too good to be true {l.s}

The Performance

III

THE PERFORMANCE

October 27th

It's the insistent sunlight, bright and golden, that wakes Louis up. He's in denial at first and it takes him a couple of long minutes, filled with suffering and restlessness, to finally accept that there's no way he will be going back to sleep anytime soon. Giving up on that type of sleep, that pretty sweet type, the one that's almost like a short hibernation, doesn't come easily for Louis. He's pretty good at it, actually. Sleeping, he means. Passing out, too. Hibernating... Louis is a lad of infinite qualities, excellent ones, all of them. Louis can think of a couple of stupid jokes Harry would make about small, hibernating bear cubs, helpless in the face of their uncontrollable need for sleep, but Louis is not in the mood for them yet. Ok, that's probably a lie. Louis is always in the mood for Harry's jokes, doesn't matter how silly they are (and they always are at least slightly ridiculous and this is coming from Harry's biggest fan, so it must tell something about their quality level). Louis groans.

Irrevocably awake, he opens his eyes one at a time, slowly, and is immediately met with burning sun rays shining straight into his eyes. Shit. He closes his eyes in the same second and his first thought is "what the FUCK is that hideous yellow circle in the sky?". He can't help it. Louis is extremely honest in the mornings. Even more during the nights. Even more if there's alcohol involved. Eyes closed, Louis groans again. Then, he uses his hand to protect his eye - only the one he opened, the right one; there's no way he's risking going completely blind - and looks around the room. Louis finds his navy-blue curtains on the furthest window from the bed just the slightest bit opened, just a crack, and that is clearly the one thing to blame for his interrupted sleep. Evil, evil fucking curtains. He's always forgetting to close them the right way before going to bed, Louis thinks to himself, even if only as an ineffective distraction from what he really knows: the truth is that it was probably Harry who left the curtains half-opened yesterday, after having looked at the stars for almost an hour. "They look even better from your bedroom, Lou", Harry had said. "Do you think it's only because I can feel you near me?" Louis didn't answer. "Do you think the stars are shining brighter only because I'm touching you?". "I think they are celebrating our love", Louis told him. Harry had nodded, as if Louis' answer was the only acceptable thing he ever heard and after a soft silence, added: "Your eyes shine brighter, though". When Louis kissed his cheek and told Harry to stop trying to sweet-talk him, he was already in Louis's bedroom for fuck's sake, Harry simply recited "At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon". Louis asked him "Fitzgerald?" to which Harry answered: "He was talking about you, you know? He just didn't get the chance to meet you. Not as lucky as me, our poor Fitz". Suddenly, Louis doesn't mind the sunlight at all.

Louis stretches his arms above his head slowly, letting out a small puff of air. He feels slightly like a lazy sloth; the laziest, most comfortable sloth that ever lived. The annoying sunlight is almost a kind caress now, sent by the universe to warm up Louis' blankets while he lays his head in a pillow that feels like it was made out of the fluffiest clouds. Louis stretches each one of his fingers and then each one of his toes and maybe he was wrong, maybe he can go back to sleep again... It wouldn't even be that hard, he would just have to close his eyes, just for a minute... There's not much that he needs to do today, anyway and-

Louis jumps out of the bed because he's an irresponsible piece of shit and there's no trace of sleep in his body anymore and the sunlight is back to being nothing but this annoying light that interrupted Louis' dreams and thank fuck it did. Louis starts moving his blankets and his pillow frenetically, trying to find his phone but it's not on his bed, so he drops to his knees to check if it's underneath it and it isn't there either. Shit. The next step is to look under some of his clothes that are lying on his bedroom floor - Louis' bedroom is this perfectly organized mess that only he could understand, thank you very much - and he simply can't find it. Not on the bed; not under the rug. There's nothing but dust on the pockets of his trackies; there's nothing underneath the armchair but The Bag.