Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The letter arrived on a Thursday, tucked between various bills and a flyer offering half-price permanent laser hair removal. Louis might've thrown it away unopened like he usually did with anything that looked out of order but something about the envelope stopped him; heavy parchment and wax seal, if you could believe it. His full name written in unfamiliar cursive.
Louis William Tomlinson.
Like someone had plucked it from an era when people still pressed ink into paper and died of old age in their thirties.

"Sounds creepy." Niall had said unhelpfully, mouth full of crisps, peering over Louis' shoulder the moment he cracked the seal.

"Or like a murder mystery. The Curious Case of Cozen Hollow." Louis had replied, trying not to let the name Cozen Hollow make the hair on his arms stand up. There'd been something about it, something sharp and maybe even familiar, though he knew for a fact he'd never been there. Never even heard of it.. but it clung to his mind like the aftertaste of a dream.

Now, three weeks later, he was parked on the edge of a fogged drive with his best friend white-knuckling the steering wheel and absolutely refusing to get out of the car.

"Go on then," Louis said, opening the door and stepping out into the wet, whispering quiet. "It's not that bad."

Niall snorted, still inside and squinting up at the house like it might suddenly bare teeth and lunge.

"It looks like Frankenstein's holiday home. You're telling me that's not bad?"

Louis grinned and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket, the air colder here than it had any right to be in early spring. Cozen Hollow rose in front of them like something grown from the ground rather than built, tall and skeletal, its stone façade blackened by rain and years. Ivy strangled the front pillars, thick and clawed and the upper windows were all too dark, like eyes left open long after the soul had gone.

"Could use a bit of a clean." Louis admitted, though the humour didn't quite make it to his voice.

The drive had taken hours, winding north through stretches of countryside that felt increasingly removed from the world Louis knew. Sometime around the third hour, after a near-death encounter with a suicidal pheasant and Niall threatening to turn back three times, they'd pulled into a sleepy village for directions. That was how they'd met a man called Zayn.

He'd been standing outside a crooked postbox with his dog, who had promptly tried to climb into Louis' lap through the rolled down window of the passenger door. Zayn looked like the sort of man who'd offer to fix your shed whether you wanted him to or not; soft smile, boots covered in something muddy, jacket patched at the elbows.

"Cozen Hollow?" He'd echoed, eyebrows lifting as he reached for the dog's lead, gently but firmly pulling him back. "You're heading up that way?"

"Supposedly." Niall muttered, eyeing the dog like it might be a shape-shifter.

Zayn gave them the directions with the slightly too careful tone of someone who didn't want to be impolite about someone else's bad decision. "It's five minutes up the road, old estate, bit of a hike up the drive. Used to be someone living there, I think. Long time ago now. You're moving in?"

Louis just smiled, not quite sure why he felt the need to lie when he said. "Just checking it out."

Now, standing at the end of that gravel path, he could still hear Zayn's dog whining as they'd driven off.

"Jesus Christ," Niall muttered, finally swinging his legs out and stepping onto the damp ground. His foot crunched something that sounded too brittle to be natural. "This place reeks of evil. I bet if I open a closet, it screams."

"You're very dramatic and you watch way too many Stephen King movies." Louis said lightly, but he couldn't stop staring at the front door. It was huge, oak gone almost black, the carvings along the frame so intricate they looked like veins. The knocker was shaped like a wolf's head.

There were what looked like scratches around it. Long and deep ones, he tried not to think too much of it.

"Swear to God," Niall went on. "If anything starts whispering in Latin, I'm getting in the car and unfriending you forever."

Louis laughed, genuinely this time and shoved him lightly toward the boot. "Come on, help me get the bags. You're staying the night, aren't you?"

"I'll stay till it starts chanting," Niall said, grabbing a suitcase. "Then I'm gone. You're mad for doing this, you know."

Maybe he was.

The house sat in its clearing like it was waiting. No birds, no breeze. Just the heavy, waiting silence of something asleep with one eye open. And still, Louis felt it again. That pull in his chest, that peculiar warmth beneath the dread.. like the place knew him.

"I don't think I am." He murmured and reached for the gate.

⛤

The key fit into the lock with a groan, an old reluctant turn, metal grinding against metal like it hadn't been used in decades. Louis felt the click in his chest when the bolt gave way. Something about it didn't sound right, it was too final. Not the sound of a door being opened, but of something being let in?!

"Well, this is how every found-footage horror movie starts." Niall muttered behind him, still clutching the suitcase like a weapon.

Louis didn't reply, his hand hovered on the handle for a second longer than necessary. The wind had died down completely and the silence pressed against them with a low hum, like the world was holding its breath.

He pushed the door open.

The smell hit them first, thick and stale, a breath of long-dead air pushed out into the world again. Dust, rot, something sweet but curdled; the scent of abandonment.

"Fucking hell," Niall wheezed, pulling his shirt over his nose. "It smells like corpses."

Louis stepped inside.

The hallway stretched long and narrow, like a throat. The light filtering in through the high arched windows was thin and grey, barely illuminating the edges of the wide staircase ahead. Everything was covered in a soft, undisturbed film of dust. Furniture sat draped in yellowing sheets that moved just slightly, like something breathing underneath.

"Okay, so this is where I say no," Niall said, peering in over Louis' shoulder. "This is the moment in the film where I'd shout at the screen don't go in there, you idiot. And look at you going in there like a twat."

Louis dropped one of the bags onto the floor with a grunt and a sharp crack split the silence, the floorboard beneath the weight gave away, the sound echoing like a shot down the corridor. A splintered hole appeared beneath it, black and toothy.

"Bloody hell," Niall yelped, hopping back. "It attacks, Louis, the house attacks."

"Bit of extra character," Louis said, though his voice was quieter now. He crouched down to inspect the damage, brushing away the splinters with an odd tenderness. "It's just old. We'll fix it."

"You've got a funny way of saying you." Niall hovered behind him, suitcase still in hand, scanning the walls like they might start bleeding.

They moved forward slowly, the echo of their steps swallowed quickly by the house's dampened stillness. The rooms branched off one by one from the main hall, massive spaces once meant to be grand. Parlours, sitting rooms, an old music room with a harp that had lost half its strings. It leaned in the corner like it was tired of waiting for someone to play it again.

The house was enormous, far too big for one person to live in alone, let alone someone who'd never owned more than a one bedroom apartment. The ceilings arched impossibly high, supported by black beams that looked like exposed ribs. The wallpaper peeled in great strips, floral patterns giving way to water-stained plaster. Cobwebs hung like chandeliers from the corners. Most of the furniture had collapsed in on itself, sunken and broken, like it had given up long ago.

"Jesus, it's like Miss Havisham and Dracula chose the interior design." Niall said, brushing dust off a cracked mirror that somehow barely showed their reflections.

Louis barely laughed this time. He was walking slowly touching things as doorframes, old sconces, the edge of a shattered lamp on a side table. There was something reverent in the way he moved, like he'd been here before in a dream.

They passed through a dining room with a table long enough to seat twenty, its surface warped by time. Dust clung to the chandelier above it like frost. There were old plates still on the sideboard; fine porcelain rimmed with gold, all cracked and dulled. In the next room, a fireplace big enough to step inside gaped black and cold.

"It's worse inside," Niall said, half to himself. "How is it worse inside?"

But Louis only nodded. "It's got good bones."

"It's got bones, alright."

They found the kitchen last, at the end of a corridor that seemed to narrow as they walked. The door creaked on its hinges and the room beyond was strangely preserved, cabinets hanging open, rusted pans still on the hooks, a teacup overturned in the sink like someone had meant to come back. A calendar hung on the wall, the pages yellow and curled, frozen on June 1961.

The silence in the kitchen felt heavier, it clung to them differently. Louis ran his fingers along the dust on the windowsill, leaving clean lines behind. "It needs work, sure," he said, almost to himself. "But I don't know.. I think I can make it something again."

Niall stared at him like he'd grown another head. "You want to live here?"

"I think I'm supposed to." Louis said quietly and stepped further into the kitchen.

Outside, the wind picked up suddenly. A branch scraped across one of the upper windows with a sharp, high screech, like nails on glass. Something in the house seemed to exhale.

And in the corner of the entrance hall, barely visible through the cracked doorframe, a shadow shifted and was still.

⛤

They carried the rest of the bags in slow trips from the van they rented, wheels skidding slightly over the gravel drive, the boot creaking with each bag as though the vehicle itself was relieved. The house loomed higher with every glance, slate roof stretching sharply against the greying sky, the narrow windows above flickering strangely with reflected light, or maybe not reflected at all.

"Do you think there's heating?" Niall asked, dragging a duffel over the threshold and immediately wincing as the floorboards moaned. "Because it seems like we need at least seven jumper to survive the night."

Louis didn't answer, he was looking up the staircase now, head tilted, as though listening for something on the second floor. The staircase wound upward in a wide curve, the handrail thick with dust, the carpet threadbare and stained the colour of dried blood in patches. A chandelier above them hung slightly off-kilter, one of its arms twisted unnaturally, as if something had yanked it halfway down and then stopped.

The first step creaked beneath his weight, then the second, a deep groan that reverberated up the wood. Louis glanced back. "You coming?"

"I'm only coming so I can say I told you so when you get haunted and possessed and try to murder me with an axe," Niall muttered, gripping the banister and following. "Shining vibes, mate. You know? Twins at the end of the hallway. Blood elevators. You as Jack Torrance, but with better cheekbones and tattoos."

Louis let out a quiet huff of laughter, eyes still fixed on the landing above. "If I start talking to ghosts in the bar, you've got permission to punch me."

"Noted. Though I might already be talking to one.. you're not acting normal."

The second floor was colder. Not the chill of open windows or drafts but something else. The cold here felt watchful, like the air had settled over the years into silence so heavy that even sound was afraid to disturb it.

The hallway stretched long and narrow, the doors spaced far apart on either side, each carved with different patterns; some floral, some strangely geometric, one with what looked like a series of symbols scorched into the surface. The wallpaper here was darker, green damask turned near-black with age and peeling in wide sheets that fluttered slightly as they passed, though no breeze followed them.

The first few rooms were what you'd expect, bedrooms mostly. One had a cracked wardrobe tipped on its side like it had been shoved too hard; another was completely empty save for a cradle in the middle of the floor, which Niall stared at for exactly one second before backing out of the room and declaring it off limits.

But then they found the door at the end of the hall.. it was different.

Taller than the others and wider, with two panels instead of one, double doors, locked tight with a heavy iron bolt that stretched across both handles. The wood was darker than the rest of the house, nearly black and not dusty like the others. Instead, it gleamed faintly, as if it had been polished recently, or as if it simply refused to collect dust at all. Something in the air shifted the moment they stopped in front of it.

Louis reached out instinctively and touched the surface. It was cold, colder than the rest of the hallway, colder than anything in the house.

"I don't like that," Niall said immediately. "I don't like that. That's the kind of door people die behind. That's your don't go in there door, mate. That's your Velvet Room."

Louis looked at him. "My what?"

"You know, that one room in horror stories. Looks nice, but it eats people, it's got a name like The Crimson Study or The Velvet Room
or something, classic trap."

Louis didn't reply, he was staring at the locked bolt now, thumb resting just beneath it.

"It's not even dusty." He murmured.

"Exactly. Because the devil lives in there and he swiffers regularly."

Louis let out a breath and stepped back. "It's just a room."

Niall crossed his arms. "So's the mouth of hell."

Still, they moved on.

They checked the remaining rooms, finding more of the same: old beds, decayed furniture, faded curtains that once must've been fine satin, now moth-eaten and frayed. In one room, a rocking chair swayed gently though no one had touched it. In another, a collection of porcelain dolls lined a shelf, all turned to face the wall.

And yet Louis remained calm, thoughtful even. Not once did he hesitate, not when the stairs cried out beneath them, not when the lock on the end-room door seemed to throb beneath his fingers, not when they passed a mirror that warped their reflections in a way that made Niall gasp and Louis only blink.

"I'm still moving in." He said finally as they returned to the main hall and set down the last suitcase.

Niall gave him a long look. "Of course you are. Because you're either extremely brave or very, very stupid."

"I've always wanted space to write," Louis said, ignoring him. "Somewhere quiet."

"It's quiet, alright," Niall muttered. "But a bit too quiet, that kind of quiet that feels like it's watching you."

Louis only smiled faintly, his eyes drifting back toward the staircase, his fingers tapped lightly against his thigh.

In the locked room above, behind the heavy double doors, something shifted slightly, just a sigh, the scrape of something soft against wood. Then silence again, deeper than before.

⛤

By nightfall, the house had grown colder. Not because the temperature had dropped, though it had, but because the shadows had begun to thicken in the corners, stretching like they were no longer content to stay where they belonged. The kind of cold that didn't sit on your skin, but in your bones. The kind that made you forget how warmth felt in the first place.

Niall stood in the middle of the front room, arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed at the fireplace.

"This is going to be one of those nights where the house eats us while we sleep, I can feel it," he declared, even as he pulled a musty old blanket from one of the suitcases. "You know, this whole thing would be way better if you weren't so weirdly into it."

Louis was dragging two of the thinner mattresses from upstairs into the main room. "You're the one who decided to stay."

"Under duress. I stayed under protest, Your Honour. I'd like it on the record that I was manipulated."

Louis raised an eyebrow. "I said come on, it'll be fun and you looked at me like I'd dared you to lick a poisonous snake."

"Yeah and somehow I still said yes."

They set up camp in front of the old stone fireplace, the logs dusty and dry but still intact, stacked as if someone had once intended to light them and then simply.. never had. Louis found a box of matches in a drawer beside the hearth. The strike of flame caught immediately and soon the fire was crackling, casting the room in a soft orange glow. The walls were painted a dull cream beneath the grime, high-ceilinged with exposed beams and now that the fire was lit, Louis could almost imagine it being cozy.

Almost.

"Alright," Niall said, collapsing onto one of the mattresses. "What's for dinner? Please don't say ghost soup."

Louis threw a pillow at him. "Takeaway?"

They both pulled out their phones at the same time. Ten minutes later, Niall groaned and tossed his onto the mattress. "No one delivers out here. Not even the bloody pizza place. What kind of desolate, haunted wasteland doesn't deliver pizza?"

"A cursed one." Louis said cheerfully, already grabbing his coat.

They drove back into town, headlights sweeping long over the winding road, the trees arching above them like skeletal arms, the landscape made stranger in the darkness. The town itself was small, only a handful of narrow streets clustered around an old church and a single petrol station.

The shop was still open though, a little corner place that sold everything from tinned beans to garden tools. As they were leaving with crisps, water and something resembling dinner, they nearly walked straight into someone coming the other way.

"Sorry," Louis began but then paused, because it was Zayn.

The same man from earlier, the one who'd given them directions, he was carrying two bags of dog food. "Oh," Zayn said, blinking at them. "Didn't think I'd see you again so soon, you settling in already?"

Louis smiled. "Yeah, actually. It's.. weird, but it's beautiful. Something about it just feels right, you know?"

Niall let out a snort. "Yeah, right like a shovel to the back of the head. That house is horrifying, mate. Cobwebs, creepy furniture, a cradle in one of the rooms and I swear something tried to bite me."

Zayn gave a tight smile, like he wanted to laugh but thought better of it. His eyes lingered on Louis a little too long. "You've seen the upstairs, then?"

"Not all of it," Louis admitted. "But most."

"And the—" Zayn paused before he shook his head slightly. "Never mind."

"What?" Louis asked, but Zayn only waved a hand.

"It's just an old place. A lot of.. history. Some of it's probably just stories, you know how people talk."

Louis tilted his head. "What kind of stories?"

But Zayn smiled again, that same unreadable expression and said only. "You'll figure it out." Before walking past them toward the till.

The car ride back was quiet.

"I don't like that guy." Niall said finally, tearing into a crisp packet.

"You don't like anyone who makes you feel like you missed something." Louis replied, eyes still on the road.

"He knows something, I could feel it. You saw how he looked at you, like he wanted to warn you but wasn't sure you'd believe him."

Louis didn't say anything, he was thinking about the house again. About the way it had seemed to shift under their feet earlier. The way some rooms had felt too big, others too small. And the door upstairs, the one that hadn't collected dust.

Back inside, the fire had burned low but steady. They tossed on a few more logs and settled in again, half-listening to a storm beginning somewhere in the distance, thunder rolling far away like an afterthought.

Niall stood in the middle of the room again, brow furrowed. "This was different before," he said slowly, pointing to the mattress. "That pillow was on that side. I swear it was."

Louis blinked. "You're remembering it wrong."

"No, I'm not. I've got excellent memory. I remember because I set it there on purpose so I wouldn't be near the draught from the window."

Louis laughed. "You think the house moved your pillow?"

"I don't know, Louis. I'm just saying things are weird and you're weird for liking it."

Louis smiled faintly as he sat down. "Then go home."

"I will, but not until I've made sure you don't get possessed or married to a ghost or whatever's clearly going to happen here."

Louis lay back on the mattress, hands folded behind his head, staring at the cracked ceiling above.

Somewhere upstairs, far away behind locked doors, the locked room pulsed once, just a beat, like breath in the dark.

⛤

The night passed without incident. Well, without visible incident at least.

Louis slept easily, stretched out on one of the thin mattresses by the fireplace, lulled by the soft, rhythmic crackle of burning wood and the faint metallic tapping of a branch against one of the upper windows. The house, for all its rot and shadow, had stilled for the night like an animal settling down after a long hunt.

Niall, on the other hand, woke up twice, convinced someone was staring at him.

The first time he blamed the wind. The second time he turned on his phone flashlight and whispered you better be not some creepy child, into the darkness, before pulling the blanket over his head and lying very still, like a man preparing for the worst.

When morning came, it was like someone had opened the sky.

Sunlight streamed in through the high, narrow windows, golden and soft, cutting long stripes across the wooden floor and catching the dust motes in warmth. Even the house looked marginally less cursed in sunny daylight. The ceilings were still cracked, the wallpaper still stained with what could've been water(or blood if you asked Niall) but the light softened the edges of everything.

Niall stretched, groaning dramatically. "I didn't die in my sleep, which is a plot twist."

Louis was already up, having rummaged together two cups of truly terrible instant coffee. He handed one to Niall and looked around with a quiet sort of satisfaction, like he'd claimed the space through sheer force of will.

"You slept fine."

"I slept like a man expecting the walls to speak," Niall took a sip and winced. "What is this? Battery acid?"

Louis only chuckled.

They took their drinks out into the morning air. The back garden was overgrown to the point of rebellion, but sunlight revealed hints of what it might've been once. A path, now buried beneath wild ivy; a rusting bench, half-swallowed by a gnarled wisteria vine; the black iron skeleton of what had once been a greenhouse, now shattered and skeletal under the creeping hands of time.

Louis stepped carefully over a cracked flagstone, half-sunk into the soil. "There's something beautiful about all of this."

"There's something wrong about all of this," Niall countered, eyeing the broken windowpanes of the greenhouse like they might bite. "It's like if some old lady had a garden and then buried a few husbands in it."

Louis grinned. "Maybe one did."

"Don't joke. There's definitely bones in this garden."

They followed the remnants of the path around a half-dead hedge. The morning was quiet, the kind of countryside hush that made every bird cry seem suspiciously loud. Bees buzzed somewhere near the overgrown roses, which had blackened at the edges like they were rotting from within.

And just ahead: a figure.

Bent slightly at the waist, shears in hand, snipping at the roses like it was the most natural thing in the world. Dressed plainly: dark trousers, boots, a faded shirt rolled up at the sleeves. From the back, he looked utterly out of place. His presence was like a photograph taped over a painting, flat and strange and off.

Niall halted so abruptly he nearly spilled his coffee. "Oh no."

Louis, undeterred, raised a hand and called out. "Hello?"

The man turned slowly. His face was young, late twenties maybe early thirties. Pale, with a sharp jawline and an expression that was neither unfriendly nor welcoming. His eyes though were the part that stuck. Green, but dark, like a deep forest. They flickered from Louis to Niall, then back again.

"Morning," he said, his voice was smooth and quiet. British, but faintly old-fashioned. "Didn't hear you come out."

"I'm the new owner," Louis said, stepping forward despite Niall's whisper-hiss of protest. "I'm Louis. This is Niall."

The man nodded. "Harry."

There was a pause for too long, just enough to make it strange before he added slowly. "I tend the grounds."

Niall blinked. "You're the.. groundskeeper?"

Harry nodded once.

"But you're, like.. young. I thought groundskeepers were meant to be eighty and wear cardigans and smell like compost."

Harry gave a small smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I like roses."

Louis stepped closer, his gaze flicking between the man and the withered blooms. "Have you been here long?"

"A while."

"Didn't realise anyone was still working on the property, wasn't mentioned in the  papers also."

"I stay on," Harry said simply. "When people come and go."

It wasn't threatening, it wasn't even particularly odd in tone but Niall took an instinctive step back anyway.

Louis, meanwhile, was fascinated. There was something about Harry that fit here, like he'd been pressed between the pages of this place and preserved, just waiting to be found again.

"Well, it's good to meet you," Louis said. "You can probably tell the place needs.. everything."

Harry looked around the garden slowly and then said. "She prefers to be left alone."

Louis blinked. "Sorry?"

Harry looked at him again, but whatever moment had passed was gone. "The roses," he said calmly, pointing at the absolute dead plants. "They're temperamental this time of year."

"Right," Niall muttered. "The flowers are moody. That's normal."

Harry wiped his shears on a cloth tucked into his pocket and gave a polite nod. "Enjoy your morning."

And with that, he turned and walked away, down the path, around the side of the greenhouse and then vanished, like he'd simply stepped behind a veil of ivy.

Niall stared after him for a long moment.

"That was not okay," he said. "That was The Ring levels of not okay."

Louis hummed, not exactly in agreement, still looking at the roses. Still thinking about the way Harry had looked straight through him.

"Louis," Niall said again, this time quieter. "That guy is weird. You heard him, right? The whole cryptic people come and go thing?"

Louis shrugged, brushing a cobweb off his sleeve. "Maybe he's just been here too long."

"He's like.. twenty-five!"

"Maybe the house keeps him young." He winked.

"That's not funny."

Louis didn't laugh, he was still watching the path where Harry had gone, a strange pressure behind his eyes, like something had settled in his head the moment he'd heard that name.

The firelight memory of it.

Harry.

Chapter Text

By the time they got back from the depths of the garden, the clouds had begun to gather again, thick and low in the sky like a congregation of watchful neighbours. The air smelled of moss and there was a dry static that made your skin prickle before a storm.

Louis for all of that was in a surprisingly buoyant mood as he talked through plans, ideas and dreams, already drafting blueprints in his mind even as the house loomed darker with every passing hour.

Niall was.. less buoyant.

"I'm just saying," he said for what had to be the third time, pulling his hoodie tighter as he stepped over a particularly big root and squinted up at the house. "You get a mysterious letter from a mysterious lawyer about a mysterious dead relative leaving you a fucking haunted mansion, and you don't even ask a single question?"

Louis opened the boot of the van and began lifting out a plastic storage bin. "I did ask. The solicitor said it was complicated."

"Oh, well then everything's fine. Complicated is legal speak for you're going to die here, mate."

"You watch too many movies."

"I've seen enough movies, this is how every ghost story starts. A big weird house, a lonely repressed protagonist, sorry mate, and a mysterious inheritance."

Louis gave a wry smile as he handed him a duffel bag. "You forgot the best friend who dies first."

"I hate you, Louis."

Despite himself, Niall followed him back inside, their steps echoing against the bare wooden floorboards. The house had settled again in their absence but its stillness felt just a little too expectant, like it had noticed their return and was holding its breath. The air was colder now again but this came not from the poor insulation it was the kind that clung to the back of your neck and made you turn your head even when no one was there.

Louis paused in the middle of the foyer, his gaze turning up the curved staircase and then across to the long corridor that led deeper into the house. The peeling wallpaper, the ancient sconces, the cracked molding that looked like it had once been beautiful.

He could see it.

In his mind, the plaster was repaired, painted over in a soft eggshell-white. The now broken chandelier was replaced with a modern but respectful one, brushed golden maybe. The rotting drapes were torn down and replaced with sheer linens open to the light. He could imagine music playing from a speaker on a shelf, candles to keep the ambiance and furniture that's more from this century. He could imagine a real home here, a sanctuary.

"I want to keep the bones of it," he said aloud, more to himself than to Niall. "Not strip it clean. Just.. polish it back to life."

Niall gave him a dubious look. "You're going to polish it with what?"

Louis smirked and dropped another bag on the floor. "Hard work and probably a shitload of bleach."

They moved slowly through the house, making notes as they went; rooms to measure, fixtures to replace, one whole corridor that needed new floorboards entirely. Louis took photos of the staircase from several angles and muttered about vintage runners and lighting tracks. Niall mostly just trailed behind and muttered. "This place wants to eat us." Whenever a door creaked without warning.

Upstairs, the hallway seemed darker despite the windows. The long corridor there felt older than the rest of the house somehow, as though whatever soul Cozen Hollow possessed had chosen to pool itself here waiting.

Louis' footsteps were careful on the stairs, the wood groaning under his feet, he stopped in front of the last door on the right.

The locked one with the double doors. The only one that hadn't opened when they'd first walked through the house. Louis studied it for a long moment, head tilted. "This one's different."

"No shit," Niall muttered behind him. "This is the door you open when you want to die a horrible death."

Louis ran a hand along the wood. "I want to see what's in there."

"Of course you do," Niall said dryly. "You would want to open the one locked door in a house that already sounds like it whispers at night."

Louis chuckled and stepped back. "We'll need to find the key."

"Or a priest."

Louis rolled his eyes and turned, already walking toward the next room. "Come on drama queen. Let's measure the bedrooms."

Niall stayed behind for a moment, frowning at the door and then with a shrug and a mutter of just to say I tried, he reached out and touched the handle.

It shocked him.

Not a little static jolt like from a jumper or a metal tap, but a sharp, sudden snap of energy that bit straight into the web of skin between his thumb and index finger, hot and cold all at once.

"Fucking hell!" He yanked his hand back, cradling it instinctively. His heart kicked hard in his chest, eyes darting down the hallway.. but there was nothing, no movement, no sound.

Just that door, still close, still watching. "Louis!" He called a bit too loud. "The freaky murder door bit me!"

Louis' voice floated back from somewhere down the hall, muffled by distance. "You probably zapped yourself mate, dry air and your shitty sneakers."

Niall stared at the door, his skin was still tingling, the scent of copper was suddenly sharp in his nostrils. "Right," he muttered, rubbing his hand. "Dry air. Cool. Great. No problem."

But when he turned to walk away, the feeling didn't leave him. That sense, deep and gnawing, that something had noticed.

⛤

The drive into the next actual town was longer than it had seemed on the map, winding through tight, hedge-flanked roads that looked like they hadn't seen new tarmac since the nineties, that narrow lanes where you held your breath every time another car came from the opposite direction and hoped whatever kept locals alive on these streets would extend to you as well.

Niall had insisted on DJ duties and put on a playlist full of upbeat songs, something Louis knew was a calculated attempt to scrub the lingering silence of Cozen Hollow from their skin. It worked for a while. They sang along to two songs in full, argued over the third and then fell quiet again, the music filling the space between them while the trees passed.

They reached the small town by early afternoon, if it could be called a town at all. A single high street with one pub, one bakery, one hardware store that also seemed to double as a post office and a furniture shop with crooked letters on the sign and a window display that hadn't changed since maybe 1984. Niall pulled a face at the sight of it, but Louis just smiled.

"Charming," he said, stepping out of the car and stretching. "Rustic."

"Rustic is.. a nice way of putting it." Niall replied, looking like he was about to say something about haunted buildings again.

Still, he followed Louis inside, trailing behind with his arms folded while Louis asked the shop owner about paint, insulation and whether they stocked anything like lime for the mould in the cellar. The man behind the counter gave Louis a long look and then very pointedly said. "You're the one that moved into the Hollow."

Louis didn't flinch. "That's me."

The man nodded, slow and unreadable. "Right." He didn't say anything else.

Outside Niall caught Louis by the elbow before he could walk toward the furniture store. "Hey, no jokes for a second. I'm serious."

Louis blinked at him. "Okay?"

Niall's brow furrowed, something more honesty behind his usual mischief. "You're sure about this? Like.. really sure? Because I know you, you get attached to ideas, you get tunnel vision. And that place, it's not right, Lou. There's a reason everyone looks at you sideways when you mention the name. You felt it too, you're not that good at hiding."

Louis looked down at the ground, scuffed his boot against the uneven pavement, for a moment he looked younger than he had in years.

"I don't know what it is," he said quietly at last. "But something about it.. pulls. Like I've already lived there, like I've already seen it whole."

Niall stared at him for a long second and then made a helpless, exasperated noise. "You're not supposed to fall in love with a house. It's not a person, Louis. It's not gonna love you back."

Louis' smile was faint and strange before he just hummed.  That was the last time Niall tried to talk him out of it.

They bought paint, probably more than they'd need and a few tools and cleaning supplies, a fold-out table, some curtains on sale that fit the smaller windows upstairs and a second-hand mattress from the shop at the edge of town, which they tied down on top of the van. They didn't say much on the way back, though Niall tapped his fingers against the passenger door to a rhythm Louis didn't recognise and Louis glanced at him more than once, as if trying to commit the shape of him to memory.

They reached the edge of London just after four. Louis parked on a side street near Niall's flat and Niall didn't get out right away.

"Promise me you'll keep your phone on."

Louis gave him a look. "I'm not going into the woods. I have electricity."

"Barely. I still bet the walls scream at night."

"I'll record them for you."

Niall rolled his eyes but then reached across the seat, pulled Louis into a brief, hard hug. "Just.. don't go full Jack Torrance, yeah?"

Louis hugged him back, fierce and grateful. "Go home, Niall."

He then pulled away and drove back. The sky was lower by the time he reached the Hollow, the light filtered thin and grey through the clouds, already preparing to fall behind the trees. The house stood just as they'd left it, still and cold, but there was something almost expectant in the air now, like it had waited all day just for him to return.

Inside it smelled of dust and old wood and faintly of earth. Louis carried everything in alone, first the mattress, then the paint cans, then the bucket of cleaning supplies. He didn't bother with the kitchen yet or the larger sitting rooms. He set everything down in the main bedroom upstairs, one of the few with an intact door and enough floor space and opened all the windows to let the staleness out. He stripped the bedframe of the old linens, found a broom and a rag in on of the cupboards in the hall and started scrubbing. It was mindless work, soapy water and muscle strength, wiping years off the baseboards and sweeping spiders out of the corners. It took hours, he didn't play music, he liked the silence.

By the time he stopped, it was nearly midnight. The wind had picked up, the house creaked softly, the natural night-settling of any building, but in Cozen Hollow it sounded almost like breath. Louis changed into a hoodie and old joggers, laid the mattress flat on the floor and pulled a blanket over himself.

He was asleep before he even remembered to turn the lights off.

⛤

Louis woke to the sound of a knock, or something like a knock; sharp and distant, but close enough to disturb the fragile edge of sleep and drag him upright in a heartbeat, his heart was thudding in his chest like a startled bird.

For a long moment he just sat there in the pale light of morning, half tangled in the blanket, blinking into the quiet. The house didn't feel threatening exactly but it listened and he was acutely aware of how much space existed between himself and anything human, even though he'd never admit that to Niall. He got up slowly, padded across the chilled wood floor to the nearest window and peered out through glass that hadn't been cleaned in years.

Nothing. Just the empty driveway. The overgrown trees along the edge of the property, the garden gate hanging open on one rusted hinge and the front porch still and grey in the weak sunlight.

He let out a breath and rubbed at his eyes. Maybe Niall, he thought absurdly. Maybe he changed his mind and came back to check. But that didn't make sense, Niall would've texted and besides, there was no car, no movement, no anything.

The knock hadn't come again. He shrugged the feeling off and turned back toward the bedroom, ran a hand through his hair and decided the first order of business, before any paint or new curtains or daring architectural work, was the main bathroom. He found it again across the hall, a long and narrow room with an old claw-footed tub that probably was beautiful once, but now its beauty was overshadowed with stains of disuse, age and something dark he refused to identify.

The tiles on the wall had long since cracked in delicate spiderwebs and the mirror above the sink was so cloudy it barely reflected at all, like it had grown tired of looking at empty walls.

Louis stared at the sink for a moment, then slowly twisted the tap.

There was a long silence, then a guttural groan deep within the pipes, like something waking far below the bones of the house and then, to his astonishment, water. Murky at first, tinged red-brown like rusted blood, but then clearer, running cold and quick and real.

He blinked. "Well, that's deeply unsettling but handy." He turned off the tap, pulled out the cleaning supplies and set to work.

It took hours, long and steady work that left his hands pruny and his back aching, but when he stepped back at last, the tub was white again, the sink gleamed and even the mirror had been coaxed into a dull, watery kind of reflection. He opened the window to let the chemical tang fade and leaned out into the breeze, hair sticking to his forehead.

He could see most of the back garden from there, if it could be called that. What had once been a manicured, possibly even beautiful estate garden was now a chaotic tangle of gnarled trees and choking vines, dead roses bent under their own weight, a trellis split down the middle like broken ribs. It should've been empty, it had been empty just hours ago.

Now there was a man standing at the far edge of the porch. Louis flinched, heart kicking up hard against his ribs. "Jesus!"

The man didn't move, he just stood there, calmly, scissors in hand, trimming the shriveled heads off a bush so brittle it seemed to disintegrate under his touch. He was dressed in black again, neat but old-fashioned, with a coat that looked a century out of place, a pale collar and boots dusted with soil. His curled dark hair was tied back loosely.

Louis pulled away from the window and hurried downstairs, his footsteps echoing slightly in the empty stairwell. When he reached the back door and opened it, the man didn't look up.

"Hi," Louis said, breathless in a way he couldn't explain. "Didn't hear you come in."

Harry, because it had to be Harry, though he hadn't seen him properly, glanced up only briefly, his expression unreadable. "Didn't want to disturb anything."

"I—" Louis hesitated. "I thought you were just the groundskeeper."

"I am."

"Do you live nearby?"

"I live here," Harry said, still not looking at him directly. "In the green things, in what's left."

Louis didn't know what to do with that, so he gave a little laugh and folded his arms. "You've got a real way with words."

Harry clipped another stem, the dead rose head tumbling to the ground like ash. "Not much else to do out here. Words last longer than flowers."

There was a silence, not uncomfortable exactly, but not comfortable either. Louis found himself watching Harry's hands, the careful way he handled the pruning shears, as if this was something sacred.

"Well," Louis said eventually. "Thanks for keeping the place.. less apocalyptic."

Harry gave a ghost of a smile. "It tries to grow, no matter what."

And with that, he turned and walked away, disappearing down the side path behind the trees, like mist dispersing into the roots.

Louis stood there for a long time, watching the place where he'd been.

⛤

By mid-afternoon, the light over Cozen Hollow had shifted again, that peculiar hue it seemed to take on just before dusk, even if the clock said there were hours of day left. It was gold technically, but there was something dull beneath it, like the sun had to bleed through layers of dust and whatever else before it could warm the floors.

Louis stood at the window for longer than he meant to, a mug of tea cooling slowly in his hand with his gaze fixed absently on the back garden where Harry had been just hours earlier. There was no sign of him now, no movement. Just the wind rippling through the dried vines like the last breath in a dying lung.

Where does he even live?

The question came unbidden, slipping quiet and strange into the back of Louis' mind. He hadn't seen a car. Hadn't heard the telltale crunch of footsteps on the gravel path or the whine of the rusted hinges on the garden gate. Harry had simply been there, as if the earth had unfolded and pushed him up like a weed.

With a frown, Louis set the mug down and grabbed his jacket. He wasn't paranoid, he was rational. He had moved into a house that was old, weird, slightly unhinged yes, but that didn't mean he was. And it was perfectly fair to want to know who the hell the groundskeeper was and whether he had a flat nearby or some old shack hidden behind the trees. Maybe it was on the property. Maybe it was just part of the estate he hadn't seen yet. Either way, it was harmless curiosity.

He told himself that again when he stepped out onto the back porch and let the door fall shut behind him with a soft, hollow click.

The garden paths were thick with fallen leaves and half-decayed ivy, crumbling flagstones nearly swallowed by moss. He followed them anyway, boots crunching quietly as he moved past gnarled hedges and flower beds that looked more like shallow graves.

Behind another trellis, this one still intact but bare now, stripped of any blossoms it once held, he spotted it.

A small house or a shed maybe. Tucked beneath the lean of a hill and half hidden behind an enormous yew tree. The structure leaned slightly to the left, the wood blackened in places, vines curled tightly around the corners like they were trying to hold it down.

Louis approached slowly. The door was closed, the windows shuttered, no visible lock.

He didn't knock, didn't go in. He just stood there for a moment, listening. But the place gave off nothing, no sound, no warmth, no hint of breath behind the walls. It was like staring at a dollhouse someone had buried for safekeeping and then forgotten. He felt ridiculous standing there, peering into nothing, half hoping for Harry to step out with a newspaper and a cup of coffee.

So he turned back, retraced his steps to the house, his house now, still irritated with himself for how his heart had picked up when the shadows between the trees had shifted.

He shut the door behind him and paused in the front hallway. Something felt.. off.

The hallway mirror, ornate and baroque, with filigree curling like smoke around the edges, caught his eye. He had passed it a hundred times already and barely noticed it, dust still clinging in the crevices, glass tarnished just enough to make every reflection look a little faded.

But now.. now something was wrong.

He stared.

In the mirror, he saw the hallway behind him; worn wallpaper, dusty skirting board, the old brass umbrella stand. But something in the angle was off. The mirror showed a closed door at the far end. But when he turned around, the door stood open wide.

He blinked, turned back.

Still closed in the mirror.

He didn't move for a long moment, just stared at it, pulse thudding in his throat. His first instinct wasn't fear but frustration, that kind of that prickles just beneath the skin. Optical illusion, warped glass. Or maybe just his brain being tired and suggestible and a little too full of house-dust and ghost stories.

