Young & Beautiful

A smile flickered across Harry’s features as he studied him, hand warm against Louis’.
“Is that how you think about things?”
Louis returned the smile, the universe warm around him. “It is, yeah.” He paused, Harry’s eyes
practically fucking sparkling. It hurt. “That, and I can literally do no wrong because, have you met
me?”
A bark of laughter escaped Harry and then all of it was gone, the tension and the darkness that
always clouds everything.
It was just gone.
And it’s those little things, those seemingly tiny advancements, that have made everything seem…
more. Because Harry has begun to let Louis completely in, without even realizing it. Because he’s
begun to seek Louis for comfort, for peace, for happiness.
He’s begun to seek Louis in general, really.
Because yes, one day, Harry also began actually seeking Louis.
“I’m going to stay away from him today,” Louis had promised, head buried in his hands as he sat
at the kitchen table, Niall strumming his guitar on the countertop. “Just one day. I need to just…
Forget why I’m in love with him. Just for one day.”
Niall’s eyebrows shot through the air.
“You honestly think that’ll work?”
“Absolutely not,” Louis muttered, lips pressed against the palms of his hands, fingers digging into
his eyeballs. “But I can pretend to think so. Let me pretend, Ireland. Don’t ruin this. Let me have
this.”
“All right, all right,” he said, raising his hands in surrender, the guitar pick pinched between thumb
and forefinger. “Just don’t crawl in my bed to cry tonight when you start missing him because you
haven’t seen him in over 24 hours.”
Fuck.
He hates when Niall can predict the future.
“I hate you,” Louis grumbled.
“I know.”
And then there was a knock at the door, as if their life were a comedy sketch.
“Tell them to go away,” Louis groaned instantly. “I’m miserable and barely holding myself
together. I’m rejected and alone and have nothing to say to anybody—“
“Fuck’s sake, Louis,” Niall sighed, fully exasperated as he hopped off the counter, making his
way to the door. “You don’t got to be so fucking dramatic all the time, do you?”
Louis glared as he raised his head, hair mussed, eyes pink.
“You wouldn’t understand heartbreak, you simpleton.”