Larry Stylinson ~ Poor Little Rich Boy AU

4.

Chapter Four:

Waking up with bloodshot eyes, a murderous headache and the kind of nausea that only the most ferocious of alcoholic beverages could inspire in him, Louis had to admit that he wasn’t exactly at his most charming when he was hung over. His hair was plastered against one side of his head, flattened oddly and sticking up in all the wrong places, and he had a big imprint on his cheek from where he’d slept weirdly and the pillow had left red marks on his face. His mouth tasted sour and gritty, as if he’d taken a mouthful of sand. There was a lovely pounding inside his head, like his whole personal orchestra was discordantly banging away in there, smashing the inside of his skull with noise. On the whole, he was feeling very much worse for wear. However, there were several pleasant surprises awaiting him; rather than waking up on the floor with his whole body aching, as he had expected, he was lying on a rather comfortable bed. He hadn’t thrown up, because his mouth did taste foul, but not remotely like vomit, so thankfully it seemed that he had managed to hang on to some small scrap of dignity. Neither had he drooled on the pillow, which sometimes happened. So he had not disgraced himself completely, which was something, at least.

Fighting back a groan, he carefully raised his head, only to discover that a pair of green eyes were fixed on him, and that Harry was sprawled on his stomach on the floor, face turned towards Louis, watching him solemnly. He was perfectly still and quiet; the only signs of life were his chest rising and falling gently as he breathed, and the odd blink as he looked at Louis with an unfathomable expression that Louis was too exhausted to even attempt to decipher.

“Morning,” he croaked. The sound of his own voice made him wince; he sounded awful, and the volume of it grated on his ears, even though he’d spoken fairly quietly.

“Morning,” replied Harry softly, for which Louis was very grateful.

“I thought I was sleeping on the floor,” Louis reminded him, remembering to lower his voice for the sake of his own dreadful headache.

Harry shrugged; the motion looking extremely odd bearing in mind the position he was lying in. “Yeah, but I figured you were going to be feeling pretty dodgy when you woke up, and I guessed that you could do without added back pain from sleeping down here. How’s your head, by the way?” The question was asked perfectly innocently, but there was a mischievous twinkle in his green eyes – Louis could have sworn the beautiful creature was laughing at him.

He responded with a sour grunt. “Did you run over me with a tractor last night before tucking me in? Because that’s what it feels like.”

Biting his lower lip in an attempt to subdue his laughter, Harry shook his head. “Well, if you will drink ridiculous amounts of something when you don’t know what it is…”

“It was a stupid sparkling girly drink in a fancy glass,” Louis grumbled, “how was I supposed to know that it would have the same effect as a bottle full of horse tranquilizers?”

Harry snorted with laughter, then hastily disguised it as a cough, hiding his smile behind his hand and turning away to try and cover his amusement.

Managing to claw himself into a sitting position, Louis wearily rubbed his eyes and cast an appraising glance around the room. It was a large room, probably one of the more luxurious in the hotel. The walls, bedclothes and enormous fluffy rug on the floor were all pristine white, and Harry’s clothes hung from every furnishing, as if he’d thrown his things about with the intention of making the room look lived in rather than eerily unoccupied. Most of his things were black, like velvety shadows sprinkled across the room. There was a doorway on the far right which presumably led to a sparklingly clean en suite bathroom. An enormous suitcase lurked in one corner, overflowing with stuff. More clothes, of course; an ipod, although Louis wasn’t sure why he needed it, seeing as he already had an iphone. A laptop, a set of keys, a couple of unread books, and several pairs of brand new shoes. None of the possessions seemed particularly personal to Harry himself, apart from some of the more well-worn t-shirts and his iphone, which rested on the bedside table and was clearly like an extension of his hand.