our kingdom by the sea

[prologue]

a/n: lately i've been writing mostly on ao3 but i'm bringing some of my stuff over here!! so this is the beginning of an ao3 fic and it'll probably have 5 long chapters {5k??} except i'm awful with staying on track [adhd probz] and it'll end up 6k too long or 9k too short.

so we'll see lol

[***}

louis sits by the ocean and he loses himself.

he listens to the roar of the waves pounding on shore with a ferocity that rattles him to his bones. the stormy-blue waters are swirling with anger and pain and screaming for vengeance and louis thinks maybe the ocean is more like him than he would like to admit.

the ocean is an enemy--it could sweep him away with the change of tide and lay him in the belly of the earth, never to rise again. but the ocean is beautiful in a deranged way because of the constant danger--the knowledge he is powerless compared to its infinite strength, the sense that thousands of years worth of secrets lie under its depths.

louis can be everything he wants to be in the company of the sea except he is still nothing, always nothing, and maybe that's why louis is so in love with it here.

nothing. the word echoes in louis' mind.

the ocean's roar drowns it out once more.

but he still can't ignore that nagging fact. louis tomlinson has been nothing since he was seventeen. always will be.

he lays himself down on the broad expanse of the beach, bare chest rising slowly with breaths he doesn't deserve. louis shouldn't be alive. it should be lottie here on this beach, eyes still brighter than the sun, her blonde hair whipping across her pink cheeks. phoebe and daisy should be with her, building sandcastles and giggling at little girl things that louis never used to understand. his parents should be watching them, proud smiles on their faces as they watch their girls being young and beautiful and so free.

but they're gone. all of them are gone. and louis--louis wishes he was with them every single day.

the doctors call it survivor's guilt. they always try to tell him that it wasn't his fault--living isn't a crime, louis--but it's hard to listen when being alive feels like a fucking felony. louis doesn't deserve a second chance because without them, louis doesn't feel like he's really living at all.

louis is drowning and sometimes it doesn't even feel metaphorical.

nothing.

he lays down into the welcoming arms of the cold waves and lets his body sink lower and lower. ice streaks through his veins and it hurts--god, it hurts--except it's so deliciously wonderful, like poison in a cup of pretty, crisp strawberries begging to be tasted.

louis' teeth are chattering with the cold. little hairs on his arms stand erect, desperately seeking heat they won't find. his heart even seems to stop for a few seconds with the shock of the cold, except it starts beating far too soon and louis curses himself for having a body so driven to live when every fiber of his being wishes he was six feet under with the only people that made him feel like he was something extraodinary.

louis closes his eyes. nothing. he breathes out. nothing.

he dives under the waves and suddenly everything is blissfully black and all the voices in his head lose their power for what feels like an infinity. louis' lungs are screaming for air, his body writhes in the burning sensation of death, and louis wonders if this is what his sisters felt when the life left their bodies too--

nothing.