Lydia’s POV
“You changed fast.” I grinned, looking up from a few emails I’d received about various job offers after my upcoming graduation
“Sweaty.” He made a face, his athletic shorts and football jersey changed to a pair of dark gray sweatpants that stretched over the impossible size of his butt, a white v-neck cutting low enough to expose the inch of script across his collarbones and riding up on the band of his TopMan boxers.
“So you didn’t shower?” I rolled my eyes, closing his Macbook and turning to stop the whistling of the kettle as the water had finally boiled for his tea.
“Don’t need to.” Louis grinned, his hair that had been styled into an artfully messy fringe had just regressed into the wild sex hair that he usually wore. Raising his arms to smell himself like that would make me want to smell him even more.
“You were at the gym for three hours.” I sighed, making sure I remembered the milk in first before I decided to ruin his day and make him put it in himself.
“Went to the field instead, kicked the footie around with Niall and nailed him in the face.” Louis chuckled, picking his tea up and blowing on it with a cautious expression.
Sometimes he was so damn cute.
Eyebrows knit together, soft lips pursed in halfway contemplation as he debated scalding his tongue or waiting it out –in which he would most likely get distracted and come back to a cold cup.
“You have terrible aim.” I grinned, leaning on my elbows so I could get a better view of my boyfriend.
Yes, I was going to say it until it got old. I’d assume if you were to date Louis Tomlinson you would also have a superiority complex.
“Actually, I think that just proves how great my aim is.” He decided on burning his tongue, speaking with a slight lisp to his heavily European accent as I settled on giggling at how much of an idiot he actually was.
“You have a charity match soon don’t you?” I bit the inside of my cheek, his bright eyes crossing momentarily as he attempted to do damage control on his tongue.
“Coming up in about a month and a half,” he nodded, focusing back on me as I dropped my eyes to the band of skin he was itching. The dark tone of his skin clearly wasn’t a tan as it was never fading, smooth and unmarked skin gracing most of the lower part of his body.
“You should get a tattoo there.” I didn’t really think much about what I had just suggested, not catching his brief eyebrow raise as though the thought had never actually crossed his mind to ink other parts of him.
“Thought about it, don’t know what I’d put there though. Maybe if I think of something I’d want you to see everytime you take my pants off we can come to an agreement.” Louis smirked at his own joke, laying it on thick the past few days as I’d passed my ‘womanly phase’ as he liked to call it, which meant I clearly had no excuse to not be fucking him every chance I got.
Which was true, there were things I wouldn’t mind doing to him, but it just hadn’t happened yet and we both knew that it would be obvious in the moment.
I seriously hoped that moment was coming soon though. I don’t think I could take anymore of him walking out of the bathroom with a towel hanging off of his waist and damp hair falling across his forehead without combusting.
The kitchen was silent for a moment after that, regressing back into our own minds as we settled into it comfortably.
There was nothing wrong with the silence he offered me most days, in fact, I was still in awe of the fact that he knew exactly when I had something to say or just needed a moment to breathe.
“I got a few job offers for research facilities after I graduate.” I spoke straight to him, waiting for the anger or hurt that never came. His smile only lifting in a strange sort of proud smile, his hand reaching across the island to fit his fingers with mine.
“Which one did you like love?” There was nothing about him that seemed upset, the question even catching me off guard because he actually sounded excited, like this was what he wanted to happen.
“I’ll be gone for months at a time.” I elaborated, not completely sure that he understood the amount of contact we would lose between each other. Continents separating us for thousands of hours that I could never reclaim, and although it was what I wanted with my life, what I had always dreamed of becoming, I had never planned on falling in love with someone who was already an Ocean away.
“Did you honestly think I wanted you to go back to Seattle or stay alone in this flat while I was on tour? Lydia, you can’t really be telling me that you thought I wanted you to drop your life for mine?” Louis sounded shocked, his voice that was usually so uniquely high-pitched was deeper in moments like this. Rivaling Harry’s as octaves dropped and his eyes remained locked on mine in sincerity.
“I’m here now, and it’s home but I’ve never really had a set home. I’m confused because I don’t know if you want me to stay, and I don’t know if I want to go.” I lifted my hands up in exasperation, the ink of his favorite tattoo catching the light and reflecting back towards me as our hands were suspended in the air. His connected to mine by his own doing, just like it always would be and always had been.
“Of course I want you to stay, I’ll always want you to stay Lydia, but I just don’t have that luxury in my life. You deserve to go and show the world exactly how brilliant you are, and spend months in some forest in the remote parts of New Zealand because that’s when you are your happiest, and I will never keep your from that. I’m always right here, your home will hopefully someday be with me.” He finished quietly, the small flat that I had learned to love with laughter in was more of a home than anywhere I’d ever been. Waking up with a heavy body trapping mine against him would always be home, and eventually there would be a stable ground to assign that name to.
