In High Definition. [Larry Stylinson, Gryles & OFCs]

Chapter 2.

Denise screamed when she got the call, or at least she thinks she did, she wasn’t quiet sure but something prompted Niall to take the phone from her hand and speak into the receiver. The person on the other line wasn’t Ivy it was the voice of a man she had never heard, then her mind went blank. He must have told her something because now she stared shaking into mirror as Niall began to panic.

“We have to go!” The familiar Irish accent almost made her want to smile but she was frozen looking at the mirror, at what she had become. Her long blond hair draped around her like a curtain to protect her from prying fans and paparazzi, but it couldn’t protect her from the truth.

Niall hastily swiped powders off of the vanity and on to the floor to mix in with the long white carpet. Denise wanted to ask why he was in such a rush but she didn’t have the energy, something had broken her and gone away in the same moment leaving her a mess in a fancy chair in a fancy mansion that belonged to somebody else staring in a mirror. This was her now.

The Irishman rushed to Zayn’s room next and Denise realize what he was doing. He was cleaning out the drugs, he was cleaning out the evidence. The evidence that the last few months had even happened, they could start over new. They could all be new people. But no amount of cleaning could bring Lila back, no amount of fresh starts and new palaces could give Liam back what he lost.

Then Denise remembered, she remembered who she was on the phone with. No. But it was too late Niall was lifting her up by her under arm dragging her towards the door. “We have to get the hospital now.”

XXX

Niall threaded his fingers through his half blond hair, was it that night when they became this? When they all became so broken, or was it before? Was it when Harry was hospitalized? Was it Lila? Poor innocent Lila convulsing on the floor of a Cardiff hotel with no one in any condition to notice?

The Irishman sat on his hotel bed staring at the remnants of the last few months frivolously placed on the crisp duvet. A paparazzi picture, the nine of them rushing through a crowded airport to catch their flight to the United States where they would began the next leg of their tour.

Next was a bottle of cologne, Louis had given it to him in Chicago <I>Burberry for men</i> it was practically Louis’ signature scent. Niall resisted the urge to open the bottle and allow the smell of one of his best friends into his nose.

Louis would never walk by his open door again; he would never make a remark about the state of his room or the bagginess of his pants. Louis would never scold him for splashing coffee all over him self in the van. Louis would never bound across the stage making thousands of teenage girls scream with excitement. He was gone and so was all of it, they weren’t One Direction anymore. He wasn’t even sure if he was Niall anymore.

Two ribbons lay next to the replaced cologne bottle, he had worn them on his jacket today. He wore a suit, a suit to Louis and Ivy’s funerals. It didn’t seem real, he ran his fingers over the soft silk of the ribbons to make sure they were real. Oh how he wished they weren’t.

His mother had dressed him, physically dressed him like a child, like the children he and Harry were as they held each other that night in the hospital sobbing louder than the beeping machines as their friends clung to life and nurses rushed to Denise’s side.

Denise was here too, in the hotel, she was in the room adjacent to his sprawled out on her bed unmoving, milligrams upon milligrams of muscle relaxers pumped into her so she could just make it through the funeral, just make it through the flight. “Try to get some sleep.” His mother had said before leaving him in his room to his own devices.