Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Goodnight, littlest alpha!” Harry called to the retreating pair. Louis led the giggling alpha down the hall towards his room, leaving Harry alone in the kitchen. They’d just finished playing a card game together, which Eli had won, and the pup had been resistant to the idea of going to bed. Eventually he agreed, only after Harry reminded him they had a big day planned the next day with the dinner at the London flat, and Louis agreed to tuck him in. The giggles of his overly excited pup had only just died down inside his bedroom when Harry’s cell phone started buzzing inside his pocket. The alpha pulled it out without a hurry, not too interested in whoever may be trying to reach him this late at night. He furrowed his brow when he saw Liam’s name lit up on the screen. He’d been waiting all day on his manager’s call. Harry had called him back Tuesday night after Eli was asleep, as he’d promised, to fill his manager in on everything going on and why he wanted to cancel the tour. Liam had agreed easily then to start the appropriate conversations and get back with Harry about what the decisions were on all of that. He hadn’t heard from him since then though, and it was Friday night now. Two days before he was set to be on stage again.

Harry swiped over on the green button and held the phone to his ear.

“Hey, Li,” Harry murmured. Liam’s voice reached back through the phone.

“Hey,” he said tiredly. The fatigue in his voice immediately put Harry’s alpha on alert. Liam was always Harry’s sounding board, always the sure one when Harry was having a hard time holding things together. It was always mildly distressing when Liam was upset. 

“What’s going on? Everything okay?” Harry asked curiously, unable to handle the suspense created by Liam’s silence. 

“Yeah, everything is fine,” Liam quickly assured. He sighed heavily. “It’s just been a long couple of days. I’ve had a lot of video meetings, and then in-person meetings. I’m a bit tired.” The other alpha chuckled without humor and Harry chewed on the inside of his cheek nervously. He leaned up onto the counter with his elbows and crossed his feet under the stool he was perched on. 

Over the days of waiting for Liam to get back to him about the decision, Harry had only grown more anxious about the fate of his future. In the heat of the moment, after finding out about the new pregnancy and having his rut, Harry hadn’t thought much at all when he said he just wanted to cancel everything and stay home now. But after talking thoroughly with Liam, the alpha had started to feel anxious about the reality of once again starting over. There wasn’t anything solid in the feeling, he didn’t have a reason in particular that he felt that way---it was mostly obscure, random things niggling at the back of his mind. He worried about Mitch and Sarah, who would once again be suddenly ousted from their jobs, and he worried about the fans who would be disappointed. There were other worries too, things that he told himself shouldn’t matter all that much, but did. His record sales, his public image, his chances of earning any awards for his album, and the really big one, the idea of not performing for the foreseeable future.

When he’d first started the tour, on that first night, he’d all but begged Louis for the chance to just go home. To pack up before it started, and walk away. To be with his family instead, to make sure that nothing ever went wrong again. That he would never have to be in the position to lose them again. He’d begged Louis to ask for that because he hadn’t been strong enough to do it on his own. His want, his need to get back on stage was too strong, and that entire night he’d felt like he had been pulled in two different ways so hard that he was being ripped in half. Instead, Louis had pushed him to the stage and promised him he’d never have to choose again. And Harry believed him. He’d settled into it again, let himself believe that he could have both, and now he felt like he was once again being torn in half. His initial reaction had been to throw it all away and be here, help Louis get through carrying their child, be here for Louis carrying their second child, and it was what Harry still wanted. It was . But in the middle of the night, when sleep would evade him, and he was all alone, he’d had the selfish thought that he wished he’d just never started the tour in the first place. That he never let himself remember what it felt like to be on stage and play his music, because now, the most selfish part of him was unsettled by the idea of having to give it up again.

“How did all of that go?” Harry wondered.

“I wish I could say well, Haz,” Liam sighed. “The label isn’t very happy at all.” Harry’s stomach dropped at the sound of that. The last time they’d done something like this, he knew Columbia wasn’t going to like it, but he’d been so focused on keeping Louis safe that he didn’t really give them a chance to be angry with him. He walked in with his ultimatum and made them come to a decision right then. This time around, it was a bit more drawn out and Harry actually had the capacity to feel nervous about what the label had to say.

“I’m sorry if they’ve been hard on you about it, Li,” Harry said sympathetically. If Harry was already feeling reprimanded just hearing they were angry, he couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to actually have to be in the meetings Liam’s had all week. The other alpha made a dismissive sound on the other end of the phone.

“It’s fine, they haven’t been intolerable,” Liam told him. “It’s just been a lot of heated discussions back and forth.”

“Did you manage to come to any decisions?” Harry asked worriedly. Liam sighed heavily then and Harry’s nerves strung tight again. He waited on bated breath to hear that he was released from the tour, that his chances to play music were officially done until the baby was here. It was both an anxious and an excited feeling---something he both wanted and dreaded.

“Actually, Harry,” Liam said. "Not really. They’re fighting me really hard about the tour. I don’t think they’re letting you out of it. The European leg for sure. The rest of it they’re willing to negotiate but they haven’t settled on what terms they’d accept a cancellation yet.” Harry squeezed the phone pressed to his ear and tried to focus on what Liam just said. All of the worry that had coiled into the tightness of his muscles released, only for a new swirling started in his stomach. An unknown, heavy feeling inside of his gut that felt much worse than the disappointment he’d been secretly carting around with him all week.

“So you’re saying…” Harry trailed off, giving Liam an opportunity to swallow the words he’d just uttered back up and take away the new feeling.

“That unless you’re ready for a legal and financial battle from hell, you have to finish at least the European tour,” Liam murmured softly. “I’m still negotiating with them about after that, but they aren’t budging with this one.” Harry leaned onto the elbows he still had resting on the counter and wiped his free hand down his face. He released a large breath as he thought, trying to come up with some way, any way around this. He didn’t want to lose touring, but he hadn’t exactly decided that he wanted to leave Louis again either. Truthfully, he hadn’t really known what he had wanted the decision to be, but having his choice ripped away from him made him feel backed into a corner even more than he already was. His alpha was deeply unsettled by it. It suddenly felt like what they were discussing was much more… permanent than anything Harry had been considering thus far.

“What are they saying will happen if I don’t?” Harry asked.

“You’ll be in breach of your contract, they’ll charge you for all of the fees accrued from every cancellation, they’ll release you from the rest of the deal, and pull your album. Harry, they’re talking serious backlash here. Blacklisting, pulling your songs from the radio,” Liam explained, his voice pained. Harry clenched his eyes shut and shook his head at the empty room. That was definitely more permanent than anything the alpha had considered. Words like that were never even mentioned in his meeting with Columbia when he wanted out of his contract with them. He’d never once worried that they’d come back with trying to ruin his career for what he wanted to do. Why was this little label doing it? Was it just that they had more to lose? Had they banked too much on Harry’s stardom?

“Can they even do that?” Harry questioned. “I mean, this isn’t Columbia, Li, they’re a much smaller label, that’s why we went with them in the first place.”

“That doesn’t mean they can’t pull big punches, especially with a heavy hitting star like you. It also doesn’t mean they won’t have the support of bigger labels in their endeavor. Columbia, for instance, would probably love the opportunity,” his manager told him. At that, Harry straightened in his stool.

“What does that mean?” Harry demanded. “They’ve always been so accommodating, what business would Columbia have getting involved?”

“They weren’t a walk in the park, Haz,” Liam muttered. “You do remember the money and the entire album they took from you, yes? And, before that twat of a nurse leaked your story to the press, I’d heard rumors that they were going to try and blacklist you as well, so you couldn’t sign with another label. Then the world found out what happened and fell in love with the idea of the pop star who was willing to walk away from his career to save his omega, and there was no way they could stand against you, even just inside the industry. They benefited much more from accommodating you, but that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten what you did, or that you released a new album under a new label instead of returning to them.”

“I didn’t think I could return to them!” Harry argued. The sudden pressure Harry felt from all sides after hearing this information, realizing how wrong he’d been about the gravity of the situation before, made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up. His alpha was growling unsettlingly inside his chest, but he wasn’t really fighting Liam. He knew it wasn’t Liam saying and doing these things. He knew his manager understood why they’d made all the decisions they’d made in the past. Harry was just floundering to understand at all how things could be so much more complicated this time.

Apparently, he hadn’t even realized how complicated they were last time.

“They probably wouldn’t have taken you back, but that doesn’t matter to corporations like that. Not in this industry,” Liam said, his voice gentle and trying to soothe, but Harry was already beyond that. His secret anxiety over having to pause his touring had just erupted into full blown panic over maybe losing everything if he didn’t comply with his new labels wishes. And complying meant leaving Louis.

“Why didn’t you tell me back then that Columbia was so put off?” Harry asked, looking for something else to focus on to try and calm the approaching storm inside of him.

“You had much more important things to worry about, and by the time I thought you could spare the headspace, they’d already flipped their script. It wasn’t worth stressing you over,” the other alpha explained with a shrug in his voice. Harry groaned and slumped back down. He rested his forehead on the countertop and dropped his free hand to the edge of it. He squeezed the hard surface as hard as he could and tried to stop the ground from shaking underneath him.

“I don’t put it past Columbia to jump at the opportunity when they can hide behind someone else doing it, and if they both start working against you, H, I’m really concerned with what you’d walk back into after this baby is born,” Liam continued carefully. “Even if you survive it financially, I’m not sure anyone else worth a damn would sign you again. You could go independent, try to rely on your loyal fanbase, but it would be hard, and it would require a lot of time commitment from you. I don’t know how you’d manage something like that with two pups---one being so new.”

“It would be impossible, I couldn't commit to being away from Louis or the kids that long,” Harry interjected immediately. They’d considered going independent with his current album but tossed the idea fairly quickly when they’d realized the kind of time it would require from Harry. He was in a better place to do it now since he wasn’t coming off of a nearly four year break like he had been back then, but if they added in a new baby there’d be no way Harry could make an independent album work. Especially when it wasn’t a guarantee that it would amount to anything. What Harry really wanted was to perform. If he couldn’t have that, what was he really working for that he couldn’t have here at home, with his family?

“The kind of retaliation they’re talking about could last years. It may eventually fall out of favor in the industry, people may forget or lose interest, but so will the public. If you’d be welcomed back at all, you’d be years older starting over with less than half the exposure. I’m really worried this time that if we don’t at least try and comply with what they want, your touring days will be done,” Liam said. “That’s what we’re looking at if you decide you can’t do the rest of this leg of the tour.” The unsteady feeling of having someone else at the reins of his life had Harry’s world spinning off of its axis and drifting into open space. His foundation wobbled and his world began to spin in a different direction, and there was nothing he could think of to do to stop it. In a way Harry was becoming much too familiar with, the helplessness he felt to control the trajectory of his own future caught the breath inside his lungs and held it hostage.

“And if I do finish it?” Harry breathed, the words coming out flimsier than he meant them to. He took in a large breath and tried to suffocate the mounting panic in his gut. His head was still pressed to the cool surface of the island countertop, and the sensation was grounding. He gripped the edge again, holding on desperately to anything he could, to try and keep himself from floating away completely.

“They haven’t decided yet,” Liam admitted regretfully. “I’ve made it clear that you will not be going overseas no matter what and they seem to be willing to work with us on that. Despite all of this, I do believe they have at least some decency. They care to some extent about the position you’re in. But they’ll look out for themselves first.”

“What does that mean , Liam?” Harry groaned, forcing himself into an upright position again. He was growing fatigued by all the vagueness in Liam’s speeches. It wasn’t the alpha’s fault, he was in manager mode and Harry knew when he got like that he had a tendency to try and frame the conversation instead of just telling Harry in simple terms what the hell was going on. Harry was typically very patient with him, but as stability began to feel less and less obtainable, Harry was losing all of his ability to be patient.

“It means that you could go and do the tour, and they may still ask things of you that you can’t or don’t want to do, and we’d be right back here anyway,” Liam said bluntly. “I’m fairly certain they won’t ask you to complete the whole tour based on the conversations we’ve had, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come up with something even more ridiculous, like suggest you and Louis stage a break up, or something along those lines.”

“I don’t want to do something like that,” Harry scoffed immediately. He wouldn’t put Louis or Eli through something that moronic. It felt cheap and wrong---he couldn’t agree to something like that.

