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Paul Higgins has one day until his scheduled holiday starts.
Just one, single day to get through.
Paul Higgins, head of security for the world famous mega popular boy band One Direction, is so close to getting to go home to his wife and children for a whole week.
He just has to survive. A single day.
Paul Higgins, head of security for One Direction, isn’t particularly worried about having to keep fans at bay, or making sure that their food isn’t poisoned by nefarious enemies or anything like that. It’s the end of the first leg of the tour and no one should know where they are. None of that is a concern.
No, what he’s worried about is avoiding the sheer number of mortifying situations he walks in on the boys doing.
Please boys, please. Just this once, keep it in your pants, Paul silently pleads. He has just one more day to get through.
—
“Boys!” Paul shouts, at eight in the morning as he raps on the door of Louis and Harry’s hotel room. The whole floor has been rented out, so he doesn’t feel bad about the amount of noise he’s making. “Boys! I know it’s the last day but we’re staying on schedule! One hour in the gym and then you can go back to bed, for fuck’s sake I don’t care!”
There is no noise from the other side of the door.
With a sigh he gets out the keycard for their room and slides it through the handle, unlocking the door and pushing it inward.
“If anyone is naked, please get under the cover quickly,” he says, shielding his eyes as he enters.
“Hello Paul,” comes Harry’s croaky morning voice.
Paul uncovers his eyes and sees Harry sitting up in bed, shirtless, curls a mess. He’s rubbing his eyes like a goddamn cherubic toddler.
“Where’s Louis?” asks Paul, suspicious.
“Under the bed,” Harry croaks.
“Christ. Of course he is.”
“He’s not wearing clothes,” Harry adds helpfully. “He thought you wouldn’t want to see that.”
“He’s very correct,” Paul says. He eyes Harry. “You’re not wearing clothes either, are you?”
“Nope,” says Harry.
“Of course not,” says Paul. “I’m leaving. Get your bums in pants and meet me in the gym in ten minutes.”
Harry collapses forward onto the sheets, feigning snoring. Paul rolls his eyes, turning around and pretending he didn’t catch an eyeful of Harry’s behind in the process.
Well, no frontal nudity could be worse. Only sixteen hours left.
—
“Liam!” Paul barks into the phone. “Have you left the hotel? No one’s seen you in hours!”
“Oh yeah,” comes Liam’s sheepish voice through the phone. “Well. Sort of.”
Paul presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Elaborate.”
“Zayn thought it’d be nice to check out the roof…”
“Zayn wants to smoke on the roof, you mean.”
“Well…”
“If you’re not both down in fifteen, I’m going to ask hotel security if you’re actually allowed to be up there, which we both know you’re not.”
“Yes, Paul.” Liam sounds very sorry for himself, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“And please remember they probably have security cameras up there. I know how you and Zayn… get.”
There’s silence on the other end, followed by a quiet, “Oh fuck, there’s one-” and the line going dead.
Paul sincerely hopes no one working hotel security was paying too close attention to whatever roof camera was inevitably trained directly on Liam and Zayn.
Thirteen hours left.
—
Lunch is a mess because, as is tradition at the end of a tour leg, everyone on staff is eating together.
This means that eight very rowdy boys spend about an hour hyping each other up and up and up as everyone else just tries to have a pleasant lunch, and it is inevitably only a matter of time before food is being flung and having to be picked out of someone’s hair.
Niall and Josh, for instance, seem to be having an intense debate on who is better at American accents, each raising their voice a little louder when they argue back.
Zayn is laughing like a maniac as he uses the strawberry sauce from dessert to draw some sort of design on Liam’s leg that Liam seems entirely content to let him do, while Sandy is filming it all and occassionally throwing chocolate chips into the mix to see if they’ll stick.
Harry and Louis are… making out.
“Boys!” Paul shouts at them, clapping his hands to get their attention. “Please! For the love of all that’s holy, no tongues at the table!”
Louis pulls off of Harry with a wet pop and Harry whines, chasing his lips. If this wasn’t Paul’s third year doing this he’d throw up in his mouth a little.
“Come on, Paul,” Louis pleads. “He’s the best part of the meal.”
“If you two don’t stop that I will lock one of you in a broom cupboard.”
“How Harry Potter,” Harry says dreamily.
“No, babe,” Louis says. “Larry Potter. Like us, you know?”
Harry giggles.
Louis laughs.
