Chapter Text
As he walks through the thick trees, lugging a gigantic pack filled with supplies for the next week, Louis begin realise how distant he’s really become from the group. Ed and Stan are laughing about some drunk chick at a party over the weekend - Louis had opted not to go, instead chatting his way through stranger after stranger on Omegle. He felt bad for missing yet another party but it had been worth it; chatting to a charming guy for most the night. Louis had gotten his number, God knows why. The kid was young only sixteen apparently, he came off a lot older though. He was charming and smart and nice and a whole other bunch of wonderful things.
He had a head covered in chocolate brown curls, eyes green like grass and dimples denting his cheeks like tiny caves. Well that’s what Louis liked to imagine from the boys brief description. For all he knew, this mysterious boy could be a forty-year-old man with a bald sport and criminal history and jail tattoo of his mother’s name.
While off in his daydream about the nameless lad, Louis neglected to notice the pretty blond girl walking by his side, eyes shining like tiny stars stuffed into her eye sockets as she poked him out his memories. “Lou Bear, why are you smiling?” She asked, batting her eyelashes in a ‘cute’ manner.
“Never you mind pumpkin.” He smile bringing her in to a tight one armed hug before leaning down to whisper in her ear, “Now, I hope the only reasoned your still flirting with me is because you’ve suddenly got amnesia and forgot about your boyfriend who’s only meters away.”
“No, Lou, you silly billy.” Giggling into Louis’ shoulder she bats him with her clawed hands. “I wanted to talk to you, God knows why, you’re such a bore.” She teases.
Louis rolls his eyes in a playful manor and wraps his arms around Hannah’s waist, throwing her on to his shoulder as gentle as possible. He holds tightly on to her as her quickens his pace to catch up with the others, setting her back down on to the dusty track before joining into his friends conversation.
+
Three hours later and the tents are set up and the campfires blazing. The smell of toasted marshmallows and burnt sausages fill the damp evening air as people wander from group to group scavenging whatever left overs they can. Stan had disappeared with a relatively big group of guys half an hour ago, chest puffed out and sleeves rolled to show of varying amounts of muscle, to collect more fire wood the night ahead. Hannah and her group of giggling girlfriends sit further up the hill staring into the sky, coved by a thick blanked of stars, threating to out shine the silver glow the full moon. Louis and Ed sit side by side on a log next to the flowing lake, watching the reflection of the night sky ripple and change with the current, listening to the gentle sounds of the water trickling down stream. They’re hidden by thick trunked trees from the rest of the campsite, basking in the relaxing atmosphere surrounding them.
“He’ll get over it soon.” Ed whispers, too afraid to break the silence that had fallen over them. “You know Stan, he doesn’t adjust well to change.” Louis hilts his head up to the sky and sighs, deep and thoughtful before replying, eyes closed as if it would block out the hurt creeping its way back to the front of his mind.
“I wish he didn’t have anything to get over.”
+
Louis is woken from his peaceful dream about a certain mysterious green-eyed boy by the sounds of planes flying dangerously low overhead. He reluctantly crawls out of his sleeping bag and steps outside the tent to be meet with the sight of fifty or so teenagers standing around outside tents in various degrees of dressed. He turns his attention back to the pink tinted sky as another fleet of planes zooms past their campsite. Some people duck, some stare in wonder and some grumble about the noise and slip back into their tents, hoping for a couple hours more sleep. Louis looks to his left to see Hannah wrapping her small dainty hands around Stan’s upper arms and staring above letting out a little high pitched squeak with every plane that passes over the tops of their heads, still dressed in her pink polka-dot onesie. On his right Ed’s head casually pops out of his tent as he looks to the sky before shrugging and disappears back where it came from.
After ten minutes the planes stop coming and slowly the teens either climb back into their tents or wander off to do what they want to do. But Louis stays, glued to the grass outside his tiny two person ten for one, staring at where the planes had come from then to where they had gone, swapping back and forth as if he was watching a game of tennis.
A loud obnoxious laugh shakes Louis out of his racing mind. He looks around the campsite and notices the stack of firewood already starting to shrink, barley enough to last breakfast, if they’re lucky. He takes it upon himself to fetch some more. He crawls back into his tent to change into a simple black scoop neck t-shirt and dark jeans and grabs his small backpack to fill with a snack for while he walks. He picks up one of the axes that rests against the trunk of on old oak tree and heads off on the dirt path leading into the heart of the woods.
+
He wonders around the path until the sky turns from pink tinted, to bright blue, to pink again as the sunsets again. Louis trudges back down the path to the campsite, hand still wrapped around the handle of the axe, dragging it lazily behind him as he walks. Arms filled with blocks of chopped wood and stomach half empty on only a sandwich and cereal bar.
He knows he should feel bad. His friends will be worried – or he at least hopes they will – about his where a bouts. But he’d just needed some time to breathe, to think and just be alone. It had only thought he’d be gone for an hour, tops.
The roar of an engine and the whoosh of the wind startle Louis causing him to drop the wood and axe and leap and squeal because fuck, what was that? He stares up to the sky to see the return of the dare-devil pilots, still flight much too low than what must be legal. The next fleet zooms past but the noise of their obnoxious engines is drowned out by an ear-splitting, screeching sound, getting louder and louder every second before the trees are shook with force. The bang that echoes through the woods is deafening, causing Louis to sink to the dirt floor, hands clasped over his ears and eyes squeezed shut in pain.
The opens his eyes a few minutes later when warmth flickers around him, heating him to his core, and scream waft their way through the dense woods. The trees no more than fifty meters in front of him are alight with a warm red-orange glow as flames dance along the branches.
Louis stands unmoving in shock as bodies run past him, some red and raw and burnt, others carrying injured over their shoulders, some so badly hurt Louis can no long recognise their faces and some who half hobble, half run to try and catch up, leg and arms and face and skin burnt and how are they alive?
As the wall of flames inches closer and closer and two boys run through the trees, one with a girl slung across his shoulder and they’re bad, all three of them, so bad, adrenaline the only thing stopping them from passing out from sheer agony. To others they would be faceless and nameless, but not to Louis. No, Louis would recognise those faces even if they were cut up into pieces the size of a thumb and painted purple. He turns away from the hypnotising flick of flames to run after his best friends and to what he hopes will be safety.