borrowed blood is not a sin

they decided to go on an impromptu trip, while the weather was still nice.

paris is where they chose, where things were a little more grand than everywhere else, more romantic. parisian skies had a special air about them, much bluer than anywhere else he'd seen, almost so blue that the color dripped onto the tangible things in the world. it reminded harry of louis' eyes.

he envisioned paris as a place with flowers, waltzes, bakeries, unicycles, carousels, and horse-drawn carriages, but it was denser and busier than he thought it would be. not very different from england, save for the unfamiliar language. he was the type to pick up languages quickly, and french was not an exception. of course, he wasn't completely fluent, but he was competent enough in it to get around without issues. it looked and sounded beautiful, he thought. maybe he'd write a song in french someday.

though paris won favor in the end, the two were heavily considering rome or venice, because louis had wanted to see more historical structures. it'd inspire him, he said. but when harry added that they could visit versailles on the last couple of days they were there, it was decided, without a hitch. france, it was.

it was actually quite the struggle to get louis to agree to go on yet another trip; the second time in just six months. he was used to simply not travelling at all, seeing no point to spending such money on memories that would be so fleeting. if it were up to the older boy, he would just spend days off pent up at home, reading, or writing, or reliving. harry, on the other hand, was the type to travel whenever he could, which was not very often, truth be told. things would get in the way much more quickly than he'd be able to anticipate, causing his plans to fall apart in his arms.

it was louis' presence that resparked these sentiments, making harry's restlessness just that much more prevalent. he was chasing inspiration, in a sense, while also hoping to give the whole world to louis. if he couldn't pluck the sun out of the sky to match louis' brightness, then it would be the world that they'd cull.

and it indeed was a catalyst for expression, both boys discovered. louis found himself absorbing the scenery around him in the most romantic, most poetic ways so that he could write about it later. he took shitty pictures with his phone so that he'd have at least something semi-palpable to work with. harry, too, had lyrics plant themselves in his notebook out of seemingly nowhere. he brought one of his guitars along, just in case louis had a bad night, or there was just something he he had to transpire as a result of the parisian atmosphere, with its bells and whistles and fountains and everything.

something about seeing the ocean boy tread on the stone brick streets, studying fruits from the farmer's market, and getting excited about hand-painted jewelry struck something special inside of harry. the boy, who was usually so unconfident and forced himself to shrink unnaturally in crowds, looked so free amidst everything. it was magical, like other pedestrians sensed his aura, parting like they were the tide and he was poseidon. or, at least, that's how harry imagined it.

they bit into thin tubes of honey and slurped them dry, leaving their lips sticky with the substance, gold-tinted and fresh and sweet. the sun beat down on the city relentlessly, but not in a way that was stifling like it was on certain days in london. more like a gentle ache they could feel ebbing at their skin, so gradual and unnoticeable.

ever since that night, neither boys spoke of the issue of sex again. they woke and it all was gone, anchored in the night before and far too heavy to bring up again. harry tried, he really did, but the ocean boy would just brush it away, walls all the way up, made of reinforced steel and even another layer of bulletproof glass.

however, in hindsight, louis started talking more than he did before. he still avoided emotional dumping and unnecessary bitching, but letting it all out was cathartic, almost in the same way that bleeding had been. before, he'd imagine himself draining the impurities by opening his skin and siphoning them out, but it had grown less and less necessary with harry by his side, he realized. even writing became something of an outlet, a place where he could bleed without tearing open his skin like before. he began writing poems alongside his novel as just an experiment, but grew attached to the ab libitum of the words, concise yet complex.

he thought about helping harry write his songs at times, but always dismissed those ideas like they were nothing but tainted and intrusive. harry's career was his own. he didn't want to become so controlling of a partner that he'd assert himself as a part of every single element of harry's life. there had to be some extent of detachment from both sides. he didn't want to sabotage harry's success with his ridiculous schemes, anyway.

but it continued digging at him as a persistent dream, despite him swearing to himself that he would never bring it up.

