ocean sequence: it's not just money, it's happiness (3/3)
let us fathom the idea of eternal return.
that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. it is a purely physical concept, involving no supernatural reincarnation, simply the return of beings in the same bodies.
this means that we do not grow absolutely or chronologically. we grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; we have foils. while one goes down one path, the other does not. we could be mature in one realm, childish in another. the past, present, future, mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. we are made of layers, cells, multiverses.
in such a world, time would not exist. only images.
harry is eight years-old and holmes chapel is out of blood. their great-aunt, their last next-of-kin, passes away, so gemma and him are put into foster care. gemma sneaks into his bed every night with stolen pudding and tells him one day, we’ll be far away. harry thinks okay. he is eight and struggling, eight and starving, eight and rusting.
harry is nine years-old and he’s moving into a sweet spacey house in evesham. a man with kind eyes named robin and his wife gives harry his own room and calls him ‘son’ with genuine affection. they save a spare bedroom for gemma, who had ran away from the foster home two months ago. harry gets enrolled in a school for the gifted and he likes it alright. he is nine and learning, nine and coping, nine and holding on.
harry is ten years-old and he thinks maybe he can put a name to the sweet house. robin is very fond of him (he teaches harry how to ride a bike, makes incredible hot cocoas, tucks harry into bed every night). he does well enough in school to make the list to take the mensa exam. he starts golf lessons. he doesn’t know where gemma is but for his birthday, she sends him a postcard from leeds with twenty quid and a worn festival bracelet - he thinks she’s alright. and the word ‘home’ is rattling in his head like a clock tower. he is ten and growing, ten and excelling, ten and staying.
harry is eleven years-old and he’s leaving chesire. gemma climbs up his window, shakes him awake, smiling with deep-sea mystery. gemma has seen london, has bitten the proverbial apple, her eyes have been opened. she tells him that she’s been trailing and working for a band and that she’s finally saved up enough for two tickets to heaven, h. harry isn’t sure if he wants to go to heaven; he thinks he might want to stay here. but gemma’s excited whisper of we’re free there, harry, and no one can tame us sweeps harry under the tides. he is eleven and running, eleven and searching, eleven and the world is ending but he doesn’t know that yet.
now, pay close attention:
in this world, time has three dimensions - like space. just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object has three perpendicular futures. each future moves in a different direction of time. each future is real.
harry styles is now.
harry could be eleven years-old and staying in chesire. he could be twelve years-old taking his mensa. he could be thirteen years-old learning how to swim. he could be fourteen years-old and kissing some dark-haired boy with sad, fine eyes.
do you think…in another world or another life…we could’ve gone on together? do you think in that world, we would’ve been happy?
liam payne is now.
but harry styles is fourteen years-old out on the london streets and kissing louis tomlinson. louis, who has a mouth that is probably hot enough to burn, hot enough to melt, and whose summer eyes tremulously murmured you darling you. he is fourteen and burning, fourteen and melting, fourteen and the world is ending but now he knows.
there is another world, but it’s inside this one.
at every point of decision, the world splits in into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. in time, there are an infinity of worlds.
harry styles is -
--
“later, alligator.”
louis is smiling playfully, all teeth and cheekbones this early morning. he’s snapping on his braces and pushing on his sunglasses while the brassy warm light filters through the open window.
and it’s like this: ibiza is perfect; it’s everything louis is. ibiza is careless, hazy, and sweet. ibiza is sunscreen and mint juleps and sea-salt. there’s a garden of magnolias, a collection of vintage typewriters, a drawer full of love letters. this must be louis’s universe, something novel louis created purely from imagination and dedication. harry tells himself he likes it.
“er’ya goin’?” harry finds it in him to pick his head up inquisitively and squint sleepily.
