Glitch [Larry Stylinson AU]

Part VII: Follow fashion

"IN THIS TWILIGHT, HOW DARE YOU SPEAK OF GRACE?"

Louis couldn't find his notebook.

It wouldn't have been such a travesty, since Zayn had most of the info down, but for the past few nights, Louis had scrawled in ludicrous theories and attempts at evidence that would tie Liam and the rest of the Payne clan to the abduction. Many of them hadn't been given a chance to enter the pinboard. Many of them had been concocted in between classes in disjointed sentences and key words.

None of them had involved victims returning, let alone victims returning without testimonies, without concrete descriptions of their abductors.

Fetching the mail or glancing off the telly out the windows always startled him. Rakes clearing the grounds. Metal and crockery polished. Curtains shivering in the windows. Long cuts along Mrs Horan's forehead. Scabs on Mr Horan's. Niall's willowy back weaving through the house, grasping a phone or the end of a vacuum.

Louis mulled his inability to find the notebook at Zayn's desk in school while the latter tapped away at an interview made with the Horans. After returning, Mr Horan had shaken his hand and said something that could only be praise given how Zayn's demeanour slackened. Praise, Louis learnt later, about holding the fort in his absence. An intern and his mentor.

Zayn hadn't been to worry about the disappearance.

"Stop dwelling on Liam's involvement. Niall's back. Don't you figure he would have protested some by now if Liam had abducted him?"

There was another impossible fact. Niall is back.

Rumours about the cancelling of Halloween Run rekindled. At first, it had been pure speculation among the student body, until it ramped up in outer social circles as a fact. Niall settled the matter with his flyer-worthy smile, ghostly with the remembrance of his wake still raw.

"It will do us no good if we give in to fear. Besides, traditions aren't without reason, are they?"

Other than from various newspapers nationwide, Louis hadn't had any contact with any of the Horans. The infinitesimal slice of him hoping for a happy ending had assumed they would be back on roofs and howling through streets, since Niall always had Liam in tow as Louis suspected the situation had been before. There had been glances, moments where Louis would grasp for words but settle for silence.

Guess you aren't really mates.

From time to time, Zayn would be added to the entourage, but he mostly kept to himself. It took Louis quite a while to figure out why he might be down and out, and when he saw the manky flyer of Safaa outside his house, he cursed himself.

The trio approached Louis one lunch. In the faces of his peers, Louis recognised the relief in seeing a chafing irregularity restored. Beyond Niall's steely charisma was physical labour and calculated motion. Louis couldn't fit in their sphere.

"How do you know him?" Louis asked upon sighting them.

Harry scrunched a juice carton, thumbing liquid from his lip. "We go way back." In a disjointed afterthought, he added, "I like Zayn. Why aren't you interested in him?"

"If you're asking platonically, I am. I'm interested in both of them. Friendships aren't exclusive."

At the same time as Zayn seated himself at the table, Niall beckoned Louis to stand. Then they hugged. The notes of fir and spicy jasmine Louis associated with him still lingered, nudging against unknown scents.

Louis opened his eyes to the cafeteria.

Liam looked at him, and it wasn't anything. The heat in his eyes had ashened. Nothing remained. On the side, Harry offered Zayn quiet conversation along with a pallid apple. Lately, everything came to him in pastels.