"you know," louis said, playing with harry's fingers on the balcony of their hotel. it was less in the heart of paris and more bordering on the edges, where just a few minutes of driving would take you past the parisian ways of speech and thinking. less soft around the edges and more crisp, like someone had upped the contrast of an image, but the image was unending and extended past the horizon. "you know, jean was french. vautour was his last name, or, uh, is his last name, after all. he spoke some, at times, though i never knew what any of it meant. i'm curious, now. i wonder what kinds of words he whispered in my ear."

"nothing that mattered," harry said pensively. "not anymore, at least."

"nostalgie de la boue."

"what?"

"'yearning for the mud.' attraction to the depraved, the ugly, the demented. it's the only phrase i know in french other than je m'appelle louis."

the younger boy rolled his eyes fondly. "of course you only remember the poetic things. most people would learn how to ask where the bathroom is, first, no?"

"i guess so. but i like that kind of thing. i'm also not much of a history person, but things like the french revolution are quite fascinating. morbid, yes, but fascinating."

"you're an edgy fuck, you know that?"

there was a person passing beneath them on a bicycle, ringing its bell, as louis' eyes gleamed and he responded. "you love me, though?"

"of course."

that afternoon, they went to the sainte-chapelle. louis found himself taken by it, stained glass arching over them, with its purples and greens and reds. he'd seen it in pictures before, but the height of it in person, he realized, was really something else. the ceiling was higher than anything he'd ever seen, and candelabras adorning the walls. looking up mimicked looking through a kaleidoscope. matthew would have liked this, he thought.

like harry could sense the memories of the pocket bible seeping into louis' mind, his grip grew stronger around the boy's fingers. the walls pictured interpretations of the bible, stretching from the western bay of the north wall with genesis, all the way to the south wall.

it was odd, how prevalent religion was in his life, despite not being religious. he'd tried to worship before, at the request of matthew, but he could never bring himself to. what is god to him, when visions of the bible cascaded his nights?

"ah," harry exclaimed. "i've been trying to remember this quote for the entire morning. finally got it."

"oh yeah?"

"'man is free at the instant he wants to be.' it's a voltaire quote. you said you liked the revolution, yeah?"

"took you all morning?" louis laughed, scooting closer to harry as they walked beneath the fragmented light.

"not everyone's vocabulary is entirely just quotes from dead white guys."

"we'll all be dead white guys at some point."

they returned to the hotel that night with the taste of whipped cream and crepes clinging onto their teeth and tongues. oddly enough, louis did not feel the unpleasant weight from sugar pulling down on his insides and begging him to set it free. it was instead a peaceful fullness; a feeling that he used to take for granted. parisian summer nights smelled of expensive cheese and expensive wines. by late in the evening, the city was still bustling; street musicians clanging their pots and strumming their makeshift guitars, couples doing the tango along well-lit sidewalks next to bakeries. a bit too much for louis to handle after a long day, but romantic nonetheless.

louis tried to convince harry, as well, to perform for people on the streets. that he'd find success lingering in some corner, and maybe even assert his name in a french record label. harry, however, just laughed and brushed it off. he did bring his guitar on the trip, as he did everywhere. having the bag slung over his shoulder, louis remembered, made him look extra attractive. maybe he'd learn someday and adopt the same calloused fingers of harry's that he loved so much.

he couldn't sleep that night, but it wasn't nightmares that kept him awake, rather, it was wanderlust. maybe it was because the city fell from lively to tranquil past one in the morning; he had this urge to go out and get lost, in a country whose language he didn't understand, roads he didn't recognize, people who didn't recognize him.

not the type of wandering that he usually experienced (the type that told him his dreams would be more pleasurable if he slept on train tracks), but instead function as a real need to explore. of course, he would run the risk of getting jumped, but he figured that it would be less dangerous than his usual flirting with thoughts that asked him if the world would really care if he were gone.