Then his phone rang, the sound shattered the tension like glass. Louis flinched, fumbling for it in his jacket pocket, the screen bright with Niall's name. He answered on the second ring. "Still alive." He said, voice a little rough.

"Sure? You sound like you've aged thirty years."

"I'm fine. Just.. standing in a big house looking into a mirror that doesn't seem to agree with physics, normal day."

"Louis.." Niall's voice was dry but warm when he joked." You know the deal. If you find any renaissance paintings of yourself, you run. No questions, just go."

Louis laughed a sharp exhale. "Noted."

"You're not losing your mind, are you?"

"No. But this place is.. different, Niall. It's not just the size or the decay or the fact that everything smells like damp velvet and something I can't even name. It's.. it's like it's watching."

It was silent for a moment. "Come back to London," Niall said eventually, quieter this time. "Get your head straight, I think you rushed into that and it's only been two days."

Louis glanced at the mirror again, the door was still closed in the reflection. "I'm fine. I'll call you tomorrow, yeah?"

"You better," Niall muttered. "If you end up on the news, I'm going to be so pissed."

Louis hung up and slid the phone into his back pocket. When he turned back to the mirror, the hallway matched again.

The door was open.

⛤

Louis spent the rest of the evening wiping down surfaces and muttering at them like they were stubborn children, nothing seemed to come clean exactly, just less filthy, as if the years refused to fully lift, clinging to the wood and wallpaper like skin to bone. The old vacuum cleaner he'd found in the broom closet made a sound like it was choking on ash and when he opened the filter, he was only half-surprised to find what looked like a mummified insect inside.

Still, it was progress. By nine, the kitchen table was uncovered, the living room rugs were rolled back and beaten on the porch and the upstairs bathroom had surrendered just enough of its grime for Louis to risk a quick, too-hot shower. He felt clearer afterward, cleaner if not particularly reassured and texted Niall a brief Still alive.No blood. Yet. Before  switching his phone to silent and plugging it in.

Sleep took him faster than expected, he didn't remember turning off the lamp. But the dream came like a cold hand pressed to the back of his neck.

At first it was only a feeling: that awful, stifling weight of being watched, but not in the way people feel eyes on them in a crowd. This was deeper, heavier. Like something beneath the skin had opened, like the floor had eyes, like the very air was sentient.

He was in a hallway. But it wasn't Cozen Hollow. Or if it was, it had been flayed and rebuilt in shades of ash and rust. The walls leaned, warped and there was no light, only a soft, rhythmic pulse from somewhere far down. The carpet under his feet was soaked with something warm, thick as syrup.

He couldn't see his hands, he couldn't remember having a body at all, only that he moved, slow and trembling toward the light.

Somewhere too close, someone was crying. The sound didn't echo, which made it worse. It was flat and raw, a quiet sobbing that rose and fell like breath. It came from a room with a half-shut door. He approached, though every part of him screamed not to. The door was old, rotting, a dull crimson and something was written on it, but the letters shifted each time he blinked, language folding in on itself.

He pushed the door open. The room wasn't a room. It was a void of velvet and flame, the air dense with heat and grief and something far, far older. The crying was louder here and now he could hear other sounds, laughter twisted into screams, bones cracking like knuckles, whispers layered a thousand deep, all saying things he couldn't understand.

Figures stood in the dark. Dozen of them, hundreds. Just silhouettes staring at him. Their faces were wrong, blurred or melted.

He tried to speak but couldn't, he turned to run—the door was gone.

And then suddenly one of the figures moved. Not toward him, it just fell backwards, like a puppet with cut strings and hit the ground with a wet, final sound that echoed like thunder inside his skull. And the others turned in unison to look at him with faces made of mirrors and mouths that didn't open.

He tried to scream but couldn't and just before the dream cracked open like a skull against stone he saw, only briefly, in the very back of the crowd, someone facing away. Not watching, not part of it.

Someone tall. Head tilted just slightly, as if listening. But then the velvet closed in, thick and suffocating.

And Louis woke up gasping.

The room was pitch black, the blankets twisted around his legs, breath loud in his ears. He sat up slowly, heart hammering and pressed a hand to his chest as if to feel whether anything inside him had been stolen.

He didn't scream and didn't cry out, why would he, it was just a dream.

But the mirror across the room seemed a little darker than it had been. And though he told himself it was just a dream, just stress, he stayed awake until the light returned.

⛤

Louis made coffee after the sun had fully risen, the house was still half-asleep around him, floors were creaking softly as if remembering the steps of people long gone and the windows catching the light in ways that left a film of gold across the walls. He'd left the curtains open in the living room. It helped somehow, made the place feel less like it was waiting to bite.

His phone buzzed with Niall's name while he took his first sip. He hesitated for just a moment before answering, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Morning."

Niall didn't waste time. "You sound like shit."

Louis snorted, one foot propped on the kitchen bench. "I slept weird."

"Weird weird or just weird?"

Louis glanced toward the stairs, remembering the dream but not wanting to say it out loud. Doing so felt like it would give it weight and it hadn't felt real. "Just a dream," he said simply. "You still worried I'm gonna be hacked to bits in my sleep?"

"Only about eighty percent," Niall replied. "Ten percent's wondering what kind of man willingly moves into a house where the trees look like they want to hang you."

"And the other ten?"

"Regret that I didn't grab that rocking chair in the upstairs hallway. That thing's haunted for sure, could've made a killing on eBay."

Louis smiled faintly. "I'm driving into the village again, need a few things."

"You see Zayn again, ask him what the hell is up with this place. I'm serious, Lou. Something's off."

Louis made a non-committal sound, but promised anyway. He didn't want Niall to worry. Or rather, he didn't want Niall to worry more. They hung up after a few more jokes about exorcisms and crucifixes from Amazon Prime and then Louis slipped into his boots, grabbed his keys, locked the door and drove the winding road back down the hill.

The village was still half-asleep too as it seemed but the shopkeepers were polite, vaguely curious and a few seemed to pause a little longer than normal when Louis mentioned where he'd moved. No one said much, no one warned him, that had to be a good sign.

He didn't see Zayn.

By midday, he was back at Cozen Hollow, a box of more cleaning supplies and canned food balanced on one hip as he nudged the front door open with his foot, calling out an "Darling, I'm back!" And laughed at himself, because of course no one was there.

Or so he thought.

He left the bags in the hallway and padded into the kitchen, brushing a strand of hair from his eyes and stopped dead in the doorway.

Harry was there.

Leaning over the kitchen counter with his sleeves rolled up, a knife in one hand and something (an apple?) half-peeled in the other. He looked domestic in a way that made absolutely no sense. No noise, no warning. Just there, like he'd been there the whole time.

Louis stared. Harry glanced up calmly, as if nothing were amiss. "I thought you might want something to eat."

"I—" Louis' mouth moved before his thoughts caught up. "How did you get in?"

Harry looked genuinely puzzled by the question, he gestured vaguely behind him. "The door."

"I locked it."

"Did you?" He asked almost softly, like it wasn't a challenge but a statement wrapped in gentle disbelief. "Maybe it just.. remembered me."

Louis blinked. "What?"

Harry only smiled, slow and unreadable. The apple peel curled in his hand like a strip of skin and Louis shivered before he could stop himself.

"You don't have to worry," Harry said, his voice slow and melodic in a strange way. "I don't take anything that doesn't want to be taken."

That didn't make Louis feel better.

"Are you always this cryptic?" He asked, trying to shake the tension from his shoulders and force himself to move. He crossed the room and placed the groceries down, careful not to brush too close. "Do you actually live here, or do you just.. haunt the grounds and break into kitchens?" He chuckled and expected Harry to laugh about that too, only he did not, so Louis stopped.

Harry's gaze flicked toward him, unreadable. "I stay nearby."

"That's not an answer."

"It wasn't meant to be."

Louis opened the fridge, mostly to avoid looking at him and discovered it was colder than it had any right to be. Frost rimmed the back wall. "You didn't say you were coming in."

"I didn't think I needed to." Harry replied and there was something about the way he said it; no apology, no explanation, just cool certainty that made Louis feel like the floor had shifted beneath him.

They stood in silence for a moment, Harry resumed peeling the apple, the blade whispering softly against the skin. "Do you want it?" He asked after a while, holding it out, the curl of peel dangling like ribbon from his fingers.

Louis hesitated, then took it and the skin on the inside of Harry's palm when their fingers brushed felt like old paper.

He said nothing, just ate the apple slowly and tried to ignore the way the mirror in the hallway seemed, just for a moment, to show a second reflection where there should have only been one.

The apple was soft but not mealy, warm but not unpleasantly so and Louis bit into it with the strange awareness that this was the sort of moment that would horrify Niall if he ever heard about it. "You took fruit from a stranger who breaks into kitchens in a haunted house?" He could already hear him say, half-disbelieving, half-exasperated and Louis smiled faintly to himself as he chewed, feeling a little like a storybook character who'd taken the bait and found it oddly sweet.

He swallowed the last bite, ran a hand through his hair and exhaled through his nose as he pushed back from the counter. "Right," he muttered to no one in particular. "More bags."

He crossed back through the hallway where the windows glared weak afternoon light onto the faded wallpaper. The air felt heavier near the front door, slightly musty with the scent of old damp wood and something sweeter beneath it, something like lavender, maybe.. or dying flowers.

When he came back into the kitchen with his arms full of grocery bags, Harry was gone. Gone without a sound. No door creak, no departing footsteps, nothing.

Louis stood still for a beat too long, squinting around the corners as if he'd missed something obvious. A shadow behind the pantry door, the sound of boots on the back porch. But the room was silent and still and empty.

And he could've sworn, sworn on anything, that there hadn't been another door there. No hallway leading off the back, no narrow servants' path through the wall. Just brick and plaster and the quiet hum of a fridge that still shouldn't be working. He frowned, blinked, shook his head and muttered. "Brilliant. He's magic now."

But he didn't linger. He decided he'd figure out where Harry lived later, when he wasn't half-distracted by the thousand things still needing to be cleaned and sorted and fixed. The place was a wreck in ways no single person could solve overnight and now that he was settling in, he felt a kind of responsibility that weighed heavier than expected, like the house had draped itself over his shoulders and whispered, You're mine now. Take care of me.

He worked for hours. The front parlour had a bowed floorboard that he marked with painter's tape, one of the tall windows had cracks shaped like bird wings and in the study, because yes, there was a study, despite the collapsing bookshelves and the thick layer of dust that coated everything, he found an old tin of buttons and a photograph that had long since faded into abstract shadows. He thought it might be a woman at a piano, but the edges were smudged as though someone had dragged their thumb over it, again and again, until her face disappeared.

He set it aside and kept moving. In the hallway, the mirror by the coat rack was slightly askew and when he tried to adjust it, he heard something from upstairs, just a small shuffle, the sound of something shifting its weight or dragging lightly across the floorboards. A draft maybe or something small falling.

He didn't pause what he was doing, just glanced toward the ceiling with a grin and called. "Stay in your lane, house." And the silence that followed was almost amusing.

Later, while sorting linens in the upstairs corridor trying to find one single damn sheet that didn't smell like mothballs, he passed the locked double doors again, the ones that stood proud and immovable at the end of the hall. The brass handles had dulled over time and one of them bore the faint imprint of something that looked oddly like fingers, or maybe claw marks, but so faint he could've imagined them.

He paused in front of it, fingertips grazing the wood, still locked. He made a mental note, more determined than before: tomorrow, he'd find a way in. No more mystery rooms in a house that already had too many secrets. Not when he was the one living here, not when strange men with sharp smiles and peeled apples came and went like ghosts.

He texted Niall Good night, still alive. No demon possessions yet and slipped into bed with tired muscles and a mind that refused to still.

The house creaked above him again just before sleep took him.

⛤

The morning had started grey, with the wind curling through the old beams and a slow patter of drizzle against the windows. Louis had pulled on a hoodie and wandered outside, stretching his still sore limbs from scrubbing floors and lifting furniture that was way too heavy.

He looked for Harry, just out of curiosity or logic, if the man was truly the groundskeeper, he had to live somewhere nearby. Louis had expected to find the tucked-away gardener's cottage, maybe even charming and ivy-covered, slightly crooked at the edges but filled with the scent of living and a man that spoke in riddles.

But when he explored the overgrown edges of the property again, past the weeping trees and the forgotten trellises, he found only one small garden house; low-roofed, with a warped wooden door and a half-buried wheelbarrow leaning against it. It was empty inside except for a few rusted tools and the skeleton of a rat curled beneath a rake.

No clothes, no toothbrush, no sign of life. Harry hadn't been in the garden that morning either. The dying roses were still untouched.

Louis frowned at the sky, rubbed his hand over his mouth and muttered. "Weird little freak." With a kind of absent affection before turning back toward the house.

By evening the skies cleared and left a strange, syrupy kind of twilight behind. The shadows were too long and the birds too quiet and Louis went to bed early because the silence was too big to fill alone.

He slept hard and when the dream came, it began with cold.

A cold that came from the inside out, that made your chest ache and your teeth clatter before your mind could even think of fear. Louis stood in a long hallway that looked almost like the one in the house but wrong. The wallpaper was darker, the sconces lit with trembling flame and the windows.. the windows were black. Not dark with night. Black. Glossy and depthless like wet obsidian.

He heard voices, panicked and pleading voices. The hallway tilted, time split and then he saw it.

In the middle of a grand and circular room he didn't recognise where curtains were spilling like blood down the walls, someone was being stabbed.

A man on his knees, screaming broken and wordless. Another man with wild eyes, covered in blood that was not his own, held the dying body in his arms, crying so violently that his whole body trembled with it.

Louis tried to move closer, tried to see their faces, but the light twisted unnaturally, as if something in the dream refused to let him see clearly.

The dying man's lips moved.

The one holding him let out a sound that cracked across the room like glass.

And then, a third figure.

Standing behind them, still and almost gleeful.

He bent over something, drew symbols in red across the wood, lit a match that sparked blue not orange. Whispered something that didn't sound like any language Louis knew.

A ritual, Louis knew it like a memory he'd never had. A ritual that should never have been done.

He backed away, instinct screaming, his lungs refusing to get in air but the room kept pulling closer, the curtains were twitching, the blood spreading and when he looked down at his hands, they were soaked red to the wrists.

Someone screamed again. Only this time, it was him and the last thing he saw before he woke,m was the house.

Not as it was now, but as it had been; grand and pristine, alive in the worst way.

Windows like eyes, doors like mouths.

Watching, waiting.. feeding.

He woke up with a shout, hammering heart and dry mouth. His sheets were tangled around him like restraints, his skin damp with sweat. The room was too quiet, the clock ticked too loud, the wind outside had stilled.

He rubbed at his face, sat up and pressed both hands to the sides of his head. "Just a dream," he whispered, his voice thin. "Jesus. Just a dream."

But when he got up and crossed to the mirror, he stopped. There were faint streaks across the glass, curved like fingerprints dragged downward. Long, almost claw-like.. and they hadn't been there yesterday, hadn't they?

The morning was colder than it should've been. Louis dressed slowly, rubbing a hand through his hair and trying not to think about the way the dream had clung to him all night like wet clothes.

The marks on the mirror had vanished. He'd wiped them, stared for a long moment and told himself that he must've pressed against it himself in his sleep. Somehow, even if the shape didn't match his hands, even if his fingers didn't reach that far.

He made tea, let it steep too long and burnt the toast. And eventually, he pulled on his jacket and headed out toward the garden, hoping, or more needing, to see Harry.

The grass was still wet, the roses were somehow worse than the day before, slumping like corpses beneath the weight of too much rain and time. He followed the narrow path that wove through the overgrown hedges and thorn-choked beds, squinting toward the trees.

And then he saw him, Harry was crouched near the fence line, his sleeves rolled up, hands deep in the soil as he cut around the base of some miserable shrub that probably hadn't seen a living bloom since the early 1900s.

Louis slowed, watched him for a moment.

Harry looked up, brushed his hair back with a dirt-streaked forearm and said in that same deep voice that always felt like it came from just behind you. "Morning."

"You know," Louis said, stepping closer and shoving his hands into his pockets. "I've been meaning to ask again, you still never said where exactly you live."

Harry blinked and tilted his head. "Here."

"Yeah, but I mean.. like, where? There's no other house, not cottage. You don't sleep in the shed, do you?"

Harry stood, stretched slightly, long arms loose at his sides. "Been here a long time."

"That's not an answer."

"Isn't it?" He offered a small, strange smile. It didn't quite reach his eyes. "Sometimes a place keeps peoples . Lets them belong. You know?"

Louis stared at him. "You're very weird."

"I get that a lot."

"You ever consider being less cryptic and more Hi, I'm Harry, I live in the basement ?"

"Too damp in the basement." Harry replied, deadpan and Louis huffed a short laugh despite himself.

Something in him unclenched just a bit, Harry looked more normal today, softer somehow. His curls were tied back again, dirt still smeared along one cheek and a worn plaid shirt that suggested he at least tried to blend in with living people.

Louis gestured back toward the house. "You've been here long enough to know anything about it? Any weird history? Hauntings? Cult rituals? Dead cats?"

Harry paused, his eyes dropped for just a second, then rose again. "Some houses have stories," he said finally. "Doesn't mean they're true."

"Right, but do you know any? Even fake ones?"

A slow shrug. "Bits and pieces. Names. Echoes. The usual."

Louis narrowed his eyes. "You're doing it again."

"What?"

"The vague haunted man routine."

Harry grinned. "Only routine I've got."

Louis rolled his eyes and turned slightly to glance back at the house, eyes drifting up to the second floor where a curtain moved just a little too slowly in the wind. "There's a room upstairs," he said quieter now. "Locked, big double doors, doesn't match the rest of the house."

Harry didn't respond immediately, he was watching the house too, expression unreadable.

Louis glanced back at him. "You know anything about it?"

"Mm."

"You do. Come on, just say it."

Harry's voice, when it came, was almost casual. "It's called the Velvet Room."

The air between them seemed to thin. Louis didn't move, his stomach gave a slow twist, a roll of something heavy and strange and inexplicable.

"What did you just call it?" He asked, voice low.

Harry looked at him. "What it's called," he said again. "The Velvet Room."

Louis felt the words ripple through him like cold water over skin. He blinked a few times, his mouth parted. "That's what Niall called it," he said, almost as if to himself. "He made a joke, just a joke, about the doors, about how creepy they looked and he called it that. Velvet Room. How the hell would you know that?"

"I didn't," Harry said, voice mild. "I just told you the name."

Louis stared. The wind moved behind them, lifting the trees just slightly, brushing over the dying garden like breath.

"...How long have you been here?" Louis asked, voice hoarse.

Harry didn't answer, he just turned around and muttered something about the rhododendron being very difficult this year and Louis watched him grabbing a watering can despite the rain, and watering the already dead plant.

Louis didn't ask again, he let Harry be. There was no point in pushing; the man clearly had a penchant for mystery and after the last conversation, Louis figured he'd get nowhere if he asked again. Still, the word Velvet hummed through his chest like static, a memory he hadn't made but somehow carried.

He watched from the kitchen window, half-hidden behind one of the lace curtains he hadn't yet taken down. Outside, Harry knelt among the thorns again, his gloveless fingers disappearing into the roots of a bush that no longer resembled anything living. His movements were deliberate, like he wasn't tending the garden but more performing a rite. Louis frowned. It wasn't that Harry was dangerous, he didn't feel that way, but there was something else, something off-kilter in the way he moved, too slow in places, too precise in others.

At one point, Harry held something up. A bundle of dead stems bound with red thread, or twine or whatever. Louis couldn't quite tell, but he placed it beneath one of the rotting benches like it belonged there. That was enough for now.

Louis turned away from the window, wiped his hands on his jeans and reached for his phone. It rang twice before Niall answered.

"You alive then?" Came his voice, tinny and too loud in the stillness of the old kitchen.

"Yeah," Louis leaned against the counter. "Listen, can I ask you something weird?"

"Only if I can answer it with a dick joke."

Louis snorted. "I'm being serious."

"Alright, go on."

"When we got here, that first day, when you joked about the room upstairs. You called it The Velvet Room. Why?"

Niall was quiet for a moment. Louis could hear birds through the receiver, maybe the sound of Niall's kettle in the background.

"I don't know. Sounded creepy, didn't it?" Niall said eventually. "Like something out of Crimson Peak or Interview with the Vampire. Velvet's proper horror film territory."

"Right, yeah. That's what I figured.. but Harry said the same thing."

Silence again, this one longer. "What, he called it that too?"

"Yeah, like it was just the name. Didn't blink, didn't ask, just said it, I didn't tell him you did."

"Louis," Niall said slowly. "You do see how that's fucking weird, right?"

"Yeah, but I mean, it's an old house, maybe someone called it that before, maybe it's in some documents or—"

"No," Niall interrupted firmly. "No maybes. That's too specific, he knows something or he's messing with you."

Louis hesitated, his gaze drifting back toward the window. Harry had disappeared again, no sound, no trace.

"You really think I should leave?" He asked quietly.

"Yes," Niall said immediately. "I told you already, I've got a bad feeling about this whole thing. There's something off, Lou. I don't like how you sound either. You're not yourself."

"I'm fine."

"You're not. You're—" Niall's voice clipped off.

"What?" Louis leaned forward.

Nothing, the line was quiet for a beat before. "Don't let him die again."

Louis blinked, his posture straightened. "What?"

There was a moment of stillness on the line, like Niall hadn't realised he'd spoken.

"Niall?" Louis asked again, voice sharper now. "What did you just say?"

"...I didn't say anything."

"Yes you did. You said, don't let him die again. What the hell does that mean?"

"I didn't say that," Niall said flatly, the edge in his voice unmistakable now. "That wasn't me."

Louis stood very still. "Who else would it have been?"

"I don't—" Niall cut himself off. "Probably interference, signal's crap today."

Louis swallowed, his throat felt dry.

"You sure you're okay though?" Niall asked, quieter now.

Louis stared at the phone like it might bite him. "Yeah," he said eventually. "Fine."

"Right, well. Text me tonight or I'm calling the local priest."

Louis laughed, but it didn't reach his eyes, they said goodbye.

And Louis stood in the empty kitchen for a very long time, listening to the quiet that followed, trying to convince himself it was only quiet. Nothing else, nothing watching.

From somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked just once and Louis, still gripping the phone, didn't move.

⛤

The next dream came in pieces, shattered fragments of a night that didn't belong to him. Blood was soaking into old floorboards like syrup. A blade, sharp and jagged like bone, plunging again and again into flesh that begged to be held. Screams, not his own, cracked open the dream, echoed through the hollows of the house until they reached the part of him that still clung to wakefulness.

When Louis jerked upright where he had fallen asleep on the old couch, the darkness pressed down around him like a living thing. The room was still but not quiet. The curtains breathed, the shadows shifted just a second too late.

He sat for a long time, hand at the centre of his chest where something still ached.

Then he noticed it, the door, the fucking front door standing wide open.

The wind whispered through the hall, a single dry leaf skittered across the floor like it was fleeing.

With a racing heart, Louis threw the blankets off and padded barefoot down the hall, the old wood was cold under his soles. He stood before the open door, half expecting to find something waiting. Harry maybe, a fox or at this point even a person-shaped shadow with no face. But there was only the long front path, the garden bent under a pale breath of fog and trees clawing quietly at the dawn sky.

Still, something felt off. There were no birds, no sounds, only the faintest rustle.. behind him.

He closed the door and turned, eyes narrowing down the length of the hallway, he slowly made his way up the stairs.

And there, just there, behind the locked double doors of the Velvet Room, he swore he saw a flicker of light. A soft shadow, like someone had walked past a lamp. It vanished as quickly as it came, swallowed up by the stillness.

He told himself it was the dream still clinging to his skin, twisting shapes in his brain. He stepped forward and placed a hand on the cold brass handle of the Velvet Room.

Still locked.

Back in bed, sleep didn't come easily. When it did, it was shallow and strange and stifling. He didn't dream, but he also didn't rest.

The morning light only brought little comfort this time. It filtered grey through the curtains like a warning. The house seemed different, not scarier or colder or anything, just aware. Every groan of the wood, every shift of air, every soft creak from above or below made Louis feel as though the house had begun.. watching back.

He made himself busy with tasks, a hammer in his hand made the silence bearable, a playlist on his phone loud enough to overplay any whisper of a footstep that was not his own. He fixed the curtain rods in the living room, dusted the carved frame of a mirror he didn't remember seeing before. He hauled several ruined chairs out to the porch and scrubbed down the bannisters until his fingers ached.

It helped a little, until he went to the window.

And saw himself standing in the garden.

For a moment, Louis didn't move. His breath caught high in his chest and his body remained frozen as if his bones had locked in place.

There, just past the skeletal trellis and dead rose beds, stood a figure. Same height, same hair, same stance, arms loosely crossed as if in casual conversation. His head was tilted, his eyes were pointed up, toward the window.

Toward himself.

Louis blinked and the figure was gone.

He laughed sharp and a little too loud. "Great," he muttered aloud, dragging a hand over his face. "Absolutely fucking brilliant. One haunted house and two shit nights of sleep and I'm hallucinating my own bloody ghost."

Still, when he looked back out, he found himself checking for footprints in the softened dirt. For a shadow that didn't belong or for proof that something or anything had been there at all.

There wasn't.

Only a slow breath of wind that curled through the broken plants and across the porch steps, brushing cold fingers against the door he hadn't realised he left cracked open behind him.

⛤

Five days...

Five days of dust and rust and decay. Five days of bruised knuckles and splintered wood. Five days of working like something in him was desperate to forget how alone he really was.

Louis had stopped flinching at the knocks in the walls by now. The house had its own language and he had decided he didn't care to learn it. He talked back to it instead. Muttered things like alright, alright, I'm getting to it when a cupboard door creaked open of its own accord, or I'm not impressed, you dramatic bastard when something fell in another room without reason.

He laughed a little too loudly sometimes. Told himself he was just lonely, that isolation and tiredness and bad dreams could explain the way the air in the hallway sometimes felt heavier than it should. He even left the radio on in the kitchen, just to keep something human in the air, but it didn't really help.

He hadn't seen Harry again.

Not in the garden, not near the gate, not even a glimpse of him beyond the hedges. It was as though the man had slipped back into the earth. If he ever came out of it to begin with, Louis thought once and then decided not to dwell on that particular line.

Still, he was beginning to miss the strange company, the silence was getting too loud.

He'd called Niall again an left a voice message this time, thick with sarcasm and some edge he didn't want to name.

"Come down for the weekend," he said, trying to sound light. "Bring beer and crisps, I don't know. Bring a crucifix and a bible maybe. Or bring nothing at all, just.. come, yeah?"

No reply so far.

By the time dusk had swallowed the sky in its blue-grey mouth, Louis had done everything there was to be done. He was bone tired and filthy. His arms ached, his skin felt tight with plaster dust and still the house loomed around him with the same, quiet question he had asked himself from the start:

Why are you here?

He stood in the hallway outside the Velvet Room, still in his worn jeans and paint smeared shirt and stared at the doors.

Those enormous, imposing double doors. Black wood, ornate carvings, one blank knob, no lock he could see and yet they hadn't opened once, until now.

Because now, the left one was ajar.. only by an inch, but unmistakably open.

Louis didn't remember opening it, he hadn't. He also didn't remember hearing a sound but it stood there like an invitation.. or a threat.

Louis reached forward and touched the wood, his heart was thudding like it wanted to escape his chest.

He pushed. The door groaned open on stiff hinges, a sound like something dying. Inside, darkness. Thick, suffocating, absolute darkness. Like a room that did not accept the concept of light.

It wasn't just dim or shadowed, it was a void. The walls, if there were any, seemed to pulse. The space felt vast and impossibly close at once, like walking into a place the mind had tried to forget.

The only thing visible was the gleam of something in the centre of the room, not an object, but a shape. Indistinct and wrong. Louis stepped forward.

Footsteps, not his own. He turned fast but there was no one behind him, only the large mirror hanging on the inside of the door.

And Harry.

Not standing beside him, not in the doorway.

In the mirror.

The glass had not reflected the room, not the darkness, not Louis, but showed something else entirely. A corridor that stretched impossibly long, lit in red, lined with doors. And there, in the centre of it, Harry stood. Expression unreadable, his eyes impossibly dark.

"You're not ready." He said, lips barely moving.

And then the door slammed shut. The sound cracked through the air like thunder. Louis staggered back, hand flying out to catch himself on.. nothing.

He was standing in the hallway again. The Velvet Room locked tight before him.

Not ajar, not open.. as though it had never been open at all.

His hand was trembling, his breath came in sharp bursts. And still, for just a moment longer, he stared into the brass handle, watching how it caught his reflection in a warped shimmer.

Behind him, in that tiny twist of shine, he thought he saw Harry smiling.

Chapter Text

The door didn't open again.

It remained shut, solid and unmoved, like it had never shifted at all, like he'd imagined the entire thing. The room, the darkness, the mirror, the voice. You're not ready. Louis stood frozen before it, unable to make sense of the way his heart still thundered, how his fingers trembled at his sides like the aftershocks of something large and unseen.

And then his legs remembered how to move.

He stumbled down the hallway, not even sure if he meant to leave the house or just put as much distance as possible between himself and that room. The front door was still half open from earlier (or maybe open again) he didn't remember unlocking it, didn't remember touching it at all, but he burst through it and let the late afternoon air wrap itself around him like a balm.

He breathed.. and breathed.. and waited.

Waited for his heartbeat to slow, for his nerves to stop ringing like a struck bell, for the sweat on his back to feel like something natural and not a sign of being hunted.

"Fuck," he whispered, low and shaky, dragging both hands through his hair. "Fuck."

He didn't believe in ghosts. He didn't. He didn't believe in cursed houses or possessed rooms or boys in mirrors that weren't there a second later.

Except he had seen it, felt the door slam, heard the voice.

And he knew it had been Harry's.

He had seen it, right?

He pulled out his phone and called Niall with fingers that still trembled a little, the screen briefly blurring as his thumb missed the contact twice. When Niall picked up finally, Louis nearly laughed with relief.

"Jesus Christ," came Niall's voice, casual and oblivious and so normal that Louis nearly crumpled into the steps. "What's happened?"

Louis forced a laugh, thin and brittle. "You'll never guess what happened."

"Go on then, hit me."

"A bloody raccoon or some shit got in. In the pantry, I think. Scared the fuck out of me."

He hated how easy it was to lie.

But what else could he say? I walked into a room that might not exist, saw a boy in a mirror tell me something terrifying, and then the house spat me back out like it was dreading my presence.

Niall groaned sympathetically. "Christ, I hate raccoons, evil little things. Did you hit it with a broom or something?"

Louis pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. "Didn't even find it, think it ran off again, maybe back to hell."

"Nice. Well, on that note, I'm coming down tomorrow. I've packed garlic, holy water and an overpriced bottle of whisky."

Louis exhaled slowly. "Thanks, Ni."

"Don't thank me yet. I'm going to scream if I see a shadow. You'll have to carry me out bridal style."

"Wouldn't be the weirdest thing this house has seen." Louis muttered, but the smile that flickered at his lips didn't reach his eyes.

They ended the call with goodbyes and a few of Niall's dramatic warnings about not being eaten before morning.

Louis didn't wait, as soon as the line dropped, he pocketed the phone and took off across the weedy lawn, feet pounding uneven stone and grass as he cut through the back of the garden.

"Harry!" He shouted, the name sharp and desperate in the air. "Harry, come on! You said I wasn't ready? Then what the fuck is going on?"

No answer, just wind. The garden stretched wide and tangled before him, overgrown hedges curling in on themselves like twisted arms, roses long since choked by thorns, the ivy dragging itself up the crumbling brick walls like it wanted to peel the house open from the outside.

"Harry!" He called again, throat raw now.

Past the little shed, past the crumbling fountain filled with dead leaves, past the row of weather-beaten statues that had lost their faces.

Nothing. The world felt too still, as if the ground was holding its breath beneath his feet.

And yet, from somewhere to the left, behind the tall hedgerow, a rustle, then a soft scrape, not close enough to be threatening, but not far enough to ignore.

Louis turned. "Harry?" He asked again, quieter now.

But there was no reply, only the silence of something watching maybe.

Louis swallowed hard. It wasn't that he felt unwelcome in the garden, no, the garden didn't mind him. But it didn't care for his questions either and it certainly wasn't going to hand over Harry without a fight.

He took a shaky breath. "You want me to be ready?" He muttered, staring into the wild thorns that lined the path like a warning. "Then stop hiding, show me."

Nothing moved, not visibly at least.

But he swore that something shifted in the treetops, just enough to stir the light, just enough to remind him that the garden was not empty and that Harry, wherever he was, had never really left.

But maybe he was only going insane...

⛤

Evening came thick and strange, as if the air itself was scared to disturb the stillness that had settled over Cozen Hollow. Louis had his sleeves rolled up from a day spent scrubbing dust and history from floorboards, moved from door to door with a quiet kind of determination.

After what happened earlier, he checked every latch, every lock, testing the front and the back entrances, the creaking side door that moaned when it moved and every window. The Velvet Room was last. Still locked and unmoving and still, albeit impossibly, drawing him closer like a song he couldn't name.

He exhaled a shaky laugh, pushing his hair back from his forehead with one hand and shaking his head at himself. "Jesus Tommo," he muttered. "You don't believe in ghosts. You don't believe in cursed houses. You don't believe in.. whatever the fuck this is."

He said it again for good measure, firmer this time, scolding the tremor in his own voice. It was just a house. An old, creaky, weird house with too many corners and a strange man in the garden, but still—just a house. And whatever this creeping weight was, the house couldn't touch him if he refused to believe in it. After all, Harry would tell him, wouldn't he? If something was really wrong? Harry would.

But Harry never said much of anything.

Louis told himself everything would make sense after the weekend. Niall would come with his loud voice and his sarcastic humor and his movie references and they'd sit by the fire with some cheap takeaway and laugh about how Niall nearly jumped out of his skin over some drafty hallway or door that closed on its own. And then he'd talk to Harry, he'd get it out of him, however long it took and Harry would confirm what he already suspected: that the house was just old and weird, nothing supernatural, nothing sinister, nothing to lose sleep over.

Feeling oddly comforted by the sound of his own internal monologue, Louis laid down on the sofa in the living room, the fire still crackling low in the hearth. He wrapped himself in the blanket he'd used the first night, breathed in the scent of old wood and fading smoke and let his eyes flutter shut.

Sleep came slower than usual, but it came, and with it, the dream.

At first it was only noise—low, guttural sounds, the rasp of breath in a narrow space, the slick wet drag of something being pulled across stone. Darkness bled into the edges of his vision, thick like oil, like a storm cloud pressing against the inside of his skull. The dream began to take shape: a room without windows, the walls dripping with something viscous and dark and the air was heavy with iron, like breathing in rust.

There were people, three this time again. Their faces were obscured, smeared by shadow or twisted just slightly out of shape, like he was watching through warped glass. One of them knelt, screaming, a sound Louis felt in his chest, jagged and desperate and far too real. Blood soaked the floor beneath him and in his arms was a second man, limp, lifeless, throat split open like a second mouth.

Louis tried to scream, tried to move, but the dream clutched at him with icy fingers, pulling him deeper. The kneeling man sobbed something unintelligible, forehead pressed to the dead man's cheek, rocking slowly, like the movement might reverse time if he just held on tight enough.

And then movement, the third man stepped forward, his face was covered with a crude mask, bone-white with symbols etched into the surface, angular and harsh, like something ancient. He moved with purpose, placing objects around the corpse; stones, bits of torn parchment, something that looked like dried flowers but smelled like rotting teeth. He was chanting, low and rhythmic, a language Louis didn't understand but which burrowed into his skull anywayd.

The light shifted, though there was no source of it and for the briefest moment, Louis saw the house again, not in the present but decayed, collapsed inward like a carcass, its bones blackened and scorched. The Velvet Room burned and yet its doors still stood.

The corpse's eyes snapped open. Louis jolted awake with a choking gasp, the kind that ripped straight from the base of his lungs, hands scrambling against...

Mud?

Cold, wet, thick and clinging to his arms up to the elbows. He was outside, in the garden. Kneeling in the dirt with his hands buried deep in the soil.

It was still dark.

The wind had picked up while he slept, if he'd slept at all, and the trees around him creaked like ancient things. The moon hung low, heavy and misshapen behind a veil of cloud, casting pale light across the overgrown garden, illuminating the wet tracks his knees had made through the earth as if he'd crawled there. The taste of blood lingered in his mouth, though when he wiped his lips there was nothing.

A sound came from the house, not a crash or anything but a low hum, barely there, like something old breathing through the walls.

Louis stumbled to his feet, breathing hard, looking down at his hands.. they were shaking.

Mud under his nails, in his cuticles, his knuckles were scraped raw. He turned toward the house, heart hammering, and saw...

Nothing.

Just the dark windows staring back at him, but he could have sworn, just before he turned, he'd heard his name.

Not whispered but spoken, from right behind him.

Louis slammed the back door shut behind him, his breath ragged in his throat. He didn't even pause to kick off his shoes, tracking mud through the hallway, leaving ghostly brown smears like someone, or something, had been dragged inside. His fingers shook as he fumbled for the nearest light switch, slapping it on with more force than necessary, then another and another.

By the time he reached the kitchen, the house was blazing with artificial light, each bulb casting garish halos on the aged walls and throwing shadows like claws across the floor. Still, it wasn't enough. It wasn't bright enough, he could still feel the dark clinging to the corners of the rooms like mildew.

"It was just a dream," he muttered loud, deliberate, his voice echoed off the walls. "Just a really.. bloody weird dream. You walked in your sleep. Loads of people do it. Niall used to piss in his mum's laundry basket, for fuck's sake. It's normal."

He said it again, louder. "It's normal."

The faucet squealed when he turned it on, spraying cold water over his muddied hands. He scrubbed hard, nails digging into his own skin as he tried to erase the feeling of earth, of weight, of some unseen pressure that had held him still. He could still feel the dirt, the heaviness of it, as if it had crawled beneath his skin.

