Sweet Tooth [HS]

SIXTY EIGHT

Six years later.

"So we need to start it slowly, Harry. Same place at the same time, same parties, and then we'll get the paparazzi to catch you two together, dinner, drinks, whatever. And then we'll stage a few proper dates. Kissing. Going home together. You know the drill by now."

Harry was not listening.

Harry was not thinking.

Harry did not feel like he was even there. He felt detached from his body, like it did not belong to himself.

"Harry? Are you listening?"

He blinked, his vacant eyes bending away from where they'd been trained on a blank space on the wall. He looked up and saw Perry, saw Tom, watching him expectantly. In fact, the whole room was watching him, he could feel all the eyes on him, staring at him like an exotic object in a museum. 

"Harry? Did you get that?" Perry repeated. 

"Yes," Harry replied flatly, and it didn't sound like his voice was coming from him - it was like a sound coming from somewhere far off. "It's a PR stunt, Perry. You don't have to explain it to me."

He felt a limp beat of anger stirring in his gut, but his numbness smothered it as soon as it came. He had no energy to get angry, had nothing left inside his body but a pulsing, desperate longing for the girl, the goddess he had left behind.

He hated himself. Hated what Max had seen the other night, hated what she was going to see. 

This had been echoing in the background for so long now. It was like Chekhov's Gun. How if a rifle is hanging on a wall in the first act of the play, it was going to shoot someone in the final act.

And it was the same with this. He had signed this stupid fucking contract months ago, back in London, when the whisperings of his album had begun, when he'd played them his song for the first time. And they'd told him then, as they always did, that this was going to happen. That Addison Ford was the person they'd picked for the PR Stunt, the tool they were going to use to whip up excitement and put him on the map again and all the stupid, stinking rest of it.

It was the gun in the first act.

And the scenes had played out. Max had taken centre stage.

But this had always been lurking in the wings, had been the final page of the script and Perry had made a swift stage-entrance and all of a sudden the time was up.

The gun was about to go off.

"So obviously we've already got Addison to approach your friend about a studio merger, so you and her's connection will seem natural. We've leaked a few things to the press about it, and Addison we want to thank you for making that step. We know that's a lot to put on the line."

Addison shrugged, "It's fine. It's not actually that bad to work with- um, Rory, is it?"

Guilt tugged at Harry's heart strings. This was another bullet in the rifle.

"Well we want to thank you anyway, Addison. You're already doing brilliantly," Perry grinned, his coffee-stained teeth peeking through his thinned lips. "So Harry, now it's your turn. We want you at the studio this evening, and we want you to be seen getting a tattoo. Maybe getting a little cosy with Addison. Yes?"

Harry thought he was going to be sick as he looked over at Addison. Her eyes, her hair, her sickly sweet smile - everything about her was wrong. She was not Max. Her laugh did not sound like a song, her body was not the form that appeared in his dreams, in his fucking nightmares. No.

But he nodded his head all the same, "Yes, Perry. I've got it."

And the meeting continued- it was a long, never-ending drawl of words and the ticking of the clock and contracts and scripts and times and places and Harry was not there.

Was in the room but not really.

Because he was taken up by the image of Max asleep yesterday morning. How she had looked wrapped in the bedsheets, how the sunlight made her glow, how it had made this halo of light around her and yes she was an angel. The sight had dazzled Harry as he watched over her, had seared the inner sides of his eyelids so when he blinked he saw her there, so when he turned away and walked down the stairs and his heart had broken inside his chest - there she was. Inside of him. 

He knew he had had to leave. 

She had seen the truth of his life - had witnessed his sickness with her own, violet eyes. And he was so embarrassed and he was so ashamed and he could not explain how sorry he was. Could not find the words to tell her what was going on - that the gun was being loaded, the shots were nearly going to be fired. 

He was too cowardly. Too toxic. 

And he thought that maybe this was for the best. Because this was his life; the drugs and the drinking and the fermenting faces - it was never going to stop. And Max, maybe for the first time, had seen past the exterior. Had peeled back the layers of gold and found the hollow cavity in the place of where his beating heart should be. 

And although Harry could not help it the first time - he could at least make sure if was the last time Max ever saw the truth. Because Max was too good for it, was too good for him. And he knew it, Lexie knew it, maybe even she knew it herself.

So yes. He had left. 

And so here he was, sitting in this boardroom in New York, listening but not really as people took his life from him, flashing him the contracts he had signed himself away on. 

As as the meeting drew to a close he could feel a weight in his hands. The gun. And he knew it was going to hurt but he had no choice but to fire it.