ocean sequence: super rich kids with nothing but loose ends (1/3)
ocean sequence
title: super rich kids with nothing but loose ends
pairing: harry/louis, liam/zayn
rating: r
warning: au, language, drug abuse, angst, infidelity
word count: 13,875
a/n: thank you guys for the overwhelming support on the first part of the sequence, i can’t thank you guys enough and i really worked hard to get this part out to you as soon as possible. however the next part might not come as soon because i will be back in college and things might be hectic but you can follow my progress on twitter (eewilde) and tumblr (wilde--fire). credit to authors that inspired me: neruda, dickens, dia reeves, nabokov, siken, hemingway, o.wilde, tyler knott. credit to pieces that inspired me: mary oliver’s ‘wild geese’ is quoted as well as milan kundera’s ‘the unbearable lightness of being’ (which this part was sort of themed after) as well as isabelle’s ‘classics for dummies’ and malinda’s ‘tape ain’t gonna fix it’. the music i recommend you all to listen to during this is cinematic orchestra’s ‘arrival of the birds and transformation’ (there’s a great video on youtube that combines the two) and the ‘candy shop’ cover by the dan band. finally unspeakable thanks to the ladies that encourage me everyday, kendall, ash, ashley, gem, katy and all of you that left a comment! p.s. this part might be a little messy grammar/spelling wise because i was posting in such a hurry! i'll try to go back and catch any mistakes but i plead a little leniency.
--
“show me a hero and i’ll write you a tragedy.”
- f. scott fitzgerald
--
let us fathom the idea of eternal return.
that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. it is a purely physical concept, involving no supernatural reincarnation, simply the return of beings in the same bodies.
if every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as christ was nailed to the cross. it is a terrifying prospect. in the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make.
and so the world is divided into pairs of opposites: light/darkness, fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold, being/nonbeing. one half of the opposition positive (light, fineness, warmth, being), the other negative. lightness is positive, weight negative.
but many honorable things could be burdens: duty, sorrow, love for another person.
so is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
the heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. but in the love poetry of every age, one longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. the heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment.
the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
in contrast, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
what then shall we choose?
weight or lightness?
--
louis thinks to himself that he’ll stop being an asshole.
‘one day at a time’, he had assured niall horan, his best friend from a simpler time (back when he was straight and impressionable and nowhere as pretty). he begins with sunday mornings. naturally, sundays are a good day. he hardly ever talks to his agent, usually gets calls from his girls and his mum, and almost always spends time with harry styles.
harry takes sundays - the day of rest - very seriously because his older sister, gemma, doesn’t work and because sunday comes after saturdays and subsequently, saturday nights.
harry never goes out on sundays. so yeah, sundays are nice.
“hello, darling.” louis chirps without looking up from his moleskin when the front door to his london flat opens around 8 a.m. and harry strolls in, eyes and nose red. he’s carrying a small bakery bag of chocolate croissants.
louis has always been an early riser. he writes best when the world is a bright yellow and when his sunflower patch dances like a compass and when the boy in his bed has green-gold eyes that puts the yellow world and his sunflower patch to shame.
unlike most authors, louis has always been scared of writing in the dark. maybe that’s why his book tanked.
“hello. morning.” harry hangs up his beanie and his wooly pea coat, toes off his shoes, then enters the kitchenette, where louis is sitting by the breakfast bar next to an open window. he kisses louis’s brow and tries to slip his hand under louis’s thick cable-knit sweater, murmuring shyly, “you look very sweet in white, louis.”
louis laughs, “cheeky!” he’s very charmed but not while harry has vodka on his tongue, crack in his blood, and reeks of another lad’s gucci cologne. also because, “watch the spray tan, love.”
harry grumbles without any real irritation, moving towards the stove to take the kettle off. he pours himself a cuppa as louis lights a cigarette and starts skimming through the times - they’re doing a run of bizet’s carmen next month. he makes a note to get tickets; harry loves the opera house.
he flips the page and on the front cover of the athletics section is a blown-up picture of a handsome youth in uniform under a bold black headline that reads: britain’s new hope? he reads as much to harry, cigarette between his teeth, watching carefully for his reaction, “liam payne. didn’t you meet this fella last week? at that party?”
