis grins, reaching up to pluck a stray curl from the middle of her forehead.
Harry’s eyes, inexplicably, fill with tears.
He goes back to the tea instead of indulging his hungover emotions.
It doesn’t help that he can tell which cup belongs to Louis, because he’s been using the same one in this house for well over a decade. He puts the milk in it, curbing his automatic impulse to add sugar, and hesitantly leaves the other two black.
He could—ask. Ask Louis. If his mouth would move, just about now.
“Just black?” he finally manages to get out. Turns out there are still new ways to embarrass himself.
Louis is silent for too long. Harry looks over his shoulder, and finds him staring with his brow furrowed.
“Milk, thanks.”
“I meant for them,” Harry says.
Louis’s eyebrows rise in comprehension. “Right,” he says. “Yes. Plain’s good.”
Harry nods, and manages to get all three cups to the table at once. Louis didn’t ask him if he wanted one, which stings a little, but then – Harry was the one who boiled the sodding water. He could have just added another cup.
“There you go,” he says as he sets one of the olive cups in front of Ernest.
He looks up at Harry with the happiest, most earnest look, and says: “Thanks.”
Harry grins at him. “You’re welcome.”
At the same time, though, his heart wants to beat out of his chest. He’s sure there’s a logical explanation for why Louis is here at nine in the morning with two toddlers, but try as he might, he can’t find it.
The other two cups are met with a considerably colder response when he slides them across the table. Louis looks like he’s sizing him up.
“Thanks, Harry,” he says, but there’s not a whole lot of emotion behind it.
It’s progress, though. Harry will take it.
He sits down again, and picks at his duvet as he tries to think about what he wants for breakfast rather than—well, everything else. There are eyes constantly on him, though, and when he looks up, he finds the little girl, now in Louis’s lap, watching him distrustfully.
He tries smiling at her, but it doesn’t help. She just grabs a handful of Louis’s jumper and pulls it over to cover her face.
“What is it, Doris?” Louis looks down. There’s that tone again, God. “What? Are you afraid of Harry?”
She pulls the fabric off her eyes, looks at Harry, then looks back at Louis, and repeats this several times.
“Yeah, that’s Harry,” Louis tells her. Harry wishes his name always sounded that sweet on Louis’s tongue. “I know he looks it, but he’s not scary, I promise.”
Harry—isn’t even hurt. He can tell, somehow, that Louis doesn’t mean it to hurt.
“Awee?” she asks. Harry blinks, because that’s—
“Harry,” Louis nods. He’s said Harry’s name too many times now, without sending over a single cool look.
“Kay,” Doris nods, like the problem is solved just like that, and lets go of the jumper. Louis smiles – soft, soft – and runs a hand through her ginger hair.
In the meantime, Ernie has scooted closer to Harry, teetering on the edge of his chair. He’s holding one hand over the side of his cup, presumably soaking up the warmth, but his eyes are carefully trained on Harry’s face.
Harry isn’t sure if it’s okay to say something to him unless Ernie speaks to him first, or crashes into him, as it were. These children are Louis’s, in some way, and his body language suggests that he’s fiercely protective of them. He has to tread lightly here – they’re tiny human beings, not a house full of replaceable things.
Thankfully, mum comes to his rescue. She walks in through the back door, which shuts loudly behind her before she can stop it.
Louis immediately straightens up.
“Do I hear my babies?” mum calls, coming closer.
“Auntie!” both kids shout in almost perfect unison, struggling to get to her before she’s even in the doorway. Louis lets Doris down after much wriggling, and Harry inconspicuously helps Ernie off his chair.
“Darlings,” she says, her voice not unlike the one Louis had put on when talking to them. It hits in a different place in Harry’s chest, but it still hurts. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much! Look at how big you’ve grown.”
“They were here last week,” Louis calls. He’s smiling.
“My oldest baby!” mum shouts back and, from the sounds of it, starts moving toward the kitchen.
Harry wants the ground to open up and swallow him. He knows exactly what his mum’s face is going to look like when she walks in and sees them.
Thankfully, Ernie and Doris lessen the impact, both pulling her forward by the hands. She doesn’t have much time to stop and take in the scene before she’s being all but hurled at Louis, who’s stood up and is waiting with his arms open.
