the crooked smiles and ||p.|| worn out miles between us

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 300px; height: 200px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify]ooc; I suppose the age they are now. And I can start! c:

I had been watching him from my window for a few years. Not in a creepy way, just a casual way. Okay, maybe I was a nosy neighbor, but I couldn't help it. We lived on the outskirts of London in a good neighborhood, so nothing ever happened. So I had no choice but to watch from the kitchen window. He was the boy across the street a few years ahead of me with the blue eyes and the perfect smile. His teeth were straight, I knew that because one time he came over asking for flour. He had a nice voice on him too. Sometimes he sang to himself when he took the trash out.
When he sat out on the porch for a smoke, that was when I was the most in love. He had his cigarette in one hand and his phone in the other. When a car would drive by, he would look up to watch the car go by, but I kept my lights off so I wouldn't get caught. It's really creepy, I know.
Occasionally he would bring a girl home. I didn't ever really mind it. She was a beautiful girl, and I always thought they would be a good couple. Of course, deep down inside I did feel a little weird about it. Didn't know why I really felt like that, so I pushed it down and down every time i would catch them snogging on the front porch in front of the dim light from what my stepdad called the "porch torch". They always had the weirdest things around their house. (like a fairy garden, which I would later learn was for his youngest sister and brother for when they were born, made by the other sisters.)
I learned later on her name was Eleanor. My mum and his mum don't actually get along very well at all because of an incident that happened before I was born. My mum told me when I was making some toast (an excuse to watch him sitting on the front porch holding hands with his girlfriend) that his mum, Johanna, was going to let the two move in together.
Of course, Eleanor was just a phase like all the other girls he would bring in on the weekends. Again, I never paid attention to any pda he would share with them, until things changed.
One night he brought a boy home.
I stood in the kitchen watching them with a "twang" on my heartstrings as they snogged, Louis being pressed up against his car. His beautiful black car with the loudest engine on the block. That's how I always knew he had come home. All I had to do was hear that loud engine and then it was showtime.
After that, I knew it was game on for me.[/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 400px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] "Dah, shit." I mumbled, seeing him looking back at me, his eyes red and puffy, him taking an occasional drag of the cig. His hand dropped down beside him as he looked back across the street. I felt a wave of embarrassment rush over the beach of pity I had for him before. I was making a batch of cookies for my older sister coming home from college this weekend, and then I had just happened to catch him on the porch again. I guess I could just take this batch across the street and make the second batch for Gemma..

To tell the truth, after the day he had come over with hickies marking his neck and upper shoulders, I had lost the same infatuation I had with him before. The boy he was with was always over, and I had given up the feelings I had pushed down. Never dealt with them, so I didn't bother getting to know those feelings on a more personal level, to be fairly honest. Ignorance is bliss, and I knew exactly what it was. I didn't want to admit it, but I had feelings for him. Emphasis on had. I gave up all hope once he showed up to my door with markings of absolutely no feelings for me. Some night I would lie back on my bed and just wonder if he would ever think of me. Things had changed.

Now I was standing here, having my mum talk to her sister on the phone about how I never bothered to aspire to anything university wise, and then my sister driving home for the holidays. Christmas was around the corner, and the boy across the street was without a scarf.

What a shame.

Somebody might just have to fix that.

I could feel him watching me back as I bent over to get the cookies out of the oven and put them in a little Christmas tin to bring over to him once they had cooled down. I expected it to go bad, but I figured that since he seemed like he was crying, he needed some holiday spirit to get him back to his normal, car revving, loud mouthed (since occasionally you could hear him screaming profanities from across the city), handsome self.

But the thing was, my mum would've killed me if she knew I had taken a step outside the door to go give a little gift to the eldest Tomlinson boy. Luckily, though, she was on the phone.

I kept my head low as I made my way up the driveway and to the street, across the quiet backroad, and over to the porch of the neighbor's. My heart didn't race like it would have when I was but an infatuated teenage boy, but I knew looking deep in his blue eyes, that yeah, maybe I did still feel the same.

"Cookies?"[/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 400px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] I took the seat beside him and heard him laugh a bit at himself, obviously thinking about how stupid he was to be sitting here crying over whatever had happened to him. As much as I wanted to be there for him, I knew it wasn't any of my business to be putting my nose into.

