Pretty Boy || larry

four

{all credit goes to the original author}

four

Louis has slept in a lot of really nice beds during his lifetime, what with being the Prince of England and all, but nice beds get infinitely better when you’re not alone in them. In those hazy minutes before he’s fully awake he can feel the warmth radiating from the other side of the bed even if there’s what feels like miles of space between them- which, by the way, simply won’t do. He frowns a little and starts to roll over so he can pull the warmth to him, wrap it up in his arms and drift back into sleep-

He stops himself just in time as reality catches up to Louis’ sleep-addled brain and reminds him that the warmth across the mattress from him is not an unnamed side to be cuddled into, but Harry, the ‘call girl’ he’d taken to bed last night and paid ten thousand pounds to sleep untouched for nine hours. In other words, the warmth across the mattress is distinctly untouchable.

The flood of recollection startles Louis awake, until the fog of sleep has left him and he’s fully aware of all the glamorous details of the room. The smell of sweat and sex. The taste of liquor on his tongue. The ache in his thighs from muscles not exercised in far too long.

He has to whiz, too, and as he rises from the bed to relieve himself he tries not to jostle the bed, lest the slumbering boy faceplanted in the sheets wake up before he ought. He looks so peaceful, Louis muses to himself as he returns. Maybe a little contained, like he’s practiced at taking up no space at all. Maybe a little stiff. But his face is totally innocent, without the flush of sex or the lines of worry or the faux confidence of a seductress to mar it.

Unwilling to risk disturbing the sleeping beauty, Louis makes his way over to where his clothes were discarded just inside the door, digging through the pocket of his trousers until he pulls out his phone. It’s been off all night so that he couldn't be traced- that would make everyone's job just too easy. Now that he turns it on, though, it takes a full minute for the barrage of notifications flooding in to stop long enough for him to take a survey of the damage he’s done with last night's disappearance. There are 37 missed calls and 18 text messages, most from Liam, all to the tune of come home right now or so help me God. The last two text messages, however, were from Zayn, barely 15 minutes before.

(Zayn, 6:34 a.m.) Langham Hotel, West End

(Zayn, 635 a.m) On my way

A smile creeps across Louis’ face. God knows how he’s done it, but of course it’s Zayn who eventually found him. That's why he’s been Louis’ right hand man for the past two years; There’s nothing that Zayn can’t do, including finding a rogue prince when he’s gone off the grid and off the map.

That could pose a problem, however, because that means he’ll be there any minute and the last thing Louis needs right now is to have staff members crashing into his hotel room while poor Harry is still sleeping away. He quickly pulls on his clothes and smooths his hair in the mirror the best he can. The envelope of money that Harry left on the desk looms up at him sadly- he’d rather been hoping that Harry would be awake when he left, so that he could hand him the money, look him in the eye, and prove to him that there are trustworthy people out there in the world.

Instead, he just takes one of the two stacks from inside the envelope and places it neatly in the center of the desk. There's a little pad of paper, too, and for one wild second Louis considers leaving a note, maybe his number, before his brain catches up to him and sternly reminds him that this was not a date. It was a business transaction, and Harry is a businessman, and he doesn't need Louis’ sappy ideas about chivalry.