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He’s nearly asleep when his phone chirps and the screen lights up.
Louis’ battle with insomnia is nothing new. Often times he’ll struggle with it for weeks on end, but, being too stubborn to take anything for it, he allows himself to suffer.
So, naturally, the one night that he actually manages to start drifting off is the night when someone decides to message him.
With a groan, he groggily reaches for his phone, eyes squinting as they fight to adjust to the light of his screen. It takes him a second, but soon enough, he sees just who is messaging him this late.
12:37 AM isn’t that late, Louis realizes, but most people are at home, in bed, asleep at this time— much like Louis, himself; minus the ‘asleep’ part.
His eyes scan across the name a second, third, and fourth time, and he contemplates ignoring the text, turning his phone off, and going back to sleep.
Mitch: u up?
Despite his first gut instinct, Louis lingers, continuing to stare at the four character text for much longer than necessary. He chews on the inside of his cheek, cursing himself as his curiosity gets the better of him.
A few more seconds pass as he tries to futilely resist the temptation to bite.
He lets out another groan before caving and bringing up his other hand to tap out a message back.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Louis: yeah, why?
Mitch is responding almost instantly and Louis feels immediate dread.
What on Earth is he about to get himself into?
Mitch: got u smth
Mitch: think ull like it
Now Louis’ interest is really piqued, though he hates to admit it. It’s hard to imagine Mitch getting him anything. Or, well, at one time it might’ve been. As of late, Louis has taken notice of little things here and there. Things such as Mitch messaging him more; randomly giving him things; watching him more… He doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s...odd.
Louis: do you have to show me NOW?
Mitch’s reply is immediate — ‘yes’ — followed by a cascade of others —
Mitch: so get ready
Mitch: im on my way to get u
Louis just stares at his screen for a moment, like he can’t believe what he’s reading, before he’s finally typing back.
Louis: it’s almost one in the morning, mitch
Mitch: so???
Louis: SOME of us are trying to sleep
Mitch: well good thing ur already awake then huh?
Louis could strangle him, he swears. He probably would if he didn’t think he’d get his ass handed to him if he tried.
Ultimately, he knows that it’s pointless to tell Mitch no. By now, he’s already on his way over, and will be determined to get Louis out of the house one way or another.
He’s really backed into a corner here.
After a long pause, dramatic groan, and faceplant into his pillow, Louis finally, begrudgingly, responds.
Louis: alright FINE. but you better make this quick
He swears he could chuck his phone across the room when all he gets in response to that is a winky face.
Admittedly, Louis spends more time laying around than he ought to, and it isn’t until his phone is buzzing again with another text that he realizes that he’d dozed off.
He jumps up out of bed before he even reads the text informing him of Mitch’s arrival. He quickly texts back that he’ll be down in a second.
Honestly, he has half a mind just just go in his pajamas, but it’s not exactly warm outside, so he ultimately decides against it, instead, slipping on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He practically has to force his feet into his already tied Converse, and is pulling a hoodie on over his head by the time he’s leaving his room.
Most times, Louis finds himself missing his parents with their busy work schedules, but this night in particular, he could not be more relieved by their absence. At least this way he won’t have to risk getting caught.
By the time he reaches the front door and pulls it open, he catches Mitch in the middle of sending another text, but upon seeing that Louis has finally joined him, discards it.
“About time,” he says in place of a greeting.
“What’re you doing here, Mitch?” Louis doesn’t even try to hide the tiredness in his voice.
“Well, I told you I was coming to pick you up didn’t I?”
Louis would love to wipe that ebbing smirk off his lips. He only entertains the thought for a second, however, before he comes to the shocking revelation that Mitch hadn’t driven here.
“Where’s your car?” he asks, as if that will somehow magically produce an answer he would actually want to hear.
Instead, what he gets is; “Didn’t bring it. I walked here.”
“You what?” Idly, Louis wonders if there’s a possibility that his eyes will fall out of their sockets.
“What am I, speaking French?” If Mitch is attempting to be funny, it’s not working. “I walked here, Louis.”
Louis must have a disagreeable look on his face because the next thing Mitch is asking is, “Is that gonna be a problem for you?”
“Oh, no,” Louis replies, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his tone (he blames it on the lack of sleep), “Not at all. In fact, I was actually looking forward to walking however many blocks with you while being sleep deprived and dead tired. That’s really gonna be the highlight of my night.”
Mitch rolls his eyes and scoffs, “Whatever, Smart-ass. Let’s go.”
Without waiting for a response, Mitch starts off down the street, and for a moment, Louis just stands there, bewildered.
“Wha— are you serious, right now?”
When he notices that Louis still hasn’t budged, Mitch stops and turns back to look at him.
“C’mon, Lou! It’s not that far! Just right down the road!”
Louis doesn’t believe him...but he ends up following after him anyway, and internally cursing himself in the process.
