Sidelines

Part title

"I never said it was just me, you dick. All I meant was you could give me some fucking credit sometimes, you know? You're so up yourself," Louis argues, genuinely angered at Harry's twisting of his words.

"Maybe if you weren't such a selfish prick I wouldn't just assume things." Harry bites back. They're pulling up to the frat now, only Louis' still seething and he can't let Liam see them arguing like this or he's dead.

"How 'bout this, we pretend we can stand each other for the sake of the team and so Liam and coach don't kill us. Deal?" Louis sighs. When Harry is silent, Louis huffs and adds, "I mean it, Styles. For the next few weeks you and I are the best of mates in front of them. I'm not losing my future over this, I swear to God, Harry-"

"Fine, I get it, alright?"

"Good, now let's go I need to smoke if I have to pretend I can tolerate you." Louis says, unbuckling his seatbelt and jumping down out of his seat. He grabs his bags from the back and Harry does the same, the two of them neutralizing their facial expressions so it doesn't look like they'd been fighting. He follows Harry into the house and up to Niall's room where Zayn and him are talking while sharing a joint.

"Oi, you two fuckers finally made it," Niall exclaims, passing off the joint to Zayn and standing. "You can dump your stuff anywhere, Lou, I'm gonna go find booze and game tapes."

"Thanks mate," Louis smiles, placing his bag in the corner of the room and head over to sit next to Zayn, taking the joint from Zayn's fingers and taking a long drag. He offers it to Harry afterwards, who sits cross-legged on Niall's bed before accepting it.

Zayn looks between the two of them with a raised eyebrow, not even batting an eye when Louis blows smoke in his face. They pass the joint between the three of them, smoking it down to a stump by the time Niall returns with a bottle of Jack and an armful of DVDs.

Niall pops in the first disk after throwing the bottle to Harry, demanding he pack them a bowl while he presses play. Harry rolls his eyes playfully at his friend and pulls open Niall's nightstand, pulling out a nice glass pipe and reaching for the baggie on the bed. He packs the bowl fat much to everyone's delight before lighting up, holding the smoke in before passing it to Niall. Louis gets a distinct feeling they won't be getting much done tonight, but watching Harry's face surrounded in a cloud of dense smoke is probably worth it. They pay the bare minimum amount of attention to the game film, passing around the pipe till there's only ash left and waiting as Niall packs another bowl.

Louis' already feeling pretty floaty. His tolerance has gone down since he tries to cut down on his smoking habit during hockey season, and Niall's got good shit too. He's curled himself up under Zayn's arm, petting at his chest absentmindedly. He's sort of, kind of, watching the game on Niall's flat screen, but his gaze just keeps catching on the circle at center line. He's almost positive it's spinning, but that's probably definitely the weed.

"Let's do shots!" Niall giggles, grabbing the bottle off the table.

"We don't have any glasses." Zayn pipes up, his voice rougher than usual.

"Is anyone capable of making it downstairs?" Niall asks, earning a resounding answer of 'no' from everyone in the group.

"Louis take your shirt off." Zayn suggests, nugging Louis' side.

"Now Zayn," Louis tuts, rough and a little bit garbled, "I know you'd love that, but I consider my body sacred and I'm not letting you play with my nipples again-"

"Fuck off Louis, I'm going to drink whiskey out of your belly button."

"Oh, sick." Louis nods, sitting up and slowly peeling off his shirt, his hair falling into his half closed eyes. He drops it to the floor and flops back onto his spot on the bed, where he'd migrated to after Niall started farting down on the floor.