All That You Are Is All I'll Ever Need

33

It's 2:34 rn so
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“Do you want me to hold your hand?”

“Yes,” he chokes out, “god yes, Lou.”

Harry’s hand forms a fist; one heavy breath, two small knocks.

The vague obscurities happen so fast. A woman with long dark hair and big, bright eyes opens the door. There is a puddle of water beside the porch, the hose is turned off, but it's obvious that someone had been watering the flowers. There is a bigger puddle formed between the woman and Harry, tears pooling in their eyes, dripping from their cheeks. There is the distant sound of city sounds blaring, a loud noise of thumping and ringing around them.

Louis knows that the woman gasped beforehand, eyes widening in the comical way Harry’s do, before she pulled her boy into her arms. Their breaths are shallow, sobs quiet. Bitten lips, smacking kisses, and skin breaking under fingernails. The woman's head fits perfectly in the junction of Harry’s shoulder and neck, tears bubbling on the end of her long lashes, yeah, this is Harry's mum. So obvious in the shape of her structure.

She pulls away, her nose is red just like Harry’s is, another similarity. She cups her boy's cheek, eyes shiny and frown evident. “Why’d you knock?” she tries to say humorously, but it sounds more like a sob, “You know you just walk right in.”

It's so impactful, the way Harry’s face crumples and he lets out a small sob, pulling his mum back into his arms. Sobbing, sobbing, he keeps sobbing about how much he missed her, how much he missed his mummy. It’s the most tangible form of the feeling of someone squeezing your heart between the cleanest of fingernails, it’s like lavender breaths and really, really hot summer days. God, Harry’s eyebrows are so furrowed, eyes so closed, it looks painful. So much pain. His mummy, he loves her. He missed her, still does.

It’s all so fast whilst simultaneously slow, the step by step event of a good heartbreak. So big, so small; it’s a bubble, encased in all that you know, and all that there is, so small in your own reality, yet bursting at the seams.

It’s all of this and all of that, up until she is squeezing her baby boys little cheeks, wiping away all the water tracks as if she had grown to know how and never forgot. “C’mon now, get in the house,” she says, mock stern in her watery smile, she looks to the rest of them, fond look of curiosity and just utter motherliness, “you bunch too, c’mon.”

She ushers them to the living room, watching Harry in such disbelief. Her baby boy. He has grown so much, he has.

“I'll make us all tea, yeah?” she says, sniffling happy as she wipes at her cheeks.

“I’ll help mum,” Harry says, biting at his trembling lip.

“No, no,” she says, lightly, before a laugh of disbelief flutters from her lips, “I just need to make sure that- that this is real, you're really here. Bit scared I’m going crazy.”

Niall chuckles at that, patting Harry on the back.

She turns to walk to the kitchen, stopping and turning around to look at her boy. She makes a sound, that sound. That motherly sound all mums make in specific moments.

“She seems really nice, H,” Niall says, sitting on the ground, “see where you get your looks from.”

Harry laughs watery, (“Stupidly,” he would call it. “Cutely,” Louis would correct) and Louis groans, rolling his eyes. It makes Harry laugh even more, stupidly, cutely, and more tears fall down his cheeks.

Louis pouts happily at his boyfriend, not even fretting the fact that they are at Harry's childhood house, and that his mum is here. He is meeting Harry’s mum. She could walk in at any moment.