“just down to the market for some fruits. i’ll stop by the bakery on the way back, you want anything?” harry shakes his head and louis leans down to press a gentle kiss on the snatch of bare skin on harry’s back before heading towards the door, grappling back in the last second, “oh, be a darling, hazza, and turn on the sprinklers at noon, will you? my orchids will fuss terribly otherwise.”
harry thinks he hummed out an agreement before dropping back into a sweet dream of spray-tan and champagne and burberry brit.
when harry wakes again, it’s due to the shrieking of some nearby tourists tumbling towards the beach. he stretches, cat-like, and slinks from the bed to the bathroom. he takes a piss, brushes his teeth, cleans shaving cream off the edge of the mirror. in the kitchen, he pours himself a glass of orange juice, puts a slice of bread in the toaster. there are dishes in the sink so he gives them a quick wash before setting them on the drying rack.
the entire living area is a mess, littered with books, ashtrays, cups posing as ashtrays, so harry takes his breakfast outside in the back porch. he starts the sprinklers before settling down to eat. afterwards, he plays a couple of games on his mobile until he feels tired again. he finds a gardening hat to put over his face for a lazy kip.
louis gets back when the sun is a roaring giant. he senses louis’s presence before he sees him, a vibrating body of compressed energy and moving light. he lifts up the hat to find louis crouched next to the chaise, smirking coolly but something tender is threatening the usual sharp edge of his mouth, “good afternoon, darling.”
“hello.” harry rasps back. he is ill-equipped to handle a tender louis. he leans forward to press a graceless kiss to the edge of louis’s lips. he rubs at the red mottled patches on his shoulder, “how’s the market?”
“hm.” louis stands without answering, taking the hat with him and skipping down the steps of the porch to check on the garden. he starts with the tulips, pinching off wayward leaves, meticulously arranging the roots so they don’t poke out of the soil.
harry knows by now that it’s a long process so he leaves louis to it; harry thinks they are still adjusting their orbits around each other, their proximity requires painstaking realignment. he goes to find aloe to rub over his sunburn and afterwards he heads out to smoke by the front steps, he picks up a fedora that smells of familiar hairspray and faded gucci cologne off the coat hanger.
when the sun starts to dip, he goes back into the kitchen to unpack the groceries. he puts the fresh oranges through the juicer and keeps the bread soft in the toaster oven on low. he turns the mini-telly onto a cooking network and absorbs himself in the recipe of eggplant lasagna while he starts up the pan for chicken stir-fry.
“is that stir-fry?” louis’s voice rings, tracking the scent. the porch door sliding open with the babble of wind chimes - harry hates wind chimes. louis toes off his espadrilles, holding a bouquet of peonies, “looks delicious.”
“hm.” harry echoes.
they sit across from each other at the dinner table, a sort of face-on intimacy where subtlety is lost. every glance is direct contact. they open a bottle of wine and louis starts a loud running commentary while he eats as he always does.
it’s not quite comfortable, but harry thinks they’re getting there.
at one point, harry asks after the orchids and louis’s voice scorches like the afternoon sun, “you didn’t water them at noon.”
harry blinks in surprise, “i suppose not.”
louis doesn’t apologize for the outburst, but he does look contrite, “it’s just - they have to be watered every six hours. so i have to shift the entire schedule back now.”
“oh. i’m - ”
“no, don’t be.” louis’s voice is still the edge of a blade, but louis’s hand feels gorgeous and warm over the raise of his knuckles, “it’s alright, yeah?”
“yeah.”
they have cake that louis brought back for dessert and smoke through a pack of cigarettes together.
louis gets up to turn on the sprinklers again, leaving harry to clean up the dishes. he’s wiping down the last of the wine glass when louis’s back to put on some tunes, feeding a vinyl under the needle, rhythmic and mellow and french.
“want to dance?” louis asks as he’s pulling harry away from the sink, the low light of the cottage simmering across the sharp planes of his face like a comet trail.
harry settles a hand on the delicious curve of louis’s hip, another around louis’s wrist. he tries for fiery, but the hummingbird flutter of louis’s pulse against his palm is affecting him more than he’d thought. “i didn’t come for a cheap dance.”
it’s too gentle and louis knows. his answering grin is a bit smug, almost demure, and achingly tender, enough to break a sea or a full moon, “never took you for cheap.”
they dance barefoot in the kitchen, shuffled steps and amateur twirls. louis humming the murmured lyrics against the craters of his collarbone, “je voudrais toujours te plaire dans mon jardin d’hiver.”
