Muse || l.s.

"and you're my muse,"

❝ He had the smirk of a devil and these sad, mysterious looking eyes..and everyone loved it. You'll fall in love with anyone that shows you the parts of them only you have seen. We both know that no matter what he does, he's not that person. This cold..heartless stone who he let's the world see. ❞ Or, at least that's what I told myself. Through every fight, Every shattered thing, Every punched wall or stormy nights drowned in bourbon and heartache...

He'd give me that smile that just seems so genuinely sweet that this unexpected warmth rushes through me..and it's over. I'm doing exactly what I swore I wouldn't do. I'm falling for him all over again.

*

" You want to know what I think about suicide, H?" Louis asks, knowing I'm awake even though my body's faced away from him.

"I was wondering when you were going to get back to that." I sigh, turning my body to look at him, our chests almost touching.

"Don't you worry about it?" I ask, deciding that if he insists on broaching loaded, personal topics, I will no longer respond with tentative politeness. "After what happened with your dad. If it really runs in families, don't you worry about yourself, Or Lux, or Marcy?"

He doesn't react noticeably at first, He doesn't change his facial expression. And if I didn't know what to look for, I know I would have missed it.

His shoulders tense and he doesn't seem to blink or breath for an entire minute. But his face never changes from it's usual cool collectiveness. Years of practice. Years of trying to act indifferent to everything that hurt.

"Lux and Marcy are survivors." He finally says, not looking at me. "I never worry about them. Well, actually, I worry about them every second of every day, but not about that. And I don't worry about myself particularly. The way I feel about suicide is, I like knowing it's there. I like having it as an option. Because, If I'm going to kill myself, then nothing really matters.

So I might as well stick around for one more day, Just to see what happens out of curiosity. Since I'm going to die anyway, Why not stick around for as long as I can to see what happens next? That's all I have to do is live until tomorrow. I know I can always handle one more day."

"I couldn't handle one more day." I don't know why I say this, I've never been comfortable talking about these kinds of things before. "At the time, I couldn't even handle one more second."

"But you have. Just look at you." He says, reaching over and putting his palm on my cheek and smiling when I lean into for a few seconds. "All these days and hours since last spring. You're here and beautiful and happy." For a minute there's silence.

"I'm sorry about your dad." I say eventually.

"I'm sorry too." He says, and I wonder why I'm able to talk about these things with Louis when I couldn't say anything remotely like this to anyone else except Nick.

"Do you ever wish you'd done something differently?" I ask him. "With your dad, I mean. Some key thing, something that might have changed everything?"

"Of course I do." he says. " But that's what grief is, right? Wishing things were different? Wishing it so hard, you might break open. Or explode."

I nod, I guess it must be obvious why I asked because then Louis says, "What could you possible have done differently? It was an accident, What happened. You didn't do anything to cause it, Harry."