Our Great Veins Of Golden Blood

Inside

Am I going crazy? Would I even know? Am I right back where I started fourteen years ago?

"You don't even know me!" Louis yelled across his room, no longer caring if Chiron heard. "You have no right to tell me how to react when you would have reacted in the same way I did!" Liam was standing with a steely expression near the door, knowing that Louis sometimes got like this and it was better to wait for the storm to blow over and wait to deal with the ruins. Clearly his lack of reaction was exactly what Louis was expecting. "I just don't want her to shut me out," the blue eyed boy huffed as he rested his chin on his knees.

"She can't shut you out if she never lets you in," Liam replied, and Louis tried his best not to scream at him to leave. It wasn't Liam's fault. He just didn't know. He shouldn't blame him for his own foolishness. Besides, Liam was right - with the way that their introduction went earlier there was a low chance of her liking him at all, and Louis knew that was Zayn's plan. "You're right," Liam relented, "I don't know you as well as I think I do, but you don't have to immediately jump to the wrong con-"

"It was Zayn's idea." Louis could see his brother's face harden in the dim light the candles emitted in his room, and he should have expected that reaction. "I'm sorry, I know you guys are...whatever you guys are but he knew exactly what he was doing." Maybe it was the break in Louis' voice on the last word or maybe it was the sight of him curled up against his wall with watery eyes, but Liam finally gave up fighting. His hand found the doorknob and he looked like he was about to say something, before he scoffed and walked through the door.

**

"Louis, good morning!" Chiron smiled warmly as he nursed a lovely cup of tea in the mug that ten-year-old Louis painted when he first got to camp, only to be ignored by the seventeen year old who decided to go for a joint by the lake. His lungs craved the poison mist that inhabited them, and he missed the feeling of finally being in control of something other than how he treats people. Before he could go to the lake he had to actually get the weed in the first place, so he took a short detour to the Hephaestus cabin, where he knew the weed was growing in one of the hanging baskets out the back.

"What are you doing so early?" a curious voice asked, so high pitched that it could only be one person. Louis turned around and saw Harry, holding the baby that she had arrived with the previous afternoon in a bundle in her arms as she stared with scrutinising eyes that pierced his very soul. He bent down next to the door to the Hephaestus cabin and pushed two drachmas underneath the crack; less than five seconds passed and a mysterious bag was being shuffled out in return by a cautious hand. It was probably one of the newer residents of camp that the other Hephaestus children had warned him about Louis, judging by the shaking in his hands, he wondered what people were telling the new campers about him nowadays.

"I'm getting weed, babycakes, what does it look like I'm doing?"

"Do you really have to smoke around me?" came the reply and Louis rolled his eyes and looked back at her. The corners of her mouth were tipped downwards by the furrow in her thick brows, pulling her whole face into an adorable pout that would definitely be stuck inside Louis' head for a while. Yet he couldn't let his feelings get the better of him. If Harry wanted to pick Zayn's side then fine, Louis was happy to play the role of the mean kid in camp if it meant that he would have at least some kind of impression on her.

"You know what, I really don't have to smoke around you," he smiled smugly and for a moment the girl's smile widened into a full blown grin. "But I do need my morning smoke, and you just happened to be out here at the wrong time." So sure, maybe Louis felt bad when he saw Harry's pure smile drop from her face, but he didn't say anything as he started walking to the lake for fear that he would say the wrong thing.