i would like you to always like me in my greenhouse.
harry kisses him at the end of the song, the wet slot of sleek mouths and velvet tongue. louis lets a soft sigh escape somewhere in the back of his throat and he keens when harry licks into there, tasting all the secrets louis is keeping locked up so tight.
it feels wrong on some level, unraveling louis like this. louis’s vulnerabilities are his and his alone, and harry finds himself to be more protective than intrusive of louis’s sensitivities.
by the end of the record, harry’s undressed louis, laid him down on the bed, and pushed into him with slick heat, fist wrapped loosely around louis’s cock, pumping without much finesse. harry comes with a hiss when louis puts two of his fingers in his mouth and sucks hard, the creation of a galaxy shattering behind his eyelids. he returns the favor by twisting his hips up in sharp snaps until louis arches off the bed and shouts.
afterwards, louis fires up a cigarette, breathes it down to the filter, and drops it out in his tea cup. their sides are pressed together, it’s the only way harry can feel the diminutive buzz under louis’s skin.
“are you cold?” he drags the covers up to their chest, “d’you want to close the window?”
“m’fine, darling.” louis shakes his head, and even in sticky darkness he glows with a fresh dewiness. his eyes are blinking close, his jaw slacking a bit as he drifts off to the sound of the waves. louis is greedy even in sleep, sprawled on his back as customary of someone used to consuming all emptiness.
harry stays up for a bit to smoke and chart the position of the vega. the moon is nearly full, silvery and low on the horizon (she looks shy and weary to have all that light on her, she much prefers the distant admiration of night). so it takes him longer than usual to map out the constellation he’s looking for and he finds himself nodding off before he could finish.
harry falls asleep dreaming of brisk busy streets, cold lulling rain, and the hollow ring of ole’ big ben as it counts down.
--
“if this typewriter can’t do it, then fuck it, it can’t be done.” louis is taking him through the office where he keeps his collection. they are examining a small curvy typewriter painted turquoise, its keys look like sea glass and it spits out words like a punch. “i had to wrestle this little tea sandwich of a man at the bazaar for it. he might’ve saw it first, but i won, of course.” the struggle is a vital part of louis’s tale, makes it more of a conquest. “it’s an hermes 3000 - swiss model.”
“hermes. messenger to the gods, yeah?” harry swivels in a chair, half a pomegranate in his hand.
“mhm. it’s pure machinery. it can punch out half a page if you just look at it hard enough. it speaks shakespeare, you know. the answers are all in here.”
“answers to what?”
“everything.” louis answers easily, eyes following the trail of red on harry’s chin. “why do we dream? where does love go? how do we make love stay?”
“is that what you want?” harry swallows, sweetness lingering on his tongue, puts down the uneaten half of the pomegranate, “everything?”
louis’s lashes are tremulous, fluttering morse code, and you darling you.
“i have everything i want.” louis’s moods are like the shifting tones of a season; summer, where flowers bloom and people burn. his eyes are as soft as snow, “i just want you to want it too.”
everybody wants to be happy. are you happy here?
harry can’t claim to know much about shakespeares’ stories except how they’re always about a man who wins a kingdom but loses his soul.
--
imagine that, in such a world, time does not exist. only images.
a bustling island in the middle of the mediterranean. bicycles for rent along a crowded harbor. a child at the seashore, awestruck by the power of the ocean beneath her feet. a group of teens in straw hats pinching a joint beneath the shade of the apothecary.
a boat on the water at night, far but bright like a guiding star.
a cottage by an ivory white beach. pastel drapes blowing gently in the wind. three pairs of scuffed toms on the welcome mat at the front door. a yoga mat on the porch deck positioned to face the sunset next to a slim silver telescope. french cigarettes stacked in an open drawer along with bottles of dark green ink. the recipe for ginger biscuits under a sack of sugar. keys to an electric scooter in a glass bowl.
an empty pomegranate shell.
dirty dishes in the sink. a locked cabinet of pills. mammoth sunflowers spreading roots into the orchids’ quarters like weed due to the overabundance of sun. a clothesline of headscarves loose in the wind. the red at sunrise. a bay window looking out to the unending sea.
a green-eyed boy in a wide-brimmed hat looks to a blue-eyed boy tapping on a typewriter. the blue-eyed boy does not look back.
