[4 pics, 4 quotes, 4 iconic 1D fics]
Iconic fics by...
- sunsetmog -
[1]
"I know. You're a very spoiled kitten, aren't you?" There wasn't much that was kitten-like about Humph any more, but he'd always be Louis's baby. He refilled his water bowl first and then spooned out half of the tin into the bowl and put it down on the tray. "Dig in, kit."
"Louis. Are you really okay?"
Louis stood up, wiping his hands on his thighs. He went to rinse his hands under the tap. "Nothing's changed," he said. "I'm the same person I was an hour ago, or last week, or last year when you left me. I did it by myself then, and I can do it by myself now. I don't need someone to fix me. I never did."
"I know," Harry said. "It doesn't… it doesn't mean you have to be alone to do it."
Louis's shoulders slumped. "You're going to go. You're going to piss off back to your old life and I'm going to be here by myself, and nothing's going to have changed from last time."
"I'm going to go back. I have to go back at some point. I know that. I just don't want it to be like last time. I want to be better. I want to do better."
"You don’t need me for either of those things."
"Yeah," Harry said. "I do."
[2]
"Are you all right?"
"Why wouldn't I be just fine?" Louis dumped two mugs down on the counter, and flicked the switch on the kettle. "My ex-boyfriend—who I was completely in love with—kissed me last night, and some dickhead with a phone got a picture and now it's on the web, so everything's just bloody fantastic. Harry's crying on his mum, you can't see my face so nobody knows it's me, Dad wants me to see him, I think I still love Harry, and everything's fucking shit. And I hate apricot jam."
"There's raspberry in the bag by the door," Mum said. "Bought it yesterday." She sounded kind of dazed. Louis didn't blame her. His head felt like it was on inside out and back to front. The fact that he was on the front of some website—luckily with his face obscured, but still—felt kind of like it was by the by. "Have you spoken to Harry?"
"What about? We haven't got anything to say to each other." That was a lie. Louis had about nine million things he wanted to say to Harry, but they were all variants of what the fuck did I do to deserve the way you treated me, and why didn't you love me enough, so it would be a fairly pointless experience to actually say them out loud.
[3]
Nick leans in and presses his mouth to Louis's hot temple. He's only allowed a couple of minutes; Louis's abdominal injuries are so severe his condition is still extremely critical.
"I'm not going anywhere, duck. I'm going to be right here when you wake up, I swear. Just concentrate on getting better. We're all going to be right here."
He sits in the family room afterwards, the plastic apron discarded, a cup of tea from the little tea maker in the corner going cold in his hand. Jay sits next to him, silent in their vigil, the minutes stretching away from them like hours, and the hours never fucking passing. All day long they're joined by Louis's family, and his band, everyone coming and going, and none of it makes Louis wake up, or shifts him any further into the land of the living.
Louis's life is measured in the beeps of the equipment and the rhythmic huffs of the ventilator. His boy can't breathe by himself, and Nick has never, ever been so scared in his whole entire life.
[4]
"Right back then. When you were picking Harry to be your friend. Why didn't you pick me?"
Inexplicably, Nick wants to cry. He wants to reach out along the phone line and draw Louis into his side and fix all those little cracks and fissures that make him up, that make him this fucked up and this needy and this broken. "It was never like that," he says, which is sort of a rubbish answer, but it's the best he can come up with. Him and Harry had just—connected, and friendship had just sort of arrived, fully-formed, seconds after meeting each other. It had never meant that he wouldn't have wanted to be friends with Louis too.
"Was, though." Louis sounds sulky.
"You're such a fuck up," Nick says. "This isn't fair."
"You picked Harry."
"It wasn't like a competition where only one of you won, you idiot." The tight feeling across his chest gets even tighter. "I could have been friends with both of you."
"Don't like being second-best." Louis is petulant and drunk and half a world away, and Nick—again—is caught between wanting to throw things at him and wanting to draw him in and kiss him endlessly. Frustration coils in his belly, like a spring ready to explode. He pinches the bridge of his nose.
"You're not my second-best," Nick says, because Louis is too drunk to remember this conversation in the morning, or at least Nick hopes he is. "You're my number fucking one, okay, and I hate you for doing this to me, all right? I fucking hate this."
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