Titanic: A Larry Stylinson Novel (Boyxboy)

xii

The enormous sinking ship emitted another whale-ish type of groan as we began our slow but steady ascent to the ship's top deck. Traversing through the water, though, was much more difficult than I thought, as it constantly required a significant amount of legwork to take that one extra footstep forward. Once we got higher from the last floor flooded with water, Harry and I had to stop and take a rest.

I panted heavily as I lay my back against a wall. "Phew, that was quite the job."

Harry chuckled grimly. "Tell me about it. At least the water drained the piss out of my pants."

Oh, I was so grossed out when he shared that with me. It was repulsive, but I couldn't pity him more. "Oh my God, they didn't even allow you to use the toilet when you were chained there?" I gasped.

"Yeah," Harry continued, his dimples stretching across his face, "and once I just about took an enormous shit in my trousers."

I groaned in disgust and felt a lump coming at the back of my neck. "That is so disgusting, Harold."

He chuckled, feeling good about himself all of a sudden as he wrapped his arms around my lower back. "You're so clean and . . . simple-minded, Louis Tomlinson. I'm usually the filthy, intricate one here."

My cheeks burned red and my spine rippled with goosebumps as his body pressed closely against mine. Clearly, as I felt a familiar throbbing pressed against my waistline, he wasn't ashamed of getting some right where we stood. "Imagine, if we get out alive, you can brag to the world that you had sex while the almighty Titanic was sinking."

He laughed, genuinely amused but caught off his guard at my blatant answer. "Nah, it'd be too rushed. I like you . . . slow. Really unusual of me to have a preference, but then again, we're aboard the sinking Unsinkable." He shrugged. "Life gets more strange by the minute."

I couldn't help but snort at the irony. "You like me slow, yeah? Explain how fast we were down in steerage the other night!"

Harry mumbled something incoherent to my ears, but then flashed a smirk at me. Whatever suspicion I had about his murmuring evaporated as those really boy-ish, jade eyes looked straight into my own. I almost lost my footing just from that intense look from him.

I suddenly felt a familiar chill of water overwhelm the cushion of heat between us. How did it get up so fast? We just went up an entire floor not three minutes ago, or what maybe felt like three minutes. But now was not the time for emotions, especially when there was none to spare. Time was not in our favour.

I shook my head as I snapped out of whatever sexual trance I was experiencing."Come on, Harry, we have to go. This is complete foolishness."

He whirled me around, causing my feet to inadvertently splash him with water. "Alright, but just in case, I want a favour from you first."

"What—?"

I almost began to break down and mourn on the spot I stood. He slammed his lips against mine and sucked the breath right out of my body before we stood and embraced for what felt like forever. I couldn't hold back the tears and just let it all pour out. And though I was silent, my heart was crying as Harry started to consider a likely possibility: we were probably not going to make it out alive.

"Come on," he grumbled, pulling me by the hand and guiding the both of us upstairs.

I didn't bother to clean my eyes of the salty tears. My pride was out of the way, and whatever man left inside of me was replaced by doing everything to ensure our survival. Even if I had to give up my soul to have Harry by my side through the rest of our lives. I continued shedding those silent tears as we were met with an angry mob forced to wait behind barred gates.