“There you are,” mum says, breaking off the stare she’s leveled at Harry.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Louis says, and wraps her in a hug as tight as Harry can remember seeing. “Mum said to say she’s really sorry about this, there was a last minute thing—“
“You know I don’t mind,” mum says after she pulls away. She puts her hands on Louis’s shoulders and touches him there, smooths down the collar of his jumper, pats him on the cheek. “They’re my favorite people in the world.”
Harry refuses to admit to any jealousy.
“Anne. I’m hurt,” Louis says, pressing a hand to his chest. Mum rolls her eyes at him.
“I’ll give you Anne,” she says, still fiddling with his clothes.
“Sorry, Mum,” he sighs. It’s much softer, much more hesitant this time. He’s very aware of Harry sitting there uselessly, watching them.
“That’s better,” she smiles, and presses a kiss to his temple. Harry thinks she might be making a point. “Now, don’t you have to get going?”
“Not yet,” he says. “Got enough time to finish my tea.”
She steps away then, and nods. There seems to be some kind of silent conversation going on between them.
Harry feels like he’s been pushed aside, but he supposes that’s the point.
“I’ll take them off your hands, then,” mum smiles. She collects the smaller cups off the table, and walks around the far side, to Harry.
“Good morning, darling,” she says, and gives him a kiss on the cheek.
Harry suddenly grows a lump in his throat, but he steadfastly ignores it. “Morning, Mum,” he says, and manages to smile at her before she’s gone.
Louis sits down silently. He wraps his hands around his cup, and looks right down through the steam.
“Did you,” Harry says, because he never had learned when to shut up, “did you want to talk to me about something?”
Louis looks up sharply. There’s still no malice in his gaze, and Harry takes that to mean good things. “Why would you think that?”
“It’s just—you—mum basically gave you an out, and you didn’t take it.”
“I’m not going to bail on perfectly good tea,” he replies, taking a sip as if to prove a point.
At least he called it perfectly good.
“Can I ask you something?” says Harry, into the ceiling. He doesn’t want to see the kind of look Louis is probably sporting now.
“Would it matter if I said no?”
Harry doesn’t reply.
“Fine,” Louis sighs. “Ask me.”
“Whose kids are they?” He figures it’s only polite to look at Louis now, as he asks him do disclose some very personal information, the kind that Harry really isn’t privy to.
Louis looks like that wasn’t the question he was expecting. He opens his mouth a little in confusion, and then raises his eyebrows when he finally gets it.
“Doris and Ernest?” he asks, and Harry nods. “They’re my mum’s, obviously.”
Obviously. Of course. Harry’s world spins a little.
“She had more babies?” he asks, full of wonder. “That’s amazing.”
They used to—God, him and Louis used to pester her about it ever since she mentioned possibly wanting one more. They used to sit down for a Sunday roast at Louis’s house and immediately start talking about how they needed practice for when they had their own children, and how life has been kind of boring ever since Daisy and Phoebe grew out of their tantrums.
She’d always shake her head and smile. Harry didn’t think she was going to do it, but she did.
He thought—he thought.
“You thought they were mine,” Louis says.
“I didn’t,” Harry mumbles back, but the blush on his cheeks must be giving him away. Louis looks at him with eyebrows raised, surprise written all over his face.
“You thought—oh my God, Harry. That’s hilarious.”
Harry petulantly crosses his arms. It’s only partly to be defensive, and partly to protect that little flame that’s come to life in his chest after Louis teased him.
His blanket slips a little, falling halfway down his shoulders.
“It’s not that ridiculous,” he tries to defend himself. “They’ve got your eyes.”
“Millions of people have blue eyes,” Louis replies, and pierces Harry with his over the rim of his cup.
“They’re obviously not all the same as yours,” Harry says. “Stop being dense on purpose.”
He’s only teasing, but he bites his lip when it slips out on its own. He’s still all too familiar with the way this kind of banter goes, and every cell of his body is hardwired to respond playfully to Louis anytime he tries to bite, but.
They’re not there anymore, not there yet. They probably shouldn’t ever go back there.
With baited breath, he waits for Louis’s reaction. Nothing big happens, though. He just smiles. Sips on his tea. Looks at one of Harry’s naked shoulders and then can’t seem to look away.
Harry tugs the blanket back up, hiding himself in it. Louis averts his eyes like he’s been burned.
“Pray tell, Harry,” he says. “How and why would I have children on my own?”
There’s the venom. Harry was starting to miss it.