--
they try to make up for lost time.
they wake up separately but they try to have breakfast together. harry tosses omelets while louis fixes them a cuppa and reads off the post in broken spanish. harry smiles indulgently, flipping omelets in a pan before setting it on the plates.
while eating, louis scribbles in his moleskin so harry fills the silence with a recap of last night’s television drama.
“…and then the vampires teamed up with the werewolves to hunt the witches.” he sums up after a long tangent. he blinks at where louis’s pushing food around, “s’it taste okay?”
“yeah, yeah.” louis reassures. he looks sheepish, “i just…i don’t like mushrooms.”
“oh. i didn’t know.”
louis shrugs, repeats, “one day at a time.”
they take long walks by the beach, holding hands, picking up seashells. they pick the ones with the most tourists because they both like to people-watch, surrounded by noise and excitement. when they see him, the kids on uni vacation invite harry to play beach volleyball with them while louis drinks a coconut under the shade.
once, louis joins in on harry’s team and they lose spectacularly. surprisingly, they have almost no coordination, bumping sides, knocking sides, and stealing each other’s returns despite calling out ‘mine’.
“at least we lost together.” harry smirks teasingly.
“no. we both lost it alone.” louis can be a bit of a sore loser.
harry darts forward to kiss him, his lips pressed to louis’s sharpened chin like kissing a blade, feels louis yield like sand beneath waves, “technicality.”
at night, they stop in at a café for a coffee and a slice of cake. they go to the cinemas whenever they show the classics or any sort of nature documentary. there’s a stall in the market only open on sundays that sells charming trinkets like necklaces or hair-ties.
they pay a man to ride a horse along the shorelines. they take pottery lessons in an old italian woman’s home. they get drunk off neon colored cocktails and salsa music at the hut with seaweed between their toes.
“you’re here.” lou’s soprano sounds thin with accusations. he’s squinting down at harry, who’s lounged for a kip on the chaise.
harry tries to remember if he’s supposed to water the orchids.
he sits up, trying to pick apart the rush of coldness creeping through his bones. good, he thinks, he could use a bit of freezing. it feels like an inevitability. he’s been too melted as of lately.
“thought it’s what you wanted.” it isn’t until the words leave harry’s mouth, he realizes how true they are.
louis must sense this too because his eyes widen but he shifts it off with shuffling feet. he presses, “i thought you were going to meet me at the flower shop.”
“yeah.” harry nods. understanding, but not quite. “i was gonna go after a kip.”
“i said 2 o’clock.”
“i remember what you said.” harry drawls carefully in case louis’s upset because he thinks harry forgot but he hasn’t.
“i waited for you for two hours!” louis bristles. his skin is almost the same shade as his hair, smoldered copper, “then i finally just had to lug the damn plants back myself. for christ’s sake, harry. it’s like you have absolutely no bloody concept of time!”
it’s not like harry’s never felt louis’s wrath before. it typically takes form behind veiled sharpness and cracking banter, but this seems different, it feels raw like a slap across the face as opposed to knives in the dark. and harry has never experienced it first-hand before, but he thinks he and louis might be having their first domestic row.
it unsettles him. he knows how to maneuver around louis’s cruelty better than his honesty.
harry reaches for those words high up on the shelf, the ones that he hopes are right, repeats the image of lovers destroyed: “i’m sorry, lou.”
the words are light…weightless on his tongue, as if he doesn’t quite know what they mean. he wonders if louis felt the same when he said them.
“no, don’t be.” louis repeats like that one time at dinner. he moves to gather the potted broadleaves in his arms, but this time he adds, “you’d do it again.”
they try to make up for lost time.
but time, once lost, cannot be found.