“I have no idea if that’s what they’ll ask for, but we should be prepared for something like that. Something they can sell, or spin, to benefit them in the face of you canceling a world tour,” Liam said back.

“So I could go, hurt myself and my family, and still lose my career, too, if I don’t agree to whatever crazy things they come up with between now and then?” Harry asked, just to clarify. Just to make sure that he was understanding things correctly. A white noise had started inside his brain that was making it hard for him to really hear the words Liam was saying, so the alpha wanted to be absolutely sure he was understanding correctly.

“Or they could ask for nothing, I just don’t know yet. With things like this there’s no real way of telling before the decision is made,” Liam said. “We just have to give it some more time.” The uncertainty of it all felt too constricting, squeezing his chest almost painfully, until all of the air trapped inside compressed and threatened to explode. But at the same time, Harry already felt adrift in the endless possibilities, swallowed up by the vastness of the possible outcomes that could follow his next decision. It was too much and too little all at once, forcing him into an odd, spacey state of mind where the past, present, and future all began to melt into one terribly overwhelming configuration of things he wished he had never had to do. There was a hollowness opening up inside his chest that stung with familiarity, but Harry tried desperately to push it away.

“...eese three weeks could give us that,” Liam was saying. Harry only caught the tail end of whatever it was, when he found the strength to focus back on his manager, just on the present.

“What are my options, Li?” Harry asked despondently, looking for anything that might help him narrow down his choices and point him in the right direction. Liam paused for a moment and Harry heard a quiet rumble through the phone, as if Liam was trying to soothe him.

“That depends,” he said, tone quiet and even.

“On?” Harry pushed.

“On if you’re going to be able to walk away from all of this if it comes down to it---for real this time. Not like last time, like a hiatus while you pivot and go another direction. Actually done.” Liam said. Every single part of Harry’s being wanted to scream yes . Absolutely yes he would leave it all behind for his omega, for his family . That’s who he’d always been, it's what he’d always told Louis he would do. From the very beginning, Harry had never once needed to think it through, he’d just known---if Louis had given him the option, he would have left that first tour and came to be with him, no matter what. That’s what he’d said, it’s how he’d felt---how he still felt. That was what his instincts roared, and yet, right now, he was frozen. Sitting all alone in the kitchen he’d shared with Louis and Eli for the last four years, knowing Louis was pregnant once again, Harry couldn’t make himself speak the same words he’d promised to Louis a million times before. The same promise he’d sealed with a ring just the other night.

The alpha opened and closed his mouth a couple times, his lips forming and reforming the words he thought were true, but they wouldn’t come out. This had never been hard for him before. He’d never struggled to make this decision, he’d just promised Louis in the biggest way possible that he’d never want anything more than the life they shared together, and he’d meant it. He meant every word of it, so why couldn’t he just say it to his best friend right now?

“Haz?” Liam asked after too many beats of silence.

 Harry imagined his untethered consciousness hurtling towards a blackhole that had just opened up inside of his mind--- or had it always been there? ---and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He was terrified that he’d find himself inside of it, thrust into the realm of the unknown with no way back. Then a sinking thought dropped through his mind like a boulder falling through paper walls. Harry imagined, for the first time ever, what it would be like having to give up music as he’d always known it. This time without a safety net, no promise that it would be there waiting for him when things settled back down. Just gone. His performing days done, his music trapped at the bottom of an aging playlist that was falling steadily to the bottom of some young woman’s music library as the weeks rolled into months that mounted into years. Years without the lights, and the screams, and the full, yet weightless, feeling he had on stage, taking up every open gap he’d ever had in his life. Whenever he lost something or someone, the stage was there, had always been there. Years that would rapidly turn into the rest of his life with a void where all that magic used to live.

As his paper mache world shredded easily under the weight of the boulder---Harry panicked. 

In the deepest, darkest, most secluded parts of his mind, a chain came undone, and a door opened. From behind the door came a thought that crawled its way over the debris of Harry’s perfectly constructed, and now totally destroyed, lie .

He actually couldn’t leave music.

Not forever. Not for anything. 

“I-I don’t think I can,” Harry whispered brokenly, all of his thoughtless promises turning to dust before his eyes, replaced by a terribly invasive, vine-like truth that reached out and covered every other instance he’d sworn foolishly that he could walk away, until there was nothing left of them but that one terrible sentence.

Not for anything.

His blood curdled with the selfishness of it, with the way the alternative hurt him now, beyond any point of rationality. It was irrational the way ice splintered across his chest at even the thought of never getting to go back, of never getting to stand on stage again and perform. But in that terrible moment of clarity, it scared him more than the thought of anything else.

His next breath broke on a strangled cry that clawed its way out of his chest.

Harry hadn’t even noticed tears had welled up in his eyes, blurring his already unfocused vision and making the dimly lit kitchen wobble in front of him.

“Okay, breathe, alpha, everything is okay,” Liam immediately tried to soothe. All hints of manager seeped out of Liam’s voice, his alpha tone surfacing seamlessly to try and reach Harry where he was currently being washed away by a violent, selfish sea.

For what felt like a terribly long time, the ocean and space played tug-of-war with Harry’s mind. One minute he was staring into the mouth of the black hole, the overwhelming silence and discontinuity within it sending shivers of dread down his spine, and the next he was being dragged under by a viscous riptide of his own swirling, selfish thoughts.

I don’t want to walk away.

I don’t want to lose this.

What if it’s not enough without the music?

What if I was never enough?

 Louis chose that moment to walk into the kitchen and run a gentle hand up Harry’s shoulder as he passed by. He was behind the alpha and had no way of knowing that Harry was barely even there anymore; that panic had already carried him away, pulled him into another time and place. But the omega’s unassuming touch brought him back just a little. Air puffed out of his nose, like a pressure valve releasing, and then Louis’ hand was gone and the omega was rounding the other side of the island. The corners of his mouth were pulled up into a sleepy smile and then he took in Harry’s expression and the smile fell instantly.

“Hazza?” Louis asked, fear beginning to color the shadows of his face as well. The alpha almost laughed at the irony of Louis looking so scared before he even really knew that he actually had something to fear. That Harry had just uncovered a terrible, poisonous truth that was going to kill everything they’d built. A truth that was going to change the way the omega saw Harry completely.

“What do I do?” Harry gasped miserably. He didn’t know if he was asking Louis or Liam, but it was his manager that answered.

“You finish your European tour, like Louis wants,” Liam said carefully, his rich alpha tone still in full force. Harry could almost picture him clutching his cell phone and trying to reach through, like if he tried hard enough he could hold Harry from three hours away. “You give me the three and a half weeks I need to keep talking with the label, and I promise you Harry, I’ll do everything I can.” Liam’s words sounded far away. Like they came from a different time, another place, another phase of Harry’s life. They echoed through his mind, until the other alpha’s voice didn’t even sound like his anymore, just a nameless, faceless, empty promise calling back over too many lost years. 

We’re going to do everything we can . 

The words wavered and shook until I’ll do everything blended into there was nothing we could do. It was the sort of thing people said when they didn’t say the thing everyone already knows anyway. It was all the same, and it had all meant nothing.

Harry already knew. 

Everything was already gone.

“What’s wrong? Who’s on the phone?” Louis tried again. Their eyes were locked on each other, but Harry wasn’t seeing him. Harry wasn’t hearing Liam on the other end of the phone anymore either. His mind was blissfully blank.

He must have tumbled right into the black hole.

“Liam,” Harry heard himself say, but his own voice sounded far away now, too. He didn’t feel like he was in his own body, he felt like he was floating above it somehow, watching himself sit there in front of Louis, even though he wasn’t there anymore. He was somewhere else, somewhere darker, where his selfishness had been so compacted and grown so strong that it molded the deformity that he was lost in now. The black hole that he couldn’t deny had always been there. He was being swallowed whole by it. Everything he wanted to be, everything he said he was and could be was vanishing. All he could do was watch helplessly, not knowing where it had all started, and powerless to stop it.

“Trust me, okay? Just let me handle it, I promise it’ll all work out,” Liam promised. Harry thought it was probably too late for a promise like that. Everything felt too broken already for things to work out. Harry was already too broken.

“Is it about your contract?” Louis asked, despairingly on the outside of everything going on, trying to reach in. “What’s going on?”

“Okay,” Harry said flatly. “I have to go, Li. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Harry hung up in the middle of Liam’s goodbye, and then he reluctantly met Louis’ questioning look.

“What was that all about?” he wondered.

“Liam talked with the label,” Harry told him. “They’re making me finish the European leg, and if I don’t they’ll release me from my contract.”

“Haz,” Louis sighed sympathetically. “I know you’re worried, but I promise everything is going to be fine. I’ll be here when you get back, everything will be as it was.”

“Will it?” Harry asked, but he didn’t really expect an answer. Louis couldn’t give him one anyway. Not to what he was actually asking, because the omega just didn’t know . Couldn’t know.

“Of course it will be,” Louis said comfortingly. The softness in his voice rubbed up against Harry’s frayed nerves like running fingers the wrong direction over velvet. The sensation felt so wrong. Harry didn’t deserve to have Louis comfort him right now. Not when he’d tricked him this whole time---not when he’d lied . Harry’s breath punched out of his chest and he turned his head to look away from Louis, unable to meet his eyes while he was hopelessly falling through the blackness in his mind. In the depths of Louis’ ocean eyes, all Harry could find was the tumultuous waves of guilt waiting for him to be spat out on the other side.

“Hey, hey,” Louis cooed. He rounded the counter to stand beside Harry. He cupped the alpha’s chin with tender fingers, and Harry tried to pull away, but Louis only framed his face with the other hand too, holding him in place. The omega forced him to turn in his seat, to look up at him through bleary eyes. Louis searched Harry’s expression desperately, fearfully, like he could see now that Harry was disappearing.

“Listen to me,” Louis murmured seriously, heroically trying to pull the alpha back, but it only made Harry sink further. Over the top of Louis’ reassuring voice was the same thought that had started his entire spiral. I can’t leave music . I can’t leave music. I can’t leave music.

Louis should have never let him back in.

“I’ll call you every single night. You’ll be able to see me, and hear my voice. You can see Eli. You’ll be performing so much, you’ll be so happy to see all of your fans and the beautiful cities. It’ll all go by so fast, you won’t even know weeks are passing. Then, when you get home, we’ll do the whole pregnancy together. You’ll get to hear their heartbeat for the first time with me, and watch me grow. You and Eli can pick out toys, and clothes, and bedding for the baby. We can start looking at houses. We’ll get to complete our perfect little family, and you’ll still have everything you wanted--- everything is going to be okay. Please don’t cry.” Louis placated, his soft thumbs rubbing soothingly over the rounds of his cheeks, ready to catch tears if they happened to tumble over the edge of his lash line. The part of Harry that felt like he was just watching himself with Louis from afar cringed at the promises the omega was making, at the easy way in which Louis was so ready to sacrifice for Harry when the alpha was painfully realizing he couldn’t do the same.  

“I think I need some air,” Harry pushed through unmoving lips. He rose from the chair, carefully pushing past his pregnant omega after shoving his phone back in his pocket. He stood motionless for a beat, time passing in slow motion inside of Harry’s mind. Then he started off down the hall and ducked into the bedroom he’d been sharing with Louis every single night. The room he’d just promised his life to Louis in, with a promise that was born from a lie that he’d even fooled himself into believing. Harry was pulled towards the desk where he’d sat that morning, playing the chords of a song that he hadn’t even had time to properly structure yet. It didn’t have a melody, or words, it had just been his raw feelings strummed over the guitar, feelings he felt perfectly summed up the moment as he’d watched Louis sleep, knowing their child was safely growing inside of him---knowing their life was still so full of first times that had yet to happen.

“What are you doing?” Louis’ voice broke his reverie and moved Harry back into action. Like opposing magnets, Louis’ proximity pushed Harry to move again---to move away, to get away from everything that was closing in on him so much quicker than he could prepare for. He snagged the guitar and plucked the case from its place in the corner. Harry set them both on the bed to pack them up, not really sure yet why. He didn’t know the answer to Louis’ question, or any of his own, so he just stayed silent and let his body move him around their physical space. It all felt unreal to him anyway, so he just didn’t bother trying to be present. He wandered on numb legs over to the chest with drawers by the closet and plucked the car keys up from where he’d dropped last. When he turned back to the door, his eyes caught on Louis’ questioning, hurt gaze.

