Enticing

15. I Wanted To Come Over, Show You True Romance

Two weeks. Only two weeks left until Louis left for Los Angeles. Two weeks that had passed by since everything turned to shit. It was unbelievable that two weeks prior Louis was the happiest man alive and two weeks present time he was a miserable, pitiful, self-loathing person.

Louis didn't know where it all went wrong. His lips poised over a mug of steaming tea. He had burned his tongue and it still wasn't enough to match the pain in his heart.

"I'm going out. Do you need anything, Lou?" Niall's soft voice lured Louis out of his thoughts.

"'M fine," Louis murmured, his forehead pressed on the cool glass of the window.

Niall sighed and shut the door behind himself with a soft click. Once again, Louis was left alone with his thoughts. He combed his fingers through his hair, his breathing struggling to be relaxed.

Louis forced himself to go take a shower after days of loathing in his own filth over the course of the weekend. He slipped all of his clothes off and took a good look at himself in the mirror. The reflection staring back at him was so unlike Louis. There were deep set bags hung underneath his tired eyes, his hair mused and dirty. He looked pale and lifeless. He looked just how he felt. A couple of weeks ago it had been so different.

Louis laughed into the small bathroom, assuring Harry he would be back for a second round. He heard Harry's bubbly laughter coming from the other room and the padding of his feet closing in on Louis' bedside drawer. The unmistakable clicking of the lube bottle send tingles of sensation down Louis' spine, reminding him that Harry wasn't done exploring his skin.

Louis stopped when he looked in the mirror and stared at his happy reflection. His hair was tugged in all different directions, dark love bites marring his skin. They dipped around his neck and decorated his collarbones. He was googly-eyed and his mouth was slick and swept away in a bashful smile.

Louis felt delirious, Harry made him feel weightless.

Louis climbed into the shower, his feet stepping on the cold tiles of the floor. He set the water in lukewarm temperature and ducked his head down, the water rinsing all of his sins away. The droplets trickled over his eyelashes, running down his cheeks. Louis spent most of his days crying in the shower but today was not one of them.

Louis poured shampoo into his palm and lathed the foam over his hair. He repeated the process with conditioner, grabbing the loofa to rub all over his body. He scrubbed harder than he intended to, leaving his skin with red, sore spots. Places where they used to be reddened from Harry's wet mouth were now pinched by Louis' torturing fingers.

Louis climbed out of the shower and wiped the fog away from the mirror. He wrapped a clean towel around his waist at the same time his phone vibrated on the sink with a new text message. He thumbed it open to Harry's name. Where once it was listed as Hazza was now changed to Harry.

Come over tonight?

Louis' thumbs padded over the keys before he could stop himself. He'd be lying if he said he didn't miss Harry. Fuck, he missed Harry so much it became a part of his daily routine. The weight of missing Harry was there when he woke up in an empty bed, it was there when he ate dinner in the solitary room, it was even there when he was with Harry. It wasn't the same. They still slept together, but it was rid of light laughter and teasing. Louis didn't remember when it stopped being about sexual pleasure and more about a feeling that was greater than the both of them.

Missing Harry haunted Louis every breathing second and enveloped him like a blanket of misery. It tortured him to the point where he couldn't drink, eat or sleep. It dragged him down and he found comfort in it. He didn't complain when it crippled him to shattered bones and broken bits of pieces.