Look at his tongue and tell me you didn't feel yourself exploding.

HOLY CRAP LOUIS LOVE ME

Louis’ POV

            “Sleep love.” I whispered, the entirety of the cabin falling completely silent to the soft brushes of snores and people moving restlessly against their scratchy airplane blankets.

            There was no answer from her side though, just the outline of her teeth against her lip as she tried to stifle the tears that had just continued to pour down on her beautiful face.

            “Lydia, sweetheart. Please just try to sleep, please.” I nearly begged her, willing to do anything just to have her catch a moment of rest. Her head just shaking slowly as green eyes stared at something unknown right above my head. Just the small glimmer of the tears staining her cheeks to reflect off the nearly nonexistent lighting.

            Eight hours in a plane. Eight excruciating hours where she would only speak in a scratchy voice to ask for water, or to use the loo.

            No communication, it was like I’d lost her even though she was right here. My hands only touching skin, but words lost in translation between the borders of the life I’d carelessly forgotten about.

            “M’going to go-“ it was the most she’d spoken in four hours. The dried tears reverberating in her shaky voice, the sharp melody lost in the depths of her heart as only the darkest version of her displayed itself to me in a heartbreaking reality.

            “Stop it Lydia. Stop it right now. Look at me, just me.” I didn’t mean for it to come out as the harsh growl that it did, her head snapping my way and the chaos of curls falling in and out of place on top of her muddled head. Hauntingly green eyes masked with the stain of tears and the quality of a thousand stars shining against them in pools of terrifying heartbreak.

            It was almost like we were meeting eyes as strangers, her own searching my face for an ounce of recognition as I wandered over the fragments of colors that were so warped they almost became threatening.

            “Louis.” I stopped short, my hand moving from its position against the inside of her knee to the top of her thigh.

            The dark pools of nighttime shining from her window and giving us our only bit of security that were still on Earth, we were still breathing together.

            I meant to ask her why she said, I really had every intention of listening until my ears ran red and raw. It was the only thought in my head the past ten hours, the only thing that consumed me completely besides her, which was why I should have seen her lips moving over my name in a question of trust. Something she needed to know and I hadn’t realized until she’d asked it again, in a much different way.

            It was hesitant at first, her fingers clasped around my wrists gently like she was afraid of touching me. Hot breath floating against my own lips as my eyes closed instinctively and I waited for her to make the decision.

            Never would it take long with us, decisions flying in spans of countless hours of thought when we were both awake at night, but too scared to check. The days when we were just understanding each other. The moments when I knew she was awake against me, but I was too afraid to tell her the things that had shaped my life.

            Those days were gone though, nights where we lay against each other unknowingly awake, those had disappeared. Our conversations starting up again at four because she was afraid of how close the thunder sounded in the comparison to our bodies.

            It was almost like the first time we’d kissed, but even then that wasn’t accurate at all. The first time I’d kissed Lydia it hadn’t been hesitant, there wasn’t a question that she didn’t want to kiss me because her body had been pressed into mine until there wasn’t enough space to slip paper between. The attraction had hit hard, the unstoppable thoughts running through my mind and an edge we’d balanced on for months afterwards could have been so different if there hadn’t been an alarm.

            She could have just been another number, but she hadn’t.

            This was different though. There wasn’t any mass of attraction to release because I could kiss her whenever I pleased now, but there was something behind it. The shaking of fingers wrapped against my wrists as I brought my hand farther up her thigh, leaning into her because she was unaware to her stiff position. Something about my beautiful blonde wasn’t registering anything but the pain of what was to come, and I just wanted her to forget. Even if for a minute.

            “She’s dying.” She pulled back from me quickly, almost seeming shocked by her actions as she stared at me accusingly. The tears that had just stopped were already pooling again in the florescent green of her broken eyes.

            “She’s going to die whether or not you kiss me.” I finally snapped, I couldn’t do the tears and watching her fall apart against me. I couldn’t because of my own selfish reasons allow the girl I loved to break inside and out while I stood back and watched. That wasn’t me, that wasn’t how I allowed things to play out.

            I could see the glare, the white-hot fury behind her eyes as I finished speaking. The way her lips set in a stony line and her body tensing under my hands, the way it wasn’t supposed to when it was me next to her.

            There were things she wanted to scream at me regardless of who could hear. The words echoing through both of our heads as she refused to acknowledge my nearly silent voice, nothing making sense and everything on an impulse.

