now i've seen the light of day {lou/lex}

There is something warm about last night, about the dreamless sleep that has stretched on for eternities and it's been too long since I managed to sleep the night through. Feel so rested after my consciousness finally stirred and-

I want to believe it was something good, something special but the familiar skittering about my skull, the thousands of spiders crawling across my brain and striking their fangs against my bones tell me that it's probably because I got wasted. Again. My eyelids are heavy, tied to my cheeks as I cling to the last bits of a peaceful night. It's blissful like this, someone pressed against my chest and I can feel their breathing sync with my own and this is what I think I love most about waking up with someone.

In even the most brisk, emotionless hookup there is this moment of peace. Of serenity and closeness that I so yearn for every morning because just maybe it isn't the alcohol that drives my nightmares away. Carefully, I pull the covers over the sleeping body next to me, laying a chaste kiss upon their jaw before settling back into the pillow and drifting into nothingness once more.

I wake to movement. There is the rustle of covers beside me, sudden cold as space is placed between me and the currently faceless being laid beside me. I'm tempted to whine, to reach for their hand with blind fingers and to pull them back down into my arms. I want to beg for five more minutes because tonight has been so sweet and I am not done with it yet. Not done with this really fucking good dream that I seem to be wrapped within.

I'm not ready to wake up yet. I don't want to leave.

I guess that's kind of pathetic, isn't it? I should wake up, get dressed and leave the poor thing's house because this obviously isn't my rickety old cot and I'm fairly certain not even drunk me would be desperate enough to bring someone home to fuck there. Besides, I have my moms to worry about and drunk me is a fucking idiot but he's not an inconsiderate idiot. They probably want me out. They're probably annoyed and I should-

Lou?

I blink a few times just to be certain, sitting up with sudden vitality and barely feeling the rush of my head and the ache of my bones in protest. I've never hooked up with a guy before, let alone my best friend but here we are and I'm pretty sure I'm naked and he's in his boxers and shit.

This fucking happened.

And I know I shouldn't be but I find myself the slightest bit disappointed he's already dressed himself and the thought alone brings heat to my cheeks and I'd try to cover the blush if I wasn't so fucking shocked about what had obviously just happened between us and-

getting drunk around Lou has suddenly topped my list of bad decisions for the year.

Our clothes are scattered about the room and it's easier just to bunch the blankets upon my exposed lower half than stand up and wander around the room for boxers that are probably long gone in some forgotten corner of the room.

We made kind of a mess, didn't we? I'd smile if I wasn't so worried about upsetting Lou. Lou who I know was saving his first time for someone special and who is probably crushed and upset and wants nothing to do with me and-

"Lou, I'm so fucking sorry." I'm not sure what else to say, there's just too much left on the tip of my tongue and even looking at him like this is making my throat ache and tears crawl up into the corners of my eyes and I think I might just cry because it was okay when I was ruining my life but this is his, this is Louvain and his first time wasn't supposed to be some sloppy hookup that neither person remembers. My words are strained when I speak and I hope it's not too obvious that I'm trying to hold back tears because this might be the first time I've cried in front of him.

"This is... this is my fault I'm so sorry. I shoulda known that if I got drunk- oh my god Lou I just..." I can't make this better. I can't fix this. Hastily I wipe a stray droplet from my cheek and I try to get my shit together because I don't want to lose him like this. "Are you mad?"

And for the first time this winter, it rains. I press the heels of my palms to my eyes and I try so damn hard to get a hold of myself but I can't stop fucking crying because I've wanted him for so long but I never wanted it to be like this. I feel dirty, like some part of me tricked him into this. And I don't remember anything but a haze of colors and feelings and heat, there really isn't much past kissing Lou that first time but I know this was my idea. This had to have been my idea.

I'm a fool. A pathetic fool because here I am crying in front of Louvain when he's probably pissed and wants me out of his house and my clothes are all over the floor and I can't really tell anything through the springs collecting in the hollows of my palms and I just want him to say that it's okay. That we can still be friends after this but how is that possible when I'm sitting here naked under the sheets and his room is a mess and there's really no denying what we did?

I can't lose another person but I think I just did.

My eyes are shut tight and I just want to sink into the earth. I want to be filled with nothing and disappear right here because I can feel the frost crawling back into the tips of my fingers and I am going to die right here. I want to beg him to forget that this ever happened and I want to beg to stay with me because he is the light through purple clouds and he is the everything that I have always craved and-

The frost has spread to my lips so I cannot say a thing. Instead I drop the blankets wrapped around my waist and I slide into the boxers that lay just by my feet, drying my eyes with the back of my hand and they feel like acid sinking into my skin and eating away at the tendons. And it has been so long since I cried, so long since anything has broken through the barriers that I have built and though I have covered myself for modesty's sake I cannot help but feel as though I am naked and bare and raw in every way that I do not want.

And then his arms are around my waist, small and warm and I can feel the throb of cured frostbite seep into my fingers and toes and his voice is soft. "I'm not mad." And I don't really know why because I was selfish and I took something I didn't deserve. I took him; what he was holding for someone special and not some asshole who takes him to parties and lets him get drunk. And even with his arms around my waist I feel like I'm dying. Guilt crawling through my stomach and into my pounding skull.

