After the End: Book 4

64. Resting

Louis POV

The weekend was quiet, at least for Harry.

He tried to hang out at my flat, but with the twins and Oliver around, it was simply not conducive to resting. He liked to get up to visit with people. It wasn't like when he was feeling the intense depression that usually kept him down. He actually seemed like he felt well despite the pain and disorientation. He wanted to be around the kids, and he wanted to interact with them. He couldn't help it, especially when his anxiety got bad. If he was volatile before the fresh head injury, then his emotions were especially heinous after the fact. He simply couldn't keep anything level. I watched him nearly sob watching a sad cartoon with Oliver. It was amusing if not concerning.

After less than a day, he decided to spend the rest of the weekend on his own sofa. He sat mostly in the dark with music playing lightly in the background. It took me a few hours of coming and going to realize he was listening to Faust, which he said he quite liked after I'd played it for Cory's grandfather. He said Cory played it for him sometimes. I found that kind of amusing.

As much as I would have liked to sit in the dark listening to opera music with Harry, I had work to do. Becca and I were both intensely busy through Saturday and most of Sunday trying to coordinate some damage control for Harry's performance. The more press was written about it, the more we had to navigate people's reactions. It was being labeled a medical event. His management and his label were officially being branded the villains in the story. The dominant narrative was that Harry was a victim, and I wholeheartedly agreed with it.

I had to completely ignore the press narrative being pushed that Harry was an unstable drug addict, potentially lying about his sobriety, and that he was such a mess that he couldn't be bothered to come to the festival sober. It made me so angry, that Becca handled all correspondence regarding it. Instead, I released several press releases explaining away the situation, and neglected to comment on his sobriety when asked, simply stating it was a personal matter for him, and that he'd been plenty transparent about it both in the past and currently. I wasn't allowed to say more anyways. The label wanted to pretend he hadn't said it all.

All of my emails from Melvin and his team were scathing. I was supposed to have prevented it from happening somehow. Apparenly begging to be released from the festivals set list wasn't example enough about my powerlessness. They set impossible standards and wanted to punish us for not meeting them.

I did my best to reply to Melvin specifically with some shred of remaining professionalism. I wasn't exactly thriving at it, but I finally agreed to hang around after our monday check in. We were going to talk. I half wondered if I would be fired. I kind of hoped I would be if not for my desire to be there for Harry. I had signed up originally because I wanted to write and compose music. Instead, I rarely found myself infront of the piano. I spent most days acting as a human punching bag for very little in return.

Becca was right. We all wanted out.

When I touched on this issue with Harry, he just shrugged. Granted, he was recovering from his bump on the head, largely without pain management. He was grumpy and tired and was literally only getting up to smoke. It wasnt a good time to ask him to quit again after he'd just put himself through what he'd just done while attempting to not get fired. At least he'd accomplished that. As far as I could tell, his job was safe. They were just unhappy about the outcome.

In addition to my issues with work, the universe was hell bent on reminding me my father existed in every waking moment. The more I ignored him, the more he was thrust into my face in a very annoyingly unignorable way. I'd ignored his messages in the chaos and so Fiz had reached out. I found his utilization of my sister to reach me rather pathetic, but I wasn't willing to ignore her anymore so I answered. They wanted to meet again. I would have literally rather clawed my own eyes out, but Daisy said she wanted to go.