Where We Belong

Chapter 6

"I don't want you to leave me."

Those are the first words uttered since they sat down on either end of the couch, thighs at their stomachs, knees tucked up under their chins, eyes on their feet.

Louis lifts his gaze a little. Harry's hands are shaking where they clutch his shins, nails digging into the fabric of his trackies. He lifts his gaze a little higher. Harry's face is down-turned, long dark hair falling in front of his eyes, lips unsteady as he tries to form his next words.

"But," he begins, thinly, "if you are then please just- please can you just say it, then?" he tucks his hair behind his ear and looks up, and whatever's in his eyes, it makes Louis' chest ache, "can you please just- just not drag it out? I know I've fucked up and, it's like- irreversible, I know I deserve it, but can you just make it fast. Please."

"Harry," Louis says, reaching out to lay a hand on his ankle, "I'm not leaving you. That's not- I don't think that's what I want."

Harry lets out a ragged breath, blinking up at him a little dazedly. "Then what—"

"I can't be the guy who keeps a father from his child."

Harry blinks again. Then he shakes head, frantic. "No, but you're not, it's not to do with you, it's—"

"But it is to do with me, Harry," Louis cuts through, "it is to do with me. I'm here, I'm yours and since I still am, this is to do with me. You said it yourself last night; you're choosing me over your kid."

Harry's lips drop apart like he's about to object again, but then Louis forces a small smile and he stifles himself.

"It's all right," Louis says, with all the affection he can muster, "I mean it's- none of this is fucking all right, but you know that, I know that, but I get why you'd think you have to... that you have to choose me over your kid. But I just don't think- I don't think I ever want to be the person who tells someone they have to pick between their kid and me. However much the way you've gone about having them has broken my fuckin' heart."

Harry's head snaps up. "Louis—"

"S'all right," Louis cuts through, mostly because he can't get into that again, not right now, not if he wants to keep half a steady voice, "I mean it isn't, obviously, but you know that - you've- you know what it's done to me, I- this isn't about that. We've talked about that."

"We can talk about it more," Harry insists, laying his hand out on Louis' where it loops around his own ankle, "babe, we can talk about it all you want. Anything you want."

Well. What he wants most is to never fucking talk about it again, or to talk about it so little, think about it so little, that maybe one day, he'll be able to feel like he did before. He'll be able to feel like it did never happen. But that's not how you do, when you take the good with the bad and all of that. That's not what you do, if you're not the sort of person who can tolerate living a lie.

And sadly, he isn't.

"Listen, I can't promise you it won't suddenly evoke some sort of reaction in me that makes me not want to ever see you again, I can't, I don't know that," Louis says, "but I also can't ever imagine staying with you if staying with you means there's a kid out there who never gets to meet their father," Harry gives a whimpery noise, his fingers twitching round Louis', so Louis squeezes them back and forces another comforting little smile, "and I know you, Hazzer. Whatever you tell me, whatever you lie about, I do know you still. And you- you haven't stopped thinking about the kid for one sodding second, have you?"

Harry sucks in a sharp breath and bites into his lip, and that, right there, that's enough of an answer. That's enough to reassure him that, even if he's just made the decision to ruin his own life, ruin their relationship or whatever's left of it, he's still made the right one. The only one he'd ever be able to live with.