#the yearning these two grown ass men are doing is fueling me

[alliekitaguchi]

the craziest and saddest thing about orym thinking that his feelings are unrequited, is that i don't think it's that orym doesn't think dorian loves him in some regard. they're friends, they've been through hell together, they shared a living/sleeping space together for months. of course dorian loves him.

but orym doesn't think dorian's in love with him.

and that's infinitely more upsetting.

[aggresivelyfriendly]

~Meet Me In The Hallway~

Special thanks to my feedback leavers and my betas!

Love you @emulateharry and @nocontrolforlouis

Chapter 9-Sightseeing

I wandered down those paths most nights in those days. I’d think about what ifs all the time and I was painfully aware of my feelings. 

The way he looked at me sometimes....

 In the beginning they were filled with me climbing onto my self-created rack and stretching my feelings long and taut. I felt ridiculous.

My stomach fluttered whenever I saw him, and those days when we were reunited after stretches away from each other were particularly bad. I was, to quote the great Britney, not a girl, but not yet a woman, but my pubescent response to him was stupidly overwhelming. I was not a fan girl. I spent a tremendous amount of time with a bunch of dudes who had fan girls. They were treated like something apart, something more than human.

In my real experience, they were more human than human, they sweat and farted and bled freely and often. It pissed me off that Harry was able to reduce me to the fluttering mess he was. My only hope was that he was unaware. I could not imagine he knew what he did to me, or his flirty little touches and open self disclosures would be the cruelest lead.

If so, he was a mean master and I was pulled along on his leash.

I told myself, in those long early days, that he didn't mean any harm. From what I came to know of him, what I still believe I know of him, is that the last thing that Harry wishes to give to others is harm.

Even when he was a randy man child coming to grips with the spotlight and all of its privileges and pitfalls, I don't think he ever intended to hurt anyone. Least of all me. He liked me always, as a person and as a friend at least. I'm not exactly sure looking back when it happened. When it became more for me, when it became more. I knew better than to like a guy who was my friend.

It didn't work out. But, by the time we had rejoined the tour and I'd been welcomed back into Harry's arms and bed, I had feelings for him. Those bastards kept cropping up, like weeds in a well-tended garden. I took the time and spent hours tending to it, every night I would talk myself down. Phrases like:he could have anyone, you are lucky he cares for you like a friend, he always takes you in, don't ruin it, he's so much fun, don't miss out on that because of stupid tummy swirls, you know how this ends, don't do this again- those were my lullabies.

Every morning I'd wake up with him tangled around me. Spider arms wrapped around my neck, or shoulders or torso, and I'd be a willing fly in the web. We'd laze about, and have talks in the half-light or bright sunshine, depending on our jet lag and then we’d eat together. We were sharing at least two meals together most days, no one seemed to notice, but all that broken bread meant we couldn't help but be making something together.

He flirted too, and he was a horrible flirt, truly. Harry's hands found my body in almost every interaction that we had. Unknowingly while he slept, unconsciously while we played video games or ate, and purposefully when he hugged me hello or goodbye, dropping candied kisses on my cheeks as well. My feelings were confused, or I liked to pretend they were, and I didn't have the huztpah to ask him about his own. I feared his rejection more than the pain I was putting myself through. I would have missed him terribly had he pushed me into the hallway after I revealed myself. I may have been in his bed then physically, but emotionally I was standing in a long chamber between countless doors waiting for him to open one.

There had been times when he slipped, Freud level oppsies that kept me on his hook. I was his own big mouthed bass, gape open and waiting. Casual I love you's were shared-"I love the way you laugh, kick my ass, make fun of Niall, talk, smell."

I wanted him to love the way I tasted.

The near miss kisses we shared may have been a teasing taste had we ever collided. Those I thought of too, lying in white fluff, smelling the tang of his sweat and gradual pleasant sour of his breath. The scenarios I came up with started to ramp up after our wish fulfilling movie night. Before watching Wesley and Co. defeat evil princes, I had daydreamed about kissing Harry.

Sitting on my bed far far away, I had thought about what he would move like. Would I taste him or just the spearmint of the gum he chewed constantly? Would the mint cool my mouth giving me a bracing inhale that one time we went to the snow in New Zealand, freezing throat of like menthol with the fiery other being our lips meeting. Would the kiss be a peck followed by an awkward sputter as it flared out? Or, would mutual attraction be enough oxygen to cause a flare?  Would the tinder be rich enough that we lit up and were consumed? Would it lead to more, be an amuse bouche, a taste of things to come?

