Sucker For A Little Devastation | H+L | Z+Li | E | 102k+ | WIP | Ch.32/? |
Louis Tomlinson is very good at bad decisions.
Sleeping with a closeted right-wing politician? Bad decision.
Letting said politician bankroll his life while quietly ruining it? Worse.
Falling for the screaming British poet he meets on a beach after a protest goes sideways? Catastrophic. Especially when the poet believes in astrology, Shakespeare, handwritten notes, fate, and looking at Louis like every ugly part of him is a language worth learning.
Harry Styles came to Los Angeles grieving, untouched, and one disconnected voicemail away from screaming at the moon. He did not plan to fall in love with a defensive, filthy-mouthed footballer with a black eye, a secret politician, and emotional walls tall enough to require air traffic control.
Unfortunately, Harry is very brave. And Louis is very breakable.
Around them: Zayn, Louis’ beautiful, volatile emotional support human, is trying to survive being loved properly by Liam, a rich, steady romantic with terrifying patience and excellent arms. Together, they form the world’s least qualified found family: part recovery group, part crime scene, part dinner party, part gay panic incident report.
There will be poetry under doors. There will be religious trauma. There will be political rot. There will be football, drugs, bad choices, worse coping mechanisms, and one bender in Chapter 10 that should legally require a waiver.
A queer ensemble romance about learning the difference between being wanted, being owned, being saved, and being loved.
Louis stopped but didn’t turn all the way around. Harry was still kneeling in the sand, hair wild, mouth pink and swollen, hoodie twisted askew from Louis’ hands. He looked wrecked. Louis’ heart bucked hard enough to bruise. “I didn’t get your number,” Harry said. Then, quieter, more dangerous for the way it stripped him clean: “What if I want to see you again?” Louis looked at him and saw all over again how this would go if he let it. The wanting. The tenderness. The way Harry would hand him pieces of himself and trust him not to drop them. Louis had dropped far less precious things. So he reached for cruelty dressed as cleverness, because it was what he had. “You said you believe in fate,” he called back. “If you’re right, you’ll see me again.” Harry stared at him for one beat. Then smiled. Those dimples punched Louis square in the spine.
