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with randomly assigned flat mates. Louis‟ first memories of uni are

classes that made him excited to get up in the morning and nights of

getting much too drunk much too quickly and Kale.

Kale was older and tall and gorgeous and wore shirts with the names of

bands Louis had never heard of, and when Louis first laid eyes on him

he was convinced that it was love at first sight. His first couple of

months at uni were spent trying desperately to win Kale‟s approval and

swindling free drinks at bars near campus to afford the cost of going to

every show Kale‟s band ever played.

Louis had never done more than kissed a boy, and he wanted more than

anything for Kale to be his first time. He knows now he must not have

been subtle about things at all, because he seems to remember a lot of

getting drunk at parties and winding up on Kale‟s lap, but at eighteen

he hadn‟t really known how to go about things and he was starving for

it. He didn‟t care who knew.

Finally, one night after a party, he‟d found his way into Kale‟s bed. It

hadn‟t been gentle at all, not nearly enough for Louis‟ first time, but he

didn‟t care. All that mattered was that he was having sex with the boy

he‟d been obsessed with practically since he set foot on campus, and he

was so cool, and fit, and he picked Louis out of all the other eligible

people lining up to fuck him, and that meant Louis was special. He

remembers when it was over, lying there next to Kale in bed and

thinking he‟d been right about everything, that the world was fucking

his, and wasn‟t everyone going to be so impressed with the new

boyfriend he‟d managed to bag.

Of course, Kale had never called him again, mostly because he never

even asked for Louis‟ number. After a month it became clear that there

were no mixed signals, nothing complicated about it, as much as Louis

had tried to build it up in his head. The simple truth was that he was a

fuck, a single nameless, meaningless fuck in a long line of nameless,

meaningless fucks. That had stung like only the first proper rejection

could.

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He‟d spent a while after that feeling idiotic and childish, and looking

back he almost feels endeared to his past self, like he wants to knit him

a little onesie that says “Baby‟s First Disillusionment With Love.”

Maybe if he‟d liked girls, or if there had been boys for him back in

Doncaster, he would have gotten it over with early, leaving the teen

angst in middle school where it belonged. He‟d been running behind.

He needed to catch up.

There were a lot of nights out with his and Stan‟s new friends, making

out with boys he didn‟t know in the back of clubs he doesn‟t remember

the names of, trying to get the whole thing out of his system.

Thankfully he was such a baby at the time that it didn‟t take him very

long to bounce back, or at least not to bounce onto the next boy he

thought he was in love with.

The next boy was Tom, his flat mate, the engineering student with good

study habits and nice hands. He had blonde hair and a cute smile and he

laughed at all of Louis‟ jokes, and by the end of first term they‟d

become fast friends over pizza and video games and bottles of alcohol

passed between them.

Except one day Louis looked at Tom, and suddenly friends wasn‟t

enough anymore. He remembers sitting across their little living room

every day and wanting so badly to close that distance between them,

listening to the sounds of Tom going about the little tasks of his life and

feeling like he was in love with them all. Back then his heart was

spilling everywhere, and he‟d wanted so badly to give it to somebody.

He gave it to Tom, and he never knew if Tom really understood that.

He knew that Tom liked how much Louis liked him, that he loved it

when Louis would be all over the place but then focus in on him like he

was the only thing in the world worth his undivided attention. He knew

that Tom didn‟t mind when Louis jumped up in his bed and laid his

head in his lap when they were up too late talking. One night in

particular, when they were very drunk and very alone, he let Louis kiss

him on the neck and then they never talked about it again. Louis was

gone for him, so gone, and he kept biding his time, waiting for Tom to

come around.

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Then one day suddenly Tom had a girlfriend, some pretty brunette with

a nice figure, and Louis thought he was going to throw up when he

found out. The next thing he knew she was coming over all the time,

sitting cross-legged on Tom‟s bed and kissing him over textbooks, and

all Louis could do was sit there and watch Tom be everything he

wanted with somebody else every day.

That was too much for him to handle, even back then, and by third term

he had started finding ways to stay out of his flat as much as possible.

Thankfully his classes kept him busy, and even though he could never

seem to land a decent part in any of the uni productions, what he did

manage to scrape up was enough to keep him sane. He was in the back

of a dressing room dreading the walk back to his residential hall one

night when he spilled his makeup kit all over the floor and somebody

bent down to help him pick everything up, and that was how he met

Daniel.

Daniel was half Spanish and had lips like an angel, and he was Louis‟

first boyfriend. They started dating near the end of Louis‟ first year at

uni, and it lasted for six months, and Louis thought he was really,

properly in love this time. They did everything together, including a lot

of very educational things in bed that Louis attached a lot of feelings to

when they were happening, because when you‟re learning those things

with somebody you love, it feels important.

They dated over the summer and well into the first term of Louis‟

second year in uni, and Louis was only nineteen but he was already

imagining ten years down the road, both of them on stages in London

and going home to the same tastefully furnished flat. He couldn‟t

imagine ever not wanting to be with him, and he was sure Daniel felt

the same way, even if he was a bit cagey about it.

