Time B0mb

Chapter 7

"My youth, my youth is yours, trippin on skies sipping waterfalls. My youth, my youth is yours, runaway now and forevermore."

-Troye Sivan

I found a flower that looks like you. xx -H

Louis smirked down at the accompanying picture of a bundle of bright blue Hydrangeas. It was just after ten in the morning, which Louis now knew as the time when Harry woke up and began to text him pictures of everything he encountered. He could see blooms of other flowers in the background, which made his smile deepen. Louis was only on his first cup of tea and Harry was already out in the world somewhere, prancing through a flower shop. Louis was absolutely sure about the prancing.

And how exactly does that flower look like me, a human?

He shot the text off as a scuttle of footsteps made his head snap towards the hallway.

"Baby?" Louis called over his shoulder. Joshua quickly appeared in the entry to the dining room, smiling to Louis when he noticed him sitting at the table, a tower of screenplays sitting in front of him. A backpack was slung over his shoulder and one ear bud was hanging from his ear.

"Yeah?"

"Are you leaving yet?"

"In like, twenty minutes."

Louis looked down as his phone vibrated in his hand.

Blue :)

He snorted before gesturing to Joshua.

"I want to talk to you about something." Louis said, looking to the foreboding stack of screenplays, topped with that same periwinkle title page that read Kids from Yesterday . It was now wrinkled and dog-eared from the three different times Louis had read it. Joshua slipped into the seat beside him, plucking the earbud from his ear.

"Did you pick something yet?" He asked pleasantly, taking Kids from Yesterday from the pile.

"Erm, maybe." Louis said tentatively, watching as Joshua skimmed the pages, his eyes flitting back and forth unseeingly. "Eleanor called me this morning." He continued, watching Joshua's posture perk up at the mention of his Metal Heart costar. Eleanor had the rare distinction of being one of Louis' friends that Joshua actually liked to be around. Liam particularly resented it every time Louis mentioned this. "She just got offered a role in that new Kurt Cobain biopic. She's going to be Courtney Love."

"Really?" Joshua asked excitedly, obviously trying to picture the sweet, flawless Eleanor as the salacious Courtney Love.

"Which has made me realize that I really need to get off my fat arse and get back to work." Louis said. Joshua frowned at the mention of Louis' ample backside. He'd always found Louis' remarks about it to be self-degrading, which was completely preposterous to Louis. His arse was a work of motherfucking art. "I need to pick a new project soon, before it conflicts with the next Metal Heart ." He explained as his eyes fell to the screenplay in Joshua's hands.

"This one?" He asked, following Louis' line of sight. Louis took the screenplay back and opened it, the familiar character names looingk up at him from the black ink.

"Maybe." He said carefully, almost afraid to convey just how thoroughly he'd fallen in love with the pages beneath his fingers. "It's erm, about this girl. She's male to female transgender. And it's the eighties. And she's half black, and she got thrown out of her house." Louis swallowed, very aware of how segmented his sentences were. "But erm, really – really it's about this niche LBGT community in London during the height of the AIDS epidemic. But it's like, it's more than that? It's about race, and sexuality, and gender, and prejudice, and love, and family, and just being young and feeling different." He took a pause from his rambling to look at Joshua, his heart dropping when he saw his stony expression.