“were you spying?” harry’s red, red mouth (cherry red) furls obscenely into a smile.
“looking on lovingly.” answers louis in a voice like candy, “with a telescope.” he puts his elbows on the counter, pretending to study the grainy article with great depth, concluding, “he’s very pretty.”
harry’s gaze flashes over for just a minute before returning to his tea, “louis. you can barely make out his face.”
“yes, but he’s dating zayn malik and we know how that one likes his toys. he is quite lean and fit.” louis rests his chin in his hand, grinning sharply at harry’s white grip on his mug, “you shouldn’t tease him.”
“why?”
“if it came down to a fight, he could have you.” he flicks clever blue eyes down again, “says here he boxes.” it also says that liam payne’s swam across the channel and rowed with royalty and christ, louis half expects him to be carved by michelangelo.
“what’s your point?”
and louis doesn’t know liam payne but he’s willing to bet his trust fund that liam payne’d do just about anything for that pretty sweetheart of his (and vice versa). and louis knows romance when he sees it, the type that you would burn down a whole planet for (harry and him had that once, have it still, he likes to think at the best of times), and those aren’t to be trifled with.
he puts out his cigarette in a crafted ashtray, counting fifteen gold sobranie filters that don’t belong with his french gauloises and harry’s marlboro reds. he hops off the barstool and cups harry’s big pretty jawbone, purrs with a smile, “my point is: if anyone’s going to ruin you. darling, it’s going to be me.”
--
before we get into harryandlouis, here’s a little on how trust funds work:
a trust is a relationship whereby property (real or personal, tangible or intangible) is held by one party for the benefit of another. the concept was first developed by the romans, fideicommissum, which translates roughly into ‘testamentary trust’ meaning that they are created by wills.
there are over a dozen types of trusts. a very specific kind is called a ‘fixed trust’. in a fixed trust, the entitlement of the beneficiaries is fixed by the settlor. the trustee has no control over the actual funds. common example: (x amount is dispelled to y once they reach of age).
when louis’s nanna died, she left everything she had to louis because she adored him and this was a time before lottie and felicite and phoebe and daisy but it was never a thing to think about because louis was much too young to know anything about money besides the fact that his family probably had too much. his surname was attached to something significant and dreadfully dull, a long line of hereditary, nepotistic businessman.
then when louis turned 18, he came into the trust his nanna had left him when she died, which included a flat in london’s prestigious primrose hill, a vacation house in ibiza, and a good sized allowance dispersed to him monthly by a pleasant gentleman that works for the bank, stan.
this became quite handy once louis was cut off after meeting a certain harry styles, wide-eyed but not-so-innocent. it was fatal first attraction, or perhaps love at first touch, some would call it.
he had been barely legal and in a club, moving manically to the beat and commanding the attention of the entire room but sometime between the last four songs, he’s started to feel sticky and light-headed and went back to the booth to catch his breath. a low silky voice calls and the slender figure that stepped out the shadows had been awfully…young, eyes green like he could smell the money off louis’s styled hair and expensive rain slicker. he gives a dimpled grin, “you look like you need a booster.” he hoods his eyes, a bit shy, and louis’s ears rush (he’s very well practiced, louis thinks), “i’ll cut you a deal.”
“how much?” louis chimes and the boy rattles prices rapid-fire. louis takes this chance to take in his holey sneakers and floppy curls. and he’d looked a little too thin, bruised in some parts, but not too worse for wear. louis buys a gram from him, tells him to keep the change, then asks, “when are you done for the night?”
“when i finish unloading.” he smiles at louis in this curious, confused way, but still courteous. he sounds a bit nervous as well, like maybe he shouldn’t be talking to louis and maybe he’d be in trouble if he doesn’t get his work done come dawn.
