Young & Beautiful

XIX

Niall may be one of the most oblivious people in the entire world. He may be a bit self-centered and indulgent. He may be careless and frivolous and crass and exhausting.

But he gives damn good advice.

The day after Halloween, amongst several trips to the toilet where Louis proceeded to vomit up his intestines-he's never drinking purple, glowing punch again and he's going to have Zayn arrested, the fucker-Louis had spent the day moaning and groaning on the floor, partly because he was dying, partly because Harry had, once again, fucked with his mind when he'd finally begun to think they were obtaining some sense of normalcy.

"Why are you so obsessed with this bloke? You barely even fuckin' know him," Niall burps, rummaging in the fridge and wearing hot pink boxers. "You want to fuck him, don't you."

"My lord, Ireland, where did you get your manners from??" Louis exclaims, actually managing to lift his head from the floor to throw him an incredulous look. "And no, I don't. To be honest, I'm surprised none of you lot are more concerned about the kid. He's an absolute mess."

"I dunno, he seems a bit better than usual lately." Niall rips a bag of crisps open with his teeth.

"I thought so, too. Until I found these this morning." Louis thrusts the tiny, scribbled quotes in Niall's direction.

"The fuck?" he asks inquisitively, walking over to Louis' sprawled figure on the floor, before plucking the papers out of his hands. He reads, his eyes squinted. Then he looks back down to Louis, large bags under his bright eyes, a bit of glitter stuck to his cheek. "I don't get it."

Louis rolls his eyes.

"Do those quotes sound positive to you? Do they? Because they certainly don't to me. And, yeah, I'm not quite sure what he means exactly-you never know with that tit-but I think it means that this whole fucking time he's not gotten any better, and he doesn't trust me any more than he did before and he's still fucked up and Des is still missing and-"

"Des is missing?" Niall asks suddenly, eyes widening.

Well shit.

"Er."

"Nah, yeah, that would explain why the track's on hold. Where is he then? On a bender?" And his tone is simple, curious, inquiring, and Louis is taken aback.

What affects Niall so little has been incessantly plaguing Louis for weeks.

"Well-I'm not sure, actually. Harry doesn't talk about that sort of thing. At least not with me." Louis quiets, feeling inexplicably unsettled as Niall pops crisps into his mouth, flopping onto the couch. "I don't know to do," he says quietly. "I'm out of ideas. How do I prove that I've not got bad intentions? That I'm not just, like, using him or taking the piss out of him or anything? Like, show him that I've got no agenda or anything?"

"I think you're looking too deeply into two scraps of paper, if I'm being honest."

"I am not!" Louis screeches, and his throat hurts, but he doesn't care, glaring viciously. "He said he chose them purposely, Niall. PURPOSELY. And now I don't know what to do about it because everything's all wrong again when I thought that I was FINALLY getting somewhere!"

Niall sighs, loud and exaggerated, and he sets his crisp bag down as he looks over to Louis, tired and thoroughly uncomplicated. "Louis. Look at me. Stop thinking so much, all right, mate? You make all these fuckin' plans, and not once have they gone right. Just be yourself. It's literally that simple. The more you try to act a certain way or try to pull stupid shite, the more Harry's gonna pick up on it and suspect your motives even more. Be your goddamn self, Tommo. It's gotten you this far." And then he's back to eating and staring at his laptop.