The Larry Book [ completed ]

Far Too Young To Die

By : fluorescentsunset ( ao3 )

Summary:
Louis and Harry meet for the first time in a diner in the middle of nowhere at two o'clock in the morning. The rest, as they say, is history.

Title from Panic! At The Disco's Far Too Young To Die

"You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shovelled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you didn't even have a name for." -Richard Siken, Crush: You Are Jeff

( this one's fucking gold 🌞☺️ )
~

Louis was not as in charge of his life as he'd like to be.

No matter what he tried to do, it felt like nothing gave him the pleasure that he knew he was supposed to be feeling. Louis was in university, the "best years of his life", and while the first couple of years had been everything that he'd hoped for, as time passed he got less and less from his experiences.

Louis' work at a bookstore which usually at least gave him a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day no longer supplied him with anything but enough money to get by on.

School seemed like it wasn't worth it, and even eating and drinking and spending time with friends seemed useless. He didn't think that he was depressed; he loved life, he really did, but he knew that he needed to change something about what he was doing with his time.
Nothing felt right, and Louis was determined to do something to fix that.
The clock read six o'clock in the afternoon when Louis pushed open the heavy door of his small apartment. The day had been far too busy for his tastes, with hours of work, tests, and pure struggle to simply get through the day and get back home for a few hours of rest before having to do it all over again starting the following morning. Just glancing around the room would be enough to know basically everything about Louis' life; there was the small kitchen shoved into one corner of the room, hardly used other than to make cereal and microwave meals--there were textbooks in the dish rack, since that was less expensive than purchasing a bookcase or some shelves. The opposite corner held the desk which often doubled as a dining room table, currently covered with crumpled up papers left there after staying up too late working on essays, and a single mug with a teabag at the bottom which had, at that point, gone completely hard. Turn around one hundred and eighty degrees from standing in front of the desk, and one would be faced with Louis' bed, one which hadn't been properly made since the last time he'd changed his sheets. Other than that, there was clothing everywhere, the carpet practically invisible for that very reason, but not much else of interest. The walls were devoid of decoration, and the teacup of an apartment lacked any little trinkets which would be able to turn it from a room into a home for the duration of university.
Usually the fact that he didn't have anything to make the room unique and his own was something that Louis found embarrassment in. Maybe he should be working harder to get little things, pictures and lamps and posters for decoration, so that someone could look inside of his room and be able to find something to differentiate it from the rooms on either side of his. That afternoon however, as Louis stood staring at his bedroom wall as if it held the answers to all of his questions, the substantial absence of personal items became some sort of gift, suddenly making things a lot easier for Louis.
Not having knickknacks to be attached to would just make it that much easier to leave.
And leaving, Louis came to the realization then, was exactly what he'd needed to do all those months of mental uncertainty.
The duffel bag had seemed obnoxiously huge when Louis had bought it a few years earlier. He had needed it for a school trip and had felt stupid carrying it around when it was so large. Now, the task of having to pack up his entire life inside of one piece of durable fabric made the emptiness of the bag which used to feel so daunting look laughable in comparison. Even with so few items to call his own, the prospect of deciding what he would and wouldn't need to survive comfortably seemed impossible. Louis just kept in mind that, with enough determination, anything could be done. And he now had more determination in his little finger than he'd felt in the past five years or more.
Slowly but surely, the dark inside of the duffel was masked by a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans, as well as one extra pair of shoes. Some undergarments were tossed in there as well, followed by all the non-perishable food in the flat. Last but not least Louis was finding a way to shove in his pillows and some blankets, deciding that warmth during nights would end up being more important than being able to have more variety in his outfits. The zipper of the bag shut with only slight difficulty, and then that was that: Louis' life had just been stuck into one single bag. Throwing on a heavy jacket and some shoes, Louis slung the duffel over his shoulder and then walked out the door for what felt like the last time. Though he figured he might return at some point in the future, at the moment it seemed highly unlikely.
Outside of his apartment building, the streets were emptying out. People were either on their way home from a day of work and school or had already gotten there. It was a strange thing for him to think of; while most people were going home, Louis was doing the exact opposite. He was running away, getting out of the place where he had already spent too much of his life in order to try and find something bigger and better, or at the very least happier, to do with his time.
Shoving his duffel bag under the tarp which covered the bed of his seldomly used truck--after moving to London Louis had found that using public transportation was often easier than trying to get around using his pickup--it seemed like things were becoming more and more final with each passing second. Louis could still see his building, could pinprick the window behind which was his very own room, but he was readying himself to drive away from it all to a new life he would be able to call his own. After getting into his truck and out of London traffic, Louis picked a direction. He didn't think of what he would find or where he was going, but just started driving towards what felt the most right. He was finally putting everything behind him.