And then Louis told Daniel he loved him for the first time, and Daniel

dumped him a week later. He told Louis that he was too clingy, that

they were young and he just wanted to have fun and it wasn‟t like that

for him.

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Louis explains to Harry that this was how he first started to learn. He

learned from Daniel, and from Tom and from Kale, that he wasn‟t a

person that other people wanted to expend themselves on. That love,

real love, probably didn‟t exist at all, and certainly wasn‟t going to

happen for him. He wasn‟t a person who people wanted to love, not

really, and even if he could get them to want to be with him for a while,

even if he managed to rope them in, eventually the shine would wear

off and they‟d get sick of him or find something better. He wasn‟t

anybody‟s place to stay, just a stop along the way.

All of those things cut down whatever sense of reckless hope he‟d

gotten when he first came out. It didn‟t help that he kept getting turned

down for every role he tried out for, that every single train ride to

London for a casting call went absolutely nowhere. He wasn‟t good

enough, and that was something he‟d always privately felt anyway, but

it was worse to have it proven to him as more than just an anxious

voice in the back of his head. He wasn‟t leading man material, not even

in his own life.

By this point in the story, Harry has run out of prints and has no

busywork left. Instead, he sits down on the bench and listens, though at

least he doesn‟t look at Louis, just stares down at his hands. Louis is

glad he‟s still playing along, because he‟s never, ever told anybody this

much before, and he‟s not sure he could do it with Harry looking at

him.

He needs Harry to know it, though. It‟s not just that he feels like he

owes it to him, it‟s that now that they‟re doing this for real, he needs

Harry to know exactly where he‟s coming from. He needs Harry to

know all the reasons he acts the way he does, because he needs this to

work. He needs this to work more than anything.

So he folds his arms on top of his knees and keeps going.

Christmas 2011, Louis was still reeling from Daniel. He was on a

tailspin, and his friends were doing everything they knew how to do for

him, but it wasn‟t enough. He was going to do something he would

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regret, and there was nothing any of them could do to stop him. If he

was going to be alone, he might as well make sure he deserved it.

It was around that time that his dad had the nerve send him an

invitation to a Christmas party at his new house with his new family

after months without so much as a text message to check up on him.

Louis had known when he got the invitation in his email that it was just

extended as a gesture, and that he didn‟t actually expect or want Louis

to go. They weren‟t really close, never had been—no matter how much

Louis tried—and at that moment in time Louis was just unstable

enough, just close enough to the edge, that one stupid email triggered

every single pent up feeling he‟d ever had about how much his dad

didn‟t seem to give a shit about him.

He showed up at the party already tipsy, wearing his tightest, reddest

trousers, and made a point to offend or scandalise as many of his dad‟s

friends and business associates as possible. He may as well have worn a

sign around his neck: Go on, Dad, ignore me. I‟d like to see you try.

Every obvious Daddy issues cliche wrapped up in one human being,

with all the subtlety of a double-decker bus. He‟s as much ashamed of

that as anything, that he lost control that much. That he let himself be

that affected.

He was in the kitchen fixing himself a drink when a man sidled up next

to him and asked if he was sure he needed another. Louis remembers

looking up to tell the prick off and then stopping himself when he saw

that it was a man his dad had been doing business with since Louis was

a kid, some corporate lawyer with a black Porsche and a perfect jaw.

He was in his early forties, going gray at the temples, and Louis

remembered that his name was Nathan Grant and he played golf with

Louis‟ dad.

It‟d be a lie to say it seemed like a good idea at the time, because it

didn‟t. What it did seem like was a way to feel like he was getting back

at his dad and prove to himself that he was still desirable in some way

all at once. He locked them in the guest bedroom and let Grant fuck

him while his idiot dad and his idiot friends carried on outside, and at

least he felt like he was in control of something for a few minutes.

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Of course, his dad found out, and of course, his dad blew the whole

thing way out of proportion. Came and got him from uni, dragged him

home to his mum and yelled at both of them for an hour. It turned out

that apparently Grant had an affinity for collecting much younger boys,

and Louis‟ dad couldn‟t believe Louis would humiliate him by being

“one of his slags” and blamed his mum for raising him to be this way.

It was a huge mess and Louis‟ mum cried all night and Louis had never

felt so completely worthless before in his entire life. It took months to

get over that night, to stop believing that the things his father had said

were true. They still come back to him sometimes, on bad days, and it‟s

always a conscious effort to push them back down.

He was hanging by a thread by the time he met Patrick, a dark-haired

boy who was studying history and seemed to be Louis‟ last hope. They

dated for eight months, through graduation and the summer after, and it

was good. It was really, really good, enough for Louis to start believing

again that maybe all the other times had just been bad luck. He was

fairly certain he was really in love this time, and for once Patrick felt

the same way too.

Except Patrick‟s parents would have disowned him if they had ever

found out he was gay, and Patrick seemed to think he deserved it. Louis

tried coming up with compromises, tried finding ways to reconcile how

much Patrick said he loved him and how ashamed he seemed to be of

it, but all he ever ended up doing was feeling worse about himself. It all

blew up when he pushed a little too hard one day about cutting off his

parents and Patrick told him that he might love him, but he was never