“You’ve always wanted them,” he says, attempting to deescalate, and removing past him from the situation even though it was never just Louis who wanted kids – it was the two of them together, always together. “I figured you might’ve gone ahead and done it.”
Louis puts his chin in one of his hands. “I guess you would,” he says, not looking at Harry, not really looking anywhere. “I don’t think I want them anymore. Not now, anyway.”
He looks immediately sorry to have shared something so personal, but Harry snatches the words out of the air before they can fade, keeps them inside himself.
Lets them hurt.
I feel the same, Harry wants to say, and is it because or what happened to us?
He was going to go to Louis anyway. He was going to knock, and get Louis to stay by the door with apologies, and ask, just ask, say—was this how it happened? Do I remember it right? I can’t honour the memory if I don’t have it.
But then, that’s selfish. The letter that’s still in his bed is full of pain, even if Louis didn’t put it into so many words. Harry’s one ghost of a long-gone past, and he doesn’t need to force Louis to face another one.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he settles on, finally. It’s kind of empty; he’s not sure he means it.
“Thanks,” Louis scoffs. “It’s just. I don’t know if choosing to be a single parent would be fair.”
“I really don’t think we’re the only two gay people in this village, you know.”
To Harry’s surprise, Louis laughs.
“No,” he says. “We’re definitely not.”
Harry thinks of what to say. Mulls over a few sentences, thinks of where they could take him.
Louis must see it, must realise he’s treating this conversation like a tactical battle. He knocks back the last of his tea like it’s a finger of whiskey and stands up.
“Got to go,” he throws over his shoulder—and disappears.
Harry blinks at the empty space where he had been. Then he gets up and follows him outside, blanket and all.
He finds Louis leaning against the front of the house, not in much of a hurry. He’s bent forward a little, hands on his knees, staring into the ground. He doesn’t say a thing when Harry pads out and onto the rug on bare feet, but he does scoot over so Harry’s got space to lean next to him.
The winding little street is laid out in front of them, straight here then curling into the distance, flanked by trees and houses and not much more.
It’s silent.
Harry squints into the sun overhead. His headache makes comes back when the light hits his eyes, but all his other options include Louis in the periphery.
“You just can’t leave me alone, can you?” Louis finally breaks the silence. He sounds—fond, almost, if reluctantly so.
“Not really,” Harry replies. “I just—Gemma reminded me—I realised something yesterday.”
Very carefully, Louis looks at him. Harry looks back.
He’s not sure he wants to do this, not when Louis is looking at him that way – but what other option does he have? Gemma told him he needs to work through it, and she might be right. Maybe if—maybe if he can understand, if he can explain himself, Louis will be more inclined to finally divorce him. Maybe they can finally, finally go their separate ways for good.
“Did you ever get over it?” he asks.
Louis blinks.
“The adoption,” he says.
Louis physically recoils.
“After—after we got rejected. Did you ever move on?”
He takes a step back, then another one, keeps going until he’s barely close enough for Harry to read his face.
“I really wish you’d shut up sometimes, you know?” he says. He sounds strangled. “You can’t just—you can’t ask me that. You don’t have the right. You left me to deal with it on my own.”
“I’m asking you anyway,” Harry says. He sounds – feels, is – cruel, but he needs to do this. For both of them.
Louis looks at him, just stares for seconds that stretch into minutes. His face gives nothing away, but his eyes are a storm.
“You still don’t have a right to know. We’re done, remember? You’ve been hounding me for a divorce for years now.”
Harry wants to fight. He wants to, but that’s not the way to go forward here.
Instead, he gathers his blanket, and sits down on the front step. It’s already a little warm from the morning sun, soothing some of the thousand little aches in his body.
“I’m not going to bite this time,” he says, rolling a stray pebble between his fingers. “I’m not going to fight you. I just want to talk.”
“You’ll understand why I have trouble believing that,” Louis replies, but he relaxes a little, and comes a step closer. “And I appreciate that you want to talk, but I don’t want to. I told you to leave me alone.”
“You said not to come see you again, and I didn’t. You’re the one who came into my house.”
“It’s hardly your house,” Louis replies, jams his hands in his pockets, and walks over. Harry nearly forgets how to breathe when he sits right next to him on the stair. Their knees knock together once, twice, until Louis settles down and puts as much space between them as possible. Harry’s skin burns in the spot where they touched, and only there.
“I’m tired,” Louis says. “I’m so tired of all this.”