"People dream and people sleepwalk. Doesn't mean anything.. doesn't mean anything," he muttered, his voice rising in pitch now, sharp around the edges. "You're not going mad. You're not—"

He looked up.

And froze.

His reflection was smiling.

His face in the mirror, same tousled hair, same mud-streaked jaw, same tired eyes but the mouth was wrong. Too wide and too calm, a slow unnatural smile stretched across his features, splitting them with a grotesque mockery of peace. It wasn't moving, not breathing, not blinking.

Louis staggered back from the sink, breath catching in his throat like a hand was squeezing it shut. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no, no—"

His own body remained frozen in the glass, still smiling. It didn't match him. His own lips were trembling, his hands were clenched but the reflection was still.

Still grinning. He blinked.. and it was gone.

His face in the mirror mirrored him once more, pale and shaken and soaked in sweat, pupils blown wide and lips parted like he'd just surfaced from drowning. The smile was gone, just his own face.. just his own face.

Louis pressed his hand to the mirror's cold surface. "Get a grip," he whispered. "Get. A fucking. Grip."

His chest rose and fell too fast, lungs working overtime, heart hammering like it was trying to claw its way through his ribs. He looked down at the sink, watching the water spiral down the drain, tinged with reddish-brown, unsure now if it was just mud or something worse. The faucet was still running, but the house had gone quiet again.

He left the bathroom lights on, every single one.

He left the kitchen lights on too, and the hall, and the bedroom.

Then he sat on the floor against the sofa, eyes fixed on the nearest mirror across the room just in case.

Just in case the thing inside it decided to smile again.

⛤

The knock came like a gunshot, Louis flinched so hard his back thudded against the frame of the couch, his heart vaulting into his throat before his mind could catch up. For a long moment he just sat there, half curled on the rug with the lights all blazing around him, listening to the echo of it, just three short knocks. Not frantic, not aggressive, just there.

He laughed, or tried to, it came out wrong. Hollow, like it didn't belong in this house anymore.

"Perfect," he muttered, dragging himself upright by the couch arm. "Absolutely fucking perfect. Creepy mirror, sleepwalking nightmares, haunted gardening, sure, yeah, let's add a visitor at three in the morning, why won't you."

Louis rubbed at his eyes, muttered again under his breath, somehting about horror movie clichés and how he was definitely going to die first for being the sarcastic one, and made his way toward the front door, his socketed feet soundless against the cold wood.

When he opened the door, Harry was standing there.

His curls were damp, clinging to his forehead like he'd walked through a mist that wasn't there. His eyes, green but darker than Louis remembered, were unreadable in the low porch light, like the shadows had taken root in them. He wore the same heavy coat as the first time they saw him, collar turned up, dirt under his nails like he'd just crawled out from under the garden beds.

Louis hesitated, Harry didn't speak.

"...Right," Louis said, crossing his arms but keeping one hand on the doorframe like it might anchor him in reality. "You've got a real knack for timing, you know that?"

Still, Harry didn't reply, only tilted his head slightly, like a curious animal might.

Louis exhaled through his nose but then, without entirely meaning to, stepped aside. "Whatever, come in. You're clearly not dangerous, just.. unnervingly silent."

Harry stepped past him, boots quiet against the floor. He didn't glance at the mirrors, didn't even blink at the fact that every single light in the house was blazing like a stage set. He just stood there, in the middle of the living room, like he belonged there, like he always had.

Louis closed the door.

They sat in silence for a minute. Louis on the couch, legs pulled up beneath him, trying to look casual while still very obviously watching Harry like he might sprout fangs. Harry remained standing near the window, fingers trailing along the edge of the bookshelf like he was collecting the dust between the spines.

"So," Louis finally said. "Do you usually make unannounced house calls, or is this a special occasion?"

Harry blinked before saying softly. "I was nearby."

"Right," Louis said. "Doing what? Whispering cryptic things into mirrors again?"

Harry's eyes flicked to him, Louis regretted it immediately.

But the corner of Harry's mouth curled, not quite a smile though. "You're not ready," he said again, this time with less finality, it sounded almost.. observational, like he was testing the words out. "But you will be."

Louis tried to not think about the fact that Harry actually seemed to know what he meant or how he was not supposed to know. "Oh, brilliant. Cheers for that." Louis scrubbed a hand over his face, suddenly exhausted. "Any chance you'll ever stop speaking in riddles, or is that part of the groundskeeper job description?"

Harry tilted his head again, something subtle shifting in his expression and then quiet and distant. " Would you believe me if I said I wanted to help?"

Louis stared at him. "I..." He shook his head. "I don't even know what's happening. So no, probably not."

Harry looked away then, back toward the window, eyes following nothing Louis could see.

And then, for the first time, he said something real. "The house knows you're here now. It's.. remembering."

Louis swallowed hard. "Remembering what?"

But Harry didn't answer.

He just turned, slow and deliberate and walked toward the door. He paused there, hand resting lightly on the wood, and looked back over his shoulder. "I wouldn't go into the room again." He said softly.

And then he was gone, into the dark.

Louis stood there long after the door had closed, staring at the space Harry had vanished into like the night itself had swallowed him whole. There wasn't even the sound of retreating footsteps, no crunch of gravel, no rustle of leaves, just silence.

He dragged a hand through his hair and let out a low breath. His heart was still pounding, not violently now but steadily, like it had settled into the idea that this was just the new normal. Weird men in the night, cryptic comments, mirror-doppelgänger warnings. Great.

The worst part, Louis thought as he turned away from the door, was that none of it felt fake anymore. But it should. Everything should feel like a joke, like he was just overtired and letting the house get to him. But when Harry had said those words with the exact same rhythm, the exact same cadence as the not-Harry in the mirror...

Nope. That was worse, much worse.

He crossed the living room quickly and sat down on the couch, curling into the far corner like it might keep the shadows away. The lights were still on, all of them, he hadn't turned a single one off since he'd come in from the garden and right now he didn't plan to. He grabbed his phone off the coffee table, screen bright and familiar and opened Instagram.

Distraction, this was the trick.

Photos. Memes. Stories. Niall's latest post about some sandwich from a café that looked way too extravagant. Louis forced a smile, his fingers scrolled.

Something about dogs and about politics. Normal.. all of it so blessedly, beautifully normal.

He kept scrolling, eyes glazing over, until a headline on the sidebar of something caught his attention. He didn't even remember clicking on it, it was just suddenly there. A page titled Residual Hauntings and Spiritual Echoes: The Power of Memory.

He stared at the glowing text for a moment, lips parting in disbelief before he laughed, actually laughed out loud, too loud in the silent house.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," he muttered to himself, dragging a hand down his face. "No. Nope. Absolutely not, I am not that person, I do not believe in haunted houses. I believe in pipes and drafts and creaky floorboards and Jesus Christ Tomlinson, get a grip."

He hit the back button, then closed the browser entirely, as if the app might infect him with more nonsense.

He texted Niall one last time:
Hurry up and get here... bring beer.... and snacks.

Niall didn't reply, but that was fine. Tomorrow, he'd come. Louis would see him. They'd laugh about all this. They'd figure it out. Harry would explain whatever nonsense he was on about. The mirror would behave, the room would stay shut, the dreams would stop.

It would be fine.

It had to be.

Louis checked the front door again, even twisted the key twice just in case, and made his way back to the couch. He left the lights on, every single one. He lay down slowly, arm under his head, phone still in hand.

And then, in the soft flicker of the lamp, with the world finally still, Louis let himself drift.

Tomorrow would come.

Tomorrow, things would get better.

They had to.

⛤

The rest of the night passed without incident. No dreams, no sounds, no strange lights or footsteps or reflections that didn't belong to him. Just the quiet hum of the house at rest and Louis sleeping through until dawn without interruption. When he woke, sunlight was breaking gently through the blinds, low and pale yes, but still warm in a way the house hadn't felt in days. He blinked up at the ceiling, surprised by the stillness of it all and for a moment he just lay there, heart calm, breath easy.

"Told you so," he muttered aloud, voice croaky from sleep but smug all the same. "Sleep deprivation, that's all it was."

He got up, turned off some of the lights he'd left on (left a few still glowing, because well, no need to push his luck) and padded into the kitchen in his socks. The floor wasn't cold anymore, the air didn't feel heavy. Even the mirror above the sink looked ordinary, the kind of mirror that just reflected his tired face and not much else.

Normal.

He made toast, ate it leaning against the counter while scrolling mindlessly again, then scribbled a list on the back of a receipt he'd found. Snacks and a few more basics, maybe beer. If Niall was going to brave the haunted countryside, he might as well be greeted with some form of hospitality. Louis even threw on a nicer jumper before heading out, catching sight of himself in the hallway mirror on the way past and yep—normal. Just him.

The drive into the village was short and the sun was still doing its best, lending a kind of sleepy golden hue to the landscape that almost made him feel silly for everything that had happened.

The shop smelled like all kind of foods and old wood. He'd just grabbed crisps off a shelf when he heard the familiar voice.

"Louis?"

He turned and there was Zayn, standing near the baked goods with a wire basket and a slightly hesitant smile.

"Oh hey," Louis said, startled by how relieved he felt to see another familiar face. "Didn't think I'd run into you again so soon."

Zayn shrugged, stepping closer. "Small village, few shops. You've got a better chance of running into your ex or your neighbour's goat than avoiding someone."

Louis laughed, the sound genuine this time. "Fair."

They chatted for a few moments, nothing too deep; how the house was, how the weather might hold, how Zayn still hadn't fixed his back gate because if it hasn't fallen completely off yet, it's doing its job. And then Louis said it before thinking:

"You should come by actually, tonight. Just for a bit. My mate's Niall driving in for the weekend, and it'd be nice to have more than one familiar face."

Zayn blinked at him. "At your place?"

"Yeah. It's still a bit of a mess, but I've got beer. And snacks and possibly a cursed mirror or two but don't tell Niall."

Zayn gave a laugh at that, the sound a little sharp at the edge, like he wasn't sure if it was a joke but then he nodded. "Yeah. Alright. I'll come by."

And just like that, something shifted. Not the house, not the air, not the shadow that sometimes crept just behind Louis when he walked alone, but something inside him. A breath of relief, a sense that maybe he wasn't alone in this, whatever it was.

He finished his shopping, said goodbye to Zayn with a wave and drove back with the window cracked open and music playing low. The house was waiting when he returned, sitting under the sun like it had never done anything wrong at all.

Like it was pretending, and Louis.. he let it.

At least for today.

Niall arrived just after five. Louis watched from the front window as his car pulled in, headlights cutting briefly across the garden like a warning. The moment Niall stepped out, he was already muttering to himself, coat drawn tight around his body like the air had teeth. Louis opened the door before he could knock.

"Still alive." He said, lifting one brow.

Niall stepped inside like he expected the hallway to eat him. "Yeah, well, that could change any second. Still feels like there's a Netflix documentary waiting to happen."

"Good to see you too." Louis said, locking the door behind him.

The hug they shared was brief, a clap on the back and a low grunt from Niall that might've been affection or exhaustion. He looked around like the house might shift beneath his feet, then rubbed his arms.

"Bit warmer than the last time," he muttered. "Didn't think haunted houses had central heating."

Louis laughed, a touch too loud and turned toward the kitchen. "Come on. I've got beer and crisps and a complete lack of supernatural activity."

Niall snorted. "Says the man who sounded like he'd been chased by Satan himself two nights ago. What was it again? A raccoon?"

"Shut up." Louis said, tossing him a bag of crisps.

Niall narrowed his eyes but dropped it, because Louis hadn't given him more than that and Louis knew better than to fan the flames of his paranoia.

Instead, they talked. About work, about mutual friends and old jokes, about how Louis was too bloody proud to ask for help with the renovation but soft enough to invite him for snacks. And Niall didn't mention ghosts again, not directly at least. Just the odd dig here and there, like when the heating creaked or the hallway light flickered once.

"If I die in my sleep, tell them I always said this house looked like death itself."

"I'll put it on your headstone." Louis promised.

By seven, the sun was nearly gone. A low haze hung over the trees outside, pale and dense. Louis checked his phone and right on cue, Zayn messaged that he was heading over.

"He's coming?" Niall asked surprised.

"Yeah, why not?"

Niall looked at him, then toward the hallway that led to the Velvet Room. "Well. Guess that means it can't be that cursed."

Louis didn't answer, just shrugged and opened another beer.

When Zayn arrived, the mood shifted again. He was casual in a dark jumper, jeans and a warm smile that instantly relaxed the room. Louis let him in and Niall offered him a beer before proper greetings were even made.

They fell into easy conversation surprisingly fast. Zayn was good at that, wry without being sharp, interested without seeming nosy. Louis caught himself laughing more than once and even Niall seemed to unwind with each sarcastic jab Zayn threw his way.

At one point, Zayn said something about how the old houses in the area all creak like they're whispering secrets and winked at Louis when he said it.

It was subtle.

So subtle that Louis might've ignored it if not for the warmth it sparked down his spine. He raised his eyebrows, grinning despite himself and leaned into the couch just enough to hide it from Niall's view.

Niall, of course, clocked the entire thing. He glanced between them and smirked into his beer. "Well, don't mind me. Just enjoying the sparks here."

"Shut up." Louis hissed, throwing a cushion at him.

Zayn just laughed.

It wasn't much really. But for a few hours, the house didn't feel quite so oppressive. The lights didn't flicker, the shadows didn't shift and Louis didn't hear any voices calling his name in the distance. Just the low murmur of conversation and laughter that felt almost normal.

Zayn stayed longer than expected. Another beer, more talk and the kind of slow slide into comfort that had Louis thinking maybe he'd ask him round again next week. He was sharp, a little too observant maybe, but not unkind and his presence somehow anchored the evening in something solid. Something that didn't whisper when the wind pressed against the windowpanes.

But just past eleven, Zayn stood up, stretched and shook his head when Louis offered him the spare room. "I should head off," he said, like it was nothing, like it wasn't strange at all. "Left my dog alone long enough as it is. He gets all dramatic if I'm late for his night walk."

"You've had, like... three beers," Niall said, sitting up straighter. His voice was casual, but Louis saw the flicker in his eyes. "You sure you want to drive?"

"I'm fine," Zayn replied, slinging on his jacket. "Just up the road, remember? Barely fifteen minutes."

"Still. You could crash here."

"Nah," Zayn said too quick. "Next time maybe. I'll bring Jasper. He'd love the garden."

Louis opened the door and a rush of cold air poured in, slipping past them like something uninvited. Zayn paused in the doorway, half-turned as if he'd forgotten something, then shifted awkwardly, thumb rubbing over the ridge of his knuckle.

"Oh," Louis said suddenly, like the thought had ambushed him. "By the way—Harry. Do you know him? Lives around here, I think."

Zayn blinked. "Harry?"

"Yeah. Dark curls, tall. Bit..." Louis gestured vaguely, trying to summon the words. "Weird, but nice?"

There was a moment where Zayn didn't answer. His expression didn't change much, but something about the silence stretched thin between them, like a wire about to snap.

Then he shook his head. "Don't think I do. No Harry I can remember."

Louis opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Niall stood up behind him.

"Wait, what?" Niall said. "Seriously? You two live in the same village—"

"I'm bad with names," Zayn interrupted, too smoothly. He laughed, light and careless, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Probably just slipped my mind. Or maybe I've seen him around and didn't catch his name."

Louis didn't believe that really. But Niall looked like he was about to combust, so he nodded, let it go and thanked Zayn again.

They watched from the porch as Zayn got in his car. The headlights flared, sweeping the trees. Just before the car turned back toward the road, Louis thought he saw Zayn glance once into the rearview mirror.

Once the car disappeared, Niall let out a breath he'd clearly been holding. "Bad with names my arse."

Louis didn't answer, he shut the door, locked it and left the light on in the hallway.

Now it was just the two of them again. The laughter had gone, the house was quiet but not in a comforting way. It was the kind of quiet that made you aware of your heartbeat.

Louis rubbed the back of his neck and tried not to think about Harry or about the flicker in Zayn's eyes when that name was spoken.

Or the way the hallway light buzzed overhead, faintly, like a warning.

They stayed up a little longer after Zayn left. Niall put something dumb on his phone, some clip of a haunted doll caught on camera, and Louis rolled his eyes, grateful for the distraction. Nothing happened, no sounds, no flickers in the corner of his eye. No dreams clawing their way into his brain like mold. Just two mates on a couch, trying too hard to feel normal.

Eventually, sometime after one, they trudged upstairs.

And that's when it happened.

Niall stopped halfway up the last flight, pressing his fingers to his nose with a confused sound.

"Wait, what the fuc?"

It was blood. Sudden, bright and already trailing over his upper lip.

Louis blinked. "Jesus. Are you..?"

Niall laughed, but it came out wrong. "Just a nosebleed. Weird though, I never get them."

He applied pressure onto his nostrils with his thumb and index finger, muttering something about dry air, but this time Louis wasn't sure. The house wasn't dry. If anything, the air felt too thick sometimes, clinging and heavy. And something about the blood, how quick it came, how long it took to stop, made Louis feel like his skin didn't fit right anymore.

Still, they didn't talk about it.

Louis handed Niall a wet towel and they brushed their teeth in silence. Then they got into bed like nothing was wrong, the tension between them ignored, but present, hovering like steam just under the ceiling.

The night, somehow, stayed quiet. No dreams, no footsteps, just sleep.

But in the morning...

Louis was the first to stir. Something felt.. off. The house was still, too still, like it was pretending to be asleep.

He padded downstairs barefoot, rubbing at his eyes, intending to make coffee, maybe even open the windows if the weather held. But when he turned the corner into the main hall, he stopped.

The picture frames on the wall, eight of them, all still empty, had been turned around.

All of them, neatly, as if someone had taken their time, one by one and reversed each frame to face the wall.

There was no sign of disturbance, no mess. Just that small, quiet act of wrongness.

Louis stood frozen, eyes darting from one frame to the next.

The sun was creeping through the curtains now. Everything was lit in that washed-out gold of early morning, but it didn't help. If anything, the light made it worse. Like the house was mocking him with how calm it could pretend to be.

He didn't call for Niall and didn't touch the frames. He just stared, heart climbing higher in his chest, because that wasn't sleepwalking. That wasn't a draft, that wasn't some dream he couldn't remember.

That was someone, or something, showing him they were here too.

⛤

Louis didn't say a word when Niall came downstairs. The picture frames were still turned toward the wall, but he'd simply walked past them like they weren't there, like they'd always been that way. It didn't matter, he wasn't going to mention it, at least not yet.

Niall was chipper again, with casual smiles and stupid comments about how the house looked slightly less like the first level of a horror game. Louis managed a smile, it felt easier this morning. The sky was holding light, pale but present and Niall's presence made the walls feel less sharp.

They made coffee and toast. Ate in the half-finished kitchen where every surface still smelled faintly of dust and old varnish. Niall leaned his elbows on the table and finally said, "So.. you're not gonna tell me more about Harry?"

Louis shrugged, picking at a dry spot on the table where paint hadn't stuck right. "He's just.. odd. I think he lives nearby. I keep running into him. He's not dangerous."

"You still think he lives nearby?" Niall raised an eyebrow.

Louis gave him a flat look and that was it, nothing more, no accusations, no paranoia, just a breath of silence where they let it settle.

They spent most of the late morning working. Niall, surprisingly, was helpful, he rolled up his sleeves and helped Louis sand down door frames, carry wood planks, patch a section of the cracked hallway ceiling. At one point, Niall asked how the hell Louis managed to get water and electricity working again in a place that looked like it hadn't been touched since the Cold War.

Louis shrugged again. "I did the paperwork. Paid the right people. Guy from the council called twice. I think he pitied me."

"And he didn't say anything like, hey maybe don't live in the murder house?"

"He asked if I had a will, that count?"

Niall laughed, loud and genuine and it rang through the dusty halls like sunshine after a rainy day.

Later, when the sun had pushed a little higher, they stepped out into the garden, tools in hand. The grass had somehow grown more thick and unruly since Louis first arrived. Twigs and nettles clawed over the edges of broken brick and whatever once passed as flower beds had turned to strange wild growth, half-dead and tangled. The garden stretched far into the back, almost too far for a house this size, like it had no real end.

"Alright," Niall said, squinting into the pale distance. "So where do we start?"

Louis chewed on the inside of his cheek, staring at the twisted tree near the back gate, its limbs sharp against the sky. "We dig it out," he said eventually. "All of it, start over."

"Bit dramatic."

Louis didn't answer. Because truth be told, every time he looked out here, he felt the strangest sense that the garden wasn't just overgrown. It was hiding something.

But maybe that was just sleep deprivation.

It was mid-afternoon, just as the sun was retreating behind a veil of thin clouds and the wind began to pick up again in lazy, aimless curls, Niall cursed under his breath and yanked his hand back from the overgrown bed near the left wall, cradling his palm like he'd been burned. "Something just fucking bit me," he muttered, inspecting a red welt rising already on the side of his thumb and before Louis could take a proper look, Niall hissed again. "And I cut my finger on.. Jesus, I don't even know what."

Louis straightened up from where he'd been clearing weeds, wiping sweat from his brow with the hem of his sleeve as he walked over. "You're not used to physical labour, that's all," he said with a smirk, but his voice didn't carry the same ease it had earlier. "You probably just caught it on a thorn. They're all over."

"Yeah," Niall said, squinting at his hand, frowning deeper. "Maybe."

He didn't say anything more about it. Didn't press, didn't accuse the earth of anything sinister. But he kept glancing back at the patch where it happened, like something still lingered there beneath the tangle of vine and root and shadow. Louis didn't look, he didn't want to.

They worked a little longer, but Niall grew quieter. And then his phone buzzed, one of those casual, mundane intrusions from the real world that usually came as relief. But this time, Louis knew before Niall even looked up what was going to happen. It was in the way Niall's eyes flicked across the screen, in the way his shoulders dropped with something that was not quite annoyance, not quite guilt.

"Fucking hell," Niall said, grimacing. "Pipe burst in my flat, or something like that. My neighbour says there's water leaking into his unit. I've gotta go."

Louis stared at him, wiping his hands off with a dirty cloth, his heart sinking low and heavy behind his ribs. "Can't it wait? I thought you were staying another night."

"I was. I wanted to." Niall looked up, sincerity plain in his face. "But if it ruins the flooring or walls, I'm out a few grand and I already live in a shoebox."

"Right," Louis said, forcing a nod, even though it felt like something was being peeled away again, like the comfort was temporary and the house had known that all along. "Of course, go. Just.. text me when you get there."

"I will." Niall slung his bag over his shoulder, then paused, standing in the half-shadow of the doorway. "You'll be alright?"

"I'm not a child."

"Could've fooled me, with how you screamed when that owl flew past the attic window."

"That was you, you idiot."

"Semantics." Niall grinned again and even now, about to leave, uncertain and slightly bloody, he couldn't help himself. "Anyway, if the walls start whispering or you wake up somewhere else in the house, just remember: don't follow the voices, alright? You know what happens in those movies."

Louis forced a laugh, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'll keep that in mind."

And then Niall was gone, walking down the gravel path toward his car, boots crunching, engine sputtering to life. Louis watched until the taillights were nothing but a blur of red swallowed by the trees. The house behind him creaked once, like it had exhaled.

And just like that, he was alone again. The quiet folded over the garden like a second skin. The light was starting to drain from the sky, slow and syrup-thick and Louis stood in it for just a moment longer, arms crossed against the chill, telling himself he'd go back inside in a minute.

Just a minute more, just until the dark finished settling in.

Chapter Text

By the time he'd wrapped up in the garden, the last smear of sun was gone, leaving behind only the hush of early dusk and the weight of the air, damp and heavier than it should've been. Louis brushed the dirt off his jeans with his palms, flexed his fingers a few times to get rid off the ache and glanced toward the edge of the trees, half-expecting to see movement, half-hoping he wouldn't.

Harry hadn't shown again.

Louis told himself it was fine, better that way maybe. He thought maybe texting Zayn but instead he tossed his phone onto the kitchen table and then moved to make tea.

He tried to relax. Turned on some music from a playlist he used to fall asleep to back home. Curled into the corner of the living room sofa with the lights dimmed to a warm low and just as he was starting to feel like maybe he could stop bracing for something, a voice broke the silence behind him.

"You work too hard."

Louis startled so badly he sloshed hot tea onto his wrist, the cup rattling as he set it down too fast. He turned, and there was Harry. Not coming through the door, not walking up the stairs. Just there, standing in the open archway to the kitchen like he'd always been there, pale light from the overhead bulb gleaming off his hair, his eyes darker than usual, but calm. Almost more.. normal. Like a person playing human and doing a better job at it this time.

Louis blinked, let out a shaky breath and ran a hand down his face. "Christ. You're shit at not sneaking up on people."

Harry tilted his head, unbothered. "Wasn't sneaking. I said something before I stepped in."

"You said something after you already were in my living room."

Harry didn't answer that, instead he stepped a little further in, movements slow as if trying not to spook something, or maybe testing how close he was allowed to get.

"You don't have to do all of that out there," he said finally. "The garden, the work. I've been keeping it."

Louis let out a small, incredulous huff, looking down at his still stained hands. "Yeah? Then I'd hate to see it when you don't keep it," he looked up, arched a brow. "You're not exactly the Royal Horticultural Society, are you?"

Harry's face didn't move, no twitch of amusement, his eyes just held Louis' a moment too long before he said flatly. "It's difficult. It fights back sometimes."

Louis opened his mouth to joke again but paused, something sour pressing against the back of his tongue. "Right," he said, carefully now. "Plants. Fighting back. Got it."

"I don't like when people laugh at me.. we need to get along." Harry said quiet, but not angry. It was just a fact, a string of words dropped like stones into water.

Louis leaned back on the couch and let out a breath, dragging a hand through his hair. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that," he gestured vaguely toward the kitchen. "Tea?"

Harry didn't move. "I don't drink it."

"Are you British at all?"

That earned the tiniest tilt of his mouth, almost a smile and Louis stared at it like he might learn something from the flicker of expression, something vital or grounding. But Harry said nothing more, he just came forward slowly and sat in the armchair across from him, moving like someone who wasn't entirely used to the act of sitting.

The quiet settled again, heavy and strange. Louis looked over at him, uneasy and too tired to pretend otherwise. "What did you mean? That we need to get along?"

Harry looked toward the window, where the trees outside had begun to twist gently in the night wind. "I think you're meant to stay and that means I should help."

Louis stared. "Help with what?"

Harry's eyes shifting back to him, darker than before. "You're not ready yet. But maybe soon."

And that was all he said, no answer. Louis knew better than to ask again.

They didn't speak much more after that, but Harry stayed for a long time and Louis didn't ask him to leave. There was something steady about his presence, even if it came wrapped in discomfort, like sitting too close to a flame you're not sure will stay contained.

And Louis didn't sleep until Harry was gone.

⛤

It was morning, but not like the mornings Louis knew. The light was softer, more sepia, filtered through lace curtains that didn't belong to him and there was a smell in the air, old wood warmed by sun, linseed oil, something sweet and earthy like pipe tobacco and garden soil. His clothes weren't his. He was wearing a soft white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, the fabric thin and slightly scratchy at the seams, tucked into high-waisted trousers that felt stiff with starch and worn-in time.

He was in the house, but not quite, because the walls had changed. The wallpaper was a pale green with faded roses, curling slightly at the seams near the baseboards. A gramophone played some old tune he couldn't recognise from the next room and outside the window, the garden was neat and full of life. The shed wasn't broken or leaning or blackened by rot, it was being built.

He stepped outside and the air met him differently, sharper, maybe cleaner and even quieter. Just the rustle of trees and birdsong and the sound of someone hammering in the garden, someone who looked up at him and smiled.

Harry.

But not Harry as he'd seen him before. This version wore suspenders over a rolled shirt, a smudge of dirt on his jaw and sweat glinting at his temple. He looked alive, vibrant and yet somehow the same; same deep eyes, same way he tilted his head like he could hear something Louis couldn't.

"You coming to help, or just watching?" Harry called out with a crooked grin and Louis laughed without meaning to.

"I'm supervising." He said, stepping off the porch into sun-dappled grass that felt too soft, too lush.. like walking on memory.

The two of them worked on the shed together, their laughter was easy and full like it had always been there, nails were wordlessly passed between them, jokes about crooked beams and splinters and how Harry had no real talent for measurements. Their hands brushed once, then again, knuckles smudged with dirt and sweat and something that felt like recognition.

And when they paused, when Harry leaned against the frame and Louis looked up, something shifted, so subtle, he wouldn't have caught it if he hadn't already been waiting for it. A flicker in Harry's eyes, something like relief, or nostalgia, or maybe something far more dangerous than either.

"Feels good," Louis said. "Like we've done this before."

Harry's voice was low, like it didn't quite belong to the body speaking it. "Maybe because we have."

And before Louis could ask, before he could think, Harry leaned in and kissed him, soft and certain, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like they were already part of something that had taken root long before they knew it. And Louis kissed him back. Not because he understood, but because it felt right, absurdly so. The scent of wood and lavender clung to Harry's skin, and the moment was warm, infinite and real...

Until it wasn't.

He woke with a jolt, his breath catching sharp in his throat, back on the couch, his heart was thudding too fast, he felt cold sweat beneath the collar of his shirt. The house was quiet again. The shadows all wrong, the light cold and grey. His lips tingled like he'd bitten them in his sleep and his hands were clenched into the blanket as if they'd been trying to hold on to something that slipped between his fingers like ash.

He sat there for a long time, staring at the window, the garden beyond dark and still.

It had just been a dream. A weird, vivid dream, probably the result of being alone too much, too long and having to admit, finally, if only to himself, that Harry was.. well, attractive. That didn't mean anything. Dreams were strange like that, they turned loneliness into stories, confusion into fantasies, strangers into men you wanted to kiss under sunlit trees.

Still, the weight of it stayed with him, heavy and strange but when he stood to stretch, he caught sight of himself in the hallway mirror.

And froze.

For just a second, or even less than a second, his reflection had dirt under his nails and a smear of something dark on his mouth.

After a blink, it was gone.. and the house, as always, said nothing.

⛤

The next few days passed with an eerie sort of calm, a calm that didn't feel earned but rather granted, like something that was watching had simply turned its face away for a while, letting the dust settle and the silence stretch too comfortably across the floorboards. Louis moved through the house like someone half-awake, half-waiting, but trying desperately not to admit it.

He told himself it was fine. He was fine. It had all been a phase, a weird foggy haze brought on by exhaustion and isolation, too much caffeine and not enough real conversation. The dream, the mirror, the blood, the shifting things, none of it had repeated since. No new nightmares, no whispers at the edge of hearing, no doors slamming shut behind his back. He ate regularly again, drank water, opened the windows during the day. It helped or at least it seemed to.

He saw Harry more now. Not just fleeting shadows or unsettling glimpses. He spoke full words, with half-smiles and even questions. He was still strange, still too quiet in his movements, still inclined to disappear at inconvenient times, but he wasn't.. scary. Not like before at least. He even sat with Louis once, legs folded beneath him on the floor while Louis skimmed through paint samples and muttered complaints about the wall texture being too difficult. Harry had tilted his head, replied dry and perfectly timed and Louis had laughed. Properly laughed and Harry had smiled soft and crooked like sunlight through a broken blind.

They started talking more, conversations becoming more fluent, even if they never made much sense in the larger picture. Harry rarely answered questions with anything other than vague noncommittals or cryptic little comments and if Louis pushed too far or asked too much, he'd just change the subject or vanish again like smoke dispersing in sunlight, not really though, it was only a metaphor Louis liked to use because obviously he can't vanish like smoke.

Still, it felt better, less terrifying, almost safe.

Almost.

One evening, they ended up in the kitchen, Harry leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, watching Louis try to wrestle an ancient drawer back into place.

"Zayn might come by again soon." Louis said casually without really thinking, just tossing it into the quiet to see what would happen.

Harry didn't move at first but something shifted behind his expression, barely visible. A flicker at the corner of his mouth, a flash of something in his eyes that didn't quite fit.

"Zayn," Harry echoed slowly, voice light but strained. "The one with the dog?"

"Yeah," Louis said, pausing in his battle with the drawer. "Nice guy, why?"

"No reason," Harry smiled again, too quickly. "Just didn't think he liked places like this."

Louis frowned a little. "What, haunted houses?"

Harry's smile stayed, but it didn't spread to his eyes. "Old ones."

There was a pause, long enough to thicken the air between them, but then Harry glanced toward the window like he'd heard something only he could hear and the moment passed.

Louis pushed the drawer back in and rolled his eyes. "Well, he'll survive. I'm not sure the house has it in for him."

That earned him a soft huff of laughter. "Not yet." Harry repeated under his breath and Louis pretended not to have heard that.

They didn't speak much more that evening. Louis went back to painting the upstairs hallway while Harry lingered in the doorframe like a patient shadow and when Louis turned around again, he was gone.

Still, the quiet held and Louis let himself believe it was over, whatever it was. That maybe it really had just been a cocktail of stress and solitude, a tangle of intrusive thoughts that were beginning to unravel now that the house had started feeling less like something alive and more like what it was always supposed to be: old wood, cracked walls and work yet to be done.

He didn't notice the framed photo in the upstairs hall was slightly crooked.
He didn't see the blackened edge along the skirting board near the attic stair.
He didn't hear the soft creak of something moving behind the Velvet Room's locked door.

And he didn't know, not yet, that peace in this house was never meant to last.

⛤

Zayn arrived in the late afternoon, the sunlight was casting long golden beams across the porch as he stepped from his car with a paper bag in hand, smiling like he had nothing but good intentions. Louis met him halfway down the path, arms open in mock ceremony, grinning in spite of the strange tension that always pressed into his lungs when he thought about someone else stepping over the threshold.

Still he told himself this was good, this was normal. A friend visiting for the sake of company. Louis needed that, needed the grounding of a familiar voice, the kind of casual banter that kept his head from spinning too far into the clouds.

They started with coffee and moved to wine later. Sat in the living room with the windows open to let the breeze through, the house unusually quiet in a way that almost felt respectful. Polite even, as if it were waiting.

Zayn, for all his usual charm, seemed genuinely relaxed this time, less wary more interested. He asked about the renovations, complimented the woodwork, laughed at Louis' attempt at wallpaper in the front hall. They talked about uni, exes, awful dating experiences, the weird dreams Louis had started writing down in his phone's notes app. Louis nearly mentioned Harry once or twice again, but each time he found himself skipping over the name, like a word he couldn't quite pronounce anymore.

"So," Zayn said eventually, dragging his finger through the condensation on his glass. "What made you want this house, of all places? Place has got a bit of.. reputation, doesn't it?"

Louis tilted his head, smiled lazily. "You mean the whole haunted-vibe thing?"

Zayn shrugged. "Not even that. Just.. no one's really lived here long.. or at all really, it was always empty. My Mum used to say the trees leaned away from it like they didn't want to look."

Louis chuckled a little too loudly. "That's dramatic."

"Mm. Maybe," Zayn allowed, then leaned back and added. "But it's got that feeling, doesn't it? Like it's waiting for something."

Louis hesitated only a second before he said."I thought I was losing my mind at first, like genuinely losing it. Weird dreams, stuff moving. That.. pressure, you know?"

Zayn gave him a look, half concern and half curiosity. "And now?"

Louis hesitated, glanced toward the kitchen door, as if expecting to see something in the shadow there, but there was nothing, only the quiet.

"Now," he said slowly. "It feels more like just a house. It's old, yeah and sure, it's got character. But I dunno, Harry being around more helps. And you, this, it's good. It makes it feel normal, like it's just me getting in my own head."

Zayn smiled at that. "Well, glad to be part of your mental stability plan."

They laughed together, an easy sound that felt almost too loud in the room. Louis hadn't realized how long it'd been since the house had heard laughter that didn't turn sour halfway through.

But then, as Zayn stood to stretch and offered to help with dinner, something changed.

It was the lights, it wasn't a flicker, nor a pop or an outage. Just a dimming, slow like the sun itself had been pulled behind something heavy and thick and wrong. The overhead light turned a faint sepia tone and the shadows stretched long along the walls in impossible directions. Louis blinked at it, but Zayn didn't seem to notice, he was already heading toward the kitchen.

Then came the hum. Low, almost a vibration more than a sound. Like something settling beneath the floorboards. Louis felt it through the soles of his feet, like breath, slow and deep.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Again.

"Did you feel—" Louis started, but when he turned to say it, Zayn had already walked through the doorway.

The kitchen light buzzed, a slow, sickly flicker now, as if the bulb couldn't decide if it wanted to exist at all. Louis stepped into the kitchen behind Zayn and tried to shake it off, just the wiring, just nerves.

But the knife drawer was open wide, Zayn hadn't touched it. Louis frowned and closed it. It slid back too easily, like someone had oiled it that very morning.

Zayn said nothing, he was bent to examine the tap. "Bit of a weird rattle in the pipe." He muttered.

Louis almost said something again, but the words stuck.

Later, when they were eating and trying to laugh again, the hum came back. Just for a second, barely enough to make Zayn pause mid-sentence, but it was there. Louis saw the hair rise on Zayn's arm, saw the way his eyes narrowed, confused.

Then, just as quickly, it was gone.

After dinner, they took their glasses onto the back steps. The night was thick with fog again, low and clinging and the trees stood still as statues. No breeze, no bugs, not even the sound of birds settling.

It was too quiet.

"Feels different now." Zayn said eventually, not accusing or afraid, just stating it.

Louis nodded. "Yeah."

"You sure you're okay here?"

Louis nodded again. "I am now."

Zayn studied him for a moment and then said. "You know, I was gonna stay the night, figured it wouldn't hurt."

Louis smiled faintly. "Changed your mind?"

"Yeah," Zayn said, like he hadn't meant to admit it. "Think I've got to get back. Dog's alone."

Louis didn't argue.

As Zayn left, Louis watched him go from the porch with his arms folded, headlights cutting across the heavy mist. He didn't blame him, he wasn't even surprised. Something about Zayn's presence had shifted the house, tensed it.

