MARIGOLD |H.S. AU|

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

It was just good to be near them again, to hear Meredith giggle at little jokes Louis makes, to see them interact. They mean the world to me.

Louis was on his phone quite a lot though, which is unusual considering he usually doesn't even know how to work the damn thing.

Eventually we went to sleep at around 4am, and I woke up at 10am to a knocking on the door.

Lou and M were curled up into each other on one side of the bed whilst I took the other side of it.

I crawled out of the bed and stumbled over to the door, because the frequency and power being the knocks tells me this person has been knocking for a while.

"Where's Louis?" His gravelly voice immediately says, brushing past me and walking straight into the room.

Harry's here then.

Once he sees Louis still asleep, and Meredith tucked tightly into his side, he walks over and shakes Lou's shoulder.

Louis is startled and wakes up gasping, his eyes wide with confusion.

He clocks Harry standing above him and rolls his eyes.

"What the fuck H?" Lou shouts.

Meredith starts to whine at the noise that has disturbed her sleep, and rolls over onto my side of the bed, moving away from Louis and pulling the covers up around her body and closing her eyes again.

"Anyone want to explain to me what the fuck is going on here?" I ask them both, Lou sat on the edge of the side of his bed, now rubbing his sleepy eyes.

I look at Harry, hoping for an explanation, but he just kicks Louis, clearly wanting him to explain instead.

Louis ignores him, so Harry kicks again, harder.

"Ow! H you have fucking boots on cut it out!"

Harry widens his eyes to urge Louis to tell me something, and I feel like I'm in fucking high school again with these two idiots sending secret unspoken messages to each other. The two of them now being friends and on nickname-basis is going to be the death of me.

"We're going out today, to some place in the city, Harry wanted to take you-"

Harry kicks him again.

"Us! Harry wanted to take us all to see it." Louis says, groaning and bending down to rub his leg where Harry has now repeatedly kicked.

"Okay then." I sigh, trying to ignore the awkward tension that is now for some reason tainting the air in the room.

"I'm... going to go take a shower." I say, wandering into the bathroom, hearing strong and angry whispers as I lock the door.

I wash and refresh myself, and after stepping out of the shower let my hair out of the top knot it was in to stop it from getting wet. I brush through it and quickly run some mousse through it to tame my wild curls.

I splash my face with some cold water and put some minimal makeup on for once, feeling like making a bit of an effort today.

Tech run wasn't until tomorrow, so we had a day to adjust to the new time zone, and then after the show we had a few days off before we were flying to LA.

As I wrapped the hotel robe around me and stepped back out into my room, Lou and Meredith were no longer there, having clearly gone up to their own room to get ready.

Luckily we weren't as big in Japan as we are in the UK and LA, which is why we all love it out here so much. It was like our own private hiding place, where we could go out and be exactly who we are, without having to pretend or fake anything. No expectations or tasks. An escape.