5SOS Imagines

Luke - Falling in Love

Author: Rhine

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to the people who weren't loved back.

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Here is what they don't tell you in love stories.

How his I love you becomes a regime, an obligation instead of his feelings; how he promises you forever like an insurance for your car-crash heart that collided into his; how you start to look smaller in the sea of his eyes and how he looks like a stranger in your bed when he turns your way for once.

Here is what they don't tell you in love stories.

How kisses become desperate resuscitations for the love you used to have, how every touch is a compression that says please bring him back to me; how he drowns at the sight of you, how you suffocate him so.

Here is what they don't tell you in love stories.

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You suppose you had it coming, really.

It was too good – too perfect – and you were too happy and god knows happiness doesn't come without a price.

And oh, you paid the price – all the nose brushes and forehead kisses, all the softest caresses and sweetest words – every I love you and every forever cost more than what you could give back in return.

With the interest accumulating – he looks at you and he thinks this girl is what I want, we'll grow into something bigger one day, this is love – and he looks at you every day with brighter eyes, and he loves you every day with more of his heart.

But that's the thing about interest, you see – you couldn't pay him back.

You couldn't pay him back and his love for you grew while you fell flat, realizing that all he was giving you – realizing all you couldn't give back.

I tried, I tried.

And then he sees.

He sees how your kisses don't taste so sweet anymore, how he doesn't like how you look in his arms anymore, how he outgrows you like clothes that another him used to wear – how suddenly, you aren't enough for him.

How he grows, how he grows better without you.

And surely you see it – how the only smile of his that you see is ones when he's turned away from you, how he says your name like a stranger instead of the lover that used to entwine it with his own; how he remembers you as an afterthought and how you are diminished, closer and closer to nothing in his eyes.

How he doesn't love you anymore.

Do you love me Luke?

And he says of course, babe, don't be silly with a kiss on the lips and an answer in his eyes that pierce right through you.

And he says don't ask silly questions and turns the other way on the bed; you don't know if he means your love is silly or if you are for believing in his for you and you don't realize until the morning that he never said yes.

You suppose you have a way of making the word love seem so sour; all the boys in the past handing you off saying someone will love you better than me but you knew better than that, you knew they didn't want your love as their responsibility.

Where does it go?

And what do you do when you love too much, when you're barely enough?

You're everything I want, you're everything I need.

And you swore, you swore – you told yourself that someone would come along one day – someone would stay one day –

And you let yourself believe it would be him.

Do you believe in happily-ever-afters?

At this point, really – you rather deserved it if you were so stupid to believe – to even hope – that when someone promised forever, when they said always, they'd mean it.

Shouldn't you know by now that people change their minds – people change their hearts like they change house keys and one day, one day you won't be able to come back to the home you've so carefully made?

Haven't you learned anything from your heartbreak?

You can trust me.

You can trust yourself to fall, you can trust in your nativity; you can trust that words of I'll never leave won't catch you and your heart is made up of scars from your scratched knees with all the times you fell for beautiful boys who didn't love you back.

But he has a smile that could make you walk off a cliff believing he'd be at the bottom to catch you; but he was the first and only one who made you wholeheartedly believe that maybe – just maybe – love could be something for you too.

I'm Luke – and you are...?

And you remember how you saw him for the first time and thought oh no, how he whispered against your lips if he could kiss you just before you kissed for the first time and how you wished please let this be my last first kiss; you wanted it to be him, you wanted him to be your reason to believe that good things happened for a reason too.

You wanted him to prove that all that heartbreak – all that pain – was worth it.

Please....

And you hated how you've used that word for every boy who walked away, for every boy who thought you weren't enough to stay; how you've left them all with claw marks that they pried themselves away from, how you could never let go of the pain while all the love managed to slip away.

And you hated how Luke is one of them too.

Tell me, how does it feel – how does it feel when you see someone falling out of love with you right before your eyes?

How does it feel to know that everything you ever shared – late nights of it'll only ever just be you and I and planning futures that you believed you could have – how does it feel to know that everything you gave, everything you had – is meaningless enough for them to simply throw away?

To know that you became meaningless enough for them to simply throw away?

I'm sorry.

And you're sorry you loved too much; you're sorry you smother sparks of something bright into deadened smoke of something that simply died, you're sorry you let yourself believe that you were meant to be loved by someone like him, you're sorry you even tried –

But the worst part is, you aren't.

And the only apology you have is one for not being enough.

For always loving more than they loved you.

And here is what they don't tell you in love stories.

It's just as easy for you to fall in love with someone as it is for them to fall out of love with you.

Don't forget.

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