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Around the time they’re finally able to set in and work on their next album is when Louis starts noticing things are going off again. He struggles in the booth a few times and finds himself squinting again, focusing on people’s lips as they talk. It feels like he’s in a rerun, stuck repeating those months he was slowly losing grip on the sounds around him, and from there it’s a headfirst slide right back to where he started.
It takes one doctor to tell him that there isn’t a second chance this time, and his odds of regaining his hearing again are next to nonexistent. They turn off his hearing aids off at the appointment and Harry lets Louis drive them home, eerily calm in the passenger’s seat.
Harry’s go-to coping mechanisms are phone calls, hour long conversations with doctors and specialists and his mum and sometimes Zayn, and he usually rushes to his computer, searching intently for any sort of fix. When he unlocks the door, though, he slips off his shoes, unbuttons and hangs up Louis’ coat for him, sweet and quiet, and takes him to bed, where they sleep sharing a pillow until the next afternoon.
It’s not often either of them admit defeat, but Louis figures this one got them.
-
When he finally decides, they’ve stopped counting how many months have added to their hiatus. After his last doctor’s appointment, Louis has a drawer full of pamphlets, 10 more months, and meetings with a counselor before he’s okayed for surgery.
On the day of, Harry’s so nervous he can’t drive, because for months he’s been reading about drills and holes and bones and Louis – Louis doesn’t really care so much about that, he wants to go back to his job and phone calls and hearing everyone’s stupid voices. He had Lou shave the sides of his head, behind his ears up the slope of his skull, and Harry’s been running his fingers over the soft skin there, through the rest of his hair and giving Louis faux hawks in the shower, before bed, in the soft light of the morning that wakes Louis up when the birds used to. They sit tightlipped in the running car for twenty minutes before Louis calls them a driver and tightly holds onto Harry’s hand in the backseat.
He wakes to Harry folded in a chair next to his bed and no pain and he stumbles to the car, slow and trying to make his feet work, while Harry holds his arm and buckles him in, glaring against anyone staring or snapping pictures.
It’s a blur, then, of a few more weeks of hospital visits and his mum staying with them and long days on the sofa with Harry, wrapped in one of his jumpers with the sleeves past his hands, checking his dressing and stitches every so often.
-
Harry’s the only one going back with him when they make the appointment, Louis wants that. The boys are waiting at home for them and he’s made his mum promise not to anxiously speed to London with the girls, he will actually get to call her first.
Harry asks him if he’s nervous as they’re heading out the door, eyeing him as Louis adjusts his beanie, and he knows it’s been bobbing around in Harry’s mind for the last few weeks, dying to come out, but it’s not often, recently, that Louis is nervous and it’s not often he’ll admit it.
Louis’ been nauseous since yesterday morning. “A little,” he signs. “I’m excited. Are you?”
Harry opens the door for him, locking up after them. “I’m nervous,” he grins, with that telling pull of his mouth. Louis takes his hand; it’s good to hear even if he knew – he’s known how the pieces of Harry’s moods fit together since he was sixteen.
In the waiting room Harry gets scolded because he nearly drinks the whole water cooler and Louis hides his face in a magazine as he refills it in the bathroom, wiping his brow and grinning at the woman behind the front desk.
“Which ear first?” his audiologist asks – Rachel, he’s been working with her since he decided he was going to do this.
Louis points to his right ear, on the side Harry’s sitting, pulled up in a chair watching. She taps at the keyboard in front of her a few times, pulling out the programmer and wires and situating everything around Louis. Harry is very focused on it all, brow furrowed, like he’s memorizing it.
“Here,” Harry says, and slips off Louis’ beanie and puts it on his own head for safekeeping.
Rachel hands Louis his little remote, “that needs to go right over – yes, just here,” they move their hands together, bumping across Louis’ skull. “There, there, hold it like that.” She adjusts more things on the screen. Louis feels his hands shake where he’s holding it up. “Are you ready?” she asks and Harry smiles at him, breathes, “yeah,” as Louis nods his head.
“You’re gonna hear some things, just one more…” She makes sure the remote is right again and clicks a few more times and there’s beeping in Louis’ right ear. He feels his mouth fall open.