“You leave in three weeks?” I mumbled the question, picking at the skin around my fingernails as I refused to make eye contact with him because I would probably lose it.
I’d only been back with him for a few short weeks, and it would all be ending just as quickly. Goodbyes that I didn’t know if I could handle approaching at the speed of light.
“Dammit.” He swore under his breath, his fingers tightening against mine and his head dropping into his free hand as dark hair blocked his expression from view.
I was almost glad that Morgan and Harry had left for the night, the days where it would be just him and I already having a number pasted to them and I planned on spending every single one wrapped up in the overwhelming person that I had settled on falling in love with.
“How the hell am I supposed to leave when you pull that shit Lydia?” He groaned into his hand, peeking soft blue eyes up at me as the weight of his tour finally started to show.
“We’re both leaving.” I frowned, struggling to push my hair back over the side of my head as it continued to wreck my perfect view of the man who had a heart no one could ever compete with.
“Let’s get a dog.” Louis announced, not shying away one bit when I raised my eyebrows in surprise at him. The serious tone of the conversation not dropping because he wasn’t joking.
“Louis, did you not hear yourself? We’re both leaving, not like leaving for a weekend, we’re leaving the country for months.” I confirmed his thoughts with one last attempt to be rational, his determined gaze however was not shifting. Lips set in a straight line with raised eyebrows like he was daring me to try and use some sort of –abundant- logic as to why it was a terrible idea.
“I’m talking about when we come back. Let’s move in together and get a dog.” He persisted, thinking nearly a year and a half into the future where he would most likely be planning another world tour and I would probably be off doing the same thing my parents were still doing after thirty years of non-stop research.
“We just started dating.” I started with the simple, realizing that with Louis, nothing was easy.
“Right, ok. So in a year and a half we will have been together for a year and a half, so will you move in with me and adopt a dog with me then?” He corrected his previous statement with a sly grin, the tips of his lips uplifted in the amusement and laughter he could pull from thin air.
“Oh my god. You’re not kidding.” I pushed my face into my hands, taking a few steadying breaths because this was actually really happening. We would be apart for months, phone calls separated by time zones and sleepless nights and he was so sure that he’d still love me after all of that.
“Of course I’m not kidding, Lydia I told you already, I love you. Not just the silly kind of love either babe, I can’t do this without you.” He finally admitted the words I had been begging not to hear, coming around the island until I could feel him standing just inches away.
“You can do this without me, you always could.” I couldn’t even attempt to bring my face up from my hands, but his fingers still remained locked in mine. Not moving because he knew that I wanted him there.
“You know what I meant by that, I’ve told you a thousand times that I want a future with you and you’re still finding it hard to believe.” Louis was giving me space at the same time as he was pushing me, all this talk should have been unbelievable to a couple who had only been together for ten days, but it wasn’t. I think that was the scariest part.
“How can we have a future together when we’re never here?” I finally spoke up, so many things I needed to talk with him about and they all stemmed from that issue. The same issue I’d had since the moment I realized his quirky smile held more of a piece of my heart than I’d ever bargained for.
“I can’t answer that if you aren’t willing to try.” I could hear the bit of pain in his voice, the part of me that had believed he hadn’t given a stray thought to him leaving was already falling to pieces because I knew he had. From the first time he sang to me, I knew that this was on his mind much more than I could have imagined.
“I’m coming back for your Wembley concert, and your charity match.” I informed him, knowing that there was no point in reassuring him that I wouldn’t leave because he knew in his heart, just like I did, that it was impossible now.
I had never meant to rely on anyone, the pure thought of it making me feel weak, but Louis had changed so much about that. I didn’t rely on him, but I couldn’t feel the same without him. It was the crinkles by his eyes when he laughed, and the kisses that had once been just a part of biology, that he had turned into something I looked forward to.
We weren’t weak, in fact, by giving so much of ourselves to the other, I would call us strong.
“You’re my date to the VMAs, and I’m coming to your graduation.” I finally decided to look up at that, letting our hands drop back to our sides and trying to figure out what he’d just said.
“You’re coming to my graduation?” I stared at him, a bit perplexed because I hadn’t mentioned that once until today.
“Are you fucking kidding? Of course I am? I’m flying in that day and even if I have to leave five seconds later I’m coming.” Louis looked almost comical, like the sheer audacity of my statement had actually caught him off guard.
“Please tell me you won’t have to leave five seconds later.” I couldn’t help but smile a bit, the ridiculous idea that he would actually be there for me had crossed my mind in a thought of whim. Never once had I believed that he’d actually want to come, let alone follow through.
