Swallow Me Whole

Harry messages Louis with the time, place, and date of their first rehearsal. Louis tries not to act too excited, merely responding back thanks. He doesn't want to give Harry an opportunity to make fun of him again.

"Are you sure you want to go?" Zayn asks, watching Louis pull on his shoes and his jacket. Zayn's fiddling with the bong he'd bought a few days ago. It's blue and yellow and the first time they used it they decided to name it Peep.

"Yes, Zayn."

"If you feel like joining this band is a point you need to prove . . . it isn't, Lou. You should be relaxing, trying to put yourself back together," Liam adds. It's easy for him to say; he's sitting on the couch in his boxers, eating a huge bowl of sugary cereal.

Louis thinks of the bottle stuffed under his pillow, still with a couple pills left in it, ready for whenever he needs it. He smiles thinly and opens the door. His management calls every few days to check on how he's doing, but they still haven't found out about Louis' "recreational activities," as Liam likes to call it. "I am relaxed, Liam."

Toxic Isolation's place of rehearsal is in an abandoned warehouse in London. Louis does his absolute best not to make a face at the smell, but it must not work very well because Harry snaps, "Some of us can't afford to be in big arenas, popstar. We have to work with what we get."

"I understand," Louis says, and he tries not to be humiliated. Thankfully, Nick and Niall don't seem to care. Niall rolls his eyes and says, "H, leave him be. Let's just do this, yeah?"

"Fine," Harry says. "Let's just warm up a little bit. Follow along if you can," he adds to Louis before he motions to the other two boys. They start playing a familiar tune that Louis recognizes with a jolt in his stomach.

Harry starts to sing in a slow, mocking voice, "You're a rich girl, and you've gone too far, cause you know it don't matter anyway, you can rely on the old man's money, you can rely on the old man's money . . ."

Louis has had enough. "Stop," he says. "Stop," he says, even louder. They do, Nick with his head down, Niall glaring at Harry, who smirks.

"Something wrong?"

Louis is angry now. He refuses to back down, instead holding Harry's stare with his own. "I don't care if you don't like me," he says, keeping his voice steady and calm. "But I'm not going to do this if all you're gonna do is make fun of me, okay? So either cut it out or find a new drummer, because it's not funny anymore."

There's a very long pause. Niall and Nick are looking at him now, and Louis feels a little stronger. Finally, Harry says grudgingly, "You're right. Fine."

Rehearsal goes smoothly after that, and while Harry is out having a smoke break Nick breaks the awkward silence and says, "Listen, mate, we're sorry."

"For what?" Louis asks, somewhat tiredly. He's so used to people apologizing to him but never actually making it up. No matter where he goes, everyone always tiptoes around him, because he's famous and he's got a lot of money and if you set him off then everyone is in big trouble. He wants to be normal. He wants people to make fun of him and comment on what he's wearing and tell him he smells and to go shower.

"For Harry," Niall says. "He's not usually this much of a dick, we promise."

Louis shrugs. "It's okay."

"He probably likes you," Nick adds. Niall ribs him and shakes his head slightly.

Louis laughs dryly. "Yeah, okay. Listen, I'll be back. I need to get some air." He nods at the two of them before he goes outside. Harry's sitting on the curb, staring at the street. Louis watches him for a moment before he sits down next to him. Harry doesn't even look up. "Can I have one?" Louis asks.

He half-expects Harry to make a smartass comment, like, don't want the world-famous popstar to hurt his lungs, now do we? But instead, he just hands over a cigarette and his lighter, not tearing his eyes away from whatever he's watching.

Louis has smoked enough times to know how to do it, but not enough times to look like it. He lights the cigarette and puts it to his lips, sucking on it and feeling it burn his throat. Cigarettes always make him think of two things: Zayn, and the pouring rain. When Louis and Zayn first really met, they were sitting outside waiting for a car to come pick them up. Zayn had lit a cigarette and Louis had watched, half-disgusted, half-admiring. "Did you know," he said finally, "that each time you smoke, it cuts one day off of your life?"

Zayn hadn't answered, instead, he smiled, pulled out another cigarette, and stuck it in his mouth, too. And for some reason, that was all it took.

Louis doesn't know why cigarettes make him think of the pouring rain.

There's a few minutes of silence before Harry says, "I hope you know what you're getting yourself into."

"What do you mean?" Louis asks. His voice comes out gravelly from the smoke.

"We're a pretty shit band," Harry says. "We rehearse in an abandoned warehouse, for one thing. We perform in shitty clubs. And . . . and the lead singer is a fucking asshole."

Louis flicks the ash onto the sidewalk next to him. "Well," he answers finally. "You've also got a fucked-up-pretty-boy-bubblegum-pop-band-member for a not-so-permanent drummer. So that's that."

Harry finally looks at him, exhaling smoke into the evening air. He's got green eyes, Louis notices, with a few flecks of brown in them. "I guess so." He doesn't smile, but Louis thinks he might see something soften around his eyes. And Louis kind of wants to tell him a lot of things he's never really wanted anyone to know before, because Harry looks like he might understand these things, like he's the type of person who will hold things inside of him and not let them go.

Things are different for them after that.