Undone, Undress (Larry Stylinson)

one

"You'll like him, Lou, I promise."

"You said he's quiet, though," Louis argues, hastily wiping the coffee table with a paper towel. Quite a bit of dust has accumulated since he last cleaned his apartment. Come to think of it, that may have been when he first moved in two years ago.

He wipes off the filmy layer of grime that amassed on his hands during his cleaning spree. The action leaves dusty streaks on his black jeans. Not his best idea. It takes another few minutes to wipe off his jeans too.

"Well- Sometimes. But that's good because you're quite loud sometimes, so it'll balance out."

"Hey," Louis warns, irritated because he hates cleaning. There's still something warm in his voice, though, because as annoying as Liam is, Louis will always adore his best friend. The warning is meaningless, just there as a front.

Liam rolls his eyes, scrolling through his phone as he lounges on the couch, socked feet propped up on the coffee table. Usually the roles are reversed, with Liam doing all the work and Louis not even pretending to help, but when Louis realized he needed to scour the entire apartment in less than fifteen minutes, Liam had only laughed and said you're on your own .

"He's gonna hate me," Louis grumbles as he organizes his messy stack of opened textbooks and journals full of notes in a neat pile against the wall. His gigantic, clumsy black labradoodle named Clifford is just standing there watching Louis, head tilted to the side, confused. Even he knows Louis never cleans.

Liam only grunts in response, and then perks up when something shows up on his phone. Louis, nosey as he always is and having no boundaries between him and Liam since they've been friends for three years now, peers over his shoulder and reads the text message.

Here is all it reads, with an almost disturbing lack of emojis.

"How boring," Louis scoffs, heading over to the door to press the button that allows his new roommate in the building.

"You're gonna love him," is Liam's only response, in a stupid singsong voice. He cheerfully hops off the couch and leaves the apartment to help carries his bags up the three flights of stairs.

The elevator has been broken for about three months now and no maintenance worker has ever tried to fix it. This just goes to show what kind of place Louis lives in. The stairs are nothing to laugh at, either. They make Louis embarrassingly out of breath on the regular. Thus he usually tries to avoid them, most of the time by not going out very often, and sometimes by making Liam give him a piggyback ride.

Louis has three extra minutes to tidy up the flat before the door is opening again. Two people step inside, their arms loaded with bags and a surprising amount of canvases. Liam has told Louis his new roommate is an art student, so the canvases make sense. It's still a bit surreal to see that most of his luggage isn't bags of clothing and other belongings, but various art supplies.

It takes two trips for Liam and Louis' new roommate to transport everything from his car, up the three flights of stairs, and down the long hallway to the flat. Louis knows he should offer to help but he's too busy clearing his own miscellaneous belongings from around the house and depositing them in his bedroom. Hopefully his new roommate won't think he's a total slob.

Half of the couch is covered in all of Louis' laundry. He carries the heaps of clean clothes back to his room and dumps them on the floor to deal with them later. By then, the other two are finished unloading, and when Louis heads back to the kitchen he's met face to face with his new roommate letting Clifford sniff his hand curiously. Clifford seems to approve because he lets the guy pet his head, and he keens under the newfound attention, panting excitedly.