Love Me Please (Larry Stylinson)

19

One thing Louis never learned in school is that staying away from your soulmate hurts like hell.

He never thought it would be so bad but here he is, lying in bed at night, one hand over his heart and the other digging into his mark, pain coursing through his body. Nothing would make it stop, nothing would even dull it, and he tried everything. Warm baths, hot tea, pain meds. Curling into a ball. Lying facedown on the floor. Screaming into the mattress. Staring up at the ceiling.

Closing his eyes, and trying not to think.

He sleeps restlessly and painfully. His entire body feels like shit, like he has the flu but worse, and he feels dizzy and nauseous but it's not physical. The pain he's feeling is real but the cause is in his mind and he's determined to overcome it.

He doesn't.

In the morning he feels so jaded, he can hardly get out of bed. Standing up doesn't make him feel any better and neither does putting on clothes. He has an exam in a few days that he can't just not study for, so he forces himself out of his dorm and to the library.

He's sitting staring out the window trying to quiet his mind from the ugly intrusive thoughts telling him he's so lonely, so so so fucking lonely, his heart aching for his other half and screaming at him for somehow messing this up, messing this up when it's so fucking easy and somehow he still did it wrong. Somehow he messed up so badly even the person who was god damn created to fucking love him refuses to love him anyways.

He's so unlovable, his soulmate wouldn't even look at him. That's what he has to remember when he feels the small hairs on the back of his neck prickle and his heart begin to thunder in his chest, for no apparent reason at all. The library is quiet as always and Louis is tucked between the bookshelves, sitting on the windowsill with a textbook propped up on his lap, and no one can find him here, he's alone. But he feels the pooling sense of dreadful hope, the ache in his heart that yearns for something nearer now. He knows what it means, and he tenses, afraid.

The universe is a fan of humor. That's why it created Louis to be hated by Harry Styles and to hate him in return. That's why it puts them in the same place as much as possible, because it thinks it's funny to torture Louis like this.

There are footsteps down the aisle of the library and Louis refuses to look up.

"Lou?"

Refuses to look up.

Refuses to look up.

Refuses to-

He looks up.

His soulmate is standing at the end of the aisle, palms turned outwards and open like he's asking god for something. He's about ten feet away and somehow the space between them seems both insurmountable and suffocating.

Harry looks tired too. Louis thinks of him and how he was panicking, how his hands were shaking and his eyes were crying hard, tears pouring down like rivulets, tears pouring everywhere. Now his face is clear but his eyes are tired and sad.

Louis wonders how much it hurts him but he's certain it can't be as bad as Louis feels, not with the way Louis knows now how unwanted he is no matter what Harry says, no matter how he tries to amend the way he never even looked in Louis' direction when Louis was so certain he was the one, so certain they would have their happily ever after.

He was so wrong, it's laughable.

"Lou, I- I didn't even know- I'm sorry-"

Louis doesn't know what he's talking about but he looks away without inquiring further. Eyes back on the textbook in front of him.