Young & Beautiful

Louis doesn’t know how to respond.
“You can’t leave.”
Harry continues to move throughout the room, dropping item after item in each suitcase, an
occasional sniffle breaking the steady sounds of wind, flickering candle, and billowing curtains.
A panicked desperation begins to drip cold down Louis’ scalp.
“Harry—fucking—you can’t fucking—you can’t just leave, you can’t do that!”
That goddamned heart shirt gets dropped in next, rumpling softly as it reaches the suitcase. Louis
tracks the movement with his eyes, palms cold.
There’s a few more pangs of silence, of Louis watching Harry pack and feeling his heart crack,
and then his pulse quickens. His heart beats harder, each thump vicious against his frail bones and
shivered skin. It might crack him in half.
“Take me with you,” Louis finds himself saying, desperate.
He might be going insane.
He says it before he understands it, but the minute the words fall into the room, he knows that he
means them, means them more than he’s ever meant any other drivel he’s spewed in his entire
twenty-one years of existence, and he stands there, defiant, refusing to take the words back.
And Harry freezes.
“Take me with you” he repeats, stepping forwards, breathless. “I want to go with you.”
He’s panicked, he’s blind.
Slowly, Harry’s head turns, eyes wide, bright, careful.
“Louis,” he drips slowly, drawing the name out into a song, “I can’t do that to you.”
“Take me with you,” Louis says again, walking up to him and locking his gaze, and Harry looks
down, trapped, torn, and frayed.
He tries to shake his head, but his eyes crawl to Louis’ eyes, settling there, and he stops, his brow
furrowing.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he whispers.
“You make me want to not make sense,” Louis whispers back with a smile, and something shifts
in Harry’s eyes. Maybe a returned smile.
Harry swallows, still staring, still caught. Almost dazed.
“That doesn’t make sense, either.”
Louis dares to smile wider. “Good. I should hate to make sense.”
“’To be great is to be misunderstood,’” Harry quotes mindlessly, unblinkingly, lost.
Louis’ ribs are cracking. He grins.