Louis’ three steps from the front door when he hears a voice behind him.
“Lou,” Zayn hisses, head poking out his bedroom door, “it’s three in the morning. Where the fuck are you going?”
Louis stops, closes his eyes for a second before turning on his heel.
“Out,” he says shortly, and then for repetition’s sake, because it’s the same discussion every time, “couldn’t sleep.”
It’s a warm night, or at least as warm as October nights ever are. He’s in sweats and a t-shirt, his hair is probably everywhere, an old pair of Vans he scrounged up from his bombsite of a bedroom floor on his feet. He hadn’t bothered looking in the mirror; he’s probably not a vision of perfection, though, if Zayn’s face is anything to go by.
He just needs to get out.
“Louis, take something,” Zayn whispers. Niall’s room is closest to the door, and if they wake him there will be hell to pay. “Just take something to help you sleep. I’ve got a load of Perrie’s herbal shit in my room, c’mon.”
“M’okay,” Louis says, “really, I’m—“
Zayn opens his mouth to interrupt, but Louis holds a finger to his lips, nodding over to Niall’s door. Zayn just raises an eyebrow, glowers at him, and Louis winks.
“Sorry if I woke you,” he whispers, before blowing him an obnoxious kiss and stealing out the front door.
The air hits him right in the face and for the first time since he turned in at half eleven, he feels like he can breathe properly. He feels the air rush through him, rubs his hands together – probably should’ve bought a jumper, but fuck it – and sets off down the street with a yawn. Irony, or something.
He doesn’t know how long he walks for, never does really, but it’s always the same deal. The air is sharp and the streets are blissfully silent, save for the low rumble of a car every now and then, and the lights are few and far between. Tonight, there’s a lamp on in an apartment that must be twenty storeys up, one of the street lights are out, and there’s something very bright in the distance Louis assumes is a McDonald’s sign. It’s a good thing he’s never hungry in the early hours of the morning, because he’d be there every night.
The route changes every day, the destination rotates between a few, when he’s suddenly had enough of walking. Sometimes he goes to the park a few blocks away, sometimes to the old train station about half an hour north, sometimes he just finds a park bench and sits there till his head feels soft enough to go home and sleep. Tonight, for no real reason, he wants to see water. He wants to go to the river and he wants to stand on Millennium Bridge and he wants to hear the rush fill up his ears.
It’s certainly not in walking distance, and he certainly doesn’t have the money to blow on a cab, but not sleeping leaves him with a recklessness above and beyond his usual. Fuck it, he thinks, hails one down anyway, and he’s there in ten minutes. So he’ll go without coffee and drinks on Friday, whatever. The coffee, at least, is probably a good thing.
The air is cooler down at the river and he laughs to himself as he walks across the bridge, stops in the middle. He’s such a fuck up. This is so fucked up, all of it, sneaking out every night like he’s a fifteen year old with a case buried down at the playground in the hopes of not rousing too much suspicion from his housemates, the aimless walks, the fucking urge to see water. All of it is ridiculous, and in his more lucid moments it’s terrifying, and then without any real warning Louis’ brain sticks like it has so, so many times before, because she loved the water.
She loved the water, he remembers it so sharply, loved nothing more than the two weeks a year they spent at White Cliff when they were kids. She had blue bathers and Louis’d helped her dip dye her hair purple there once. She wanted to learn to surf. Fuck, he whispers, and he loses his breath at the thought, has to close his eyes and count to ten, and suddenly the rush of the river is too loud.