Not for anything .

Harry blinked away and then once again carefully moved past the omega to head back towards the kitchen and move to the front door.

“Harry, where are you going?” Louis called after him. Harry didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say. He had no idea where he was going. He didn’t know where he was anymore. He’d thought he’d known so many things, but one small conversation with his best friend had changed all of that. The alpha continued to walk robotically until he made it to the front door. As he slipped on his trainers, muscle memory guiding him through shrugging on his jacket over  his Hollywood Sound t-shirt, Louis stepped up behind him.

“Haz?” Louis asked in a now trembling, small voice. His alpha wanted desperately to reach out and comfort the omega. He could practically taste Louis’ distress in the air now. He couldn’t bring himself to though, couldn’t let himself comfort Louis with any more lies.

“I can’t do this,” Harry finally answered. They were as heavy as the silence from the moment before, but it was all Harry could offer.

“It’s okay,” Louis reached out, and Harry felt it push him right over the edge. He didn’t want to be comforted by Louis right now. He didn’t want to be told more things that were untrue, words created for the purpose of being fillers when the emptiness of the unknown got to be too uncomfortable---he didn’t want it to be okay.

“ I’m not okay, Louis!” Harry barked. He had the sense not to shout it, even if it broke free from his mouth with the power of a years long repressed scream. He managed to keep it quieter, to let it out in secret so it wouldn’t wake his son. For one moment, letting them out felt like a relief. The fog in his brain cleared and he could see Louis in a way he hadn’t been able to for the past several minutes. Then, there was nothing relieving about what he’d just done. Only painful. Louis’ expression was pure hurt, and Harry wished he could swallow his words back up and hold onto them forever to prevent the look he put on Louis’ face now. Harry finally reached out to the omega with hesitant hands.

“I’m sorry,” Harry murmured. The alpha held onto Louis’ shoulders and whispered apologetically again. “I’m so sorry.”

“What can I do?” Louis asked. Harry’s heart broke a little at the devotion in his voice. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the omega’s forehead, trying to put every single word he didn’t have into that one act of affection. Louis leaned into it, his shoulders lowering and his eyes closing, the kiss providing more comfort than it should have been worth.

More than Harry knew it was worth.

“You can’t make me feel better right now,” Harry said sadly. And he didn’t want the omega to. “I’m sorry, omega. I just need some time to think. I’m so sorry.” The alpha made his escape quickly then, turning before Louis could say anything else and grabbing his guitar before he wrenched the door open.

“It’s late, you can’t just leave,” Louis tried again, calling after the alpha as he crawled into the car. Harry didn’t look back again until he turned off of their street.

* * *

It was dark outside, but Harry knew that the real darkness was just inside his mind. On the street there were lights to guide him, and he was following them aimlessly with no idea where he truly meant to go. He was running from something that had already trapped him inside his mind, so no matter how hard he pushed the car, how far down he pressed the gas pedal, it just didn’t feel like far enough. He figured he’d just go to the flat. That felt reasonable. It was secluded, and he’d be alone, and it was safe. He could spend all night there trying to figure out what had just broken inside of him, and when the sun came up he’d be ready to welcome his little family back in. He knew the way to his London flat so well it was practically second nature. He wasn’t required to think about the roads he was taking after settling on that decision, didn’t have to pay attention to what turns to take, and what signs to follow, he just had to go through the motions and trust his memory to carry him back home.

With that freedom came more space to fall into the cavern that had sucked up all of his other thoughts and memories. The creepy crawling memory that had skitted its way over every moment in time that he’d thought he’d made a sure, definitive decision in the name of love for his omega or his family withered underneath the pressure inside Harry’s black hole. Every single instance where he’d yelled, or whispered, or promised, or pleaded with Louis that he didn’t need any of this was slowly fading into a fuzzy image, like a silent black and white film, that Harry could just barely make out now. In every one of them he could see Louis beginning to believe it more and more, and now in him all he could make out was the deceit that his words had been coated in. So sugary sweet and thick that even he couldn’t taste the lie beneath it. Even he didn’t realize he was feeding Louis heart shaped cyanide pills every single time. It was a particularly hard pill to swallow the first time though, when he screamed it at a trembling omega doused in guilt for what he’d done. The words weren’t sugar coated in that one, they were razor sharp and thrown with the intention to cut Louis, to punish him for the mistake he’d made. But his anger looked more like desperation to him now. The desperate, aggressive act of a man who’d had no idea what he would have done, what he was going to do.

Harry was watching these instances on a loop, spotting different things each time, hopelessly distracted by every error he’d made. He was so caught up in recognizing all of the wrong turns in his life so far, that he didn’t even notice when he made a new one and got on the A628 instead of the A1. He just hit the pedal and shot down the freeway with a shake of his head, doing everything he could to escape the enveloping silence and the impending guilt. There was a hollowness opening up inside of his chest directly contrasting the way it was all closing in on him inside his mind. Both too much emptiness and not enough space all at once. The hollow feeling made it hard to breathe, and the less he breathed the less he could actually think. Eventually he wasn’t thinking or feeling anything at all. Harry was just moving, just running from the nothingness. It felt so achingly familiar, like this terrible feeling he couldn’t outrun had chased him before.

How had he ended up here?

* * *

How did he end up here?  

It was like waking up from a horrible dream, driving for so long without truly thinking, without even really feeling like he was inside of his own body. Only, when he managed to shake himself awake, he found himself deeper inside the nightmare.

Why was he in a cemetery?  

Harry put his car in park and looked out of his windshield over the headstones that surrounded him. His headlights illuminated only a few in front of him, but he knew they’d be everywhere, on all sides of him, now that he was parked on the small driving path. The darkness was all encompassing, but despite the way it limited his sight, and the fact that he’d only ever seen it one other time before, Harry recognized where he was immediately. He could still picture the way the grass looked in the summertime, under an early afternoon sky. In his memory, the sun was bright overhead, but it didn’t make any sense to him---now or then. He was still inside his car without even a window cracked open, but he could smell the fresh dirt of a newly dug grave---Harry knew this place. He’d dreamt of it many times before.

How had he gotten to Cheshire?

Panic bubbled up under his skin and deep inside his stomach. His breaths started coming out quicker and shorter and he suddenly felt like his head was full of buzzing bees as he looked all around at the dark cemetery. He knew he was alone, but he felt like there were eyes on him everywhere, poking into the too tight skin on his face like the pointed ends of little needles, just like they had when he was here last. Their scrutiny seemed to have never left this place. Harry put his head down onto his steering wheel and took a few slow, steadying breaths. He counted them the way he’d grown used to doing---in for four, out for six---over and over trying to turn down the noise in his head and calm the nerves beneath his skin. When it didn’t work, Harry squeezed his eyes shut and forced out a guttural sound that wasn’t quite a yell or a growl. It was a sound that existed somewhere between his fight or flight response.

What the fuck was he doing at the cemetery where Robin had been buried?!

He didn’t notice when his eyes grew wet, or even when the tears slipped down his cheeks to pool in his dimples. He didn’t realize his confusion, frustration, and anxiety had leaked out onto his face until he rose from his slumped over position and looked into his own empty gaze in the rearview mirror. The alpha just didn’t understand what happened between his logical reasoning to go to London, and now. He’d never once come back to this place, he’d never even wanted to, had never been able to stomach it---of all the places he could have ended up, why did his tumultuous mind bring him here ? 

He tried three times to pull his car out of park and just leave. To shake off the heavy coat of that one terrible day and just go back the way he came. He could still go back to London, he didn’t have to ride whatever rollercoaster his mind was trying to put him on. He swore to himself he’d never come back here, and he didn’t have to break his word now---but Harry’s hand was frozen on the gear shift. The blackhole he’d fallen into sitting inside Louis’ kitchen had carried him silently all the way here, and now Harry was acutely aware of the sound the silence was making. He could hear the walls closing in on him now, and the sound got louder every time he tried to convince himself to leave. He’d sworn there was nothing in this hollowed out piece of earth for him, told his mum many years ago that he’d never find solace in a rock that stood where Robin should have been. But tonight, as his world crumbled beneath his feet Harry couldn’t bring himself to leave.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” Harry whined out loud, to no one in particular. The conversation with his manager had made him want to run away from the emotions that had started to shake awake inside of him, but instead of running away, instead of escaping the foreboding truths inside of him, he ended up just traveling in one huge circle to end up right back where it all started. Because this really was where it all started, wasn’t it? This damn cemetery and the person they’d left in it. The hope they buried here. This was really where he’d started running, it made sense that it would all come right back here. Harry felt like he kind of deserved to be here now. All alone, in the middle of the night, after realizing for the first time that he was nothing but a terrible liar. He should wade into the discomfort this place stirred inside of him. Like his own form of self punishment, he could push into his worst memories and pull at the scab to see if it could still bleed after all this time. He deserved to face the one person who would have called Harry out on all of his bullshit, if he’d been here to see it.

Harry opened his car door and slid out into the night. The breeze was cool, but not cold. Summer was so close now, they’d soon be begging for nights like this. Harry was glad he’d thought to grab his jacket, the chills on his skin coming from something much colder than the late night air. He pulled the guitar out of his backseat as an afterthought before pulling out his phone and turning the flashlight feature on to guide him through the slightly overgrown grass. He wasn’t at all familiar with the path he walked down, but the way the gravel crunched underfoot echoed in his mind from the last time he had walked it. Every step he had taken with Robin’s casket clutched in his shaking fist was pressed into the bottoms of his feet and in the strain of his shoulders like his body had become a mold that the pain of that awful day had filled. Years had torn away the mold, but the impression left was identical.

Harry felt like a little kid.

Muscle memory carried him and his guitar all the way up a small hill until it crested and then it carried him a few more paces until he was standing in front of a rock he’d never seen. His flashlight illuminated grass that hadn’t been there the last time he was. It had only been a hole when he last saw it. Harry panned the light up to the headstone and finally let his gaze trace over the stone his mother and sister had chosen after he was gone. Harry’s stepfather’s name was printed in large bold print at the top, and then underneath it, in smaller letters, it read, “Loving father and husband.” Harry lowered the light even more and just beneath that message was even smaller letters spelling out the simple phrase “Gone Home.”

Harry scoffed.

“Gone home?” he asked out loud. “ Gone home ? That’s what they chose?” Harry couldn’t help but scoff again. There was a thick, sludge-like feeling boiling deep inside his stomach as he stared at the expensive rock marking where his favorite person in the world was now rotting beneath the earth. What a fucking sentiment to remind them every time that they came to see Robin that where they were would never fucking be home again. What a thing to choose to display, like that was in anyway supposed to be comforting when Harry had been all over the world looking for the feeling they’d etched forever into this stupid fucking stone. What a stupid idea, Harry thought. Harry imagined his mum trying to pick something to put on it, crying her way through catalogs and memories alike looking for something that fit just right. They’d only get to choose his parting sentiment once, he could imagine his mother wanting it to feel just right. Something that would never change with time, that would never get old. He could actually picture her thinking this up and smiling with tears on her face because that’s who she’d always been. At least, it was who she was before they lost Robin. Always trying to do for others, always putting what they would want first.

He could see it clear as day, as if he’d been there to witness it himself. He hadn’t been. Even if he’d still been physically present, he wasn’t actually there. Then Harry had left and never looked back, but he could still see his mother writing the phrase onto an order form, and as she did, the weight of Robin’s loss lifted off her shoulders. As if she’d finally found God in the way Robin had always wanted her to. Their family didn’t go to church, or practice religion in any organized fashion. Harry wasn’t religious at all, and he didn’t think Gemma really was either. It was hard being queer and to take any of that seriously in the world they grew up in, but his parents had individual relationships with God. Anne’s was tentative and uncertain, willing to believe she wasn’t alone, but hesitant to talk to the walls when she was feeling out of control.

