Larry Stylinson - Turning From Praise (AU)

18.

She blinked nervously back at him, apparently confused. Louis supposed he must look different – happier than usual, flushed and excited, and with his hair sweaty and sticking to his forehead, wearing a shirt his mother disapproved of. But then suddenly she seemed to recognize him too – her expression went from puzzlement to horror, lipstick-coated mouth opening wide. He reached out to grab her shoulder, and she turned around and bolted into the crowd, staggering on the heels which obviously weren’t hers, but still, she wasn’t drunk, and she had a head start.

Open-mouthed, Louis watched her for a moment until she’d almost vanished out of sight. His reactions were dulled by the alcohol. It was only when her enormous hair had almost disappeared from view that he took off after her, leaving the surprised Harry far behind, shoving through the crowd, giving chase. His little sister was in a club, covered in so much make-up it was astonishing she could still move her face, which meant that their mother hadn’t a clue where she was. Louis was drunk and dizzy, but he still knew that this spelt trouble.

Lunging past a couple who stood with lips locked in a smarmy embrace, dodging around a girl with a monobrow and a short skirt, almost running into a tall man in a trench coat, Louis struggled to keep his eye on his little sister, scared to lose her. He might have been less worried if she hadn’t been running, clearly desperate to get away from him. Apparently, she was afraid of his reaction to meeting her in a club, covered in make-up and dressed like a girl five years her senior – and if she was scared of what he would say to finding her this way, then that wasn’t good news. Louis wasn’t a judgemental brother. Something majorly dodgy had to be going on if the sight of him had inspired such panic in her.

Muttering an “excuse me” with a tongue which felt thick and clumsy, Louis slid past a group of dancing people, tripped over someone’s shoes which they’d left abandoned in the middle of the dance floor, as if this was a modern remake of Cinderella and he was so drunk he was seeing double (which he wasn’t), and almost pushed straight past the little gaggle of girls before he did a double take and it registered that they were all too short to be old enough to come in – and behind all the foundation and eyeliner, their faces were young. It was the same thing he’d noticed in Felicite – they had attempted to hide themselves behind make-up masks, but if you looked a little closely, you could see that they were just little girls again, playing at being grown up, looking like they’d borrowed Mummy’s make-up.

Felicite had never borrowed her mother’s make-up. Jay didn’t tend to wear a lot of it, and she’d always had very strong opinions on little girls wearing make-up. Even Lottie wasn’t supposed to wear it, and she was at the age where you’d have been expecting her to wear it.

Louis’ head was spinning, his mind running far faster than his feet in his drunken state. Shaking his head, he skidded to a halt and spent several seconds studying the scene before him, trying to process what was going on, piecing his disjointed thoughts into a jigsaw that would spell out a conclusion which made sense. His little sister was standing with a group of girls her age who were all wearing hardly any clothes and too much make-up with hairstyles that seemed too sophisticated for their ages. As he stared at them, they all looked insolently back at him, identical expressions of disgust on their painted faces.

“Oh, no!” Felicite whimpered, burying her face in her hands at the sight of her brother.

“Fizzy?” Louis demanded. “What the hell’s going on?”

His sister looked pleadingly at the girl closest to her, and as if that anxious glance was some kind of trigger, all six of the other girls immediately stepped in front of her, a human barricade. They all glared at Louis, and he was reminded of a group of snarling Alsatians standing on guard. Still, despite the fact that they all were wearing high heels of various ridiculous heights, Louis was still more than a head taller than even the tallest of them, betraying their young age even if it hadn’t been obvious that underneath the layers of make-up, they were only kids. Squaring up to the closest girl – an obvious bottle blonde with brown roots showing through, her hair scraped into a tight side ponytail that made a vein in her forehead pulse, lipstick inches thick – Louis folded his arms.