by that, he rolled out of bed, slithering out of harry's arms, who had still been breathing deeply and sleeping soundly. it'd been a busy day, after all. it was comfortably cool for a night in july, slight breeze blowing hair from his face, exposing his soft forehead to thin light. he was eerily aware of each step, the way the rubber bottom of his shoes made contact with the ground, heel to toe, heel to toe.

he decided not to wear a jacket when he looked out the window and the streets were empty. his arms would be out for show—but this was a country where he knew no one and no one knew him. it was okay, he figured, to flaunt his vileness for one day.

even before he cut so heavily on his arms, he always wore modest clothing that covered him to his ankles and hands. he hated how flabby he was, how he could feel his thighs brushing against each other no matter how underweight he was, or how hard he tried to form a valley between them, how his upper arms were soft and clearly separable from bone. anything that wasn't bone, he decided, was inherently impure.

he never even showed his arms, or, more accurately, much of any part of his body to harry. there'd been accidental discoveries, but never intentional. harry didn't mind; he didn't so much as blink when louis left the room to change, but both boys could sense longing that stemmed from green eyes; not the predatory type, but the desire for louis to trust him enough to just take off a jacket in front of him.

walks at night in paris were radically different from his afternoon strolls in london. the streets were quiet yet the lights were alive, the people still around did not look busy, instead destinationless but not lost. he figured he was one of those people.

even the stars looked different, he thought, or maybe it was just his imagination. they were larger and further apart, like heavy raindrops. was paris closer to the sky, after all?

he strayed further than he meant to, mindlessly, when he realized that he had his notebook with him, but not his phone. his surroundings looked familiar yet foreign at the same time, like he'd seen it only in dreams. streetlamps shone a yellow-orange onto his face and his paper, dyeing the cold white into something warmer, more digestible, more alive.

he sat without looking for a bench, wincing as he felt his bones sink into jagged pavement. beside him was a drainage hole that led to a large sewage system. he always wondered what he'd find and what would become of him if he were to crawl in and never out again. a pleasant place to pass, he thought.

he wrote. he wrote and he never felt so small in his life. this time, the smallness was unmatched—despite being in the middle of a street, people simply walked around him like he wasn't there. it was humiliating but at the same time, liberating.

there were women with thin thighs in tight leather jeans staggering along walls drunkenly, so louis wrote about them. there were teenage girls with colored hair holding hands with men much older than them, and louis wrote about them, too. there were stray black cats digging through dumpsters, presumably to find their next meal, and, about them, too, louis wrote.

there was a girl sitting on the edge of a fountain in the middle of the plaza, reading. it was hardcover, with no book jacket (which louis believed to tell a lot about a person, whether they keep the book jacket or not), dark, bound by white thread. the contrast between the colors made the book almost seem like a shirt mistakenly turned inside out. dickinson's best poems, the cover read, in gold text.

she leaned so far back that louis worried she would slip right into the cold water. she was thin, unnaturally so, deathly so, so much that there was no way that her level of thinness was in any way healthy. seeing her bony thighs not fill the already tiny legs of her pants made louis want to throw up. not because her appearance was disgusting, but because the idea of someone else suffering in the same way, or maybe even worse than he did, was sickening. it screamed that he wasn't sick enough, that he was never sick enough, that he was never thin enough to be sick. he hated his body as it was now, with the erasure of all the work he'd put in to make it sharper and more acceptable to his own dizzy standards.

he wanted to go up to her and ask her if she was okay, but had a feeling that in doing so, he'd present himself as a terribly rude foreigner. not to mention, he didn't even speak the language, and would just come off as a blubbering maniac.

so he remained hunched over with his knees to his chest, still relishing the uneven pavement as it bore into his skin. the sun was already up when he snapped back into reality, feeling judgmental glances of city-goers as they passed by, some kicking him in the back, whispering about him in french. he remembered his bare arms out in the open, and normally, he'd shrink in shame, but the sun was so bright and so hot and so oppressive that he didn't care. he didn't lose track of time by falling asleep on the street, but was rather so taken by his notebook that he failed to notice anything else surrounding him. people-watching, as he saw it, was something completely separate from actually being present in the moment. he wondered if he was ever really present, under that logic.

he was met by a worried harry when he returned to the hotel. light was spilling in from open curtains against sloppily-painted white furniture and beige walls. harry, whose eyes were filled with sparks of anger to mask his fear, stood immediately from the cracked-leather sofa.

