Chapter Text
Moving back to his parent’s house wasn’t an ideal situation for 21-year-old Louis Tomlinson. But his friends had cut him off without explanation just before graduating from university and Louis didn’t know where to go. Louis didn’t have the money to pay for such a big apartment now that he was alone in it and he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in the city full of… traitors would be a suitable word for his ex-friends. He was unemployed and just graduated, with pretty much no job experience. He stayed in the apartment until the end of May. Last month had been lonely, because his roommate had moved out without telling Louis and leaving only rotting food in the kitchen. If Louis was honest, he didn’t know why this all happened. Did he do something or…
Louis opened his laptop and sat on his gaming chair placing the laptop on his lap. “Fuck my life”, he muttered as he scrolled through his Spotify his mom paid for him. All his plans had changed due to his situation. He is searching for a job but since he is moving to his parent’s house, computer science jobs are tight in a small place like Doncaster. He was supposed to start an IT company with his friends but… that is cancelled now. While listening to music, Louis checks his emails. Finally, something good happened, he got a job interview in a local tech store in Doncaster. It wasn’t anything big but it was something. Louis placed the laptop on his desk and sighed.
Looking around his room, he knew he should pack the rest of his stuff. But he wasn’t feeling energetic. It had been over 6 months since he was at his parents’ house last time and lately he hadn’t been able to shake the homesickness off. Probably due to losing all of his friends since they were the only thing dragging his mind away from it. Louis couldn’t visit home because his family had been having money problems lately and train tickets were expensive. He didn’t have a car and it was a 7-hour drive anyway. Louis let the music play from the laptop and started finally packing his stuff. Not trying to think about too much of everything.
-**-
Emptiness echoed inside Louis while he watched the sky and hoped he was anywhere else. Louis sat on the balcony. His knees pulled to his chest, hands wrapped around his feet and his chin resting on his knee. He watched the rainy sky. It was the middle of the night and Louis couldn’t sleep. His brain didn’t let him sleep. Louis kept overthinking everything. What did he do wrong? Why did all his friends leave him? Why did they… He didn’t know, they didn’t tell him. So… he kept thinking about it.
-**-
Still, so many days to go. Nobody to talk to and nothing to do. Louis had packed all his stuff ages ago. Because the university city was pretty small, there was nowhere to go or nothing to do. Drinking wasn’t fun alone and after the last time… Louis wasn’t even sure if he would be able to ever drink again.
Louis lay on his double bed. It was under the window and Louis was able to watch the lake the campus was built around. Countless hours he had spent doing that during his weeks alone in the apartment. Not wanting to do anything since he was all alone. At this point, he couldn’t feel anything. He was just numb from just laying in bed for so long.
There was roadwork on the other side of the lake. Louis kept watching it, the truck or whatever system driving slowly by, fixing the road. But it wasn’t silent. Three dudes were talking about some game through his laptop’s speakers and randomly Louis commented on the podcast he was listening to. He had started listening to this podcast a few days ago, missing human voices. Maybe someday Louis would do a podcast? But then remembered that he had no one to do it with.
-**-
Wrapping his hands around his mom was the best feeling in months Louis had felt. Finally, Louis closed the trunk of his mother’s car. He was leaving the town and university after what had felt like forever. He had barely moved from bed the last few days. All his energy had been spent during the night. Louis’ sleep routine had been a mess since his classes had ended. Not having to get up early to be anywhere and nobody being there to keep him company. Overwhelming homesickness kept his body in bed all day but his mind was awake all night. Overthinking his every move and word that left his mouth. It all had been so overwhelming. Maybe now that he was leaving the town and memories behind, he could find peace. Louis sat on the passenger seat and opened the radio. ”Two weeks and I’ll be home…” Louis heard a male voice singing and laughed a bit. ”Finally going home”, Louis sighed.
-**-
Two weeks later Louis sat on his chair and played Minecraft while listening to music. His sisters were watching some movie or series in the living room, and Louis could hear their laughter over the music. “What in the…”, Louis got up and went to the living room. He found Lottie and Thalia, sitting on a couch and watching something.
“What are you watching?” Louis asked curiously.
“Just ZayZee’s live stream. He is very funny”, Lottie smiled, looking at the television that had YouTube on it. Louis turned his gaze to the television. It was a live streamer. In the facecam, there was a young man, around Louis’ age, with black hair, a short beard, and brown eyes but a wide smile on his face. He was playing Minecraft with some friends.
“So who are these?” Louis asks his sisters.
“Just ZayZee and his friend Payno. They’re playing Minecraft”, Thalia tells Louis.
“Thalia has a crush on Payno”, Lottie giggles.
“Shut up! You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone!”
Louis rolls his eyes but continues to watch Zayzee’s playing. Maybe it would be fun to try to live stream his gaming sessions.