“i suppose you’re done now then.”
louis took him to nanna’s flat that night and bought everything off harry styles. half a capsule of vicodin, an eight-ball of cocaine, and eventually, after a couple white lines and harry blinking owlish, pretty eyes, louis bought harry’s dignity too - or maybe he just took it, because he can’t recall to have paid for that…
following that, it was a whirlwind year of snorting white powder off harry’s lean, lithe body and trading an ecstasy pill between slick mouths and losing himself in dimples and curls and the space between harry’s laugh and greengreengreen, all this and more stretched towards infinity. he has this…this vision…of forever with harry. he thinks he can taste it and it’s as sweet as harry’s kisses on his shoulder.
but money was running out of louis’s savings account and harry was still on the streets so what was he supposed to do?
he wrote a book and he traded his soul for it and settled into a life of domesticity (where everything became so new, so solid, so…breakable) but traces of doubt from the old life (where nothing ever broke because everything was like air) remain; guilt and suspicion and fear. they had both sacrificed unspeakably precious things to trade for this freedom that suddenly feels more like a cage. they don’t know how to behave without the pretense that things might vanish in the next moment. so they play up emotions they’re supposed to feel; bliss and content and louis thinks they’re too good of actors, the both of them.
and the cold war rages on.
louis is going on 22 now. he most certainly feel older but not much wiser. and the only thing he can depend on is still his trust fund.
--
“how was ibiza?” harry asks quietly, tracing invisible patterns into louis’s caramel skin, his touch careful, unlike his teeth and arms and cock driving into louis’s small nymph figure just minutes earlier when he was a flexible length of molten heat, pinning his face into the mattress and fiercely taking.
on the dvd, casablanca is rolling but they’ve watched it enough to know the ending before it happens.
louis swings over to open the window and lights his cigarette; he thinks it’s what bogart would’ve done. blowing out smoke, he envisions milky blue waters, lapping waves on an ivory sand beach, a neat white cottage decorated with linen drapes, a whole collection of vintage typewriters, and bamboo mats. it’s paradise if such a place existed on earth.
he thinks he’ll take harry there. not now, but one day, when they learn to love each other properly.
he tilts his head, blinks invitingly, “come here and i’ll tell you all about it.”
“can’t you tell me from here?” harry rolls like an itching puppy around the bed, riding the sheets further down his hips.
“no.” he answers curtly then belatedly realizes he’s probably being an asshole (he told niall he’d stop doing that). feigning disinterest, he goes back to his cigarette. he’s been working on this new theory that if he maneuvers his tongue into the way he says certain things, he can spell out letters, the alphabet even, with the smoke. he’s quite fascinated with this idea: inhale oxygen; produce words. he’s in the middle of curling his lips around the letter ‘a’ when he feels slinky arms snake around his waist, it messes up his concentration so he stubs it out.
he turns so they’re face-to-chin, it seems like harry grows with the wind. and harry’s skin is sleep warm and his chest is orange from where louis’s tan rubbed off. he’s mildly annoyed but harry’s already got his giant hands on either side of louis’s face, demanding very patiently, “ibiza. tell me.”
“’s just another city, haz.”
“yeah. but it’s where you are.” and the implication is: it’s home. but the word has never had any meaning to them before so they don’t try to taint it now. they can’t label something they don’t have based on something they don’t know. harry presses his mouth to louis’s brow, voice soft and lush in his heavy plea, “describe it to me. i want to imagine you in ibiza.”
“it’s hot and sunny and clean. there are a lot of palm trees and there’s jellyfish watching…you would love it.” he sounds fond even to his own ears.
“that sounds nice, louis.” harry confesses - harry’s confessions always sound like honey, like warm silk - “i’m lonely, louis. i’m horribly lonely because of this love i feel for you.”
“i’m lonely too.” louis replies obligingly. he doesn’t say why. he clears his throat and says, “but i want to be alone when i’m there.”
“why? what do you do?”
he shrugs out of harry’s tight embrace, “to grieve. to repent. to write.”
“louis. please.” harry grabs his hand as he tries to slip around but harry’s looking at the ground, breathing hard and louis stops breathing completely. “you don’t have to do any of those things. not alone. i just mean…we did this together…to ourselves. we can undo it together, you know…”
he thinks he purposely forgets how strong harry is, how willing he is to always fight for them despite knowing exactly what kind of person louis is; flaky, quick-worded, spoiled. he forgets because it frightens him.
“but we didn’t do it together, did we? that’s the point. we both did it alone.”
“technicality.” presses harry.
louis winces but tries not to let it show. he tugs so harry’s hand will drop then goes to pull on his trousers and a loose shirt. he almost walks out of the room but he doesn’t want to leave the conversation unfinished, adding quietly, “darling. it’s only for the week. i’ll be back by friday.”
louis doesn’t invite harry to ibiza and harry doesn’t ask to go. they both know why.
