Where We Belong

Chapter 16

He pretends to be fine for a while. He isn't sure what he's doing it for, because there's only one person left in this all too quiet flat and he certainly isn't fooling him. He turns on the telly, just to have it running in the background. He paces between the couch and the kettle for three hours straight, pouring much too much sugar in his tea every time, just to feel like he's giving himself a mood-boost.

All it does is elevate his anxiety-levels and makes his fingertips go throbby.

At some point, right around the right time, he receives two texts from Harry in the span of two seconds.

H - in Sheffield now. Just checked into hotel and putting my bags in the room.

H - want me to text when I'm at marie's?

Louis texts him something vague back, not wanting to come off half as worried as he is, but also wanting to make it abundantly clear that Harry shall and must check in with him every step of the way or he'll go out of his bloody mind.

If he hasn't already, that is.

He sits on the couch, smoking cigarette after cigarette because Harry isn't here to tell him off for doing that inside, or just doing it at all, and thinks about Harry and her. Some sick part of his brain has him convinced that if he graphically imagines the worst possible scenarios - them playing with the kid together, laughing and bonding over it, Harry looking at the kid that he so easily fell in love with and then up at the woman that looks like her, or the kid falling asleep and Marie convincing him to have a drink before he leaves, him saying no a few times, but then giving in, looking through old photo-albums together, opening up about their fucked-up relationships over a bottle of wine they shouldn't have opened and one thing leading to another - it won't hurt as much if it does end up becoming a reality. It won't pull the rug out from under him like it did the first time.

Of course, it doesn't help him in any way. At 5 PM, he's called Eleanor three times even though he knows she's at some fancy-schmancy fashion-soiree and can't pick up. She has her own life, which he hardly knows anything about because he only rants about himself when he speaks to her. She's probably sick of him at this point.

He finds himself dreading tomorrow. An entire Sunday full of nothing to do. Which, well- would be fine if he weren't so worried about what Harry might be doing every second of every minute of every hour. He finds himself actually looking forward to going back to work on Monday.

*

Harry always keeps three bottles of wine in the fridge, just in case someone should pop by or he should need a little glass to get the writing-juices flowing.

By Sunday noon, Louis' polished off all three; one last night and two since he woke. He's stumbling round the flat in a haze, looking for his phone, when the door-phone buzzes.

"Wha'?" he asks, voice raspy from not speaking to anyone since Harry left.

"Harry?"

"Louis," Louis says, "Harry's gone. He isn't here, he isn't- who the fuck is this?"

"The fuck do you mean, 'who is this'? It's Zayn, what do you mean?"

Oh. Yeah. Now that he focuses, he realises it is. "Oh. I'm not- I'm... Harry isn't here."

"Yeah, I get that," Zayn says, followed by a pause that Louis' too drunk to figure out whether he's supposed to fill, "well, are you going to buzz me up or what?"

"Oh." Louis glances down himself. He's only in his trackies, and he smells like sweat and wine and shit. "You wanna come up?"

"What do you mean, why the hell else would I be buzzin' your door-bell?"