magicalrocketships

ANONYMOUS ASKED: Lilo, 9. bullied

Originally posted here.

“Where the fuck’s Liam?” Louis asks, dropping down onto the sofa in the green room. “Isn’t he always the one who’s always, oh my god, do not be late by even one second or else the world will end and I will tell you off?” He pulls his best Liam face. Niall laughs, but he does it at the same time as he’s kicking him in the thigh and telling him to stop being a dick.

Louis isn’t being a dick. It’s just that Liam Payne is the most annoying part of this whole X Factor experience, and he’s annoying and in Louis’ face and worse than all of that, he’s deadly, deadly dull, and practically the easiest person to wind up Louis has met in forever.

“But seriously,” he says, “I’m like, fifteen minutes late. I’ve been hanging round for ten whole minutes just to see if he’ll make that stupid face like his brain’s about to explode, and he’s not even here?”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Liam’s nice.”

“I know,” Louis knows he’s nice. He doesn’t not like him. He just doesn’t get him, or why he’s determined to take every single second of this experience so fucking seriously. “He just does my head in. Where is he, anyway? Even Zayn’s here.”

“Shut it,” Zayn says. “I’m always here.”

“Hmmmm,” Louis says, and then looks over Zayn’s shoulder to the door, where Liam’s coming in. “Where have you been, Payno? We were just having a band meeting about whether or not to chuck you out the band. We’ve voted with letting you go, sorry, you’re too late. You’re out.”

There is a single, desperate moment where terror is scrawled across Liam’s face, so painfully obvious that Louis feels the weight of it across every inch of his skin.

“It was a joke,” Louis says, because Liam looks like he’s about to hyperventilate. “Liam, it was a joke.”

“Fuck you,” Liam says, red-faced, and he turns tail and walks right back out again.

“Lads,” Louis says, looking wildly from Harry to Zayn to Niall. “It was a joke. You know it was a joke, right?”

Niall looks desperately awkward. “Are you going to go after him? One of us should go after him.”

“It was a joke,” Louis says, but he’s clambering to his feet. Guilt weighs him down. “It’s not my fault he can’t take a joke.”

“He got bullied,” Harry says, like Louis hasn’t figured out by himself that Liam is and probably always has been a blatant target for every school bully in a five hundred mile radius. Louis is already half out the door, but he waves a hand behind him to say, I know.

He really fucking knows.

*

It takes him almost twenty minutes to find Liam in the end, and he finds him curled up on a windowsill at the top of the building, knees drawn up to his chin.

“You’re not out of the band,” Louis says, awkwardly. “You should learn never to listen to a fucking word I say. Always fucking ignore me, Liam, I’m all mouth.”

Liam wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Everyone always looks at you,” he says. “They walk into the room and all they see is you. I walk into a room and all I can see is you.”

“Liam–”

“You’re always fucking there,” he says. He rubs at his eyes with his hands. “I think about you almost all of the time, and I can’t make you like me, and I can’t ever make anyone like me, but it’s worse with you. You’re the fucking worst.”

Louis’ heart feels like it’s going to burst right out of his chest. He wants to cry, because he’s the one who made Liam look like this. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why don’t you like me?” Liam asks, and a sob catches in Louis’ throat, because this is the worst. Liam’s been crying, and over something Louis said, and he looks so desperate and so broken that Louis has literally zero idea how to fix it.

“I do like you,” Louis says, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he covers Liam’s fist with his hand. “I was joking, but I’m not funny, I know it. I’m the least funny person ever, and I am so sorry. I never meant to make you cry.”

“I thought i was doing okay,” Liam says, and his voice catches. “I was trying so hard, but I still couldn’t make you like me.”

Louis leans forward until his forehead is resting against Liam’s knee. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for what he’s just said. He means for everything, for all the times people have made Liam feel like shit, for all the times he has too, by accident and on purpose and everything in between. “I do like you, I swear.”

There’s the longest, longest time before Liam touches his hand to Louis’ hair. Louis shifts position, his cheek resting against Liam’s thigh. Liam’s eyes are all red. His cheeks are tear-stained.

“What can I do?” Louis asks.

Liam shrugs, and Louis slides his hand into Liam’s, squeezing.

“We do want you,” Louis says. “God, have you heard yourself? You can sing so fucking well, and you’ve got this hair, and you’re cute, okay? You think the rest of us wouldn’t give a fucking kidney to sound like you do? Because we would. I would.”

“I’ve only got one kidney that works,” Liam says, sniffling.