--
imagine a world where there are two times. there is mechanical time and there is body time.
the first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swing back and forth, back and forth. the second glides and jumps like a bluefish in a bay. the first is unyielding, fated. the second makes up its mind as it goes along.
some are convinced that mechanical time does not exist. they do not keep clocks around them. instead, they listen to their heartbeats. they feel the tides of their moods and desires. such people eat when they are hungry, go to their jobs at the docks or the bookstore whenever they wake from their sleep, make love all hours of the day.
they believe that there is no point in letting something as vast and unforgiving and far away as time control them. lying in the arms of a lover, the smile of a mother, the first taste of something sweet. time does not know when something lovely is occurring. all the bright, precious things are fleeting. and they don’t come back.
therefore, the body is a temple, a place of worship.
then, there are those live by mechanical time, who think their bodies don’t exist. they rise at seven o’clock in the morning. they eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. they work forty hours a week, read the sunday paper on sunday, go out to the pub on friday nights.
they know that the body is not a thing of wild magic, but a collection of chemicals, tissues, and nerve impulses. thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain. sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum. in short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.
the body is a thing to be ordered, not obeyed.
where the two times meet, there is confusion and desperation.
each time is true, but the truths are not the same.
--
timeline: harry is in ibiza.
outside, the afternoon sun blazes, the ocean is very blue, and the tune on the vinyl spins il vous aime, c’est secret, lui dites pas que j’vous l’ai dit.
he loves you, it’s a secret, don’t tell him i told you so.
it is the last days of summer, the condensed scorch of heat bearing down like a live fire. fruits ripened and rot twice as fast. and the constellation of lyra sits at center sky during nightfall.
and there are dirty dishes in the sink.
harry blinks down at them, curious at their miraculous appearance. he’s just done them last night, but yet, here they are again.
“god, it’s hot as hell.” louis slides open the porch door panting. he’s pulling off his gardening gloves, a bunch of honeysuckles under his arm, his cheeks are pink. “do you remember that indian place that makes the iced mango desserts? we could go after i bang out this chapter, maybe this weekend, yeah? the sunflowers are ravenous. they’ve taken over the entire yard.”
the greek legend of the lyra goes like this:
the lyre is played by orpheus, a musician who enchanted all of the land with his music, even the sea would change course to remain close to its sounds. orpheus fell deeply in love with the nymph eurydice and they married in bliss. it was taken from them too soon, however, when eurydice was bit by a treacherous snake while wandering in the fields. orpheus was devastated so he decided to seek out his wife in the underworld. he struck a deal with hades in which he was allowed to take his wife back to the land of the living on the condition that he must not look back until they had returned to the upper world - a test of faith.
up the sloping path, orpheus climbed, until he’s almost reached home. here, too eager, the lover looked behind him, only just in time to watch eurydice slip back into the depths. orpheus stretched out his arms, straining to clasp his beloved and be clasped; but he clasped nothing but air.
harry always wondered how eurydice felt; if she felt betrayed by the lack of trust or if she had always known that she could not live two lives.
“ - was talking to the grocer today. he just came back from barcelona, apparently it’s cooler there.”
“let’s go then.” harry draws his eyes up from the piled plates in the sink, focusing them on the curvy silhouette of louis leaning against the counter. he can feel the slow heat of summer simmering in his blood, melting away the steel, loosening his bones, “let’s go there.”
“go where?” louis asks but his gaze is clever.
“barcelona.”
“when?”
“now.” louis’s forgotten to close the screen door. the air conditioning is escaping, invaded by hot winds, damp and salty, and every draught clashed the wind chimes together loudly. harry turns on the water just to drown out the sound. he picks up a rag, “s’cooler there, yeah?”
“yeah.” louis nods. “that’s what they say.”
louis and him could be out of the door in a minute, get a ferry ticket, and sleep beneath a different constellation.
“so?” harry prompts.
louis is staring at him intently and cautiously, “you want to leave.”
harry wants to say it’s an inevitability and he would, if he still felt the numbing protection of the cold, but as it is, the heat is pounding on the back of his eyelids. harry says instead, “no, i want you to come with me.” because he thinks that makes a difference.
louis throws out the wilting daisies from yesterday, neatly slotting the bunch of honeysuckles into their place, “well, when would we come back?”