“Is it beeping?” Rachel asks and he doesn’t – he can just hear her without watching her lips. He listens, concentrating, and Harry’s face breaks open next to him, his smile unwavering.
Louis nods belatedly, “it’s, yeah, like clicking? As well.” He gasps a little at his own voice, the breaths he can feel and hear himself taking. Harry’s captivated, leaning forward in his chair as Louis looks around him, taking in tiny noises.
“Good, okay, how do I sound? How do you sound?”
“It’s like, weird. It’s not loud but it’s – it’s weird.” His own voice is strange, a little tinnier in his ear, different than what he remembers.
“Oh, good if it’s not too loud; it’s going to take time for your brain to rework all the sounds and understand what it’s hearing again and you can come back and adjust as many…”
She fades out for Louis, a sort of background white noise he’s failing to pay attention to because of this swelling build up in his chest, all the sounds he’s kept in there for so long, and when he looks at Harry, he knows.
Harry breathes a little laugh. “Can you hear me?” he asks and all Louis feels is relief. He nods his head fervently, chest tight, everything falling out. Harry’s lower lip is quivering even as he smiles, of course he’s going to get weepy. “Okay?” Harry asks, leaning in close to Louis.
“How’s Harry sound?” Rachel asks.
Louis clears his throat. “Your voice is still deep,” he says.
Harry coughs a wet laugh, not-so-subtly wiping at his eyes. “Good, I didn’t become all girly voiced in your ears.”
Louis shrugs, wants to say, I wouldn’t care, and says, “’s nice,” instead and Harry has to go blow his nose.
Rachel adjusts his volume a few times, and then they start with his left ear.
“Is it beeping again?” she asks and Louis jumps.
“Oh, that’s – that’s different,” he stutters and Harry’s laughing at him. Laughing – it swirls in his ears and Louis hasn’t felt so centered in a long time. He breathes. “That’s so different, it’s way better.”
“You can come back and do the left ear if you want, or do you want both today?”
“No, no, this,” he says instantly. “This is – good, I want this.”
It’s surround sound back in his ears, finally, every sound at a proper volume and Louis does lose it when Harry asks him again, “How am I now?” and Louis can hear every rumble, the low tone of his voice, how he remembered.
Rachel sends them out the door with tissues, many instructions, and another appointment.
Harry herds him into the nearest bathroom and locks the door. He bends his back, crouching just the slightest before Louis and holding onto him. “Y’okay?” he says, all open concern, eyes searching Louis’, and even that little phrase sets Louis off, squeezing his eyes shut and listening. “Jesus, Lou,” Harry curls his arms around him and Louis snuffles wetly into his shoulder.
“Gimme my hat,” Louis sniffles. “Please,” he adds as Harry hands it over. He scowls when Louis starts to wipe his cheeks with the beanie, and then gives in, rubbing gently at his eyes.
“Your face,” Harry says incredulously, like he’s more overwhelmed by it all than Louis.
Louis fixes his beanie over his hair, holding his ears for a second. “I don’t wanna cry anymore, if I get stuffed up I’ll sound weird.” He sniffles again and Harry kisses his forehead. “Are there – will people be outside?” He feels childish, all wrapped up in Harry, in awe of all the sounds around him, and he doesn’t care.
Harry shakes his head, “No, no, we’ll get the car in the back.” He’s still signing his words, second nature, and Louis takes his hands, smiling.
“Keep talking, please,” Louis whispers, and Harry isn’t quiet until they get home, mouth dry and voice hoarse, and then he narrates their dinner, mouth and hands, and they lay, Louis on Harry’s chest, listening to his heart.
“’ve you fallen asleep on me?” Harry asks. He’s all croaky now.
Louis shakes his head, rubbing along one of the swallows. “Pretty voice,” he says, his hands gentle on Harry’s throat, feeling him swallow. “You can’t talk forever, though.”
“I could,” Harry says surely, through a yawn. “I’ll always talk for you.”
Louis rests his head again, willing himself to stay awake. If it’s some sort of sick joke, that he can now hear Harry’s breaths as well as feel them move his chest up and down, Louis hopes they never get to the punch line.