-**-
Everything was ready and Louis was home alone since his mom, stepfather and four sisters had gone to sleepover to visit Louis’ grandparents. Louis had everything he wanted for a gaming session. A thought came to his mind when he turned his computer on after coming home from work. He wouldn’t lose anything if he live-streamed himself playing. Tonight he had planned to play Minecraft and maybe something on his Nintendo Switch. He already had a program for recording his screen due to his school work and it should work with any streaming platform. So he logged in to his old YouTube and Twitch accounts, both under the name “TommoTeasing”, and set everything up. Pressed “start livestream”, and started playing. Talking to himself and a few random people who showed up to his chats.
-**-
Two months later Louis sat down in his chair and got everything ready. He tweeted how he was going to live in 15 minutes and put his phone away. In a short time, Louis had got 100 regular watchers. To him, it was a big deal. There was already a small community and he had his own Discord server for everyone who wanted to chat with him. He used Discord and Twitter to tell his followers when he was going to stream. He used Twitter for other things also. But he also started to edit his live streams after noticing that he had the files. The videos he posted on his YouTube channel. He still worked at the local tech store, but because it was a part-time job, he had a lot of free time for his new hobby.
Louis noticed a message icon pop on his phone’s screen. It was a Twitter DM. It was from ZayZee’s official Twitter account.
“Wanna join me and Payno in a Minecraft session?”
Louis was surprised and maybe a little confused by the message. So he wrote a reply.
“It would be fun. But why?”
Nowadays Louis was familiar with ZayZee, aka. Zayn. He was from Bradford and played mostly with Payno, aka. Liam who lived in Wolverhampton. They were not small streamers but rather big names, with a couple of hundred thousand followers and only going up.
“Why what?”
“Why are you asking me to join?”
“Because you seem like a chill dude. Anyway. Wanna join?”
Louis thought about and honestly, why not.
-**-
“Where are you, Payno?” Louis smiled as he tried to find his new internet friend in a new horror game that allowed one player to be Slenderman and the others trying to gather the eight pages.
“F you Tommo”, Liam laughed. “Ain’t gonna tell you anything.”
It was Halloween and Louis was streaming with Liam and Zayn their Halloween special stream. Only horror games. Almost two months ago, Zayn had asked Louis to join the Minecraft session and after that, Louis joined every now and then Zayn and Liam’s stream. He had gathered a larger audience during these months with Zayn and Liam but also talked to them when they weren’t streaming. They had great chemistry online and offline. Louis wanted to see Zayn and Liam someday face to face.
“Found ya!” Louis yelled and managed to scare Liam.
“God damnit”, Liam laughed.
“You two are terrible in this”, Zayn smiled as he collected the final page and Louis saw the “You lose” text on his screen.
“My main object was to scare Payno here”, Louis laughed.
“You’re a nightmare sometimes”, Liam pointed out but Louis could hear him smiling.
“Love you too Payno”, Louis smiled. “Next around or next game?”
-**-
“Here it is. Canon EOS 90D”, Louis showed the camera to his facecam. “I have fallen in love with photography lately and this is gonna be useful when I’m gonna meet Zayn and Liam in London next week. Gonna vlog it and show you some of it”, Louis smiled and then answered some questions his chat had. “We need to celebrate our anniversary after all”, Louis laughed.
It had been almost a year since Louis had started streaming with Zayn and Liam. Louis was able to do YouTube and live streaming as a full-time job now. He knew how incredibly lucky he was to break into this community so soon. He had almost a million followers already and streamed daily. Without Zayn and Liam, Louis wasn’t sure where he would be with this what started as a hobby. With the help of Zayn and Liam, Louis was able to turn a hobby into a job, with a rather comfortable income even though it wasn’t always stable. All this had happened in such a short time so Louis couldn’t even understand the situation fully. He was just happy that he could support his mom and stepfather with bills and food nowadays but also get his sisters and himself something nice sometimes.
But still, Louis hadn’t met Zayn or Liam face to face yet. Because Zayn and Liam had been friends for years now, they had met multiple times but Louis hadn’t met either one. He hadn’t met anyone in the community yet but had done videos and streams together with huge streamers and YouTubers. He was a social media influencer with brand collaborations even though he mostly played games.
-**-
“I’m so nervous”, Louis said to the camera. He was walking towards the cafe where he, Zayn and Liam had agreed to meet. “These two lads have been so fucking helpful with my career and generally just are really good friends to me. I just can’t wait to meet them.”
Then Louis saw Zayn and his mouth opened. He turned his camera to film the raven-haired man like their followers liked to describe Zayn’s hair. Louis wasn’t used to calling their followers fans. It felt so absurd. But then he started running towards Zayn, which felt even more absurd. “ZAYN!” Louis yelled and soon the two men were in a tight hug.