As if it didn't want him here, as if it had tolerated Niall, as if it only ever wanted one person at a time.

And Louis, now fully alone again, felt that old pressure returning, deep in the walls, under the floors, behind the mirror glass.

But when he turned to go back inside, the house looked the same. Just a house. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Harry appeared like he always did, without a sound, like the house had grown him out of the walls and set him gently down in the hallway. Louis found him there as he came back in from locking the gate, the last streaks of dusk caught in Harry's curls and that same crooked half-smile on his face, soft but unreadable.

"You're back," Louis said, brushing dirt from his palms onto his jeans. "Didn't see you for a bit."

Harry tilted his head slightly, watching him like he was something distant and precious. "I was around."

Louis smirked, stepped past him toward the kitchen. "You're always around, apparently."

A few second went silent before Harry followed. "Saw someone left in a rush, was that your date?"

Louis threw a look over his shoulder. "It wasn't a date."

Harry's expression didn't change but still, something passed through it, barely a flicker, too quick to name.

Louis leaned against the counter, arms crossed. "Are you jealous?"

He said it teasingly, with a grin he didn't mean, but the words hung heavy between them, soaked in something stranger than they should've been. Harry's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, not with anger, more like confusion, or something far more ancient and harder to define.

And then something fell upstairs.

A single thud, like a body dropping from height, or a wardrobe tipping violently against the wall. The sound split the house open for half a second, sharp and real and unforgiving.

Louis jumped. "Shit—not again."

He stared at the ceiling like he could see through it, the sound had come from his bedroom, or near it.

He didn't want to move.

Harry however barely reacted. If he noticed at all, he didn't show it. Just looked at Louis, hands in his pockets, completely unbothered.

"You're not.. concerned?" Louis asked, voice tight. "At all?"

Harry blinked slowly. "About what?"

Louis swallowed, his heart was racing and there was that feeling again, that terrible feeling that the walls were listening too closely.

"It's only a house," he muttered, almost to himself. "That's what I said. That's what I keep saying. Just an old house, no big deal."

But his voice trembled at the edges, didn't match the words.

Harry took a step forward then, slow and deliberate, gaze never leaving Louis'. His presence was calm but unsettling in a way Louis couldn't untangle. Like standing next to an ocean; silent, massive and full of hidden weight.

"I should sleep," Louis said quickly, like it would undo the tension in his own shoulders. "Been a long day."

Harry didn't argue, just nodded once. He passed by Louis on the way to the door, but stopped just briefly, just long enough to touch two fingers gently to Louis' upper arm. Not enough to leave a mark, barely anything at all, but it burned.

A shock burst under Louis' skin, sharp and electric, crawling up the back of his neck and through his spine. He sucked in a breath, blinked at Harry in confusion.

"Jesus. What was that?"

Harry only tilted his head. "Static."

Louis blinked again, heart pounding. "Your bloody shoes or something."

But Harry was already gone. Louis stood there for a moment, rubbing his arm, staring at the door.

Then he turned off the lights one by one, not because he wanted to, but because he had to, like it was part of the ritual now, and climbed the stairs.

He didn't check the noise in his room, he didn't want to see if anything had moved again.

He got into bed and stared at the ceiling instead.

Only a house.
Only a house.
Only a house.

⛤

The dream did not start like a dream. There was no drifting into it, no strange shift in gravity or time, no knowing it was a dream at all. Louis was simply there, walking through the house as if it were his own for ages, but again not the version he knew now. This one was lit with warm amber from antique sconces, faint music playing from a gramophone somewhere upstairs and everything smelled of beeswax and old paper and woodsmoke.

Louis moved like he belonged here, his hands calloused, his clothes older; stiff trousers and a wool jumper rolled at the sleeves, paired with a metal watch that ticked too loudly. His breath fogged faintly when he passed the front hall, though he didn't feel cold. It was 1949. He knew that without needing to ask, somehow.

He went out into the garden. The shed was newer then, fresh wood, clean lines, not yet warped or caved in with time. Inside it, two men stood. One had his sleeves rolled too, dirt under his nails, a wide smile that looked like Harry's but wasn't, not quite. The other man, older, wore a dark coat and gloves, even in the warmth of late spring.

They were waiting for him.

Louis didn't speak and neither did they.

It all unfolded with horrible calmness.

A book, thick and bound in something not quite leather, was placed gently on a table. The pages shimmered like oil, the writing dense and spidery and moving. Louis blinked but couldn't look away.

Then the struggling began.

Someone else had been brought in, a third man, his hands bound, face bloodied, gasping Louis' name. And it was his name, though this Louis hadn't given it, the victim knew him.

"Please," he begged, throat hoarse. "Please don't let him—"

But Louis didn't move, he couldn't. His body was frozen. Not paralyzed, but obedient, like something long ago had told it this is how it goes.

The gloved man began chanting, the floor pulsed.

The shadows in the shed curled inward like something was breathing through the walls.

And when the knife came out, carved bone handle, red-streaked blade, it was not the gloved man who used it.

It was Louis, his own hands.

He felt everything. The resistance of skin, the heat of blood, the way life left the other man's eyes not all at once but in stuttering flickers like a dying candle. The chanting deepened, the blood was collected, the book opened itself.

And then Harry—only not Harry—turned to him and smiled, not like the ones before, not gentle or quiet.

This smile was knowing and infinite. Like something had waited for Louis to remember.

And Louis, Louis did. For just a moment, he remembered everything.

And then he woke up. But he wasn't in bed, he was standing in the hallway and his hands were red and dripping, still warm. His breathing hitched as he stumbled backward, trying to find the source, to understand, to wake up again, but he was awake and the air was cold and the house was watching.

He ran to the bathroom, turned on the light with trembling hands. The blood on his hands looked real, it smelled real, it was sticky and not quite dry. His nails were ragged, skin torn, no wounds on his body, no cuts, not his.

"What the fuck." He whispered, shaking now, tears rising before he could stop them. He backed up, trying to breathe, heart slamming against his ribs and then, in the mirror.. he saw himself. But not himself, not the way he looked now, not quite right.

His reflection stared back at him, unmoving. The Louis in the glass was still and smiling. Louis blinked, the reflection did not.

And then the smile widened, slowly, like it had all the time in the world.

Louis fell to his knees and screamed, the lights above him burst, glass shattered around him like stars and somewhere behind him, someone whispered his name like it belonged to him.

He woke up the next morning, curled in the hallway again. Hands clean, no glass, no blood.

But the mirror in the bathroom was cracked, clean down the center.

And his lips tasted like copper.

⛤

It was past noon when Louis finally picked up the phone and called Niall. His hands were cold despite the warm light pouring through the kitchen window and the phone trembled slightly against his ear though he would've sworn he wasn't shaking.

"Hey," he said, voice hoarse, a little too casual, like nothing had happened at all. "You busy?"

Niall didn't waste a second. "No, but I will be if you don't tell me why you sound like you just saw the actual ghost of Christmas."

Louis chuckled under his breath and rubbed his temple, forehead still lined with sleep, or the absence of it. He hadn't meant to call. He'd thought about it all morning and told himself not to. But the mirror was still cracked and something about the silence in the house today felt too loud to ignore.

"I've been having weird dreams," Louis admitted eventually, leaning against the counter. He stared at the kettle though he hadn't turned it on. "Nightmares. Not just a one-off. Like, every time I close my eyes. Always the same place, always this house. Sometimes.. sometimes I thought I saw Harry in them too."

A pause before Niall said, "What do you mean, Harry's in them?"

"I don't know," Louis exhaled. "I mean I do, but, he's not like.. himself in them, it's more a feeling than anything else. And there's always something awful happening. Some sort of..ritual? I don't know, I sound mental, I know I do."

"You don't sound mental," Niall said too quickly and too concerned, which made it worse. "You sound like you're in danger and don't want to admit it. Louis, I told you that house gave me the creeps. You remember how it was the first time I came. You need to get out of there, yeah? Come back for a while. Just until you're sleeping through the night again."

Louis pressed the heel of his hand to his eye. "It's just nightmares, Ni. People get nightmares. Especially when they're tired and living alone in the middle of nowhere in a freezing house full of draughts and weird noises. That's all it is."

There was a long silence before Niall said softly, "Have you asked Harry about it?"

Louis blinked. "What?"

"If he's in your dreams and he's, you know.. around. Maybe he knows something, or he's.. doing something weird. I don't know. Ask him. What's the worst that could happen?"

Louis didn't reply right away, he just said goodbye, promised to call again tomorrow and hung up before Niall could say anything else that made too much sense.

He found Harry in the back garden, not in the way of searching exactly, but in the way one just knew where someone would be. As if Louis had walked outside and his feet led him there without thought. The shed door stood ajar and Harry was leaning against the frame like he'd been waiting.

"Hey." Louis said, sharper than intended.

Harry tilted his head. "You okay?"

"No," Louis said. "Not really."

That earned a slow blink. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Louis stared at him. "Are you—are you real, Harry?"

Harry laughed once, soft and confused. "Pardon?"

Louis stepped forward, heart thudding. "I'm serious. Are you real? Where do you live? Zayn says he doesn't know anyone named Harry around here. He looked at me like I was mad when I asked."

Harry's expression didn't change, not in the way Louis expected. He didn't look surprised or offended, he just looked tired, not old, just worn down by something ancient and quiet.

"I don't have answers for you," Harry said simply. "I wish I did."

"Then who are you?"

"I'm.. someone who understands," Harry said carefully, like every word cost him something. "Being here, being alone. Being haunted by things that may not even be there. I know what that feels like."

Louis' breath stuttered in his chest. "Then why aren't you scared?"

Harry smiled, small and strange. "I didn't say I wasn't."

They stood in silence for a while, birds chirping somewhere too distant to seem real, the wind gentle enough to move the brittle leaves on the ground but not enough to cool Louis' burning skin.

Then Harry said. "If it's getting too much.. if you're losing sleep or feeling unsafe, maybe I could move in."

Louis blinked. "What?"

Harry shrugged one shoulder. "Just for a bit. You're not crazy, Louis. It's an old house. People don't do well alone in places like this. I can help. Fix up the last bits, keep you company, that way you don't have to wonder if you're losing your mind, yeah?"

It was said so gently, so rationally, that Louis could almost pretend it made sense.

He looked at Harry, really looked at him. The curve of his mouth, the earnestness in his eyes, the faint trace of worry beneath the calm.

"Are you sure you're not the reason I'm losing it?" He said, half a laugh caught in his throat.

Harry just smiled. "If anything, I'm losing it too."

And somehow, that made Louis laugh. A real one, sudden and reluctant and breathless, he shook his head and sighed. "Alright," he muttered. "Fine. Move in, if you want."

He would tell himself later that it was a practical decision. That it was just a way to get some sleep again, that it had nothing to do with the way Harry had looked at him when he said you're not crazy, or the strange, impossible comfort that clung to Harry like a second skin.

Just nightmares, Louis told himself as he turned back toward the house.

Just a phase, exhaustion. He ignored the way the cracked bathroom mirror had spiderwebbed a little deeper that morning.

He ignored the shadows in the stairwell that didn't quite move right.

He ignored the feeling, buried quiet just beneath his ribs, that things were about to change again.

⛤

Harry moved in with no bags.

Louis noticed that detail the next morning, standing in the hall and staring at the closed door across from his own. There had been no car in the driveway, no cardboard boxes or duffel bags or even a single coat draped over a chair. Just Harry, saying it calmly in the garden and then later, appearing again in the upstairs corridor, toothbrush in hand, like he'd always lived here. Louis asked once, half-joking and half-expecting no real answer, where he'd come from, what flat or village or friend's sofa he was moving from, and Harry had smiled and said something vague about being here and there and mostly nearby. He didn't mention friends. Just that faint smile, one that didn't reach his eyes and then, with an unsettling finality, he closed the door to his room like he was closing off a part of himself too.

Louis told himself it didn't matter. People were allowed to be private, they were allowed to be strange.

Still, it lingered, how easy it was, how there was never a moment of transition, no sound of footsteps or clutter, just one day Louis alone in the silence and the next Harry brushing his teeth in the bathroom with the door ajar like it was nothing.

That night, it rained.

The kind of rain that didn't come in waves but settled instead like a slow weeping from the clouds, steady and persistent against the windows, barely loud enough to hear but impossible to ignore. The fire downstairs had gone out without anyone noticing and Louis had only noticed the chill when he climbed into bed and felt it seep into his sheets. He lay on his side, back to the door, half-watching the window breathe with the occasional flicker of light from the streetlamp outside, there was only one near the edge of the driveway, but sometimes it caught the edge of his curtain, pale and slow, like a pulse.

Louis had almost drifted off when he heard the voices.

Not loud, not even clear. Just.. whispering, a  murmur. He sat up slowly, blood thick in his ears, throat suddenly dry. The whispering was faint but unmistakable. Not coming from outside.. but from inside.. The Velvet Room.

Of course.

He should've rolled over. Should've pulled the covers higher and told himself it was old pipes or air in the walls, or maybe Harry talking in his sleep.

But instead, he got up.

The hallway was dark, lit only by the dim glow of a distant bulb downstairs that no one had switched off. The floor felt colder than it should under his bare feet and the shadows didn't seem to settle right, always swaying slightly at the edges of his vision as if trying not to be caught.

The Velvet Room's door was open a crack.

It never was. Louis never opened it again, even if he wasn't thinking about it consciously, something in him didn't like seeing it ajar. The room at the end of the hallway.

The voices stopped as soon as he reached the threshold.

He stood there, barely breathing, hand hovering just over the doorframe. The air smelled different here, colder and metallic. Not like blood exactly but something close. Something sharp, like wet rust, or coins left too long in a damp pocket.

"Harry?" He whispered, throat catching on the name.

No answer, he stepped into the room.

It looked the normal at first, a chair in the corner, a cracked mirror above the old fireplace. The velvety wallpaper flickering slightly with the movement of air. But something was off. The shadows in the corners didn't behave. They stretched and bent the wrong way, curving inward like something was drawing them to a single point.

The centre of the floor was darker than it should have been.

Louis knelt slowly, squinting. It wasn't a stain exactly, more like just a patch of wood that looked older than the rest, warped somehow, worn. Like something, or someone, had stood there over and over and over again. He reached a hand out, fingertips brushing the edge of the warped grain, and for just one second, just a heartbeat: a scream.

He heard it, sharp and human and way too close.

He stumbled back, heart in his throat, breath ragged and then the room was empty again. No voices, no shadows moving. Nothing but the creaking of the old house and the rain tapping steadily against the window.

He fled, he didn't look back.

He didn't know how he made it to his bedroom, but the next thing he knew, he was in bed, the covers pulled high, his skin clammy and his mouth dry. His heart took longer to settle, his hands wouldn't stop shaking, he didn't know what he had heard, if he'd heard anything at all.

But then there was a knock, three soft taps, like a hand. Louis didn't answer, the door creaked open anyway, slow and deliberate.

Harry stood in the frame, hair mussed, voice soft. "Hey. You alright?"

Louis blinked at him, hollowed out and shivering. "What?"

Harry stepped closer, concern creasing his brow. "I heard you crying."

"I—what?"

"In your sleep," Harry said. "You were crying."

Louis opened his mouth and didn't know what to say. His throat hurt, his eyes were wet, he hadn't known, he hadn't even noticed.

Harry sat down on the edge of the bed, hand brushing the blanket but not quite touching Louis. "You don't have to pretend it's all fine," he said quietly. "It's alright to be scared sometimes."

Louis wanted to ask where he'd been, if he'd heard the voices too. If he'd opened the Velvet Room's door.. but he didn't.

He just stared at Harry's silhouette in the dark, the soft line of his shoulders, the way the shadows didn't quite cling to him the way they should.

"Thanks." He whispered.

Harry nodded and stood again, just before leaving, just before the door swung closed.

And Louis lay there, wide awake until morning, because now the house wasn't just haunted.

Now, he was.

⛤

It must have been past three when Louis drifted off again.

He'd stayed awake for what felt like hours, lying stiff under the weight of the blankets, skin still tight with the memory of the Velvet Room, Harry's voice at the door, the way the shadows had folded in around him. But eventually, exhaustion wrapped its hands around his mind, heavy and persistent and pulled him under, not like sinking this time, but more like stepping through a familiar doorway and remembering halfway through that you'd already walked this path before.

The dream was warm, almost golden.

The light had that quality to it, soft and sepia-toned, like film faded by time. It was the house again. The walls were new, or maybe just cleaner, the windows free of dust and grime and the air smelled fresh like cut wood, pipe smoke and the rich earth of the garden after rain.

He was barefoot on the back step, trousers rolled at the ankle, shirt untucked and sleeves shoved to the elbows, his hands were streaked with soil. The sun filtered down through the trees, warm against the back of his neck and Harry was there, Harry with suspenders and a smudge of paint across his jaw, laughing as he balanced a hammer against his shoulder like it weighed nothing, his grin open and easy and so impossibly young.

It was the 1940s, maybe early 50s. Louis didn't know how he knew that, he just did. The clothes, the garden tools, the quietness of the world around them, how far away everything felt. There was music somewhere too, soft and grainy, drifting from an old wireless radio in the window. A woman singing about moonlight and heartbreak.

They were building something, Louis didn't know what, maybe another shed, maybe a shelter and Louis said something about Harry doing it wrong and Harry called him a smart arse and they were both laughing, shoulders brushing, hands too close and glances held too long. It felt natural, easy in a way nothing in real life ever quite managed to be. And when Harry leaned in, still smiling and pressed a dirt-smudged kiss to the corner of Louis' mouth, Louis didn't flinch. He closed his eyes and kissed him back. Deep and slow, like he'd done it a thousand times before.

They were careful, always careful.

Behind closed curtains or in the quietest part of the garden when no one could see. And Louis felt that fear under his ribs even in the dream, the way his heart thudded when a car passed too slow on the road, or when a neighbour's voice cut across the fence. But the love was there too. Stronger and burning under the surface of everything like a promise made in secret.

They kissed until Louis was breathless, until his knees gave out and they sank to the soft grass behind the half-finished shed and Harry whispered into his neck, "I'll never let go of you, not in this life, not in any other" and Louis felt his chest swell with something too big for the dream to hold.

And then Harry in the dream slowly peeled off his clothes, touched him where he longed to be touched but where it was a sin in the world they live. Where no man was meant to touch another man in the way they touched each other under the sun. Naked bodies moving together as if they never did anything else.

He cried, in the dream. Not with sadness, but with the weight of it all. The joy, the terror, the aching sweetness of being allowed to feel something so fierce and beautiful in a world that said he couldn't.

And then he woke.

The light in his room was pale, barely there, just a blush at the edge of dawn. The air was cool still, like the house hadn't even taken a breath in the night. He blinked at the ceiling, unsure for a moment where he was, heartbeat thudding too loud in his ears, skin flushed, hands tangled in the sheets.. and then the awareness settled slowly over him.

His cheeks were wet, his chest ached.

And lower down, between his legs, the unmistakable heat and damp of a release he hadn't even known was coming.

Louis stared at the ceiling, frozen. Embarrassed and confused. A little ashamed, even though no one was here to see. It wasn't like he hadn't had sex dreams before, he wasn't twelve, but something about this.. the depth of it, the detail, the emotion, the realness. That was what left him shaken, what made it hard to breathe for a second.

He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, letting out a shaky exhale, then rolled onto his side, eyes still blurry with sleep.

Just a dream, he told himself. Just a dream, the product of loneliness and too much silence and the strange comfort of a man with kind eyes who maybe wasn't real. Just the mind playing tricks on a person who had too many questions and no answers, who slept too little and thought too much.

He would get up in a minute, wash the sheets, have some coffee. He'd pretend it didn't happen.

And he'd pretend too, that his lips didn't still tingle. That when he touched the corner of his mouth absently with his fingers, it didn't still feel like Harry's kiss was there, waiting, patient and ghost-warm, like it had followed him out of the dream and into the waking world.

It was getting harder to look at Harry without something twisting just a little too sharply in Louis' chest.

He'd always been good at compartmentalising desire, at brushing things off, turning attraction into jokes, handling feelings with the same careful sarcasm he used for bills and bad weather, but ever since the dreams started, something had shifted, something subtle but irreversible and now every time he saw Harry; leaning over the bannister, rolling up his sleeves to stir sugar into his tea, laughing low at some offhand comment, it was like his body remembered things his mind wasn't sure it had permission to feel.

It wasn't just that Harry was attractive, he knew attractive. He'd fancied men before, had little crushes, entertained quiet, dusty fantasies that never quite lit up into anything real. But this, this was something else entirely. These dreams weren't just flashes of lust or vague longing, they were memories, somehow, emotional and tactile and too raw to be safely filed away under daydreams or loneliness. And it frightened him, in that slow, creeping way that didn't show up as panic but as the steady erosion of certainty, the kind of fear you only noticed when the foundation was already cracked.

Still, he told himself it was nothing. His brain playing games again, sleep deprivation, emotional exhaustion, a sprinkle of delayed grief maybe or hell, maybe it was just the house, maybe Niall had rubbed off on him and now he was caught in the echo of too many whispered stories.

A midlife crisis, he thought bitterly, dragging a hand through his hair as he sat on the edge of the couch, shoulders hunched. Maybe that's all this is. A delayed sexual epiphany and a haunted house.

He should go out more, go on a date. Hell, maybe ask Zayn, see if he was into men, or just.. go on one of those apps, meet someone who didn't live across the hall like a damn ghost.

Or, God help him, he could ask Harry.

The thought made him snort under his breath and rub at his face with both hands, heart stammering as if even thinking it out loud had weight.

He didn't hear footsteps, just the soft, matter-of-fact creak of the hinges and when he looked up, his stomach dropped so fast he thought for a second he might throw up.

Harry stood there, in the doorway, holding Louis' sheets.

Folded halfway over his arm were pale linen, bunched like clouds between his hands and Harry had that unreadable calmness painted across his face, his voice casual, almost kind, as he tilted his head and said. "You must've had an intense night. I'll get these washed, no worries."

It was like the world tilted, just a fraction of a degree and Louis could feel his body reacting before his brain could catch up, heat rushing to his face, a spike of nausea in his gut, his mouth opening and closing like he'd never been taught how to use it.

"I—what?"

Harry blinked. "The sheets."

And then, as if explaining to someone groggy or slow from pain, he added lightly. "Looked like you had an accident. Probably the dreams, yeah? Anyway, don't stress. I've got it."

Louis gawked at him. "Wait, how, why were you even—" But the words jammed up in his throat like traffic, too loud and too shameful to force past the lump that had settled there.

Harry just turned, already halfway down the hall, his footsteps soft and unbothered, like nothing about this was strange at all.

And Louis sat there, heart beating in his chest like it wanted out, hands clenched into the blanket on the couch, the ghost of the dream still simmering just under his skin; Harry's mouth on his, laughter like music in his ears, the desperate, whispered promises and now, somehow impossibly, he was left with the real Harry walking calmly down the corridor carrying sheets he shouldn't have seen, let alone touched and Louis couldn't breathe for the embarrassment of it.

Or maybe the confusion. He buried his face in his hands and groaned. Long and low and helpless.

He had no idea what the fuck was happening to him.

But if it was madness, it was starting to feel almost gentle and that scared him more than anything else.

Chapter Text

It was late again and the quiet felt too heavy to provide calmness and Louis told himself he was only brushing his teeth for like five minutes to kill time until he felt tired enough to fall asleep for real and not just lie there watching the ceiling and wondering what his body had already figured out before his head caught up. The bathroom light buzzed softly, a comforting sort of hum in the (for once) otherwise still house. He stared into the mirror, toothbrush in his mouth and made a face at himself, toothpaste foam at the corners of his lips, with his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep. He looked ridiculous, or maybe just tired, or maybe like someone who'd just been handed back his own bed sheets by a man he barely knew or someone who'd been too embarrassed to ask what the fuck were you doing in my room anyway, Harry?

He didn't ask because he wasn't sure he wanted the answer.

He spat into the sink, wiped his mouth and rinsed. The water was too cold and he hissed through his teeth, flipping it off again, drying his face with the towel. He kept his gaze low, watching the water swirl away down the drain until it was all gone and then stood there for a while longer, towel pressed to his cheek, breathing. He felt the ache in his spine, in his legs, in that small hollow place just under the ribs where the air caught sometimes.

Eventually, he looked up.

Oh no.

It was still his face in the mirror, still his bathroom, but the light was different, warmer somehow, like an old photograph, washed in amber and gold. His reflection didn't match. He was still standing in the same place, but his clothes weren't his own. He blinked and didn't move. But his reflection reached up and scratched the back of its neck, turned slightly, like it was listening to someone.

And then there was Harry.. in the mirror.. behind him.

But not the Harry from the hall or the kitchen or the weird, silent breakfast earlier that morning. This Harry looked like he belonged there, in that amber light. Shirt collar unbuttoned, suspenders hanging from his hips. He was smiling a smile that came with knowing someone for years, like a shared secret or like a memory.

Louis spun around so fast he knocked his hip against the sink.

No one was there.

No footsteps, no breath, no sound except his own blood rushing too loud in his ears.

His stomach turned and he stared into the empty room, chest rising and falling too quickly, he looked back at the mirror.

It was normal again, just him, just the bathroom. Just the ugly overhead light.

Except.. his reflection was still smiling.

Only for a second, just the barest flicker before it caught up, lips relaxing like they hadn't moved at all. But Louis saw it, he knew he saw it and worse...

There was a dark mark at his throat in the glass. A smear of purple-blue just under the jaw, like a bruise, like.. a love bite. He yanked his collar down in real time and saw nothing there. Skin bare, smooth and unmarked.

He didn't know how long he stood there, but it was long enough for the buzzing light to feel louder, for his heart to stop racing and just pound steadily instead, thick in his chest. His skin crawled but not in fear, at least not fully. More in the way that came when you knew something was true but had no way to prove it. When the hairs on the back of your neck stood up for no reason and you told yourself it was nothing.

He left the bathroom light on when he walked out.

Louis stood outside Harry's door longer than he needed to. The hallway was dark but quiet, a sliver of moonlight leaking through the curtain on the landing. The air felt still again, like it had that first week, like the whole house was holding its breath.

He hesitated before he knocked, knuckles soft against the wood. "You're not hanging upside down from the ceiling like a bat, are you?" He said, mostly to hear his own voice.

There was a beat of silence, then the door creaked open a few inches and Harry's head appeared in the gap, hair rumpled, eyes a little sleepy, but there was something else in his face now. Not surprise or that faint strangeness Louis had gotten used to reading into every tilt of his head. He looked almost settled.

"Sorry to disappoint," Harry said, voice low and a little raspy with sleep but somehow so much more human. "No wings, no echolocation, just a man in pyjamas."

Louis smirked despite himself and leaned against the frame. "I wouldn't be shocked at this point, to be honest. I think I've hit my lifetime quota of strange."

Harry didn't reply, only opened the door further and stepped back, a quiet invitation. The room still didn't look lived-in. More like a guest room, a set piece, but it had a warmth now that it hadn't before. A jumper was draped over the chair and book on the floor beside the bed, a half-empty glass of water on the nightstand, all signs of him being human, Louis thought to himself.

Louis sat at the edge of the bed, watching him. "I saw something again," he eventually said. "In the bathroom mirror."

Harry sat across from him in the armchair and didn't flinch. "What did you see?"

"Us," Louis said, hesitating only a bit. "Not like, us now. It was like.. a different time? Different clothes, but it was me and you. You smiled at me, it felt like it remembered me before I did."

Harry didn't move for a long moment. "Do you believe in reincarnation?"

Louis snorted. "No. I believe in sleep deprivation and a house that doesn't like guests."

Harry's lips quirked, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I don't have answers, Louis."

"That's the part that pisses me off," Louis said, quieter now. "Because I feel like you should. You're just here and I don't know why that doesn't scare me more because you don't make any sense here."

Harry leaned back in the chair, the springs creaking slightly beneath him. "I'm here because you let me in."

That hung in the air, oddly final.

Louis stood not long after. "I don't know what I expected," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Maybe you to admit you're the ghost and the house is just your weird Airbnb. Or that I've lost it and none of this is real."

Harry tilted his head. "Does it feel real?"

Louis stared at him. "Too much."

He left before either of them could say something worse.

The dream rose like fog again, thick and choked with candle smoke and the distant stench of something sweet rotting behind the walls. Louis didn't remember falling asleep, but now he stood in a room bathed in amber light, candle flames dancing low in their brass holders, shadows flickering like spectres across crimson wallpaper. The fireplace crackled weakly, casting a pool of trembling gold across the dark wooden floor.

Two men stood in the centre of the room.

Louis couldn't move or speak. He was watching, anchored somewhere behind his own body, a weightless observer caught in the hush of what looked like an old tragedy replaying itself.

One man trembled in place, his linen shirt soaked with sweat, smudged and sticky across the front. His chest rose and fell too fast, his shoulders shook. His hand clutched something small and silver, glinting in the candlelight. A blade.

The other stood before him with the stillness of someone who had already accepted death. Barefoot on the cold floor, chest heaving faintly, he spoke so softly the words brushed the silence like a ghost.

"You don't have to do this." He said.

Louis couldn't see his face, not fully, but the curve of his jaw, the wet glint of sorrow in his eyes, the curl of hair damp with sweat at his temple, it all felt like recognition sitting just beneath the skin, like something Louis knew but couldn't place.

The man in the poet's shirt, Louis knew it was silk just by the way it caught the light, shook his head.

"You'll leave," he whispered, voice cracking. "You'll forget me."

"No," the other man said. "Never."

A breath, a heartbeat and the knife plunged forward.

The sound it made, wet and final, ripped through the silence like splitting wood. The man stumbled back, one hand clutching at the blade sunk deep in his chest, red blooming fast across his ribs. He didn't scream. Just gasped, like the air had been stolen from him all at once, eyes wide with not pain but betrayal.

Blood sprayed across the hearthstone. It splattered the candle nearest the fireplace and just like that, all the flames in the room extinguished.

The light went out like a held breath released.

Louis woke with a noise lodged in his throat, sitting bolt upright in the dark of his bedroom, heart slamming against his ribs like it was trying to break free. He reached out in the dark and fumbled for the lamp, for the blankets, for anything, but his hands were trembling. His shirt was damp, stuck to his skin, the scent of smoke still clung to the fabric of it and in the hallway, a clock ticked too loud.

He stayed sitting there for a long time, listening for the sound of footsteps or breathing or firelight or knives.

But the house, as always, held its silence tight.

Louis sat in bed long after the dream had slipped away into shadows, his breath still shallow, heart pacing like he just ran a marathon. He rubbed his palms over his face, slick with sweat, then down his arms as if he could shake off the cold. The candlelight. The knife. The way the flames died like the room had sucked in its last breath.

"Just a nightmare," he whispered hoarsely, forcing a laugh that didn't quite land. "Christ. Just too many horror films, too many late nights. One man alone in a weird house, it's textbook."

He swung his legs out of bed and stood, stretching until his spine cracked. His knees ached, his tongue felt dry and thick. Still caught in the sticky remnants of sleep, he padded barefoot across the room to grab some water.

The mirror above the dresser caught his eye.

He didn't know why, it had always been there, hadn't it? Curved at the top, antique, speckled with age and dust and a strange crack spidering out in the bottom corner. A warped relic of some past owner's vanity he hasn't get rid off yet. He'd barely glanced at it since moving in, always too tired or disinterested to care. But now.. now it seemed to shimmer, ever so slightly, like it had breathed.

Louis blinked. "Stop," he muttered, setting the cup down too hard. "This is ridiculous." He was so fucking tired of mirrors, always mirrors.

He stepped toward the mirror, his reflection stared back, drawn and tired and with his jaw clenched. Just him, just Louis.

But then it tilted its head, he didn't, he froze.

His own reflection stared at him, lips curling upward into a smile, except it wasn't a smile. It was wrong, it was off, it reached nearly over his whole face, nearly from ear to ear.

Louis took a step back, he blinked, that helped the last time. But the reflection didn't move, didn't follow, it stayed there, still smiling.

Then it raised one hand and pressed its fingers against the glass. The fingertips split open, blood began to trickle down the inside of the mirror.

Louis couldn't breathe, his lungs burned.

He turned to run, to scream, to wake himself up again, but the door slammed shut on its own behind him with a sound like a gunshot. Every candle in the room flared to life at once, flooding the room with flickering, too-bright light.

And the mirror.. God, the glass cracked from the inside. Lines spiderwebbed outward and something—some thing—began to press against it from the other side. A shape. A face. No, faces, overlapping, melting into each other, bleeding out from behind the silver, mouths stretched too wide in silent screams, eyes rolled back, features that shifted and twitched like they didn't want to stay in one shape.

Louis stumbled backward, slammed into the bedpost.

The glass shattered.

Not outward, but inward, like it was sucking air, pulling him toward it. Wind howled in the sealed room, papers were flying from his desk, furniture was creaking and the shriek of the mirror's implosion filled his skull.

He screamed.

He didn't mean to, he hadn't screamed in years, but he did now, a full, ragged, terrified sound ripped from his chest, raw and involuntary, because something was coming and he didn't know what but he knew it would eat him alive.

The door burst open.

"Louis!"

Harry.

He was there, bare-footed and wild-eyed in sleepwear, rushing across the room, hands on Louis' arms, shaking him, holding him, voice sharp and urgent.

The room was normal, the mirror was whole, every candle was out.

But Louis couldn't stop screaming, not until Harry pulled him fully into his arms and said his name again and again and again.

⛤

By morning, Louis felt like a fool. He sat curled up on the maroon armchair in the living room with a mug of tea going cold in his hands, staring at the now covered mirror leaning against the wall. A shiver ran down his spine, he couldn't look at his reflection now, probably never could again, not without wondering if it would grin at him again. Not without imagining those too-long fingers pressing against the glass.

It hadn't happened, of course not. The mirror wasn't cracked, there was no blood, no wind, no screaming faces.

Except there was screaming. His own. And Harry's hands on his shoulders, trying to ground him. He'd buried his face in Harry's shirt like a child, shaking and mortified.

Harry hadn't said anything unkind, just held him quiet, steady and warm.

"I'm sorry," Louis had muttered at least four times, even as Harry led him back to bed. "I didn't mean to wake you. I just.. I guess I lost it."

"It's alright," Harry had whispered, smoothing a hand down his back. "You're okay now."

But Louis hadn't felt okay, he'd felt like his skull was full of fog and broken glass and now the morning light did nothing to change that.

"I'm taking the mirrors down," he announced to no one, setting his mug on the floor like he couldn't bear to hold it anymore. "All of them. First thing."

Harry appeared in the doorway at that exact moment, dressed in soft knitted jumper and looking well-rested, too well-rested compared to Louis. "Morning," he said easily. "Sleep alright?"

Louis blinked at him. "Seriously? You were there, Harry."

Harry tilted his head, blinking slowly. "I mean after. You fell asleep again, didn't you?"

Louis opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. "I—I guess. I don't remember."

Then there was a pause, a little bit too-long pause for any normal interaction and then Harry stepped into the room. "Want help with the mirrors?"

Louis watched him wary. "Do you believe me now? That something's going on in this house?"

Harry's smile didn't reach his eyes. "I never said I didn't believe you."

There was something off in his tone, it was too calm or too rehearsed. Louis frowned and eventually shook his head.

He stood, brushing past Harry, heart thudding in his chest as he went to the hall. "I'll start with the one in the hallway," he muttered. "That one's always creeped me out."

"Right." Harry said behind him.

Then Harry's voice shifted, the light in the hall flickered. "You can't find it, you know." Harry said, but it wasn't quite his voice. It was layered, like two people speaking at once, one deep and hollow and stretched like an echo.

Louis stopped in his tracks and turned around.

Harry stood exactly where he'd been, blinking slowly, head slightly cocked, like a puppet trying to pass for human.

"What did you just say?" Louis whispered.

"I said I'll help you if you want." Harry replied, normal again.

But he hadn't, Louis knew he hadn't. He backed away slowly, pulse roaring in his ears and then Harry said something else.

"It's time to remember."

But his mouth hadn't moved. The voice came from behind Louis' ear, but it was Harry's and yet not.

Louis spun around, breath ragged, searching for someone, anyone, but the hallway was empty. The paintings blurred at the edges, like someone had half-forgotten to render them.

He turned back toward Harry and the corridor was wrong. The walls stretched longer, the light flickered and buzzed, the floor seemed to tilt.

Harry looked at him, eyes too wide, smiling too softly. "You've been here before."

Louis clutched at the wall. "Stop it. Stop talking like that."

"I'm not saying anything." Harry said, his voice back to normal, honest confusion in it.

He wasn't, his lips weren't moving, but the voice, Harry's voice, or something like it, kept speaking.

"It's been too long, Louis."

And then the hallway broke. That was the only word for it. The floor cracked down the middle, a jagged, black line splitting the tiles and wood and through it Louis swore he could see something crawling or writhing, something made of limbs and smoke and sound. The walls flickered again and suddenly looked different, wallpaper stripped, gas lamps lit. He blinked and they were gone. Blinked again and they were back.

"No, no, no, stop," Louis gasped, clutching his head, eyes squeezed shut. "You're not real, this isn't happening, it's just stress—"

And suddenly silence, only his heartbeat in his ears. Louis opened his eyes.

The hallway was normal again, Harry stood calmly, frowning concerned. "You okay?"

Louis stared at him, chest heaving. "Did you say anything just now?"

"No?" Harry blinked. "You sure you're alright? You look pale."

Louis nodded too fast. "I—I need air."

Harry didn't stop him and when Louis got outside, the birds weren't singing. The trees weren't moving. The world was silent, like the house had swallowed all sound and spat him out just to make a point.

He sat on the grass, hands in his hair, shaking.

He no longer trusted the house, he no longer trusted his own mind.

And he wasn't sure, no matter how kind Harry's smile looked, if he still trusted him or if he should've trusted him in the first place.

⛤

The call connected before the first ring finished, that alone said everything. "Niall," Louis said and his voice cracked. "Can you come over?"

"Thank fuck," came the reply. "Yes. I'm on my way. I'm.. Jesus, Lou, I was about to call you. Are you okay?"