Robin, on the other hand, believed . He wore his cross---Harry’s now---every single day, and when he was happy or hurting he’d hold on to it like he was threading his fingers into God’s for extra strength. When Harry was little he used to catch Robin sitting on their back deck, looking up at the stars and talking to the sky like they were old friends. When he was a pup he’d thought it was cool, because he’d thought Robin was best friends with the man on the moon. He told all of his friends at school that his dad and the moon man talked every single night. It was only once he was older that he realized Robin was actually praying. That he actually felt that kinship to his idea of God, a God that made no sense to the young queer man Harry was becoming. Robin’s love never changed for him or Gemma though, even as they did. Even as they turned their backs on his idea of love and power, even when they both came out as queer. Robin never batted an eye, and at night he’d still talk to the man on the moon, telling God all about his children and how much he loved them. Thanking Him for Harry and Gemma every single night.

Robin had seen death approaching and had almost sighed in relief. Through the pain of treatment, through the pain of leaving, Robin had remained still at the idea of the end. He told Harry once, when he was weak and unable to leave the hospital, that it was painful to leave, but “it wasn’t hard to go.” Harry could see Anne putting this sentiment down to be etched in his stone forever because he could still hear Robin trying to comfort him while he laid on his deathbed.

“We’ll see each other again, Harry. Everyone gets called home at the end,”

Harry scoffed for a third time.

The memory of Robin’s voice was faint in his mind. Fuzzy like it was being played underwater, or on an old camcorder with a broken speaker. It still moved in the way he remembered it, but it was hard to make out. Harry felt tears sting his eyes once again as he tried once more to recall the words his stepdad had spoken, trying to hear the stupid phrase on his stone in the voice he used to listen to every single night. It was so far away it was almost gone. Harry and all the pain he’d felt from the moment Robin had gotten that phone call all those years ago was still here in sharp focus, but that comfort, the sound of his voice and the peace in his words, Robin had taken all of that with him.

“That’s great for you that you got to go fucking home, Robin,” Harry bit out through clenched teeth. The hot, bubbling feeling that boiled in his stomach was reaching a fever pitch and Harry thought he might explode from it all. His skin tingled, and his eyes leaked, and his alpha roared inside of his chest, agony ripping the power of it to shreds so that his next words came out in pitifully painful yells. “But you left me here! Where’s your fucking God in that?” Silence tangled up in his hair and sent shivers down his spine as his breath came out laboriously. He hadn’t expected an answer, of course, but somehow the lack of sound was jarring anyway. It shook him to his core so he kept talking, kept yelling.

“What kind of home could it be, anyway?” Harry asked furiously. “All He ever fucking offers is silence! I’ve never heard him say a god damned word to you in all those years. He sure as shit never answered me ! I begged Him the whole time you were sick to let you stay. I begged Him, Robin, but he took you anyway. What kind of God breaks a child like that, huh?!” In the back of his mind, Harry was aware of how frighteningly useless his actions were right now. He was yelling at a rock in the middle of the night in a cemetery almost two hours away from his family. There was no one there to hear him---he was all alone. But the scab wasn’t bleeding yet, and Harry wanted it to bleed. He was beginning to think that maybe he needed it to.

“Does being with Him really feel more like home than being with me?” Harry wondered, the anger dying on his tongue. There was just pain now. Visceral and guttural pain, like nothing he’d ever felt before. He’d never let himself feel this before. He didn’t want to feel it now. Harry wished he’d never come here, wished he never let himself get out of the car. The wound was bleeding openly, and now that it was, Harry wondered if it ever had before, because even when they were actively losing Robin, it had never felt quite like this. 

“Was His silence all it took to make you want to leave us? I sang for you. Nonstop. Why didn’t you fight for that ?” Logically Harry knew there was nothing Robin could have done to beat his cancer. It wasn’t his stepfather’s choice to leave them. But grief didn’t care about logic, and Harry remembered the solace with which Robin died---the ease he felt in letting go. At the time it had felt like being abandoned, and Harry was surprised to still find a bit of that feeling underneath all the years he’d had to heal from it. A sob crawled slowly up his throat and rolled out into the night like a bubble floating in the air. It hung there between him and Robin’s headstone, and the quiet of the dark cemetery swallowed its sound. He felt pathetic crying over something that none of them had any control over. He felt silly and young for throwing blame and heartache at his stepfather’s grave, but the alpha was powerless to stop it now. He clutched at the shoulder strap of the guitar hanging around his body and sniffled.

“I’m still singing. All I ever do is sing for yo--” Harry broke off mid cry as the breath flew out of his lungs. Suddenly the black hole spit him out on the other side and all the noise he wasn’t hearing inside his mind came into sharp focus as pieces began to snap together.

“ For you ,” Harry gasped. The next sob he let out wasn’t muffled, not even an actual black hole could cover the sound it made as it tore out of his chest. The pieces had all been there, but Harry hadn’t been able to connect them. It still didn’t look like a complete picture to him, but he could see how they went together now. He knew why he was here, he knew what drove him to finally come back after all these years. For the first time since Robin died he could really, truly lose music. He could really, truly lose him . His connection to him, the one way phone line he’d been leaving voicemails on every single night in the form of songs he’d written. He’d clung to it with desperation right after Robin’s death. He ran away from home in order to find it. He walked away from Louis back then, despite the way his heart called out for the omega. He leaned on Louis’ fear of commitment, he even convinced himself that it was Louis ’ decision to keep their relationship casual, but when that tour came along Harry left without even once asking Louis to wait for him. Without even telling him how he felt about him, because Harry had no idea if he was coming back. Louis had told him once that he let Harry leave because he knew there would never be anything the alpha wanted more than music, and Harry had told him he was wrong. But the omega had been right. So, so agonizingly right.

With the feeling of his heart being ripped straight out of his chest, Harry lowered himself down on his knees over Robin’s grave and sobbed painfully. His guitar and phone slid to the dewey grass unceremoniously and Harry let them. All this time he thought he was chasing his dreams, but it turned out he was just chasing a ghost. And the need to feel Robin, even just for a second on that stage, had driven him for years. It was so powerful it had lulled him into a state of denial so thick he’d even fooled himself for years. He fooled everyone. He abandoned his mother and made her the bad guy, he missed important milestones in Gemma’s life. Harry buried his face in his hands when the sinking question flitted across his mind of whether or not he would have even been able to come back for Eli, had he known. He had insisted angrily to Louis the day he found out that he would have . Of course he would have come back, it’s his son .

Another sob squeezed out between his fingers when he came to the horrifying conclusion that he had likely only fooled himself then too.

Being on stage back then felt like getting to actually breathe for once. Like he’d been running a marathon non stop, but every time he stepped on stage he got to rest and just breathe. It was euphoric, especially during the first few shows. The truth of that feeling settled roughly but deeply inside of him now, the fact that it only felt like relief because he didn’t feel like he had to chase the loss of his stepfather while he was on stage. He could pretend that Robin was there, another faceless person in the crowd hearing him sing. He could feel him there, listening to him. If Louis had called him back then, when his only rest was on stage, Harry wasn’t confident he’d have been able to come back. He might have asked Louis to join him. He might have even begged for the omega to come on the road with him so they could be together, raise their baby together. But if Louis had pushed back, if he’d said no---

He would have left his son to sing for Robin. 

If Harry thought struggling with the choice now had rocked him to his core, it was no match for what this realization was doing to him. The foundation he’d built his entire life on was being ripped up by the jackhammer of his eight year old grief. Everything he thought he was and could be was being broken into rubble that was slowly piling on top of him, making it harder to breathe. Making it harder to fight. Harry was openly sobbing into his hands now. Yelling, and crying, and curling in tighter trying to hold what little was left together. He was afraid if he didn’t, he wouldn’t actually ever leave this grave.

He’d made a dire mistake by coming here.

“ Why? ” Harry cried. He didn’t know if he was asking Robin or himself now, but he couldn’t hold it inside himself anymore. The questions were too large. The answers were even larger. He had to let it out, he was going to suffocate under them now that they were all stirred up and broken.

“Why did you do this to me?” Harry sobbed. His face was still buried in his hands, his tears now soaking them and making his whole face wet. He was on his knees with his head bowed towards the ground now, as small as he could possibly get, in every way he could possibly be small. “I was fine . I was happy . Why did you do this ?!” Harry yelled. He never removed his hands from his face, something like shame keeping him from being able to face the darkness he was screaming into, but he yelled wordlessly, powerfully, so that even through the barrier, the sound was sharp. It ripped his throat to shreds like he was spitting up broken glass. He yelled until his chest throbbed from the ache, and then he stopped to continue weeping uselessly.

“Give me something,” Harry pleaded brokenly. “Please, I just need something . I’ll do anything, just tell me how to make this stop. It hurts .” His breath was firing in and out rapidly, he could feel the panic gripping his lungs with sharp pointed tendrils. The pain from the mild panic attack hardly registered through all the other hurt though so Harry surrendered to it. He let it shake him until his mind was woozy. A small part of him hoped he would pass out, just for a moment to go back and not know any of this, to not feel any of this. He didn’t though. Eventually his breathing went back to normal and his sobs quieted into pitiful whimpers as he sat there holding himself on the ground on top of Robin’s grave.

“I can’t lose you again,” Harry murmured wetly. He could feel the moisture clumping up his eyelashes, making them feel heavy, and by contrast the dryness inside his eyes itched and burned, making him feel tired. Harry was exhausted, deeply, terribly exhausted. An immeasurable amount of time passed then, as his cries slowed to a stop and he found the strength to lower his hands. He managed to drag himself over to the stone to rest his back against it as he stared up at the night sky. It was too cloudy to see the stars, and his phone had fallen on its back so his flashlight was on but useless. It was completely dark around him and as numbness washed over his body again, he almost felt as though he’d slipped into sleep. Time felt as unreal as his body did but the nothingness was bliss after the breaking, so Harry sat in it. Hours could have passed that way, but Harry was unaware of them, and the alpha preferred it stay that way.

* * *

Harry strummed his guitar quietly without any real intention. He switched from one chord to another. Then he changed the key and did it again. He played with the sounds of the stringed instrument like that until he found one that he liked enough to stick with. Then he returned to his idle strumming, letting the metronome inside his chest lead him for a while. There were crickets chirping somewhere in the distance and Harry got swept away in playing alongside them for a while. Then as his fingers continued to pluck out notes he leaned back against Robin’s headstone and sighed.

“I think if I’m being honest with myself I’ve been hiding from this since that New York trip,” Harry murmured over the chords he was playing. He wasn’t singing, just speaking, but the softness of his voice weaved in and out of the music in a song-like way anyway. The alpha closed his eyes and plucked out a series of eight notes before moving up in the chord. He released a slow breath before opening his eyes again to look down at the instrument in his hands. He repeated the series of notes once slower, then again faster. “You told me it would be the last one you’d be taking with me.” Harry sat back again and went back to playing the chords he’d fallen into, but working the eight notes into it as well. It sounded more complete that way, like something he’d felt before. Maybe like something he felt now.

“I think a part of me never came back from that trip, and that’s where the emptiness started,” Harry continued out loud. He felt kind of silly. He knew Robin couldn’t really hear him, but it was good to hear his own voice after the time he sat in complete silence and darkness. It was helping him make sense of the aftermath inside of his head, the damage that had been left behind. With each word that slipped past his lips, he felt like the mess got a bit more manageable. The song he was playing became more intentional, it was coming together purposefully now, the eight notes became a refrain between several chord progressions.

“The farther you slipped away, the harder I had to try to fill it. I was nearly gone by the time we lost you,” Harry’s breath wavered on that admission so he sighed until the noise started to sound like a hum instead. He hummed over his playing and pressed his back harder into the stone. “I think mum knew at your funeral. She was crying for you but her eyes never left me. I think she knew she was losing us both then.” Harry abandoned his speech to sing a soft melody of syllables over the chords he was playing.

“But I didn’t know,” Harry said, just talking again. “I didn’t realize that I was lost, I thought I was just leaving.”

“ Don’t know nothing, just pretend you do, ” Harry sang in time with the guitar. Sometimes music made more sense to Harry than talking. Sometimes it was the only thing he could think of to unlock the baggage packed inside of his mind. It had been a long time since he felt the need to play about his feelings like this.

“Anyway, things got better after I found Louis,” Harry continued with his quiet murmuring, the music from his instrument growing quiet again. “I think falling in love with him was the first thing I did in spite of you. I didn’t know it back then, but he was the only thing I’d truly wanted just for me, not for any other reason. Just because I loved him, and he loved me.”

“But performing gave me something even he couldn’t give me,” Harry’s strumming stopped abruptly, his fingers resting on the strings to still them and silence the instrument. Then he picked back up playing again, slower this time, and deeper. “It gave me you.”

