Timeless - A Larry Stylinson FanFiction

Chapter 4

Louis tried to shake the replaying image of that God forsaken rich bloke out of his head, but no matter how hard he tried, the image of his face was intensifying in his mind, especially after seeing him for the second time that day.

Drink it away, Tomlinson, he thought to himself, calling out stupidly for another.

“Hair of the dog, ya?” Zayn asked with a smirk, voice heavy with hooch, accent even heavier. Louis gave him a cocky tilt of his chin, now holding a fresh shot glass in his clammy palm. Before anyone could blink, the glass was just about licked dry, merely a neglected coat of liquor remaining, chilled by the air. Louis swiped his tongue downward to his lower lip, just to get that one last savory drop to add to the now comforting blaze trickling down to his stomach, where it dropped like a rock down with the three others that had gone down before it.

Nodding to Zayn with a chipper smile, Louis set his empty shot glass down on a small table nearby, taking careful steps on the cobblestone to get out of the throng of things for a moment.

Zayn was a nice guy. A little rough around the edges, but at least the lad knew how to have fun. Louis had met him when the two late teens were seated next to each other on the train and nearly forced to make conversation. His dad had fled Pakistan and, by many trains and long walks, had made it to England, where he married a wealthy white woman, which was quite the scandal. They moved frequently, and Zayn finally left after a falling out with his dad. The dark-haired lad was easy to get along with, and had made a cheap Huntingdon hotel room his home for just a few months before being drafted.

Louis made good of the nighttime air, taking a deep breath in with every scalding mouthful of whiskey until he was ossified beyond his usual limitations. The paper lanterns becoming dizzy, floating stars illuminating the black sky, a mosaic of what probably wouldn’t count as astronomy to the eye of a man in his right mind. When Louis had first arrived home that afternoon, he was slow to realize he wasn’t in the service anymore. Like testing the waters, he kept to himself and spent his afternoon getting slowly reacquainted with the familiar film of dust coating the untouched home he had lived. And what happens exactly once you test the waters? You dive right in. So that’s what he did. Diving right into each shot glass of gin with dizzy eyes and a facade of a smile, he drank himself to near passing out. But everything was alright, no? Louis would be just fine.