-
Harry gets very loud. Or it seems – Louis isn’t exactly sure, because things have been quiet for so long. It feels like they’re both making up for lost time, like Harry wants Louis to rehear everything; he shares headphones and always has music on and he reads out loud sometimes, bits of the paper or a magazine, and once, they go on a drive, where it used to be so quiet, and wind up screaming along to their third album when Louis tentatively asks him, “Would you sing something, please?”
They get studio time again, and go to work right away. Louis figures since they’ve started and quit three times since he first stopped singing, he owes everyone a bit of work.
“I’ve figured out,” Louis says, on the day before they’re to officially start recording, “that I’ve heard you sing like, three times in the last few years since my ears really went.”
Harry’s watching him upside-down, sprawled on the floor since he came in from his workout, with his headband still in his hair. “I sang last year, when we started at the studio. And for your birthday, except your hearing aids were kind of shot by then, so.” Harry thinks, looking somewhere away from Louis. “S’just weird, ‘cause you were singing, like. You kept performing, Lou, that’s.” He breathes in, sharp, suddenly, says, “I’ll sing whatever the hell you want as long as you can hear it.”
Louis slips off the sofa and settles in a spot next to Harry, fingertips brushing. “Sing me whatever this woman’s cooking, then” he challenges, waving at the TV.
Harry breaks into a ballad about risotto that startles Louis, a laugh escaping from his mouth, and he listens until he has to join in the second verse about a spinach salad.
-
He forgets, sometimes. It isn’t easy; Niall’s accent twists up in the connections of his implant and Daisy clings to his neck, her little fingers skirting around the bumps behind his ears, hesitant, scared.
The first time they rehearse a song Louis is so focused on not focusing on his feet on the floor and feeling for vibrations that he forgets the words. Not that it matters, with Liam practically bouncing off the walls, giddy, all of them leaping out of their choreography steps; Niall’s on the ground, and Harry’s off, somewhere, spinning around in swooping airplane circles, a little hum into his mic that Louis can hear wherever he goes.
Liam runs by, kissing Zayn on the cheek, who stumbles into Louis. Their backing track is gone, replaced by some enormous ballad, Harry’s pick, probably. It swells, building up Louis’ legs, into his chest, and resting in his ears.
Next to him, Zayn whoops. There are five rushing heartbeats in this room and they’re all Louis’ again.
“I knew we’d do this forever,” Zayn says, and his voice echoes.
-
His mum is the first to ask, before Harry. Before Harry works up the nerve, maybe, but Louis isn’t sure. She’s the first, anyway.
In the middle of America, one of the states he always forgets about, they sit in a hotel room. He likes to fly them out now, all of them, since his sisters are older and it’s less hassle to drag the four of them across the world. Airfare, he figures, is the least he can do, since his recent suggestion of surprising Lottie with her first car was shot down so quickly he hasn’t heard the end of it since.
“You’re happy, then?” his mum asks just as some match on the TV turns over to adverts. He’s sprawled next to her where she’s spent a good portion of the morning on her nails while the girls were out. She’s always picking out new varnish colors wherever she goes now.
Louis fiddles with his phone, flipping it in his hands. He’s been waiting for replies: Niall’s MIA, they’re all sure, with some girl he’s had here for a few months, shacked up in a different hotel. Still, he worries.
“How could I not be?” he asks. In the quiet of the room there are still street noises down below, city sounds filtering in through the windows that he’d only remembered when they went back on tour.
She lifts her hands and he watches and, for a moment, tries to catalogue her movements. She fans them, though, trying to make the paint dry faster.
“I know this wasn’t how things were supposed to be,” she says. She was decent at signing, almost as good as Louis himself. He often wonders who has forgotten what specific words or phrases, because just the other day he couldn’t remember the one for dog, and he’d nearly stopped talking mid-sentence.
“None of this was,” he laughs, and she nods emphatically, knowingly. Sometimes, she’ll nearly stretch her hand out and touch his face, his cheek or his nape, like when he was small and constantly reaching for her. Now, fifteen stories high, she holds onto his hand.