“It was ignorant of me to believe that I could go through something like that---like watching you disappear right in front of my eyes, and just come out on the other side with a necklace and a new dream. It was ignorant for me to believe I could just run from all of that,” Harry shook his head at his younger self. He was still locked deep inside of Harry, and the alpha could tell he was completely exhausted. He’d give anything to be able to help that boy stop running so damn hard, but Harry didn’t even know where to begin. “But I thought I was falling in love with my job when I started to come alive on stage. I didn’t know that I was just dancing with your ghost. I didn’t know the easy breaths I was taking up there were meant for your lungs.”

“I suppose it was my ignorance, too, that made me so confident while I yelled at Louis for keeping Eli from me,” Harry admitted. His words cracked as his breath hitched over that one. That small truth still wrapped so tightly in barbed wire that, even as careful as he was being with it, ripped its way out.

“My precious omega,” Harry marveled to himself. A small, sad smile pulled at the corners of his lips as he let his mind rest gently over Louis’ image. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of Louis gently since he left. Only to punish himself. Only to remind himself that Louis was going to hate him once he found out what Harry learned tonight. Right now, though, he just lingered on the thought of his mate. “I think you would have loved him. I think he would have loved you too. You should see our boy, he’s growing up so fast. I don’t know how you and mum did this, I can’t seem to keep up with him…I wonder if you’d think I’m a good dad.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know, ” Harry crooned over the slowed down melody.

“I think I’ve done a lot of lying to my omega,” Harry murmured, ashamed. “To everyone, really. Myself most of all.” Harry just played for a while then. The chords moving and shifting out of the steady pattern they’d fallen into and forming something else. It was brief, the way the song shifted, and then he moved back to what he’d been doing before. He shifted the tempo a couple of times, first faster then slower. He liked it best at the faster tempo, and he filed that away into a safer place inside his tumbled mind. Harry wasn’t really sure what for, but it never hurt to keep things that felt important, even if you didn’t really know why. Afterwards, he went back to playing the quasi song at a slower, more appropriate tempo. The night was muted, even the crickets’ song had died off since he’d started playing. He didn’t want to disturb that too much. Enough peace had been disturbed tonight.

“It was one thing when I was still reeling from losing you,” Harry eventually found his voice again. “When I still couldn’t even stomach the idea that you wouldn’t be at home waiting for me. But I’ve told the same lie so many times. I’m still telling it. I engraved it on Louis’ engagement ring. I swore I’d choose him---over everything. Our life. But you aren’t a part of that, Robin. You never were. And now, music might not be either. And how can I promise Louis that I’ll choose our life when that means I have to let you go? I’ve never been able to do that. I’ve never learned how.”

“ Tell me something,” Harry sang again, and then he stopped, humming over the next phrase instead of repeating what he’d said before. He played the same chord over again and thought about how different it had felt the last time. Harry knew he couldn’t be the same alpha he was back when he first met Louis. He wasn’t still that bad. He had grown. He’d done it on his own too, it wasn’t just about Louis. By the time the omega had walked back into his life he’d already been off tour for quite a bit of time. He hadn’t felt the need to run back to his stage then. He’d found a steady pace, a healthy jog, that kept him moving enough to never have to face what was behind him, but easy enough that he’d learned to breathe through it. When he stumbled into the pup and the omega that day he was a different alpha, but that didn’t make him who he said he was. That didn’t make him less of a liar.

“I thought I’d made this decision once before,” Harry mused quietly. “I was so confident, so sure, when I flew to L.A. and bought my way out of my contract. The monster I’d been running from the whole time wasn’t even a thought in my mind. I didn’t feel the need to run, I just stopped. I stopped and I went back for the man I loved and for the son that needed me. I thought I’d already done this. But I didn’t.” Harry broke off to chuckle darkly. His hands stilled on the instrument and he shook his head slowly as he looked up at the overcast sky. The clouds had thinned out enough that he could barely spot the moon poking through. Harry chuckled again, the sound emulating the darkness he was surrounded by.

“Helene told me definitively you have to choose,” Harry did his best imitation of the serious tone Helene had taken on in one of Harry’s most self defining moments. “His life or yours and I didn’t even hesitate. I told Louis when I proposed to him just the other day that I didn’t even hesitate when I chose him, but the truth was that I just didn’t even consider the choice. I had everyone telling me that music would always be there. My band members, my manager, even Louis himself, they all assured me over and over again that even if I walked away to help Louis right then, music would wait. I said I was willing to give it up, but I knew, in the back of my mind, I always knew I wasn’t.”

“I wasn’t giving anything up, that’s why I went to LA back then. Why I felt like I needed to fly all the way back to LA when I knew Louis wasn’t okay. I did it to ensure I could always go back. I was just playing pretend. I hung up the phone but only after promising to call right back. I used to wonder about why I was so restless in the beginning. Right after Louis’ surgery, when everything was still new. I didn’t sleep much. His near death haunted me, of course, but it wasn’t him I clung to in those long nights all alone. I would sneak out to the living room and play my guitar really quietly. When I wasn’t having nightmares about losing my mate, I was dreaming about being on stage. I was writing the new album before Louis and I ever even talked about it. I never actually made the choice. Not permanently.”

 Harry let the feeling that whatever it was they were facing this time was more permanent than he’d considered, which had rooted in his gut during his conversation with Liam, begin to unfurl into a beautifully sad bloom in his heart. The alpha knew in his bones that this time, whatever decision he decided to make, it was truly permanent. There was absolutely nothing he could do now to stop what was coming. The label was decided on their course of action if Harry didn’t comply, and he couldn’t change their minds. He couldn’t choose what they would ask of him and he couldn’t demand they make it something easy to take on. He couldn’t change the dog-eat-dog music industry with the melancholy melodies of his hardships and intense love for both music and his family. Harry didn’t have control over the fate of his career, not really, and he didn’t have control over the fate of his family either. 

Louis’ pregnancy was a one in a million shot anyway, and it was still early. Too early. The unpredictability of a normal pregnancy made the first trimester an anxiety induced hurdle, but Louis’ pregnancy amplified that feeling tenfold. He might leave to finish this tour and come back to a loss he couldn’t prevent even if he never left Louis’ side again. Or he could come home to a more pregnant omega, who may only grow sick and weak, who may have his heart give out on him trying to breathe life into their new child, or bleed out trying to bring them into the world. There was nothing Harry could do about that either. This wasn’t something he could save Louis from with a few doses of his pheromones and proximity. 

He couldn’t control it.

None of this was like it had been before. 

“But I have to choose now,” Harry said and quietly started playing his guitar again. “And no matter what I choose, I’m going to lose. One way or another, I’m going to lose.”

“ There's no antidote for this curse, oh,” Harry mumbled in tune with the song. He stopped to breathe slowly, in through his nose and out through his mouth. The last time he’d stood in the wake of such imminent loss was when Robin got the call about his diagnosis. The last time he felt so truly out of control was when he’d realized he was going to lose the only father he’d ever known to a force he couldn’t see and that doctors couldn’t cure. They said they’d treat him, they’d promised Harry’s family that they’d do everything they could, but they had to have known there wasn’t anything they could have done. It was just a thing people say.

It was the thing Liam had said.

His manager was going to do everything he could to save Harry’s career, but that was just a thing people said. Usually when they already know it won’t be enough.

“My family has to come first,” Harry murmured brokenly. He felt the urge to cry form like a boulder in his throat, but no tears came. The alpha was sure he’d cried every bit he had out already. There was nothing left to fall. “I have to put them first, and I want to. He’s having another one of my babies, Robin. They’re my babies. I can’t walk away from them but-but---you’re my dad .” A dry sob halted his words and the music he was playing. He clutched the instrument to his chest and tried to apply pressure to the hole trying to pry itself open there. He could hold it together, Harry needed to hold it together. He didn’t think he’d survive breaking open again. He pulled in a shaky breath and clenched his eyes closed for a couple of silent beats. His heart was the only sound that penetrated the thick quiet. It was pounding in his skull, still racing inside his chest like the quick fearful flutter of a hummingbird’s wings, afraid to slow for even a second---racing an impossible internal clock.

“I’m sorry I never said things like this when I had the chance,” Harry cried. “But you were . The only one I ever knew, the only one who wanted me. the only one I ever wanted. You’re my dad. How am I supposed to let you go? How am I supposed to be a dad without mine?”

Harry spent another few more minutes just breathing and fighting back the urge to break apart once more. He didn’t have anything left to say, there were no more stray pieces laying around the rubble inside his mind. The picture was clear to him now. The alpha understood why the phone call had sent him over the edge. He understood how and why he came to be here, at Robin’s grave in the middle of the night. He understood the web of lies he’d tangled himself and his family up in trying to protect himself from this feeling he was now holding. So Harry didn’t talk anymore, to himself or Robin or whoever Robin believed God to be. He just breathed. Eventually, he found the strength to continue playing his instrument, and as he played, images from the full picture came tumbling out. They were broken and displaced and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but Harry could tell it was all there. He could tell that he’d finally written something specifically and intentionally just for his dad---and it was a goodbye song.

* * *

The door swung open but Harry didn’t look up from his feet. Exhaustion pulled at every nerve ending and muscle that he felt were only clinging to his bones now. He hadn’t been home in so long. The memories danced around him on the front lawn, weaving and giggling through his consciousness like the frollicking children that had made them, haunting him. They were nothing but specters from a past he could hardly believe was his own anymore. Parts of himself he’d abandoned---ran away from---when it had all changed too much to feel like home anymore.

“Harry?” his mother’s voice was colored with early morning frailty and shock, and the alpha understood why. The sun had barely come up, and her son hadn’t been seen on this doorstep since he’d grown out of his ability to ask for help---to recognize he even needed it. Harry finally pulled his eyes up from his dirt caked trainers to look into his mother’s surprised gaze. She was wrapped in a soft pink robe, the same one she’d always worn in the mornings for as long as he could remember. Her hair was flowing freely around her face, rumpled from sleep but not at all messy or unkempt looking. Anne had the uncanny ability of making underprepared look like a style choice that she was effortlessly pulling off. His mother was beautiful, but she looked tired. For the first time Harry noticed that she looked older . He’d seen her a lot in the last four years, of course. Things had been much better between them since Louis came into their lives, but this time was different. Harry didn’t know if it was just because he was seeing her in the doorway of his childhood home for the first time in nearly a decade, or if it was because this was the first time he was bothering to really see , but he felt as if the wind was punched out of his chest as he ran his eyes over the years collected at the corners of her eyes and around the frown she was wearing now.

“Hi,” Harry murmured, his voice already breaking on the single word.

“It’s not yet seven in the morning, what are you doing here, love?” she asked exasperatedly. Harry looked from one side to the other, desperately searching for a reasonable explanation. The tears that he’d thought he ran out of throughout the night suddenly reappeared and made her image swim in front of him. Anne made a sympathetic noise in the back of her throat and ushered him inside. 

“Oh come in, baby. You look exhausted---have you been up all night?” Anne said as she wrapped an arm around his slumped shoulders. Harry blinked the moisture out of his eyes and sniffled pitifully. He leaned heavily into his mother as she led him straight through the living room and into the kitchen. Harry’s childhood home was modest in the same way Louis’ childhood home was. On the smaller side, though, Harry's wasn’t nearly as cluttered with possessions or memories. There was less evidence of them scattered around the sparsely decorated living room. The couch was white and pristine, as if kids had never lived there. The deep green throw pillows Harry noticed as they walked through were new, at least to him. When he’d last been there, the accent color in the living room had been orange and pink---or red if it was christmas time. Green hadn’t made its way into Anne’s living room until after Harry had left.

The emptiness was exactly the same from the last time he saw it, though.

The kitchen was more dated than Louis’ or even Jay’s kitchen was. Anne’s cabinets were dark wood, and her floor was the same, making the space feel small and enclosed. The space was opened up by the speckled beige countertops that Robin had redone when Harry had been twelve years old, and the large bay window that overlooked the garden and let in all the morning light. Anne led the alpha to the large wooden table in front of the window and sat him down in one of the seats that now had deep blue cushions on them to match the deep blue runner going across the table. There hadn’t been any cushions on these seats when Harry was a pup.

