Young & Beautiful

Louis doesn’t know.
All he can do is stalk Zayn.
“But where does he go, Zayn?” he asks for the hundredth time as he follows him around his
rooms, Liam tapping diligently away on his laptop.
“I can’t think of any other way to say ‘I don’t know,’ Louis,” Zayn sighs, keeping his patience.
Having just finished making his canvas board, he hoists it up, setting it up against the far wall
where his paints, easel, and pallet lay.
“But surely you know something,” Louis says impatiently, watching as Zayn squeezes a shiny,
wet tail of yellow paint out of the tube. “This is the longest he’s ever been gone. I’m fucking
worried. You should be, too.”
Zayn’s silent for a moment, his eyes scanning his paint selection, plucking up tube after tube and
squirting them purposefully on the pallet. “There’s nothing we can do,” he shrugs, not looking at
him. “He’ll return. He always does.”
“But why does he go?” Louis asks, teeth clenched with frustration as he digs his hands into his
hair. He flounces down on the couch, watching as Zayn begins selecting brushes. “I hate this.”
“He’ll come back, Louis,” Zayn says calmly as he smears the first streak of purple paint on the
canvas, thick, clumpy, and oily. “He’ll come back.”
**
Harry still hasn’t come back.
Louis refuses to count how many days. Refuses to worry about him. Refuses to wonder how this
works academically. Will he be expelled? Will he fail?
Louis refuses to think about it.
Instead, he’s sitting on his couch as Niall gets ready for another night out. He’s currently singing
in the shower. Normally Louis would go to Zayn’s. But apparently it’s another ‘date night’ for
him and Liam. So. Louis is stuck on his couch, playing video games and not thinking.
It’s really fun.
“You sure you don’t wanna come?” Niall calls as he exits the shower, wrapped only in a towel,
his skin moist and pink. Most people would go to their room and put on clothes. But Niall? Niall
clomps over and sits at the piano, begins tinkering out a delicate melody.
“I’m sure,” Louis says. Because, no. He’s had enough of people. The problem is people. He
needs to stay away from people. He wants to be alone on an island, making radios out of coconuts
and befriending parrots.
“I’ll text you where we go all the same,” Niall says, playing more intently. The sound is rather
nice, actually.
Louis pauses his game, drops the controller at his side and lets himself listen, leaning his head
back on the couch and staring at the ceiling.
“It’d be good for you to get out, you know,” Niall says.