Chapter Text
Louis Tomlinson is a train wreck. That is a way of putting it lightly. His whole world is a vast blur of darkness and bad decisions. It doesn't matter how many times he decides he's done, he always falls back in, because darkness is tricky like that for him. Louis wants for nothing—has everything he could ever ask for really, but it's all nothing. Maybe he needs to be rescued—maybe he can't be rescued. No one knows, least of all, Louis.
Years ago he'd read a Stephen King novel with the line hello, darkness, my old friend, repeated endlessly through it from start to finish. This he can agree with. This he understands, because his own life is the same way. It's so easy to slip back into darkness when it's kind of all he's ever known. So it's become his mantra. He greets the darkness when it comes, because it’s the only constant he's known. He's accepted it for what it is.
Nearly four years ago, when he was just sixteen, was the first time he'd decided that he was done. He was ready to beg his mother for a way out, but she'd stopped noticing that he needed help. For the second time in Louis's life, she'd let her new boyfriend, new kids, eclipse Louis. Maybe he should learn to accept these things. He supposed, if he'd had a child like himself, he'd probably want to keep trying until he got it right. Until he was able to prove to himself that he could do it right, despite the one glaring example of imperfection he was forced to stare at every day.
Louis was born into excess, that much is true. His grandfather was the most wealthy person in Doncaster. He owned real estate across the town and some kind of international mining company that Louis didn't have a real clue about. All he knew was that money had never been an object. His grandfather gave them everything, doting on his daughterand grandchildren excessively. Louis had honestly never known what it was like to really want something, because his every whim was always met.
Louis' mum was only 19 when she'd had him. His father was just some guy who was in it for the money. He left before Louis could really remember. Which, maybe isn't the most remarkable story in the world. Plenty of people had dead-beat dads. That didn't really explain how Louis became the way he was. It wasn't a very good excuse. Then again, Louis never tried to make excuses.
When he was five, his mother got married and changed his last name to match her new one. Louis didn't mind his step-father. He wasn't inherently a bad person, but he'd stolen his mother. That was pretty unforgivable if Louis was honest. When his first sister was born, that's when things got bad. Louis was pushed into the background, a left over from his mother's former life. A constant reminder of the mistakes that she'd made as a teenager. He didn't fit in with the picture that Mark and his mother were trying to paint. So they pushed him back and kept replacing him with sister after sister until there was four of them and they outnumbered his mum's past. They gave Louis every single thing he asked for aside from their attention and affection. He'd never fit in. He'd never really been a Tomlinson, despite his name. Lottie, Fizzy, Daisy and Phoebe? They were Tomlinsons. They were sisters, same mum, same dad. They were born into a life where, even as things fell apart, they were sisters. They always had each other. They never paid much attention to their old brother. No one did.
And then, about four years ago, his mother left Mark and married Dan. It all happened really quick. Louis was sixteen, and he was really starting to fall apart. He was on drugs—so many drugs—and he was scared and lonely and the people surrounding him were probably just there because he had the money to support their habits. He wanted help. He wanted out. He wanted someone to love him unconditionally, but his mother had all but forgotten him. Again, she pushed him aside and brought another set of twins into the world. They took up everyone's time. Lottie, Fizzy Daisy and Phoebe were all obsessed. No one noticed just how lost Louis had become.
That was until he stated to embarrass everyone. Then his mother was forced to acknowledge him. He was a proper mess. Nothing original or special. Just another rich kid who had everything but complained that it wasn't enough. He kept doing taking. He kept making stupid mistakes. He'd drink and drive his 'friends' around everywhere they wanted. He was arrested a few times, mostly for petty drug charges. Nothing ever came of it, and his mother always bailed him out.
Yeah, Louis was a train-wreck. It was a simple fact. And he hurt. He hurt a lot, but he was exceptional at suffering on his own. So, he was never really a Tomlinson, he'd never be a Deakin and he was lost, lost, lost.
He was in his third year of Uni—taking mostly first year classes because he normally flunked everything he took. He didn't go to school much. He liked lectures and all, but it was never enough of an incentive for him to attend them. If he was honest, he'd much rather stay in his room and read poetry and sip tea until the wee hours of the morning. Reading was the only thing that had ever really held his interest. He liked to escape (hence the excessive drug use). But more often than not, he'd chosen his friends over the things that actually brought him joy, simply because they asked him to, and that almost made him feel wanted (even if he was intelligent enough to know they just wanted him to buy them drugs).
On that particular night, that was exactly what Louis was gearing up to do. Matt had texted him asking for a ride to a rave across town where they apparently had the best MDMA in town. Louis liked MDMA. It was probably his favourite drug. He wasn't really addicted though, not anymore. He was kind of tired of the whole scene. Most of the time, now, he just waited around until his friends wanted a ride to the next party or needed him to buy pizza at four AM.
Louis didn't like his life, but it was his. It was what he knew. These were the people who searched him out and asked for him in ways that his family never had. It made him feel wanted, and that's really all Louis wanted. He'd snort anything, drink anything, drive people around in the middle of the night if they asked him to, because he was pathetic. Pathetic and desperate and lonely. He was lonely in a house full of nine people and parties full of hundreds of others. He didn't really have a clue what he was doing.
