Rumors, Rumors, Nothing But Rumors (L.S)

Chapter Twelve

A/N Hi, sorry for taking a minute to update, but exams are absolutely killing me. On the positive side I'm halfway through as of today : ))

It's practically night as a shrill alarm tone drags Louis from his comfortable sleep, but he can't move to turn it off, as he is restricted by a body wrapped around him. Soon though, the noise wakes Harry as well, and the model rolls away from his place on Louis' chest with a tired groan.

"Too early", Louis mumbles as he sleepily makes grabby-hands towards Harry in order to pull him back into bed, despite the fact that there's a flight they need to catch in a couple hours - hence the too-early-alarm-clock.

Harry doesn't reply at first, just throws a pillow at Louis while yawning uncontrollably. When Louis still doesn't get up, Harry throws another pillow, and even though he misses with quite a length, Louis reluctantly gets up.

They don't speak much on the way to the airport, both of them too tired to do anything but stare emptily into the air, interrupted by the occasional yawn, but Harry's fingers are drawing light patterns on the back of Louis' hand.

Harry falls asleep in a chair at the airport, and Louis finds himself wanting to reach out and nuzzle his fingers through Harry's hair, only stopping at the last second as he realizes that would probably be a bit weird.

Louis intends on waking Harry kindly when it's time to board the plane, but as the model refuses to wake up, Louis has to shake him almost violently, resulting in Harry barely catching himself from falling to the floor when he finally awakes.

On the plane it's Louis' turn to fall asleep, and when the plane is descending, he wakes with his head resting on Harry's shoulder, the younger man's arm wrapped around his waist and the armrest between them folded away, leaving their bodies resting against each other.

It's around half past seven in the morning when they finally land, and Louis grabs their bags in one hand, Harry's hand in the other, as the step outside. Just in case there's any paparazzi at the airport who could spot them looking like a couple.

As soon as they get inside, they're greeted by Harry's manager who is way too excited, considering that it's still very early. He continuously compliments them on their great 'performance', as he calls it, telling them how well their fake relationship has done in the variating papers and gossip magazines.

Not that Louis counted, but in the span of five minutes, Harry's manager has probably mentioned the words 'fake' and 'pretend' approximately fifteen times, and maybe it bothers him a teeny tiny bit.

It's not like Louis forgot that their relationship is fake - it's just that the constant reminder from Harry's manager makes Louis realize that's exactly what his and Harry's relationship is - fake. When he thinks back, Louis honestly isn't sure how much of this trip was for show and which parts were actually real.

Obviously, not all of it was for show - well probably not - but Louis doesn't want to think too much of the things going on between the two of them if Harry only sees it as a part of the contract they've signed. That would be embarrassing.

Louis is the one to let go of Harry's hand the second they enter the car picking them up, and when Harry doesn't react in the slightest, Louis has a hard time pushing away the doubts about a relationship he actually started believing to be more than a signed contract between two people who couldn't stand each other.

***

Louis is dropped off at the curb in front of his and Zayn's apartment around half past eight in the morning and he mumbles a goodbye to Harry as he jumps out of the car with his bag thrown over his shoulder, looking a whole lot forward to climbing into his own bed immediately.

He unlocks the door as quietly as possible, shuffling out of his shoes, leaving them by the door, and continuing into the kitchen to grab a quick breakfast snack before going to bed again.

Even in the kitchen Louis keeps the lights off, determined not to wake up Zayn, and he slaps together a sandwich in the dark, fumbling around for the correct ingredients - which he seemingly fails at - which he only discovers as he bites into his jelly and mustard sandwich.

It honestly should taste worse, but Louis still throws it away and he is just about to leave the kitchen as the lights turn on, blinding him momentarily.

He expects to see Zayn standing in the doorway to the kitchen with messy raven-colored hair and sleepy eyes, complaining about Louis waking him up too early on a Monday where Zayn usually doesn't work until noon.

What he does not expect to see is Liam wearing nothing but boxers, bite marks and hickeys littered across his chest and neck, and Louis stares at him for a moment, mouth agape and eyes wide.

Liam looks equally surprised - and a whole lot more awkward than Louis - as he fiddles with his hands, trying to mumble something about 'not expecting to see Louis here'.

Louis can't help the laugh escaping his lips at that, considering the fact that he is very tired, and the fact that Liam's awkwardness is hilarious. "All good mate," Louis laughs. "Even though I'd argue that I'm allowed to be slightly more surprised to see you here, considering I'm the one who lives here".

Liam blushes furiously, and Louis decides to let him off the hook, so he pats the designer on the shoulder, walking past him and towards his room.

Within two minutes, Louis is underneath his duvet, and he ignores the slightly empty feeling of his big bed as he tries to relax, a grin still present on his face from the encounter with Liam. Guess Zayn had a pretty good weekend as well, he thinks.

***

When Louis awakes five hours later, both Liam and Zayn are gone - his roommate supposedly at work, and Liam probably leaving with him, so Louis throws himself on the couch and stares mindlessly at the TV for a minute or two before his phone interrupts his relaxation.

He picks it up and checks the caller - it's his sister, so he accepts the call and is about to greet her.

"Hi-"

"WHY DID YOU NOT TELL ME YOU HAD A BOYFRIEND, YOU BIGGOT?!" Lottie's voice screams excitedly through the phone, and Louis has to pull it a bit away from his ear.

"Hi to you too, Lots".

"YOU AND FUCKING HARRY STYLES ARE TRENDING ALL OVER THE INTERNET". Alright, this was a part of the contract Louis didn't quite think through and he tries to dial it down as unimportant gossip, before his sister freaks out even further. "Jesus, calm down. It's just a few articles."

"OH, IT IS NOT!"

And then Lottie rambles on and on about the extreme amount of pictures, edits and posts circling the internet in the wake of their recent interview. She sends a few of them his way - some of them are just tweets with a screenshot of his hand squeezing Harry's thigh and captions varying from 'please kill me already, this is too cute' to 'I can die happy' - which Louis finds a bit entertaining, considering it's a pretty simple gesture.

Another thing apparently going viral is a short clip of Louis huffing out the words "Didn't realize fabric needed a gender", and that actually makes Louis a little happy.

The captions to these videos are rather wholesome, and Louis can't help but smile at one reading 'Get yourself someone supportive #larrystylinson".

He only considers telling Lottie about the contract for a second before he decides against it - not because he wants her to believe it's real or anything like that, but because he technically signed an NDA and isn't allowed to tell her.

Besides - and not that he would ever admit it to anyone - he kind of likes telling Lottie about all the boyfriend-ish-things they've done, and then it doesn't really matter that they were pretend, does it?

All of this leads to him chatting with Lottie for hours, only interrupted by Zayn coming home and Louis interrogating his roommate about the weekend to which Zayn blushingly tries to keep it cool, as he tells Louis about Liam spending the entire weekend after coming over Friday evening.

It seems like both of them had pretty good weekends.

A/N I feel a little meh about this chapter, but I decided to post it anyways as it has been a while. Anygays, thingsare going to happen in this story soon...