"No," Louis said honestly. "I'm not."

Niall was quiet for a moment, just long enough to carry the weight of every warning he had ever given him before he said. "I'll be there in about three hours."

Louis was already standing when the call ended, pacing the hallway outside the Velvet Room. It was colder there again, like always. He swore the shadows cast by the door didn't match the angle of the morning light.

He didn't go in, he waited.

And around three hours later, hours that felt like days, Niall arrived, red-faced and breathless, his keys still in hand.

"You look like shit." He said trying to hide his concern and pulled Louis into a hug.

"Thanks," Louis mumbled into his shoulder. "You're a ray of sunshine."

They stood like that longer than either of them would admit to needing and then Niall pulled back. "Tell me everything."

So Louis did. The nightmares. The corridor glitching. The flickers in Harry's voice. The mirror, the screaming. The way the Velvet Room was always cold.

"And you still haven't found anything?" Niall asked, pacing now too. "No bones under the floorboards? No creepy diary left in a crawlspace?"

Louis shook his head. "I didn't really want to look."

Niall scowled. "Well, I do. Show me the room."

Louis hesitated, glanced at the door.

"It's just a room." Niall added, like it was that simple, like he wasn't the one that was scared in the beginning.

Louis nodded, though his gut squirmed.

The door opened on the first try.. and maybe that should've been the warning.

The Velvet Room looked exactly the same, but wrong. Still dim even though Louis swore it was noon, still heavy with dust. The air was thick, like trying to breathe through a mask. The floor creaked under their feet but not in rhythm. Off by a half-beat, almost like a breath, or something pacing beneath.

Niall stepped in first. "I don't like this." He said, voice a whisper.

"I don't either," Louis admitted. "I just. Something happened in here, Niall. I know it and—"

The door slammed shut behind them.

Not a gust, no a click. A slam.

Louis jumped, heart lurching to his throat and Niall spun around, grabbing the handle.

"It's jammed," he said after a second. "What the fuck."

"Try again."

"I am."

Louis backed away, eyes on the mirror across the room. He hated how it stayed clean. Everything else was dusty and faded and threadbare but that mirror was clear, cold, silver-edged.

Then Niall gasped. "The walls Louis, the walls—"

Louis turned. Watched the wallpaper ripple like something beneath it moving.

"Oh my God," Niall breathed. "We have to go."

Louis took a step toward the door, hand out.

The mirror cracked.

No sound, just a sudden jagged crack down the centre. And behind the glass something shifted. Louis could've sworn he saw eyes. Red and watching, a mouth too wide.

The lightbulb overhead popped.

Then the floorboards swelled and groaned and splintered, just at the edges, just enough to look like hands pushing up from underneath.

Louis ran to the door, shoulder-barging Niall aside.

He twisted the knob hard, then harder, hearing something click behind the wall.

Finally the door flew open, crashing into the opposite wall but the hallway beyond was wrong. Too bright, no shadows, no sense of depth.

And yet they ran.

Only when they hit the stairs they stop, gasping. The hallway behind them had returned to normal, but neither of them dared look back.

"I'm gonna be sick," Niall said, crouched over, hands on his knees. "Louis. You have to leave. Now. Tonight."

Louis shook his head. "No. No, I need to know what's going on. I—I think I need to stay."

Niall grabbed his arm, eyes wild. "Are you hearing yourself? That room closed on us. The walls moved. There was something in the mirror. You want to stay for what, answers?"

Louis turned, eyes trailing up the stairs.

And... "Louis?"

He blinked.

"Louis," Harry said again, this time from the hallway. "What are you doing?"

Louis looked up and around.

He was alone, standing in front of the Velvet Room, the door was closed. He remembered standing outside the Velvet Room with him, remembered Niall reaching for the doorknob, remembered the door slamming shut and the mirror cracking and the wallpaper breathing. He remembered running down the stairs with him, hearts pounding, the walls too bright, the floor groaning like something was underneath.

He turned slowly, hands cold, breath caught in his chest. Harry stood in the doorway to his bedroom, a mug in one hand, brow furrowed.

"Who were you just talking to?" Harry asked gently.

"I—" Louis' throat was dry. "I.. Niall. He was here."

"No one's been here, Louis. I just came upstairs. Thought you were on the phone?"

Louis reached for his mobile, hands shaking.

Call log: Nothing.

Call to Niall: never made.

"No," Louis said out loud, as if protesting reality itself. "No, I called him. He said he was coming. I opened the door. He was here, Harry."

Harry stepped closer, voice still calm. "Louis.. maybe you dreamed it?"

"No. No, I didn't."

But already, the certainty was slipping.

He dialled, his hands were cold and sweat-slick, and the phone rang once, twice, a third time. "Louis?" Niall's voice, clear and real. "Everything okay?"

"Where are you?" Louis demanded, stepping away from Harry, suddenly breathless. "Where are you right now?"

"Uh.. London. At work? Why?"

Louis felt the world twist slightly, just a fraction, like a lens shifting out of focus. "You're not here."

"I.. wasn't invited?" Niall tried to joke, but his voice was already wary. "Louis, what's wrong?"

"I thought I saw you. You were here. I talked to you. We were in the room and—and the walls moved, and you said to leave—"

"What room?"

"The Velvet Room. The door slammed shut and the mirror, Niall, I swear, I saw you."

Niall was silent for a moment before low and urgent he spoke again. "Louis. Get out of that house."

"I can't. I don't know what's happening. I can't—"

"I'm coming to get you."

"No!" Louis shouted so loudly Harry flinched. "Don't. Don't come here. Niall, don't ever come here. Not until I know what this is. Promise me."

"Louis—"

"Promise me."

A shaky breath and then, "Okay. Okay, I promise. But I'm calling someone. I'm not letting you stay in that hellhole alone."

Louis hung up before he could hear more. Staring at the Velvet Room door, which now looked exactly like it always had.

Behind him, Harry said softly. "You're scaring me."

Louis didn't respond. Because the only thing scarier than seeing things...

...was not knowing whether he'd ever stopped.

⛤

Louis didn't know if he'd sound mad, but he also didn't care anymore.

He called Zayn just after noon, hands shaking slightly from too little sleep and too much adrenaline. Harry had left the kitchen to water the plants, another quiet, uncanny habit that made Louis feel like he was in some off-kilter dream, and Louis took his chance.

"Hey." Zayn answered, cheerful and warm.

"Are you free today?"

There was a pause. "Yeah, I was just going to work on a few emails but sure. What's up?"

Louis didn't hedge. "I need to talk to you about the house."

Another pause. "Okay...?"

"I know it sounds insane and maybe it is insane, but.. things have been happening. Since the day I moved in."

"Louis," Zayn said slowly. "What kind of things?"

Louis wet his lips. "Dreams that aren't dreams. Visions, maybe. Voices. Rooms that breathe. I've woken up in places I didn't go to sleep. The Velvet Room, something is wrong with it. I've seen things in mirrors that weren't my reflection."

He expected laughter or an awkward silence but Zayn didn't hang up or laugh, he just said. "Okay."

"Okay?" Louis echoed, stunned.

"I'm not saying I believe it all, but I do believe you believe it. And that's enough. I'll come by this afternoon, yeah?"

Louis exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for weeks. "Thank you."

"Maybe there's something we missed," Zayn added gently. "Something in the house. We'll figure it out."

But Harry wasn't thrilled when Louis told him.

"He's not part of this," Harry said too calm. "We're fine here, Louis. You're fine. Whatever's happening, we can work through it. You don't need to drag someone else into—"

"No," Louis interrupted. "You don't get to tell me who I bring into my house."

Harry just looked at him, unreadable. Something about the way he folded his hands made Louis think of funeral homes and coffins. He turned away and went upstairs, heart thumping.

He didn't wait for Zayn, he started digging.

He began in the attic, dust clung to his skin and throat like cobwebs and the air was sharp with mildew. The floor creaked with every step, the narrow beam of his torch cutting through the gloom like a scalpel. Trunks, boxes, forgotten cloth-covered chairs, all things that belonged to someone else, lives stacked in corners like unwanted memories.

One box near the eaves caught his eye. Smaller than the others and locked. He didn't think, just kicked it open.

Inside were papers, old and yellowed. Names he didn't recognize. Receipts from the 1800s. A dried flower with petals like blackened parchment. And beneath it all.. a map.

A hand drawn layout of the house but with a room he'd never seen before. No. Beneath a room. A cellar?

Louis stared at it, throat dry, heart beginning to race. He'd never found a cellar door, not in all the weeks he'd been here.

He turned the map around, checking the hall placement, the cellar door should be under the staircase. He practically flew down the steps.

Harry was in the living room, flipping through a book like he hadn't heard a thing. Like Louis wasn't breathing like a hunted animal, tearing back the hall rug with trembling fingers.

There it was, seam in the floorboards, a trapdoor. Louis fell to his knees, running his hands over the edge. There was no latch, no handle, just wood. Seamless and untouched.

"Louis," Harry said from behind him, voice calm and cool and too quiet. "That's nothing. I've looked."

"You said you didn't even know the house."

"I meant it wasn't important," Harry corrected. "It's just a crawl space. Nothing's there."

Louis turned slowly. "Then you won't mind if I open it."

Harry smiled but it didn't reach his eyes. "You won't be able to." He said simply.

Louis didn't answer, he just got a knife from the kitchen and wedged it between the board, tried to lift and then again and the metal bent.

The floor shivered under his hands. Not moved—shivered. Like it had muscles, like it could flex.

Louis stumbled back, gasping.

Harry was still seated.. still smiling. "You're tired," he said softly. "Why don't you come sit with me? It'll pass. This is just your mind playing tricks."

Louis stared at him and then the doorbell rang.

Zayn.

Please, Louis thought, like a prayer.

But when he opened the door it wasn't Zayn. It was nothing, just the empty courtyard. No car, no footsteps, no sign of movement. Just the ringing doorbell.

Behind him, Harry asked. "Who is it?"

Louis didn't answer, he just shut the door and locked it and sat down in the hall, staring at the seam in the wood. He didn't say anything for a long time but the house seemed to breathe around him.

Almost smugly.

⛤

Louis hadn't meant to touch him. He was angry, panicked even and all he wanted was space, a moment to breathe without Harry's calm voice wrapping around him like fog. But when he pressed his palm to Harry's chest to push him away, it was like the floor beneath them fell open.

Not literally, but inside his head, something buckled.

Like a trapdoor giving away but he didn't fall, he sank. The hallway dissolved. Harry vanished and Louis was somewhere else.

The air smelled like dust and something sweeter, lavender perhaps and dried roses, faded by time. The room was small but richly dressed: velvet curtains, a fire flickering low in the grate and tall windows blurred by rain. Candles burned low in silver holders and a grandfather clock ticked softly in the corner.

There was tea, two cups, steam curling from porcelain like dust.

The man seated across the table wore black, deep mourning black. High collar, polished buttons, gloves folded neatly in his lap. A cross hung from his neck, the gold material was catching the candlelight like a whisper of mercy. His hands trembled, even as he poured the liquid into the cups.

The man across from him smiled soft and gentle, looking so young even though he can't make out his face.

He brought the teacup to his lips and drank.

At first, nothing.. just the sound of the fire, the clock, the clink of the cup against the saucer.

Then.. a twitch.

Barely a flicker at first but then a sharp, shuddering jerk. The man gasped, hand flying to his throat. His eyes went wide and he made a sound, half a word, half a choke and the man in black stood with his gloves off now.

He dropped to his knees beside the seizing figure, cradling him as if this were a tragedy happening to them, not because of them.

"I couldn't let it take you," he whispered, voice raw, trembling, aching. "It was going to take you from me, you promised."

The younger man convulsed violently.

A cup fell from the table, shattering on the floor. Dark tea spilled across the carpet in a blooming, seeping stain.

The man in black didn't move. He just held the dying boy tighter, pressed his lips to his sweaty curls and whispered something over and over like a prayer.

Outside, the storm rose.

Inside, the candles blew out one by one.

Until there was only the fire and then not even that.

Louis came to on the floor.

He was on his hands and knees in the hallway, panting, drenched in sweat, heart thundering in his chest like it was trying to escape. The wood beneath his palms felt slick, like that dream tea had spilled through time and into his real life.

His hand still burned from where he'd touched Harry and Harry knelt in front of him, not reaching, not moving.

But staring, patiently, like he was waiting to see which Louis had returned. "Are you alright?" Harry asked softly.

Louis scrambled backward, almost fell. "Don't touch me." He breathed.

Harry blinked. "I didn't."

"You did," Louis snapped, though he knew Harry hadn't. "Or, I did.. I don't fucking know."

Harry tilted his head, something flickering across his face. "You looked like you were somewhere else."

"I was somewhere else!" Louis shouted. "Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."

Harry didn't argue or didn't explain, just stood slowly. "You should rest," he said. "It'll pass."

Louis pressed his back to the wall and stared up at him, shaking. "No," he whispered. "I don't think it will."

⛤

Finally there was knock. Sharp and sudden, three firm raps on the door that echoed through the hallway like a warning shot.

Louis flinched so hard he nearly hit his head on the wall behind him. His nerves were already frayed, stretched thin from the waking vision, from Harry's eyes on him like he knew, from the feeling that something inside him had been stirred loose and might never settle again.

Harry turned calmly toward the door, as if the timing wasn't eerie at all. "Are you expecting someone?" He asked, his voice was soft again. Friendly and gentle, like they hadn't just been locked in a moment thick with dread and buried memories.

Louis scrambled to his feet, still breathing hard. "Yeah. Zayn."

Harry blinked slowly. "Zayn..."

Before Louis could say anything else, the door opened, he hadn't unlocked it.

But there Zayn was, drenched from the storm that suddenly swept over them, a little flushed, holding a plastic takeaway cup of tea, his brow furrowed the second he saw Louis' face.

"Jesus, are you alright?" He asked, stepping inside without waiting.

Louis didn't answer yet, he was too busy watching Zayn's gaze catch, freeze on the figure just behind him.

Harry.

Harry, standing at the edge of the hallway, looking composed, perfectly still. There was a strange pause, something in the air twisted like the walls themselves were holding their breath.

Then Zayn gave a polite nod. "Hi. You must be Harry?"

Harry's mouth curved into a smile, not warm but not cold either, something perfectly in between.

"I'll give you two a moment," he said, already backing away down the hall. "Let me know if you need anything."

And just like that, he was gone.

Not gone-gone, not like disappeared into smoke. Just.. not there anymore. One second he'd been in the hallway and the next the shadows had swallowed him whole.

Zayn turned to Louis with a look that said: what the actual fuck.

Louis laughed, it was short and brokenh. "Yeah. He does that." Louis muttered, dragging a hand through his hair.

Zayn stepped closer, frowning. "Louis, you look like shit."

"Thanks."

"Start talking."

Louis didn't need to be told twice.

He didn't hold back, not anymore. Not now that Zayn was here, solid and real and normal, standing in the same hallway where nothing felt normal anymore. He told him about the dreams, every one he could remember. About the voices, the Velvet Room, the blood and the mirrors and the way time seemed to bend. About waking up in the garden and the walls bleeding and the version of Harry that said things he shouldn't know.

He told him about the map, the mention of a cellar that didn't exist in the modern plans. A space that should be beneath the Velvet Room, but had no visible entrance.

And through it all, Zayn listened. He didn't laugh or  interrupt, he just looked more and more disturbed the longer Louis went on.

When Louis finally stopped, breathless and wide-eyed, Zayn shook his head slowly. "I don't know what to say, man. That's.. that's a lot."

"I know," Louis whispered. "But it's real. I swear it's real."

Zayn nodded. "I believe you. Actually, that's what's scaring me."

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked up the stairs like he was afraid Harry might be watching.

"Growing up around here, everyone knew about this place, you know? But not really. No one actually came here. No one ever saw who lived here. It was like the house had owners but at the same time didn't. Like it owned itself. The names changed. Property records said one thing, the people around said another."

Louis swallowed hard. "You think.. people died here?"

Zayn looked at him gravely. "I think people disappeared, quietly, without a trace. Maybe they never really left, maybe they never really existed at all."

Louis felt the hairs on his arms rise, he glanced toward the Velvet Room. The door was closed again and something was waiting behind it.. watching, he felt it.

Zayn seemed to sense it too, his voice dropped. "Where's the cellar, Louis?"

Louis turned to him. "I think it's under that room somehow." he whispered. "I think it's where everything started."

Zayn's hand found his arm. "Then we should find a way in."

Behind them, the lights flickered once and the whole house seemed to lean.

Like it had heard them and didn't agree.

⛤

They searched the entire ground floor first.

The map had made it seem obvious, there was a cellar under the Velvet Room. But the Velvet Room wasn't on the ground floor. It was on the second and that alone made Louis' skin crawl. It didn't make sense, none of it made sense. The architecture of the house seemed wrong. Like it had grown over time in ways that defied planning permission, symmetry or logic. Some staircases turned sharper than they should. Some doors opened into walls, one cupboard had no back. Just bricks and something faintly pulsing behind them.

Harry was gone.

Louis had expected him to appear, maybe with a knowing look or a cryptic comment. Maybe even to help, but when he called his name down the halls, through the rooms, up the stairwell, no one answered.

So it was just the two of them now, him and Zayn.

"Maybe the map's wrong," Zayn muttered after they'd circled back to the front hall for the second time. "Maybe it's old, you know how people made those weird conceptual floor plans before actual architecture caught up—"

"It's not wrong," Louis cut in, his voice was distant and cold with certainty. "We're looking in the wrong place."

He looked up, past the stairs. Toward the double door with the dark wood and the brass handle. The Velvet Room.

"Lou—"

"It's upstairs."

They didn't speak as they climbed the stairs, the house groaned beneath their steps. Not old-house groaning, not natural but like the beams resented being stepped on.

The Velvet Room waited at the end of the hall as always. Silent and still, a predator with closed eyes.

Louis pushed the door open, it didn't creak, it simply.. allowed them in.

The room was colder than the rest of the house, that's what's always the same. Louis remembered it different somehow. The wallpaper, faded and velvet-stripped in places, looked brighter than he remembered with darker spots, almost wet. The chairs by the fireplace were empty now. The glass in the cabinets dusty. The smell, copper and candle wax, coiled up into Louis' throat until he wanted to gag.

Zayn paced around the room with cautious, respectful steps. "What is this place?"

"Hell." Louis murmured.

It was only when Zayn's foot knocked against something that Louis saw it, a thin seam in the floorboards, almost invisible.

A door, a trapdoor.

His breath caught. "Holy shit."

They dropped to their knees, fingers searching for a handle, a latch or something, the edges of the trapdoor were oddly warm, soft almost.

"I can't open it," Zayn said through clenched teeth, bracing his fingers under the seam and pulling. "It's stuck."

Louis tried too, together they pulled, the wood didn't budge, and then the air shifted, instantly and violently.

The temperature dropped at least ten degrees. The fireplace, once merely cold, now seemed to suck light into it. The shadows on the walls lengthened, stretching like arms, twitching.

The windows slammed shut one after the other. BANG—BANG—BANG—BANG—

The door behind them tried to swing closed, but Louis lunged for it and shoved it open again, chest heaving. "What the fuck is going on—"

"Louis—" Zayn choked.

He was standing now, staggering back from the trapdoor, his face had gone sheet white, his pupils blown wide. The walls began to ripple like they were made of cloth, not wood. Like something was pressing against them from the other side.

Louis saw faces. Barely-formed, screaming in silence, stretching the velvet surface from the inside. No mouths, but he could hear them.

Then the sound began, low at first. Like wind, then growing. Whispering.

Fast, overlapping whispers in too many voices, in too many tongues, crawling along the walls and into their ears.

And the room turned on Zayn.

The chandelier above them snapped its chain and dropped, he barely leapt aside in time. A cabinet crashed forward with an unnatural lurch. The mirror on the wall shattered outward, not inward.

"GET OUT!" Louis screamed, lunging for Zayn as a bookshelf tumbled down, missing them by inches.

Zayn's coat caught fire, he didn't notice.

Louis tackled him to the ground and beat it out with his hands, coughing from the smoke that had appeared without warning, rising up from the trapdoor like steam from a pit.

"Louis, something's wrong!" Zayn shouted.

"I know!"

"No, I mean.. it doesn't want me. It—it wants you alone."

Louis froze, the moment stretched and in that second of stillness, all the noise stopped.

The whispering vanished, the fire went out, the walls stilled. Zayn rolled onto his side, gasping for breath. Cuts on his arms, singed ends of his hair, eyes wide and wild.

Louis looked around the room, it was normal again, as if it had never happened, but the trapdoor still pulsed, the wood was breathing.

"Get up," Louis said hoarsely. "We're leaving."

"Damn right we are." Zayn muttered, still trying to steady himself.

Louis helped him to his feet and they limped out of the room together. The Velvet Room didn't resist this time but Louis swore he felt something like fingers brush against his back as he crossed the threshold.

They didn't stop moving until they were back in the kitchen, both of them shaking, the electric lights flickering like they might go out forever.

Zayn was the first to speak. "I think the house wants you for itself, mate."

Louis didn't laugh, he couldn't, because something in him agreed and that was the most terrifying thought of all.

⛤

Zayn made tea with trembling hands, it was a pitiful comfort, two mugs on the kitchen table, cold light from the overhead bulb stuttering like a failing heartbeat, but at least it gave them something to do with their fingers, something to hold that wasn't each other.

Neither of them had spoken since they'd escaped the Velvet Room.

Louis watched the steam curl and vanish. "You saw it too, right?" His voice was hoarse, quiet. "Tell me I didn't imagine it. That it wasn't a psychotic break or some twisted dream."

Zayn looked up slowly. "Louis, that room attacked us."

Louis gave a humourless laugh. "Yeah. That was my impression too."

They sat in silence. Somewhere in the walls, something scratched, just faintly, like nails against wood, or teeth against plaster.

Zayn leaned forward, elbows on the table. "I mean it, Lou. You need to leave. Right now. Just pack a bag and come with me. We'll go back to mine, or fuck, Niall said he'd drive up, right?"

Louis shook his head. "No. I'm not leaving."

"Louis."

"I can't, not  yet."

Zayn stood. "You nearly died. That door in the floor, it breathed. That mirror shattered without reason. It's not in your head, this house is not just haunted, it's hostile. You're not safe."

Louis didn't move, his fingers tightened around the mug. "But why me?"

Zayn blinked, caught off-guard. "What?"

"Why me?" Louis said again, louder now. "Why this house? Why now? I didn't buy it. I didn't even know I'd inherited anything until the letter came. No family name, no distant aunt. No history, just a key and an address."

His throat felt tight, his skin damp, the air in the house had grown too thick to breathe.

"I thought it was a joke at first. I told Niall and we laughed. Who the fuck inherits a house in 2021?" He looked up, eyes wild. "But it wasn't a joke. And now I'm dreaming deaths I've never seen and mirrors talk and rooms breathe and Harry—Harry—"

He broke off.

Zayn's voice softened. "Harry what?"

Louis swallowed hard. "He's part of it. Somehow."

Zayn hesitated. "You said he's only the groundskeeper and that he moved in to help out."

"He did," Louis' voice cracked. "And then he didn't and he knew things and he said it was time to remember and when I touched him I saw—" He cut off again, shaking his head like he could physically force the memory out. "I don't know what's real anymore."

Zayn sat back down, his tone gentle, but the urgency stayed. "Whatever's going on, Harry or the house, or all of it, you're not going to figure it out if it kills you first."

"I'm close," Louis whispered. "I can feel it. All these.. flashes. Dreams. They're not just dreams, they're pieces and every one of them is showing me the same thing, over and over; two men, a death and pain, always pain, but I don't know who they are."

His eyes were glassy and haunted.

Zayn studied him, quiet for a long moment. "Do you think it's the people who lived here?"

Louis looked up sharply. "I don't know," he said finally. "But I don't think it matters. Because whoever it is, it always ends the same way and the house.."

"Is watching." Zayn finished grimly.

Another silence, Louis stood slowly. "I need to find Harry."

"Louis—"

"I know what you're going to say, but I need him. He's part of this, he might even be the key."

Zayn opened his mouth, then stopped and looked away.

"You said yourself," Louis added, voice low. "This house wants me, but it also didn't hurt me, it tries hurting you as if it didn't want you near me."

Zayn looked back at him, his expression was full of things he didn't say. "I'm not going anywhere."

Louis' throat tightened.

"I'll sleep on the couch," Zayn said. "One night, but if something happens again, I'm dragging you out myself. I mean it, Louis."

Louis gave him a ghost of a smile. "Okay."

But he didn't believe him, because deep down, Louis didn't think the house would let him go.

And somewhere, probably much closer than either of them realised, Harry was waiting.

⛤

Zayn lasted until midnight. The symptoms came on suddenly, so suddenly it felt impossible. One moment he was sitting on the couch, blankets wrapped around him, a film playing low on the television, the two of them trying for a normal night. And the next moment he was hunched over in the small downstairs bathroom, vomiting so violently that Louis stood frozen in the hallway, unsure if he should go in or just give him privacy to fall apart.

"Zayn?" Louis called quietly, after the third wave had passed. "You okay, mate?"

There was no answer, just the constant hum of the house and exhausted sound of someone trying not to cry.

When Zayn finally came out, he looked wrecked. Pale as a sheet, skin gleaming with cold sweat, his hands trembling as he leaned against the doorframe. "I—I don't know what's happening. I was fine earlier. My head's burning, everything's spinning."

Louis helped him to the couch, grabbed water, cold flannels, medicine. But nothing helped. The fever spiked, fast and unrelenting and Zayn started shivering so hard the glass in his hands rattled.

And still, he tried to stay. He kept repeating it like a mantra, through chattering teeth and fever-fogged eyes. "I said I wouldn't leave you. I promised. I said I'd stay."

But by 2:00 a.m., he couldn't hold himself upright. By 2:30, he was delirious.

Louis paced the length of the living room, hands knotted in his hair, panic crawling up and down his spine. "This isn't normal," he muttered. "This isn't the flu. This isn't something you caught. The house is doing this, it wants me alone."

Zayn was half-conscious, curled up on the couch with his coat draped over him like a blanket, teeth chattering, skin glowing hot.

It took all of Louis' strength to stop hoping the house would let up. That maybe if he just waited, if he just fought it...

But then a glass shattered by itself in the kitchen.

And the hallway light began to flicker like a dying pulse.

And the air turned cold. Not cool, not chilly. Frozen. A sharp, biting cold that cut through the walls and soaked into the floorboards and crawled inside his skin.

It was trying to hurt Zayn.

Louis knelt by the couch, pressing a hand to Zayn's clammy forehead and his voice cracked when he whispered, "I need you to leave. Please."

Zayn stirred, eyes barely open. "No. No, Lou, I said—"

"I know and I'm grateful for it. But if you stay here, this house is going to—," he broke off. "And I won't let that happen.

He helped Zayn into his car at three in the morning. The air outside was thick with fog and silence, as if even the surrounding woods were holding their breath. Louis stood in the gravel driveway as the taillights vanished into the mist, his chest burning with guilt and fear and a deeper sense of something else, something like defeat.

The house behind him stood still and silent.

When he stepped back inside, the cold was gone. The lights were steady, the shadows no longer flickered with malice.

It was like it had never happened.

He sat down slowly at the kitchen table, the same one they'd shared tea at only hours earlier and pulled his phone out of his pocket. His fingers hesitated for a moment, then typed out a message.

Louis
I'm so sorry mate, are you okay? Please let me know.

He hit send.

Zayn didn't answer right away, but a few minutes later, a typing bubble appeared, it blinked in and out for a while, then a single message.

Zayn
I'm home and I'm okay, it's fucked up Louis but as soon as I left the property it all stopped. You need to get out of there.

Louis stared at the words, his heart thudded low and hard in his chest, he opened his call log and tapped the most recent name.

"Niall?" He said when the line picked up, his voice quiet, strained.

"Louis? It's four in the bloody morning, are you alright? What's happened? Is Harry with you?"

Louis swallowed. "Harry isn't here, but Zayn was. He got sick, had to leave."

"Sick? What kind of sick?"

"Like.. violently. All at once and then it just stopped when he left the house."

There was silence on the other end of the line, then the sound of rustling sheets and a long exhale. "I'm getting in the car."

"No. No—Niall, don't."

"Louis, you need help!"

"And you won't help me if you end up like Zayn. Or worse. Please. Don't come near this place."

"You're scaring me, Lou."

"I know. I'm scared too."

Another silence and then Niall's voice again, quieter this time. "Alright. Okay. But you text me every hour. On the hour. You stop answering, I'm calling the fucking army."

Louis almost smiled. "Deal."

He hung up, pressed the phone to his chest and sat alone in the dark kitchen. The window above the sink showed only the blackness of night, but for a moment, he swore he saw something behind the glass. A flicker of movement. A silhouette, maybe or maybe just his reflection, shifting in a way it shouldn't.

He didn't check.

He just stood up, slow and hollow and turned to face the house once more.

He would find Harry and he would get his answers.

Even if it meant going back into the Velvet Room alone.

Chapter Text

He didn't remember falling asleep, one moment he'd been on the couch with his phone in hand, scrolling through social media with shaking hands and without really reading anything and the next—nothing. The air around him thickened, it wasn't peaceful, not the kind of descent into dreams you wish for after a long and exhausting day. It was more like being yanked through the time, pulled into something too dark.

In the dream, there was snow falling but it wasn't outside, it was indoors, inside a grand drawing room with pale walls and ornate molding. The fireplace was cold, its grate black with ash. Velvet drapes were pulled across the tall windows but no light came through them. It was silent except for the soft, steady patter of ash-white snow on the wooden floor.

Two men stood in the middle of the room. Their features blurred like smudged pencil lines, but their shapes seemed familiar. One man's hands were trembling, wrapped around a heavy revolver, its dull metal catching the candlelight. The other stood still and calm, like he'd accepted his fate long before this moment. There was still pain in the way his shoulders curled, the way his lips moved around a sentence the dream didn't allow Louis to hear.

The man with the gun was sobbing, not loudly or anything but like each breath hurt and brought them nearer to what was happening. His hands shook, his knees buckled and still, he raised the gun.

"You'll forget me." He whispered, Louis heard that, the sound didn't belong in the dream, it belonged in a memory.

A shot and then a body collapsing like the strings had been cut, a loud thud and blood, so much blood.

It splattered against the fireplace, across the pale floor and even onto the edge of the mirror that hung over the fireplace. A massive, gilded thing with curling edges. Louis' breath caught, the mirror didn't show what it should.

The scene in the glass was the same but not, it lingered half a second behind, the blood still dripping when it had stopped behind him. The man still holding the gun when in reality, it had clattered to the floor. And in that delay, Louis saw something else.

Himself. Not a faceless dream-figure version, not only a silhouette. Him. His own face, blinking back at him from the mirror. Standing beside the body with a look on his face he couldn't recognize.

He gasped awake, but the gasp didn't sound right, it echoed and bounced off the walls of the room. He sat up sharply on the couch, heart pounding, and immediately looked around.

"Harry?" He called, hoarse. "Harry?"

No answer.

He stood on legs that were shaking, still reeling from the image of the gun, the blood and the mirror. The living room was dark, though he was sure he'd left the lights on. He walked slowly to the hall, then to the staircase, each creak under his feet felt like a scream echoing in a cathedral.

"Harry?" He tried again. "Come on, don't fuck around."

He heard something then, a whisper, not a voice; a whisper, right beside his ear.

Louis...

He spun around, chest heaving.. nothing, no one.

Then it came again, from the top of the stairs, a different voice. Childlike, almost or maybe an echo of one. Or maybe just a trick. He's not yours.. you took him again.. you always do..

He gripped the banister, his knuckles were white.

He climbed the stairs with slow, careful steps, eyes darting to every doorframe. A shadow flitted past the guest room. He stopped and turned. Nothing there.

Then a thump, from behind a wall. The Velvet Room.

He crept forward, the hallway stretched endlessly or at least it felt like it did. The floorboards beneath him groaned like they resented him, like they were tired of the weight of his presence. When he reached the door, his hand hesitated on the handle.

Then the mirror on the landing beside it cracked. Not shattered but cracked, a single jagged fracture running through the center like a scar.

And behind him, in the mirror, he saw it.

Not his own reflection, it was the other man again, the one with the gun, the trembling hands, but this time, he turned to face Louis in the glass.

Louis screamed.

A hoarse, gut-wrenching sound, like some dying animal. He stumbled back, nearly fell down the stairs, clawing at the railing like he could hold onto something real, something that wouldn't move beneath him or twist behind his back.

When he felt hands on his shoulders he nearly struck out, but the voice stopped him. "Louis! Louis, it's me, it's okay—"

Harry. It was Harry.

He was there, calm and wide-eyed but grounded, pulling Louis to sit on the stairs as he shook and gasped for air like it had been stolen from his lungs.

"You were screaming," Harry said gently, kneeling in front of him. "What did you see?"

Louis couldn't speak, he could barely look up, the mirror still hummed but the reflection was his again.

Only something still felt wrong and Louis knew he couldn't keep running from it much longer.

⛤

Harry didn't try to leave this time, he followed Louis down the stairs like he'd been waiting to do so, barefoot, quiet and shadowless. Louis didn't say anything until they were back in the living room, though his hands shook enough to knock the remotes from the coffee table when he reached for a glass of water. His voice cracked from screaming and fear and whatever the hell had looked out at him from the mirror like it had been waiting.

Harry just stood there in the doorway like a question Louis couldn't answer.

"What are you?" Louis finally asked, and it came out quieter than he meant, then after a bit,
louder. "What the fuck are you doing to me?"

Harry didn't flinch, he didn't even look confused, just resigned. He moved to sit across from Louis in the armchair, that same one he always seemed to gravitate toward. His eyes looked heavy, like he hadn't slept in days or decades or longer.

"I'm not doing anything to you." Harry said.

Louis scoffed, then laughed, short and hard and jagged. "You live in a house that hates everyone but me and you apparently. You vanish into thin air. You know things before I tell you. I dream about death and mirrors and voices, and y— and every time I wake up, you're closer. So tell me the truth."

He was shouting by the end, a vein throbbed in his temple, he couldn't stop pacing.

"Tell me why I remember things I never lived! Why I feel things I shouldn't! Why I somehow know you, Harry, why I saw you in my dreams but still don't know you." He knew he didn't make sense, but he couldn't explain.

Harry didn't respond right away, his fingers threaded together in his lap, the bones long and still, the shadows under his eyes were darker now, not tired but drained. Then he said very softly. "Because you did live them."

Louis froze and Harry stood slowly, like the air around him had thickened. "You just don't remember."

Louis took a step back. "Then tell me. Help me. Say it."

"I can't," Harry said and there was real grief in it. Not frustration, not fear. Grief. "Even if I tried, I can't. You'd forget. Or you'd bend it into something else. That's how this works."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means you have to find your own way through," Harry said. "It has to be you."

Louis stared at him. "This is insane."

"I know."

"I'm not a fucking chosen one in a fairytale."

"I know."

"Then why does this feel like I've already done it?"

Harry stepped closer. "Because you have."

Louis couldn't breathe.

"You said it yourself," Harry murmured. "You feel things. You know me. You dream of places that aren't here, of times you never lived. But that isn't true. You lived them. You've always lived them. Over and over again."

Louis shook his head. "No."

"Yes."

"You're insane."

"Then why do you believe me?" Harry asked and Louis didn't have an answer for that.

He turned his back, closed his eyes. The whole room tilted, like the ceiling had shifted a few degrees to the left. He pressed his palms against his temples and groaned.

"It's time to remember, Louis." Harry said gently, and Louis hated how it sounded like a prayer.

"Stop saying that."

"You always do," Harry added, quieter now. "In every life. You fight it. You scream. You ask. And then you remember. And then.."

He stopped, Louis turned. "Then what?"

Harry smiled, but there was nothing warm in it. "You'll know when it happens, or maybe you won't. It's always different."

"This isn't helping," Louis snapped. "You're speaking in riddles like fucking Dumbledore, say it plainly."

Harry stepped back, almost like something had tugged him by the collar. "I'm not allowed," he whispered. "Not until you see it, not until you know."

He blinked slowly, like he was struggling to stay present and when he spoke again, it wasn't entirely to Louis. "The Velvet Room is the anchor. But it's not the beginning. It's never the beginning."

"Harry—"

"You'll lose me again if you don't remember," he said and this time the pain cracked his voice open. "You always do."

Louis opened his mouth, but nothing came out, his throat was dry, his chest ached.

And Harry blinked, like he didn't know what he'd just said, like it hadn't been him at all. His lips moved but made no sound then he looked up and asked, almost blankly. "Did something happen?"

Louis didn't answer, he couldn't. Because the mirror behind Harry had just flickered again and this time, it wasn't a dream.

The reflection stared straight at Louis—fucking again.

Smiling, knowing.

⛤

There was coming another dream, of course, but it did not burst through with blood or mirrors or screams this time, it was calm.

It arrived like a warmth slipping through the last days of winter, quiet and persistent and utterly without threat. This wasn't a nightmare, somehow he felt it this time, it didn't start with darkness or grief or a cold feeling.

A room, old ans cozy, the walls lined with books. The wooden floor was scuffed and gleaming in places, reflecting the golden light from a hundred flickering flames. A small table with a bottle of wine and the slow hiss of a log splitting in the hearth.

And two men.

Louis didn't know how he knew, but he did: he was one of them. He was in the room, but also watching it, held in the vision like a bead of rain on glass. There was no horror in this one. No death, no blood, only the unbearable weight of love.

They were seated on the floor beside the fire, not dressed for any occasion it seemed, just in shirtsleeves and soft trousers, one had his bare feet tucked beneath him, the other was half-curled, with his head resting in the other's lap. The one sitting upright had a book open, his fingers gently turning pages now and then. The one lying down was half-asleep, eyes fluttering shut and opening again as the voice beside him read slowly.

Poetry. That much was clear, and Louis could feel it, feel it down to his bones, the way the voice melted, the way the man reading bent to brush a kiss to the other one's temple, the way the hand curled into the sleeping man's hair and stayed there, thumb stroking absently across the crown.