"where the fuck were you?" he growled.

"i…" louis breathed, scrambling to cover his arms with anything he could find. some of his cuts were far too new and far too red to slip harry's notice if he wasn't careful. "i couldn't sleep. just went to, uh, just went to go on a walk. get some fresh air, you know?"

"do you understand how it felt to wake up with the bed cold and house empty?" harry's voice broke, "your phone was still on the bedside table, you didn't leave a note, nothing. you could have been dead for all i know."

"i'm sorry. i intended to get back before you woke up but got distracted. i was… i was out. writing. people-watching, you know?"

"i guess so." the younger boy sighed, softening, brushing the tears out of his eyes. "i was just scared, that, you know…"

"i know. i'm sorry for scaring you." louis looked down as if he were a small child caught in the act of something naughty.

"it's alright. just write me a note next time, yeah?" harry paused, "lou, your- your arms."

he winced, cursing himself for not bringing a jacket with him, and being so stupid to not get back before harry awoke. "oh, um. sorry. i, i just forgot to wear another layer out. sorry you had to see that."

"that's not, that's not the point. i just didn't think- i was just surprised at how, how recent some of those look. i mean, i know—"

"yeah. sorry. it's less than usual, though. i'm getting better, haz. i promise. they're from a few days ago." and it was true; despite their angry red color, they were hardened and scabbed over, rather than soft crimson surrounded by blue that he'd usually find. "i, it's okay. i actually, um. i finished my novel. i just have to get it all down on a word document and submit it as a manuscript. but it's all written."

worry still stayed prominent in harry's features, but they'd receded a little, replaced with glowing pride. "i'm proud of you! i can't wait to read it, love. you're going to blow up, i feel it."

he shifted in discomfort, still not used to the flurry of compliments that always came out of harry's mouth, despite how often it happened. "it's- it's not that good. i don't even know if i like it. i have to go back and fix it."

"however it turns out," harry said, "i know it'll be good. because you wrote it. and i have trust in your writing ability. someday, i hope you'll help me write a song."

the ocean boy's eyes widened at this, like he couldn't believe what he heard. "you mean that? like, actually?"

"of course. only if you don't mind, though."

"i've actually been wanting to. i've been writing poems, and to hear that come out as a song would be incredible. as long as you like what i write, though. i don't want to drag you down and sabotage your career."

"never," harry smiled, all remaining tension escaping his deep-set eyes, "never."

"have you read anything by emily dickinson?" he asked, thinking back to the thin girl against the fountain. he winced a bit at the image of her illness (she, herself, was the face of illness, he thought), but nevertheless tried to focus on the loosely-bound book.

"some bits. i'm not much of a poetry person."

"ironic, coming from you, being a songwriter and everything. is song not just essentially poetry?"

"that's why i'm asking for some of your help in the lyrics department. i was never great." harry shrugged, still smiling. "the one i remember most poignantly, though, is hope is the thing with feathers. short, easy to read, straightforward. and romantic."

"suits you," louis breathed, "hope."

"you too, to be honest."

"no. no way. i'm quite the opposite."

"have a bit of faith in yourself," harry said, pulling the smaller boy closer to him, stroking his scabs with a single index finger, eventually tracing the rest of the scar on his arm, even the smooth, white ones. "things get better."

"that's what they always say."

"they do, though. have they not?"

he thought about the progression of the past months he'd been with harry. he pursed his lips, this time not to mask his pain, but instead mask his shyness. "they have, i guess. you're right."