a/n: my third drabble for the fabulous the lola's ten topics, ten drabbles challenge – this time with slash pairing character lorcan scamander, who i chose to pair up with louis, and of course i couldn't resist cornwall again.
sea salt
do you want to go to the seaside?
i'm not trying to say that everybody wants to go, but i fell in love on the seaside,
on the seaside, at the seaside.
—seaside, the kooks
Louis has never been anything but the sea – he is a crashing tide of hope and wit, he has always smelt of salty sea air and his rumbling laugh is carefree and you swear you can hear waves and see gulls swooping above you when he smiles. He's the kind of boy who paints sea salt across your body; drums the ever moving beat of the tide into your spine and could teach you to soar above.
You are a city boy – your eyes are the steely grey of the metal skyscrapers you reside amongst, your feet are always planted firmly on the ground (a realist, Luna used to say) and the closest you've ever come to soaring above the waves is the swoop of your stomach as the glass lift in your city office clambers to the sky.
You are enclosed in your black suits and morning meetings, your building lined streets and your tight schedule and one smudgy grey day, as the car headlights and endless drizzle drum an endless pattern of boredom onto your shoulders, you realise that you're sick of it.
And, so, you quit your job on the spur of the moment and you sell your flat and you run, you run as fast as the wind can carry you to a little cerulean corner of southern England, a fishing town on the coast, where the only schedule that dictates your life is the times of the tides and the waxing and waning of the moon.
One night, as you sit in a little pub, drinking beer in the dusk, a familiar boy with azure eyes and a rumbling laugh that sounds like the waves you've always dreamt of sits down next to you and shakes your hand.
"Louis," he says, and you swear you feel like you're soaring on the back of a gull's wing.
"Lorcan," you reply, and your world splits in two.
