Atlas At Last

Chapter 10

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12 Hours Until The Concert

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He wakes up the next morning hot, sandy, and alone, and it's not so much the hot and sandy aspect of it that disorients him, as it is the aloneness. He blinks in the mid-morning sunlight and looks around, confused— not because he thinks Harry's, like, abandoned him, or anything, but because it's not like Harry to be willingly awake in the morning. Especially not if it's early enough for Louis to still have been sleeping.

It takes him another drowsy moment or two to realize that he's butt-naked, his briefs still balled up in the sand next to him. He shoots up in horror and quickly scrambles to put them on, looking over his shoulder to make sure the tree line is still somewhat covering him, Jesus fucking Christ.

If he hadn't been awake before, he definitely is now, so he makes his way back down the beach to where'd they left the boys the night before and wonders what the hell they're going to do for clothes, grimacing when he glances down at his chicken legs.

"Yo!" Niall shouts when Louis comes jogging into view. "Guess what we found!" He's in his briefs as well, all pasty-chested and slightly hairy, and Louis really, really wonders what the hell they're going to do for clothes.

"Have you seen Harry?" he asks immediately, but his eyes follow to where Niall is pointing, to a spot right at the edge of the trees and the sand where Liam and Zayn—

"We found our clothes!" Liam shouts happily, pulling his t-shirt from last night over his head. Louis decides that there really is a God.

"Harry's somewhere down that way," Niall gestures of his shoulder. "Saw him like an hour ago," he says dismissively before returning back to the morning's apparent miracle. "But look! They didn't actually steal our shit!" he grins. "They just dumped it in the grass over there."

"And ran it over with their car," Zayn adds ruefully, holding up his flattened vest.

Louis' already heading over, shaking his head in disbelief. "Fuck, that's fine by me..." His jeans are a little dirty, and his yellow t-shirt has a very distinct tire track stretching across the chest, but the first calamity of the day has been successfully avoided, so he shrugs it all on and finds he couldn't give less of a shit.

Fully clothed, he's now able to turn his full attention to his next question: where is Harry?

He has a dim, orgasm-hazy memory of Harry announcing that he wanted to write a letter to his mother, but he'd woken up almost under the impression that it must have been a dream, given Harry's usual tendency towards sighing and evasiveness at the mere mention of family.

Louis frowns. The idea of Harry suddenly wanting to write home to mother is just as strange now as it had been under the cover of night and sex.

Still, he's nowhere to be found, and it's astronomically early, particularly by Harry's standards, so Louis puts two and two together—

late night decision + early morning disappearance— and sets off down the beach with a sinking feeling in his stomach that this letter might be more of a Letter.

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"Harry?" Louis calls out as he wanders. The sun's bright off enough off the water that he has to shield his eyes with his hand, and— he falters when a glint of black catches his eye.

Louis' hand snaps down and he stops in his tracks, staring at the little black letter in the center of his wrist.

Holy shit. They really did that.