How To Change A Life - A Short Story [One Direction]

23rd

what happened with this chapter lol oops

the song they dance to is at the side >>>

- i'm falling for your eyes

but they don't know me yet

23rd December

Screaming wakes Louis up the next morning.

He throws himself out of bed, stumbling into the spare room in only his pyjama bottoms. "Sophie?" He yells, flicking on the light switch.

She's trembling, drenched in sweat and tangled up in the sheets. Her eyes are shining and she takes a shaky breath, closing her eyes briefly, the tears spilling over and streaming down her face. Louis doesn't know what to do, or why she's crying or what's upsetting her this much, but he folds her into his arms anyway. 

"It's okay." He whispers. "It'll be okay."

She only shakes her head against his chest. "No. No, it won't," And that's the last thing she says before breaking down into broken, muffled sobs. So Louis doesn't tell her that anymore, because she's probably right.

"Tell me?" Is what he says, instead, and as soon as he does she tenses, and he knows he must have crossed some sort of line - why did he say that? - and he silently swears in his head.

 "I - I can't, I don't -"

"Okay. It's fine." He says.

Sophie nods and pulls away, wiping her eyes furiously with the heel of her hand. "I'm sorry, Lou." She whispers, sniffing.

Louis shakes his head, breathing in deeply, looking for something to say desperately, anything to distract him from the fact she sounded so much like Eleanor when called him that. . "It doesn't matter.Look, I haven't put up a tree up this year - and I thought maybe, I mean we don't have to, but if you like... You could help me put one up?"

Sophie smiles a little through her tears. 

"Okay. Okay."

**

"Are you sure you don't need my help?"

Louis watches, amused, as Sophie stands precariously on top of a chair, two plastic boxes and a sofa cushion, stretching to place the glittery star on the top of the tree. 

"Nope!" She says indignantly, and as if to prove her point, stretches that last bit - the boxes she's standing on dangerously close to toppling over and squishing the tree - and reaches the top, dropping the star onto it with a flourish. "See?"

Chuckling, Louis puts the small cardboard box on the coffee table in front of him. The Michael Buble Christmas album that Niall guilt-tripped him into buying is playing (it's not half bad) and he just wants to take this moment and put it in a jar, wants to keep it forever.

"What's that?" Sophie asks, while he unwraps the tissue paper surrounding the glass ornament in the box.

He holds it out for her in answer. A frosted glass bell, the Disneyland castle sculpted on the top of it  and inside, a tiny, sparkling, Tinkerbell.

"That's beautiful." She breathes.

"I got it last year in Disneyland." Louis says, not wanting to finish that sentence because he bought it with her, thinking she would still be by his side when he put it on the tree. Sophie seems to understand, though, because she takes it from his hands gently. "Lets put it near the top, yeah? Next to the star." She does so, standing on her tiptoes, before moving back to stand beside him.