Louis is not sure if he is ready to see Harry like this. The way his lower lip slightly quivers, makes his heart twinge. He looks younger suddenly, in his tear smudged face, fragile in a way that that someone of his fame and stature should not. But...
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The fifth floor Modest meeting room is in function, meaning it is a fiasco unfolding.
All the Modest employees knew that any meeting taking in the glass, soundproof cube means extra work and extra effort - plus utter chaos. But most of them were asleep on their beds at this hour.
Inside the cube, four figures sat with one facing the other three - two middle aged men and a woman in her late twenties. For an onlooker it would look more like an interrogation/ a hearing rather than a damage control meeting. The young man who sat silently, facing the older clan was none other than Harry Styles, one of the most recognized faces in the industry even though his feet were in a boyband.
The things in the room were almost ending. The deafening silence after a long session of arguments and one sided shouting hinted that much.
Taking the opportunity, Stacy Willinks, the main PR coordinator for the world known pop band, One Direction, takes her voice with a finality - attempting to lighten the situation. Because as she feels, it is high time that they send the boy to his bed. There is a show he needs to get ready by the morning and there is only few minutes left of the night...
"What's done is done. There's no going back. We need to handle this intelligently. Meaning, that we will have to use whatever the backlash to our advantage," her curt voice rings in the silence without interruptions. "As said, there'll be no rescheduling, or cancellations. We will draw a media response plan accordingly for you, Harry, and rest of the boys. You all will have to follow our lead for a while until this situation calms down."
She sits back in her chair, waiting to hear the word 'dismissed' from Robert, her boss, or their CEO, Mr. Magee ; but it never comes.
She spares another glance at Harry, who kept fiddling with the silver ring on his finger, refusing to look up. His tired face has worry written all over it, and his narrowed eyes does little to hide his distress. Hair still tied up with one of his signature scarfs, Harry is still in his stage clothes from the show a few hours earlier. He must be knackered out of wits, she feels a hint of sorry for him which she should not - given what he had gotten himself in to amid all the work and schedules.
The boys had just finished a show an hour or two before and has another tomorrow night. It will be the last gig of the European tour and they had sound checks and set ups in the morning before the show. They will be headed to Australia for another set of shows the same night after a brief press conference about closing the European leg. Schedules were already tight, and everyone was tied up with late working hours. A chaos of a huge tabloid outbreak is the last thing they any of them could afford.
So when some very graphic images, and a compromising video of Harry with some model got leaked online out of nowhere in the evening, the sky had fallen over.
