Dare To Love

13 - Not a Big Deal

Hazy eyes fluttered slowly open and began to focus. Louis yawned, covering his eyes from the harsh light of day, the sound muffled and raw from sleep. Sitting into a sitting position, and blinking through the lingering haze of sleep, he registered a throbbing in his temples. He could tell his hair stuck out wildly on one side, and his lips were swollen and sore.

He glanced over at his phone, grabbing the device and frowning to see that it was barely eight a.m. Typically, it would be another hour or two before he would be up on weekends.

Slipping out of bed, Louis checked himself in the mirror and scoffed at his predictably wild hair. It was incredibly frizzy on the top. He grabbed his hairbrush and ran several fast strokes through it, taming it as best he could before shrugging on his jacket. He ran his hands down the front of his shirt before letting out a staggering breath.

As his sense of awareness slowly kicked in, Louis frowned in confusion. Blue eyes widened as the events of last night came rushing back in flashes. He gasped as his body flooded with heat, fingers slowly inching and touching gently at his lips.

They were puffy and a bit chapped. His cheeks flushed a deep crimson as he shook his head, last night's events coming back into his mind in flashes.

The memory hit Louis like a hard punch to the gut. His heart began to pound against his ribcage, and a lump formed in his throat. His head swam with thoughts of Harry, with looks and laughter and their heated kiss in the elevator, and, suddenly, it was as if something clicked firmly into place and he couldn't breathe.

"Fuck," he muttered, passing a hand over his face. "What did I do?"

His throat felt tight and dry, and his eyes stung horribly. He'd kissed Harry...what a mistake. His head spun with the memory, and the heat of the moment. Harry's lips had been on his, kissing him. It was the sort of kiss Louis had only ever seen in movies. Harry had pressed himself into Louis, suckling on his bottom lip, the softness of his mouth bringing about a whole series of physical reactions Louis had never felt from kissing girls. He shook his head, pacing around the small perimeter of his dorm room.

He wasn't gay. He couldn't be.

He was seven years old, sitting on the school bus next to the girl who lived next door, when he first heard the word gay.

"It's when two boys kiss," Eleanor had said, nodding to herself. "Instead of a girl and a boy."

"That's a real thing?" Louis had asked, eyes widening in horrified fascination. He'd never heard or seen two boys kissing, it had always been a boy and a girl.

"Yeah!" The brunette assured him, her pigtails bouncing along. "My brother told me it yesterday. There's a gay on his soccer team, so they don't wanna change in front of him cause he might look."

Louis frowned in confusion, tilting his small head to the side. He was still having trouble wrapping his head around the whole concept. He'd never seen or heard of it, so how did he know if what Eleanor told him was real. Maybe it was fake? If it was real, then why was it always boys kissing girls in movies and TV shows his mum watched on Friday nights? Why had he never seen two boys kissing in the movies and TV shows?

If it was real, then why didn't he know any boys who married boys? It sounded way better than marrying a girl in his opinion, if he married a boy, then they could share all their stuff and have twice the toys. It seemed like a genius idea when he thought about it, and when he'd proposed the idea to his friends, their faces scrunched up in immediate disgust. He didn't know why it was bad, but he guessed it had to be to have that type of effect on his friends.