Gods & Monsters

Chapter 1

Louis Tomlinson has been watching Harry Styles for four days.

And it's not been very eventful. Turns out that The Uprisor in the Kingdom of Liam is not nearly as adventurous or lively as Liam made him out to be. Rather than "fitting into everybody's pockets" (a direct and startlingly inaccurate quote from none other than Liam himself), Louis hasn't actually seen the boy talk to another soul for more than five minutes at any given time. Rather, he strides quietly about the school grounds, earbuds tucked firmly in his ears, his fluffy head always bent low towards the soil and grass and cement pathways that glide beneath his purposeful, Converse-clad feet.

And that's basically it. That's pretty much all he does. Just walks around with a bag slung over his shoulders, head down, listening to music. Vaguely, distantly, and unamusedly, Louis wonders what he listens to, but the curiosity is almost instantly squashed when he comes to the inevitable conclusion that it's most likely shit. Nickleback or something. Shit.

Still though, the boy isn't what Louis had expected.

This 'Harry Styles' definitely doesn't seem like the type that would boast about being recruited for a footie team without even needing to tryout (the boy is all stick limbs and points, and trips up while he walks, so...) and as Louis watches him every day for four days, peering at him through the tendrils of smoke from his cigarette while he times the slaps of his long, gangly feet against the pavement to the bass of Nirvana's "Aneurysm," he grows more and more curious as to what this boy could possibly possess that should cause Liam to feel so threatened. He can't really put his finger on it from the distance though, so he doesn't waste much time mulling it over, just brushes the thought away along with the ash from his cigarette.

It'll be easy, though. This target? Easy peasy. Probably won't take more than a week, even, given that the boy is seemingly docile and potentially shy. Clearly, he's not one of the aggressive, repressed types that take a bit more time and concentration on Louis' part; the ones who kick out their questionable sexualities on the field and grunt the words they can't form before colliding their bodies into you in a manner that suggests more than just petty violence.

Nah, this Harry chap, with his earbuds and long limbs and unmoving lips, is a bit more... well. The 'innocent' type, Louis suspects. One of the naïve ones that flushes easily, that stutters out his sentences and sends forth shy smiles as he curls the edge of his notebook paper. He's one of those sweet ones that Louis has so callously tossed aside on countless times before, all on Liam's orders, all due to boredom, all because he's just a shitty, deplorable fucking human being at the end of the day.

He does feel bad sometimes, though. Secretly, quietly, he does.

He doesn't mind conquering one of the aggressive types — fucking them in the head professor's office and getting purposefully caught or leaking shitty iPhone footage of them exchanging blowjobs all over Facebook or whathaveyou. He doesn't so much mind crumbling the (frankly, pretty shitty) foundations of a douchebag footie player who's bred even more misery in an already miserable world.

But he does feel the pinpricks of remorse when it comes to dashing the hopes of boys who hold a less...blemished heart. He does have a bit of trouble meeting his own reflection after he's broken the spirit of one who was never meant to be broken.

But. Louis is piece of shit, ya know? Facts are facts.

It's just how it is. Not everybody was born to be inherently 'good'. The world is going to be filled with different characters, different flavours, different levels of respectability and whatnot, and Louis just so happens to be on the lower ranks. He's not good, he's not brave, and he's not out to save anyone except himself. Even fairytales have their villains — it's a part of life. And it's always been that way. Louis' always been a bit harsher around the edges. He certainly isn't going to be winning any "Humanitarian of the Year" awards, that's for sure. And he doesn't mind it so much, being thoroughly unaffected by anything and everything and totally removed from his peers and their very trivial lives. Because he's not like the rest of them. That's the thing. They're all the fucking same. With their money and their uppity attitudes and twattiness and their preconceived notions and recycled sentences that disappear as quickly as they come. The same.