It wasn't only tender, it was devastatingly beautiful.

This was not new love, not rushed or reckless. This was old, worn-in, almost holy. A love lived in for years. A love that knew everything and forgave it all. The kind of love where silence was a language, and every breath in the same room was sacred.

"You always do that." The man in the lap mumbled, eyes still closed, his voice was thick with sleep, like honey.

"Do what?" Came the soft reply, warm and low.

"Read me poems and then look at me like you're going to cry."

The reader smiled and Louis felt his own face echo it. Not out of amusement, but recognition. Muscle memory. The body remembering what the mind still couldn't say aloud.

There was a pause before the quietest whisper, barely audible under the crackle of the fire.
"Even if it ends again, it was worth every time."

The man in the lap didn't reply, he didn't need to. He reached up instead, tracing along the jaw above him, his fingers brushing the curve of a throat, the corner of a mouth. The intimacy of it shattered something inside Louis. It was too close, too familiar and too real.

He felt it before he saw it, how their mouths came together slowly, like a promise remade again, like a ritual remembered not in words but in touch. Their kiss was not hungry, not leading anywhere. Like it knew, somehow, that this was one of the good nights. That there would be another ending but not yet.

Louis woke up crying this time but he didn't woke up in shock or gasping for air like the other times.

It wasn't one of those lurching, choking awakenings that left him gasping, this was different. He was still half inside the dream and the ache hadn't faded.. the love hadn't either.

His throat burned, his chest ached. There were tears on his cheeks, warm and slow and silent. The room was dark, but not menacing. He could still feel it. That strange, eternal thing between them.

He pressed his hand to his mouth, as if to hold it in, as if to keep it there a little longer.

Some part of him whispered that he had kissed Harry.

And not for the first time.

That in some other life, or many, he had kissed him by candlelight, had whispered poetry into his ear, had promised to remember, had promised to stay.

He laid back down, hand still against his mouth, and stared into the dark.

He didn't know why it had ended.

But he knew now, for certain, that it had been real. And that it had been worth it. Every time. He just didn't know how he knew.

Louis sat on the edge of his bed long after the dream had faded, only it hadn't really faded at all, not in the way normal dreams did, not like a passing thought or a flicker of imagination, but like something that had truly happened, something sunk so deep in his bones it pulsed through him now in every heartbeat, as if the memory had been excavated rather than imagined, as if the echo of it wasn't a product of the mind but of the soul.

And it terrified him.

Not because it was cruel or violent or grotesque, he'd had those dreams, he'd lived through them already, but because it had been real, real in the most dangerous way something could be, real with the kind of emotional weight that made it impossible to forget. And yet now, sitting in the cold dim quiet of the present, he found the specifics already slipping away again, dissolving like sugar in water, leaving only the ache behind. A hand in hair. A mouth on his. The whisper of a poem. And a kiss that felt like the final page of a love story.

He told himself it couldn't be real, he tried to tell himself. But he knew the truth now, at least some part of it and it bent the very edges of what he thought the world could be.

Because if that dream—no, memory, Harry had said memory—if it had been real, if he and Harry had lived other lives, if they had kissed under candlelight and read each other poems and promised things that spanned centuries and skin and death, then that would mean Harry...

Louis stood up, too quickly, like he could outrun the thought, it followed him anyway.

Because that would mean Harry wasn't human. Not entirely, maybe not at all, right?

The room tilted.

Because how could he be? How could someone know things before they happened, speak in riddles wrapped in centuries, live through lives that didn't belong to the now? How could he look at Louis with that quiet, patient pain, as if waiting for something ancient to rise again? And if that was true, if Harry wasn't human, then what did that make Louis? Just some poor fool dragged along across time, haunted by a love story he couldn't escape? Or wasn't he human neither?

Louis wanted to scream.

But worse than all that, worse than the knowing or the not-knowing or the aching pull in his chest, was the forgetting. Because it didn't stay, nothing stayed. He had that dream, that memory, and it was clear, vivid, electric and then, like waking up from anaesthesia, it all dulled again. He couldn't reach it, he couldn't grab the thread that might lead him out of the labyrinth. As soon as he blinked and re-entered this reality; this haunted house, this creaking floor, this silence that breathed when he wasn't looking, everything went hazy.

Like the house wanted him confused. Like it unstitched his thoughts on purpose, every time he came close and that was the worst part, because Louis wasn't just scared, he was starting to believe he might be going insane.

Not in the poetic, overwhelmed-by-emotion way. But in the terrifying, clinical, straitjacket way. In the way where you start to mistrust the edges of your own mind, where you start to wonder if time is actually passing the way it's supposed to, if people are really saying what you think they said, if you are really who you were a week ago. And if you're not, if all of it is an illusion, then where do you look for truth?

He gripped the edge of the sink in the bathroom, leaning over the porcelain like he might throw up. His reflection was there, just as it should be for once, still his face, still his hair, still the same tired shadows under his eyes but he didn't feel himself anymore, not fully. He felt split, like there were other versions of him walking around just behind the walls, living out other endings, bleeding on other floors.

He squeezed his eyes shut and whispered into the room. "What the fuck is happening to me?"

There was no answer, not from the mirror, not from the air.

Only the familiar phrase echoing back from the deep well of his memory, Harry's voice, quiet and aching and full of something much older than now: "It's time to remember."

Louis pressed both hands over his face, shook his head slowly and whispered back, broken and shaking. "I'm trying."

But he didn't know where to look.
Didn't know what to trust.
Didn't know if he even wanted the truth.
Because what if it was too late to survive it?

⛤

He didn't think, maybe that was what finally broke it. Not the logic, not the digging, not the maps or the mirrors or the blood beneath the boards but this; this impulse, this knowing.

That if Harry was what he thought, if Harry had been there all those times, if the hands that touched him in dreams were his, if the voice that whispered poems in a dozen dying languages belonged to the man who now stood barefoot in his kitchen in a threadbare jumper...

Then maybe the key wasn't in some secret room or forgotten trapdoor.
Maybe it wasn't hidden beneath floorboards or locked behind the shape of a curse.
Maybe it was right in front of him.

Maybe it had always been.

And so Louis stepped forward, heart a drumbeat in his throat, fingers shaking, breath ragged and pressed his lips to Harry's.

And everything collapsed.

Like a house made of paper, soaked through and caught in a storm. There was no room, no time, no breath.

Only heat.

Only light.

Only memory.

One life: a garret room, dust on the floor, Louis in a painter's smock with charcoal on his hands, Harry sitting cross-legged beside a canvas, humming some melody while Louis sketched the line of his jaw by candlelight.

Another: a field hospital in 1917, Louis holding a shaking hand, Harry grinning through bloodied lips, whispering. "You came back. You always come back."

Another: London. Gaslight. Music. Louis in velvet, Harry in silk. Their hands brushing at a crowded party, slipping away down a hallway, breathless laughter in the dark. Harry whispered, "They'll never understand, but I don't care. I only need you."

Another: books strewn across an ancient floor, Harry reading aloud in a language Louis didn't remember learning. One of them is dying, or maybe both. But they are together, they are always together.

Another: A vow in blood.
Another: A locked tower.
Another: A bed. A kiss. A laugh. A look.

Every time. Every. Fucking. Time.

It was Harry.

Louis choked on the kiss, his knees gave out. His hands were gripping the front of Harry's jumper like it was the only thing holding him to the earth.

And Harry, he trembled beneath his palms, gasped softly against his mouth, like he felt it too, like he always felt it.

Louis pulled away, just enough to see him, just enough to whisper. "You. It was you."

Harry nodded, a single tear slipped down his cheek, glowing like moonlight. "Every time."

And it was like the dam broke.

All of it crashed into him and still, he could not hold it all. It was too much, it was like trying to contain the weight of stars in his lungs.

Louis clutched his chest, bent over, gasping and Harry caught him before he fell.

They sank to the floor together and for the first time in what felt like centuries, Harry wrapped his arms around him and didn't have to pretend.

There was no cryptic smile.
No mirror tricks.
No more of that infuriating, aching silence.

Only this.

"I'm here now," Harry whispered into his hair. "You're remembering now, that means I can finally help, I can finally speak."

Louis tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come, there was too much grief in his throat and too much love in his bones.

Harry pulled back just enough to cup his face in both hands. "It's not over, Lou. We've still got to break the cycle. But this.. this is the start."

Louis could only nod, eyes blurred with tears, because for the first time since this nightmare began, it didn't feel like he was drowning alone.

Harry was here.

And not just in fragments or flickers.

Harry, the one from the dreams.
Harry, the one from the poems.
Harry, the one from the blood and the vows and the velvet and the war.
His Harry. Even if he didn't know all of it yet.

They had been cursed across time, doomed to find and lose each other.

But right now, in this sliver of calm, in this house that had bent itself around them, they were together again.

Louis breathed deep, forehead against Harry's, hands still gripping him like he might vanish again.

But then, everything went black.

The air was thick with the kind of silence that only follows horror, the kind that seems to press against your eardrums, like the world itself is holding its breath in grief. Louis stood motionless, drenched in blood that wasn't his, with dirt beneath his fingernails and tremors running through his fingers that he couldn't feel anymore. The only sound was the dull roar of his own heartbeat in his ears, like the ocean slamming itself again and again into the shore that was his skull.

Harry's body lay crumpled at the base of an altar.

Not the symbolic kind, this wasn't a chapel or a church, but a stone slab in the oldest part of the manor, hidden behind heavy velvet curtains in the room the villagers whispered about. The room they said you couldn't enter unless it wanted you to. Louis had never believed them, not until the moment he carried Harry's broken body inside and the door closed behind them without a single gust of wind.

Harry's eyes were still open, even in death, those impossibly green eyes gone glassy and slack, lashes clumped with blood. The curl of his hair was soaked with it too, sticky and black now where it used to shine like dark copper in candlelight. There had been screaming earlier, Louis wasn't sure whose, but now there was only the whisper of candle flames and the sound of something dripping slowly onto the stone floor.

He dropped to his knees beside the altar and pulled Harry's head into his lap, as if that could undo the way his neck had been snapped, his head lolled too easily, too unnaturally and Louis choked on bile. He had waited too long, he hadn't known what to do. The man, the stranger, the one who had attacked Harry was already gone, vanished into the woods with Harry's blood on his hands. Louis hadn't even chased him, he had fallen to the earth and screamed until his throat bled.

And now.. now this.

The book was older than any language. Bound in skin from whatever animal was used. Inked in the blood of things that should never have bled. He didn't know who had placed it in the house, or how he'd known where to find it. But when he'd stumbled through the corridors carrying Harry's body, the walls seemed to shift. The house itself had guided him, hadn't it? The door to the Velvet Room had opened for him like a lung taking a breath. The book had been waiting, resting on the altar like it belonged there, like it knew this was always how it would end.

Louis turned the pages with shaking hands, the foreign symbols burning into his mind like scars as he read aloud, words he didn't understand, syllables that made the candles gutter and the walls groan, dust raining down from the ceiling like ash.

"What was taken shall be bound. What was ended shall begin again. What is loved shall never be lost, if love is brave enough to pay the price.. let him return to me, even if it takes forever."

The room vibrated, a deep humming in his chest that didn't come from the air. Harry's hand twitched. Louis gasped, clutching it.

But it was only a nerve, only death doing its slow work.

Tears soaked his cheeks, he screamed the next words, ripped his own palm open on the blade left beside the altar and smeared his blood onto the symbols, smearing it across Harry's chest, across the wound, across his brow. He sobbed as he leaned down, pressing their foreheads together, whispering. "Take me instead. Take anything. Take everything. Just give him back."

And the house answered. "Done."

The candles flared white-hot. The book slammed shut on its own. The air tore open like fabric being ripped from the sky and Louis felt it, something ancient crawling into the space between worlds, sliding beneath his skin, into the blood he had spilled, into the room itself.

And Harry.. Harry screamed.

His body arched off the altar, bones cracking as life snapped back into him all wrong. His mouth opened but no breath came. His eyes burned with too much green, like fire in a forest. Louis backed away in horror, reaching for him, but something, or someone?, held him back. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it, a presence watching and a weight pressing down on his shoulders.

And then Harry collapsed again.

His voice was raw and breaking when he spoke. Not with gratitude, not with love, but with something else entirely. "What did you do Louis, what did you do?"

And Louis couldn't answer. He could only cry, pressing his lips to Harry's bloodied hands, whispering I had to, I had to, I had to over and over like a prayer that meant nothing anymore.

Because something had come back with Harry that night and Louis could already feel it stirring in the walls.

⛤

The world didn't feel quite real anymore, not after that.

Not after the kiss, the crash of memory, the truth as raw and merciless as bone:
That Harry had died.
That Louis had brought him back.
That it had never been a dream.
That this, somehow, was still a continuation.

Louis sat on the edge of the bed, his fingers curled into the sheets, his eyes unfocused, not looking at anything in particular, just the soft, gold-drenched air of the bedroom that now felt off, like it knew. Like the walls had been listening the entire time.

Harry stood across from him, as he always did, like something Louis had conjured and couldn't quite contain.

And yet he looked more real than he had in days. His face no longer seemed to flicker, his eyes weren't blank, but heavy with something ancient and sorrowful and sweet. He looked exactly like the Harry Louis had seen under candlelight in another lifetime, with ink-stained fingers and the taste of honey on his tongue.

Louis lifted his head. "You said.. we can leave. Now that I remember."

Harry's lips parted, but he hesitated.

Louis sat forward. "So let's go. Let's.. pack, or not even that. Let's just go. Anywhere. Let's just leave this cursed place behind."

He watched Louis before he softly spoke. "I can't."

Louis' stomach dropped. Harry's eyes flicked down. "I haven't been able to leave since the day you tried to bring me back."

"No," Louis said, his voice breaking like a rotten beam. "No, you said—"

"I said it wasn't that easy," Harry whispered. "Because it's not."

Louis was shaking his head before he even stood. "That's not fair. That's not fucking fair. I did it for us. I loved you. I—"

"I know," Harry said and his voice was so gentle that it almost killed Louis. "I remember."

Louis looked away, blinking hard, trying to breathe through the rising panic. The room was too small, the shadows were too thick. His skin didn't fit right on his bones, he wanted out, wanted answers, he wanted...

"Come with me." Harry said and held out his hand.

Louis stared at it, the long fingers, the curve of the thumb. This wasn't a ghost's hand, this wasn't some flicker of memory.

It was his.
The same hand that had once held a brush in Montmartre.
The same hand that had clutched his waist in a rainstorm outside Oxford.
The same hand that had reached up from a bed of blood in the dream that wasn't a dream.
The hand he had loved in so many ways that even now, even now, his heart ached with it.

Louis stood, slow as dusk and placed his hand into Harry's.

Everything stopped.

For a heartbeat or less a coldness rushed up his spine like wind whistling through an abandoned building.

Then warmth and a pulse, a weight, as though the air around them had thickened into something sentient.

Harry's eyes locked onto his. "You felt it."

Louis nodded, throat dry. "Yeah."

"This is it," Harry said, voice so quiet it could've belonged to the house itself. "This was always the key."

Louis swallowed hard. "What is?"

Harry looked toward the door, or no, through it.

"The room," he said. "The one that's never let go of either of us. It's where we always end. It's where we always begin."

Louis followed his gaze. The Velvet Room.
Of course it was.

They had circled it again and again. Niall had tried to reach it and failed. Zayn had nearly been destroyed by it. Louis had stood at its edge too many times now, as though the house itself was waiting for the right alignment, the correct version of him.

But now.. it had him and it had Harry.

Together. Remembering.

The doorknob was already cold in his mind, the velvet already whispering.

Louis turned back to Harry. "What's going to be in there?"

Harry looked at him for a long, soul-splitting moment. His eyes were the same but the pain inside them was deeper than time.

"Everything."

Chapter Text

The door closed behind them with a hush like someone breathing into one's neck. There was no click and no locking sound, just a sensation, a bit like falling. The moment they crossed the threshold, something changed, the air bent, the walls exhaled, time unwound.

Louis gasped, not from fear this time but from recognition. But wasn't a flash, not like the dreams or any of what he's experienced before.

Instead, it was immersion.
Full-body. Full-soul.

The room around him warped and melted, until candlelight danced on ancient plaster and the wallpaper gave way to stone. The smell hit first: wax, smoke, sweat, iron. Then the sounds: the crackle of the fire, the hush of breath and the trembling of his own voice.

He was inside it, not watching it this time, but living it. Louis stood in the centre of a shadow-drenched drawing room. The fire in the hearth was low but alive, sputtering with soft crackles that sounded like bones breaking under pressure. The air was thick with smoke and dread. There were books on every surface, pages yellowed and curling at the corners. And everywhere candles, their flames swaying as though disturbed by a whisper only they could hear.

He looked down at himself and staggered.

The shirt he wore was white, or had once been white. Now it was soaked at the sleeves and at the hem, the buttons gaping open and smeared with blood. Dried, sticky patches of fabric clung to his skin, his hands were trembling, one of them held a knife.

He couldn't breathe, his voice, raw and young and shaking, came out before he could stop it. "You'll leave. You'll forget me."

Across from him, standing with infinite gentleness, as though afraid to take even one step closer, was Harry.

Or, the first Harry. Or, the real Harry. Or whatever version had been alive back then, in another body, another universe, another lifetime. It didn't matter, the eyes were the same.

God, the eyes were always the same.

Harry didn't look afraid, he looked heartbroken.
He took a single step forward, hands open, voice soft. "You don't have to do this."

But Louis, this Louis, the one inside the memory was already crying, his whole body shook with it. The knife in his hand gleamed once in the firelight before trembling violently. "You'll leave me," he said, as though the words were a wound he had to press on to feel real. "You'll forget who you were. It'll take you from me."

"I would never—"

Louis lunged forward with a strangled sob and the blade met resistance before it made a wet sound, short and terrible. Harry's body folded in, staggered back, but his eyes never left Louis'. He looked surprised, but not angry.

Never angry. Just sad, so so sad.

Louis caught his body before it hit the floor. His knees hit the rug, the fire hissed. Blood spread in a wide stain beneath them, soaking into the fabric. The candle flames flickered violently, one by one, extinguishing like lives.

Harry was gasping, Louis cradled him. Whispered something over and over, his forehead pressed to Harry's temple. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." As if sorrow could stitch it closed, as if regret could hold back death.

Harry lifted one hand, smeared with blood and reached for Louis' cheek but his fingers fell short, his arm went slack.

The fire went out, the darkness swallowed everything and Louis came back screaming.

He stumbled out of the vision, into Harry's arms, into the present. The Velvet Room again, his knees buckling, throat tearing itself raw as he sobbed into Harry's chest.

"Shhh," Harry whispered. "You're safe. It's alright. I'm here."

But Louis could still smell the blood, could still feel the blade in his hand, still see the eyes, the ones that had never stopped loving him, even as they dimmed.

He clung to Harry with both hands, shaking, heart thrashing, lips pressed to the shoulder that was somehow still there. "I killed you," he gasped. "I—Harry, I killed you."

Harry stroked his hair and said nothing.

Because they both knew.

And it wasn't over yet.

⛤

The Velvet Room barely seemed to breathe this time, it swallowed them both in silence, a soundless shift in air pressure, a tilt in gravity, and then everything was different again.

Louis didn't fall this time, he sank as though the floor of the room gave away beneath his feet and lowered him into memory like it was a coffin being gently set into the earth.

The light changed, it dimmed into a sickly yellow, filtered through lace curtains and the dull grey of an overcast sky. The smell of rosewater and old wood and something sour beneath it.

When the world stilled, Louis was seated.

Sitting straight in a high, stiff chair with carved edges and an embroidered cushion that poked uncomfortably through his clothes. He could feel the weight of them, the thick black wool of the waistcoat, the stiff collar tight around his throat, the gloves hiding the tremor in his hands.

There was a polished and round table in front of him, set for two.

Two tea cups; one porcelain, pale ivory with delicate blue forget-me-nots painted on the rim.

The other identical, but in one of them was death.

Harry sat across from him, he was gentle in the way he moved, elbows resting lightly on the armrests, a soft smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. His hands were long-fingered, careful as they lifted the cup. He spoke, voice low and affectionate, though the words blurred as if unimportant. It wasn't the conversation that mattered, it was the atmosphere.

This was a goodbye in disguise. Louis' chest clenched so hard it hurt to breathe, he remembered this, he remembered this.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it, Harry took a sip.. it only took a few seconds.

First it was confusion, a frown and a blink. Then a hand rising to his mouth like he might speak but no words came, just a choking sound, wet and wrong and then the chair scraped back sharply as Harry doubled over with a gasp.

Louis stood so fast the chair behind him fell over. He was around the table before he knew how he moved, falling to his knees beside Harry's twitching frame, arms catching him before he hit the floor.

"Harry." The name left him like a sob.

Harry's limbs flailed once then stiffened, spasmed. His hands clawed at the carpet, white spit bubbled at his lips, his eyes were wide and shining with terror.

Louis cradled him, held him as close as he could without crushing him, voice low and frantic and broken.

"I couldn't let it take you from me," he whispered, over and over, like a rosary against damnation. "I couldn't, God, I couldn't."

Harry's body jerked again, one last time, before he went still.

The teacup tipped, rolled from his limp fingers and shattered against the floor with a thin, pathetic clink. Brown liquid seeped into the carpet, it looked like blood.

Louis pressed his face to Harry's shoulder. His hands trembled on the stiff fabric of his waistcoat. The sob that tore out of him wasn't loud but deep, like it had been buried for centuries.

When the vision released him, he didn't scream. He collapsed right into Harry's arms again, sobbing in gasping silence, his whole body wracked with grief that spanned more than just one life. His knees hit the real Velvet Room floor and Harry held him from behind, arms tight, head pressed to the back of Louis' neck.

"I killed you," Louis whispered, ragged. "Again. Again. Why do I keep killing you?"

Harry's breath ghosted against his skin. "Because you love me."

Louis shook his head violently, but Harry's voice stayed calm albeit tired, full of sorrow, but not afraid.

"You always loved me. You loved me more than you loved yourself. You couldn't let it have me. Not once, not ever. But it never worked, Louis."

Louis turned around desperately. "Then why do I always kill you? What the fuck is wrong with me?"

Harry took his face in both hands, not firm but gentle. "The first time was an accident. You tried to bring me back and I came, but only halfway. And every version of me since then.. wasn't exactly me, not really and you knew. You always knew that something was wrong, that I wasn't supposed to be."

Louis' chest caved like a house collapsing. "So I—every time I see it, every time I feel it, I'm—"

"You're trying to fix it," Harry finished, brushing a thumb under his eye. "But there is no fixing it. There's only remembering, there's only us."

"But I—" Louis swallowed hard, his lips were trembling. "I couldn't let you go. I can't. I never could."

"I know," Harry said softly. "I never could either."

And then the air in the room began to shift again. Louis felt it before it hit him; the pull of the next memory, the next death, the next reckoning, but now he held Harry's hand.

⛤

The velvet beneath Louis' knees disappeared again, the world spun, it folded, edges peeling away like burnt paper, until the air turned thick and acrid and hot.

Louis couldn't breathe, his body remembered it before his mind could catch up, the sting in his eyes, the sharp panic in his chest, the uneven slam of his heartbeat in his ears, trying to drown out the sound of bombs exploding in the distance.

When the memory came fully into focus, he was no longer in the house he knew.

Long silk drapes were shaking in the force of an explosion. Walls that rattled with impact. Windows that glowed orange from the fires beyond them.

The world outside was dying and inside..

Inside was death too.

Louis stood beside the door, his breath was ragged. His hands were soaked in sweat and something thicker he wouldn't even want to acknowledge. He turned the key, clicked it into place, and the lock echoed with finality.

He knew what was going to happen, he had done it already not once but countless times.

The oil sloshed heavily in the canister in his hand. It glugged out in sticky lines along the baseboards, glistening under the flickering light of fire from beyond the curtains.

Each splash was louder than it should've been, each sound sounded like betrayal and behind him, Harry stood in uniform.

Not as a costume, not in a dream but real. With a high collar, dirt on his boots and medals on his chest. His hair cropped shorter than usual, nearly bald. He looked older than in the other dreams, tired and haunted, but the softness around his mouth when he looked at Louis hadn't changed.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked.

Louis didn't answer, he kept pouring the oil, the can was nearly empty.

"Louis," His voice again, firmer this time. "What are you doing?" There was a shake in it, barely there, but it was fear.

Louis turned to face him, he held a single match in his hand.

Outside, another explosion shook the glass in the windows, the sound didn't even make either of them flinch. Louis walked slowly across the room. He stopped right in front of Harry, close enough to touch, but he didn't. His eyes were glassy though not with tears but with finality.

With the end.

"Better ash than absence." Louis whispered.

Harry's breath hitched. "You don't have to do that."

"I can't lose you again."

"You don't have to do this."

"I won't let it take you from me," Louis' voice cracked. "Not again."

The match struck, the sound only soft but unremarkable and it changed everything.

A flame bloomed in his hand, he didn't even look away from Harry when he dropped it.

The fire caught faster than it should've, the oil went up with a roar, wall became light, curtains screamed and smoke billowed toward the ceiling like breath from the throat of a monster.

Harry stumbled back in shock. "Louis!"

But Louis caught him, arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, his chest, pulling him in, holding him. "Don't be afraid," he whispered, his voice was calm. "We'll be together."

The air grew thick, every breath scraped the throat, heat licked at their ankles, their knees.

Harry was coughing now, pulling at Louis' arms, desperate. "No, no, we can still run, we can get out, Louis, please."

"I'm sorry," Louis choked, lips pressed to Harry's temple. "I'm so sorry."

Outside the windows, the sky glowed orange like the mouth of hell.

Inside, the fire danced along the floorboards.

The last thing Louis saw before the smoke took everything was Harry's face, streaked with soot and disbelief, trying so hard to understand why. And Louis, holding him tighter, burying his face into his chest, repeating the words like a prayer to some cruel god: "Better ash than absence. Better ash than absence."

He came back with a scream lodged in his throat, but it never made it out.

He was still in Harry's arms, shaking and with tears streaming down his face. Gasping for air like it was water in the middle of a drought.

Harry didn't say anything this time, he didn't have to, he knew it would happen, he lived it every time.

He just held Louis tighter, pressed his lips to his hair and waited, let Louis sob again into his arms like his heart was being torn out through each bone. "I killed you again," Louis whispered, broken. "I killed you again."

Harry nodded, silent.

"But why? Why do I keep?"

"You loved me more than the world," Harry said softly. "Every time, you chose me, but some choices.. destroy everything."

Louis looked up at him through tear-blurred eyes. "Then why do we always come back?"

Harry exhaled. "Because we still haven't learned the right way to end."

And before Louis could ask what that meant, the Velvet Room shuddered beneath them.

⛤

The breath hadn't even settled in Louis' lungs from the last vision when the velvet bled away beneath them once more. He just fell again, through memory, through time, through layers of himself so tightly coiled that they snapped like wires under tension.

He landed in a world of grey light and cold silence.

A wide drawing room, elegant in the old-money way: paneled walls, tasteful rugs, oil paintings. A chandelier overhead and rain tapped against the windows like it was asking to come inside.

And in the center of the room.

Louis.

In a charcoal suit, the collar slightly wrinkled. His hair slicked back, eyes glassy, rimmed in red, shining wet and he was shaking.

And in his right hand a pistol.

Harry was kneeling in front of him.

Hands behind his back, posture straight despite everything. No fear in his face, just a terrible, quiet knowing. His clothes were crisp, his skin pale in the rainy light, his lips parted as though he wanted to speak but had already decided it wouldn't matter.

Louis inched closer, trembling harder now, the gun raised but not quite aimed, his knuckles were white around the grip.

"I can't do this again." He whispered.

Harry blinked once slowly. "You always say that."

Louis' face crumpled. "Please. Don't make me."

"I'm not making you," Harry's voice was soft, almost kind. "You've already decided."

"I—" Louis shook his head, tears streaking down his cheeks. "I don't want to hurt you. I never want to."

"You said you'd never hurt me." Harry murmured.

Louis' breath caught, a full-body shudder overtook him.

He stared down the barrel, at the man he loved. At the only person who had ever made him feel like time wasn't cruel, like maybe he wasn't cursed to relive the same ache over and over and over.

"I never wanted to," Louis said, his voice cracked like a window under pressure. "But I always do."

Harry's lips barely moved. "Then maybe this is the last time."

Louis' sob cracked the quiet and then a sound like the world exhaling.

A single shot.

The silence that followed was too complete.

No echo, no scream. Just the thud of Harry's body falling forward, lifeless. A sick sound as his weight hit the floor, his head against the carpet, one arm half-bent beneath him.

Louis dropped the pistol and fell to his knees with a terrible, breathless gasp, crawling forward with outstretched hands, clutching Harry's coat, curling over his body like he could still shield him from death.

He was sobbing into the crook of Harry's neck, repeating something over and over.

But in the vision, it was lost.

All the words blurred into grief.

When the vision let go, it did so like claws dragging out of skin.

Louis came back with a strangled noise, collapsed back into Harry's arms, barely conscious with how hard he was shaking.

He couldn't speak, there were no words, only broken sobs.

Harry held him wordlessly.

⛤

The Velvet Room had gone quiet again, if not too quiet, a kind of silence that feels like something watching and holding its breath.

Louis hadn't moved since the gunshot.

His knees were soaked in memory, his hands were still curled in fists from a past that had long since rotted away. His eyes were open but unfocused, seeing not the crimson velvet or the flickering lamplight but the trembling hands holding a pistol. The body on the floor, the blood.

He blinked slowly. Inhaled. Exhaled. It hurt.

Harry knelt with him again, steady arms around his ribs, his face pressed against the side of Louis' neck like it could anchor them both to this time, this version of themselves, this flickering maybe.

It took Louis a long time to speak and when he did, it was barely more than a breath, a whisper frayed and thin and strung out from grief.

"Why." He said.

Harry didn't move. Louis turned his head and looked at him. "Why. Why does this keep happening? Why do I always kill you?"

Harry didn't look surprised, he looked.. grieved.

Ancient.

Older than his own skin, his own soul, as if his eyes had watched this moment repeat for lifetimes and were afraid to believe it could be different this time.

He exhaled through his nose, closed his eyes before he answered. "Because once you brought me back," Harry said quietly, "I wasn't just me anymore."

Harry lifted his eyes and something flickered behind them faint and shifting, like candlelight behind a thick veil. "There was a time," he continued. "In a life so long ago we stopped keeping count, where I died, and you.." he swallowed. "You tried to undo it."

Louis' hands began to tremble again, flashbacks of the first time, the ritual.

"You did something you didn't understand. Something ancient. You called out with love, Louis. With grief so loud it echoed across time.. and something answered."

The velvet walls pulsed around them barely.

"You thought you brought me back," Harry said. "But you didn't, not only me."

Louis' mouth was dry, his stomach turned.

Harry's voice was heartbreakingly gentle now. "You brought back something wearing me. Something that remembers our love, yes, but twists it. Devours it, it hides behind it, it grows with it."

Louis' throat closed, each word hit like ice down his spine. "So you're not..?"

"I am me." Harry's hand moved, cradling the side of his face. "But I'm not just me, not anymore. And every time we begin again.. that thing inside me becomes more."

He paused, watching Louis crumble silently.

"More hungry," Harry whispered. "More afraid of you leaving, of us forgetting, of ending it."

Louis let out a low sound, something between a sob and a gasp.

Harry brushed a thumb under his eye. "At first it was subtle. A shift in my eyes, a tremor in the way I held you. But now, now it knows what's coming, it remembers too."

"And I.. forget." Louis choked.

Harry nodded slowly. "You always forget, we both do. That's part of the curse. You remember the pain, the fear, the love but never all at once, never early enough."

Louis' hands fisted in Harry's shirt. "Then why can you never tell me? Why can't you warn me?"

"Because I just can't," Harry said, voice breaking now too. "Not until you remember. The moment I try, the house takes more of me. The thing inside claws closer to the surface. That's why I'm always strange, distant and silent. You need to see it all over and over again until it let me talk."

"Because of me." Louis whispered, horror creeping up his spine.

"Because of love," Harry corrected softly. "Because what we had was too strong and too real. It defied time. And a love like that, it burns. It carves echoes so deep the world can't forget them."

Louis was crying again, silently but fully, like something cracking open. "Then why do I always kill you?" He whispered. "Why does it end that way?"

Harry pressed their foreheads together, he knew it was hard to understand, Louis asked it every time.

"Because by the time you remember, it's always too late. The illusion's already cracked. I'm too far gone, or the house is, or you are, and it's the only way to reset."

Louis shook his head. "But we're here now, this time, I do remember early enough, right?"

Harry smiled and it nearly broke Louis apart. "Yes," he said. "This is the first time you've asked why instead of how to escape."

Louis' heart slammed in his chest.

"The first time the house has let you get this far," Harry went on. "The first time I'm still mostly me, the first time you remembered before the final death."

"I couldn't save you," he whispered. "Not once."

Harry's voice broke as he kissed his cheek.
"Then save me this time."

The velvet air pulsed again.

"So what now?" Louis whispered.

Harry looked at him, love burning in his eyes and something else, something darker, it was watching.

"Now?" He said. "Now we try to break it."

Louis blinked at him. Harry laced their fingers together. "But to do that, we have to keep going."

Louis nodded once, just barely.

"There's only one more thing you need to see before we fight it." And before Louis could ask, Harry pressed his finger against his temple and Louis fell again.

⛤

It was raining, in a slow and steady way like after a heavy storm.

It had soaked through the windows, dripped down the stone walls in slow, pulsing streams.

Louis found Harry in the Velvet Room.

The heavy crimson drapes that lined the walls, the ones that never seemed to gather dust or fade with time, had started to feel alive somehow. The room always held heat inside, like life, like blood, like memory.

The air was always just a little too thick and lately, the door didn't close unless it wanted to.

Harry sat slumped on the edge of the altar, that altar, the stone slab where he'd once died and came back wrong. His hands hung between his knees, his shoulders hunched forward, shirt clinging to his damp back. Rain dripped from the ends of his curls.

He didn't look up when Louis entered.

Louis moved carefully, like stepping too hard might startle the moment into shattering. "You're cold," he said softly. "Let me get you something dry."

"Don't." The word came sharp, brittle.

Louis stopped.

Harry's voice cracked when he spoke again, quieter this time. "Just sit."

Louis did. Not on the altar, but the floor below, back against the stone, close enough that their knees almost touched, he looked up at Harry through the gloom.

The room sighed. "I remember all of it now," Harry said eventually. "What it felt like, the first time."

Louis tried not to flinch, but failed. "I didn't know what else to do.

"That's not what I mean."

A beat passed, the rain traced lazy lines down the window. The shadows shifted along the velvet walls like they were breathing.

"I mean I remember being dead," Harry whispered. "I remember that it was quiet and warm. I wasn't afraid."

Louis' throat tightened.

"I remember thinking—" Harry laughed, but it cracked halfway out of his mouth, breaking into something shakier. "I remember thinking, 'He's going to be okay. Louis will go on without me.' That was the last thought I had. That I could go, and you'd be safe. That it would end."

Louis shook his head. "I couldn't Harry, I couldn't let you go."

"But I was gone, Louis."

Harry turned now, slowly and when their eyes met, Louis felt something in his chest turn to dust. Harry looked wrecked. Eyes rimmed red, dark shadows beneath them, mouth trembling like he couldn't quite find the words to hold the grief inside.

"You didn't bring me back," he said. "Not really. You just.. tethered me. Anchored me. Tied my soul to this place and wrapped it in barbed wire. You tore open whatever came next and shoved me back into my body like it was a cage."

Louis could only stare, blinking through the wetness in his eyes. "You're alive."

Harry smiled, but it wasn't kind. "Am I?" He stood abruptly and the room groaned, curtains swaying without wind, the door creaking open an inch as if listening. Harry paced once, then twice, fingers curling into fists at his sides.

"I don't sleep, did you know that?" He whispered. "I close my eyes and I see all the ways I died. My bones still hurt when the storm comes. I can feel the air change hours before rain falls, like I'm still rotting." He stopped, looking down at Louis.

"And every time I'm afraid. Because if I die again—"

"You won't."

"When I die again," Harry pressed, stepping closer. "You'll do it again."

Louis surged to his feet, shaking. "What was I supposed to do, Harry? Let you go? Let it take you and just.. just bury you and try to breathe afterward?"

"Yes! Louis, yes. That's what people do. That's what love does, it lets go."

"I can't."

"Then you will ruin me."

The room fell silent.
The curtains stilled.

Harry was panting, tears streaming now, whether from anger or heartbreak or both. He took Louis' hands and placed them flat on his own chest, over the faint, unnatural thud of his heart.

"Please," he whispered. "Promise me. Promise that if it happens again, you'll let me go. Promise that you won't open that book. That you won't come back here. That you'll burn the altar and bury me deep and never try to pull me back."

Louis' fingers trembled. "I—I can't."

"You have to," Harry begged, pressing their foreheads together. "Because this thing, it's inside me now. It watches when I sleep. It whispers, it wants you to need it and if you bring me back again, I don't think it'll be me anymore."

Louis sobbed then finally. The sound tearing up from his chest like it had been waiting for weeks.
"I don't know how to live without you."

Harry's voice was a ghost. "Then you'll have to learn."

They held each other in the hush that followed, both of them crying, both of them breaking.

Neither one realizing that the Velvet Room was listening.. and smiling.

Louis snapped out of it, eyes wide when he looked at Harry. "I.. I brought you back every time?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, Louis. Not only did you kill me, but you always dragged my body back here, into this room, just to bring me back again and try again."

Louis felt sick then, Harry noticed. "I didn't show you that to make you feel bad but to ask you once and for all to let me go this time."

"I can't." Louis sobbed.

"Please," Harry whispered. "Look at me, Lou," he cradled Louis' face in his hands and their eyes met. "Let. Me. Go. If this time we won't get out, promise to let me die, let me rest, I'm tired, Lou. So, so tired."

