Young & Beautiful

And it just feels nice.
**
The night eventually dwindles down.
After Zayn decided to paint drunkenly—which ended up being horrifically messy, all the boys’
suits splattered with acrylics and oil pastels, cerulean smudged on their necks and cerise splattering
their hair—the exhaustion began to settle in and, supporting each other up, Zayn and Liam drifted
to bed, painted hands entwined.
And once the host goes to bed, that sort of puts a damper on things. So, steadily, the guests began
to file out, one by one and cluster by cluster.
Niall himself leaves even, still abuzz with something and everything, arms wrapped around the
shoulders of two jolly-faced boys.
“To the clubs, my lads?” he asks happily, not even showing a trace of slowing down.
“ONWARD!” they bellow, and they leave, Niall pressing smudgy kisses to Louis and Harry
before the door slams, leaving silence in its wake.
And then it’s just Louis and Harry.
“Well that was…loud,” Louis comments, smiling hazily through the last of his drunken stupor.
He’s sprawled on the couch clutching a bottle of champagne. Two petals still cling to his arms,
one of them splashed with black paint.
He feels like art.
Or maybe he’s just drunk.
“Niall is the loudest that I know,” Harry murmurs through a smile, perched on the armrest of the
couch. The tips of Louis’ Converse graze Harry’s thigh. He looks at Louis, face quiet. A bit
carefully? “I should go. I need sleep and it’s always best for one to fall asleep when one’s happy.”
He grins in that put-upon dazzling way, but the words catch on Louis’ skin.
“You’re happy?” he immediately asks, tilting his head curiously.
The dazzling smile fades, Harry’s lips evening out into something more calm and thoughtful.
Something real. “I’ve no reason not to be.”
It makes the room warmer and swirls Louis’ already inebriated state.
But then it’s broken.
“I should go,” Harry says again, this time with more force, and he stands up, leaving the tips of
Louis’ shoes cold and his smile bereft.
“Already?” he asks, sitting up, hair a complete mess, skin pink. He doesn’t want Harry to go.
“Yeah,” he replies, not looking at Louis.
He makes for the door and is about to open it, hand hovering above the handle, and Louis is
already crestfallen—even moreso because when he drinks he feels everything that much more—
when suddenly Harry pauses. He pauses, and Louis watches closely, his heart teetering on the
edge of a precipice, and there’s about twenty pounding, silent seconds of indecision before, at last,