Burn to ash

Chapter 10

Tickets for the tour go on sale a few days later. They have a rare day off from rehearsals--it's a Sunday, but even then Louis is sort of surprised that Bernard d oesn't force the five of them to show up to the warehouse anyway.

He's sitting on the couch, the TV is on, and frankly, he's fucking exhausted. He can't remember the last time he worked this hard, which is hilarious because he knows at the height of their popularity, they did more in one day than they've done in the last week. But the truth is that they're older now, out of practice, and in his case, out of shape. It's almost embarrassing.

Louis has no intention of leaving the couch all day. He also has no intention of spending any of this precious day off thinking and/or worrying about the tour or rehearsals or anything to do with either of them. He's shut his phone off and doesn't even want to hear about ticket sales until tomorrow morning. At which point, Bernard will look down his godawful beaky nose at them and pronounce in that patronizing tone of his that makes Louis want to punch him over and over again that it was inevitable that no self-respecting music fan would be caught dead seeing the five of them on stage again.

Bernard. Louis really hates how much he keeps wasting his time off stewing about how much he has come to loathe Bernard. At first Bernard had his amusing moments, but Louis is rapidly losing his sense of humor and his patience. Not that he ever had much of the latter to begin with--but Bernard's cracks about his ex-boyfriend are not helping at all. And frankly, the very same ex-boyfriend is n't exactly helping either. Just yesterday, Harry decided to fucking waltz around the rehearsal space wearing no more than a pair of tiny workout shorts that Louis spent much of the day imagining removing with his teeth.

The sexual frustration is getting to him, okay? That's to be expected, Louis reassures himself. Harry has always been this disturbing mix of sexy and precious that has never been good for his sanity and now that he can only look and n ever touch, it's about a million times worse.

And that's not even taking into account that Louis has been celibate for five years.

Basically, Louis decides, as he stuffs crisps into his mouth and fucks his diet all to hell, he could probably handle Bernard or Harry, but the two of them together are going to make a strait jacket more a reality than a nightmare.

What he needs to do is something to alleviate some of this damn pressure but he just doesn't know what that something is.

It hits Louis in the next moment. He's got some sort of horrible American reality show on his TV, Impractical Jokers , he thinks it's called, but he's not really watching until the shenanigans on the screen catch his attention and he realizes that there is very much something he can do about his problem.

He can't get rid of Harry. Not that he'd even really want to , but after coming out, Harry is apparently at the root of some real life grass roots LGBT movements (as is Louis himself, through he's not done much to encourage it, not like Harry has ) and so suddenly, Harry is Important again.

But Bernard. Bernard is a different story. He can be easily replaced. So, so easily.

Louis wipes his greasy fingers on his sweatpants and reaches for his iPad. He's got some research to do.

As it turns out, pranking someone when you are not in living with or near them or sharing an office with them is trickier than Louis ever thought it could be.

He's been maniacally scrolling through list after list of good pranks but none of them seem exactly right. He's saved a few, but he needs something really choice, something absolutely one hundred percent nasty, that is guaranteed to send Bernard into a screaming hissy fit.