*shrug* I have opinions that would get me canceled

Stop teasing me lol

Thank you!!

💙💙💙

BYE. I'm gonna go cry now!

🥺🥺 this made my heart happy. Thank you for still being here and still reading 💙

Thank you 💙💙

💙💙 it's so nice to be able to give a little again

The world is not, but maybe I am 💙

there in the inbetween. He and Harry and the two phantom dimples floating somewhere between near and far, healed and broken, then and now.

On the edge and already over the line.

At least they had a few more minutes left on this call.

need the aftercare then."

"Now who's being cheeky?" Louis teased, even though his heart did a small dip at the insinuation Harry was making—at the admission that was the boy's next hurdle to overcome.

Harry humored Louis' attempt with a dimpled smile again, and it was a strange moment they shared

stupid time zones, and stupid internal clocks, and stupid time itself for stretching on too far and erasing way too much way too quickly from what once was.

"You'll call tomorrow, yeah?" Harry asked suddenly without moving.

"Course," Louis said immediately.

"Good," Harry murmured. "Think I might

Woke up the next day, but for now, Louis just watched as the last of Harry that existed before all of that slowly unraveled, bleeding into the icy bath below.

He was both the most familiar this way, and the closest to being a stranger than he'd ever been since he WAS a stranger.

And Louis hated

Those months ago. He'd trained hard, fighting through the end of his music career, the end of a few business deals gone wrong, the end of the 1D era. Harry trained through all of it, and now it was all over.

Louis was certain that tomorrow Harry would be nursing more than physical wounds when he

Knuckle grip Harry had on one side of the ice bath, and the small knick of angry red on the curve of his bottom lip. Evidence of a soreness that was planted in deeper gardens started to come up as the murky water of the temporary relief began to wear off.

Harry had done what he'd set out to do all

The tattoos littered across both of his arms, and the smattering of wirey hair across his chest. His mustache was unruly, like his furrowed eyebrows and windblown hair.

The deeper set pains were becoming more visible the more the ice worked on the surface level ones. Louis took note of the white

"Yeah, yeah," Louis huffed. They were quiet then for a beat. Harry relaxed further into his ice bath, and Louis got comfortable on the bed he was reclined on. He ran his eyes softly over every small detail of Harry's body, taking inventory of his elongated throat and his coiled muscles. He cataloged