Louis takes long strides to catch up, and when he does, he easily falls into step beside Mitch.
He’s silent for a few minutes before a thought occurs to him.
“Hey, wait— I thought you said you had something for me,” he says, casting Mitch a sidelong glance.
His eyes are met with yet another smirk as Mitch winks and says, “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
Normally, Louis loves surprises, but coming from Mitch? He’s not so sure. An uneasy feeling swarms around in his gut the more he thinks about it.
“Can’t wait…”
By the time they reach their destination, Louis is decidedly... underwhelmed.
“This?” he asks, incredulously. “This was your ‘Big Surprise’?”
It’s an abandoned building— some old department store that appeared to have not seen any business since the eighties. Louis wasn’t sure why it was still around or why the city hadn’t had it demolished or renovated yet. He wondered how long it would continue to be around before anything was finally done about it.
“Noooot quite,” Mitch responds, simperingly, tearing Louis from his thoughts. “Follow me.”
They walk around to the back of the building where an old, ricketity looking ladder can be seen, clinging to the brick. The paint is mostly all gone, being replaced by a majority of rust, and Louis swears it looks like the thing would poof into dust at even the lightest of touches.
“Up here,” Mitch says, stepping towards said ladder.
“Wait, what—?” Louis’ eyes widen, clearly not liking this idea. It’s not that he’s scared of trespassing, per se, but more so because there’s no way in forty hells that ladder would ever pass a safety inspection. It’s a death trap waiting to happen.
Though it doesn’t seem to deter Mitch.
“You’re not gonna chicken out now, are you?” He teases, already hoisting himself up the ladder. “After you’ve already come so far?”
“No!” Louis replies defiantly. Yes, he may be tired as all hell, and yes, he might think that his chances of falling to his death on this thing is a very real possibility, but if there’s one thing he’s not, it’s a chicken.
So, without giving a second thought, he’s climbing up after Mitch, trying to go as fast and careful as he can. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually breathe again until he’s finally on the roof.
He takes a moment to look around.
It’s not that he’s never been on top of a roof before — he’s done plenty of things and been plenty of places that he shouldn’t — but just that he doesn’t know why they’re here.
Mitch sits close to the edge so that he can peer out at the other buildings and everything below them. Soon enough, Louis has joined him. But not before asking, “So why did you bring me here, exactly? To look at the stars? I could do that at home.”
“Just relax and take a seat, wouldja?” Mitch replies flippantly. “That’s not the only reason why I brought you here.”
Louis reluctantly takes his seat and sends Mitch a quizzical look.
“Then why—” He cuts himself off the moment he sees what at first appears to be a cigarette, but definitely isn’t. “—is that weed?!”
“Whoa, hey!” Mitch, despite not needing to, takes a quick look around before fixing Louis with a stare. “Would you keep it down?”
Louis, for once in his life, actually shuts up, just staring, wide-eyed. The look results in an exasperated sigh from Mitch.
“Hey, just— calm down. It’s not a big deal or anything, alright?” He shrugs, before tilting his head back to look up at the stars for a brief moment. “I just like to come up here to think sometimes… And smoking helps me relax. Didn’t think it’d be that big of a deal to you.”
“It’s not,” Louis clarifies quickly. “I mean— I don’t really care, I just— wasn’t expecting it.”
Mitch finally looks back over at him. “Is that right?”
“Yeah—”
“Because it seemed like it was a pretty big deal to you.”
“Well, it’s not,” Louis defends. “Like I said, I just wasn’t expecting it. In fact, I wasn’t expecting any of this. —— So what, this was your plan? Get me up here to look at the stars and watch you smoke weed?”
“Well…” This time, if Louis didn’t know any better, he’d swear that he could see a genuine smile pulling across Mitch’s lips. “No, not exactly. I mean— yeah, stargazing is bound to happen, but I wouldn’t just smoke in front of you like that…”
“Oh—”
“Without offering you some first, at least.”
“... What—?”
Contrary to what some might believe, Louis has never once smoked before. He’s been around people who have, sure, but he’s never personally smoked, himself.
“I know people call me an asshole,” Mitch replies, “but I do have manners… Sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?” Louis teases. “That’s a shocker.”
“Shut up.” Mitch reaches over to give him a light shove. “You want some or not?”
“Oh, uhhh…” Louis shrugs, pretending to mull it over, even though he already knows what he’s going to say. “I...dunno. I wasn’t really planning on it or anything.”
“Have you ever even tried it?” Mitch asks, regarding him curiously. Though, judging by Louis’ reaction earlier, he has a pretty good idea.
“Well, no—”
“It’s really not that bad,” Mitch goes on to explain. “You were complaining about not being able to sleep earlier, right? This would help with that little problem.”