“Well, then,” Louis says. “You could probably do with another one. You can have one of mine if you’ll let me have your vocal range.”

“Louis.”

Liam’s hand is shaking in his. It’s impulse for Louis to lean in and kiss Liam’s cheek. It’s what he does to his sisters when they’re upset. Liam turns his head to the side, just a little, just enough. He breathes against the corner of Louis’ mouth, and Louis nudges forward, one breath, two. He pulls away, but doesn’t let go of Liam’s hand.

Liam ducks his head. “How did you know?” he asks, gaze still down in his lap, and Louis thinks, oh, fuck. “I never told anyone.”

“Me neither,” Louis says. He wraps his hands around Liam’s. “There you go,” he says, and his voice shakes. “That’s a secret in return. That’s what cements a friendship, isn’t it? Sharing your secrets.”

Liam swallows. “Friends?” he asks, softly.

Louis nods. “Friends,” he says, and tries not to concentrate on the memory of an almost-kiss. “Friends until the bitter end, Payno. Can’t get out of it now.”

“Wouldn’t want to,” Liam says, and he almost smiles.

Originally posted here.

ANONYMOUS ASKED: Lilo breakup/makeup

They break up two weeks before the end of tour, after weeks of arguing over nothing and bickering over stupid, ridiculous stuff like who ate the last of the Coco Pops or who got to pick the DVD. Louis is snappy and bad-tempered, and by the time he and Liam break up, he can barely remember why he’d ever thought sleeping with one of his bandmates was a good idea.

It had seemed a great idea at the time; sneaking around and snogging a lot and fucking on hotel beds. Coming out had been accidental, and easy: the two of them hadn’t closed the hotel room door properly, and they’d been caught snogging up against the bathroom door by Zayn and Niall and Harry. They’d immediately accepted them as together, even before Liam and Louis had talked about taking it to the next level and being boyfriends.

Breaking up was even easier: Liam had eaten the last of his pop tarts, and Louis couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t do the fighting, or the snapping, or the lack of fucking. They’d barely done more than perfunctory snogging in weeks, and Louis could put up with fighting if there was spectacular sex coming alongside it, but there hadn’t been anything, literally nothing, for over a week.

“You ate my last pop tart,” he says, suddenly exhausted.

“I’m sorry?” Liam says. “I thought they were mine.”

“They’re not,” Louis says, and then, “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” Liam asks, but Louis can tell that he gets it. He knows it isn’t working too. His shoulders drop.

“This,” Louis says, and he waves his hand between the two of them, and all of a sudden he feels too exhausted to sugar coat it. “The two of us. It’s not working.”

Liam nods, and doesn’t try to stop it, and that’s when Louis knows it’s the right thing to do. He spends the rest of the day hiding in his bunk, iPod on high, blankets pulled up to his chin. In the gaps between the songs, he can hear Liam’s snuffled, hitched breaths from the bunk next to his, and Louis cries then too, silent and painful, tears sliding down his cheeks.

And then: they just have to get past it, work through the strained silences and the long, endless nights where sleep doesn’t come and Louis stares up at the ceiling of his bunk and tries not to think about what it felt like to fall asleep next to Liam, or to know that he could sprawl out across the sofa and have Liam slide in behind him, wrapping his arms around Louis’ middle. He tries to forget what it felt like to kiss him, to be able to think, boyfriend, and see Liam’s face. He tries to forget what it felt like to be in love.

The shows are strained, and although they try to hold it together, there are shards of Louis’ heart that are slowly splintering away with every time they have to stand next to each other on stage, with every lyric that they sing, with every time their eyes meet and Louis has to look away.

It hurts, is the thing.

It really hurts.

Every time he looks at Liam his heart contracts.

It takes him a week to realise he’s made the wrong decision.

Making up is the hardest part of it all, harder than kissing him for the first time, harder than being away from his family, harder than turning around and walking away from Liam the first time.

Liam won’t look at him when they’re off stage, ducking his head and walking away, looking the other way.

“Liam—” Louis says, the night before the end of tour. He grabs Liam’s sleeve, but Liam shrugs him off. “Liam, please.”

“I can’t,” Liam says. “I know you’re probably over me or whatever, but I can’t. Not yet. Just give me a bit more time before we go back to whatever we were before.”

“No,” Louis says. “I want to talk to you.”

Liam shakes his head, and pulls away. “I seriously can’t.”

Louis doesn’t sleep. It’s almost four in the morning when he crawls into Liam’s bunk, and wraps his arms around Liam’s waist. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, into the back of Liam’s neck. “I’m so sorry, babe. I miss you so much.”