And finally, Louis nodded. "I promise."

⛤

The house was quiet again, a quiet that wasn't truly silence at all, not when the walls still breathed and the Velvet Room still shimmered faintly behind its closed door like something waiting. Louis stood near the window in the upstairs hallway, arms folded tight around his ribs like he was holding himself together and Harry lingered beside him, just barely a presence in the dim light, there and not there, real and not real, soft and steady and utterly unreadable.

There were still so many questions and Louis felt like he needed to know before they'd face the last step, the last memory. Louis didn't look at him when he asked, he couldn't.

His voice was quiet. "Why am I still here?"

Harry turned to him slowly, eyes catching the last glimmer of twilight before the sun disappeared behind the trees. He didn't answer immediately, just looked at Louis like it hurt, like the words he was about to say had been living too long in his throat.

"I mean," Louis went on, eyes fixed to a crack in the floorboard, his voice building with the weight of a question too long ignored. "I get you. I mean—I don't. Not really, not fully. But I see it. You're.. whatever the fuck you are now. Not human, not gone either, but me? How am I even still alive if all this happened so long ago? If we've done this so many times, how am I still here? Why me?"

That last part came out jagged, almost desperate. Harry stepped forward like he meant to touch him but didn't, he hovered there, hands loose at his sides, gaze steady.

"You're not the same every time," Harry said softly. "That's the point."

Louis blinked. "What?"

"You're not still here. You always come back."

And Louis felt it before he understood it, his body tightening, heart stammering against his ribs, as if the answer had been humming through his blood all along.

"You're a new you each time. A different version of the same soul. Reborn. Rewritten. You look a little different. You move a little differently. But you're always you. You always come back to this house, to me."

Louis' mouth was dry. "So I've been.. reincarnated?"

Harry gave a faint nod, almost mournful. "In a way, not like stories say, but yes. You're pulled here because you never finished what began. Because you tried to bring me back that first time, and the loop's been tethered to your soul ever since. You're the anchor now. You light the match. You start the cycle. Without you, there is no loop."

Louis sat down slowly on the edge of the stairs, like his knees couldn't hold him anymore. "But I didn't remember."

"No. You never do, not until the end, not until you kill me and even then it slips."

He looked up at Harry. "Why?"

"Because as I said, what came back.. wasn't just me."

Harry knelt in front of him, voice low and level, full of unbearable affection and resignation and something far darker threaded beneath.

"There's a force, an echo or a shadow. It wears my face, it speaks in my voice and at first, I am still me. I still love you. I still remember us. But as the cycle repeats, the shadow grows stronger. I become.. less."

Louis stared at him, heart sinking through the floor. "So you're not even really you anymore."

"I am," Harry said, firm and fierce, like he needed Louis to believe it. "I am now. This time, I'm still here, still holding on. But the longer we stay in this loop, the harder it is to keep the shadow from swallowing me completely. That's why you always end it."

Louis whispered. "By killing you."

Harry nodded, the smallest motion. "It's the only way to reset but the loop was never meant to repeat, not forever."

A heavy silence fell over them, thick and breathless. "This is the first time." Harry said again quietly.

Louis stared at him.

"It's the first time the house has let you get close. The first time I've still been mostly me when you started to remember. The first time you asked not just what was happening but why."

He took a deep breath.

"The first time," Harry said. "That loop might actually break."

"If we survive," Harry whispered, reaching for his hand. "If you can forgive yourself.. if I can hold on.. we might make it."

"But how?" Louis asked, voice barely audible. "How do we end it?"

Harry looked at him with eyes full of centuries, his thumb brushing over the back of Louis' hand like it was the last thing tethering him to earth.

"With love." He said simply. "Love created this. And only love, fully seen, fully owned, can unmake it."

⛤

Louis sat on the floor now, knees pulled to his chest, forehead pressed to the bannister rail and it felt like the house itself was trying to crack his skull open, pour in every memory at once, every word Harry had spoken, every loop, every death, every variant flickering behind his eyelids like lightning—knife, poison, fire, gun—him, always him, begging or sobbing or shaking or whispering through clenched teeth as he did the thing he swore he'd never do again. And then again. And again.

He knows now that it wasn't resurrection, it was desecration and that if he dies again, Louis will try it again. And again. And again.

He let out a low, shuddering breath. "I don't know what to do with all this."

Behind him, Harry was sitting quietly, one knee drawn up, arms wrapped around it in a way that looked too human to be anything else. He watched Louis like someone memorizing the final shape of something beloved.

"That's the cruel part," Harry said softly. "The remembering. It doesn't come with instructions. It's just.. weight and ache and questions you already asked a hundred times, in a hundred different lives."

Louis lifted his head. "But you know, don't you? You know how it ends, you just won't say."

Harry didn't flinch, he didn't deny it either, instead he said." You still think there's time."

Louis' blood ran cold. "What do you mean?"

"I'm still mostly myself. I can still hold your hand. I still remember every version of you. What you look like when you're sixteen. How your voice changed. The way you breathe when you're asleep. I still love you the way I loved you in 1802 and 1849 and 1917 and 1943. I still remember your letters. Your fingertips. Your laugh."

Harry's voice broke. "But it's getting harder." He looked at Louis, really looked and something in his expression made Louis want to run. "The longer I'm here, the longer you're here, the more the thing inside me grows. The shadow you pulled in when you opened the wrong door trying to bring me back. It wasn't meant to touch this world but it used your love like a tether and now it wears me, it waits. And if it takes me fully, before you remember everything, before you face what this version holds, then this time ends like the others."

Louis shook his head, heart hammering. "But it doesn't have to, you said this time might be different." Louis knew he had asked that multiple times, Harry had explained it multiple times but it was too much to comprehend.

"It might be, but only if we don't waste it."

Louis stood, dizzy, angry, overwhelmed. "You're still not telling me what to do! How do we break it? Do we burn the house down? Do I walk away? Do I stay? Do I die? Do you die?"

Harry stood too, slower and steadier. He came close enough that Louis felt the air change around them, he reached out and when his fingers touched Louis's jaw, the gesture was unbearably gentle.

"You can't end this."

Louis blinked. "What?"

"You can't kill me this time. You never could, not really. It was never your choice. The loop made you, but now..." He swallowed. "Now I have to end it myself, before you try, before the thing in me decides it wants you instead."

"No," Louis said too fast. "No, no, we just found each other again. You're still you, we can fight it. You said we had time."

Harry nodded once. "We do, but not much and the next part is the key."

He stepped back, toward the Velvet Room, his voice low and grave and final. "You have to face the last variant. This life. The mirror version. The one from now. The one neither of us remembered until you step through with me."

Louis hesitated. "What happens?"

Harry's eyes didn't leave his. "You'll see."

Louis' throat was tight. "And then?"

"If there's anything left of me," Harry said. "Then I'll help you finish it and if not..."

He trailed off, looking toward the door, where the Velvet Room waited. ".. then you'll know what you have to let me do."

The silence stretched.

"Harry," Louis whispered, "Please don't.."

But Harry only opened the door and held out his hand. "Come with me," he said. "Let's go find ourselves."

Louis was just about to take Harry's hand, fingers trembling with the weight of everything he still didn't understand, when his phone, silent for days, he could have sworn, rang sharp and sudden in his pocket.

He flinched, Harry froze, hand still outstretched, his expression unreadable.

The screen lit up with NIALL in capital letters, and Louis blinked like he'd forgotten what a name even meant. He answered, breathless. "Niall?"

"Jesus fucking Christ, Louis, where the fuck have you been?!"

Louis winced. "I I'm here. I'm fine, I'm—"

"You're not fine," Niall snapped, his voice was wild. "I've been calling for hours. Zayn has too. Nothing. Not a fucking peep. I called the police, Louis. The police. They went to the house and you know what they said?"

Louis glanced at Harry. "What?"

"They said it's ruins, Louis. It's a fucking overgrown foundation. No house. Just rubble and rot and a place that's been empty since before we were born."

Something cold licked down Louis' spine.

"I'm looking right at it." He whispered.

Niall's voice went flat. "Don't fucking joke."

"I'm not. I'm—I'm inside it."

"You're what?"

Louis pressed his palm to his forehead. "I don't know how to explain it. I don't know how I'm here. I don't know how they can't see it. But it's real. I swear to you, Niall. And I'm not alone."

Zayn's voice filtered faintly through the line, then Niall again "I'm with Zayn now. We're coming. Now. He says he's got a friend.. Liam. He's.. into all this. A medium, or something like it. If there's a way to reach you, we're gonna find it."

Louis felt his knees wobble under him. "Okay. Okay, but you have to hurry, it's getting worse. I don't know how much time I have left. I don't even know if I'm really—" he broke off. "Just please come."

"Hold on, Louis," Niall said, and for once his voice was soft. "Don't disappear on us. We're coming."

Louis hung up, the silence after ringing far too deep, he looked up.

Harry hadn't moved but his eyes had darkened faintly. Just at the edges, like the shadow had flickered closer. "They won't be able to help if we don't act now," Harry said quietly. "If there's any chance to break this, Louis, we have to do our part first. They can come, let them come, but you and I, we have to step into the memory. All the way."

Louis gripped the phone tighter. "You heard all that?"

Harry nodded once. Louis hesitated only a moment and then, without another word, he slid his hand into Harry's.

The house held its breath.

And together, they stepped back into the Velvet Room.

Chapter Text

The room was quiet this time, not still, because it was never completely still, but quiet in a dreadful way that made your breath feel wrong in your chest.

Louis stood at the threshold, Harry just behind him and the Velvet Room blinked itself into memory like it always did. The air clung to them like syrup, the walls pulsed faintly like a beating heart. Familiar.

And yet this one felt different. No fire, no blood, no teacups or pistols. Only silence and a mirror.

It stood tall in the far corner of the room, framed in ornate black wood, its surface was weirdly warped like something had been clawing at it from the inside trying to get out. The reflection was wrong, like some tilted version of the real world.

Louis stepped forward, or no, he was pulled more like and he didn't fight it. Not that he could if he wanted, his body remembered the way.

There, across the room, he saw them in the mirror.

Himself.. and Harry.

They weren't dressed in old coats or uniforms or lace and there was no antique flicker of candlelight this time. It was just them, now, in jeans and sweaters.

But the mirror didn't show them standing like they were in reality, it showed them kneeling. Louis held the knife, Harry was already bleeding.

Not from the chest this time, but from the wrist, or more like both his wrists and it was clear that this wasn't an act of rage or confusion or panic.

It was grief, the kind that makes you fall to your knees, the kind that makes you believe you can follow someone into death. Louis sobbed in the mirror, clutching Harry to his chest, rocking like a child, whispering over and over: "It wasn't supposed to happen again. I remembered. I remembered this time. I chose you."

And Harry, Harry smiled while blood dripped down his fingers like ink and he said. "You always choose me. That's the problem."

Then the mirror cracked, a long, jagged line right across Louis' reflection's face. Then another and another, until it shattered altogether and the Velvet Room howled.

The vision broke, but the screaming didn't, it wasn't coming from Louis.

It was coming from the walls.

From the floor.

From the house.

From everything that had been holding its breath for whatever hundred years.

Louis fell backward into Harry's arms, his body wracked with sobs, his skin cold to the touch, he couldn't speak, he could barely breathe.

And Harry, the real Harry this time, wrapped him up, one hand in Louis' hair, the other around his spine, and whispered, "You saw it. You saw it all."

Louis pressed his face into his neck.

"We're here," Harry said. "At the end."

Then the house began to tear itself apart.

⛤

The ruins didn't look like ruins from the outside. The house was still there, just not fully.

Its shape flickered at the edges, like heat rising off black tarmac and the longer you looked at it, the more weird it became. Windows seemed to blink and shutters pulsed. The door that should have stood silent and shut was now just gone.

Liam stopped just before it, he simply stood, hand half-lifted, as if trying to feel for something.

Niall, frantic and breathless said his name. "Liam. Come on, he's in there."

"I know." Liam said, but not like he was relieved, more like he was mourning. "You need to listen to me. Once we cross the threshold, it won't be the same."

"What do you mean?" Zayn asked, stepping closer.

"I mean you'll step in, and you won't be here anymore, not really. The house exists, but not like a house. It's a place, yes. But it's also..."
He struggled. "...An echo. A memory. A trap."

Niall didn't wait. "He's in there and I'm going in."

Liam nodded tight-lipped. "Then go fast, go together."

And so they stepped through, they didn't walk in, they fell.

Time folded like paper, the sky vanished and when the three of them landed, coughing and knees scraping against a blackened wooden floor, they were inside the house.

The real house.
The truth of it.

Every wall was bleeding wallpaper, curling and writhing with rot. Mirrors hung crooked, all of them cracked, some were softly weeping fog. Every light was flickering and the ceilings moaned like lungs struggling to expand.

It wasn't a place built to hold life anymore, it was built to consume it and it was doing exactly that.

"This isn't possible," Zayn whispered. "This can't be the same house. This can't be.."

"It's the only house it's ever been," Liam murmured. "Louis saw it as he needed to see it, but now it's dropped the veil."

Niall was already running. "LOUIS!" His voice echoed in a sickening spiral, like it went down instead of forward.

The walls didn't respond, but they shifted. Doors blinked out, stairs twisted, it was a maze designed to separate and to isolate.

But Zayn ran after him. Liam brought up the rear, his fingers twitching like he was reading something the others couldn't see.

A glimmer, a thread and then, at the end of a hall that should not have existed, a room with no windows, but full of light.

The Velvet Room.

And in the centre of it, collapsed and broken, was Louis.

Kneeling, shaking and covered in tears. His face buried in Harry's shoulder like a child hiding from thunder. And Harry, too still and quiet, held him like he had every century before.

Niall cried out his name. "LOUIS!"

Louis flinched like the sound burned him.
He turned slowly, eyes rimmed with red, face pale and his voice small. "Niall?"

Niall fell to his knees and threw his arms around him, but something snapped in the air at the contact, something angry, the room shuddered.

"Don't," Louis gasped. "You can't. The house doesn't want you. It doesn't want any of you."

"We don't care," Zayn said, stepping forward.
"Tell us what's going on. Tell us what's happening to you."

And Louis finally did, he told them everything.

About the dreams.
The deaths.
The rooms and the rituals.
The visions.
The endless loop.
About Harry.
How they had always loved.
How they had always lost.
How Louis always killed him—until now.

He explained what Harry was, what he had become and what he used to be.

He explained that love could unmake it. That memory could change it, but they were almost out of time.

The house, this ancient grieving thing, was dying, and like any dying beast, it would do everything it could to take them all with it.

As Louis spoke, the floor beneath them began to rumble. The ceiling above groaned, as if some monstrous truth was waking in the bones of the house.

Liam whispered. "We're in its final breath."

"What do we do?" Zayn asked. "Tell us how to help."

Harry looked up for the first time. Eyes glassy, fading at the edges.

"You can't help," he said. "Not this time. I'm sorry."

Louis clutched at him harder with his chest heaving. "Don't—don't say that. We're together now. You said that mattered."

"It does," Harry said. "That's why I can say goodbye now."

And in that moment, Niall and Liam and Zayn realized: They hadn't arrived at the beginning of something.

They had arrived at the end.

The house let them in for one reason only:
To witness.

⛤

Louis screamed, no words exactly, nothing with a reason, it was just grief, raw and gut wrenching, like his soul was being dragged out through his throat.

He shoved himself back from Harry, stumbling on the velvet floor. "No. No, no, you don't get to say goodbye. You don't get to end this again."

The house didn't like that, it shuddered with him, the walls pulsed, cracks split the ceiling like lightning.

"Louis," Niall called, staggering to his feet, his hands trembling from the aftershock of the house's rejection. "You have to calm down!"

"Don't tell me to calm down!" Louis shouted, turning on him like a wounded animal. "You didn't see what I saw! You didn't feel it! You didn't kill him again and again and again—"

"I know," Liam said, voice low and steady, cutting through the noise like a blade. "I do know."

Louis turned to him, saw him, really saw him. Liam's eyes weren't entirely his anymore.

They shimmered, threaded with silver veins of something not of this world. His hands were black at the fingertips, burned with old ritual ink, glowing faintly with the same dull red as the Velvet Room's eternal light.

"The house marked me years ago," Liam said softly. "That's why I could hear it. That's why I could feel it. I just never knew why, not until now."

Louis stared. "What are you talking about?"

"I've been dreaming of this place since I was seventeen. Always the same room. Always the same red. I thought it was just visions. Fractures in time. But I was being pulled here, all this time, for this."

The house groaned again. Splinters rained from above like falling snow.

Harry stood slowly behind Louis, pale and quiet, his presence flickering between human and something else entirely. "It's too late," he said. "It always is."

But Liam stepped forward, eyes burning now. "Not this time."

He pulled something from the inside of his coat. A notebook, small and frayed, covered in wax drips. Inside were symbols and what seemed to be scripts and charms that shouldn't exist in this world.  "The Velvet Room is a threshold." Liam said, voice rising to be heard over the house's growl.

"It's where the loops start, it's where the lies hold. And if I can invert it, twist the anchor point back into time, we might be able to unbind it."

"Unbind what?" Zayn asked.

"Harry's soul." Liam said. "Not destroy it, just.. unmoor it. Let it go back to where it belongs."

"That's killing him." Louis said brokenly.

"No," Liam said, his voice trembling. "He's already dead. This is what's killing you."

Louis collapsed to his knees again, sobbing now. "I can't. I can't let him go."

Harry knelt beside him, placed a hand on his back, so gentle, so soft. "You never could. That's why we're still here."

Behind them, the walls split open in long horizontal mouths. Mirrors shattered. Blood poured out of empty sockets in the ceiling. The house was ending and it meant to take everyone with it.

Liam knelt in the centre of the room and began to chant, not in English nor in any known language.
The room bent toward them and the fight began.

Niall collapsed again, screaming in pain as the floor turned molten under his feet. Zayn tried to drag him back, the walls closing in, vines of shadow slashing out from the corners.

"LIAM!" Zayn screamed. "Whatever you're doing! DO IT FASTER!"

"I can't rush it!" Liam shouted back, his eyes were glowing fully now, the air around him crackled.

He was trembling, sweat pouring down his neck. "It has to sync with the pulse of the house, otherwise it'll kill him."

The room began to shift around them, the Velvet walls peeled back like skin.

Underneath; a black void, full of memories, and Louis, at the center of it, was being pulled down.

Hands and mouths. Versions of himself and Harry. All the deaths, all the sins and the screaming. All of them crying and begging him to remember.

Harry moved toward the center, light haloing his figure, but only just, he was fading, and fast.

Liam opened the book wider, drew a circle around himself in glowing salt that burned where it fell.

"Louis," he shouted. "You have to hold onto him, but only his humanity, let the rest of it go."

"How?!"

"You know how!"

Louis stumbled forward, found Harry again in the center of the storm.

"Please," he begged. "Stay. Stay with me. This time I won't forget. This time I'll get it right."

Harry smiled, soft and sad. "You've already done it right, you remembered."

And then he kissed Louis, just once and stepped backward.

Liam screamed the final word of the spell.

The house shrieked.

And the floor opened beneath Harry like a pit.

Louis screamed as Harry backed toward the void, and Niall lunged forward, caught his arms from behind before he could throw himself in after him.

"LET ME GO!"

"No," Niall sobbed, breathless. "You don't get to die with him, not this time!"

The house roared in fury. Flames erupted along the walls. The velvet curtains turned to writhing, shrieking shadows. The mirrors bled black and the floor cracked open in long lines.

Liam was still chanting, his hands were trembling, his mouth stained with blood. The salt ring around him flickered, barely holding together.

"Harry!" Louis screamed again, lungs breaking.
"Don't you fucking dare! Don't. You. DARE!"

But Harry only looked at him softly, like always.
With that impossible love, with grief carved into the lines of his face like history written in them.

Zayn wrapped his arms around Louis too now, holding him up, holding him back, as if that could make a difference.

And then, Harry knelt at the edge of the abyss.
Laid the ritual knife, that same knife, across his wrists, palms up.His hands were shaking, but he was calm. "You brought me back when you shouldn't have," Harry said quietly. "But you did it out of love and I've been carrying that love like a curse ever since."

Louis choked, thrashing. "I'll find another way, there's always another way—"

"There isn't," Harry said gently. "I know. I remember everything now and so do you."

He smiled, brighter than every star Louis had ever seen. "And this time," Harry whispered. "I want to go."

He slid the blade across his skin, one wrist, then the other. Blood poured in a slow, steady stream onto the velvet floor, soaking into the fabric like wine, like memory or like sacrifice.

The house screamed. Louis collapsed in Zayn and Niall's arms as Harry's knees buckled.

The floor beneath Harry opened, swallowed him like he'd never been real. The air rushed out of the house like a breath held too long finally released.

The Velvet Room crumbled. "RUN!" Liam yelled, throwing open a door that hadn't been there a second ago.

Louis didn't run, instead he screamed and clawed at the floor. But Niall and Zayn dragged him out through the collapsing hallways, through fire and shadow and splintering light, through time itself snapping in half.

Behind them, the house imploded, a scream of glass and grief and red velvet swallowing itself inward into silence.

They didn't stop running until they were outside. They collapsed in the grass just past the dead oak tree, heaving and choking and trembling.

The house was gone, mot ruined or burned.
Gone.

Only a foundation of ash remained, smoking quietly in the blue-grey dawn.

Louis didn't speak.

He sat curled in the dirt, blood on his hands, soot in his hair, his face blank.

Niall sat beside him, his arm around Louis' shoulders even though Louis didn't lean in.

Zayn stood guard beside them, hands shaking, staring at the spot where the house had been.

Liam knelt a little away from them, the ritual book closed on his knees. His eyes hollow, bleeding from the corners, but his lips still moving, whispers now, softer than breath.

Louis finally spoke, barely audible. "I loved him in every life."

"I know." Niall whispered.

Silence. "I wanted a different ending."

"So did he."

Louis blinked slowly, his hands curled into fists in the ash. "...Do you think he's free now?"

Liam, eyes still closed, answered without looking up. "He's not here anymore. That's something."

Louis didn't move, his voice cracked when he spoke. "It's not enough."

And dawn broke over them.
And Harry was gone.
And the house was gone.
And the curse was broken.

But Louis stayed in the ashes, holding the silence like it was Harry's hand.

They dragged him into the car because they had to, there wasn't any other way. Louis had gone soft in their arms after the collapse, not quite conscious, but not unconscious either, his body moving like driftwood in the tide, mouth open and silent, face streaked with ash and blood and tears.

Niall sat in the back with him, holding him upright with both arms like he was cradling a dead man, murmuring things, nonsense things, things like you're okay now and I've got you, you're safe, but none of them made it past the shell that Louis had become. Zayn drove, white-knuckled and hollow-eyed, knuckles bandaged with a dishrag Liam had pulled from the car, the only clean thing left. Liam sat in the passenger seat, eyes closed the entire time, lips moving soundlessly, as though he still had some chant left to finish, like if he just kept whispering the right words the cracks might stay sealed and time wouldn't pull open again at the seams.

At Zayn's house, they didn't even make it past the front hallway. Louis collapsed the moment the door shut. No furniture, no comfort, just the wooden floor and the weight of what he'd done and what he hadn't done, and what had happened in every life before.

He screamed once, his voice raw and full of something inhuman, something ripped from deeper than lungs or throat, then he went quiet again.

Zayn paced. Niall crouched next to Louis, his arms loose around him like he didn't know if he was allowed to touch.

And Liam sat on the stairs and finally opened his eyes. "He's not going to be okay, is he?" He said quietly.

"No," Zayn replied. "Not for a long time."

Louis was trembling, his lips moved soundlessly at first, then he began to speak in scattered fragments, half-whispers, some words in the wrong order, like he was trying to exorcise the whole thing from memory by speaking it aloud over and over again. The ritual. The knife. The tea. The fire. The gun. The mirror. Harry's wrists. Harry's face. Harry's voice. "You brought me back when you shouldn't have."

He told them everything. Again. And again.
And again.

Liam finally stepped in when it became clear Louis wouldn't stop on his own. He crouched in front of him, placed two fingers on his temple gently, like he might bless him or ground him or silence the spinning inside his head.

"You're not crazy," Liam said quietly. "You remember too much, that's all. And you're still in that life. You have to come back to this one, Louis."

Louis stared at him, wide-eyed and shaking. "Why?" he breathed. "Why me? Why again? Why did I have to do it all again if it always ends the same, if he always dies?"

"Because this is the first time you had the time to remember," Liam said, his voice almost kind. "Every other time, it pulled you under too fast. Every time before this, the house got stronger, and Harry got weaker, and you forgot. You always forgot."

Niall looked up, his voice ragged. "But, how the fuck was this ever supposed to end?"

Liam exhaled slowly, like he'd been waiting for that question. "It was always meant to end this way. With him letting go, not with you killing him. That was the loop. The knot. The punishment. And the only way out, was for Harry to make the choice himself, to die as Harry, not as the thing the house turned him into."

Louis let out a strangled sob, pressing his forehead to his knees. "But why did I have to remember," he whispered. "Why did I have to watch it all again?"

"Because you created it," Liam said sternly but not unkindly. "You brought him back, you tied your love to his soul in a way that even death couldn't undo, it had to be you."

Zayn sat down heavily beside Niall, both of them staring at Liam like he'd cracked open the sky, the air in the room still tasted like ash.

Liam glanced at them softer now. "You were never supposed to see it. Either of you, but maybe you had to. Because this was the only version where Louis had help. Where he had time and where he didn't fall apart until after."

Louis was sobbing again but quietly now, like he'd run out of ways to break.

"And now he's gone," he said, almost inaudibly. "And I'm still here."

Liam placed a hand on his shoulder. "That's how you know it worked."

Zayn wiped his face with the back of his hand. "But the house, it vanished."

"It was never a house," Liam murmured. "It was a wound, a scar carved through time and now it's gone, because he finally let go."

Louis was still curled up on the floor, shaking, mumbling something between gasps of air.

Niall leaned closer, brushing the hair from his forehead. "Louis?"

"I remember.. the way he looked at me. Every time, every time he died, he always loved me."

"You loved him too." Niall whispered.

"I still do."

Liam stood. "And that's okay, you always will. But you need to live now, Louis. For real this time, in this life."

The house was gone, the loop was broken.
But Louis sat in the wreckage of memory, splintered by love that outlived death and pain that echoed across centuries.

And outside the window, morning light poured in over the floor, uninterrupted and whole, unclaimed by shadows.

The first day in over a couple hundred years that didn't belong to the house.

But Louis still hadn't learned how to breathe in a world without him.

⛤

Two weeks had passed since the house collapsed, since the sky tore open and swallowed the only person Louis had ever truly belonged to. Since they dragged him, clawing and screaming, from the wreckage, the ruin and the graveyard of all their lives.

London didn't feel real, nothing did.

The days passed in strange silences, the sun shone through windows like a foreign language Louis no longer understood. He barely spoke, he didn't eat unless Niall made him. Sleep came in brutal, flickering fragments and still, every night, he dreamed of red velvet and smoke. Of blood running across pale skin, of a voice, his name, whispered from somewhere he couldn't reach.

He lived on Niall's sofa, in the soft grey shadows of a flat that had seen better years and better men. Niall tried, he endlessly tried. He cooked when he could, he left takeout when he couldn't. He filled the silence with stories, with jokes and with a half-hearted optimism that cracked a little more every day.

But Louis was beyond it, he'd searched relentlessly. He went back to the ruins, more than once. Stood there in the dust with his fingers clenched so tightly they draw blood. He'd wandered the streets of London like a ghost, pushed into old bookstores to find something. He was hoping, always hoping.

But Harry wasn't there.

Not in the mirror, not in the smoke, not in the sky.

And now Niall sat across from him in the dim living room, one knee bouncing nervously, voice gentler than Louis could bear. "You can't keep doing this to yourself, mate."

Louis didn't look at him.

"You saw what happened. You saw it. We all did."

Still, Louis said nothing, his thumb moved slowly across the rim of a cold mug of tea long forgotten.

Niall exhaled. "Liam said it was supposed to end this way."

Louis finally looked up, and his voice, when it came, sounded cracked down the centre. "But what if he was wrong?"

Niall paused.

"What if.. what if it wasn't the end?" Louis went on. "What if I just didn't see it? What if there's still something left, something I missed, something I can undo."

"You can't bring him back again, Lou," Niall said gently. "You know that, we all do."

Louis flinched. But Niall wasn't angry, just tired and terrified, the way someone is when they've watched their best friend burn in real time and couldn't stop it. "You're still here," Niall added. "You're still here and he made sure of that. You can't let that mean nothing."

Louis closed his eyes, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. There was something rising in his throat again. Rage or grief or guilt or just memory. He didn't know where one ended and the others began. "He died," Louis whispered. "And I let him."

"You loved him," Niall said, firm this time. "You loved him enough to break the loop, that has to count for something."

Louis didn't reply, he couldn't, the silence sat between them, terrible and heavy.

He stood then, walked to the window and watched the world moving on outside, he pressed his forehead to the cold glass and for the first time in weeks, he said the thing out loud. "It's over."

His breath fogged the glass, he wasn't sure he believed it, he wasn't sure he could, but he said it again. "It's over."

The words settled into the air like ash. Niall stayed quiet behind him, there was nothing else to say. And outside, London kept moving. Louis pressed a hand flat against the glass, he didn't cry this time but in his chest, something shifted, not anything close to healing or forgetting.

Just the first thread of finality.

And somewhere, out beyond time, beyond endings, beyond ruin and memory and blood, maybe another version waited.

One that had not yet begun.

Chapter Text

1802

The garden behind the house bloomed wild behind its carefully maintained hedges. The roses had grown past their cages and the lavender spilled over the paths. Bees were humming near the orchard in the late afternoon haze and the air was filled with the scent of petals and sun-warmed stone.

Louis sat on the low stone bench with a book open but not reading in his lap, his head tilted back toward the canopy of wisteria above him. His waistcoat was unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled past his elbows, his curls damp at the nape of his neck from the heat. He looked utterly content, or perhaps not content, perhaps undone, as if the warmth of the day had softened every edge of him, left him more human, more touchable and more alive.

Harry was stretched out on the grass beside him, his boots discarded and long legs crossed at the ankle, one arm flung across his chest, the other behind his head.

He was reciting something in a low voice, some poetry Louis thought, though he wasn't truly listening to the words. Only the sound of them, the way Harry's voice wrapped around the words like it was a secret and meant for no one else.

Louis looked down at him and smiled, slow and private. "You're going to put me to sleep."

Harry tilted his head, eyes half-lidded against the sun. "Is that a complaint?"

"It's a promise, you know I haven't had a proper rest in days."

Harry smiled without showing his teeth and his hand reached blindly, fingers brushing the inside of Louis' knee. "Then sleep," he murmured. "I'll still be here when you wake."

Louis didn't move, he stared at him a moment too long. Because the truth was, this couldn't last. It never did for people like them. Not in this time, not in this world. They'd been careful, yes, met in the shadows, behind garden walls, beneath candlelight in locked rooms, but love like this didn't survive history, not often and not easily.

But here, now, in the golden hush of an August afternoon, Louis let himself believe they had forever.

He reached down and brushed the backs of his fingers along Harry's jaw, the way he always did when he needed to touch him without drawing too much notice, even though there was no one watching now, no one to see but the ivy and the sky.

"You're warm," Louis murmured. "You smell like grass and old books."

"And you," Harry replied without opening his eyes. "Smell like nicotine."

Louis huffed a quiet laugh and ran his thumb over the curve of Harry's cheek. "And yet you still recite poetry to me."

"I'd recite it to your ghost, if I had to."

Louis blinked startled. "That's morbid."

"It's true," Harry said, opening his eyes at last. "You know I would. I'd follow you anywhere."

Louis looked down at him, at the man he loved more than anything he could ever put into words. "Even if it ends?"

Harry reached up and tugged Louis down until their foreheads met, until their breaths tangled between them like invisible thread, his voice was a whisper. "Even if it ends, it was worth every time."

Louis just stayed there, eyes closed, forehead still pressed to Harry's, the smell of the garden around them, the weight of their bodies against each other. His hand slipped into Harry's hair, carding gently through it. "I never know what to do with this much feeling." Louis whispered.

"Then don't do anything," Harry murmured. "Just let it be."

And maybe they stayed like that for minutes or hours. Maybe the sun set behind them. Maybe the first shadows of evening reached through the trees when their mouths finally met in a kiss so quiet it could've gone unnoticed by the wind.

They loved like they were trying to memorize it.

As if their souls knew, even then, that they'd need to remember.

⛤

1870

The summer of 1870 had lingered unusually long over the valley. The air was heavy with the smell of lavender and chalky stone and something unidentifiable, something deep in the roots of the house that refused to die with time. The paint on the windowsills had begun to crack and ivy clawed its way up the east-facing wall.

Louis sat in the garden, cross-legged in the flattened grass beneath the old fig tree. He had taken off his boots an hour ago and had his bare feet pressed against the sun-warmed stone border. He was not paying attention to anything anymore, his eyes were on the boy a few paces away.

Harry.

He was lying on his back in the grass, shirt undone halfway down his chest, sleeves rolled to his elbows. There was a smear of soil on his cheek where he had wiped it with the back of his hand. He had spent the early hours pruning the garden beds while Louis lingered by the house with the latest pamphlets from the radical press, neither of them had said much all day.

That was the way of it lately, the silence between them had begun to feel more and more like comfort, the sky shifted above them, gold tilting into rose and the crickets began their evening hymn.

Harry rolled his head toward him. "You're staring," he murmured, the corner of his mouth quirking. "Again."

"I'm allowed," Louis said a little too quickly. He looked down at his hands and then back up, unable to stop himself. "I think I might be in love with you."

Harry didn't react, he didn't say a word. For a long, weightless moment, all Louis could hear was the wind in the dry grass and the creak of the old fig branches overhead.

Harry sat up, he moved closer, knee to knee now, then chest to chest and Louis was sure he would break open if he touched him. But Harry reached up instead, slow as breath and tucked one strand of Louis' hair behind his ear.

"You are," Harry said softly. "You are in love with me.. and I—" He faltered, the way boys do when they're asked to name a thing like love. "I have dreamt of this every night since you came here."

Louis inhaled like he'd emerged from underwater, then he kissed him.

The bedroom was warmer than it should have been behind the stone walls. The sun had dipped low but the walls held the day's heat and every movement felt like it echoed into forever.

They had no lights on, no candles lit and the fire in the grate had died hours ago, but they could see one another, just barely, by the silver wash of moonlight through the thin curtains.

Harry's mouth was on Louis' neck, slow and soft. His hands trembled as they moved up under Louis' shirt, over the ridges of his ribs, the flat of his chest, he paused when Louis shivered.

"Are you cold?"

"No," Louis whispered. "Just scared."

Harry kissed his jaw. "Me too."

They undressed each other slowly, uncertain but unhurried, touching like the world might fall apart if they moved too fast. Which, in some way, it always did.

Louis dragged his hands down Harry's back, pressing close. Harry kissed his shoulder, his collarbone, every inch of skin he could reach. His hands were careful, asking permission even without words. When Louis nodded, his whole body flushed and breathing fast, Harry pushed inside.

It was clumsy in places but soft in others and it even hurt at first, they had no idea what they're doing after all. There was laughter once when Harry tried to grab Louis' balls but the position wouldn't let him. Louis arched up beneath him, mouth parted, eyes glassy.

"Is this right?" Harry asked, pausing with a hand on his cheek.

"I don't care," Louis said. "It's us, that makes it right."

So Harry pushed again, deeper this time and Louis clutched at his shoulder, whispering yes, yes, please.

The room seemed to hum around them, time folding in on itself, the house holding its breath.

And when Louis came, he was shaking and crying out Harry's name like a prayer and it felt less like a climax and more like a homecoming.

They lay there for a long time afterward, skin slick against each other, hearts beating in the same rhythm. Harry's fingers traced circles against Louis' sternum and Louis had one hand in his hair. They didn't speak for a while until Louis softly whispered. "Do you think it always ends like this? Us finding each other?"

Harry turned his head, kissed his throat. "I hope so," he said. "And if not, then I'll keep looking. Every time, until I do."

Outside, the house sighed.

⛤

1923

It was already well past midnight when Louis finally threw his head back and laughed, a real breathless laughter, cheeks flushed red from too many glasses of whatever he found on the trays during the evening. The old drawing room of the house had been transformed with strings of fairy lights and velvet bunting, soft shadows dancing across the wood-panelled walls as jazz bled through the open windows from the gramophone.

"Darling, you're flushed." Harry said, stumbling slightly as he returned from the kitchen with two more glasses in hand, both sloshing dangerously.

"I'm not flushed," Louis argued. "I'm dazzling. There's a difference."

And he was. In a cream shirt with a draped collar and high-waisted black trousers that hugged the line of his hips just right, he looked like someone pulled from a dream. His hair had been slicked back earlier in the evening, but a few curls had fallen loose now, tumbling into his eyes, he didn't bother to fix them.

"To being dazzling." Harry declared, raising a glass, his pinky sticking out.

"To being entirely too beautiful for this world." Louis countered, taking his and together they drank.

The others had long since gone, Niall had left around eleven, arm-in-arm with some bird he hadn't stopped smiling at all evening. Zayn had vanished into the garden, cigarette glowing in the dark like a lighthouse. Liam had fallen asleep on the settee, shoes still on, hat tipped over his eyes. The party had burned through its first wild hours and now glowed only with the intimacy of what was left: the two of them, soft with music and light, orbiting each other like they always did.

Louis reached out and ran his fingers down the front of Harry's black vest. "You haven't danced with me tonight."

Harry smiled, lazy and warm. "No one else could keep their hands off you."

"That's not an excuse."

"Fine," Harry said. "Then come here."

He pulled Louis toward the centre of the room, where the rug had been rolled up hours ago, leaving warm wood beneath their feet. The music drifted into soft now, the tail-end of a brass-heavy number and they began to sway. Harry's hands found Louis' waist. Louis let his head rest against Harry's chest.

