Young & Beautiful

“Perhaps.”
“Not ‘perhaps’. Stay. Come on—there’s no reason for you to go anymore.”
He’s silent, eerily silent, watching Louis. But then he nods eventually, just once, his eyes boring
into him.
“Good,” Louis says, muscles relaxing.
But Harry keeps staring. Why is he looking at him like that?
“What did you mean before?” he suddenly asks, voice odd. He’s still staring at Louis, almost
fiercely, his hands at his sides.
Louis blinks, startled.
“Before…?”
“When you said you won’t ask it of me?”
Oh.
Well oh shit.
Louis swallows, ducks his head, clears his throat.
Shit.
“Oh. Er. Well. I—“
“What did you mean when you said you didn’t know what you expected? When you said you lost
yourself?”
And Harry’s eyes fucking burn. And his voice is strange.
Shit shit shit.
“I just…” he begins, surveying the half-empty room, before his shoulders fall in an exhale. Tired,
he looks up at Harry, looks in those wide, penetrating eyes that sear. “I care about you so much,”
he admits quietly, openly, nakedly. His voice is weak under the strain of feeling he allows to seep
forth. “So, so much. And you mean everything to me. Somehow, without me even really knowing
how, you mean everything to me. And it’s the little things and the big things and… And it’s sort of
quiet, you know? It’s sort of this quiet feeling that is just so fucking powerful and essential but so
quiet that sometimes I forget it’s there almost? But then, sometimes, it just sort of washes over me
and I… I lose myself, I guess. I forget that I’m not supposed to. I forget that I can’t. I forget
because all I’m aware of his how much I—“
No.
No no no.
He can’t say it. He can’t do this to Harry.
Not with you.
He closes his mouth, sucks in a breath.