“Oh god! You’re real flesh and skin”, Louis laughed.
“Louis you idiot”, Zayn laughed.
“Fuck I can’t believe we’re here”, Louis smiled.
“Me neither my friend”, Zayn sounded amused.
“Care to let me join?” said Liam’s voice. Louis turned around and saw Liam and hurried to hug him next.
“You look like a big teddy bear just like Zayn said”, Louis laughed and Liam joined his laugh.
-**-
“I have a crazy idea”, Zayn said as they sat in the cafe.
“Shoot it”, Louis smiled. He hadn’t been able to stop smiling since seeing Zayn standing in front of the cafe only twenty minutes ago.
“Let’s move in together”, Zayn said.
“What?” Liam and Louis said in unison.
“Let’s move in together. We can buy a house or apartment in London. We could do some much more different kinds of videos together. Skits, cooking, vlogs and you name it. Just, think about it”, Zayn smiled.
“It’s not a bad idea”, Liam said.
“It would be nice to move out of my parent’s house”, Louis sighed smiling. “And I would love to make chaotic cooking videos with you.”
“So let’s do it!”
-**-
“We should start a podcast”, Louis said while he was lying in a beanbag chair with a guitar in his hands. Since high-school playing guitar had been something Louis did when he was relaxing with friends. Lately, Louis had picked guitar again and started playing it again.
It had been another year. Louis moved in with Zayn and Liam into their two-floor house in London and now they had been living together for nine months. Louis had over ten million followers on YouTube and almost 8 million on Twitch. Last year was the best year in Louis’ life. He was 23 years old, with a house, a full-time job as a YouTuber and streamer, and founded a media company with Zayn and Liam. They hired a few people to edit their videos. They had done shows at LA’s YouTube events and conventions. He had travelled the world with Zayn and Liam. He had a busy year of being a successful media influencer and he loved every moment.
“Why should we start a podcast?” Zayn asked from the couch where he sat drawing on his iPad. Zayn was also an artist nowadays and sold his art to companies, other streamers and influencers.
“Because our followers love to hear whenever we talk about something random. They find it interesting and relatable”, Louis pointed out.
“I mean, we have now that we have editors, we have more free time and Zayn, you could draw the same time we do the podcast”, Liam said thinking about it. “We wouldn’t lose anything by trying it.”
“Yes. We could record it in the office’s extra room”, Louis said. After hiring editors, they rented office space. It had an extra room that they used as storage for now.
“It would be fun though”, Zayn smiled and turned to meet Louis’ eyes. “What should we call it?”
“How about, Press Play! because you have to press play to do a lot of things nowadays. Like movies, audiobooks, games etc.”, Liam reasoned.
“Sounds good. And it’s not just us talking about games but talking about anything”, Louis smiled.
-**-
“And that was today’s episode of “Press Play!”. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did doing it”, Louis smiled. “Next week, we have a live episode on Twitch, hope we’re gonna meet you guys there. Good night!” And Louis stopped recording from his computer.
“This was a fun episode”, Zayn laughed as he removed his headphones.
“Did you finish the artwork for River?” Liam asked Zayn who always drew during their podcast recordings.
“Not yet. Gonna finish it tonight. I promised to send it to her before tomorrow”, Zayn said and started leaving the recording room. They had changed the extra room in the office into a podcast room after the first few episodes had received positive feedback from their audience. It wasn’t a super serious podcast, they just talked about random things like they would during playing games or while hanging out but kept most of the personal life stuff away. Louis had turned 24 and it was now February. Almost three years since Louis graduated from university. He almost couldn’t believe it. This felt like a dream.
Louis heard his work phone start ringing and pulled it out of his pocket. It was an unknown number so Louis answered, “Zouiam Media Company, Louis Tomlinson speaking.”
“Afternoon Mr Tomlinson. This is Ashley Bencon from Pleasing Records talking”, a strange woman’s voice spoke. Louis frowned in confusion. Why would a record company call him? He and Zayn had released a few parody songs as a joke but nothing else. Did they accidentally break some copyright law or something?
“Is this about breaking a copyright law?” Louis asked.
“Oh no no. I’m not a lawyer. I’m Niall Horan’s manager and he has asked me if he could come to record an episode of your podcast with you. If I understood correctly, you listen to his music and so does your audience. He has a new album coming up and it would be good marketing for him”, the woman, Ashley, said. Louis was speechless. Yes, it was true that Louis listened to Niall’s music and had a few conversations with his followers about his music during live streams. Just last night they had talked about Niall’s upcoming album.
“So is it okay if he comes to your show in March, after finishing recording his album?” Ashley asks.
“Yes. Of course. It would be awesome if he would be our guest.”
If only Louis knew where those words would take him.