“They told me when you were very young you wouldn’t be very tall,” she says. She smiles at him, crinkly-eyed. “I told them that was all well and good, you were loud enough to make up for it.”
“I missed that,” she says, and Louis nods at her, agreeing.
-
The car park has those enormous stadium lights, the kind that wash blinding white over everything, so bright they’re loud, buzzing powerfully above them. 10 o’clock in a car park is late for them now, because they’re old men or whatever, but they’re out there drying sweat under the lights to watch Niall do something really, really stupid on a skateboard.
Harry’s isn’t even paying attention, kicking a ball back and forth with Liam. “Next year,” he says, “let’s get our own bus, so we can leave Niall behind. Or like a van, that’s rock and roll, innit?”
He just went to Toronto for three days and called everyday and Louis still missed his voice. “Next year?” Louis asks. “I’m taking another four off. I don’t think career consistency is for me, lads.”
Liam kicks the ball at his head and ducks when it’s thrown right back at him. It makes a great shuddering noise when it hits the side of a bus, the metal bouncing, and Harry runs after it.
Niall’s long gone down the cement with Zayn.
“Has he done it yet?” Liam asks, shielding his eyes from the lights. “Niall! Oh—oh, no, he’s just fallen over. Zayn’s got him, he’s got him.”
“Did he?” Louis squints. Niall’s red-faced, sweat gleaming in the light. He starts his way back, going slow enough Zayn can trail behind him. “Do you think Zayn filmed it?”
“Zayn’s phone is probably still in the dressing room. Like, we’re going to leave and probably have to come back for it.”
“You weren’t even watching!” Niall yells when he’s near enough.
“I was!” Harry says, looking up from his phone.
“Niall, I’m hot!” Liam complains.
“Niall, I think a shower would be beneficial to us all at this point!” Louis says.
“Niall, did you know that fifty percent of giraffes are bisexual?”
“Harry, get off those weird fact Twitter accounts,” Liam groans.
Niall ignores them, waving a hand. “All you lot do is moan.” He turns around and skates off on the lot again. “I’m doing it again!”
Zayn marches out of the dark, looking grim. He pulls out a cigarette.
“What’s he trying to do?” Louis asks.
“Some move where he falls on his arse, I don’t know,” Zayn says. He pats his pockets for a minute, feeling around in his jacket. “Has anyone seen my phone?”
Liam throws his hands up and heads for the bus doors. “Thanks, mate, I owe Harry ten pounds now.”
“Liam, we can work out a deal,” Harry says, as Zayn searches more of his pockets, even reaching into his hood. “We’ll add it into the next contract.”
Niall rolls back, whooping for himself. “How about that time, did you see it?”
They all shout their approvals at him. Liam’s already on the bus and Zayn’s finishing off his cigarette.
And the lights buzz above them. And Louis can hear them.
-
Liam is the second to ask.
They fly back home and bring autumn with them. The leaves fall and leave their imprints on the pavements he and Liam walk one day, while the sun is still showing. When there’s a massive leaf in their pathway Louis makes sure to step down with a satisfying crunch, and later there are a few pap pictures of him raising his feet ridiculously, shoving Liam from the leaves he claimed as his.
“Stop, you’re spilling yours now!” Liam shouts when he takes a smack to the chest, balancing cups, and there’s hot tea on his hands but he’s laughing.
“Then hold them better, Liam, I can’t do everything,” Louis says and stomps dramatically on another leaf.
“Take it, take it,” Liam hands his drink off, fishing around for his phone in his pockets. He’s been texting some girl, Anna is her name, maybe, ever since his birthday party. After Zayn and Perrie’s wedding they thought he’d gotten serious about the girl he was dating at the time, but they’d had Liam wrong the whole time; he just never settled down like they figured he would.
Liam looks at his phone for a moment before putting it away again. “Do you remember when the only way to speak to each other was by texting?”
Louis takes a sip of his drink, hot down his throat. “That was hell. Well, not for Harry, he loved it.”
Liam smirks and Louis watches him, sees him thinking. “We were good at signing, though, yeah? We could have done a proper show like that, I think.”
Louis is tired of leaves. He finds them a bench and plops down.
“What’s this, Liam, are you sad my deaf era is over?”
