Young & Beautiful

He remembers seeing Harry’s face one last time—smiling charmingly at a brunette girl wearing
diamonds—before slipping out the door.
He remembers walking down the street in a daze, passing body after body. He remembers a group
of pretty girls surrounding him, asking his name. "You’re gorgeous,” one of them smiles, and
leads him by the hand into another, different, house, tall and modern and fucking enormous.
“I’m gorgeous,” he repeats, burping, staring up at the vaulted ceilings and people dancing on
platforms. Everything looks expensive. There’s smoke everywhere. Liquor everywhere. Cocaine
everywhere. And a lot of sex. The kind of party Harry would love.
No.
No more Harry. He needs to forget that evil, little, life-ruining fucker.
So he drinks more and smokes and swallows whatever’s pressed into his palms and lets lipgloss
lips kiss him because he needs to forget.
And then there’s a boy. A boy who’s even prettier than Pretty Boy from the night before. And
Louis wants to forget. Louis wants to go back to how he used to be: fun.
Niall told him to have fun. He needs to have fun.
“Hey,” he breathes, smiling up at the boy because he needs to forget. Needs to succeed where he
failed last night.
“Hi,” Boy immediately beams, surveying Louis appraisingly.
It doesn’t take long to make his intentions clear.
He remembers slurring a nonsensically drunken, “Let’s devour the world,” in Boy’s ear, drunk
and dazed and desperate to distract himself, and ignoring every empty feeling inside of himself,
ignoring his thoughts of Harry and the fact that he doesn’t give a fuck about this boy. Instead he
digs his fingers into the fabric of his shirt, feeding off of him, stealing his breath, biting at his
mouth with his own that he can't even properly feel. It’s hideous and sloppy and wet—Louis’
entire face feels like it’s fucking drenched in spit—and everything feels cold and frantic, but he
drags the boy away because he needs to forget. He drags him to an abandoned, dark, blurry corner
—or, rather, semi-abandoned but who gives a fuck—and wastes no time, desperate to feel
anything, unzipping the boy’s jeans and claiming his offered body. He grabs and slides and uses
and, in time, he gets lost in the feeling of sweat, skin, and silence.
And now he’s outside.
Outside, in the frigid air and icy breeze, stumbling around and staring at the warmly lit windows
of the mansions on either side of him, cum crusted on his jeans and someone else’s vomit on his
shirt. He’s fucking freezing—he’s lost his jacket somewhere, somehow. His mouth tastes like
mints but he doesn’t remember chewing gum, doesn’t remember ingesting anything that tasted
pleasant, so he just breathes it in, smoke still tinging his lips and tongue, sharpened by peppermint
and dulled by winter.
He has no fucking idea where he’s going. He has no idea where he’s been. He hasn’t looked at
his phone. It’s tucked in his back pocket, forgotten and heavy.
“Oi!” a voice shouts.
He turns around.