Young & Beautiful

“Come home. Please come home,” she pleads.
But pity is lost on him, and instead he feels another surge of anger and annoyance. “No.”
“Come home!” she says louder, but Louis only shakes his head.
“No.”
“Then I’m coming to get you.”
“What? No! Go home, the girls are there, just go—“
“I’m on my way, and I’m taking you home with me.” Her emotions are frazzled, obviously, and
her voice shakes in its determination.
“WOULD YOU CALM DOWN,” Louis begins to shout at the receiver, now gripping his hair in
frustration, because fuck, no, his mother can’t do this now, she cannot do this now. Not when
Louis is just beginning to like this place, not when things are going so smoothly [for the most
part], not when he’s finally had a chance to breathe after all these years of being both child and
parent because he was unlucky enough to be born into a selfish family that festers in their own
emotions. “Don’t you dare come here, I won’t—“
But the dial tone rings, and Louis knows, he just knows, his mum is on her way.
Because this is what she does. She panics. And she drags Louis to fix the mess.
But not this time.
Without reaction, he immediately texts Stan.
‘Pls go to my house? Mum’s at it again, sisters home all alone.’
And almost instantly he gets a response. ‘Sure thing mate’
And he just really loves his best mate.
By the time he looks up, he’s all but forgotten where he is and who he’s with. Until he sees Harry,
brow furrowed, staring at him from the desk, clutching the quill in both hands absently, sliding his
fingertips over the feathers and looking somewhere between cross, alarmed, and unsettled.
And he continues to stare.
Louis, having no fight left in him and absolutely dreading the return to his flat where he’ll have to
deal with the hot mess that is his mother, only stares back.
Then Harry clears his throat.
“Who was that,” he asks nonchalantly, eyes now averted as he corks the ink bottle and wipes the
remaining ink off of the quill with a small vermillion cloth.
“My mum,” Louis admits lamely, running a hand over his face.
Harry nods, continuing to clean the quill with painfully slow movements. “She’s coming to get
you?” he asks, but his voice is odd, slow in its usual drawl, but off in timbre.
“Yeah,” Louis says simply, and leans against the bookshelf.