After the End: Book 4

32. The Explosion

A/N: Welcome to the longest chapter I've ever written.
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Harry's POV

I was 16 the first time I drank an alcoholic drink. Louis was 18, which meant he was able to buy beer, but he hadn't really done it yet. He said he had drank wine with his girlfriend once, but it wasn't really a lot because he'd had to drive home afterwards, and he was still driving his mums car.

The X-Factor stuff was in full swing, and we'd recently made it through the judges houses. We were technically celebrating, but Liam had a family thing, Zayn seemed to think I was annoying, and Niall wanted to go home one more time before we started the live shows because he wasn't sure when he'd get the chance again. That was a good move on his part. He didn't get to go back to Ireland for almost a year after that. It was just me and Louis and the 2 cases of beer we had snuck into his bedroom under his mums nose. Louis told me she knew about it anyways. She seemed to always know everything. He said they had a tradition in their home of pretending not to notice things as long as everyone was being safe. My mum could never do that. I'd had to lie and tell her I was at Louis for an X-Factor thing or she'd probably have said no just because she could. I lied a lot.

Anyways, we lounged in his room drinking beers that tasted terrible and talking about music, and movies, and my mum, and his girlfriend that didn't last. We speculated on whether Zayn was just a douchebag, or if I was actually the problem for being so flamboyant, and because I woke everybody else up at judges houses by managing to sleep less than 3 hours through the entire weekend. I thought maybe Louis was starting to notice that the sleeping thing was a pattern.

When he invited me over this time, he'd said something like "I slept in this morning, so I can stay up with you."

He said it so casually and so matter of factly. He didn't see it as an issue at all. He said it the same way someone might say they'd straightened up in preparation for guests. Louis had caught up on sleep for me, and we'd known eachother all of like 2 months. Maybe even less.

The things was, I couldn't predict which days my brain would reject sleep. Some weeks were normal. Sometimes I was organizing Louis room by the light of my phone. There wasn't a predictor.

The night we drank those beers was a night my brain wanted sleep. Looking back, it was probably the alcohol, but I just remembered thinking I was awfully annoyed by how heavy my eyes had become because every other part of me felt bubbly and talkative and pleasantly slow. I remembered smiling a lot. Louis was smiling too. I was learning that alcohol made people smile.

Louis asked me a lot about my family. I thought he was interested because he knew I came from something much different than what he had. He had a lot of siblings. He was the oldest, while in my family I was the youngest. He had a mum that liked him. His mum called every night when he was away and mine didn't. Louis had brought me back to his house several times even though it was a several hours drive, but I never invited him to mine, and I'd been candid in telling him I never would. He asked about my dad and I'd informed him of an untimely demise. He'd tried to offer a condolence, but I told him it was like leaving flowers for a strangers grave. He'd looked like he wanted to laugh, but wasn't sure if he was allowed. I laughed.

Then I'd drunkenly stumbled to his bathroom, engaging in hallway conversation with Lottie that time. She didn't hate me yet. She actually told Louis she thought I was cute. He didn't tell me about that for several years. When I got back to Louis room, I asked him why the hallway photos didn't have a dad in them. I already knew his dad had left. He'd told me it was only just a few years prior, but even in the photos that portrayed a young-faced Louis or an infant Lottie... his dad was still missing.