Liam
"You are so beautiful love. I wonder if you know it?" I spoke softer than the noises around us, just the tips of her feathery auburn hair brushing just the slightest bit against her forehead.
Long eyelashes fell in a careful swoop over the slight pink of her cheeks. The molten honey of her eyes hidden under delicate eyelids, and the soft dusting of nearly imperceptible freckles.
Soft shapes lined her every feature, rounding the apples of her cheeks even as she slept wordlessly in the comfort of a foreign atmosphere. Rounded lips tossed in the soft pinks of dawn, and stuck in an endless pout throughout the taped re-run of dreams that must have been playing in her beautiful head the entire time.
Lottie was a dream, she was that cautious bit of perfection I'd always pictured in my head when I'd thought of love. She was the curved edge of sharp wit, and a brilliant arse, with just that little hint of self-doubt. The bit of her that made her seem like she could have just been a fan in another setting, and not the daughter to an esteemed director, not the woman who was holding my heart in her steady hands.
"Mmm," the mumble came from softly pressed lips. Her button nose snuggling deeper into the comforter, pushing the light of morning further behind her as the clock neared the hours when I'd have to leave.
"Lottie-" I hushed into the sheets, curling my fingers into the fabric of one of my own t-shirts against her skin, unable to stop the smile from spreading across my lips as the crinkles against her nose squished together as though she were utterly disgusted with the idea of being awake at an hour like this.
It was almost comical how alert my body would become the instant it passed eight in the morning. Like all the times on tour I'd felt as though this really was sleeping in, were true, and I'd never again experience the dream of waking up at half past two with only one meal left in the day and a hangover the size of Manchester.
Lottie though, Lottie had been stirring just gently since seven. Like she had the same issue, because maybe for some odd turn of events Lottie couldn't sleep in either. Maybe her nose would always scrunch when it passed eight, maybe her fingers would always tighten against the pillow, clutching onto the last chase of a dream. The last moment where she'd been completely settled, only to wake up to a throbbing headache with only five hours of sleep under her belt.
"Where'm I?" The brush of a sickly sweet voice, scratched only by the brush of vodka that had painted the colors around her brightly burning hues, sending distinctively uncomfortable pangs against the inside of her head.
I had the briefest flash of an urge to answer her without thinking, with the word that seemed so easily synonymous with the way I felt about her.
Home.
"Open your eyes." I spoke the words in a whisper, my lips closing against the freckles of her cheek as though it came as a second nature.
Instants passed in the span of years as the vividly sticky golden of honey fluttered open in the perfect oval of mortification, memories flooding between the minimal space left between us in a bed large enough to fit the entirety of Louis' family.
Lottie had sat on the plushiest of hotel rugs early this morning. Throwing up the contents of her stomach in the drinks we'd all bought her, Harry's lanky figure crouched protectively over her as I'd opened the door. Catching nothing but the stunted fragments of horrified half sentences draining out of Lottie as though she'd let someone down by mirroring the events that were currently happening in Niall's bathroom just two doors down.
