Young & Beautiful

They have dessert while they play video games, Louis’ mum washing up in the kitchen (at her
insistence), and the girls beg to play intermittently between showing off their various toys and
singing for attention.
Stan grins, pinches Louis’ cheek.
“You should come home more often,” he says, and Louis laughs, bites at his hand.
“Maybe I’ll just stay home,” he wants to say jokingly, but there’s a thinly veiled edge there, and
Stan’s eyes falter momentarily, regarding Louis closely.
“Yeah, maybe,” Stan replies, and when Louis looks away, swallowing, he still feels his eyes on
him.
**
Their shoes scuff the pavement as they walk.
“So you just left?” Stan asks, brows pinched, watching Louis closely. “Didn’t try to call him or
anything?”
The sun is setting and the sky’s becoming overcast, and Louis’ hands are stuffed deep in the
pockets of his jacket. He’s just word-vomited it all to Stan, everything, told him all about Harry
and all about Harry-and-Louis and all about the dead ends and the almosts and he feels so fucking
exhausted from it, just wants to be done with the conversation now that it’s only started.
“He hasn’t tried calling me, either.” His voice carries in the breeze, breaks in the wind.
“Have you checked?”
He studies the cracks that pass beneath his feet, the little blades of grass that struggle to grow
there. Louis carefully avoids stepping on them.
“I don’t need to. He won’t call.”
“He might.”
“He won’t.”
Stan falls silent, sighs eventually, and knocks into Louis’ side.
“He’ll come around. He always does, from the sounds of it.”
Louis bites down hard on the corner of his lips, just because. He never does that, probably never
has even once, but he does it now because there’s nothing else he can do. Just bites the corners of
his lips as they walk, lets it sting.
“He sounds like he really loves you, you know,” Stan adds, a bit softer, and at that Louis has to
close his eyes.
“No, Stan,” he says when he opens them finally, moist and stinging. “He doesn’t know how to
love.” And why does his voice sound like that? Why does it sound weak and small and distant
and everything Louis is not? “He doesn’t want me.”
And it’s simple and it’s dead and it’s final, and Louis just shrugs as Stan sighs and they don’t
speak until they arrive back at the house.