disposable darling

Louis liked the gym this time of year. There were still some New Years stragglers, turning up to convince themselves they were going to work out only to spend 30 minutes on their phones unstead. It wasn’t optional for the Foxes, their whole lives kind of evolved around keeping in shape so even though going to the gym was routine, a habit even, by this point, it got boring.

So, Louis looked out for things to keep him entertained. His favourites were the people that turned up regularly, chests puffed out as they competed with themselves to see how much they could lift, in comparison to the person they were 12 hours ago. What Louis really loved was when people competed with each other.

He was taking a water break and scanned the room, mentally noting where the familiar faces were incase he needed someone to spot him. Then, off in the corner of his eye, that was when he spotted them: Two fairly skinny guys, not faces he’d ever seen before, on treadmills. One would look at the speed of the other then turn theirs up slightly, then the other would do the same. Right now they were jogging, but Louis could see that soon they’d be in sprinting territory and their faces were already red.

HENRY: If you have to ask me to share, you weren't paying attention at the airport, or the game, or the party, on the way home to who I was attached to the entire weekend. So, ask anyone else.

HENRY: I'm sure there are youtube videos with information to help.

sterling: if you're trying to get it off your clothes good fucking luck

louis: wait what?

louis: I mean that isn't my issue but good to know

HENRY: Uh, no. But if you find out let me know. I need to figure out how to cover up... uh... I'm not saying this in the group chat.

louis: would you care to share with the rest of the class?

alis: i kind of know some things. what do you need?

louis: I need to know how to cober bruises and general exy scrapes

louis: cover*

louis: I have an EMERGENCY

“Yeah, you’re hot as shit,” he says, easily. Whether he means them or not, whether it’s just flattery or something more, Leo finds it easy to give out compliments, honeyed words to keep people around, keep them coming back for more. It’s even easier with Louis: Leo thinks about the long sleeves that he never gave enough thought to before, but now can’t keep himself from noticing; he thinks about the look on Louis’ face when he first took his shirt off in front of him, let him see—and he thinks that, maybe, Louis could do with hearing it. And he wants Louis to hear it from him. 

Louis’ hand is warm on his leg, his knuckles still looking ragged. Worse than Leo’s, even though his fight wasn’t as long ago. But his was an Exy fight: the fists were real and so was the blood, but it was partly for show, a flash of blows on the court—when the Rebel was down on the court and the referees came to break it up, Leo went easily. What Louis did was something else, and Leo doesn’t know exactly what. There’s so much, still, that he doesn’t know about Louis.

He wants to ask, but he’s not sure exactly how. He wants to put his hand over Louis’ hand, but he doesn’t do that either. 

Instead, he just continues in the same teasing vein: “But sitting there and looking hot until someone tries to kiss you isn’t game, so I don’t know if I can give you that.” He grins, and he puts the full force of his charm into it, the grin he grins when there’s something he wants and he knows it can help him get it, as he leans back on his chair and folds his arms behind his head. “I guess you’ll just have to convince me somehow.” 

Louis wasn’t good at compliments. He knew that on first impressions, he was good looking - but he couldn’t believe it when people told him so. Louis knew what he actually looked like, that if most people saw the truth they’d never be able to look at him properly again. He felt lucky that Leo was, for whatever reason, still interested. Still, Louis rolled his eyes and looked away from Leo, feeling heat rise into his face as he smiled slightly to himself. Maybe he still didn’t fully believe it, but he liked hearing it.

“Yeah, I bet I look like a total snack right now,” Louis muttered. As well as his busted knuckles, he still had a yellowing bruise next to his eyebrow and a scratch on his jaw; Louis wasn’t even aware of the ink stain and smeared lipstick still on his face.

Convince me somehow. Louis raised his eyebrows at Leo and watched him for a moment, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. But he knew that grin.

“So I have to convince you now? Did you get bored of chasing me already?” Louis chided. He shrugged out of his hoodie, now too warm in the tower, and wished that he wasn’t wearing a sweater underneath it. He stood and guided Leo’s legs down from the arm of the chair to get him to sit properly so Louis could straddle his lap. Louis surprised himself in that moment, in his ability to be so forward with Leo when that never would’ve happened a while ago.

   Despite the downtrodden attitude Louis currently sported, Indi couldn’t help but smile secretively, chin falling in hand as she leaned forward, lips pursed to the side in an eager, gossipy smirk. She’d found in her experience with friendship that sometimes? The best friends were just those who hated the same things as you did. 