            Everyone had told me we were the most impulsive couple, sometimes with a smile and sometimes with a scornful frown. Like I was supposed to fix her, I was supposed to keep her grounded or she was supposed to chain me down, but people didn’t understand. While they meant impulsive in a number of ways, it was never like they assumed. We were impulsive, we ran and did stupid things while laughing because we were together and no ones opinion mattered. As long as blonde curls spread across my chest as night then nothing else mattered. Nothing but the people who were there to bring her down, I didn’t care about the ones who hated me anyways, my skin was thick but my ears were still opened.

“Don’t touch me.” Lydia brought me back to reality, the fog of no sleep for nearly thirty-six hours had again pulled me down into the depth of my thoughts. The place people thought I didn’t have because everyone knew my name.

It wasn’t the first time I hadn’t listened to her giving me a warning signal and it wouldn’t be the last.

Her tiny hands had all but left me, searching for a place to go as she struggled to move away from me in the tiny space offered. The arm rest not helping one bit because she’d moved it up to cry into my shirt for the first three hours of the flight.

I couldn’t stop myself and I saw no need to, moving my hands up to cheeks without offering herthe luxury of deciding if she wanted me to. My fingers knotting in her hair and tugging her sharply to my lips.

“Louis-“ she started to mutter against me, her body struggling to pull back because she wasn’t running from me. She was running from the reality that would either consume her or set part of my beautiful girl free from the things she thought I didn’t see.

Kissing, it was just two people with their eyes closed and lips touching. Sometimes it escalated, sometimes it lasted handfuls of minutes and sometimes it was over in just a fraction of a second. It really wasn’t that interesting of a concept, and it’d been used to fill slots of times I wanted to forget about previously, which was why I was constantly reminded of what exactly I was dealing with when it was her. It wasn’t just kissing then, it was an emotional connection that had been built, shattered and somehow fallen into a messy pattern even more beautiful than the previous in just a matter of half a year. The love I felt for one person almost hurt at times like this, the seconds where I realized that she had involuntarily turned into my world. My life revolving around the gold in her hair, because she brought a smile to my lips even when hers weren’t pressed against mine. She was my beauty in the world.

“Don’t cry lovely.” I hushed a whisper against her, small and thin fingers brushing past the skin on the back of m neck and curling into my hair. Gravity couldn’t push us together, but in instances like that I questioned the laws of science that she spent her life preaching.

“I will never not love you Louis Tomlinson.” Her voice was rough and high, almost intoxicating as the thick sound of tears echoed through me. The soft hesitation of her hands against me were the last things I hope she remembered for the remainder of this god awful flight, as I allowed her to forget in infinite seconds of time.

Showing her only, just how much I loved her.

            Lydia’s POV

            “Shhh.” He cooed into my hair, his voice growing softer as he held me so tightly to him that I couldn’t feel any bit of space he didn’t occupy. “Almost there.” Louis’ accent was thick, his words almost confusing as tears caught in his throat but he wouldn’t allow them to escape.

            We both looked like hell, his hair messed up in confusing tufts of brown from all the pulling I’d done and the gel that had yet to wear off. The fresh tattoo on his back still remaining a mystery to me as he hadn’t complained once about it, even after I had mistakenly dug my nails into it in an effort to keep him tangible.

            Nothing had made sense since the call. Nothing had even been in my line of sight because it was all too blurry, the pain of losing the one being that had stuck behind me, my entire life almost seeming unreal because I’d put myself before her. I’d loved and lost her because I’d found him, and he’d taken over all the gaps that I was struggling to fill by myself.

            I was guilty.

The car came to a stop in front of the Zoo, my apartment that probably held a coco puff eating Cassandra was outlined in the skyline. The life I’d left nearly a month ago had already changed drastically, people and places seeming to have shifted because my perspective of the world had remapped into the blue in his eyes. The way he would hold me at night and smack my bum in the morning because he was irritating, and beautiful, and mine.

A door was suddenly flung open, my body dragged towards the entrance of the zoo and through the gates without so much as a look to anyone standing nearby and yelling at us. The actions not registering in my brain that I had flung the car door open and I was the one dragging Louis behind me because I wasn’t in control anymore.

            A light smattering of young girls screaming finally woke me up, Louis’ feet staying in place with mine as I sprinted to Nora. His red vans creating patterns against the spring of Seattle and a slow frown of realization crossing his sharp bone structure.