“I don’t want to point out the obvious, but I wouldn’t be here at all if you—“
“Yes, thank you, I get it. I’m mean and stubborn and standing in the way of your grand wedding plan, because every single thing on planet Earth has to be about you.”
“Will you tell me why, then? Why won’t you do it, if it’s not to spite me?” Harry asks. His own voice sounds softer than he’d like.
Louis sighs. He’s been sighing a lot. “It doesn’t matter anymore. You wanted to know about the adoption.”
Harry bites his lip, hesitant. “I did.”
Louis pulls the sleeves of his jumper down over his hands, leaving only the tips of his fingers peeking out. He uses them to pull at loose threads, fidgeting.
“See, the thing is,” he starts. “The adoption panel – they said they’d send us written reasons, do you remember that?”
“Of course I do.” He does now, anyway. Three men, three women, all a little too stern, going over their application ad nauseum, reading through the countless forms they’d filled out. It was a terrifying process, but one that promised indescribable happiness at the end. Plus, Louis had held his hand under the table the entire time, steadying him even though he himself was shaking.
“Right, so. They did,” his voice shakes. “And they said—“
Harry watches, in abject horror, as Louis’s eyes fill with tears. It hits him somewhere very, very deep inside the chest, gripping his heart like a vice. Louis looks so small, so—broken, and Harry feels like crying right along with him.
Louis always put more weight on his own shoulders, because taking care of others made him feel good about himself. Harry had seen it play out across the years, and was always there when the other shoe dropped, there to calm him, to hold him, to remind him that for Harry, he was everything that mattered in the world no matter how strong he was.
Harry left, though. He left, and he wonders now, for the first time, who was there to pick Louis up afterwards.
“Don’t cry,” he says, because he can’t keep quiet. “Don’t, please. Please.”
His hands are itching to reach out, just while they’re inside his moment, to offer comfort any way he can. He wouldn’t help, though, he knows.
“It’s just,” Louis says, breathing through his tears, blinking them away. “It was my fault. It was my fault, Harry.”
“It wasn’t,” Harry says. He has no idea what the letter said, but he knows this.
“It was the smoking,” Louis says, voice rough. “They said—they said they weren’t certain I got far enough with quitting, even after I told them I would never smoke anywhere near a child, I called them and begged them like an idiot, just—it was my fault. I was the reason we didn’t get to have a baby.”
Harry only just notices his hands shaking. He’s hurting, but he can’t pinpoint a source; it might just be sadness, and the pain he never went through years ago, all rippling angrily underneath his skin. He imagines what Louis must have felt, what he must be feeling, how much worse it must be.
“They didn’t even say that it was a definite no, they kept our application and said to get back to them in six months, but. Well. You were long gone by then.”
“They—what?” Harry breathes. It’s come back to him in flashes, the way he felt that day. How pointless everything seemed, because if they wanted to try again they’d have to go through the entire exhausting process from the start.
“We could’ve fixed it,” Louis says, but he’s lost some of that soft vulnerability. There’s an edge to his voice now, probably because he wants to let Harry know just how much he’d cocked it up. “Six more months, and we could’ve been approved.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers, horrified. He never, ever thought. He never realised.
“What’s done is done,” Louis shakes his head. “You wanted to know if I ever moved on, and you can probably drawn your own conclusion from all this, so,” he breathes out, and wipes his palms on his jeans. “Unless you want to continue the interrogation, I’m going to go.”
“That’s not what I mean to do,” Harry says. Somehow, he’s broken things where he meant to mend them. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“Bit late for that, isn’t it?” Louis asks, but it’s more benevolent this time. He’s even smiling a little, if completely devoid of joy. “Just leave it alone, Harry. I’m glad we don’t need to scream at each other anymore, but my life is mine, and your life is yours. There’s no reason they should have anything to do with each other, as you said.”
Then he walks away without waiting for a response. Harry watches him go, the blue of his jumper slowly becoming a mere speck in the distance.
What about the divorce? he wants to scream, wants the entire street to hear. It would be so, so easy to for Louis to get rid of him, and yet he—doesn’t.
It’s so very, pointlessly frustrating.
He goes back inside, and mulls over everything Louis said while he carefully eats a banana for breakfast. He did get his answers, or at least some of them, but he’s no closer to feeling like that chapter of his life is finally closed.
One of them doesn’t want to let go. At this point, Harry isn’t quite sure which one of them it is.