After he sat his bony hindquarters on me and leaned in so close, the daydreams changed. I was no longer some corseted heroine being taken by his Fabio-esque rakishness. All those fantasies I built from books still in my head were replaced by little realities. His nose glanced off of mine during our Eskimo kiss, so I could fill that in to my imagined scenario. His breath was minty, but the onion from his burger had a sharper bite when I tasted his breath. His hands did span the back of my neck doubly, one could wrap around my throat with ease. Up close the green of his eyes were translucent and the blue ring at the edge was pushed out when his pupils dilated. His lips tipped up enough around the edges so that they touched my own when he leaned in, long before the interiors were in danger of connecting. And when he spoke at that proximity they moved against my own like silk sliding over my hips, a snag or two on the dried pieces of skin Lou hadn't exfoliated off yet.

The new sensations to go along with my wishful thinking fueled my late night yearnings. It only got worse after that.

I tried not to think about him, not to give myself to him when I had no assurance that he wanted it. I'd go out and try to distract myself. But I had built habits around being hisbiis eyes in the cities he moved through without seeing.

I'd pass a bit of street art, graffiti, dude with a funny sign, ocean view, mountain vista, piece of kitsch, slice of Americana, and I'd snap it. Send it. I'm surprised my phone did not automatically forward pictures to him. All those algorithms failed me there.

Even now, when I'm in a new place, or see a new wonder, I capture it for him before I do for myself. Last week, before I headed out from Singapore for a week long work trip, my friends dragged me out to celebrate my new gig with a night out. After shots and dancing and karaoke, and more shots, I was in the Chomp Chomp Centre watching the late night hawkers, and all I could think of was how watching the life in this place would light up his face. The wonder he would have, his chin would tilt up and he'd stop breathing for just a moment, and then his eyes would cloud, gloss, and he'd close them to get ahold of his emotions.

Maybe now he had grown comfortable with how weepy he could be. I was always impressed with his deep feeling, how things cut to his bone so swiftly. The armor I wore blanketed me from my emotions and my natural inclination to introspection meant my feelings were only known to me, and then I'd dissect them out of existence. I did not possess his glass face, but I coveted it. I also loved to provoke the deep feelings when I hit upon something that moved him.  I knew this place, it's pace, would do just that. I could imagine him going from stall to stall, looking for the longest lines like a local. He'd want to share.

"Try it." His low tone would bring me in, his personal space my own as I tried to hear him over the din of drunken company men and metal spoons scraping woks.

In the beginning, I'd shyly open and receive his offering, a child at first communion. Near our end, I was more the naughty school girl hoping to seduce the new young priest. I'd suck his fingertips and look at him through my lashes. The dilation of his pupils and other measures of his mania for me I'd have studied like an acolyte. By the end I was more than ready for ordination.

I wondered what he'd put on his chicken rice, if his British sense of taste would be satisfied by the fragrance of the grain steeped in stock, or if he'd grown as much as me in his travels and would heap on the chili sauce. If he couldn't come with me, I wondered if the kisses we shared when I made it back to him would be spicy, and his lips would burn with mine from dual appetites.

I snapped pictures, for him, and long dead habits seemed to be surfacing. The three years since I'd last seen him erasing my consideration of him in my day to day life. I made a conscious effort to stop, I had taught myself to seek my own interests and pleasures. It was when I couldn't walk out without the banana sweet I realized I hoped to see him in Shanghai.

I don't even like banana.

The yearning for him is what I remember most. It was my constant companion. It’s shadow was long and dwarfed me when I slept in his arms but didn't have a room in his heart. It cast itself like it was noon when I was sure of my place, only to grow long in absence. When we were apart, the want of him was huge. It overshadowed me. I can't say it was the same for him. Our final separation saw my shade become greater than myself. It was so large, there was nothing left of me for longer than I care to admit.

I'm not sure I ever made such an impression on him. I suspect I was more like an amenity.

I am being unkind, especially to myself. He would be disappointed. I wish I did not care.

I'm still watching the back of his head as he makes his way away from me to the elevator, to the next place. He's surrounded by people, I can hear his voice and I know the tone. He is teasing the man with short hair beside him. I can't make out the words, but the guy’s tone is low and full of affection, he wraps his arm around a woman among them and I wonder if the affection is towards her or Harry. Probably Harry, he provoked that response in strangers, let alone people he liked enough to tease.

His fingers extend to press the call button and I am distracted by his long fingers. I've watched the skinny digits pluck away at a guitar and my nipples and my body twinges at the memory. My attention strays from his nail beds, still chipped with polish. I smile involuntarily that he still likes them painted until my eye drifts to the cluster of silver near the top of his palm. My breath catches.  He couldn't possibly still wear that ring. When his hand pulls back, the light catches the metal circle and I can almost read it. I know what it says. It was my wish for him while he was surrounded by chaos. It was what I hoped I gave him a measure of in the rooms we shared, a moments peace.

His head rises up, and the mirror next to the elevator doors catches his attention. My focus shifts to where he is looking.

He is looking at me.