“Do you want some tea? Have you eaten?” Anne asked. She was shuffling nervously around the kitchen, pulling cabinets open aimlessly like she’d suddenly forgotten where all the dishes were in her own home. Harry understood the feeling of displacement, the way a place could suddenly become foreign because something that was always there was gone, or in this case, because something that didn’t belong there anymore suddenly showed back up. It was making his mind feel foggy too. Or it was the lack of sleep and the pressure on his eyes from all of the crying, the alpha wasn’t quite sure. Harry eyed the cabinet closest to the fridge until his mother finally pulled it open to pull down two mugs.

“I’m not hungry,” Harry said quietly. He tapped his fingers on the smooth wooden top of the table, remembering the way he used to tap out melodies from songs playing in his headphones while his mother cooked. Robin would often be sitting at the head of the table, reading the newspaper and nodding along to whatever nonsense Harry was tapping out like it was his favorite song, even if it wasn’t a song, just a collection of noises. Harry almost choked on the open space when he looked towards the head of the table and noticed there was no longer a chair there at all.

Robin was everywhere in this house---because he was so painfully gone .

Harry suddenly remembered the way it had felt so suffocating to sit in his absence. To live where Robin so obviously wasn’t anymore.

“Harry?” Anne asked. She was standing in front of the table, across from where she’d sat Harry, and she was eyeing him with concern. He blinked up at her confusedly. “Are you okay? Are Louis and Eli okay?”

“What?” Harry asked hollowly, blinking back to the present. A second later Anne’s words sank in and he shook his head and furrowed his brow, speaking again before Anne could. “Yeah, everyone is fine,” Harry said hollowly. She furrowed her brow too and pulled her robe a little tighter around her frame and searched Harry’s face for answers.

“Then what’s going on? Why are you here? And why do you look like something terrible has happened?”

“Something terrible has happened,” Harry whispered. He pressed his lips into a thin line and blinked up at his mum through wavering, relentless tears. “Robin died.”

“Oh,” Anne said suddenly, the word bubbling unexpectedly out of her chest. Her confused expression softened and she pulled out the chair she was standing closest to. She fell into it like her feet had been swept out from underneath her. Though Harry was positive this wasn’t quite the revelation for her that it was for him. She sighed sadly as she eyed her son. “Oh, darling.”

Harry told her everything then. The whole, painful, agonizing story of how he got here and what he’d done. Every last detail, from Louis’ pregnancy and how he’d hurt Louis over and over again, to how he’d spent the entire night screaming and singing to a grave marker he’d never seen before. Anne listened and cried as Harry talked, tears silently bubbling out of her still morning puffy eyes and racing down her cheeks like they were afraid to sit too long upon her soft skin. Harry’s didn’t run like hers, they meandered over the surface of his face, dipping into every crevice and pore, soaking into every gaping wound Harry was sporting now. The older omega only moved when the kettle began to scream behind them. Her hands shook as she prepared their tea, and they both only held onto the mugs as Harry continued to talk, leeching up their warmth but not being able to actually let it in.

By the time he was done, Harry was crying into his hands again, and the wound he’d tirelessly picked at all night was bleeding everywhere.

Oddly, while he was lost to his emotions once again, Harry thought about something Zayn had said to him not too long ago. Something about how the people who stayed had a tendency to break open and spill onto everyone who dared to get too close. A new wave of sobs washed over him when Anne suddenly wrapped her arms around his frame, having rounded the table to get to him and hold him close. He was spilling his guilt and shame and hurt all over her.

“Shhh, darling,” she murmured, voice low and comforting. It resonated deeply with the alpha, appealing to parts of him he hadn’t connected with in a long time. Young, vulnerable parts that reached out desperately for his mother. “Breathe, my love. Just breathe.” Harry tried to do as she said and took slow, even breaths until the sobs quieted again. Anne was standing beside him, holding him against her chest still. Harry had both hands wrapped around her forearm draped across his chest. They both seemed reluctant to move, even when Harry was just resting quietly in the hold.

“I’m sorry, mum,” Harry murmured. His voice was shot from all the ways he’d abused it over the course of the night. Low and rough, hiding nothing about his sleepless venture. “I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Harry,” Anne insisted. She moved her free hand into his hair and began stroking it back near his temple. Her bergamot and gardenia scent grew thick and wrapped around him, blanketing his senses with the familiar smell of childhood and comfort. The touch and the scenting lulled Harry back into a blissfully quiet, numb feeling, until the only thing he truly felt was absolutely exhausted. When she felt the alpha go slack in her arms, Anne pulled away slowly, still holding him by the shoulders. She looked down at him, searching his red rimmed eyes seriously. Harry sniffled but kept eye contact with her, trying to convey his sincerity beneath all of his unearthed trauma.

“I left you,” He said quietly. The words wavered and broke, and Anne’s expression did too. She shook her head as her own gaze grew wet once more.

“You are my child, Harry,” Anne told him firmly. “You do not get to carry my weight. You didn’t have to then, and you don’t have to now. You have nothing to apologize for.”

“But I know it hurt you,” Harry whined. “You were already hurting so badly. I shouldn’t have left you then. I should have been here.”

“Hush,” Anne shushed. She held his face with both of her soft, strong hands and rubbed the pads of her thumbs over his cheeks. There was still moisture there even though he’d stopped crying, so she wiped it away. “You lost your father, baby. There isn’t a right way to deal with that, we all dealt with it differently. I won’t lie to you and claim I was never upset, because I was. But I let you down when I let those feelings dictate how I treated you. Do you hear me, H? I let you down. I should have been there for you.” Harry leaned into her again, burying his nose into the crook of her neck like he used to when he was a small boy. He sniffled at her skin as he held back whimpers and she didn’t hesitate to scent him again, filling the air with her summertime scent.

“I can’t breathe without him, Mum,” Harry cried, pressing his words into her pulse point. Their position was awkward since the omega was half knelt to hold him while Harry still sat in his chair, but Anne didn’t sway away from the hold. She held his head and kissed the crown of it. “I don’t want to give up music. I don’t want to let him go.”

“Oh, my darling boy,” Anne cooed. “He’ll never leave you, sweetheart. Not really.”

“He’s already gone,” Harry agonized. He couldn’t see her expression from his current position, but he could feel her head shake back and forth as her chin played in the wisps of his hair.

“No he’s not,” she told him. “He’s everywhere. He’s been here the whole time.” Harry pulled out of her arms and looked up at her again curiously. She rose to her full height, but replaced the proximity with a hand at the nape of his neck. His mother carded soft fingers through the finer baby hairs on the back of his neck. Harry subtly leaned into the touch as he watched a small, fond smile pull the corners of her lips up.

“I never feel Robin more than when I’m around you,” she told him wistfully. “He’s in Eli’s laughter, and hiding in your dimples when you smile at Louis. I see him in you every single time I look at you, Harry.”

“I can’t feel him anywhere,” Harry told her sadly. “I can’t feel him without my music, without being on stage.”

“The music you shared is in your heart, not on that stage, Harry,” Anne said with a heavy sigh. “No one can take that from you.”

“Then why do I feel like I’ve already lost it?” Harry asked helplessly. He put a hand over his heart as he spoke and rubbed at the spot he usually reserved for Louis. He couldn’t feel anything beneath his finger tips. Not Louis’ heartbeat, and not his own. Certainly not the music that kept his father alive, years after he’d already died.

“It only feels that way right now, love,” Anne told him. “You’ve uncovered a terrible loss, and you’re just processing it for the first time, which makes it feel like it's just happened. But I’m here to tell you from the other side, not everything that dies stays dead. You’ll find it again. You’ll find him again.”

 “What else will I lose in the process?” Harry wondered out loud as images of his family flitted through his head again. Anne pressed her lips into a hard line and then she dropped her hand. The omega finally rounded the table again to take her own seat. She pulled a slow sip from her cup, the first sip she’d taken of her tea since pouring it. Harry followed her lead, realizing his need for something in his stomach. Anything to replenish the energy he’d lost throughout the night. The warm, sweetened liquid tasted like gold on his tongue. It pulled his eyes shut and wrenched a deeply satisfied hum from his chest. When he opened his eyes again, his mum was watching him steadily, one of her hands cupping her own chin with an elbow resting on the table.

“What makes you think you have anything else to lose?” she finally asked. Harry shrugged defeatedly and looked down at the tea rippling inside his cup, too ashamed to look her in her eyes now.

“I can’t keep this from him,” Harry said resolutely. “I have to tell Louis, and he is going to hate me after he hears it.” Anne tsked quietly and Harry listened to her take another sip of her tea.

“Louis could never hate you, even if he wanted to,” Anne protested. “You’re everything to that omega. I knew it the first time I ever laid eyes on him. Surely you know that by now.”

“I know he loves me, but I don’t deserve it, mum,” Harry argued. He looked around the old kitchen, still skilfully avoiding his mother’s probing gaze. “I’m not who he thinks I am. Hell, I’m not who I thought I was. He hid Eli from me for selfless reasons. I would have run for selfish ones. What kind of an alpha would just abandon their child like that? How can I ever look Eli in the eyes again?” Anne reached across the table then and took one of Harry’s hands in her own. She pulled on it gently until finally Harry found the strength to peek up at her through his eyelashes.

“The only thing Louis thinks you are is a good alpha, and that is as true this morning as it’s been every single day of your life. You don’t know what you would have done had Louis told you about Eli. It may have been the thing you needed to finally face what you’d been running from. All you can do is assume now. But even if you hadn’t been able to come back---you’re human, Harry, and you were young and hurting. Louis made mistakes that never made you stop loving him, do you think his love for you is any less forgiving? Do you think he doesn’t feel the exact same way about you as you do about him?”

“But I lied , mum,” Harry pushed desperately, trying to make the older omega understand. “I’ve lied to him so many times. I was terrible to him when I first found out about Eli. I was even more terrible when I found out about the new baby. I’ve hurt him for what he did, and all this time I was no better than him. I was worse. He should hate me.”

“You didn’t know,” Anne told him. “And Louis will understand .”

“And Eli?” Harry wondered hollowly. “Will he understand?”

“Understand what?” Anne asked. “That his dad did everything he could to save his mum’s life and has been there and present every single day afterwards? That he’s been loved, cherished, and taken care of his whole life? Harry, that pup thinks you walk on water. One day, when he’s all grown up, he may realize that you’re only human, and that you make mistakes like everyone else, and the two of you will have to reconcile that between yourselves when that time comes. Every child goes through that eventually. But it doesn’t have to be right now. In fact, it shouldn’t be.”

“How do I keep being who I’ve been for him when I know now that it’s all been just a really terrible lie?” Harry asked sincerely.

“It’s not all a lie,” Anne answered. “You are a good father, Harry. You love that little alpha with everything you have. You want to be around him, and you care about what he feels and what he likes. Those aren’t lies. Your love for him isn’t a lie. You continue to love him like you always have, despite any other truths. That’s what being a parent is all about.”

“And what if I-I c-can’t?” Harry murmured breathlessly. All night he’d been imagining himself standing at a fork in the road, his family down one side, and Robin down another. As he stared down the fork it would suddenly morph to him standing on stage and the only people in the audience looking back at him were Louis, Eli, and Robin. They were all begging him to stay. He was frozen on stage, unable to sing but unable to walk away. He’d drowned in the sounds of their pleas all night as he imagined the impossible choice before him. He knew what he should do, what he wanted to do---in theory. But he couldn’t make himself unfreeze. He didn’t know if he was actually strong enough to do the right thing.

“Can’t what?” Anne asked, confused.

“What if I can’t choose him now?” Harry asked. “What if, after everything, I’m just not strong enough to be what my family needs? What if I’m made to choose and I disappoint them? Hurt them?” The hand still being held by his mother’s was squeezed gently and Anne rubbed her thumb across the top of it.

“Darling,” she said gently. “I think you’ve already made your choice, and that’s why this hurts so much. You wouldn’t be here right now if you truly didn’t know what you were going to do.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Harry asked fearfully. His eyes implored hers, pleaded with her to see the same image of him frozen on that stage. She looked back at him with an assuring smile and squeezed his hand with her own.

“I’m not,” Anne said assuredly. Her smile was small but warm and Harry blinked at her for a silent moment, trying to find the strength she so effortlessly saw in him.