Paul massages his temples.
Twelve hours.
—
Mid-afternoon finds Paul helping Dan and Sandy to fit all of their equipment into the storage cubes provided. He’s dreaming of his beautiful wife and children and the great homecooked meals he’s going to make for them.
Then, he hears a grunt from under the percussive instruments.
Oh no, thinks Paul.
He walks over and, picking up the pair of drumsticks stored with them, bangs on the top drum.
“Ow,” says the pile of drums.
“Louis,” Paul sighs. “Is Harry there?”
“Um… no,” comes Harry’s voice.
“Louis and Harry,” Paul says. Dan and Sandy seem to have made themselves scarce. “Are either of you indecent?”
“Um… no?” comes Harry’s voice again.
“If I pick up this drum right now, will I see something I have no desire to see?”
“You absolutely will,” Louis quips, quite happily. “You might even see two things you have no desire to see!”
“But don’t worry,” Harry cuts in. “We’re not touching each other! Not at all!”
“Christ,” says Paul. “Heathen children. I’m going to go get some horrible hotel coffee and when I come back I want these drums rated PG.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, Paul!”
Eight hours left, Paul things to himself as he walks away. Just eight hours.
—
Paul’s just had room service delivered when a knock sounds at his door. He opens it to find a member of staff looking haggard.
“Hello sir,” said staff member starts, looking terribly awkward. “We were told that you’re more or less in charge-”
Oh no, Paul thinks.
“The only thing is, whoever is in room 410 has, we think, accidentally knocked their room phone off of the hook so it keeps dialling us and- well-”
“Yes alright,” Paul says. “I know who’s in that room, I’ll take care of it.”
Dismissing the poor, traumatized member of staff, Paul walks down the way to room 410 and pounds on the door. “Zayn!” he says sternly. “And also probably Liam! Open up!”
Nobody opens up.
“Right,” Paul says. “Make yourselves decent!”
He pulls out the keycard for their room from the stack that he has and swipes it, opening the door and letting it fall inward.
Covering his eyes, he steps inside. “Are you decent?”
“Yes,” comes Liam’s strangled voice.
Paul cautiously lowers his hand.
Liam is on the couch in the room, fully clothed.
Zayn is on the bed, a fluffy white comforter covering his intimate bits. The phone is off the hook next to the bed.
“I don’t want to know,” Paul says. “I don’t. Please do not tell me.”
He walks over and hangs up the phone. “Please do whatever teenage boy things you’re doing farther away from the phone,” he says, looking at Liam (bashful) and Zayn (blasé). “And please make sure whatever you’re doing doesn’t end up on the internet.”
He leaves, shutting the door behind himself. Six hours.
—
Please do me a favor, Lou T’s text message reads. And make Niall shut up. The whole hotel can hear him.
Three hours until Paul is officially on holiday (he’s absolutely leaving this hotel at midnight to board the plane and everyone else is in charge of the little monsters from that point forward).
(Paul loves the boys).
(They are little monsters).
I’m on it, he texts back to Lou .
He heads down the hall and knocks on Niall’s door. The source of Lou’s complaint is apparent, as he can hear what sounds like incredibly loud and almost violent moaning coming from the other side.
“Niall!” he shouts. “For the love of all that is holy, either you’ve injured a feral animal or you’re doing unholy things to yourself again, and I don’t care which one of those it is but please make such activities silent ones!”
Niall’s room immediately goes silent.
“Thank you,” Paul says, knocking one more time. He turns and walks back to his room. Japan doesn’t know the half of it, he thinks. It’s a miracle that’s the only rumour that’s taken off.
—
At zero hours, Paul zips up his suitcase. He gathers his things, used to traveling light after years of it, and gets onto the elevator.
No one is in sight, and that’s just fine by him. He’ll see them all in a week, the little monsters, and it’ll be like he never left.
Under the cover of night he loads his things into the waiting taxi and settles in as it takes off for the airport. He’s a free man. He’s done it.
His phone pings.
Paul, having let his guard down in the safety of the taxi, unlocks his phone and is immediately faced with full frontal nudity and a flurry of messages in quick succession.
Harry Styles:
[image]
Harry Styles:
Oh shit
Harry Styles:
Sorry Paul!!!!!!!! That was for Louis!!!!!!!!
Louis Tomlinson: ;)
Paul looks out the window of the taxi like a character on The Office.
He had been. So close.