Young & Beautiful

Despite the song, despite the fame, despite Nick trying to help him… Especially because he
knows I’ve been looking for Anne. And especially because he knows I’ve found her.” Harry
closes his eyes more tightly. Louis wonders if he’s begun to cry. He can feel his own storms
brewing. “But what he doesn’t know is that she refused to see me. I finally found her, Louis. After
so, so long. And she refused to see me.” He opens his eyes, drags them to Louis. So pained.
“That’s why I showed up at your flat that night. I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t…” He
turns away again.
“You had just come from your mother’s?” Louis asks, winded. So much information. So much.
So overwhelmed.
Harry nods, swallowing. “I didn’t want to be alone.”
Where Louis’ heart used to be is now a bloody, shattered mess.
“You’ll never be alone again,” he manages, impassioned. He sits up, his limbs shaky.
“You can’t promise that.”
“Yes I can,” Louis says fiercely. “I can speak for myself. I’m always going to be here.” He
manages the weakest of smiles. “You should know that by now. We’ve gone over it enough.”
Harry’s brow furrows deep, turning his head away, shutting his eyes fiercely.
The seconds drag past.
“Is that where you go?” Louis asks, faintly. Every question is rising to the surface. Every piece is
beginning to assemble. “When you just…disappear for days on end? To search for your mum?”
Harry nods. “Mostly. Sometimes because I try to see Gemma. Sometimes it’s because of my
father.”
It’s because Harry keeps trying to reach out. Over and over and over again. Harry disappears,
vanishes, because he’s searching. Searching and being spurned by the only people he has in his
fucking life.
Louis wants to gag.
Louis wants to cry.
Louis wants to fix it all.
Louis wants so much.
“I’m sorry I’ve…unloaded all of this on you,” Harry says eventually. “But I saw you with your
father and I heard some of the things you were saying and…” He looks at Louis again, face open,
eyes somehow managing to glint amongst lightless shadow. “I want to know you, Louis. And I
want you to know me.”
Out of the thousands of emotions Louis is feeling right now (anxiety, pity, despair, helplessness—
the list goes on) there is one predominant feeling that shoots to the surface: love.
Love for Harry because here is this boy.
This boy who’s been left by everybody he loves, who grew up simultaneously in the spotlight and
in anonymity, who is so widely adored and forgotten, who shields himself from the world that is