“I’m scared,” Harry admitted quietly.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” Anne reassured him. “But, love, you’re so much stronger than you think.” Harry averted his eyes and sucked his lower lip into his mouth to worry it between his teeth. He wanted desperately to believe his mum, to have as much faith in him as she seemed to. He didn’t know where she found the will to believe in him so much, after everything he’d done to her in the last few years. Even though he was a parent himself now, he was still a little in awe at the power mothers held in their selfless hearts. Their ability to maintain love endlessly without conditions, without fault. His mum had every reason in the world to believe Harry would only ever be capable of running from his family, because she was the only one he truly ran away from. She’d been stung by his failure before, but here she was, without a doubt believing he could be a better alpha now. Believing that he’d somehow grown enough inside the box he’d trapped himself in to make the right choice this time, and to do it with his eyes wide open. But he was here right now, instead of at home, and the churning feeling in his gut worried him. He longed for the relief of a steady breath that he’d only ever found in one place, and that longing scared him most of all. Because the alpha knew it wasn’t back home with his family where he’d find it.

Harry worried that he actually hadn’t grown at all.

* * *

Harry walked back into Louis’ house quietly, hesitantly. He stepped out of his shoes lightly and crept through the quiet living room like a scolded dog with his tail between his legs. It was past mid-day now. The alpha had finally gathered the strength to go home only after a quick meal prepared by his mother and some more reassurances from her that Louis was going to understand. Anne seemed very confident that the omega wouldn’t even be angry with him for disappearing, but Harry kind of hoped he was. It was the least he deserved after how he’d acted the night before. Harry had never left Louis like that. Not by choice. They’d spent every single night together that they could help, the only exception being the week they’d just spent a part for his tour. He’d just walked out on Louis without any explanation. Harry wanted Louis to be angry with him for it. He wanted the omega to yell and scream, or worse, not talk to him at all. If Louis wasn’t speaking with him, then he could put off telling him the truth just a little longer.

When Harry didn’t find any sign of his family in the front of the house, he toed his way down the hall. He checked the bedroom first, but wasn’t surprised not to find Louis there. The lights were out and it was much too close to time for them to leave for Louis to still be sleeping. The bathroom was also vacant, which left only Eli’s room. As Harry got closer to the last door in the hall, he could make out his omega’s voice. Louis was nearly whimpering as he spoke to Eli, something clearly upsetting him.

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” the omega cooed. A wall of Louis’ soothing pheromones hit Harry square in the chest and it was all he could do to not whimper himself. Underneath the rich aroma of Louis’ pheromones Harry could detect the tell-tale sourness of Louis’ distress in his usually fresh scent. Something was clearly wrong. 

“I’m so sorry you heard us last night, pup. I wish you would have told me sooner. That was not meant to be a weight for you to carry. Daddy is okay---everyone is. He’s just having a hard time with having to go away again. He doesn’t want to be away from us now that I have a baby in my tummy.” Harry rounded into the open doorway and leaned against the door jam with his arms crossed over his chest. Louis was on his knees with his back  to the door, and he had Eli pulled into a tight embrace. The young alpha had his face buried in his neck, sucking up as much comfort as Louis was willing to give him. Harry longed for the ease with which Eli could let himself be loved by his mum. He longed for the comfort Louis gave so well, but he didn’t dare let himself reach out to take it. He never would again, if Louis didn’t want anything to do with him after he knew the truth. He’d respect that.

The omega pulled the pup from his embrace and used gentle hands on his small shoulders to hold Eli’s gaze. Eli didn’t look up at Harry, he didn’t appear to have noticed him yet. Harry wondered about that as he watched the scene play out in front of him. His pup was unusually difficult to take by surprise. He typically knew if Harry or Louis were around before the other adult did. Now though, with Harry standing right in front of him, Eli seemed none the wiser. It wouldn’t be surprising in any other situation with any other kid. Eli was fully engrossed in the conversation he was having with his mum, he seemed to be a bit in his head about something. Worried, for sure, also maybe a little distracted. Harry hadn’t made a sound when he came in and Louis had just covered all other scents with his own. It seemed almost expected that the pup didn’t notice Harry in the doorway, but this was Eli , and maybe it was just the lack of sleep and over abundance of emotion still coursing through his system, but it did strike Harry as odd. 

“I thought daddy liked making people happy with his music---more than anything?” Eli asked hesitantly. “I thought that was why he went away when I was in your tummy.”

Harry blanched.

For a single moment, Harry wasn’t in the doorway of his sons’ room anymore. For a split second he was sitting at the kitchen island again, realizing for the first time that he wouldn’t have been able to give up music back then. Not for anything.

Not for anything.  

Eli didn’t know how close to the truth he may have just come, and the white hot pain that sliced through Harry’s heart almost doubled him over. His mum had told him he didn’t have to tell Eli about his mistakes, not yet at least. Eli could go on thinking that Harry walked on water, he should . But was Harry too late already? Had Eli already figured out that Harry was a weak, selfish man?

The alpha stared at the back of Louis’ head, waiting for the omega to say something. To reassure Eli that he was wrong, to solidify Harry’s image in the pup’s wavering mind so that Harry didn’t have to, but Louis seemed to be frozen. He was just looking at Eli while the pup looked back at him curiously. Then Harry scented the ripe smell of Louis’ shame in the air, and Eli’s eyes were growing rounder, still unable to hide the hurt when it bloomed on his face. The alpha didn’t think any more after that. His mind went on a steady loop of his mother’s reassuring voice, and he just acted.

“One day, when he’s all grown up, he may realize that you’re only human, and that you make mistakes like everyone else…But it doesn’t have to be right now. In fact, it shouldn’t be.”

“That’s not true,” Harry said firmly. It may have been the first time his voice didn’t waver since the night before. Harry caught the subtle jolt and immediate tightening of Louis’ shoulders out of the corner of his eye before his gaze settled fully on Eli. The pup jumped noticeably and looked up at him with wide eyes, truly startled to see Harry there in the doorway.

“Daddy,” he squeaked. The alpha was vaguely aware of the omega turning then to look up at him, but Harry refused to meet his eyes. He didn’t have the energy to do what he needed to do for Eli and face Louis. He just couldn’t do both. Harry tightened his fingers on his arm where he held them across his chest and schooled his face into a clear expression.

“Why would you think that?” Harry asked the small boy. “There’s nothing I love more than being here with you. Making you happy. I told you that when I first came home, didn’t I?” The little alpha’s cheeks colored a sweet pink color and he looked around the room nervously.

“Yeah but--” Eli started, but Harry’s sudden movement into the room cut him off. Harry walked pointedly to the chair in the corner of Eli’s room, his alpha doing most of the work to make his fatigued stature seem in control and strong. Louis and Eli both watched him attentively until the alpha settled into the chair.

“Eli, come,” Harry beckoned. Eli didn’t hesitate to wander over to his dad after Louis let him go. Harry picked the young alpha up easily and maneuvered him onto his lap. Harry scented Eli immediately. The alpha could almost feel Louis’ wound tight nerves in his own body so he nosed at the small boy’s throat and covered the room with his scent the way Louis had just done. He did it thickly, making sure that the comforting scent would reach Louis too, because he was sorry and because he didn’t have anything else to offer the omega.

“I’m sorry,” Eli murmured in a small voice.

“Don’t be,” Harry was quick to reassure the pup. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who is sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Eli asked curiously, fisting his hand in Harry’s shirt and toying with it idly. Harry held his breath for a beat as the endless amount of things he was sorry for spun around inside his head. There were so, so many things now. But he had to stay focused, stay present . This moment was about Eli and about reassuring him that his dad was who he should be, who the pup needed him to be.

“Because you believed, even for a second, that I could love what I do more than I love you,” Harry told him. Harry vowed to himself then---when Eli peered up at him with unsure eyes and tightened his hold on Harry’s shirt like he was trying to keep him from disappearing---that no matter what other truths he came to eventually accept, Eli would never question this one again. No matter what he had to do, or say, even if he had to lie again.

“I love my job, E, but it's just my job,” Harry told him, pushing the complicatedly untrue words out of his rigid jaw. Eli just blinked up at him, so trusting and innocent. Harry’s heart squeezed painfully inside his chest as he looked at his son. He wanted desperately to mean what he’d just said, but it was so much more complicated than his seven year old could wrap his mind around right now. Eli didn’t deserve to suffer for any of this.

“You’re my son . My super-powers-possessing, littlest alpha---my favorite person in the whole world,” Harry said, the words coming out thick with emotion and exhaustion. The alpha leaned in close to Eli and bumped the tip of his nose against the pup’s. As usual, the pup struggled away from the display of affection, but he was giggling as he did it and the sound brought a chuckle to Harry’s own lips. It was a bit of a sad sound, the laughter that bubbled out of Harry, but it was better than the cries that had tore their way out of him all night long. It was a reassuring feeling to watch Eli giggle and squirm in his lap, because if the alpha could do nothing else, at least he’d been able to make Eli smile again.

Out of the corner of his eye Harry saw Louis move and for the first time since walking out last night Harry looked over at him. Louis was sitting on his bum now, watching the pair of alpha’s adoringly. Their eyes locked for a brief second and Harry was sucked out of the jovial moment with Eli and wrenched back over the coals of his discovery. He ran through every emotion he’d felt in the last fifteen hours or so while falling into the depth of Louis’ impossible blue eyes. Louis never even so much as blinked. He stared so openly, so lovingly at Harry that it tore whatever remaining parts of his heart he had left out. The pup in his arms suddenly felt heavier, and the happiness he’d found in making him smile curdled in his stomach as he was reminded that any comfort any of them felt could only be temporary while the alpha was still so unsure of his own strength. 

Eli’s giggles tapered off and Harry shook himself out of Louis’ gaze to look back at the pup. He tried to push the heaviness of the last moment down and continue on with Eli like nothing had happened. He was only half successful.

“That’s why I was so upset last night,” he explained. He tried to stick as close to the truth as he could for this one. “Because I wanted to be able to stay here with you, and with mamma and the new baby. I wanted you and your mamma to be able to rely on me to stay when you really need me. But, sometimes, things aren’t always as simple as you want them to be.”

“Are you going to come back this time?” Eli asked lightheartedly, unaware of what kind of blow he’d just landed square to Harry’s chest. He buried his nose back into Harry’s neck shyly as he said it and Harry was glad for it, so the pup didn’t have to see the devastation on his face.

“Of course I will,” Harry heard himself say, but there was no conviction behind his answer. His eyes found Louis’ as he said it, and he watched as the omega took just as much comfort in the words as Eli did. Harry felt like he was drowning. He held Louis’ gaze like he was clinging to a life raft as he made himself form the next sentence. “I’ll come back. It’s just a couple of weeks. I just have to finish up these last few shows and then I get another break, and I’ll fly right back home to you. Just like the song.”

“And my picture,” Eli interjected excitedly. The image of the family that Eli had drawn in colored pencil flitted through the older alpha’s mind. He lingered on his own image as the blue bird as he forced himself to laugh in response to Eli’s excitement.

“And your picture,” he agreed with the pup. Harry was quickly losing the battle with himself to keep up the charade he was putting on. He wasn’t going to be able to last much longer, suspended in his tangled web the way he was. He had to get out of here, needed to be alone for a moment to just breathe and recollect himself. Eli was still clinging to his shirt though, so Harry tried one last time to put his mind at ease.

“I’ll do everything I can to make it back to you as fast as I possibly can, okay, E?”

“Okay, daddy,” Eli chirped happily. The alpha kissed Eli’s forehead, peeking at Louis once more as he did. Louis looked…relieved? Harry didn’t understand the emotions playing on the omega’s face now, but he did know that there wasn’t an ounce of anger in it, and that only made Harry feel a million times worse.

* * *

Harry ran to the bedroom as soon as he could get away. Louis was finishing up packing Eli’s things for their trip into the city, and Harry excused himself with the guise that he was going to do the same. Pack for the trip, not just for London, but for his tour as well. The plan was to leave from London Sunday morning, but Harry couldn’t focus long enough to really put any kind of luggage together. He eventually just threw a bunch of tops and bottoms into a couple of suitcases and loaded up every pair of shoes he could fit into one bag. Everything else could be provided for him on a moment's notice and the stylist usually brought the stage clothes. He didn’t need to think much further than that. Which was good, because Harry didn’t think he’d be able to think about anything other than his own tumultuous thoughts no matter how hard he tried.

