we'll live to tell the tale (l.s.)

i'm a statue

tw// self harm , mentions of past sexual abuse 

sorry if this chapter sucks. i wrote most of it in one sitting. maybe i'll start writing more but i'm not sure yet. i'm trying to get it moving somewhere so it's not just louis being sad and harry coming over and over and over again.

please please please give me feedback. if you don't think the plot is moving, let me know. and i'm not asking for compliments. it's like that one quote in of human bondage-- "people ask for criticism but all they want is praise," i think it goes? well that's not the case this time. i swear. god i'm stupid ahhaha. i hope y'all aren't disappointed because my writing reads so pretentious and smart when i am literally just a clown. god. where am i going. 

twitter: @louflymehome

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the moving process was just as harrowing as he thought it would be.

it involved driving back and forth from louis' place, harry's place, and their condo; over and over and over again. they had to rent a truck, which both boys had trouble driving for the first few days, especially while dealing with london traffic and heavy grey skies. it was mid-march already, and louis couldn't really tell if it'd felt like no time had passed at all since he met harry, or if it'd already been a lifetime.

by the time they were all shifted over to their new flat, it finally hit both boys that this is where they would be living, that this is the beginning of the life they pledged to build together. as much as it was romantic, it was terrifying. after just six months, were they well enough equipped to be together like this? if they were to break up, louis thought, where would he stay?

nights were harder as well, he found. sometimes, he'd awaken and forget where he was, altogether. the place smelled of slight oxidation, which louis usually found comforting, in a way, but all those feelings would dissipate quickly as night fell, forcing louis to shed has antlers and become something much more helpless than he wished to be.

he'd been trying to work away from the cutting, recently, as well. it's true that he'd done it nearly every night, save for the nights he allowed himself to wake harry, but he hadn't realized how dependent on the pain he really was, until recently. he hated that word, dependency. it was tainted and disgusting and reminded him of how parasites suck the life out of things until there's nothing left; but without its host, it can't survive. maybe he was a parasite to harry, he realized; so he steeled himself to not bother the younger boy for more than just one night a week, instead. he couldn't stop completely, or the boy would get suspicious of him, worried that he was caging up again. and louis knew that those reservations were the last thing that harry needed in his life, especially with how busy he had already became.

the first night he tried to deal with it on his own, he awoke drenched in sweat, feeling phantom cold hands all over his body and caressing his cheek. let go, he wanted to scream, if not for the soundly sleeping boy beside him, let go, let go, let go.

so he peeled himself out of the sheets, which were so damp that he worried he wet himself during his nightmare. it was a problem that he had as a child, after matthew had come into the picture. his mother had been perplexed as to what had caused it—a seven year old boy should have been far past that stage. louis himself had been confused as well. why had his dreams of matthew triggered such responses? it never happened while the man was touching him or penetrating him. he bled sometimes, much too young and much too small for something as old and disgusting to enter him. but he never urinated during the process.

but luckily, it wasn't urine that had damped the sheets, just sweat. he'd wash them in the morning once harry woke up, he noted to himself. normally, he'd make a beeline straight to the restroom to sit down on the cold tile and allow his skin to corrode into the equally cold earth. but tonight, he went to the study. he often found himself getting lost within their own home, now, on his most disoriented nights, having forgotten that they'd moved. he would be confused that there had been stairs, or that, beneath his feet, was plushy red carpet rather than unyielding wooden planks.