“yeah. okay.” harry’s gaze is trained at the london structure and the evening glow. his face is sad and beautiful, stroked by sympathetic moonlight.
“i’ll take you to the opera when i get back, yeah?”
“yeah.” harry agrees as the air between them normalizes again, back to crackling banter thinly veiled with distrust. this is better, they know how to react around each other’s cruelty more than weaknesses. he finds louis’s crumpled pack on the windowsill and tucks one between his lips, questioning in a way that’s sharp yet flat at the same time, “lou? were you getting ready to go out this morning? you had your jumper on.”
louis tenses. his head replays last night, which is a rolling film of wanting to find harry and knowing where harry is but not wanting to see harry and a tall boy that’s good at running collapsing as the sun came up and he’s blonde and saving him had felt something akin to atonement.
he beams, and louis is all sparks, “cigarette run, darling.”
--
when louis was 14, his mother sends him to camp because the twins are at the age where they’re more monster than little girls and she really, really didn’t need louis standing around giving her teenage angst and sassy shade.
his mum decided that he needed to take up rowing (keep in mind this is around the time she saw one of the princes row for cambridge). so she enrolled him in the same summer academy sir steve redgrave went to. she buys him a whole kit of sleeveless, his own set of oars, specialized gloves. it all goes to waste because as predicted, louis is an atrocious rower - deliberately, of course, louis does everything with intent. mostly, he just refuses to play well with others and the only thing he expressed interest in were boat shoes.
“tomlinson, you twat!” his team leader is some bloke named nathan sykes and louis doesn’t like him because he seems to be prepossessed with the idea that he can tell louis how to row. so they’ve lost again to team b in their daily work out because louis’s strokes didn’t match up to the speed of the other lads. louis doesn’t give a flying fuck; the wind is dastardly to his hair and he needs a cigarette.
“goddamn it, some of us actually take this seriously. you think you can get special treatment just because your family’s got enough cash to fill this damn lake. but all our parents paid good money for us to train here. don’t ruin this for the rest of us.”
“please, sykes.” louis drawls flatly, rolling crystal blue eyes. “quit clucking at me like a mother hen. everyone knows you got sent here after you fell out of tryouts for the junior nationals.”
even at 14, he knew his words were his best weapon. and he had no qualms in using it to get whatever money doesn’t get him.
nathan sykes is obviously no different because he turns purple, fists shaking by his side (he expects nathan to hit him; he’s almost disappointed when he doesn’t). nathan just shakes his head, grits his teeth, “fuck you.”
“you would like that, wouldn’t you.” louis cracks back, sharp as a whip. and nathan glares at him fiercely, absolutely white with rage. he stalks off, but not before knocking louis onto the grass by ramming him with his shoulder. the rest of the team follows hesitantly like sheep, avoiding glances, and louis calls out cheerfully from the ground, “i hope you drown in my lake of money, you pompous fucker.”
at some point, louis knows he’s going to have to get up from the floor but for know, he just sits there because he fucking can.
“need a hand, mate?” he first hears the thick irish brogue then sees pale chicken legs sticking out of cargo shorts. he looks up, unimpressed, and it’s a lanky boy in a cap offering him a skinny arm. it’s not really the megawatt beam that throws louis off (although that plays a small part) but rather the temperate blue eyes wide with easy kindness. louis must’ve just been staring because the boy keeps his crooked smile, yanking him to his feet by his elbow - his palm is calloused, worn; it’s comforting like he’s used to taking care of things. once louis steadies himself, he remarks, “you really are a right twat, tommo.”
but it doesn’t sound reprimanding, just bemused, affectionate even. louis doesn’t really know how to respond to tones that aren’t exasperated or disappointed so he says, “thanks?” it’s for both the statement and the hand up.
“you’re welcome.” he readjusts his cap to reveal a shag of dark hair. he introduces by-the-way, “i’m niall horan. and the whole camp knows who you are.”
louis suddenly recognizes him as the leader of team b, a favorite among the trainers and well…everybody. he sees the appeal. he dust his hands off on his trousers, “well. sorry then. if the whole not-trying thing bothers you.”
