(v.) to bury something deep;
to hide

"DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT?"

     This was the first thing that Harper asked Louis after he was done eating his dinner the next night, finally working up the initiative to eat something after days of refusal to consume any sort of food. Louis stared down at his empty plate, picking at a tiny bread crumb with his fork before setting it aside and taking a breath, getting ready to speak. His mother sat across from him, waiting patiently for the story to unfold.

     "I liked him," Louis started, taking the time to realize that he was actually talking about this to somebody, "I liked him a lot, actually."

    Harper nodded, humming as she eyed her son. Louis seemed to be elsewhere, lost within the confines of his imagination, nervously bouncing his knee as he probably waited for this to be over.

     "Did you love him?" Harper asked. That got Louis's attention.

     "Hm?" Louis asked, eyes widening just a bit.

     "Did you love him?" Harper repeated with the same, calm intonation to her voice.

     Unintentionally, Louis's eyes brimmed with tears as all their past memories came to surface. It wasn't the moment of his saying I love you that made him realize he loved Draco but all the moments leading up to it that sealed the deal. He could so clearly remember all the times they spent together in the library and atop the Astronomy tower, albeit them being still rather fresh. But he could see them in a way that made him feel as though he were still there, standing, feeling the wind sweep through his ears as he was eye to eye with the boy that claimed to be so proud—the sky and the sea, tethered until the very end.

    "I do," Louis confirmed in earnest. Present tense. Despite where they are now and the rift they caused, he still loved him. It was a little funny to consider the reason that Draco may or may not have wanted him dead. That brought Louis to wonder how others were able to go about their day after having broken up with someone the night, or months, before, how their bones didn't ache with the want and desire to settle into someone's embrace and keep still. Louis was, rightfully, still in the early stages, and receiving the letter only made him ache more. It didn't quite undo any of the process, however it did hinder at the sight of Draco's scrawly handwriting, spelling out the ways he missed him.

     "I love him," Louis reiterated, licking his lips before continuing, "mum, he was wonderful. A little thick in the skull, but wonderful, nonetheless."

     "'Was'?" Harper tilted her head, catching the hypocrisy in both the use of past and present tense.

     "Maybe I still love what I thought he was, or the idea, rather," Louis sighed, hanging his head before looking back up, "it's just. . .I don't know. It felt real to me. It was real to me." Thinking about it unfortunately wore Louis down so he made his way to stand but his mother soon stopped him, placing her hand on top of his.

     "Did he love you?" It wasn't a complicated question, Louis realized. In fact, the answer to that was a simple "yes". Trying to prove it was made to be the hard part. Maybe it didn't need to be proven, considering that Louis did promise Draco that whatever was going on between them didn't need to be proven or made known to anyone. It was theirs, and theirs alone.

     "Yes, he did," Louis answered.

     "I'm not going to tell you to try and fix him because you know better and that wouldn't be good advice on my part," Harper stated, "but I bet you would be willing to try and hear him out, if he hasn't written to you already."

     "He's written to me."

     "And?"

     Louis contemplated his answer before sighing once more. "I'll write to him again."

     Harper squeezed his hand before letting him go.

Draco did his best to keep himself from wallowing in his own self-pity.

     His parents were out most of the time so that left him to his own futile devices, haunting the manor like a ghost in pajama pants and a gray, oversized, hooded sweatshirt. And just as he predicted, the smell was beginning to wane the more he wore it, but he found himself almost beginning to drown again. He'd find himself lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling with nothing but the warmth of the sweatshirt to keep him human, to keep him from feeling more phantom than boy as the days went on. It would be dramatic to say that Draco was almost bedridden, held down by the weight of want that grew through his chest. His appetite lessened, only getting up when the hunger pains got to be too much and when he could actually feel like he could keep food down.

     Louis's letter sat on Draco's bedside table, carefully placed in the envelope it came in. Draco took it out to reread it every now and then, scanning over the prose, easily swept up in how Louis always had a way with words. Even if the letter detailed how Draco had not-so-subtly fucked him over in the end, it also described how the heartbreak was also treating Louis, letting Draco know that he wasn't the only one sinking beneath those waves. Draco sat on the edge of his bed, a steaming mug of tea in his hands, and contemplated reading it again. He did his best to decide against it, to push the urge and the feeling down and shove it away so he could finally be able get ahold of himself, considering how debilitated he had been these past few days.

    Louis had totally and completely rendered Draco useless. As much as he missed him, he wanted to swear at him, curse him out for doing such a thing. Only the use of foul language could get his point across, to release every gut-wrenching pain that clenched and clawed at his stomach, having his blood flow as freely as the ink that spilled across the numerous pages that kept Louis near and dear. It was only a matter of time that Louis wrote something out of his blood with that godforsaken quill of his.

    Draco let out a shout at the realization, quickly clamping his mouth shut afterward, worried someone would come rushing to his side, asking him what was wrong. And he wouldn't even be able to tell them. He would have to shove the letter into the drawer of his night table and lie about having a nasty nightmare, just like the same three times he's already done it, given he wouldn't leave his room to eat. They all totaled it up to him being sick, which was pretty much an equivalent to what he was currently feeling. He felt the sore throat, the nausea, the tears, the turned-out stomach, all at the thought of a boy with a halo on his head when the light hit it at just the right angle. Someone who could have easily said "no" to Draco's first question, someone who sacrificed their special solace just so he could have a place to hide. It was maddening. It was all really maddening.

Louis was sitting at his desk, lamp on with the moonlight streaming in from his bay window, Jupiter fast asleep on one of the cushions. His head was swimming with a litany of thoughts, ranging from ones of want to downright melancholy. He was unsure of which route to take so he just sat there, strapped down by the uncertainty. Maybe he was tapped out by the letter he wrote to Draco, practically consumed by the emotion he had poured out onto the parchment a few nights prior, writing so much that wasn't sure if he could stop. But he wrote and wrote until he could feel his wrist beginning to cramp up.

     His was quill in hand, the tip dipped into the ink so he could dive into his little world of writing again. But then he got stuck because he wasn't able to think about what he wanted to write. This was a first for him. "Merlin's sake," he muttered, "Draco's really worn me out, hasn't he?" With that thought, he called it a night and went to bed. Maybe he'll be able to get a burst of inspiration early in the morning.

     Louis got a total of three hours' sleep before his mind was plagued with a number of things, words and phrases and images all revolving around a certain somebody with the blond hair and personality to match. Then he remembered the little story he started in the back of his journal, about an Icarus figure and the mortal who saw him fly, and dragged him onto the shore to keep him from drowning. He had another one about the prince on his high horse and the commoner who had reached out his hand soon after the prince got bucked off the horse and headed straight for the ground. Louis found that the two had similar themes, and it didn't take much for him to realize he was mirroring his own life with these stories of his. Clearly, he was the commoner, but what made him stop to think was the fact he was always stopping to help the pompous character. They didn't ask for his help and yet, he was the first one there to be of assistance to them. And with that same reluctance, they took his hand.

     That was when Louis stumbled out of his bed, turned on the light on his desk, and began to write.

✧˖*° ━━ AUTHOR'S NOTE
another chapter how fun !! chapter content, however, not so fun but we do get a look into how the breakup is affecting the both of them and how they're both so emotionally worn down so there's that

i also remember in chapter 14 i wrote this odd little snippet about the icarus and the mortal and to be honest, idk where the heck that came from so now it's just a little story in louis's journal :) he'll probably expand on it a little more, we'll see

feedback is always appreciated, let me know what you liked, anything confusing i can help clear up, what made you want to put your phone down because they were being too much™‬, all of it !