            He didn’t stop though, his palm only pressing farther into mine as I was now the one struggling to keep pace with him. His athletic nature once taking me off guard, but not again, not after I’d seen him take Liam down in arm wrestling and kick a nearly impossible goal during a scrimmage last week. Although there was no way I could keep up with him, our hands suspended between us, there was things he didn’t possess and it took only a second for me to tug him back through the enclosed fortresses that were empty habitats.

            Moving through the mazes of metal because I’d spent my whole life playing games in all the exhibits, both of us finally coming out the other side. Adrenaline flying through my and making it much easier than it should have been to stay in sync with him. Dark hair suddenly stopping short as fingers were released from my own and I ran without thinking into the onslaught of scientists that were crowding my Nora.

            “Lydia stop!” Someone shouted at me, the voice more familiar than my mothers as Cindy reached out and grabbed my arm. Her caramel hair held up in a messily crafted bun, lines of red running over her warm eyes as her soft hand held me back from the one thing I’d always clung to.

            “She can’t be in here.” One of the many men crowding the nearly lifeless body of my large cat stood up to speak. His hair pushed back much like David’s would be in thirty years, the scorn of a young child coming into his research lab evident in his wrinkled features.

            “Like hell she can’t.” Another person butted in, his voice sharp and final. The edge to my rough boy back again, and I almost feared turning around to see the expression on his face. Cindy’s eyes wide and worried as she looked between the two men, one finding himself superior because of an intelligence level while the other had constantly been undermined for the things he hid behind his tough exterior.

            “I’m sorry, I’m going to need you to take her away until the tests have been fini-“ the man started again, Cindy’s eyes losing mine as she stared at the dirt beneath her feet, understanding that she had to listen and knowing that what she was about to comply with would kill me.

            “Don’t fucking touch her.” Louis snapped, a familiarly rough hand pulling me back in a way that seemed careless, but he was blocking the blows. Pushing me against him as Cindy struggled with what she knew was right, and what her job had demanded of her.

            Either way, she knew she couldn’t make me leave.

            “Alright, this is enough. I didn’t think children were allowed on the premis-“

            “Her parents fund half the research here and her boyfriend is the highest donor!”

            “I’ll buy the damn zoo if I have to.” Both Louis and Cindy lost it together, shouting angry words that made no amount of sense to me because I hadn’t known this zoo was my parents and nearly Louis’. I didn’t know he could even fathom such large amounts of money, and with everything I had to worry about it almost finished severing the last tie to my grip of reality.

            “Victor and Cara Stavens? This is Nora?” Realization finally hit the man, his eyes widening in surprise as he looked between my best friend and I in a strange limbo. Of course everyone knew Nora, the cat that had been so severely injured as a baby that she would never run again, the cat that had befriended a small little girl with stupidly curly hair and fixed everything wrong in the world. The one thing in my life that had stayed, the one animal that I could trust with all my secrets, until Louis walked in at the right time and stood silent, just watching until I fell in love with him.

            Cindy’s POV

            “She loves me.” Lydia giggled, her innocence soon to disappear as the ten year old ran around her beautiful animal. The sanctuary as large as the young girl pleased because she wanted Nora to live, she wanted her to walked around the acres of land we provided and be as free as she would ever be.

            “She does love you silly goose, lots and lots.” I smiled, the messy headed blonde had only grown more beautiful with time. Her hair curling like her mothers in the color of the sun, green eyes sometimes hard to look into because she looked not just at you, but into your soul. Bright achievements yet to come of the small girl who would be a woman before we knew, her bed in my house occupied than her one at home.

            Brilliant parents understanding that they had a daughter, but sometimes forgetting that she was in her most important years of life without a family. To her, family was the snowy white creature that played with her and held her spirit beneath the fur that Lydia would fall asleep on.

            Time passing and snippets of conversation caught as I walked past on my trips to some odd end of business. The words as eloquent as the beautiful girl who grew up far too quickly, curves shaping her young body into that of a woman’s.

            First bras bought with me, my own children born when she was twelve and almost becoming the siblings she would never experience.

            Curly blonde hair becoming the center of every boy and man’s attention. Her mind too clouded with scientific figures to notice, but then of course she would one day notice. One day she would see that way they watched her smile when she was at her happiest, but none of them ever noticed the streaks of pain in her golden hair. The reality of having no one because she was secluded of her own doing, cut off from the world, but reflected in Nora’s eyes.

            There had been a time when I believed that no man would ever tame the spirit that encapsulated that beautiful girl. No one would ever see her for who she was, scars and pain and everything she every stood for marked into the small lines that made no sense and had no place against her lovely skin.

            That was my mistake though.

