Floating in The Water

Chapter 5

The weekend passes in a haze of sleep and shitty television. When Monday morning comes around, Liam wakes up with the knowledge that he literally did nothing the entire weekend. And he's a bit happy about that, to be honest. He thinks he kind of deserves it after the week he had.

Harry has two moods in the morning: too cheerful to handle, or too annoyed to handle. Liam gets in the car and the only word he can think of to describe Harry's face is grumpy. He's like a petulant child who got all his toys taken away.

Liam opens his mouth to ask him what caused his mood, but Harry lifts a hand. "Not until I've had coffee."

Liam snorts but complies, knowing that the grumpy mood could quickly turn into a full on angry Harry, and he's too tired to deal with that right now. Thankfully, after they've gotten caffeine into him, Harry's mood brightens a bit. He ends up stealing half of Liam's coffee too, though, so Liam's not sure if he takes this as a win or not.

The rest of the morning is a frenzy of cleaning. Apparently there were a lot of reservations made that weekend, and they have a horde of guests coming in later in the day. That, coupled with the fact that the weekend rush left them with a good amount of dirty rooms meant that every spare minute was spent cleaning. Niall was the only one who managed to escape cleaning duty, but he was stuck doing almost all of the room service for breakfast and lunch.

"At least we get to relax tonight," Niall says at dinner.

Liam can't remember the dining room ever being this quiet. Eleanor is one of the only people not falling asleep in her soup, and Liam hates her just a bit for it, because he is one of those people.

"I've got Liam and Harry set to run into town to pick up things for guests," she says as Liam attempts to lift his spoon to his mouth. It's difficult. He's not quite sure how he manages it. "Everyone's chipped in ten quid to go towards the liquor fund."

"Awesome," Harry says brightly. "No more fucking cleaning. Honestly, I considered just hanging myself with the bed sheets in my last room, prison style."

"Why didn't you sign me up?" Niall asks, pouting just a bit.

"Because," Eleanor replies, "Malik doesn't trust Harry to take out one of the cars -- Sorry, Haz, it's true-- and neither you nor Liam are old enough to buy the booze yourself, so Harry has to go with him."

"You've got to teach me how to get into his good books, mate," Niall says to Liam, pointing his spoon at him for emphasis. "What'd you do to make him like you so much anyways?"

"It's not so much what he did, as apposed to what he didn't do. Like turn an entire load of laundry pink by washing his red snapback with a load of sheets," Eleanor says, grinning fondly at Niall. "Or attempt to strangle one of the guests."

"Is anyone going to let that go?" Harry asks. "My gravestone is going to end up reading, 'Harry Styles-- once attempted to strangle Louis Tomlinson'."

"I remember that!" someone at one of the other tables yells. "Good on you, mate!"

More than one person grunts their agreement. "He's not that bad," Liam finds himself saying before he can stop himself.

Harry literally drops his spoon. It falls onto the table, smearing the creamy broccoli soup over the tablecloth. "Not that bad," he repeats slowly. "I'm sorry, did my hearing just suddenly go? I could have sworn you just attempted to defend him."

Liam looks down at his bowl and shrugs while spooning up another bite. "Maybe," he admits.

"What the fuck, Liam?" Harry demands. "You know that he--,"