“I won’t leave five seconds later, I’ll go back to your flat and throw cocoa puffs at Cass and joke with Josh because someday I’m certain he’s going to force me to kiss him and-“
“I love you.” I stopped him, probably looking like a complete idiot because I just couldn’t believe he was real and mine.
There weren’t just people like Louis in this world, ones who cared so deeply and knew from the very bottom of their infinite heart that they had a future with someone. He did though, and although I still couldn’t wrap my head around it, there was a part of me that understood we would always be Lydia and Louis.
He didn’t have to say anything in response, his dark hair tickling my cheek as lips pressed the words I dreaded into my skin.
Every single song I’d heard him sing had a meaning now, devotion and broken hearts falling to pieces only to be rebuilt. The future unsure, but he’d always be here with me. Songs copyrighted and inked with the lines of his tattoos that would forever have me wondering exactly what he felt so heavily in his quietest moments, the lines seeming to have no meaning unless you really looked at him and understood that it was incredible to even have him standing in front of me.
No one could ever hold the sort of bottomless love he felt because I’d never met anyone who had been given up on so completely, only to turn around and prove to the world he was worth it.
Louis was so wrong when he said I made him strong, because there was not a single person on Earth who had the beautiful strength he possessed and if anything, he was the one who made me strong. He was my constant grip on reality, demons he never even questioned attacking me until I was moments from giving up, but they were gone now. An onset of beautifully blue eyes taking their place and moving kisses up my neck in the silence of an empty apartment.
Behind closed doors he was a different person, one who could breathe freely and laughed with such amazement in his light voice that you almost needed to just stop and make sure he wasn’t some mindlessly created man with the power to destroy you.
I’d loved him for months, unable to admit it to myself because smiles like that came just once in your life and if you were lucky enough to keep them, then your life would forever be changed.
There was something waiting for us, obstacles we still had to jump and times where it would be so hard that I couldn’t even fathom the ache I would feel once we were both gone. Months would pass though, time would continue and his voice would alter between the crackling of a line thousands of miles away and the rough scratch of a man who had just woken up next to me, and one day, it would all slow down.
For now though, it was our lives and out futures that had painfully collided and I wouldn’t have it any other way. There was no one else in the entirety of any bit of untraveled time and space that would ever make me love him any less, because I couldn’t ever imagine a world where he was just another face on the screen that I’d once known.
“I love you.” The space between his words was stunted, lips pressing feather light kisses to my wrists, covering darker spaces of skin and up my forearm until they came back to move their smooth pace back over my neck.
Things he couldn’t even imagine ran through my head, just simple acts like that drawing me to the same conclusion. I’d won. Everything that had swam around and killed me slowly was no longer there, and although he wouldn’t let me hand him the credit, it had been him.
He was my reason to do everything I was afraid of, because he’d shown me exactly how wrong one person could be. How things weren’t as they seemed and sometimes all you needed was someone to listen, someone to tease you shamelessly and teach you that love stemmed from your entire being, not just your head or the chemical release of endorphins. That was science, and we didn’t need science, we needed each other.
The melody of his open heart breathed against my cheek, slow kisses painfully making their way to me as everything around me blurred.
“You can never be replaced.” Louis was finally right in front of me, eyes as peaceful as his soul and laced with the mischief I’d seen since the very first day. Spectrums and colors making no sense because there would never be anything that could compare to the color that was so deeply lost in the facets of his beautiful eyes.
That was the last thing I ever wanted to see, his lips breaking my thoughts into lost shards of emotion as my heart pounded in my chest. The anxiety of this moment mixing with adrenaline and a strange sort of euphoria that could only be heightened.
There was no question because it didn’t need to be asked, our hands separating as I ran them through his hair and clutched the last bit of what I had.
He didn’t hesitate though, slipping his fingers under my shirt and digging into my skin. The rough boy I’d fallen in love with not letting me down one bit as he picked me up with just one arm and nearly forced me to wrap my legs around his waist.
“Breathe.” He mumbled against my lips, not stopping to give me time to catch up with my body as we moved easily through the flat. My weight not deterring him at all because he’d somehow only grown more muscular in the time that we’d spent apart.
I couldn’t respond though, the pounding in my heart making me feel like I’d combust as the door to the room he’d labeled as ours swung open. My back slamming into it as he used his entire body to hold me in place, heavy breaths filling the silence and falling between the lack of space between us.
