☆
[y/n]

_

I HATE HIM.

No, I want to. I want to hate that smile on his face when he kissed me, and I want to hate the way he walked out of the room as if it never happened. He makes me feel like I'm nothing sometimes—when really he makes me feel like I'm everything, and it's that confusion that I hate.

I fell in love with his memory, and now I'm seeing the truth right in front of my eyes.

"I don't know who I took you for," I seethed, storming out of the laser-tag establishment with fire in my blood, "but I never thought you'd be a cheater."

Louis was avoiding eye-contact with me.

"No, you don't get to be silent," I snapped, "you ran your mouth off in there, and the second something important happens, you act like you don't know how to speak."

"I know how to speak," he said quietly.

"Oh, you do? Great, then explain why you kissed me."

I'd never been more thankful that we were alone on the pavement, because I could yell my mouth without being scared that someone was listening. I was fuming right now, and I didn't want to hold any of it in.

"Do you want the truth?" Louis asked, meeting my gaze for a fleeting moment.

I frowned. "Are you implying you'd lie?"

"No, I'm asking if you want the truth," he said, his voice raising, "because I'm not going to give it to you unless you put your own truth out on the table."

What was he talking about?

"Are you trying to make a deal?" I scoffed.

He shrugged. "Guess."

"Fine, deal."

There was a pause, where he stared at me silently, the hood of his jumper pulled up over his head so that it cast a shadow over his eyes. The sky was turning a shade of red—hellic shadows surrounding the place we stood.

"Swear on it," he said curtly, holding out his hand.

I glanced at his extended pinky, analyzing it for any mock. Was he messing with me again? I knew promises weren't things he liked to keep—otherwise he wouldn't have cheated on his girlfriend a few minutes ago.

I held out my hand. "Truth, and nothing but."

I made a point of standing my ground, making sure he was the one who had to cross the distance between us. When he wrapped his finger around mine, I glanced away, trying not to give into the feeling of his touch.

"Truth," he whispered, before letting go, "I don't have a girlfriend."

I scoffed. "Are you being serious?"

"Yeah, I am. I only pretended I had one, because I wanted you to be jealous," he explained hesitantly, "and also, because I wanted you to admit to this."

He took a step back, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his trousers, before pulling out a thinly-folded sheet of paper. I recognized the writing immediately, and my heart wanted to shrivel up and die.

"So what is it?" He asked, nodding to the paper, "dark magic? Voo-doo?"

I wrinkled my nose sarcastically. "Oh, yes, because I'm secretly an elderly sorcerer."

"I asked for the truth, not sarcasm."

"You don't get to ask for anything," I snapped, "I decide what you get to know, and in what order."

Louis shifted his stance defensively, casting a glance around the area. The tension was thick around us, and if it was visible to the human eye, it would feel like a coursing ocean of indescribable feelings.

"It's a shifting script," I began to say, exhaling nervously. I could tell Louis was hanging onto my every word. "Shifting is where you can transport yourself to other realities when you sleep."

Louis opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

"What you're holding—sorry, what you stole—is the script I wrote for the reality I wanted," I said, "that means whatever I wrote down on that paper would end up happening when I reached my DR."

"DR?" He asked.

"Desired Reality."

I told him as much as I could, trying to explain things so he wouldn't get confused. I told him about Cheeky, Neverland, and Wonderland, and he eventually became silent throughout the whole thing. Strangely, I swear I saw him nod in understanding when I described the other shifts—almost as if he was remembering them. But no, that wasn't possible.

After I finished, there was a moment of silence.

And then he started laughing.

Doubling over himself, holding his stomach as he giggled to the ground. I felt like a laughing stock. An idiot. I felt like I was unimportant and I felt like I was wasting my time.

"Go to hell, Louis," I spat out, spinning on my heels, "I can't believe you."

As I strode away from him, I heard his laughter cease, and his footsteps start to quicken.

"Tewks," he called after me.

"Don't call me that!" I yelled back.

"[y/n]!"

"Don't call me that either!"

There was a pause, and his footsteps stopped, so I assumed he'd given up. Good, I didn't want to see him or hear his voice ever again, because I felt like I'd lost every bit of connection with him. But I was nearing the edge of the block when he yelled one last time.

"Skipper!"

And I froze.

Skipper...no, no that wasn't possible. That was the name he and the lost boys called me in Neverland. Skipper? No, he couldn't—God, no.

"What did you say?" I choked out, slowly turning around.

"Skipper," he said again, a smile on his lips, "the first time I called you that was because you kept disappearing, and look at you now, you're still trying to run away from me."

"I never told you that," I said, my voice starting to shake, "I never told you that."

"I'm the one who made the name."

"No, don't even start, did you read the other pages?"

My heart was pounding. He couldn't have—no, it wasn't even a possibility. Hearing that name was like hearing the voice of a voice lost gone, and in this specific case, a life already lived.

"No, [y/n], I didn't read the other pages," he said.

"Then how the hell do you know that?" I yelled, storming up to him.

I grabbed the collar of his jacket, my blood racing with what felt like fear and anger, and all I wanted to do was shake it out. I stared up at him, locking my gaze with his hazel eyes, and wanting to curse him for being the reason I felt both love and loss in a matter of months.

But then he smiled at me—not just a smile, but one that told me that he understood—and placed his hands over mine. In that moment, all the anger I felt washed away from my skin, and my heart was left out to dry.

And I snapped.

The next thing I knew, I was crying into his shoulder, my arms wrapped around him like I was suffocating without his touch. I hated crying. I thought he'd freeze or back away, but he didn't. He just held me back tighter, falling down with me when I slumped onto the ground—and we just fell there, loving and lying together in the ocean of feelings we'd created.

"I remember everything, Tewks," he whispered, his head resting on mine, "everything."

I couldn't tell if my heart was breaking or soaring. "You're lying to me."

"I'm not lying."

"Then tell me something that only you'd know," I sobbed, my eyes blurring with salty tears, "tell me the truth."

There was a moment of silence, where I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head. Round, and round, and round they went, reminding me of us—running, and running, but always finding our way back. Life mimics love.

"Every time we met," he finally whispered, "we watched the stars."

I kept listening.

"I never told you why, but the truth is...." he continued, "I took you to see the stars, because I wanted you to see the thing you remind me most of."

"A star?" I asked quietly.

"A star."

There was another moment of silence, but neither of us minded. A star, he said. We watched the stars every time we met—on the rooftop of his house, from the depths of a pool beneath a dying cave, and from above the trees in a forgotten land. I never knew why until now.

"You remind me of the sun," I whispered back, drying my eyes.

"The sun is also a star, so that means we're both stars," he smiled, "that means we're the same."

"What do you mean?"

"That dream? Or shift, or whatever you call it, I lived it too," he explained, resting his forehead against mine, "I don't know why, but every time you shifted, I dreamed with you, and whatever I said to you I meant."

I shook my head. "That's just how I scripted it."

"So you're telling me you wrote every single line of dialogue, and ever feeling, and every action I made?" He laughed softly, "no, Tewks, you may have put me in a story, but I was the one who kept it going."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I don't care that you shifted, because it gave me the chance to meet you," he said, holding my hands tighter, "and it...."

He stopped himself, glancing off to the side.

"And what?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said, pulling me into a hug, "I just want to live in this forever with you."

I wrote our story on the pages of a notebook, not expecting him to live it with me. The words I used to create our lives meant something in his life as well, and as crazy as that sounded, it was true. And his words mean something as well.

Forever.

With me. 

_

hello! just checking in!
I know this chapter was
emotionally draining, so
I want to make sure you're 
all doing fine :)

drink water! love you all <3