Still Sleeping Next To Me

thirteen

It's five in the morning when a noise wakes Lennon up. She raises her head. Harry is crying. It's not a nice thing to wake up to, and Lennon thinks the worst part is that it isn't even surprising. Her bones feel heavy and her head is clouded and Harry is crying, beautiful, sleepy, sad. Nothing is out of the ordinary.

It makes her sick, the way it's familiar, the way it's comfortable and instinctual and how natural it is for her to draw Harry into her chest and soothe him. Yet there's also comfort in it that, a sense that this where Lennon belongs. Where she's supposed to be.

It's something Lennon doesn't know whether to resent or love.

Harry's full-on sobbing now, unraveling that much more, and Lennon feels it too, feels the relief and the terror and the exhaustion in that sob, feels the helplessness in how he clings to her.

(What do you do when the only way to save someone from drowning is go under water with them? When the only one who can resuscitate you is the one who submerged you in the first place? Maybe together is the only way you can make it. Maybe.)

So Lennon goes under and lets this boy drown her.

Because it's all so fucked up, and he might have pushed her away, he might've left her, but this is more than that. It's so much more than unrequited love, it's everything, and Lennon needs be here for Harry like this.

"It's okay," she tells him. "You'll be okay, beautiful boy. S'gonna be okay."

She knows now she has to forget it - the love and the hate. The pain and the anger and the lust. All of it. It rests heavy on her shoulders, insistent and pounding against the back of her head, demands to be thought about when the only thing she can really afford to think about right now is Harry.

Do that first, she tells herself. Keep Harry from drowning and then you can think about the future.

She has to bury it all. Beat it down to a secret place where it hides. Lock the door but don't throw away the key. Get over it but never forget it. Accumulate the tiny demons that eat away her insides and hope they don't consume her. Let them consume her as long as they don't consume Harry.

Feelings saved for later because Harry needs to be saved now.

* * * *

The days in the hospital don't feel like days as much as they do a long wait. Harry doesn't talk much. He doesn't apologize. It's probably for the best; the only thing he could bring up are their mistakes and home and other things neither of them want to talk about, anyways. She tries not think about that, either. About the conversations they still need to have.

Lennon could go back to the hotel and get a proper rest, but she keeps sleeping in the worn chair beside his bed. It's uncomfortable. When she's able to sleep, it's light, the beeping machines and fear enough to keep her awake most of the time, and she wakes up with backaches and nightmares.

Lennon didn't think heartbreak would hurt this much. It's heartbreak, she's decided.

It hurts too much to be anything else.

For now though, it's dark and quiet, almost calm, the way Harry's chest rises and falls, the jump of his pulse flashing green on the monitor, the gentle flutter of his eyelashes opening when she brushes a loose strand of hair off of his forehead mindlessly.

"The doctor said you'll be able to leave in a few days," Lennon tells him, quiet. It all started to feel quiet on the second day. They don't try to fight it. "Your ECG looks good."

Harry leans into it a little, eyelids fluttering. "Good," he sighs. "'m ready to be home."

Lennon thinks about her flat, the hotel, the bed that hasn't been slept in for days now, all the places that are there just because she needs to pretend that her home isn't this boy in a hospital gown warm under fingertips. She feels a lump rise in her throat. Swallows it. "Home?"