   “I know, right? God, it’s such a lousy thing to assume of a person,” Indigo sympathized. Her experiences weren’t the same as his, clearly, but she’d been in bad positions with a similar vibe more than once. “Have you heard of the term fuck boy - or, I guess, fuck girl in this scenario. Sounds like you just got a little bit too up close ‘n personal with them. It’s enviable. They are everywhere. People suck.” 

It surprised Louis that he enjoyed gossiping, he liked that somehow his troubles were entertaining to someone else and it helped him feel less bad about it. It was nice to feel validated too, as he explained the situation, and Indigo agreed with him, agreed with his reaction to the situation, and it put Louis at ease a little. Since he was trying to be more open with the Foxes anyway, this was a definite confidence boost.

For the most part, Leo likes people, in some vague, abstract way, where he hates being alone and likes having people around him, but they’re hardly real to him. Where he doesn’t waste time thinking about, like, what’s going on inside their heads. People like him, too, most of the time, because he makes himself easy to like. He knows how to have fun, he throws his money around so other people can have fun with him, too. 

And, yeah, there are always people who don’t like him, but he’s always dealt with that by pretending that they didn’t exist. Why waste his time? 

He frowns. Louis seems more preoccupied than Leo can imagine himself being: on whether he’s an asshole, like one girl’s opinion is enough to make him question it; on why she did what she did. It doesn’t seem quite fair, somehow. “I don’t think you should waste more time thinking about her,” he says with a shrug, nudging his ankle into Louis’ wrist, the heel of his hand, and leaving it there. Skin on skin. “She’s not worth it, man. What the hell does she know?” 

And then he isn’t frowning—he’s preening. He’d been feeling smug already, but to have Louis basically confirm it for him is even better: that, where Louis is concerned, he’s done things right. 

But he still asks: “Are you saying I’m an expert?” Grins wide and crooked with the full force of his charm, because he isn’t above asking Louis for more compliments, for a reminder that he’s different, that he’s allowed to be close. “But also—fuck that, these are trade secrets. I’m not just giving them away.“

Louis thinks that maybe this feels more complicated than it is because he isnt that good with people. He’s good at keeping to himself, to keeping a distance, and he used to like things that way because it was easier. If he wasn’t involved with people then he didn’t get involved in their lives, their drama; he found it hard enough dealing with himself most of the time. He used to be better at this, he was naturally pulled to social situations before things went downhill for him in high school. Being the centre of attention wasn’t his idea of a good time anymore.

And he knows that Leo is right. This isn’t worth his time and obsessing over it isn’t worth his energy. She’s one weird person that Louis doesn’t really know and doesn’t care about, he never has to associate with her again if he so chooses and that feels like an appealling option.

He let his hand rest comfortably on Leo’s leg and looked at his own knuckles for a moment; still not fully healed from fighting Joe on the court. If Louis could have anything in the world, it would be a week without anything going wrong.

   In a rare moment of actually managing to sit quietly, for once, Indigo kept her curious gaze on him as he scrubbed at his face. Drama wasn’t something she enjoyed being involved with… but she never minded watching or listening from afar. His behavior at the moment seemed odd, though maybe not as odd as it would be from someone else; Louis himself had always seemed a little different, but it wasn’t something Indigo could fairly judge. 

    Wasn’t she one of the most strangely behaving individuals at Palmetto, anyway? 

   Still, she shut her laptop and straightened up in her seat as he talked. Truth be told, she was a little surprised he was opening up to her, and it struck the blonde that maybe he was genuinely upset. As he explained, she could understand why. “Oh, what the fuck?” Indigo scoffed after he gave her an idea of what was going on. “That doesn’t make you an asshole — she is the douche-y one here. Do you, like, want to sit down for a minute and bitch about it? I’m down.”

Louis tried not to get himself involved in drama for a few reasons. It stressed him out if it was his own drama and he was no use with anybody else’s; he wasn’t good at giving advice and having the problems of other people unloaded onto him made him uncomfortable. But it was times like this that he understood why people needed to vent their problems because his own were weighing heavily on him. It made him feel grateful towads Indigo that she wanted to listen, that she was willing to let him bitch at her.

Leo worried about many things, under his guise of ease and carelessness. He’d learned from his father that life was a game, and one that Duartes played to win at all costs. He wanted to be liked, he wanted to be worshiped, wanted to live so large and so extravagantly that he seemed hardly human.  

But he didn’t worry about other people thinking he was an asshole. He didn’t worry about being nice. He knows he’s selfish. He knows he’s shallow. That was part of the game: he got what he wanted from people, because he didn’t want impossible things. The things that he wanted were simple—companionship, usually, the feeling of people next to him or around him or underneath him, so he didn’t have to be alone—and they were easy enough to get, because if he couldn’t get what he wanted from someone, there was always someone else. 

