concealing ➸ tomlinson

xxxix

a longer update hey lmao anD THIS WAS SO FUN TO WRITE I LOVE 5 ES OH ES !!!

at first, the only thing any of the four boys could see was pitch blackness.

"turn on the fucking light, dumbass." calum mumbled.

michael told himself that he'd properly punch calum later. uncertainly, he found the doorway and gripped it, using his other hand to whack against the wall and look for any sort of switch. a few more steps in and he ran into something hard, and a few feet away something shattered.

"was that me?" he asked to no one in particular.

"uh, i think that was me?" luke's voice came from the same direction as the shatter.

one could almost feel the instantaneous eye roll that everyone did.

after a few more blind seconds and after ashton fell on his face about twice, luke finally found a switch on the wall that turned on a single rusty light-bulb that was dangling from a wire. michael noted the glass on the ground where luke had been and made sure to walk around it. then he started to look around the rest of the room.

to be fair, it was fairly large; maybe not large enough to be lost in for about a minute and a half, but that's was open for argument. the room was mostly open, with a few cabinets lined up on the bottom half of the wall and long tables mostly positioned in the center, close to the sole light source. the tables themselves were nearly empty, save for a few vials- also empty- and a laptop.

ashton picked up a vial and looked it over. "didn't think jacob was into science?.

"doubt he is." michael crouched down and opened the laptop. not very surprisingly, but still dishearting, it was password protected. he gritted his teeth and exhaled.

luke came over and looked. "what's going to be on here, you really think he's going to have something bad?"

"it's either that or porn."

"that isn't bad in itself?"

"not for me."

luke rolled his eyes. michael closed the laptop and exhaled.

"can't you just read the pass-code off him?" calum suggested.

"no idea. unless he just randomly starts thinking about when i'm right behind him, i'd have to follow him in here." he laughed a little. "that's just a little more suicidal than i typically am."

"we'll get someone to help." ashton said, "i mean, niall can turn invisible, zayn has that draw-power-thing-"

"and if we get busted, they're busted too." luke cut in.

michael was still crouching, gnawing at the inside of his bottom lip until he tasted a bit of blood, fingers flying furiously over the keyboard, and hoping that the computer wouldn't permanently lock itself after too many failed attempts. it had taken enough courage to sneak his three friends in here, doing it again with more people was almost certain to end badly. he didn't know how severely jacob would come after them. there could be nothing at risk at all.

"okay," he said, cutting into the ongoing conversation the other three were having. "if we can convince someone else to help us out, we'll come back later. if not... we'll just leave this lie?"

ashton frowned. "why would we just drop this, this could be really important."

"or it could be nothing at all; we don't fucking know." michael snapped back.

a surprisingly tense silence took over for what dragged on to be maybe twenty seconds. then calum cleared his throat.

"okay, we'll look around tomorrow. we'll figure out what to do tomorrow?"