It took all of my self control to pull my hands out of his hair, not daring to open my eyes and see what a mess of a man I’d created before me, for that would probably end me before I could even utter a word. Slipping my fingers under the hem of his shirt and tugging it sharply, his arms doing the rest as it fell in the beginning of a pile on the floor. Markings against his chest unable to compare to the lines that had deepened and made him even harder to focus on, trailing down into the band of his boxers as I traced them with the tips of my fingers.
“Dammit.” He hissed, something falling with a loud crash next to us as my shirt was nearly flung off of me. The mask of scattered tattoos across his forearm in my line of sight as I nearly gave myself a concussion, slamming my head back into the door when lips bit the skin that lined my bra, not saving a moment of hesitance because that just wasn’t him.
Everything was a mess, scattered clothes and something broken. My head exploding with the way his lips were moving against mine, not giving me space to breathe before I was thrown onto the bed, a body pushing down on mine as my feet hooked into the band of his sweatpants, pushing them off until it was just the thin material of his boxers between him and I. The dusting of his happy trail nearly blinding, but he didn’t give me time to stare.
Louis’ lips hit the line of my collarbones first, tracing sharp kisses down the lines of bone before he stopped on my stomach, bright eyes filled with a sharpened kind of lust meeting mine as I tugged on his hair.
There wasn’t much room left for anything else, his entire being taking over because it was the first time I’d ever do something with love and lust, things that shouldn’t combine under any circumstance, but Louis was good at breaking rules.
His dark hair unruly as faint red marks spread and fainted with the disappearance of his fingers, my sweatpants disappearing with an easy motion as I lost the last bit of everything.
This was happening, the last bit between us that hadn’t been shared and would now forever hold part of my heart that mixed with the sharp definition of his muscular torso and the script I would trace countless times more that lined his heart.
The comforter had already been pushed to the opposite side of the bed, his arms wrapping around my waist and moving me without caution until there were no feet hanging off the edge. The darkness of night consuming us in early hours of the morning, his tea –as predicted- cold and abandoned downstairs, the noises lighting between us almost making me thankful that Harry had decided to sleepover somewhere else.
My bra joining the rest of my clothes on the floor, porcelain eyes not stopping once with shame because he didn’t need to. Tangling my fingers in his dark hair again and bringing his lips back to mine, remembering this moment because it would never happen again. This was the last first, the last person I would ever share myself with because I couldn’t ever let anyone even attempt to shadow the feeling of everything he was to me.
“Louis?” It was heavy air between us, my nails sinking into the skin of his back as he didn’t hold back from what I knew he was capable of.
Once again Louis was right, there would be no slow and steady, not with us.
His lips briefly parting from mine as I slipped my fingers into the band of his boxers, hips pressing even harder into mine as a sinful groan fell from his red lips.
Our eyes locking in states of disbelief, this moment playing over and over in my head so many times that now that it was actually real, I wasn’t even able to control my own thoughts. Nothing remaining a mystery anymore because it was better than any sort of imagination. He wasn’t even sparing a second’s thought, letting his entire body take over and I was no longer dealing with a rookie.
Louis knew what I was doing and he knew what I was asking, eyes flickering over to the bedside table before it all turned to dust with the ragged sound of a heavy British accent, teeth biting sharply against his neck as I forced the control from his grip and the last word was spoken between us.
“Yeah.” His boxers ending the pile on the floor with the slight tumble of useless items before it all turned to noises that would have our neighbors complaining and neither of us able to forget the first time we decided to love completely.
A/N
I did not want to distract you from this chapter, but now that it's over i'm going to anyways.
THE GIF OF SHIRTLESS LOUIS BECAUSE IF ANYTHIGN HE'S ONLY GOTTEN WAY MORE MUSCULAR AND HAS ANYONE SEEN THAT VINE OF HIM WET IN A SNAPBACK A FEW NIGHTS AGO BECAUSE ABS AND IM STILL NOT OVER IT.
I'm not even going to talk about this chapter.
It explains itself.
They deserve it.
You deserve it.
Everyone deserves someone like that to them.
There are about six chapters left including the epilogue......and i'm really sad but every story has an end.
The message of the story is at the end, and it's coming up so quickly that i'm just shocked at how far this story has come.
I love every single one of you for reading and coming along on their journey... because it's still not over and it never will be.
Lydia and Louis are a huge part of my heart because of you guys, and i can't thank you enough for even appreciating what I write and giving me something to look forward to.
And to the Lydia I know, thank you for this story. You're the best friend I could ask for :)
So comment if you'd like, vote, take a look at the gif and remember what you all deserve in life. Louis isn't just a popstar or a character in fanfiction, he's out there. There are people like him, and don't settle until you find your Louis.
I love you all.
Thank you so much for getting Zoo back to the PG-13 rating. It means the world.
-Hannah