Young & Beautiful

But, of fucking course, the chaos from outside is becoming a deafening roar as students celebrate
the first weekend at school.
And he wants to shut his windows—those damn windows that practically lie on the ground,
exposing him to all the drunken idiots scrambling by—but it’s hot and he likes the breeze, and if
he just turns his music up that bit more…
He's gotten four texts from Niall so far.
The first one was a picture of himself, surrounded by an actual castle built from neon, glowing
shots, their saturated light soaking into his shaded skin, with the caption, “Wish you were here,
mate!” underneath.
The second one was a picture of a girl in a giraffe costume wearing a tiara and holding a bottle of
absinthe. The caption underneath this one read: “She’s fucking crazy !!!! Absinthe !!!”
The third one was simply text. It said, “I have seen the fourth dimension.”
And the last one merely said, “Butterbeer.”
So he seems like he’s having a good time.
Which is well and good and all for Niall, but Louis’ been staring at the same page for fourteen
minutes now, resolutely ignoring the line of windows on the other side of the room, and tapping
his pen against a blank notebook page. It’s safe to say that Louis is not having a good time.
But he needs to study. He needs to. He’s at this incredible school and he’s been given a chance,
and he needs to succeed. He’s very aware of the fact that this school certainly would provide an
excellent stepping stone towards bigger and better things. Maybe he doesn’t exactly know what he
wants to do, but the options are open. Perhaps he’d find himself living as a highly respected and
dashingly handsome drama professor at some American university? Or perhaps he would light up
the stage every night, spouting grand lines and throwing exaggerated gestures out to an audience
that craved his presence and screamed his name?
No matter what Louis becomes, there’s one thing that’s certain—he needs to take advantage of the
opportunity before him. Even if he isn’t quite sure how. Or where to start. Or what any of this will
actually lead to. Or what he wants it to lead to.
Fuck.
It’s just as Louis is totally fed up by his own thoughts and the on-goings of outside—he’s seen
too many drunken passerby and neither music nor focusing nor TV can drown the hubbub out—
that Louis decides, breeze be damned, to close, lock, and cover his living room windows and
pretend he’s in the middle of the desert.
He goes to the window with a surly expression, lamenting the time wasted after having read the
same sentence at least seven minutes, and is just about to shut the window, hands placed on the
wood, when a young man comes stumbling directly up to the window, impeccable suit glowing
under a moonlit sky, the stench of smoke and alcohol permeating the air.
Louis blinks once, twice, three times as he stares at the young man before him.
It’s Zayn Malik.
He’s glassy eyed and slack jawed and he’s looking up at Louis with something like inquisitive