(ATLANTIS) - haylor au

chapter twentyfive

(harry)

"Taylor, for fuck's sake." I mutter, wiping the first drop that rolls down. "We can be," I nod, holding her face as she bites her lower lip in an attempt to stop crying. "We can be how we were before."

She's nodding but the tears keep rolling down and it makes me feels really bad. I don't know how much of this conversation will she even remember tomorrow because she might just be drunk right now which makes me ache just a little.

"I'll tell you stuff, okay. I'll try to your best friend again." I keep saying to console her.

She tries to speak through her tears, nodding. "I'll try too. I'll tell you stuff." Taylor's trying to wipe her own tears with her sleeves. I help her wipe her tears too and in the dim light, her eyes don't seem so red than they would be when she normally cried.

"Let's get out of here before they come and hit us while opening this door." I say before opening the door myself.

When we step out, nobody's outside. We're looking the living room and the kitchen but the girls aren't there and we assume they're already outside. They're always scheming. I laugh a little when I realise that we didn't even need to stay in there that long.

"I'll just go to the bathroom." Taylor says before I leave to look for the others. Eventually, I find them settled in the conservatory.

They've got some music playing in the background and all the drinks and food had been moved in here. "How long were we in there?" I chuckle to myself as I look around. Then, everyone's attention turns to me.

"What were you two up to?" Zayn's smirking as he lies down on the couch with a cushion in his hand.

"Nothing happened." I roll my eyes and turn to the girls. "You guys are literally so creepy." I joke.

Selena's setting up a monopoly game between Niall, her and Liam on the floor beside the couch as she looks up at me. "Yeah, you two have an upright passive aggressive fight in front of us about some subliminal thing BUT we're the weird ones." She rolls her eyes. Niall and Liam look up at me and laugh with their heads shaking too.

"What'd you two do in there?" Niall asks which I ignore because they were going to assume whatever anyway.

Gigi and Karlie stand near the table with all food and watch me. "What?" I say and walk over to them, picking out a chip to dip something in.

Gigi looks at me with pursed lips, thinking but doesn't say anything. "We're about to play Cards Against Humanity, wanna join?" She finally says with a lightness in a voice that's being fake. When I look over to Karlie, she's not looking at me and just picking out what to put on her plate. "It won't be fun with just the three of us." Gigi says.

I nod and turn around to see if Tay's come yet -- no. "Maybe Tay will wanna play." Shrugging, I stuff my face with a chip that's 90% dip.

"Yeah, of course, she will." Gigi rolls her eyes. "What about you?"

These girls have always, somehow, managed to get me to do what they want me to. We're all seated again in a circle beside the other three who're playing monopoly.

"We play this every time." Taylor's whining as she looks at her white deck of cards. Again, she's trying to keep me at a distance but I can't blame her after what just happened.

The game starts and there's always a snicker when we're choosing which card to pass out and alwaysba roar of laughter as we read them out. Gigi and I win with a tie and Tay's a close second. Although, winning this is never a proud moment, I do feel proud.

On the other side, Liam and Selena are throwing little plastic houses at each other and yelling because it'd reached that point in the game.

Zayn laughs and sits down on the couch, watching them. Eventually, he poisons Niall's mind from behind him and is telling him how to play to win. We all sit on the couch and watch the mess with amused expressions. At last, Niall wins and does a victory-run around the room with his hands raised. Selena's flipping the board over while Liam's cursing Niall and Zayn out. It's all chaotic and Gigi sneaks around to turn up the music louder. She takes Zayn's hand, leading him out to a more spacey place. I turn away because I feel like I'm intruding to an intimate moment as they start swaying close to each other.

I get up to look around at everyone else and Liam's back to stuffing his face with the leftovers we've got left. Taylor and Karlie waste no time and start dancing beside the newly-formed couple as Niall sips on his another drink beside Liam and Selena's head on Niall's shoulder or whatever she could reach of it. Feeling exhausted, I fall back onto the couch and closed my eyes for a few seconds.