“whenever.” harry considers the slack heaviness in his limbs, “later.”
“those aren’t answers.” louis is doing that thing where he snaps then looks restrained, his snarl twitching into a grimace, “i just - it’s not enough, haz.”
“enough.” harry repeats. he tries for indifference despite the threat prickling at the hairs on the back of his neck, “why not? because you make dinner reservations? write? tend to the garden?”
louis drops the vase down onto the counter. the honeysuckles look alarmed by his callousness, their petals shaking loose frightfully, but harry is not. he scrubs harder at a milk ring on the bowl.
“yes.” louis’s pitch draws thin and high, “yes, because that’s what home means.”
harry barely refrains from twitching, “just because you put things inside a place doesn’t make it a home.”
a wind chime, a typewriter, a harry.
louis’s eyes go hot, the energy of the sun cackling in a violent flare, “what would you know about building? all you know how to do is lay waste. you make everything something to be sacrificed and conquered.”
“and you avoided it.” his fingers are stained green from where he’s scrubbed hard enough to erase the edgings of ivy off the porcelain (something swells inside him like wicked satisfaction). he spins away from the running sink, hands clenching into wet fists. “you think if we leave london, we can forget about what’s happened, but we can’t get away from ourselves just by moving from one place to another. you think moving us out here, stranding us here will fix everything that you think is wrong with us. you think you can move us here and slap a name onto it and that’s what it’ll be. but you hate that i’m here. you hate that i put mushrooms on the omelets, that i don’t help you with the garden, that i never remember the time. i’m a piece of decoration that just won’t stay put. you hate it but you won’t say it.”
“what do you want me to say?” louis’s voice is low and strained, “yes, you make me miserable, do you want a fucking apology for it?”
“i want the truth, louis.”
“the truth!” louis screeches and harry can feel something sharp and blue shattering in his hands, “you want the truth? how about you tell me what the bloody truth is then, harry? the truth is you’re drowning!” louis’s collarbones hollows as he pants, tide pools of bronze, “the truth is we fucked up all those years ago manipulating each other and manipulating ourselves into thinking it was okay.”
“we knew what we were doing.” harry points out calmly.
louis’s laugh is sharpened by his wicked chin, “we say that because it sounds better than saying what we did - ‘i sold you for a book’, ‘you sold your soul for me’, and ‘we did it all alone’ - we knew it was wrong and we did it anyway. you don’t want to admit it because…you’ve built your bones around it. you’ve forgotten how to take it off.” louis’s eyes trace a stellar orbit around the room and he moves a measured light-year towards harry, it feels dangerous, “you’re not broken. but you’re drowning. you’re drowning because you’ve got that armor on.”
“i’m not wearing armor.” harry responds tightly, the matrix in his bones are knitted like chain-mail, “s’just what i am.”
louis goes on, “it has to mean something, doesn’t it? and this is it, darling.” his voice is close but his gaze is fixed far away. when louis reaches forward to hold harry’s hand, palm running over the mismatched knuckles that louis had caused, harry feels a rush of alarm, “we were terrible but this is where we make things right. we can be different here. better. happy. this is our universe. it’s what we wanted. harry, this is home.”
but the things is: harry has been running away from that word since he’s born.
“this isn’t what i want, louis.” harry slips his hand carefully away, watching louis’s sun bleached eyes darken into focus, “i don’t want the universe. i don’t want paradise. i don’t want every time you say ‘i love you’ to sound like an apology. i’m not a novella and i’m not a flower that just grows when you water it. i’m harry.”
“i know that.” louis whispers.
“no, i don’t think you do.” and as soon as the words are out, the realization punches harry square in the chest like a vase of spilled lightening. he staggers back, blindly gripping for the kitchen counter with white-knuckles but slips - his hands are shaking too hard. “i don’t think you do. because you think i’m liam payne.”
harry’s head is spinning. he grips the stitch in his side, “oh god. that’s why you told me to come on shore that day with him. you sent zayn down the spice cart because you knew he’d be there. that’s why…the dancing, the flowers, the domesticity. you think that could be us. that’s what this is…this idea of happiness and home, that’s where it came from. i’ve been stuck here playing pretend-liam to you, haven’t i?” harry breathes a short laugh, “my god, you’re so clever.”