"This house feels different," Louis murmured. "Like it's still watching us, but in a kind way tonight."

"It likes parties," Harry said half-smiling. "I think it remembers them."

"Do you remember?"

"Sometimes."

Their feet slowed. Louis looked up.

"You love me." He said, not a question.

"I do."

"And I love you," Louis whispered. " I always have."

"Then kiss me, sweetheart. Kiss me like it's the last song of the night."

So Louis did.

They barely made it to the bedroom, laughing the whole way down the hall, trying not to trip over the discarded shoes and champagne flutes, giggling against one another's mouths as they stumbled through the doorway.

The bedroom still smelled faintly of roses and tobacco. The curtains had been left open, spilling moonlight across the sheets. Louis pushed Harry gently down onto the bed, climbing over him with a grin that spoke of every stolen hour they'd ever shared. Harry's eyes were glassy with adoration, hair already mussed from Louis' hands.

"You looked at me tonight like I was the only man in the world." Louis said.

"You are." Harry replied.

Their mouths met again, slower now, the giddiness giving way to something older and deeper. Louis kissed down his throat, his collarbone, unbuttoning the vest with practiced fingers. Harry's chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths, his hands wandering beneath Louis' shirt.

"I'm gonna fuck you now." Louis whispered.

"Yes. God, yes."

Their bodies moved together like they were made for it, like they'd done this in every life and would do it again in every life to come. Louis kissed the line of Harry's jaw, then his shoulder, then the tip of his dick and Harry arched into him, eyes fluttering shut as the moon lit his face like a sculpture.

They didn't speak, not beyond the gasps and the whispered names and the low, broken sounds that came when they grind together. It was all hands and mouths and shared breath and the room echoing with their love.

When it was over, Louis collapsed onto the pillows beside him, chest heaving, one leg tangled with Harry's.

Harry turned his head, eyes half-lidded, voice hoarse. "If this were a dream," he said, "I'd never want to wake up."

Louis reached for his hand. "Then don't." He whispered.

Outside, the wind shifted, the house stirred.. and the past kept breathing.

⛤

1946

The kettle whistled in the little kitchen, shrill and sharp against the quiet of the evening, but neither of them moved to get it.

Harry sat on the worn chair, one hand wrapped around a mug of lukewarm tea, his legs stretched out, socked feet barely brushing the scuffed edges of the coffee table. Louis stood behind him with his arms draped across Harry's shoulders and his forehead resting between the curls at the nape of his neck. He wasn't sure how long they'd been like that, minutes or maybe hours. The house had that Sunday quiet, a stillness that came only after long storms.

"You're going to burn the water." Harry said, voice barely a murmur.

"It's already boiled twice," Louis answered. "I just like the sound."

Harry smiled without looking back. "You always want the sound."

"It fills the spaces." Louis leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to the side of Harry's neck. "You fill the rest."

They stayed like that as the whistle faded, as the kettle clicked off with a final metallic sigh. The only other sound was the ticking of the wall clock, its hands creeping past seven in slow motions.

Outside the windows, London was wrapped in dusky blue. The city was still healing, bricks were missing from buildings, there were shadows where bombed walls had once stood and gardens growing wild where no one had the strength to tend them. But in this house, tucked away from everything, it was warm. Safe.

Louis finally moved, walking around the armchair to sit beside him. He tucked his feet beneath his legs, knees touching Harry's, their bodies angling toward each other instinctively, the way they always did.

"You look tired." Louis said gently, brushing his thumb beneath Harry's eye.

"I am, but not the bad kind."

"What kind is it, then?"

Harry reached over, his hand resting on Louis' chest, just over the soft wool of his jumper. "The kind that comes after peace."

Louis smiled, but it was faint. "Funny, isn't it, how peace can feel almost as heavy as war."

Harry didn't answer right away, just looked at him with eyes tired but full of something he'd been waiting years to say and had only now remembered how. "When I was in the field," Harry said quietly, "I used to think about this."

"This?"

"You. This room, this tea, your bloody whistle kettle, the way you look at me like I've never left." He looked down. "I didn't believe it could happen. Not really, not after everything."

Louis reached out and took his hand. "But it did."

"Only because you waited."

"Only because you came back."

Their fingers tangled and for a long moment and they just sat, breathing and existing in the same space.

"I want to lie down." Louis said eventually, voice soft and Harry nodded.

They moved to the bedroom without words. It was small, barely large enough for the iron bedframe and an old wardrobe with one broken drawer, but the sheets smelled like lavender and the window was cracked open to let in the cool night air. Moonlight spilled across the wooden floor in long, slanted streaks.

Louis undressed slowly, with the casualness that comes only after years of loving someone. He peeled off his jumper, then his undershirt, folding them neatly on the chair by the wall. Harry watched from the edge of the bed, already changed, hands resting loosely in his lap. His gaze wasn't hungry, it was full of love.

"Come here." Harry said.

Louis climbed into bed beside him, the mattress groaning in familiar protest. They lay facing each other, knees touching, foreheads almost close enough to kiss.

"I still don't know how we made it." Louis whispered.

"Doesn't matter, we just did."

Louis leaned in, brushing their lips together, soft and slow. He kissed him like he knew every line already, every shift of breath, every heartbeat beneath skin.

It wasn't frantic, not leading anywhere. It was slow and aching and full of gratitude. Harry's hands traced the dip of Louis' back, the slope of his spine, the curve of his ribs. Louis kissed him with his whole body. Every movement was an echo of the promise they'd made without ever speaking it. I'm here. I'm yours. We're still alive.

They moved together like the house had written their rhythm into its bones long ago and soon their breaths quickened and their bodies pressed close until there was no space left at all. It was gentle sex and when they finally fell back into the mattress, there were tears in Louis' eyes.

Harry kissed them away. "I won't leave again." Harry said, voice hoarse and thick.

"I know." Louis curled into his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart.

Outside, the wind turned colder but in here they were warm and together, and the house, for once, did not stir yet and Harry prayed it would stay like that.

⛤

1975

The house was nestled in a valley of green, its walls were painted orange and yellow in blotchy handprints and spirals and peace signs. Wind chimes tangled with beads and feathers danced in the hot summer breeze and the scent of weed and roses drifted in through the open doors. It was always music playing somewhere from the crackling record player inside the living room, or someone outside plucking at a guitar, or the radio fizzing with Bowie or Queen or Joni Mitchell, soft and strange and everywhere at once.

Louis padded barefoot across the kitchen floor, a tie-dye shirt clinging loose to his shoulders, the sleeves were cut off and sunglasses perched on his head. His cheeks were flushed, lips pink and strands of hair sticking up like he'd just rolled out of bed (which to be fair he had) at 2pm because mornings didn't really exist in this version of their lives.

"Harry," he called, lazily dragging the word out like syrup. "Where the hell is the incense, man?"

A laugh came from behind him, warm and honey-thick. "Try the breadbox."

Louis turned, grinning wide and there he was: Harry, in bell-bottom jeans and an unbottoned linen shirt, his chest dusted with hair and a daisy was tucked behind one ear. He had a joint between his fingers and a record sleeve under one arm.

"You put incense in the breadbox?"

"I apparently put bread in the bedside drawer, you get what you need, yeah?" He crossed the room and pressed a kiss to Louis' forehead like it was the easiest thing in the world.

The living room was awash in sunlight and haze. Pillows and blankets were spread all over the shag carpet, half-full glasses of orange juice and wine and ashtrays scattered like debris from another night. The walls were painted purple and gold in here and above the mantel, Harry had scrawled we are stardust, we are golden in glittering paint.

They collapsed together into the cushions, giggling as the record clicked and spun. Music filled the air, loud and chaotic and perfect.

Louis was already halfway through laughing at whatever Harry said when the joint was passed back into his hand. He took a long, deep drag, held it and exhaled up toward the sky where the sunlight turned the smoke gold. His fingers brushed Harry's thigh, bare now and warm from the sun, and Harry looked over at him, eyelids heavy, lips soft and nothing had ever felt more right.

"I love you," Louis said, dazed and honest, blinking slow like the words surprised him. "Like. You know. Deep-space, multi-lifetime kind of love."

Harry made a sound like a chuckle and at once. He leaned forward, nose brushing Louis' cheek. "Yeah," he whispered, "I know. I've loved you since before I knew what love even was."

They kissed, sticky and slow and just a bit off-target. Louis laughed into it. "You're so high, babe."

"You love it," Harry murmured against his mouth, sliding one leg over Louis' lap until he was straddling him, arms lazy around his neck. "You love me."

"God, I do," Louis said, already tugging Harry's shirt off, losing his balance and pulling them both down into the cushions. "I love you so much I think I could float."

Their bodies moved together with a clumsy, hungry affection that only comes from knowing someone so well you don't care about anything else. They shared open and wet kisses and let their hands wander all over each other. The record changed on its own somehow, no one remembered doing it, and now it was Joni Mitchell spinning in the background as the sun poured over their bodies.

Louis was beneath him now, flushed and smiling, his eyes glassy with pleasure and love, chest rising and falling rapidly as Harry rocked above him, pounding into him with a steady rhythm. Harry's fingers laced with Louis', pinning their hands above his head as he moved, as their bodies found that old rhythm they always knew.

"Feels like we're flying." Harry whispered, pressing their foreheads together.

"We are," Louis said, breathless. "God, Haz—ah—we are."

There was lust and love everywhere, on their tongues, in their sighs, in the way Harry arched his back and Louis kissed him and both of them trembled with pleasure. Their climax hit them both like a storm, messy and unstoppable.

Harry fell onto Louis, not bothering to pull out just yet he nuzzled into Louis' neck, murmuring something too quiet to hear but still Louis smiled. "Best time," Louis mumbled, lips curved against Harry's temple. "You and me, right here. Just like this."

"Forever." Harry said and the wind outside the window blew through the beads like a lullaby.

The house held them gently, no ghosts, no memories, just the music and the weed and the summer and their love, post orgasm and glittering and alive.

⛤

1910-1914

In this version, they are not lovers.
They are not friends.
They are not anything that language can rightly express.. and yet, they are everything.

The first time Louis dreamed of him, he woke up with a name he doesn't know. The bed was cold and the fire had long since burned down and the soft blue from dawn was seeping into the lace of the curtains, making the room look like a watercolor painting.

Harry, he thought, but didn't tell anyone. Not when he woke three days later with that name written into the margin of his copy of Wilde's De Profundis, or when he walked by a store in town and swore he saw a reflection in the glass that does not belong to him.

He told himself he's simply lonely.
It's what people say about boys like him: lonely, poetic, fragile, strange.

But it wasn't loneliness.
It was something else.

At the same time, across the city, Harry wrote letters.

They were never sent, always unsigned, scribbled wherever he found the space. Letters addressed to you, because you was safer than admitting he didn't know the name of the person he ached for.

"I dreamed of the train station again today. The clock struck seven and the light bent around you like it had been waiting too."

He hid the letters under the loose board in his closet. The stack grew thicker with every passing month. He found ink on his fingers each morning, even when he doesn't remember writing.

Some nights, he lit a candle just to speak aloud.
"Are you real? Or am I mad to miss you like this?"

They lived in parallel.
Louis played piano in an art hall on Camden Road and Harry walked by every Friday night without ever looking inside.
Harry sketched faces in the quiet of a bookshop in Holborn and Louis walked in once to find a particular edition of Keats, his eyes sliding right past the boy at the desk.
The city held them like a breath that refused to be exhaled.

Sometimes they felt it more strongly.
Louis would drop a teacup for no reason and swore something important just happened.
Harry woke with tears on his cheeks and no memory, just a clanging ache in his ribs.

It got worse before it got better.

In 1912, the air in London thickened with history, everything was shifting. Louis moved into a new flat in Bloomsbury with a window seat where he often sat and stared into the street, feeling as though he's waiting for something to arrive.
He wrote poetry that he couldn't finish.
He played melodies on his piano that he doesn't recognize.
There was one he returned to again and again, with trembling hands, because it made his chest hurt and he did not know why.

Harry, meanwhile, began painting his dreams.
At first he hid them, but soon they filled a whole sketchbook:
A room with red velvet walls. A garden drenched in moonlight. A boy with blue eyes and a soft smile.
In one, the boy is standing in the garden, his smile trying to outshine the sun.
In another, he is crying, begging to turn back time.

And Harry ached in his bones when he woke, like his heart remembered something his body hasn't lived yet.

And then, finally, in August of 1914, it almost happened.

It was an early morning at King's Cross. War has just been declared and the station was thunderous with movement. Soldiers were kissing their sweethearts, mothers were crying into handkerchiefs, men with paper tags around their necks.

Louis was there to see off his cousin, standing alone in a long navy coat. Harry was there to enlist.

Neither knew this was the closest they will ever come in this.

The crowd parts, a single beam of sunlight cut through the thick of steam and coal smoke.
Louis turned to look for a moment, some instinct tugging at him and Harry looked up at exactly the same time.

Their eyes met.
Just for a breath.

And something inside each of them collapsed.
Not in pain.. but in recognition.

It's like hearing your name whispered after years of silence, like finding an old letter in your handwriting that you've long forgotten having ever written.

Louis took a step forward.
And then someone pushed between them.
A trunk fell.
A whistle blew.
And the crowd swelled again.

Harry was gone.

That night, Louis didn't sleep, he wrote a letter he won't send.

"I saw you today. I know it. I don't know how. But I do."

He left it on the windowsill and stared at it until sunrise.

Years later, Harry found himself standing on a bridge in Paris, the war had taken too much from him, he had no name for the ache in his chest.

But when he closed his eyes, he saw a boy with the saddest eyes he's ever known, he wrote in his journal: "I hope you made it. I hope you're real. I hope we find each other next time."

And somewhere, deep in a place time cannot touch, the house heard this.
It carried the ache forward, it folded the moment into its walls, it saved it.

Because even when they never met, even when they pass like ghosts in the fog; their love still left a trace.

And it was that trace that time can never quite erase.

⛤

2010

It started in a toilet, obviously. Where else would fate show up in 2010?

They're in the middle of a London summer that's not quite warm and not quite cold, the kind of weather where you didn't know whether to wear a hoodie or die trying. The arena was packed with hopefuls lined up for the X Factor auditions.

Louis was bouncing on his feet in the corridor, jittery from too much Red Bull that did nothing to calm his nerves. He's rehearsed his song about twenty-eight times already. Hey There Delilah, he chose that one and now he's regretting everything.

His jeans were too tight, his tie was bothering him. He was about to spiral again when the call of nature interrupted his existential crisis and he headed into the toilets to clear his head and maybe pull himself together.

He pushed open the door.

"Hi!" He said automatically, because someone's at the urinal and Louis had no filter.

The boy turned his head slightly, or more like his whole body. "Oops!" He said, and then looked down mortified. "Shit, sorry. Did I just..?"

Louis looked down and there was in fact a splash on his shoe, just a little, nothing serious. "You peed on me." Louis said deadpan. It should've been awful but somehow, it's not.

The boy zipped up quickly and turned around, his face already going pink. He's got big curls and dimples so deep they look carved in.

"I'm so sorry, mate. That's.. God, that's the worst way to meet someone."

Louis just blinked and grinned. "Well," he said. "At least now we've broken the ice."

The boy laughed and Louis liked it, really liked it. It was warm and unguarded and cracked something open in his chest that had been clenched since he got on the train that morning.

"I'm Harry." He said, extending a hand like they didn't just share an incident of mild public urination.

"Louis," Louis replied, shaking it. "I'd say nice to meet you, but—" He looked down again.

Harry cringed. "Yeah, fair."

They looked at each other without saying anything for a moment before both of them laughed.

And somehow, that was it, that was the moment.
Not grand or anything, just a toilet, a disaster and a feeling that this is going to matter.

They sat together after that and swapped stories about their hometowns. Louis from Doncaster, Harry from Holmes Chapel. They trade song choices while side-eyeing everyone who looked like they've already had won. Louis teased Harry for his scarf. Harry teased Louis for his cardigan.

By the time the first of them was called in for the pre-audition check, they've already agreed to wait for each other. They didn't talk about what happened if they both get through. Because for some reason, that feeling, the thing between them, already felt like it's bigger than all this.

"You're gonna smash it." Louis told Harry without a doubt.

Harry bit his lip. "You too, even if you smell like.. me now."

"Yeah, cheers for that."

Weeks later, after auditions, after callbacks and after getting grouped together with three other lads, Louis said. "Imagine telling the press we met because you peed on me."

Harry grinned. "I will tell them."

"No, you won't."

"I absolutely will."

"Harry."

And so the rumour was born.

Half-joke, half-truth, fully them.

They never stopped laughing about it. Even years, full stadiums and spotlights and sleepless nights later, it was still their thing. Their ridiculous, impossible, unforgettable beginning.

Two boys, a restroom, a Hi and an Oops.
A friendship that felt like destiny. And love.. well that would come too.

Chapter Text

The bar they were in had low ceilings and it smelled faintly of damp wood and old beer and Louis sat hunched over his pint like he'd been poured into the booth. His hoodie hung around his shoulders, his knuckles were pale against the condensation of the glass and even though he was surrounded by three people who loved him in many ways, he still looked vaguely like a shadow had sat down in his place.

Outside the bar, London pulsed and howled despite it being a cold October night and somewhere a siren wailed. Inside, the lights were dim enough to hide whatever exhaustion Louis felt.

But Louis wasn't hiding it. Niall nudged him for the fourth time, half a chip speared onto a fork and brow raised. "You have to eat something, Lou."

"I'm drinking beer, aren't I, hops and malt count as meal."

"I will force-feed you. I swear I will. I've done worse things for you."

Louis blinked, slow and unimpressed. "Like what?"

"Like.. never mind." Niall said, shoving the chip into his own mouth instead.

Liam laughed quietly from across the table, his fingers tracing the rim of his glass of water, he was the only one not drinking, had stopped after everything, after the house, after what it took from them all. His eyes, dark and still a little too sharp, were fixed on the phone cradled in Louis' lap, half-obscured by the table, just visible enough that he could see the blue light cast upward.

He didn't say anything yet.

Zayn was mid-story, telling about his new job at the youth center, some new kid who tried to sell him fake weed and ended up crying and wanting to change. His voice was full of care, full of the solid, paternal calm he'd grown into over the last months since he moved to London, but even he kept glancing sideways at Louis between punchlines.

Louis wasn't listening.

Or he was, but only the way someone underwater might listen, muted and delayed, everything just slightly too far away. He smiled when they expected it, nodded when prompted, laughed at one joke that didn't reach his eyes. He was thinner than he had been, paler too, the shadows beneath his eyes carved out like something had tried to hollow him from the inside.

Liam finally spoke. "You're searching again." He said stern but not unkind.

Louis didn't deny it, just shrugged. "I don't sleep well."

"That doesn't mean you have to ruin yourself."

"Bit late for that." Louis muttered.

Niall set his pint down with more force than necessary. "Mate. Please don't."

They'd done this before, the cycle, the descent. The nights where Louis didn't talk, didn't eat and didn't sleep, just walked to the window again and again as if the answers might be inthe lights across the river. Niall had found him there more than once, standing barefoot with his phone in one hand, trembling with need and fury and a grief that never learned how to soften.

Liam leaned forward a little. "It's not that I don't get it, I do. But you're not gonna find him on Reddit forums about past lives or occult theory threads from 2006. You know that, don't you?"

Louis' jaw tightened. "I don't know anything anymore."

And there it was, the quiet truth, that quiet ruin. His voice didn't exactly shake, but it sounded like it was scraped raw. For all the time that had passed, for all the ways the world had kept on spinning without apology, Louis had remained caught in the wreckage, waiting.

Liam didn't push, as usual, he just said. "You're not alone, no matter how shit it feels."

Which Louis hated hearing, because even if it was true, even if these boys had dragged him back from the cliff edge more than once, none of them were Harry. None of them filled the aching silence at night, none of them walked into the room with a half-smile and a look like he already knew Louis was going to pretend he hadn't been crying.

None of them had bled for him, again and again and again.

He was so tired.

Tired of being held together by other people's love.
Tired of the way the house still showed up in his dreams.
Tired of not knowing if any of it was real, if Harry had been real.

He glanced back down at his phone. The page hadn't changed, a link to an obscure blog on soul tethering, another to an old Latin manuscript transcribed by someone named Crowchild89. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for anymore. A way back? A sign? A loophole?

A miracle?

Zayn reached across the table suddenly, firm and sure and plucked the phone from his lap.

"Hey!" Louis snapped.

"No," Zayn said, gentle but resolute. "You're here with us tonight, that's enough."

Louis didn't fight it, just stared at the place the phone had been, fingers still curled like it was there.

Niall pressed another pint into his hands. "C'mon. Just one drink like a normal sad bloke, yeah? No ghost-hunting, no time loop theories, no creepy forums. Just beer and chips and mates who love you even though you're being a moody little shit."

Louis let out a sound that could almost be called a laugh, almost. Liam was watching him still, but now he smiled a small, close-lipped one, full of something that might've been hope.

It was Niall who noticed the change first, not in the bar or in the air, but in Louis.

They'd been there long enough that the edges had softened a little. Four pints in and Louis was finally talking, still not laughing exactly and not telling a story with any real conviction, but his voice had gained a rhythm again, the vowels rolling easier and even some hand gestures were included. It wasn't much, but after six months of silence and self-immolation, it felt like watching frost crack open under a weak winter sun.

The four of them sat around a small wooden table near the back, the boys facing inward while Louis had taken the seat that faced the door.

He wasn't even aware of it, was just telling a story about some better times back in his teenage years. The words had started to gain weight again.

And then the door opened.

Louis' lips stopped mid-word. His mouth remained parted, his expression arrested in the shape of a sound he never let out. His pint sat heavy between his hands, but his fingers had gone slack around the glass.

He looked up and everything stopped, like the whole pub tilted and forgot how to move, like time folded wrong. He completely froze.

Zayn turned to him with a worried frown. "What's? Lou, mate, did you just have a stroke?"

Louis didn't respond, still staring, still frozen.

Niall laughed, soft but bewildered. "Jesus, looks like he's seen a ghost."

Liam, ever the quiet one, set his drink down as if he already knew something had changed. His eyes flicked to Louis, then to the door behind him, then back again. His body didn't move, but his mind had gone still in a different way, like he was listening inward to something no one else could hear.

Louis still hadn't spoken, his chest rose once and then nothing again.

He felt it before he saw it.

That shift, that pull. Like the universe had sucked all the air from the room and filled it instead with something too familiar. Like that thing inside him that had cracked so violently six months ago suddenly recognized something before his brain had time to catch up.

Just a shape in the periphery, a curl of hair beneath a beanie, a pair of boots pausing at the threshold as if still deciding whether to enter or look for the next bar.

Louis' pint glass tilted slightly under his loosened grip, his throat burned with something that wasn't alcohol, his tongue forgot how to form words. The pub moved on around him unaware.

A couple laughed near the dart board. The bartender pulled another pint. A song hummed from the speakers overhead, something too upbeat, wrong for the moment. And still Louis sat, spine locked and heart thrashing in a rhythm that felt entirely wrong for someone who was supposed to be made of ashes.

Liam stood up.

Only then did Niall glance behind him, eyebrows raised in confusion and then, very slowly, his expression changed.

Zayn followed his gaze.

Louis still hadn't moved.

Because sometimes you don't run to the person you lost, sometimes you freeze.

Sometimes your entire body forgets how to function because the impossible just walked through the door.

And you're not sure if it's hope, or madness, or both.

And you're not sure if it's a ghost, or him.

And you don't know which would hurt more.

It wasn't nostalgia and it wasn't déjà vu.

It was gravitational, it was chemical.

It was Harry.

He turned, not like in a film where the music swells and time warps and a spotlight lands on the person. No, he turned the way a person does when they're scanning a room or when they feel watched. When some small thread on the back of their neck is pulled taut by invisible fingers of fate.

And then he saw them.

Or maybe, he saw him.

And the smile that bloomed, soft and careful and devastatingly familiar, was the kind of smile that had no business surviving the kind of ruin they'd lived through.

It was Harry.

Unmistakably.

Irrevocably.

Unquestionably.

Harry, in the coat Louis had once tried to throw away because it had a hole in the pocket where Harry always lost his lip balm in, but Harry had kept because it still held him warm. Harry, with a wool scarf wound around his neck. Harry, with hair slightly longer than Louis remembered, curling under his ears, the same way it used to when he'd let it grow out.

Louis stood but he didn't remember moving.

One second, he was frozen to his seat like every part of him was made of stone and the next he was upright, trembling and hollowed out, held back only by the steadying hand of Niall gripping his forearm. Not restraining, just ready to catch him, just anchoring like he knew Louis would either collapse or run or combust.

Niall's voice was low and quiet. "Easy mate, just breathe."

But Louis couldn't. There was no air in his lungs, no words in his throat, no thought in his mind except him. Harry. Standing just inside the door of a shitty pub on a rainy Thursday night like it hadn't taken lifetimes for them to find each other again.

Zayn blinked hard, his mouth parted, then closed again. "What the fuck." He breathed, because what else could you say when your friend's dead soulmate, the one you watched die with your own eyes, was now three metres away and smiling?

He turned to Liam who leaned back slightly in his seat now with a subtle grin that spoke of knowing something no one else had dared to believe. A glimmer of satisfaction was also there, like a priest watching a miracle unfold, not with surprise, but with recognition.

Zayn stared at him with sharp eyes. He wanted to ask and he would ask, later.. not now.

Because now Harry was still looking at them, still smiling. And Louis felt his knees threaten to give out because it was him. Not a shadow. Not a dream. Not a hallucination conjured by grief. Not a voice behind a veil. Not the half-formed ghost of velvet corridors and bleeding time loops. No, this was Harry in full colour and warmth, with light behind his eyes and life in his blood and a pulse that somehow, impossibly, Louis could feel echoing inside his own chest.

Their eyes locked and the entire world stilled.

Not just the pub, not just the four friends who sat stunned and breathless. Not just the noise or the beer or the background hum of strangers ordering chips or darts clacking on a board. The whole universe seemed to tilt just slightly, aligning something that had been off-kilter since the beginning of time. Like the moment had already happened in every dimension before this one, in every era, in every soul-wrenching lifetime and this was the moment they had all been trying to reach.

Harry's smile faltered just slightly, as if even he couldn't quite believe it, his voice when it came, was soft wrecked and disbelieving. "...Louis."

And Louis, broken and grieving, bleeding in every place a heart can bleed, let out the kind of breath that you only let go when something major happened.

He stepped forward, just one step and Niall didn't stop him this time. No one moved. Liam closed his eyes like a prayer. Zayn swallowed hard and blinking too fast. Louis' fingers twitched at his sides.

And Harry...

Harry stepped further toward him too, just a little.

They simply stood, a few feet apart, like they were approaching something sacred, like the air between them still held the memory of that house, that room, that knife, that ending.

They stood there still, just a breath apart.

Louis blinked at him once, twice. His eyes glistening, wide and searching, desperate to believe, but terrified of what believing might cost him. He didn't speak, only stared, his lower lip caught between his teeth the way it always was when he was overwhelmed and trying not to break in front of people. But then the tears started, slow and quiet at first, one sliding down his cheek like a whisper, and the sound he made was so small, so shattered, that Niall instinctively took half a step forward.

"How," Louis rasped, so hoarse it barely made it past his throat. "How—how is this—"

He broke off, jaw trembling, hands twitching at his sides like he didn't know whether to reach for Harry or push him away. His breath hitched again and again, like each inhale was cutting through him, the weight of it too much to bear.

"This isn't—" His voice cracked fully. "This can't be.. this isn't real, it's not real, it's not—"

And just like that, the panic surged. It hit him like a wave breaking hard against the shoreline. Sudden, drowning and unstoppable. His chest rose too fast, his pupils wide with disbelief and his arms came up protectively like the world had turned on him again, like someone was playing the cruelest joke and he was about to wake up in Niall's flat, sweating and empty.

"I'm dreaming," he choked out. "I have to be dreaming, I, God, it hurts, it fucking hurts, someone needs to wake me up, I can't. He's not—he's not—" He stumbled backward, palms pressed to his temples, like he could crush the hallucination out of his skull.

Niall moved first, catching him by the elbow just before he could fall. "Woah, woah Louis, Lou, breathe, you've gotta breathe."

"Don't, don't do this to me again," Louis whispered, his eyes locked on Harry's with a kind of devastation no human being should have to feel more than once. "I can't. I can't do it again, please—"

Then Zayn was there too, wrapping an arm around his back and steadying him with quiet force, his voice low and calm but urgent, the way it had been outside that house.

"C'mon, mate. Come outside, let's get you out of here, breathe in the cold, yeah?"

They pulled him gently from the bar, out through the crowd, past the stale smell of lager and bleach. The night air hit him like a slap, wet and crisp, cold enough to bite and still, he couldn't breathe or think or stop shaking.

Liam followed silently, close behind.

And Harry, Harry walked out last, slower and unsure, blinking like the world around him was just as surreal.

Outside, beneath the streetlights flickering like old film reels, Louis collapsed against the wall of the pub. His knees gave out and he slid down until he was crouched there, shaking and eyes clenched shut like if he just squeezed hard enough, it would stop hurting.

"It's not real," he kept saying. "It's not real, it's not, it hurts, God it hurts to see him. I can't do this again, I can't—"

His voice cracked on the last syllable, raw and broken and wrung out, like his grief had claws and it was tearing him apart from the inside.

Then soft footsteps and Harry knelt. Louis didn't open his eyes, he was still shaking, still sobbing into his hands until they got pulled away from his eyes and he looked up and before he could say something..

Lips on his own, soft and familiar.

Pressed against his, without warning, without question. Just Harry, brushing their mouths together with the gentlest touch imaginable, as if to say this is me, I'm here, feel me, remember me, believe me.

And the moment they touched, the earth stopped turning. Louis' body stilled, lungs filled again but not with air, but with light.

The universe, for just one impossible second, remembered them.

Every life. Every loop. Every whispered I love you. Every goodbye.

And inside Louis, something clicked back into place, their souls aligned like constellations shifting quietly back to their rightful shape.

And Louis, still crying, but no longer breaking, kissed him back. His hands fisted in the fabric of Harry's coat, pulling him closer, anchoring himself there like the only way to survive was to feel him, his warmth, his scent, his breath and let it rewrite the story carved into his bones.

When they pulled apart, Louis didn't speak, his forehead leaned into Harry's, his eyes closed, his breath slowed.

And for the first time in centuries, he wasn't lost.

⛤

The ride back to Niall's was silent at first, or maybe just soft, the air thick with a tension too sacred to touch, like the aftermath of a miracle. Louis sat beside Harry in the backseat, but he barely looked at him, too afraid that one second of disbelief would send it all crashing again. He didn't reach for his hand and he didn't speak. He just sat there, trembling like he finally stopped running from the fire and turned to face the burn.

Niall drove carefully, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror every few seconds as if to reassure himself that Harry was really there. That it hadn't been a shared hallucination. That the universe had actually bent, finally relented and given him back to them. Zayn sat up front, unusually quiet, but his knee bounced restlessly, his fingers twitching against his leg like he was counting something he couldn't name.

And Liam sat like he always did, a little removed, spine straight, eyes unreadable, but there was something smug in the curve of his mouth. Not arrogance but certainty, in a way that comes when you've risked everything on a hope too large to speak aloud and then watched it bloom in your hands.

Back at the flat they filled in slowly, scuffing their shoes on the doormat and practically throwing their jackets on the rack. The living room was still the same but it felt smaller now, like the air itself had condensed around the weight of what had just occurred.

Louis was the last to come in. He paused at the threshold like a man just released from prison, unsure how to inhabit freedom. Then he stepped in and behind Harry and the silence pressed down like snowfall, soundless and suffocating.

No one sat down yet or moved at all, they just stood in a loose half-circle, eyes flicking between Harry and Louis and it was Niall in the end who broke the silence.

"So," he said, voice thick with disbelief. "Are we gonna talk about it? Or are we just gonna pretend you—" He gestured to Harry, "Didn't crawl your way back out of literal hell or whatever the fuck that was?"

Harry swallowed. "I.. I don't know how it happened."

But Liam, Liam did. He stepped forward, slow but sure and it was only then that Louis noticed the dark bruising under his eyes, the way his hands shook slightly, like holding onto this truth had cost him something. He looked at Louis first, then Harry and at the other two men last.

"I wasn't sure," he said quietly. "When the house started tearing itself apart, when the last of the energy from all the timelines began to collapse inward, I.. I reached for something I'd only read about. Old Persian texts, translated poorly into Arabic, then into Latin and worse in English. No one uses it anymore, way too volatile and unstable."

He took a breath, eyes heavy. "It was never meant to save anyone," he continued. "It was a severance, some ritual for binding loops shut and unhooking the soul from the cycle."

"But you did save him," Louis said, voice almost inaudible. "He's here."

"I didn't save him," Liam corrected. "You did."

Louis stared at him. "What?"

"You were the constant," Liam said. "In every life, every version, you were the one who remembered. You loved him through every variation, through every death, every war, every fire. And this time," he gestured vaguely, like he still didn't quite believe it. "This time, you remembered soon enough. You saw it and faced the final variant. You were ready, which meant..."

He turned back to Harry.

"...which meant he didn't have to be."

Harry's breath caught in his throat.

"I used the ritual," Liam continued. "But it didn't bring him back. It just, freed the path. Opened the door. Loosened the rules. But you," he looked at Louis again. "You were the one who called him home."

Louis was crying again, silently this time, the tears didn't fall in sobs but came steadily, like grief and joy had finally learned how to coexist.

Liam stepped closer. "The ritual worked because you still had time," he said gently. "Because the house hadn't yet consumed him entirely. Because you were meant to find each other again, you just never had the space to finish the story."

Harry was silent for a long moment. "Why now?" He asked, voice raw. "Why this time?"

Liam shrugged. "Something broke open. Maybe the trauma aligned your soul in the right place. Maybe the Velvet Room overplayed its hand and revealed too much. Maybe you two just loved too hard. Magic is powerful, but nothing has more power than love."

A laugh caught in Niall's throat, part sob part disbelief. Zayn sat down abruptly, head in his hands.

And Louis.. Louis moved slowly, like in a dream. He stepped forward, reached for Harry's hand and finally laced their fingers together.

"Are you real?" He whispered.

Harry leaned in, kissed his forehead. "I think I am."

"You're not going to disappear again?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere."

They stood there for a long time, forehead to forehead, breath to breath and no one dared interrupt the moment.

Eventually, Liam sat down, cross-legged on the carpet like he'd done this a thousand times before. "I don't think it's over," he said, not unkindly. "But I think it's settled. The house is gone. The echoes are quiet. The timelines are closed. You won't cycle again."

"Then what now?" Zayn asked. "What happens now?"

Liam looked at them, at the two boys whose love had transcended centuries of pain. "That's for you to decide."

And outside, the London rain began to fall, soft and steady, like a baptism, like a promise, like a world finally, finally beginning again.

⛤

The flat smelled like coffee and honey and slightly burnt toast. There was light spilling through the window in that lazy, golden way that only come on slow mornings, when no one had to be anywhere and the universe seemed to sigh and say, You're safe now, rest.

Louis was curled into the sofa, legs tucked under himself, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and the Sunday paper open but unread in his lap. He wasn't reading it, he was watching Harry from across the room, from where he stood barefoot in the kitchen, humming off-key as he poured water into the kettle. His hair was still damp from the shower, the collar of his oversized jumper hanging off one shoulder and the horizontal dark red scar at his wrist was visible for a brief moment before he rolled his sleeves down.

Louis couldn't stop watching him. Even now, even still, he looked and looked and couldn't believe he was allowed this. That after everything, after all the deaths and timelines and hauntings and nights screaming for someone who wouldn't answer, he got this.

A lifetime.

The kettle clicked off and Harry turned, catching Louis staring and he smiled. That smile, God, that smile, was still the most unfairly beautiful thing Louis had ever seen.

"Lou my love," Harry said and crossed the room with two mugs. "You're staring."

Louis accepted his tea. "Can't help it. You're really here."

Harry chuckled, but his voice softened as he sank down beside him. "I know. I keep checking."

They sat in silence for a moment, pressed together under the blanket, sipping their tea quietly. Outside, the city was waking up slowly, distant footsteps, the bark of a dog, a bell on a bicycle.

Louis rested his head on Harry's shoulder. "Liam texted this morning," Harry murmured. "Said we should relax, we finally are allowed, no higher power is fighting us anymore."

Louis huffed a quiet laugh. "Sounds about right."

"And Zayn wants us all over for dinner next week, he's making that thing with the aubergine you said no one likes."

Louis groaned. "He loves that damn aubergine tarte."

"We'll pretend to eat it. Liam will slip his to Jasper."

They both smiled and then there was silence again, but a good kind, soft and full like a shared secret. After a while, Harry put his mug down and turned toward Louis. "Do you think we'll ever.. forget again? Any of it?"

Louis considered that and then looked at Harry, really looked at him, at the man he'd loved in every version of his life, in every war-torn decade, in every secret bedroom and sunlit garden and cursed house. He thought about the boy in 1871 who learned to be kissed, the man in 1947 who whispered promises into the quiet, the kid in 2010 who said Oops and never left.

And he smiled. "No," he said softly. "I think we'll carry it, all of it, but it won't hurt so much anymore."

Harry nodded. "Like muscle memory."

"Exactly."

They leaned in then but not to kiss, just to rest their foreheads together, eyes closed, breathing each other in. The city continued around them, cars honking, someone yelling at a bus stop, a bird shrieking on the windowsill.

Harry whispered. "I missed you."

Louis nodded, blinking back tears. "I found you." He whispered back.

Finally they kissed, slow and certain, like it had taken centuries and this was finally the moment the stars had been holding their breath for. No rush, no fear, just them.

Just home.

And when they pulled back, when Louis buried his face in the crook of Harry's neck and sighed so deeply it felt like exhaling an entire lifetime, Harry smiled into his hair and murmured. "So what now?"

Louis smiled too.

"Now," he said, voice thick with love. "We live."

The End