Liam nearly chokes on his coffee. “What—no, no, I just. Are you?”
Louis stares at the ground. “Did Harry put you up to this?”
“No, this isn’t—why would he have? Does someone in the band need to be put up to something? I always use Niall myself, he wins people over.”
“Liam,” Louis says, and he goes quiet.
Liam waits for him for a long time. Longer than Louis would have waited.
“I don’t know, is the thing,” Louis says, and it nearly comes out as a question. “Only I do know that when they said it was permanent I first thought, ‘like hell it is.’ And then it really was… but. Like, I’m glad I was with you, with you boys, or I don’t know if I could have done it.”
He can feel Liam’s eyes on him, and then he bumps their cups together in a little cheers. “Me too.”
Where Louis used to have silence, true silence, in the gap between conversations, there is now constant car noises, the rain on the ground, the wind in his ears, and the reminder things will never be that quiet again. On this park bench with Liam, it’s no different.
He clucks his tongue. “A whole show, Liam, you couldn’t even remember the band’s sign half the time.”
Liam laughs, “Hey, I tried!”
“Yes,” Louis agrees. “Thank you. For trying.”
He hops off the bench, because they did have a goal today, and it was mostly to find that sandwich place Niall told them to try.
“Honestly, though, it was a one and the letter D, we couldn’t have gotten much more simple than that.” Louis strolls ahead, grinning when he feels Liam’s empty cup smack into his back.
-
They do take a break. It’s different than the endless time off they had before; Louis knows it’s a ‘this-time-you-can-hear’ break, and that’s fine.
“I was thinking like, Alaska,” Harry says, and his mouth is full. Louis is sprawled on their bed watching him, unamused, as Harry stuffs popcorn into his mouth, his back bowed over his crossed legs.
Louis scoffs, “Alaska,” he says flatly.
Harry chews. “We could camp,” he says, “and all that. Do they camp in Alaska?”
“I’m sure they camp in Alaska,” Louis says. He doesn’t really know. He flips to his stomach, pillowing his head on his folded arms. Their mostly clean sheets smell like soap and Harry beneath him, and he feels soft like this, like Harry’s pale belly in the lamplight, like Louis’ socked feet in their lumpy duvet. Louis stifles a yawn as he watches him eat; Harry’d kindly woken up him early with breakfast, if two thirty in the afternoon can be called early. Louis’ days are starting to run together. It’s how a break should be.
Harry stuffs another handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Oh, you do eat that shit loud,” Louis says. “How did I never notice.”
“Maybe you were busy noticing other things,” Harry says, beaming. He tries to wag his eyebrows.
“More like your impeccable tidiness,” Louis tells him. “I can’t believe you’re eating in bed, how many kernels are in here with us now?”
“Hey,” Harry pouts. “I’m on break.” He leaves his popcorn on the bedside table and shimmies down the bed, sliding in next to Louis, fitting all his extra inches alongside him.
Louis peeks at him from behind his arms. “’D you really want to go to Alaska?”
Mostly he can see the green of Harry’s eyes, bright and finally calm. Louis sometimes wonders if he’d be able to pick that shade out of a lineup or something, but maybe not. Maybe just when they’re like this.
“No. Well, maybe Canada or something. I liked it there.” Harry cuddles in closer, tucking his knees in. His eyes are closed, and he’d give Louis his old man ‘resting my eyes’ excuse if he were to say anything.
“Having a good break?” Harry asks. It’s more breath than anything.
“I am,” Louis says. “Are you?”
Harry nods. “I like—this. It was a good tour, but this.” He trails off.
“I hear you,” Louis says and Harry opens his eyes.
“You do,” Harry says, and it’s both agreeing and reassuring. He leans in and kisses Louis, barely reaching his mouth, “you hear me. And this,” he kisses Louis again, on his cheeks and scrunched up nose. Sometimes Louis’ heart thunders in his ears and Harry’s voice swoops in next to it and holds it.
When they were young—when Louis was young, he stood on a giant stage years ago and was told he can sing, and now Harry presses into him and tells him, “you can hear this and this and that,” and they are different, but Louis listens all the same.