I Don't Love You (And I Always Will)

Chapter Fifteen

Hey! Sorry I was gone so long, school and ballet were killing me this week ://

Disclaimer: This is a work of FICTION not meant to imply anything about anyone or any organization mentioned in the work.

Louis

Louis swore he didn't believe in ghosts. That would be stupid and childish. And Louis is not stupid. Childish, yes, but not stupid.

So there had to be another explanation for the fact that all the lights in Harry's apartment had gone out, right after the shampoo bottles in the shower fell while Louis was six feet away from them.

"Guys?" Louis called out when he was drenched in darkness. All he got in response was about five screams. Louis left the bathroom and was treated to his group of friends cuddled together like they were the main cast in a horror movie. Harry and Gigi were somehow both putting their heads in each other's chests, and Liam had jumped onto El's arms, and they both fell on the floor, unsurprisingly. Zayn and Ed were smiling, like they were actually enjoying this shitshow. Niall surged forward when he saw Louis.

"Louis!" Niall shrieked. "What did the ghost look like? Was it one of those weird, bloody ones?" Niall was yelling so much Louis couldn't tell whether he was a secret ghost enthusiast or scared shitless.

"There was no ghost." Louis says, met by multiple scoffs. "That I saw." Seven pairs of eyes whipped toward him, and with this, Harry finally decided to take charge.

"Bernard is clearly having a bad day. Let's get candles." Harry says, while shepherding the group into his kitchen. He opens a cabinet, containing about twenty scented candles. "Okay, it might smell weird, but at least we can see." Everyone takes a candle and a match, and slowly the rooms of Harry's apartment get a warm glow. They focus most of the candles in the living room, so they can gather there again. After they've been settled for a few minutes, Ed comes back from a phone call with his roommate.

"So, lights out in all of Brooklyn." Ed sighs. "Bernard sure is a powerful ghost."

"You better not be insulting him. He'll move my toothpaste to my fridge again." Harry pleads.

"Bernard did what?" El exclaims, clearly all in on this ghost thing. Louis tries to come up with some sort of reasonable explanation for this but comes up empty. There really is no reason for the moving toothpaste. Or the shampoo bottles.

"Bernard is a vengeful ghost." Harry says closing his eyes and putting his head in his hands. Louis thinks he needs a hug. Louis will volunteer to do that. Before he can though, Harry's phone starts to ring. "Shit, I gotta take this." He mumbles, and scampers off to the hallway.

The remaining dancers (plus Ed and Zayn) continue to chat about Nutcracker coming up. El is feeling fine about it, but the pliates is killing her. Gigi is basically running off iced coffee, but what else is new. Louis fell flat on his face after tripping on his hoop during rehearsal yesterday, but he doesn't feel like revealing that.

"My fingers might fall off from sewing those damn snow costumes." Zayn grumbles, and Louis can sense he's about to go off on another tangent about how he will be getting arthritis before he's thirty, so Louis decides now is a good time to go to the bathroom.

Louis walked down the hallway, his socked feet making little noises while he moved. He went into the bathroom, did his thing, and then decided to snoop through all the cabinets. All he found was a staggeringly large collection of face masks, which Louis was incredibly jealous of. He ran out of things to do in Harry's bathroom except maybe take a shower. Harry probably wouldn't appreciate that though.