“darling, it’s not - ”
“i don’t make you miserable. i bore you.” maybe i’d like you better as a liam - harry’s hands are stained with china patterns - you wouldn’t, he would bore you. he clenches them, “i’m right, aren’t i?”
louis’s breathing is ragged, his pulse like a canary, but he tips his chin in defiance like a proud lion. when he speaks, it’s a curling snarl, “they’re happy. why shouldn’t we be? why shouldn’t we have what they have? we deserve it!”
“i’m not sure what we deserve.”
“fuck you, harry.” louis spits. “you want to live in the past. you want us to go back to fucking around and getting high. maybe we can. for a while. and when we run out of money, then what? you say you want the truth and here it is! you can’t forget or forgive what we’ve done because you’re so fucking scared of losing your bravery. you don’t know anything about happiness!”
people are built for happiness. even louis.
here is the repeated image of lovers destroyed, a mirror’s image:
“you’re absolutely right. you’re absolutely right and i’m sorry.”
“what’re you sorry for?”
“leaving.” harry looks to louis’s sea-breeze fringe to his volcanic mouth to the intergalactic web of galaxies in his universal eyes, and he feels an overwhelming sense of heaviness.
but would a liam want you?
he forces himself to push away from the counter and move swiftly towards the door. he didn’t want to chance any hesitation to drag him down to hades.
no, he wouldn’t. because you’d ruin him. and he’d leave.
“leaving?” louis echoes with a falter, his fox gaze very wide,“wh - where will you go?”
“disappear.” harry answers. he pulls on his boots in the foyer.
louis’s voice sounds small and distant, “what about your things?”
his blood pumps so loud in his ear he can barely swallow. he whirls around. louis is closer than he thought, it makes the scars on his hand hurt. he hisses, “i don’t need things.”
louis shifts into defense at harry’s anger; this is a familiar game for the both of them, but harry isn’t playing anymore. louis presses, “nobody walks. that was the deal, styles. you said it yourself.”
“we’ve both said a lot of things. i’m not sure we know what they mean when we say them.”
he pulls open the door.
“if you leave, i’ll never forgive you.” louis’s voice has gone quiet and husky, it’s the most honest harry’s ever heard him, “i’ll hate you.”
harry thinks this must be how the first men on the moon felt when they landed and found none of the myths to be true - nothing blue, no cheese - just rocks and metal.
louis is harry’s man on the moon.
“i guess that makes us even.”
--
imagine a place where time stands still.
raindrops never touch the ground. lights never turn green. pedestrians never reach their destination.
as a traveler approaches this place from any direction, he moves more and more slowly. his heartbeats grow farther apart, his neurons decelerates, his temperature drops. his thoughts diminish, until he reaches dead center and everything comes to a halting stop.
this it the center of time.
from here on, time travels outward in concentric circles - at rest at the center, slowly picking up speed moving in outer diameters.
who would make pilgrimage to the center of time?
lovers, of course.
at the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go. the loved one will never drop his arms from where they are now, will never have to break away from a kiss, will never journey far from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice, will never fail to show his love, will never fall in love with someone else, will never become jealous, will never lose the passion of this instant in time.
those at the center do move, physics would not allow for absolute, but at the pace of glaciers. a brush of hair might take a year, a kiss might take a thousand.
while a grin is returned, seasons pass in the outer world. while hands are joined, fountains rise. while a goodbye is said, cities crumble and are forgotten.
then when they return to the outer world, they find that their friends are long gone. after all, lifetimes have passed.
they have to move in a world they do not recognize. they might try to return to the same buildings or find comfort in an embrace, but now their embraces seem empty and frightened. soon they forget the centuries-long promises, which to them lasted only seconds. they become jealous even among strangers, say hateful things to each other in fervent outbursts, lose passion, drift apart, grow old in a world they do not know.
some say it is best not to go near the center of time. life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life.
others disagree.
they would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.