He opened the door to his bedroom and flew down the stairs quickly. Normally he slipped by his family easily without them noticing. They always ate dinner at 7, which is what they were doing now. They never invited Louis to the dinner table. They were probably afraid he'd corrupt his sisters, one of which was officially a teenager. She was now particularly susceptible to corruption. He tried to slide carefully passed them without word, but when he reached the front door and reached for his keys, he realized they weren't on the hook. This was odd, because he always put them back (he had a horrible habit of losing everything and vowed that the keys to his Mercedes would never be one of those things).
"Louis?" He heard his mother's voice, and the whole thing was odd. Where were his keys, and why was his mother trying to engage him during her precious family dinner time? His palms felt sweaty, he wiped them on his jeans, tension in all of his limbs.
Rationally, he knew that this was probably just another intervention of some sort (they did this every few months) but he still felt uneasy.
"Come in here, would you?" His mother beckoned.
He walked uneasily to the dining room, his heart hammering in his chest. Honestly, he didn't know what he wanted, but he knew it wasn't this. It wasn't this life, this awful rerun that looped over and over. He was sick to death of everything in his life. He stood then, in the threshold of the dining room, his mum standing now and his siblings and Dan filing out of the room. Oh, god. It was an intervention, wasn't in?
"Louis, we need to talk," she said softly, which was odd, because his mother rarely afforded him such dignity as pretending to care about how he felt.
"Where are my keys?" His voice was mechanical. Rationally, he didn't care about his keys, but people expected things of him and he was well rehearsed at giving people what they expected.
"I took them,"
They were nothing alike, his mother and him. She was a princess, always working hard to exceed everyone's expectations. Louis, on the other hand, was a mutilated verson of the person he'd been made into. He'd been squished into mold after mold and he hadn't properly fit any of them. He's failed at being a golden child, failed at making real solid friendships and though he'd grown up sort of infamous, he'd become accustomed to being over looked. He kicked against everything around him, choosing anonymity in his family and favouring his self created shadow in the rest of his life. He didn't know who he really was, though. Maybe he was none of those things, or maybe he was both. Maybe he'd never know.
"Why?" He didn't care. Not really. Honestly, he'd be just as content to go back upstairs and read for the rest of the night, but that's not what she expected, so he adjusted.
"I found pills in your laundry,"
He stared down at her. Louis wasn't tall by any stretch, but he felt like he towered over his mother. He didn't like it. He didn't like to feel intimidating. He blinked down at her three times before she spoke again.
"Why do you keep taking drugs, Louis?"
That was a loaded question. Why did he keep taking drugs? He didn't particularly care for it, not anymore. And to be fair, he rarely dabbled anymore. That's why the pills ended up in his jumper! He'd pretended to take them and sat back, watching everyone else trip out. They'd only ended up there because I didn't take them. Ironic, wasn't it?
"I like it, I suppose," he said then, still looking down at his mother's tiny face, wishing that maybe she care enough to realize that he wasn't the person she thought he was. He wasn't even the person he thought he was. No one had a clue who Louis was. He wished his mother could see passed the front he put on for the rest of the world and see that he was crying out for her. That he needed her to love him the way no one else ever had. He needed someone to prove that he was worth something more than what he'd grown so used to. He wanted to be saved, and he really wanted his mother—his only real family—to be the one to finally see through him. To prove that he hadn't wasted his entire life waiting for her love and approval, that maybe it was there all along. Wasn't parental love supposed to be unconditional? What a joke that was. Louis had learned the hard way from a very young age that nothing in life was unconditional.
"Louis, you have sisters, little sisters who look up to you," he sputtered a small laugh as she said that. They'd kept his sisters far away from him for years. They probably didn't even know his real last name. Funny, innit? "You can't bring drugs into this house. I can't let you drive, Louis. You're out of control,"
He didn't say anything else, he just nodded slowly, waiting for his mother to release him from this conversation that he in no way asked to have. Eventually she broke their eye contact and turned away from him, following after Dan and his siblings.
"You disappoint me, Louis,"
Yeah, well, that wasn't news. That was a fact that Louis had been aware of for longer than he could really remember. He'd kind of been thrust into disappointment from the day he was born as a bastard child to a woman who just wanted everyone else to think her life was pretty. He was never going to measure up to his adorable younger siblings who had never done anything wrong. That would never be him. He had accepted that.
But it didn't hurt any less when he mother reminded him. They were her first words to him in probably a week. Just when Louis was thinking that maybe he was becoming a little less fucked up and a little more balanced.
Oh, well, such was the life of Louis whatever-his-real-last-name-should-be.
"Night, mum," he said walking out the front door. He might not have had his car, but there was always a driver at his beck-and-call, and that would suffice.
***
It was four A.M. and Louis was in some abandoned warehouse, music blasting so loud he could see the pages of the book he was reading shake. He was reading Dante's Inferno for maybe the eighth time that year. Silently, he wondered what circle of hell he was in now. He wondered if maybe all of the mistakes he'd made in his life were him walking through some of the circles. Maybe he was halfway to Lucifer by now, or maybe he was just second-hand high on the meth Matt had smoked next to him awhile back.
