[Hanger in a Closet] + [Stylinson]

[Chapter xvA] + [Seven Devils]

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Seven devils all around you; seven devils in your house. See I was dead when I woke up this morning and I'll be dead before the day is done ~ Florence & The Machine

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Previously on Hanger in a Closet:

“I didn’t kill him Sheila,” Harry says, tears flowing silently down his cheek. Louis wipes them with his thumb, straddling the boy onto his lap his warmth spreading warm, cuddly tingles to Harry whose heart smiles for the second time that day.

She eyes both of them silently, in their position and continues.

“I know you didn’t because as Louis said, he had it coming but I’m mad you weren’t looking out for him,” she says, finally calm, another drink in her gloved fingers. “He promised me he had stopped doing drugs.”

“No he didn’t,” Louis says, remembering the times he would come home after a date with Eleanor and find Ed, Harry, Nick and King rolling their bodies on the floor, high on drugs, booze and smoke. “I think he became worse.”

“He refused to go for rehab, he refused every help I offered him,” she says. “I didn’t want him to join the music industry because his drug problem would only get worse but what mother would I be if I stopped my son from reaching the skies, right? So I let him go. Who knew that meant letting him die slowly?” She buries her face in her hands, stifling her cries but her shoulders kept jiggling below her black, Chanel trench coat.

“He was already dying,” Harry says weakly.

“Why didn’t you save him?” she says, more of a plea than a question.

“I don’t know how to save a life.”

 “It’s a beautiful day, innit it?” Louis asks driving in his navy blue Range Rover Vogue to the London Peace Keeper Cemetery, Harry seats quietly in the passenger seat, white flowers on his lap.

“Mmh,” he hums.

After Sheila Sheeran had left, Louis and Harry along with the other three lads spent every waking moment together, whether it was ice-skating, hiring out an entire theme park just for themselves [and stuffing Niall’s stomach with cotton candy], watching all eight of the Harry Potter movies because as Liam says, “It’s better on Blu-Ray” and it really is. In all this time, the mention of Ed Sheeran was minimal as Harry refused to talk about him nor did his other friends [King hung up the moment Zayn said his name] but as Harry kept reassuring them that he is “fine”.

Louis heard him crying several times at 2AM and he would rush in to find a hot, sweaty body ripping off the sheets around him, tears staining his red eyes and cheeks from his nightmares, crying that he couldn’t save his best mate. He would then climb into his own warm bed, along with Harry since his was wet from tears and sweat, and hold him tightly against his body, his nightmares ending for the night. That was the trend for the last two weeks, and in those two weeks, Ed’s funeral had come ad passed with Harry sobbing the entire day on Wednesday when Ed’s body was laid six feet underneath.

Six feet.

“I’m glad you agreed to this,” Louis says.

He had convinced Harry that he should say a proper goodbye to Ed, his best friend because to say the least, he skipped the requiem mass and his funeral, the least he could do was pay him a visit. And surprisingly, he agreed.

“You practically threw me out of bed,” Harry says smiling at the Doncaster boy, squeezing the butt of his cigarette.

He parks the car outside the funeral gates, thankful the paparazzi are not here which has been a nightmare for the last week with them asking “Where is Harry?” and “Why didn’t Harry attend his best friend’s funeral?”. There were trends on Twitter as well asking for Harry like #HarryATTENDEdsFuneral, #WhereIsHarry, #Deadstagram, #HarrysCurlsAreOverLikeHisBFF and some Sheerios wishing it was Harry who had died not their idol, Ed.