I took a deep breath and watched him take another lungful of the toxins and I moved my head back to stare into my front yard. That's where I had grown up. That's where I played with the other boys in the neighborhood who would always play with me one day and then Louis the next. It was a weird situation, but I was always jealous of the other kids. They seemed like they had so much fun at his house, and then I never got to go out and do it myself.

I remembered taking my first girl home too. Caroline Flack. I snuck her in when I was but 17 years old. She would come over and we would just hang out. Obviously we didn't mess around too much to the point where it would've been obvious to my mother. She would've been so upset with me. But luckily, it was just a little phase. I mean, my mum always figured I was gay, but of course she never said anything. She let me have my fair share at women too.

"It's that guy, isn't it?" I ask, looking over at him. I looked at him, and I knew something that he never would. As much as I would pretend I was at peace with where I was, I never was when he wasn't around. I would look at him, and that was home. I couldn't deny that.

"You deserve so much better. Or deserved. Nonetheless, I.." I say, trailing off and bringing my knees to my chest. [/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 300px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] I listened to him talk, and looked over at him for a minute. I just wanted to help him. I didn't know why, though. All my mum ever talked about when she caught me looking out the window was how horrible the Tomlinsons were. Of course, she thought I was always judging them from a distance. She would kill me if she found out I was admiring their oldest.

"Yeah, I guess you have a point." I say and frown a bit, letting go of my knees and sighing, getting up. "You can come by tonight maybe if you'd like to. I'll leave the back door to the basement open. I'm the only one who has a room in the basement so you should be good." I say, and smile a little. I had to get back to baking the cookies before the second batch was done and my mom figured out I wasn't there.

As I made my way back across the street with out the tin, (of course, just praying my mother wouldn't notice one of her cookie tins were gone) I felt a little blush creep on my face. It would be just like when I was seventeen. But with a man I night actually like. A man I had been watching from a distance. A man who I already knew a few little quirks for. And I felt pity for him now. I wanted to help him out and talk it out. I knew heartbreak was hard, and especially when you get tricked. I could say the same for me when I took a girl home for the holidays, and she just used me to get closer to my sister. Of course, my sister had to break the news to her that she wasn't gay or bisexual or any variant in between after they finished having sex in the room above me. She had told me she was going upstairs to get a bottle of water.

So I knew vaguely of his pain. It was rough. Heartache was rough. And now I had the opportunity to really get to know the man across the street. The man who I grew up watching and wishing he was my friend, boyfriend, lover, one night stand, anything but an enemy.[/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 200px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] My mum was still on the phone, and my sister still hadn't gotten home yet. I knew she was bringing home a boy today, so I knew Louis and I would be safe from being caught. Mum would be all over Gemma asking her a bunch of questions about university and her boyfriend. I was honestly excited that Louis was going to be coming over in just a short amount of time.

He was my childhood crush. I thought about him all through the years in places and times I most certainly shouldn't have. It was honestly a bad thing to think about someone you knew absolutely nothing about like that, but I couldn't help it. Now was my chance to get to know him. I could have him for my own if I played my cards right. I had to tidy up my room first, though.

Though I was now twenty-one, my room was always still in a constant state of messy. Not in the way it used to be as a teenage boy, but more like the desk had too many bottles of water strewn on it or something like that. Silly little things only I would think about being a mess.

I got the cookies out of the oven and went downstairs to my room, hoping to avoid my mother (and succeeded), and went straight to my room. I got out my guitar and began strumming for a while, just to try to occupy myself while I waited for him. I figured my room was clean enough and I was just waiting now, but happily.[/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 200px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] I heard a small knock on the door, and my head looked up from the strings of the guitar to the entrance to my room. The basement was laid out so the door lead into the family room, then through a door was the hallway that lead to a bathroom on one door and my room through the other. Luckily, he navigated it just fine, and I saw him standing in the doorway to my room, holding out the cookie tin.

I smiled once I put the guitar down beside the chair I was sitting in. It was a chair that would absolutely swallow you up, and I just loved sitting in it. I motioned for him to sit on the bed that was near the chair, and I put the tin beside the guitar.