Matt was Louis' closest friend. He wasn't much, really, when Louis looked back at the whole thing. Matt was a grown-up kid from foster housing who never really had a real shot at life. He was a reckless drug addict and had dragged Louis through more than one circle of hell. They'd met when Louis was 14 or so and it had been a match made in...well, hell.
See, the truth was, Louis was smart in his own way. He mostly saw things for how they really were. Matt had been a horrible choice, but he had also been the first guy to ever really pay attention to Louis in the way he wanted as a 14 year old boy. Sure, Louis never had a lack of people offering to be his friend. His family was well known. People knew he was wealthy and generous. He'd spent most of his life trying to gain friends that way. People had always used him a lot. He didn't mind so much, least of all when Matt did it, because in all honesty, he could afford his friend's habits and he really wanted the attention and the companionship.
Sometimes, when Matt got high, he would lay back and let Louis read him excerpts of whatever book he was devouring at the time. That kind of felt like friendship to Louis, and Matt gave him other things too. He gave him release.
In the beginning it was just rushed handjobs and sloppy kisses in between hits of whatever drug they could find that day. It was all dark and primal and sometimes Matt told Louis he loved him, and sometimes Louis was high enough to believe it. Most of the time though, Louis saw it for what it was. It was just a horrible, shameful display from a boy who was even more fucked up than him. Matt probably didn't love him, and Louis probably didn't love Matt, but they had each other, and that was something. That was something more than anyone else had given him.
It wasn't all sunshine and butterflies, though, because Matt was angry. He hated to be let down. Sometimes he took drugs that turned him into a monster than Louis rationalized could only belong in the ninth circle of hell.
But, then again, even with his enormous family, Matt was all he had. So for a lot of years, he'd get high with him and let him fuck him until he bled or let him use Louis as his personal punching bag. Louis knew how to handle other people's anger well. He knew how to shrink in on himself and wait for the storm to pass. Besides, being alone would be the only thing worse than dealing with Matt's violent streak, so it was a small price to pay for companionship.
Yeah, Louis was a bit fucked up but he honestly believed there was no changing this. He had insight. He had survival skills. He was aware of every single dumb thing he did but there was no way for him to stop. It had been an incredible journey on this downward spiral and he was no quitter. He'd probably end up ODing in a shady hotel room next to Matt.
He didn't really care much. He didn't imagine anyone else would really care much.
Meanwhile, as he sat in one of the circles of hell, underlining new parts of Dante's Inferno that appealed to him, he felt someone sit next to him. He glanced up momentarily, meeting Matts eyes—which were mostly pupil by that point in his high. Matt smiled at him sweetly and Louis almost remembered all of the initial reasons he'd fallen into this whole mess with him.
"Always reading," he mused, running his fingers softly down Louis' neck.
I a shiver ran down Louis spine, making his hair stand on end. It was all just desperate affection. Matt never meant anything by it. He needed an outlet and Louis was always willing.
"Let's go away," said Matt, still trailing his fingers across Louis' skin. "It's been so long since you took me somewhere. Let's go to London for the week,"
Louis' gaze was trained on the same words on the page that he'd already read about 16 times since Matt sat next to him.
"Classes start Monday," his voice was soft, shrunken, along with his posture.
Matt's fingers no longer gently tickled Louis' skin. Instead, he grated his nails down Louis' neck harshly.
"You're such a fucking joke," he said as an uneasy feeling dripped into Louis' stomach. "You've never even passed a class, who gives a fuck? You're not smart enough for uni, I wish you'd quit pretending. It just makes you look even more pathetic,"
And yeah. Okay. Those words hit home for Louis. Feeling pathetic was something he was quite used to. It was something he knew well and felt daily, but there was something to be said for other people seeing that he was pathetic. Louis liked to go unnoticed. It was his comfort zone. He didn't want anyone to have any opinion of him, positive or negative. The words settled into the parts of Louis that felt inadequate. And that was, essentially, all the parts of Louis.
Was he supposed to argue? He'd chosen Matt and drugs and parties and impromptu holidays to London over his studies time and time again. Matt wasn't wrong to expect this of him. It was who Louis was. He was the drug addicted rich kid who gave his friends what they wanted. It wasn't the prettiest picture, but oblivion was so much more attractive to him than being the train wreck everyone could see. If he could just dig himself into a deep enough hole that everyone stopped noticing his mess, that would be ideal. If he tried enough, flooded his system with enough illicit substances maybe he could stop noticing that everyone noticed him.
And those are the reasons why Louis was now sneaking into his mother and Dan's bedroom at 3 in the morning, praying that they hadn't changed the combination on the safe. He fiddled with the numbers while Matt lurked in the doorway. There were about a million problems with this situation. First of all, his mother had no idea that he knew the safe's combination, and he was about to blow it and forfeit any future opportunities to open it. Second, Matt was expressly banned from their home, on account of almost fist fighting Dan on several occasions.
But, to Louis' relief, the safe opened on the first try and he reached in the pluck out the keys to his Mercedes.