He was running. Feet padding the city pavement, shocks running up from his bones as his shoes hit the ground. He wondered if his steps were so hard and deliberate because maybe, if he pushed hard enough, he could disappear. Past the harsh sidewalk and down, down somewhere where he could get away. There was nothing more that he needed in that moment. To just leave, and restart. He's messed up everything, nothing is right, why can't he just go back? He could fix it all, if he just had that chance to do it all again, why couldn't he be given that? It wasn't fair, but it was, it was so fair, it was all his fault, all his fault, all his fault.
Louis woke up, wishing he had actually been running.
Harry woke up, expecting to feel the cold, man-made ground he had dreamed of beneath him.
The same soft blankets that enveloped him every night. The same bright light filtering through the blinds of his window. The sight used to be so beautiful- peaceful and tranquil and subtle. Now it just made Louis scowl in disapproval, a look he knew that had been etched on his face for far too long.
The headache that seemed constant for Harry, the one that retold him tales of the night before. He didn't mind the pain. It would soon be drowned out by the alcohol, the intoxication, the music, the lights. The feeling of the edge, the recklessness he craved almost dangerously.
Louis didn't want to get up. Not for the normal reasons- he was actually quite well rested and wasn't tired at all. He didn't want to get up because he was living in a rut. An endless cycle. He woke up, some days happily, just to go back to bed with the same feeling in his stomach, one he could only describe as restlessness.
Harry didn't mind mornings. Yeah, he could do without them. They were sometimes tedious and long, a drawn out calm before the storm that was to come that night. And if Harry had the chance to live the rest of his life in the night, he would take it. He loved how the darkness could transform anything. The city goes from sweet to the most pleasant kind of sour. The people change from the publicized day to day lives to who they really want to be, the night shielding them from shame. It was a beautiful thing.
Maybe today would be different. Maybe he would do something crazy, something would surpass his bored expression and make him smile. And maybe that wasn't meant for today. But when would that come? Louis was tired of waiting. The feeling pulling at his chest, his gut, whispered to him in a language he felt too inferior to understand. What was he supposed to do?
If he was going to get away, he was really going to. He wasn't going to look back. He couldn't. Looking back at the life he held now, he knew, would be painful. Because when you're stuck in a rut for so long, it becomes all that you know. You realize that you're stuck, you just don't care anymore. You have no will. You don't want to leave, because you might be unhappy now, but if you leave the comfort of continuity, where will you go?
Louis had no idea where he was going as his car keys jingled ominously through the empty apartment for the last time.
He had no idea where he was going as the world spun around him, thoughts making laps around his head, weaving their way everywhere he didn't want them. A physical, longing pain made its way to his chest, like it was trying to close around his lungs, his heart, trying to suffocate him before the world did it for him.
No idea what he was doing when he drove until the sun had gone from one side of the sky to the other. When he stumbled, sober, into the nearest pub, soon stumbling out again into the now dark sky, drunk and in no way thinking straight.
His phone lit up with calls and texts- he left them, why didn't they just leave him alone?
The phone was soon enough left crushed next to the bricks Louis slid against when his dry mouth screamed whispers to him and wet eyes betrayed him.
Blurry lines of life and memory swirled like smoke clouding his vision behind his eyes, in the depths of his brain, and he was sure that the quick breaths and the heartbeat he wasn't sure was his own anymore would drive him over the edge. His skin crawled, and it seemed too tight for everything inside that pushed and pulled his thoughts out of place.
What was he even feeling? The alcohol had unleashed a flood of everything that he didn't want to feel pulsing through his veins. He was scared, because he knew that now he had to sever ties. Friends, family…they might as well be passing strangers, their names, stories, all mysteries behind unfamiliar faces.
Because there was no going back.
Only starting over.
Louis could only sigh in relief when he felt his body betraying the coursing energy inside him, muscles unwinding and eyes drooping as he passed out against the harsh bricks and sounds of the city masked in the dark.