"Any troubles getting past your mum?" I ask, turning the chair so that I could look at him. He looked like an angel when he was cleanly shaven. But on the other hand, he also looked like an absolute model when he wasn't. He was certainly very fit, and had a nice little bum. Not that I would really know. Oops?

[/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 200px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] I watched him as he looked around the room, and I had suddenly felt myself grow more conscious about how it was going to appear to him. I really wanted to impress him for some reason. The same reason that I had pushed down in my heart for so long when I was a child. I just didn't want to admit it, but yeah, I probably did have the same feelings as I did when I was a young lad.

The room was starting to smell a lot like him. Doused with cologne. I didn't mind it, I just personally wasn't much of a cologne guy. I was definitely a strawberry shampoo bottle from costco and bath and body works Vanilla Bean Noel kinda guy. I loved scented soaps and things of that sort. I was the kinda guy who dreamed about taking baths with a pink petal bath bomb and some incense with a lover in the bathtub behind me. Legs tangled with each other. Taking handfuls of the pink water and washing the other person with a sensitivity only a person who had been through such rough situations could have made them so soft. But something told me he was more of a quickie in the shower kinda guy. Still hot and still as much love, just faster, more adrenaline, and less sensitivity. And god, the thought of having that balance with him, that was something I could only dream 'bout. But only for a while, I supposed.

"I've been playing since I was about thirteen. I write songs and stories and all that. I'm pretty quiet and keep to myself, so when someone actually gets to hear something, it, uh, pretty special." I say. I wouldn't share with him some of the songs I had up my sleeves, because they were old love songs about him. I was infatuated with the boy across the street who was forbidden for me. [/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 200px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] I shook my head, propping my feet up on the bed beside him, stretching out a bit. I was comfortable with him already, but I could tell he didn't feel the same. It worried me and even made me feel a little sad about it. I wanted him to be comfortable around me and have a good time, but it was obvious that wasn't about to happen for a while.

"No, stay. I'll get to see her in the morning and hear all about mum changed her bedroom into a guest room. Mum really wants us to move out, you know? I don't want to leave, though. Not until I get my feet on the ground." I say as I put my arms behind my bed, sitting back.

I didn't want to leave unless I had someone to leave with. I was a struggling writer and I was publishing stories like nobody's business, but no one knew. I was so underground that no one even knew my name. Mum blamed it on me not going to uni, but I knew it was cause I didn't have the emotion or motivation to put my all into it. I was just.. there. It wasn't my best work, and i knew that. But I had deadlines. I made such little money from sales that I was considering just throwing in the towel and going to university to get a business major. That's what my stepdad Robin wanted me to do. Work under someone and go to galas with a woman in a beautiful blue ballgown. But I knew that where I belonged was with a man being woken up with a up of coffee in a white room overlooking the Thames.[/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 200px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] "Probably just going to go into a business track. Get an internship and get a job at some corporate office, stuck in a cubicle or something." I say. Actually, I knew that's what I was going to end up doing. I was such a people pleaser that I felt like I had to be an office drone for my step-father.

I twirled a pen that I had lying around on my desk around my finger and smiled at him a little bit. I caught him staring into my eyes, and I thought that was the sweetest thing.

Getting up from my seat on the chair, I moved over to sit beside him on the bed and put my hand over top of his in a sly way. Okay, maybe not so sly. But still, I really wanted to kiss him. So I was doing good by holding myself back right now. My hand moved from his up to his jawline, and my thumb ran along his beautiful cheekbones.

I giggled to myself as I blushed, looking away but keeping my hand on his face, cupping his cheeks gently. "This is inappropriate, right? I shouldn't." [/justify][/fancypost]

[fancypost bgcolor=transparent; width: 500px; height: 400px; border-radius: 5px; overflow: auto; border: transparent;][justify] I giggled to myself once more, still having my head ducked, my hair falling in my face. When I looked up I had to push my hair out of my face with my other hand. I was nervous as hell about this. I was almost sure he didn't want this, and I didn't want this to be the end. I wanted to have this moment be the moment. The moment that i could say started it all. But I was too nervous.

I took in a beep breath as I moved my other hand to cup his other cheek and leaned in a bit quicker than the normal slow pace, but I definitely kept my lips pressed to his. I had closed my eyes and let my mind wander to all the moments that I had only dreamed of this. If only 16 year old me could see me now.[/justify][/fancypost]