Or, at least, that’s how it used to be. Now, he’s still sure that he’s selfish, still sure that he’s shallow, but he’s less sure about what it is that he wants, and less sure that he knows how to get it. 

He listens to Louis, one eyebrow slowly ticking upwards, ignoring the way that he feels, almost—smug. If you ignore the fact that, apparently, this girl has no game, when Leo obviously does—Leo was once just like her, thinking that Louis was someone who could be cracked open easily, that he was convenient. But Leo had learned otherwise: he’d been patient in a way that a gambler is, calculating the odds and playing his cards right. And now he knows better, and he knows Louis, when this girl probably won’t get the chance to learn. 

“Look,” he says, throwing himself into another chair and stretching his legs out, propping his feet up on the arm of Louis’ chair, since it seems like the only way he can get to him without coming on too fast and too strong, when someone else had already done that tonight. “This girl, she wanted to get laid, and she was too fucking oblivious to notice you weren’t into it before being a pushy asshole and completely embarrassing herself. That says a lot about her, and not a lot about you—she’s kinda pathetic, and you’re fine.” 

Louis watched and listened to Leo keenly, genuinely interested in his opinion. Their situation was a different one, Leo had managed to achieve what Kelly hadn’t and in some ways that made his insight more helpful. Even now, Louis didn’t really understand what Leo saw in him that made him want to pursue Louis but unlike the advances he’s experienced tonight, Leo’s had been welcomed. He knew Louis better now, knew more about Louis than most of the people on their team and in situations like this that was something that mattered.

“So...Even if I had accidentally made her think I was interested it wouldn’t have mattered anyway?” Louis asked uncertainly. “Because she would’ve like...tried it anyway? That’s a really dumb thing to do.” And it didn’t make sense to Louis either.

He tried to put himself in her shoes, tried to imagine what kind of confidence someone had to have to just come on to somebody without any indication that the other person was interested. Was it confidence? Or was it delusion? Louis didn’t know, he didn’t understand it, it made him uncomfortable to think that people were just like that. Louis liked girls just as much as he liked guys, girls were great, he loved girls, but that didn’t mean he wanted all of them and definitely not that one.

Louis sighed deeply and reached towards Leo, toying with a straying thread on his pants to distract himself. If he was telling this to Betsy, which he probably would over the next couple of days, she would probably tell him not to over-think it and that he didn’t have to beat himself up over someone else’s actions. Some habits were harder to break than others.

 A rare occurrence tonight was, with River finishing their homework in the common room. Given that they usually holed up in their room, it was an unusual sighting for anyone outside of their roommates to witness them dutifully completing their studies.

This hadn’t been their pattern in high school; usually their nights were spent helping Dana, struggling to keep their passion for Exy alive as they wiped down tables and washed dish after dish. 

But Wymack had offered this chance, this new life, and River had promised themself they wouldn’t waste it. And that meant taking time to learn in between the periods of rest from drills and press and travel. Being so close to the Championship title, it would be a waste if they couldn’t play because their grades had tanked.

So they walked through the door and immediately dug into their work, not caring to take the extra steps to their dorm. And for the most part, the common room remained quiet, most people walking through small blips of noise that didn’t amount to distraction.

But then, a thump, a long sigh, all too close, and all too encompassing. Looking over their shoulder, River peered at Louis, eyebrow daring to raise at the sight of their teammate in a state of mild distress.

                                     am i an asshole?

River cast their gaze around the room, the hope of finding someone else fading much too quickly. They — weren’t the person to answer this. He barely knew Louis enough to give an adequate response, and they were half-tempted to ignore the question.

But — they swallowed, and responded, “Uh, do you think you’re an asshole? Is that, uh, why you’re asking?”

It hadn’t occured to Louis, when he addressed River, that he was disturbing them. He was too far into his own head at this point in the evening, thinking over the incident that brought him here over and over again and analysing every moment he remembered. Louis hated that it was bothering him so much, almost more than what had happened in the first place. Situations could be misread, maybe he had made Kelly think he was somehow into her but knowing if he’d done something was what was truly eating at him.

Plus, now he felt bad because River looked like a deer in headlights. They weren’t necessarily the right person to ask just because they really didn’t know each other that well. River knew Louis on the court and if they were to base their opinion of that then Louis wouldn’t blame them for thinking he was, in fact, an asshole. Louis was good at being quiet in everyday life but on the court he was loud and aggressive, not a stranger to getting angry on the court and getting into fights.