As tempting as that sounds, Louis still hesitates. He doesn’t want to seem like a punk, or like weed even bothers him for that matter, because it really doesn’t. He truly means it when he says that he doesn’t care if people smoke it. His main concern is just how he, personally, will experience it.
He must take too long to give Mitch an answer, because Mitch adds, “Hey, it’s no big deal if you don’t want to. I’m not gonna force ya or anything.”
That said, he decides not to waste any more time, retrieving a lighter from his pocket and lighting the blunt.
For a few moments, Louis just watches him, eyes trained on the rings of smoke that drift from his lips as he exhales. His eyebrows pull together for a second before he finally makes his decision.
“Okay, fine. Hand it over.”
Mitch, genuinely surprised by this, glances over at him, eyebrows raised. “You sure?”
“Yeah, sure,” Louis replies. “I mean, this was a part of what you had in store for me, right? Fuck it. Might as well.”
Mitch can’t stop the beginnings of a grin from tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Hell, yeah!” he cheers, passing the joint over after one more drag.
Louis hesitates for a moment, before deciding to throw caution to the wind. He’d already come this far, anyway.
Bringing the joint up to his lips, he takes a drag, only to end up going straight into a coughing fit, much to his embarrassment, and Mitch’s amusement.
He can feel his cheeks burn as Mitch’s laughter meets his ears and all he can do is let out a slightly strangled, “Shut up!” as he passes the joint back.
“What?” Mitch asks around a chuckle. “That was funny!”
“Was not!” Louis denies, doing his best to suppress a pout. “I’m just— still getting used to it, that’s all.”
“Wanna try again?” Mitch takes another puff and holds the joint back out to him.
Louis tries again, only to end up with the same results, unsurprisingly.
Mitch laughs again, much to Louis’ chagrin.
“Yeah, yeah— Like you’ve never coughed before.”
Mitch has. He still does sometimes, but he isn’t about to tell Louis that.
“Whatever,” he says, taking the joint back.
That’s when a thought occurs to him.
“Hold up, I’ve got an idea.”
“What?” Louis asks, voice still slightly strained from coughing.
He watches as Mitch takes another drag, holding in the smoke, and the next thing he knows, Mitch is reaching forward, grasping Louis’ face in his hand, and leaning in.
Louis, tense and stiff, unsure what what else to do, opens his mouth to question what Mitch is doing, but before he can, smoke is being blown in his face.
He still coughs a little, but it’s nothing compared to before.
Louis hates the way he can feel his cheeks tingling, and he tries to convince himself that it’s just a side-effect of the weed. It certainly has nothing to do with just how close Mitch had just gotten to his face just then. He doesn’t even like Mitch like that. Oddly matched friends is all that they are as far as Louis is concerned.
“Shotgunning,” Mitch answers Louis’ unspoken question, and the smirk tugging at his lips tells Louis that the color of his cheeks must’ve been more noticeable than he’d like.
“I think I’ll just stick to—”
“Hey!”
Louis swears he’s never nearly jumped out of his skin so fast. He stares, wide-eyed over the edge of the building, seeing a cop below. This is not good for many reasons — far too many to list right now — and judging by Mitch’s sudden outburst of, ‘Oh, fuck!’ he seems to share that sentiment.
“Get down from there!”
Only a beat of silence passes before the two of them jump to their feet and take off running as fast as they can.
Mitch hurries down the ladder, jumping the rest of the way down when he’s halfway. Louis scrambles after him, nearly tripping on his way down. Despite his speed, however, he goes about it much safer, rushing all the way down as cautiously as he can, rather than jump like Mitch had. It’s nearly enough to bite him in the ass, however, as the cop who’d caught them on the rooftop rounds the corner and yells out to them again.
“Hey! Stop!”
They don’t stop. In fact, they only go faster.
Apparently, Louis isn’t running fast enough though, because Mitch is reaching back to snatch up his wrist, pulling him forward in an attempt to make him move even faster. Really, it does nothing more than make Louis trip up more times than he normally would.
But they keep running.
They zip past the corner, and turn down another alleyway, bobbing and weaving until they no longer hear the cop’s voice and footsteps behind them.
They both prop themselves up against two walls of an alley, opposite each other, fighting to catch their breath. Louis notes that his lungs burn as he inhales crisp, cool air, and soon enough, much like before, he’s coughing again.
“Holy shit—!” Mitch exclaims in a gasp. “A-are you okay—?”
Louis tries to respond amidst his coughing, but he can’t.
And then… He’s laughing — much to Mitch’s surprise — a product of the adrenaline coursing through his veins.
It dies down just enough for him to blurt out, “I can’t believe you pulled me out of bed for this! This bullshit !” And then the laughter is picking up again. He can’t stop.
A bewildered grin tugs at Mitch’s lips, and he finds that Louis’ laughter is so contagious that he can’t refrain from joining in.