11) Prepared.

There is a loud rapping on Niall’s hotel room door and the blonde glances up from strumming his guitar briefly before calling, “Who is it?”

“Niall, have you seen my toothbrush?” shouts the deep, muffled voice from the opposite side.

Niall looks to his suitcase sitting in the tiny hallway leading to the door, untouched since he dragged it in.

“Nope,” he shouts back.

“Okay.”

Niall hasn’t seen any toothbrush since he’s packed his own. He stares at his suitcase for a moment, then returns to strumming mindlessly.

---

Minutes later, there is another knocking.

“Niall?”

His fingers pause. “Yeah?”

“It’s blue and white. You haven’t seen it?”

“Your toothbrush?”

“Yeah.”

Niall can’t believe he’s being asked again.

“Yeah I’m sure,” he shouts back.

After a moment, he can hear faintly through the door:

“Okay.”

Niall’s fingers resume their pattern. He wouldn’t be surprised if his bandmate had completely forgotten his toothbrush at home altogether.

He glances once at his suitcase.

---

Three loud off-beats tear Niall from his musical focus, seconds later.

The beats repeat impatiently and Niall sighs and sets his acoustic down on the bed, going reluctantly to open his door.

“Niall, are you sure you don’t know where my toothbrush is?” interrogates the boy standing there.

Sounding as interested as possible, the Irishman questions, “Have you checked the long pocket on the side of your suitcase?”

The other boy’s face becomes overcast with blank emotion.

“No,” he replies slowly, and turns to let himself back into his room.

Niall closes his door, chuckling to himself. Sometimes he really doesn’t understand where that boy’s mind is.

He starts to walk back to his bed but pauses. He ponders, holding a breath, staring at his suitcase.

Maybe he should unpack soon. Not everything, just some of the necessities, like his own toothbrush, and face wash, and shampoo… and that bag of chips he had stuffed in the corner. Hm, he had forgotten about those…

---

There isn’t even a knock on his door this time. Just a voice.

“Niall!”

He had barely begun to unzip the large flap of his suitcase before going back to open his door again.

Looking a combination of awkward, helpless, and suspicious, the revealed bandmate tells him, “It wasn’t in there.”

Niall looks at him in disbelief.

“Then ask the hotel for a spare,” he deadpans, and shuts the metal door in the other boy’s face.

Niall can’t quite grasp any reason why he’s being asked four consecutive times where something as insignificant and replaceable as a toothbrush is, especially since he doesn’t handle anyone else’s luggage beside his own, and now this is making him paranoid as to whether or not he had brought his own toothbrush, which he knows is ridiculous because he definitely remembers packing it. Niall immediately kneels at his suitcase and opens it, all the while thinking, how would he know where someone else’s personal—

Oh. There it is.

Sitting in plain sight directly on top of a folded yellow shirt is a blue and white toothbrush that certainly doesn’t belong to the blonde Irishman.

He suddenly recalls Zayn running up to him holding said toothbrush in hand after unloading the tour bus at the airport, cackling and convincing him to hide it in his suitcase. And thus, there it is.

In his head, Niall tosses around the idea of whether going next door and giving the toothbrush straight to the perplexed boy or loudly announcing its discovery through the thin hotel walls is the better option. But all he really wants to do is unwind by playing guitar some more. This is really the only time he gets to do this sort of thing, so he likes to take advantage of the opportunity when he remembers to actually bring his acoustic into the hotel with him.

Niall ends up reclining back onto the hotel bed, plucking at the guitar strings on instinct, but not before propping open the door with one of his Supra Vaiders shoes— you know, in case Harry comes back.