theboycanthelpit
#OH MY GOD LIAM THE LAST THING YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO DO IS READ HIS MIND #ISN’T HE ENOUGH TROUBLE AS IT IS
Hi you. Your tags made me have a little thought, and so I wrote it down for you.
—
Liam dreams of crisps.
Crisps crisps crisps crisps, he dreams, hundreds of smartly-dressed crisps marching past him in waves. It’s like the History Channel. Only crisps.
Crisps crisps crispy crispy crisps, Liam dreams. Someone is singing the Crisps Song, which Liam knows is the Crisp Dream National Anthem. It sounds a lot like Louis, but that’s not new, is it?
—
His first hint that there’s, like, something properly wrong is at breakfast, when Liam looks at his eggs and thinks, bloody eggs again, I’m going to be sick. It’s interesting, really, because Liam never eats the eggs.
“Fucking eggs,” Louis says, and Liam knows he’s not the cleverest student in class, but he gets it right off.
Because that’s what Louis sounds like, to a T, and he’s not ever going to fail to recognize one of his boys.
—
He decides to wait until they’re back in their hotel rooms to go after Louis and sort this out. No sense bringing it up in public. For one thing, it’s going to take extensive testing to prove it to Louis — he knows how Louis’s mind works, although not nearly as well as he’s going to, he supposes — and they might be interrupted.
Liam had not accounted for just how terribly awkward that would be.
Louis’s brain is a constant river of nonsense, little songs about nothing and thoughts about his shoes and then an infinite flood of observations about the people around him. The hair on that bloke, Louis thinks, followed quickly by, ugh sticky trainers.
That’s not that awkward, though. It’s more or less what comes out of Louis’s mouth, honestly.
The awkward bit comes when Louis starts making up daydream stories in his head, little tales of dragons and princesses and fighter jets and soldiers. There’s one Liam’s getting quite invested in, actually, where there’s a bloke who’s obviously Louis who’s magic and exiled from his kingdom but he’s got to go back to save someone who’s really important to him from something awful — Liam missed what; actually, he thinks maybe it was mentioned in a previous installment, because Louis seems to know exactly what it is without clarifying. There’s a lot of subterfuge and confusing subplots and somebody who’s clearly Zayn is helping Louis out and Zayn might also be, like, part witch or sea creature? There’s loads of water things around him. It’s cooler than any movie Liam’s seen in ages, and then magic-rescuer-Louis gets to the library where the blatant love interest person’s been captured and held, and it’s Liam.
What? Liam thinks, and it’s so novel, having just his own thought in his head, that he almost falls out of his chair.
—
Louis doesn’t notice, because why on earth would Louis notice? It’s not like Liam’s in his head. He quite sure they’d have figured that out by now, if he was.
—
It’s not a distance thing. Liam goes to the toilets, and he can still hear him. He’s beginning to get a bit worried.
—
As a bonus, they’re brilliant at games now. Liam can guess anything.
—
He’s going to have to confront him. There’s nothing for it.
“Louis,” he says, having followed Louis to his room whilst listening to a lovely half-formed story about a mechanic and his dog that Louis was clearly just messing about with in his spare time, “I can read your mind.”
What, Louis thinks. Is that how he was so good at the flashcard thing this afternoon?
“Yeah,” Liam says, slightly chagrined. “Cheating, sorry.”
“This is wicked,” Louis says. “Wha — wait, everything?”
“I reckon so,” Liam says. “Like, stuff about your trainers and that, so. I dunno why it’d leave that in and something else out.”
Louis makes a noise like six or seven words all rolled into one.
Whyyyyyyy, he whines in Liam’s head.
“I don’t know, Lou,” Liam says. “The last thing I need to do is be able to read your mind.”
Hey, Louis thinks, hurt. Liam frowns at him.
“Louis,” Liam chastises. He can’t believe they’re having half a row about this. “That’s the fun of it. Nobody likes cheating.”
I like cheating, Louis thinks gaily.
“I know you like cheating,” Liam sighs. Louis laughs out loud.
—
Louis is conspicuously quiet all through movie time. All his thoughts are focused on warships and punching, until the long slow boring section where the two leads pretend they don’t want to kiss, and then Liam finally hears a whisper of Louis’s story about the fellow who lived in the mountains of Scotland with the wolves.
It disappears as fast as it comes.
“I like the stories,” Liam says, reaching out for Louis’s hand before he can think about it. On-screen, no one knows what they want out of life.
Liam doesn’t want anything else out of life, but he’s known that for ages.
“Um,” Louis says. “You’re in some of them,” he blurts. Liam giggles.
“Louis,” he says, “I know.”
“Oh,” Louis says, half-cross. “You do.”
“You can rescue me if you like,” Liam says amiably, and Louis turns beet red.
“I’m not telling you any more of that one,” Louis grumps.
“Oh,” Liam says. “Will you at least tell me the beginning, then?”
Louis falls silent, mind whirling, and then he says, “Well, all right.”
—
Once up on a time, because it’s always once upon a time, there was a boy named —
“We can call him Louis,” Liam says, squeezing Lou’s hand.
Louis.