“I can’t be your friend yet,” Liam says, and he sounds exhausted. He doesn’t pull away.

“I don’t want to be your friend,” Louis says and he presses his nose to Liam’s skin, trying to breathe him in. “I want to be your boyfriend. I miss you so much.”

Liam’s breath hitches. “Louis—”

“I want to try again.”

“Lou—”

“Please,” Louis says, and he holds on tighter. “Just give me another chance. I love you.”

Liam doesn’t say anything.

Louis gives him another minute before he loosens his grip. If he can get back to his bunk before he breaks down then he’ll count it as a win.

Liam lets out a breath. “Don’t go,” he says. “Stay.”

“God,” Louis says, but he stays, and Liam slides his hand into Louis’ and keeps holding on.

Originally posted here.

So…. I found this in an email draft in gmail, with no name in the to: field, and no idea when I wrote it or why. But here, have the beginning of a not fic in which Louis works behind the bar in a package holiday resort in Greece, and Liam’s there with his friends for a holiday. Obviously there will have been a ridiculous happy ending, because this is me we’re talking about.



Essentially Louis is aimless and he’s failed his AS levels once and dropped out the second time, and didn’t go to X Factor, and instead he just says, fuck it all, and goes to work a season as a barman at a hotel in Greece. He reasons that he isn’t eating his mum out of house and home and he can still send money home to help, but he’s sick of being a failure and a loser and not knowing what he wants to do with his life.

Louis has a good summer. He works behind the bar in a three star hotel complex a bit up from the main beach, and there’s a pool and sun beds and the majority of the tourists are English in the area, so it’s a bit like he gets to keep up with home whilst at the same time soaking up the sun in Greece. The bar does a full English for breakfast, and sausages and burgers and chips and essentially all the comforts of home, but with 35 degree heat. The girls flirt with him, and the wives flirt with him, and the mums flirt with him, and he makes faces at the kids and sits at the bar when there’s no one to serve, watching Sky Sports on the telly and watching the families and couples by the pool.

It’s an all right job, all things considered. There’s an Irish place down the road, Fagin’s, and there’s a guy there who is out for the summer playing his guitar a couple of nights a week. Once Niall discovers Louis, he’s always in and out of the bar where Louis works, flirting with the girls and occasionally offering to teach them how to play guitar. His is the language of shagging, all things considered, and Louis can’t count the number of times Niall’s winked at him over the bar and gone off to kiss a girl a lot round the back of the hotel.

It’s getting towards the end of the season when a group of lads turn up. They’re all wearing t-shirts with their names on the front, and livin it large GREECE 2013 on the back.

One of them looks a bit embarrassed about it, which Louis takes to be a good thing. The hotel is usually for couples and friends and families; most of the big groups like this like to be down on the strip, where all the bars are and the girls from Newcastle and Liverpool and Leeds and Birmingham out on the streets offering them cheap drinks deals and a shot on the house to tempt them into the beach bars every night. This is a late booking, though, and they’ve been here about seven minutes–barely enough time to get upstairs and put their bags in their apartments–before they’re back in the bar ordering beers all round, shots of ouzo to start, and a full English for them all.

Louis says, “All right, lads, where are you from?” As he lines up seven shot glasses on the counter and pours out the ouzo from a large bottle.

“Wolvo,” one of them says, as they drag tables together, and take a good look at the pool as they get themselves sorted.

One of them, blond and loud, yells over the bar to the pool, “Watch out ladies, the lads are here.” There are at least three groups of female friends staying at the moment, but the only women who whoop back are the ones that are here with their husbands. Louis sees a lot of life, here.

Only one of them stays at the bar to ask about paying.

Louis grins at him. “Like I’m going to let you leave without getting money out of you. Go sit down, we’ll settle up later. How long are you here for?”

“Fortnight,” the lad says, and he’s kind of cute. Not that Louis pays any attention to that kind of thing; dimples and a bit of five o'clock shadow and a bit of a faux-hawk that looks kind of soft and fuzzy to the touch. He doesn’t think too much about the ripple of muscles under the too-tight t-shirt. “We’re not too loud, are we?”

“It’s Greece,” Louis says, as he grabs seven cans of lager from the shelf under the counter. Nothing on tap here; the hotel’s running on a shoestring as it is. “You’re on your holidays. Have at it.”

“Well, tell me if we are. I’ll try and get them to quiet down.”

Louis laughs at that. “Seriously, don’t worry. It’s your holidays. Go sit down, I’ll bring all these over.”