            She didn’t need someone to stop her from running, she needed someone to run with her and fly just as fast as she did through the colors of life.

            His dark persona almost seeming dangerous the first time I’d met him. The cocky, spitfire coming off as strong as he’d crafted it to be, and I thought nothing of it.

            Nothing until I saw how he watched her as though she was more fragile than anyone allowed her to be. His brilliantly colored eyes shedding the same amount of beauty as hers against the Earth.

            He had come as a pop star with too many problems to count, and he’d left much different. The fading images of his small frame shielding hers from whatever he saw that she didn’t would forever mark in my mind why he was and would forever be the only man worthy of Lydia.

            The love Louis felt for her had remained hidden the entirety of his stay at the Zoo, but I knew it was there. Sitting at the tip of his tongue as he realized he knew her more than she allowed, and waited patiently for the end he foresaw.

            She had admitted it to Nora though, long before she’d admitted it to him. Things he’d never know, but accidental conversations I’d heard in the silence of her worst battles.

            The amount of love between the pair almost unexplainable as I’d spend hours on the phone with her parents until they knew every last bit of their daughters life. Unknowing that they would again be put to the test, her entire life lost inside Nora’s stained blue eyes.

            “She’s going to be alright.” I nodded to Louis, his stance solid and his presence almost intimidating, not because he was famous, but because he could demand the attention of an entire room just because he radiated dominance in situations like this. His small figure in no way a disadvantage, in fact it almost made him more threatening.

            “She’s not ok.” His voice was soft and floated over the air in a melody, cracking slightly as the thick of tears overcame both of us.

            “Love is a hard thing to cope with once it’s lost.” I put my hand on his back, rubbing circles over the white shirt that displayed his misleading tattoos.

            He wasn’t as intimidating as he put on, he was just a man who cared deeply for not just her, but the life he felt guilty for allowing her to leave.

            “She wanted to be with you, she always wanted to be with you. Don’t blame yourself for allowing her the right to share a bed with you, don’t apologize for giving her something she could fall back onto because this would have happened with or without you Louis.” Tears lined my vision, my voice shaking as he caved under my hand. The strong man who cared about every bit of my Lydia nearly collapsed beneath me.

            Louis’ POV

            “You remember Louis don’t you Nora. I told you all about him, just like I told you all about the others. He turned out different though baby, he loves you too.”

            She was breaking my heart into pieces, her posture limp as she draped herself over the large animal. Holding onto her with small hands, curls falling in pieces and tears matting down the beautiful fur of a magnificent animal.

            “You know he wants me to move in with him, I thought he was kidding because I’m a pain in the ass, but he was serious. We could get a dog, you’d come too and maybe we could make you a house cat. Get a really large litter box.” She sniffled a giggle, my hoodie swamping her little figure and matching the black leggings that fell behind her like she couldn’t even bring herself to have any energy to move.

            “He told me he loved me when we were skateboarding, or he was and I was trying to learn. I didn’t learn very well, but he’s still trying to convert me. I told him I loved him too though.”

            Tears were pouring down my face now, the strong persona I was supposed to be was slowly dropping into the background because I was hearing the raw truth from her.

            “He loves you so much, and I love you so much Nora. You’re the reason I’m still alive and the reason I got to see his smile, and every bit behind my life now and I will live the rest of it for you Nora.”

            “I can’t.” Cindy choked from next to me, her hand falling off of my back and covering her red face as she turned away from Lydia and Nora to take a shaky breath.

            “Louis, Louis!” It was every bit of everything I didn’t want to hear from her, her voice hitting octaves of desperation as her fingers clutched what was left of the large animal that had grown up next to her.

            “Yeah?” I choked, my voice sounding foreign and broken as I looked to my only light in a collapsing universe.

            “She’s looking at you, she wants you.” Lydia explained frantically, her desperately green eyes pulling me to her as I stepped into the familiar pen and slowly approached the animal that had minutes left on this Earth.

            “Why are you leaving?” I frowned, catching her by her waist and pulling Lydia to me in questioning. The small girl had stood up, leaving a lasting kiss on Nora’s head before covering her choking sobs with her sweater paws and walking away.

            “Stay with her.” She smiled with only heartbreak in her beautiful eyes, only sincerity behind them. “I love you as much as I love her and I want you to be with her. I can’t do it.”

            That was what tore me apart, her wide eyes waiting for me to approach the animal that I’d had tattooed onto my back.

            Nora’s photo from Lydia’s desk mailed to me at my request, her beautiful face inked into the back of my shoulder as a reminder of what had given me the woman I’d never let go.

