Gods & Monsters

Chapter 2

He's on a mission.

He enters the library, pulling open the heavy wooden door that brings forth a wave of musty pages, dirty carpeting, and stale ink. It's sort of acrid and gross and it stings his nostrils in this odd way but he ignores it, his eyes intent, searching. Wordlessly, he slinks to the back of the large room.

He saw Harry Styles come in here, is the thing. He knows he's in here somewhere. He's just got to find him, is all. Then the games begin.

The dirty soles of his Vans squeak a bit as he sidles past tall, endless rows of dusty books with spines that are cracked, chipped, and fading away under dim lighting that suffocates. The carpet smells like ancient paper and stagnation, creaking beneath his feet and sending up little puffs. Despite it being blue in nature, it's actually alarmingly brownish—something he'd previously never considered possible but... Well. Public flooring is probably the one exception to art and all of its purposes. It looks and smells like long, boring nights filled with anxiety, silence, a bit of stress, and a touch of panic. And while, true, he's not been in many libraries (even when he was in school, he was never very...erm...academic, shall we say), he can imagine that's probably the general vibe of them--some sort of calm inner turmoil. A contradictory sort of chaos.

He likes them, though—libraries, that is. He enjoys the idea that in one single room there exists thousands of tiny universes, bound in leather and sitting quietly on shelves. Or maybe it's the libraries themselves that are actually the universes, housing galaxies and worlds and dying stars and black holes and red dwarfs, undiscovered and untouched. Lying just beyond the surface, so you wouldn't know it's all even there...

In any case, it's a cool thought. A universe in a universe. Maybe the world is a library. Maybe Louis is just another book on the shelf. Huh.

It's sort of a comforting thought. Louis loves books, loves other peoples' words. He loves hearing them sung in his favorite songs, he loves scribbling them down and carving them and painting them and he loves repeating them in a soft cadence when the world gets a little too fucking cacophonic. Books are nice. He loves reading. He loves the way people form sentences and use their vocabularies to say all the shit that he cannot.

"To live is the rarest thing..."

But anyway. He's got business to attend to.

Ignoring the, frankly, repugnant giggles and the glares of students and staff, he continues forward. He peers past all the books and galaxies, skimming over the countless heads taking up the long, rectangular tables that lie in the open spaces of the shadowy room with too few windows and too many dust particles. He searches for a bent, curly head and earbuds, he searches for the boy, his boy, his target.

He continues circling, eyes penetrating through the dense clusters of students, well-dressed and clever and cocky, skimming through their iPads and Macbooks and quoting Bukowski. He squints a bit, just circling and circling and searching (because where the fuck is this kid?), disguised and unseen and becoming increasingly frustrated and a little hungry. This entire fucking thing is ridiculous.

God, the things he does for Liam Payne and his shit-eating grin... He purses his lips together at the thought.

Eyes on the prize, Tommo. Eyes on the prize.

With (slightly) renewed vigor, he creeps further to the back, the shadows of the room getting a little deeper, the dust swirling a little heavier, where the books sit quieter from years of being untouched. He feels an odd twist of sympathy at that—something admittedly rare for him—and he swipes his fingers across their spines. Just for a little attention, a little something. So they know haven't been completely forgotten.