1.
Never get used to it
“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. Tell me we’ll never get used to it.”
— Richard Siken, from Scheherazade.
“My first real crush was… Louis Tomlinson.”
“Who?”
“Louis Tomlinson.”
“Louis Tomlinson, and how does he feel about you?”
“Mutual, we’ve discussed it.”
If someone had told him he would have fallen in love at eighteen like they do in the movies—with the stolen glances in an overcrowded room, the whispered promises about happily ever afters, and the endless nights made of entangled limbs and fast panting, the kind of love you read about in books and poetry and don't even expect to meet in real life—he would have laughed his lungs out. Yeah, he loved Hannah. Of course he loved her—or at least he thought he did. Just, there is love and there is love. And he knew, deep inside of him, in a far part of his mind he wouldn't acknowledge, that he didn't love Hannah like that. That he couldn't possibly love any girl at all like that.
With hindsight, he would have known; at that time, though, he unconsciously lied to himself: he cared about Hannah, he really did, he liked her smile and her personality and the way she always backed him up and the kind, cheering word she'd whispered in his ear before he went on stage for his first audition to X-Factor, but something wouldn't ever click right. He felt like they were two wrong pieces in the clumsy, chubby hands of a child playing puzzles. They rub and clashed and tried to match, but they never did. They never did. That was a truth he'd hidden in the back of his heart, or perhaps shrunken somewhere between his chest and his ribs, exactly where, sometimes, it started to ache when he looked at her. (Or when he'd look at him.) During those times, he used to ignore that annoying tingle. He lied and lied and lied, unconsciously so.
You can bury things so deep in yourself, that it needs someone else to cast a light on them. To literally shred you in pieces and build you up again from the inside out—to give light and air and oxygen to the pieces of you you otherwise wouldn't accept, or know, or recognize as true and beautiful and fine.
That's when he met Harry.
It was sudden, to be honest. Faster than one could reasonably expect. He fell in love with Harry so illogically, impossibly fast, God. One just shouldn't fall in love so hard, so fast.
He didn't fall in love, he told Harry on a rainy afternoon in 2011. He literally crashed in love. He pushed on the accelerator and happily engaged himself in a head-on collision with Harry Fucking Dimples Styles, full speed, no seat belts fastened. (Two dead, ten missing. Call the emergency services. Quick. QUICK!)
“Quite frankly,” he added, tapping with his index fingers on Harry's right shoulder. “It should be illegal to love someone like this. ”
Harry smiled widely and became a whole, adorable, gigantic dimple. You should be illegal, Louis thought. “Why so?”
Because it's dangerous, he thought. Because, no matter what you do in the last few seconds of awareness before the impact, it's too late. You end up hurt. He wasn't that naïve – he may have looked like that, but he wasn't at all. He was painfully aware of what'd be coming – of the inevitable moments of sadness, and grief, and disillusion, and he'd understood how deeply wounded he was: so wounded, so desperately in love, that he was ready to face it all. Forever, maybe. His love was a continuous clash, a never-ending impact: he fell in love again again and again, everyday, whenever he'd look at his green eyes, whenever he'd hear his laugh.