            “Nora.” I hushed, pressing my lips into the soft fur at the top of her head. Incredibly blue and haunting eyes watching me as the rise and fall of her started its slow descent.

The outline of Lydia crying into Cindy as both woman watched outlined in my vision as I fought for the ability to speak.

“Dammit Nora, thank you. Thank you for Lydia, thank you for taking care of her for so long and being there when I wasn’t. Thank you for keeping her alive and holding her secrets, giving her life and teaching her love. Thank you for shaping my beautiful girl, thank you for letting me have her and for everything you’ve done. I didn’t believe in things like this until you, I didn’t believe in bonds between animals that belonged in the wild, but I know you love her. I know you’ll love her for all of eternity, I know you’ll be there with us through everything because she loves you more than she loves me some days.

“You kept us together, you are the reason I was allowed love and I hope you can run as fast as you want and wherever you go it will be as beautiful as your spirit. There is no greater hero than you love, there is no greater soul than yours Nora.

“Thank you for loving her.” I couldn’t continue on, the breaths left in her slowly fading away until all that was left was what was left of my heart as held her head on my lap and slowly lost to the battle of sobs that ripped me open.

            Silence taking over and numbing me as I held the shell of an animal that had lost the long battle of life and died in my arms for her.

            “I love you.” She spoke brave and bold to everyone that was witnessing us now. People gathering because of a multitude of reasons, but only Lydia and I mattered. Only Lydia, the animal against me, and myself.

            “I love you so much.” I couldn’t even hear if my words were coming out, for once her small arms encompassing me in an effort to keep me together as everything Nora had done for us hit me like a thousand knives.

            All three of us tangled up in the way our lives were lived as the last of Nora’s love bottled up inside the two of us, and became the reason a lifelong legacy of love came to be.

A/N

This chapter sort of ruined me and broke my heart.... soooo there's that

ALSO THIS WEEKEND THE GIRL WHO I BASED LYDIA OFF OF... MY BEST FRIEND....AND I WENT TO ONE DIRECTION TOGETHER IN CHICAGO AND IT WAS AMAZING AS ALL HELL....

UNFORTUNATELY LOUIS WAS HUNGOVER AND SICK BUT HE WAS SUCH A TROOPER AND AMAZING AND HOLY SHIT HE IS SO MUSCULAR. LIKE I KNEW HE WAS MUSCULAR AND HAD BEEN BULKING UP BUT DAMN HE TURNED AT ONE POINT AND I TOTALLY SAW THE ABS OUTLINED IN THE BLACK SHIRT. ALSO HE KEPT HOLDING HIS MICROPHONE AWAY FROM HIS FACE FOR SOME OF HIS NOTES BECAUSE HE DIDNT FEEL GOOD BUT HE WAS SO AMAZING ANYWAYS.

AND HARRY FROLLICKED AROUND LIKE A PRINCESS THE WHOLE TIME AND HE WAS HILARIOUS AND DUMB AND ADORABLE AND HIS NOTES WERE INCREDIBLE ADN I COULDN'T BELIEVE HE WAS THERE. I LOVEEEE HIM AKDNAKLHWEJKR I HAD A TOTAL MELTDOWN WHEN HE BROUGHT THE LITTLE GIRL CAROLINE ONSTAGE AND I WANTED TO PEE AND IT WAS AMAZING AND I COULDN'T HAVE ASKED FOR A PRETTIER HARRY...... HE IS SO GORGEOUS

PLUS DAY AGTER LIAMS BIRTHDAY SOMEONE GOT TRAASSHED...... WASTEY PANTS. LIAM WAS ADORABLE AND NIALL WAS INCREDIBLY AND ZAYN WAS HOT AS HELL AND THE NOTES WERE AMAZING AND IT ROCKED AND I WAS SO HAPPY....

ANYWAYS THE IMPORTANT PART: I was nominated by my friend Tennille to do a youtube video challenge. So i'm going to film and upload it on wednesday... i'm so excited and sorta nervous!!!! AND you can see me and hear me and that's sorta weird.... soooo  if anyone has any questions for me to answer on the video please comment them on this paragraph!

ALSO IF THIS CHAPTER GETS 20 COMMENTS I WILL BRING THE GIRL WHO I BASED LYDIA OFF OF INTO THE VIDEO................ AND YOU CAN SEE HER HOT ASS TOO. 

Now she's going to kill me..... SO :) I LOVE YOU ALL 

VOTE COMMENT READ I LOVE YOU!!!

-Hannah