But I am selfish. I shake and press my face into the crook of his neck because it is warm when I am cold and he smells floral and sweet and sort of like alcohol. I think that the sobs have stopped, my lungs do not quiver and my stomach no longer tightens so violently. My hands crawl up Louvain's waist, fingers tangling themselves in his hair. Desperately I pull him closer because I cannot get enough. Not enough of his skin against mine, of the softness of his breath in my ear. Of his heartbeat against my chest. I feel as though the world is ending and I want everything before it all goes black and everything is meaningless.

He's not mad. Not mad that I have taken his virginity. Why? There isn't much room for thought through the intoxicating haze of relief and vanilla that suddenly is all I am made up of. I feel like glass, like I will shatter if even a breeze crosses my path and I do not care because if Louvain wants he can have every bit of me. Even the bits that are scared and small and broken. He can have them.

"I thought... I was gonna lose you." I mutter and my voice is like worn paper against the cement. Tired. Torn. "Why aren't you mad, Lou? I took... we... we slept together and it was probably my idea. 'Cause I-"

I'm pretty sure I know how I feel about him but those words will stay locked between my lips perhaps forever. (There are some things not even everything can take.)

"I think I've fallen for you?"

Fallen like a star out of the sky, like a house of cards. I have fallen like every leaf of winter's trees. I have fallen onto the cement and I have scraped my knees and I can feel the pain. The blood soaking into the edges of my socks and the antiseptic my mother used to press into the rock-infused cuts.

Because I can feel like this. Here. With him in my arms.

And even the pain is sweet.

'Since we met.' The memory burns, that night etched into my skull with broken graphite and I don't understand. The night we met was a haze of poison and stolen voices. The turning of a blind eye to suffering. Just like always. Louvain cannot be serious- there was no way that bristling boy held even the slightest of sympathy for me, let alone anything stronger than that. Not that I blame him. He was foal, cornered and scared and lucky enough that his canvas had been left untainted by blacks and blues until that point. There is something so violent about the shattering of innocence that the sound of their fists against his flesh have haunted me more often than not the nights I spend trapped within myself.

Apathy is a curse- one that I had so welcomed when there was nothing to feel but pain. Guilt. Fear. Anger. There was so much bad, so many blood stains upon molding parchment that I didn't see the point of living upon a paper that was too poisoned to do anything but tear when met with a pencil. I stopped drawing for that reason, my world was void of anything but gray and black and the crimson that dripped from the corners of Anthony's mouth when he-

I have seen things that would drive any man mad. Not even a year ago I held the body of a dead boy and pressed my lips to his cold forehead and I begged. I pleaded. I needed him to come back to me because this world meant nothing if I was alone. And it scares me, more than anything I fear the silence of my own mind. How many times have I retreated within its depths? Woke screaming and sobbing and clutching at a heart that was so desperate to keep beating that I think it might have been killing me.

Lou knows nothing of my past, nothing of my father and his anger. Nothing of the mother that I lost mere hours after my brother's birth. I was old enough to remember her- to remember the screaming that bounced about empty halls when the clock struck Witching Hour. The blue bruises that bloomed upon her cheeks, the ones that found themselves a home upon my flesh once she was dead and gone and it was up to me to keep him safe. Her son. My Anthony. He didn't have mom but he had me and I wasn't gonna let Dad ruin him like he did everyone else.

And I couldn't keep the only promise I had ever made.

I'm still alive because I'm a coward.

Lou would leave if he knew what I was. There's no doubt in my mind that if he saw the ugly that is etched within every line of me that he would be revolted. Grow to hate he who was too weak to stand up to a father who held a baby's neck between his fists and watched as it screamed and screamed until it simply didn't. (I let him die. I let him die.) I'm too selfish to say anything- to reveal just how broken of a man Lou has just spend the night with. He is my heart- the replacement that I have sewn to my sleeve. He is the only reason I have found to smile in nine long months and without him I might just crumble.

His hands are splayed upon my bare chest- inches away from the scars left by shards of broken glass and expensive rings that father forced upon his fat fingers. "I've had a crush on you?"

(You shouldn't.) I bite my lip, trying to make sense of the world when there is nothing but desire and fear to set my blood to boil. I want him. I need to have him more than I need to drink or eat or breathe and here he is. Within my grasp. His skin is soft beneath my touch- fingertips grazing a strong jawline that stands out upon a boy made of up nothing but soft edges. Somehow it makes him all the more enticing. It drives me fucking crazy and I love it.

He is all that I want and everything I need.

I run my hands down his body, fingers catching upon every bruise left by evil, selfish things. (The mere thought of them makes me feel sick, anger working its way up every notch in a weathered spine.) But they do nothing to taint his beauty, something that Lovain never seems to realize. There is nothing more dangerous than a bombshell who believes they are anything but.

My palms find his, filling the gaps between his fingers with my own. "Be mine then." I whisper and I press my lips to his. "I'm already yours."