“why would it? you’re the reason why my team’s been getting telly privileges all week.” niall laughs, effortless and loose. his eyes are very understanding, “it’ll go by a lot faster if you enjoy yourself. i don’t mean rowing. i mean we’re all here for the next month and people aren’t as bad once you get to know them.”
surprisingly wise because niall is, like, 11.
“how do you suggest i do that?”
niall shrugs, “you can probably start by stop being an asshole.”
louis doesn’t succeed, as it turns out ‘asshole’ is louis’s default setting; a factory defect most probably. but it’s a lot easier with niall around. everything is easier with niall around, even breathing is easier - it makes louis wonder how he ever breathed for 14 years without niall around to make the air go down his windpipe smoother.
niall doesn’t mind his complaining or his condescension or his hatred for ‘teamwork’ (louis doesn’t do ‘team’ or ‘work’). niall doesn’t mind all of louis’s sharp edges or lurking vulnerabilities (louis is secretly very sensitive). niall most certainly doesn’t care about louis’s money because the tomlinson’s lake is nothing but a puddle to the horan’s.
niall is also the first person he ever wrote for. louis wrote haikus, sonnets, prose, pertaining to niall’s cheeks and niall’s arms. he refuses to think he had a crush on niall, because once again, he reiterates, niall is, like, 11.
(now that he’s reminiscing, louis supposes he always did like them young.)
“never took you for a poet.” niall finds him one time under a tree after a rowing practice he skipped, huffing and throwing his oars down.
“never took you for a reader.” louis snaps, perhaps harsher than he intended. there’s heat crawling up his neck.
niall’s brow raise but then he puts louis in a headlock and tussles his hair furiously, fond, “asshole.”
“one day at a time.” louis promises, ducking out of niall’s much shorter grip. he puts his arm around niall instead as they walk up to the mess hall, thinking of rhyming lines of yellow bright incandescent sun illuminated and he asks smooth as caramel toffee, “nialler? have you ever thought of going blonde?”
--
deus ex machina (latin) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.
it is the worst nightmare of every writer but almost every writer falls victim to it at some point in their literature, first utilized by the great greek tragedian euripides. it is generally undesirable in writing because it does not pay due to the story’s internal logic and is often so unlikely that it challenges suspension of disbelief, which breaks a reader’s illusion of a novel reality.
but. it allows the author to conclude the story with a more palatable, amiable ending. it makes tragedies more optimistic with the promise of “cheerfulness” and “blissful delight in life”.
a deus ex machina, is what they summarized louis’s book in a nutshell and the scalding review is as follows:
tomlinson’s ‘universe’ is vivid and captivating, deeply rooted in stone and pain, through the first half, distinct in his clever use of prose and dialogue but the latter half crumbles like sand under the weight of expectations set early on by readers - tedious and time-consuming. while it has plenty of action, tomlinson spends too much time in distracting description for it to be truly enjoyable. the language becomes too grand for most audiences today and the disastrous ending tries to wrap a woeful telling into a distorted fairytale brings a bitter taste to the readers’ mouth.
final verdict: tomlinson’s attempt as the next shakespeare ends in defeat along with the dissolution of his ‘universe’.
--jay mcguiness, new york times
there’s a dozen more critics reiterating the same thing and a small handful that praised him, but those articles focused more on his family history and his personal life and well, louis guesses it’s alright if vogue likes it. fuck the new york times. fuck the telegraph. fuck the guardian.
because even if the media didn’t love louis’s book, they most certainly love louis. and why wouldn’t they when louis wears fame better than most people wear armani. so louis might not get a nobel prize for his novel but he gets notoriety, he gets a spotlight, and he gets a big fat check with his name on it.
but legend has it, whispered in dark ears into darker minds at writer’s gatherings and novelist conventions, that the universe was very nearly not published. they say head editor, caroline flack, predicted with titanic certainty, “the book will sink”, but she made louis an offer anyway. evidently, an offer he couldn’t refuse.
and they say this is what happened: louis tomlinson gave harry styles in exchange for the ‘universe’, he traded darling and green eyes for a book and green money; this-for-that, quid pro quo.
this is all just a legend, of course.
--
part two