Fine Line || L.S.

What He Did For Me

The table was set, Harry opened a bottle of wine, and the two began a simple spaghetti dinner.

"Once the tour for Made in the AM started, Eleanor and Louis got together again," Harry continued, taking a sip of wine. "Have you ever seen Brokeback Mountain?"

Harry looked at Lily, and she was surprised by the sudden question.

"The gay cowboy movie?" she asked,

Harry laughed, "Yeah."

"No," she shook her head. "Is it good?"

"It's incredible," Harry sighed. "You need to watch it. But there's one scene, where Jake Gyllenhaal's character says to Heath Ledger's: 'well this is a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.' And that's exactly what ours was. It was a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.

"And management would always say that they didn't care if we were together—secretly and privately—those were their two favourite words, but I know it was deliberate. Nothing drives people more apart than inserting another person into their relationship. Louis had to spend a lot of time with her, and I think what bothered me most, is he didn't hate it.

"And I had to date a few other girls, but it never felt like we developed a relationship. I mean, Kendall thinks I wrote the fucking album about her," Harry laughed, and Lily snorted. "Not a single song was written about her. I wouldn't even say we had a relationship, like a real personal or romantic one. It was like that with me and the girls I saw when I and him were together. And maybe even since.

"But Louis liked Eleanor, not romantically, but he learned how to not dread those outings and time spent eventually, and it was like your boyfriend is going to run an errand, but is instead going to hold hands with another person. It was almost worse than him having sex with someone else."

"Really?" Lily asked, genuinely surprised.

Harry shrugged, "Well, no. I would have killed myself if he had slept with somebody else."

"Jeez," Lily said, laughing a little.

"I would have," Harry stuck to his guns, "and I think I still would. That would destroy me. Being... intimate, with Louis, was just, like nothing I've ever done, or probably will ever do, it was the most unguarded and vulnerable thing I've ever done. I always felt like he could see directly through me and in me. The difference between me feeling safe and completely vulnerable would be one look from him."

Harry remembered those looks, how as time passed, the world saw less and less of them between him and Louis. It's always what he mourned the most—the loss of the appearance of love. It felt like he was spinning around on a world whose gravity was reliant on only his own knowledge—if he didn't remind himself he and Louis were together, no one else would.

Sometimes at night, he would watch videos of him and Louis, from before they were told to not look at each other too much during interviews, like 'Cutest Larry Moments' or 'Best Larry Proof,' even when he and Louis were together, to remind himself other people believed in it to. It was hard to go from Louis lounging to bite his neck to the two sneaking one short, fleeing look and suffering the consequences after.

"Louis took so much in his stride," Harry shook his head. "It made him mad and upset but he never wanted me to know he was mad or upset, which was so dumb because I think if he had just expressed that more it would have helped him. He wanted me to see him acting like it was ok, and maybe that would make me ok. But seeing him not upset about it was so confusing."

Lily watched as Harry became more flustered and upset, his speech quickening.

"I wanted him to mourn this loss with me. To mourn the life we could have had, but he didn't, he thought it showed weakness, and he was always so fucking scared of seeming weak, even in front of me, and I always felt so goddamned weak in front of him, so he just... didn't," Harry finished, and took a sip of wine, looking up at the ceiling and then at the table.