Louis’ tongue felt like a heavy weight in his mouth, a weight covered in scratchy sandpaper. His head had a dull ache circulating throughout, a heavy thump as he sat up disorientated. His eyes were blurred and out of focus, but the creak in his back indicated that he had definitely not slept in his bed that night. His bed for the night was more like his kitchen floor, which was sticky with clinging gloop that made him have to peel his hands away slowly to even just move slightly.
He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, the front being disgustingly gluey. He looked around, sun blinding him momentarily, and took in the state of the kitchen. It was just the same as normal, bar the spillage on the floor and the two empty clear bottles of, wait, what was that?- vodka. Clearly, Louis had been on a warpath and that alcoholic beverage seemed the most pleasing in whatever state he had been in. He didn’t want to think about what had happened to make him like that, well, not until he had boiling coffee burning his throat and mind back into sense.
His coffee making was full of stumbles and clatters, but eventually he had collapsed onto the nearest kitchen chair with a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. The smell was already awakening his senses, and thank God it was because he couldn’t stand the fuzz over his eyes any longer.
The burning liquid scolded his throat as he swallowed it, the harsh taste combating his stale alcohol addled mind. He didn’t push his thoughts along to quicken his retrieval of whatever bad had happened the day before; he left them to gradually return to him as he sat staring into thin air.
As each and every detail pooled into his mind, more blocks of regret and hatred kept being piled on top of the other until it was eventually towering unsteadily from the bottom of his spine to the top of his throat. It was then, as Louis contemplated his disgraceful actions, that he noticed the burning at the pit of his stomach. Whether he passed it off as hurt and annoyance at himself before, he certainly couldn’t pass it off as that now. With it rising rapidly, he stumbled from the chair and tipped his head over the sink just in time to release the contents of his stomach. Maybe he reacted like that because of the amount of alcohol he had consumed, but Louis wasn’t stupid; he was disgusted at his actions and his body reacted in a way it would with a nasty disease.
After a swig of water to wash that horrible acidic taste from his mouth, Louis dropped his head onto his arms which were clutching at the side of the counter as if their life depended on it. His eyes were tight shut, squeezed with force to dispel the thoughts of what he had done away. With no prevail, he cursed to himself, “Fuck.”
He couldn’t be a coward; he had to face up to what had happened, even if it was just to his thoughts. He couldn’t pretend it never happened, not to himself anyway. He needed to think it through, maybe try and figure out why in hell he had said those ridiculous things.
After he left Zayn’s, earlier than planned, he’d numbly made his way to back to his own flat and sat in his living room, motionless, for a good twenty minutes. He’d just sat there, staring, breathing, silent, numb. He couldn’t seem to register everything that had happened, it was all a blur.
Had he really just said that his boyfriend was Aiden fucking Grimshaw? Had he just denied that he was dating Harry? Had actually been that much of a prick?
The answer was yes.
And so that led him to trundling along to Aiden’s house, a lethargic stumble in his step, to tell his old friend that they were now in a relationship. Seemed simple enough, right?
Maybe not.
It took a lot of explaining to the boy who had answered the door in his pyjamas, a wooly hat on his head, scarf around his neck, and gloves covering his fingers which gripped onto a mug of steaming soup. Louis had chosen not to question the outdoor attire being worn inside and passed it off as Aiden’s weird ways, but as he set his foot in the house he soon came to realise that the warm clothes were necessary. The heating had broken, supposedly, so Aiden had to walk around like a, I quote, “fucking polar bear wrapped in a bloody bear which is already wearing a zebra’s coat”. Those were the kind of things Louis would have to get used to, somehow.
