Love stings.
Love stings because it lies, like an idea to fight towards. An awfully, ironically romanticised vision that society loves to play into, filling one's heart with hope before drowning them. It's addictive, warmth trickling through the cracks and leaving nothing but a longing ache when it goes.
Harry Styles would do anything to experience it, in all its glory, just one more time.
Two years, he'd gotten two years with him. Two years with the love of his life, just over seven hundred fifty days. It feels like eons ago, that they first met, as little teenage boys with nothing more than sunshine clouding their vision. Their naïveté in the world silences all else, their giggles paint the world in rainbows, and the promises whispered into each other's ears ink themselves into each other's souls. Time flies, but it seems like nothing has passed, nothing has changed, Harry is still the same boy who loved him at sixteen. Yet, as Harry scrubs at his skin, face soaked with tears, a familiar sensation tickling at the back of his throat, he knows.
Some say love is fickle.
As Harry wipes the blood off his lips, he tries to remind himself that it's not true.
**
When Harry first met Louis, he is nothing more than just a boy.
A boy with too much innocence, too much love to give. He'd met him, in all his fiery, feisty glory, and they just clicked. It's like the universe understood, and Harry had been too oblivious to notice. Too blinded by love, perhaps, to truly pay attention to the warning signs. The coughs, the feeling in his lungs, everything. It was nothing but Louis Tomlinson.
He's such a fool, thinking it would ever be enough, that Harry could ever be enough for someone like Louis.
Hiding their love from the world was hard. Having to duck behind shaded corners and dark alleyways in hopes of snagging a desperate kiss without getting caught was hell. Having management breathing down their back was excruciating, and not being able to scream to the world how much he loved Louis was downright impossible, but. He made it; he had done it and would do it all again in a heartbeat.
Some time ago, Louis would've said the same.
The first mistake he made, was ever believing that he could ever satisfy love.
As difficult as the days were, having Simon up their asses ready to start their next PR stunt, was manageable. They could do it, it was okay. That was the best way to describe it, their situation was okay. As much as it hurt to see Louis going out with girl after girl, all in the hopes of convincing the public he was single, it was okay, as long as he knew that Louis always came back home at the end of the day, ready to cuddle up to him.
That changed when Eleanor got involved.
She wasn't like other PR stunts, no. She was long-term. She was meant to stay.
Harry remembers the day he found out. It was through Louis, through his screams. He had been screaming at Simon for breaking their promise, his word. That Louis would only do a couple of stunts and nothing long-term. This was new, this was terrifying, but Harry was willing to face it if it meant he could keep their relationship going strong.
Louis didn't feel the same way.
As Harry hugs Louis, trying to hold back his own tears as he comforts Louis' broken apologies ("I'm sorry Harry, I never wanted it to be like this, I only love you"), wailed out through fragmented syllables, he tries not to think about how much harder life was going to be now, how much more they were going to hide. He tries not to think about how much longer this was going to last, how many more promises Simon was going to break.
आप पढ़ रहे हैं
your faithless love's the only hoax i believe in
रोमांसPerhaps it's because he's known Louis for so long, but Harry can read him like a book. There's something in his eyes that's been missing for a long time, something that Harry had been desperately looking for in the last couple of weeks they've been...