When he finished his haphazard packing, Harry sat down at the desk beside their bed. The place he’d sat when he proposed to Louis not a whole week ago. He’d watched Louis sleep for hours that morning, going over the memories of his rut over and over again. The way the omega had cried, the way he’d then reassured Harry so gently when the alpha had been too scared to reach out and touch him again. He’d stared at the ring and marveled over how lucky he was all morning long, because he’d made a snap decision four years ago and accidentally made all of his dreams come true. Harry had thought there would never be anything in the world he could possibly want now, with Louis carrying their newest child, the first child he’d get to be here for from the very start. But even then. Harry had turned to music. He’d reached for the guitar and immediately started writing a song. Even then, when he thought he’d had it all figured out, Harry had reached for just a little something more.

Could that ever truly be enough for him?

Harry turned to the desk and flipped open the journal that he usually left there. It was his music journal, where he tended to write songs. He’d take it with him on tour, but when he was home, it sat here. Harry always felt the most inspired in the bedroom, usually when Louis was sleeping and Harry was just taking it all in. He flipped to a new page and pulled a pen out from one of the drawers in the desk. Slowly, painfully, he began jotting down the lyrics of the song he’d played in the cemetery. He wanted to get them down before he forgot everything. 

“Harry?” Louis’ soft voice broke into his reverie and sent his heart racing inside his chest. He froze in his seat, unwilling to turn and meet Louis’ eyes now. All he could think was that he just wasn’t ready for this. Louis appeared at his side and knelt down so he could look up at Harry. His rosewater scent carried easily through the room and worked its way into Harry’s tense muscles. His alpha whined, deep in his chest, but Harry managed to keep it from escaping. He glanced at the omega, exhausted and defeated. He sighed when Louis’ expression became curious.

“Are you okay?” Louis asked in a whisper. The concerned, almost pained question broke what little resolve the alpha had left. He reached for Louis then. He turned in his chair and pulled the omega into his lap. Louis moved easily, letting Harry position him without complaint. The omega straddled Harry as the alpha buried his nose into the crook of his neck and sucked in selfish gulps of Louis’ comforting scent. His alpha was panting and whining in need, but still Harry kept a firm lid on his reaction. He tried to remain as in control as he possibly could, which wasn’t saying much, but he could at least keep himself from crying out like a wounded pup. Instead, Harry nipped and licked at the most sensitive parts of Louis’ neck, pressing his scent into the place where his bond mark should be, and sucking on his scent gland. He told himself it was for Louis’ benefit, to comfort his omega who had to be deeply confused and hurt over last night’s events, but Harry knew in the back of his mind it was for him. It was all for him.

“I’m sorry I left, I’m so sorry,” Harry murmured when he could pull in enough air to speak. Louis started showering the alpha with kisses then, peppering them on any inch of skin he could find. His scent grew thick and Harry was smothered in rich calming pheromones, and the alpha couldn’t resist gasping into them and letting them ease some of his discomfort.

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” Louis reassured him. “I’m not upset. It’s okay.” With every ounce of relief Harry was getting from his proximity to Louis and the omega’s soft words, came another bout of guilt and pain, because nothing about what happened last night was okay. Nothing about what he’d been doing this whole time was okay. Even now, he shouldn’t be allowing the omega to give him so much, but he was too weak to ask him to stop.

“It’s not,” Harry whimpered aloud. “None of this is okay.” Louis held him closer, rubbing his back reassuringly and cooing soft words into his ear. The omega was doing everything he could to comfort Harry, and Harry just loved him so much. He loved Louis so, so much and he just wanted to be worthy of this, of what they were to each other and the life they were building.

“Talk to me, alpha,” Louis begged. Harry pushed his next sob into the warm skin of Louis’ neck.

“I don’t deserve you,” he managed in a whisper. “I don’t deserve this .” Harry tightened his arms around the small of Louis’ back to punctuate his statement.

“What’re you talking about, love?” Louis asked softly, his confusion as clear as his want to understand and help Harry. His next words burned like acid on their way up.

“I lied,” Harry continued to whisper. Louis pulled away from him then, abruptly sitting back and cupping Harry’s face to guide his gaze up to his own. Harry whined quietly in the back of his throat.

“ What are you talking about?” The omega insisted again.

“I’ve lied to you for so long,” Harry told him. Louis wiped at the tears falling from his eyes while he shook his head. The omega was fighting the truth in Harry’s words with every fiber of his being and Harry thought each shake of his head might cut him just a little bit deeper. Louis believed the very best of Harry. How was the alpha supposed to just rip his heart out?

“About what?” Louis wondered, his voice low and patient, like he was merely humoring one of Eli’s outlandish ideas.

“I wouldn’t have come back,” Harry said, ripping the band aid off as fast as he could. With Louis’ hands still on either side of his face, the only way Harry could run from the intense eye contact was to close his eyes, so he did. He clenched his eyes shut and he waited for the anger, the betrayal to weave its way into Louis’ calm scent. He waited for the omega’s touch to disappear, along with the comfort he was providing.

“When, baby?” Louis prodded, his confusion making the words come out higher than usual. “Please just tell me what’s wrong.”

“If you’d called me and told me you were pregnant with Eli,” Harry explained, letting each word fall out of his mouth slowly without opening his eyes. Every single other one of his senses were tapped into Louis, monitoring his mood and his emotions. Harry didn’t need to watch the devastation too. He didn’t need to see Louis’ heart break. Perhaps it was selfish of him, maybe he deserved to watch what his actions would do---but Harry was a weak alpha and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. “I wouldn’t have come back. I wouldn’t have been able to.” Once the words were out, everything around them fell silent. Harry couldn’t hear or feel anything outside of the rush of his own blood. He was totally sensory blind and he felt completely off balance. He pushed back into Louis’ space without thinking. He whimpered pitifully and scented the omega, pleading with the only sense he had left to not be left by him. He wanted Louis to stay even though he knew Louis was entitled to do anything but that.

Louis slowly wrapped his arms around Harry’s back again and hugged him tight.

“Shhh,” Louis soothed. Harry scented him more desperately. “It’s okay. I love you so much, that will never change.”

What ?

The beating of Harry’s heart finally quieted back down to background noise, and the shock of his admission slowly tapered off. It was quickly replaced by the shock of what Louis was saying though. Of Louis’ complete acceptance and love despite what Harry had just told him. Somehow, Louis was holding him and telling him he loved him. Somehow, Harry had just revealed his darkest truth and the best thing that had ever happened to him was still sitting here, still looking at him as if Harry was still his favorite person in the world.

But how could that be?

“How?” the alpha asked. “What kind of alpha am I? How can you love me knowing what I would have done to you? To Eli?”

“I already knew, love,” Louis told him. His face was soft and understanding, free of any heavy emotions one way or the other. He was gazing at Harry, letting his eyes roam gently over the lines of the alpha’s face. He didn’t look even a little surprised, or pained. Louis looked calm, almost tranquil.

“What?” Harry asked, dumbfounded.

“I already knew,” Louis repeated. “I didn’t know why, but I knew you needed to go, alpha, it’s okay. You came back. You’re a good alpha, and a great father, Harry. Always have been. Everything is okay.” Harry wanted to find some kind of peace in Louis’ words. He wanted to feel relieved by the fact that even if he’d fooled himself into believing every word he’d ever said, his omega didn’t feel lied to. Louis knew the truth. Harry wanted to think that made everything alright again, but really it just turned the gooey, hot, sticky feeling festering in his gut in a sickening way. His mother hadn’t been all that surprised by his revelation either.

Was he really the last to know about his own weakness?

Harry didn’t know if that was worse or better, or if it made the next decision he had to make easier or harder. It felt a lot like both, and the alpha didn’t understand how that could even be possible. He was just so confused by it all. Two versions of himself, two versions of his life, two very distinct realities were at war inside of his head, and no one on the outside seemed to think of it as groundbreaking as Harry did. He was all alone in his feelings.

“ I’m not,” Harry finally let out on a cry. The omega held him impossibly tighter and let the alpha cry until, for the third time in less than a day, Harry simply ran out of tears to shed. 

* * *

Louis drove to London. Once the alpha had sobered, the omega had picked up very quickly on the fact that Harry hadn’t had much sleep at all. His mother had made him nap a little before she felt safe sending him home, but other than that Harry had been up all night. Louis demanded the keys and wouldn’t hear a single one of Harry’s protests. It's not that he minded Louis driving, he didn’t care about that. But his alpha didn’t like it one bit now that he knew Louis was carrying their baby. It was a true testament to how exhausted he was that he didn’t just lovingly pin the omega and wrestle the keys from his delicate hand.

They made a quick stop at Jay’s so Louis could grab a toy for Eli, and then they were off---only an hour behind their schedule. Harry tried to make a point by staying up the entire drive, just to show Louis that he very much could have driven them to his flat, but he didn’t even make it onto the freeway before his sleepless night got the best of him.

Before he knew it, Louis was waking him up with a gentle nudge to his shoulder, and they were at the flat.

“Thank goodness,” Eli sighed from the backseat as Louis moved to climb out of the car. Harry peered behind him at the pup and found Eli shaking his head and letting out a big sigh. The alpha furrowed his brow questioningly at the pup.

“Your snores were so loud ,” Eli complained. Louis giggled as he slid out of the driver's seat.

“Hey now,” Louis laughed. “Be nice to your dad. He’s not feeling the greatest.”

“Me neither anymore,” Eli mumbled under his breath as the omega shut his door. Harry huffed a silent laugh through his nose.

“You’re just like your mother, you know that?” Harry asked, his voice rough, apparently from all of his snoring . Eli beamed at Harry from the back seat. Louis knocked on the window then, getting both alphas’ attention.

“C’mon you two,” he hollered through the glass. “We’re already late.” Harry sighed and stretched as much as he could in his seat before gradually climbing out of the car. Eli knew how to get himself out of his booster seat by now, but the pup stayed put as Harry moved. The alpha took the hint and opened Eli’s door to reach in and unbuckle him. Eli held his arms out, widening his eyes innocently and biting on his lip in the same way Louis always did when he was trying to persuade Harry. The alpha looked down at his son and laughed heartily, the joyous sound punching out of his chest and taking him by surprise. It felt good to laugh after the night he’d had.

“Yep,” Harry said. “ Just like your mum.” Harry scooped the alpha up into his arms and Eli giggled as he clung to Harry’s shoulders.

“Harry, don’t forget the bags!” Louis called back over his shoulder. Harry and Eli looked at each other then and then at the full boot of the SUV.

“Erm,” Harry said as he looked from the boot to Eli and back again.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Eli asked seriously. Harry met his son’s contemplative look and blinked once in question.

“Al,” they both said together. Harry laughed again and slung Eli up onto his hip.

“My boy,” Harry cooed as he walked towards the familiar building.

“I’m just like daddy, too,” Eli said, his cheeks turning a pretty shade of pink. Harry dimpled at the pup in his arms and kissed his cheek, right where his matching dimple would be. Harry’s heart was heavy with his newest revelations, but he was relieved to find Eli was so easy to carry, even now.

* * *

“Funny running into you here,” Zayn’s quiet voice drifted over to him on the gentle breeze. Harry turned in his patio chair to watch the very pregnant omega slide the door shut behind him. “Come here often?” Zayn smirked at the alpha as he waddled over to join Harry. He lowered himself awkwardly into the too low seat beside the alpha. Harry managed a small smile at Zayn’s joke.

“Only on the days you’re here,” Harry joked back, but it was half hearted and they both knew it. Harry was running out of steam on his entire facade. He’d done a really good job keeping up appearances for their friends tonight. Harry was positive that no one even suspected something was wrong---besides Louis, of course. And Liam. Maybe Liam too. But he was certain that Niall and Zayn were none the wiser to the storm brewing inside Harry’s troubled mind. Since his tearful confession to Louis before coming out to London the alpha hadn’t been able to say much of anything real to him since. Louis had been a dream. All the things his mother said Louis would be and say and feel, he was doing and saying all of the right things just trying to take care of Harry. He didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was only making it worse. Harry didn’t feel like he deserved compassion right now, and he didn’t know how to accept love from Louis feeling this way---even if the omega insisted nothing had changed.

Harry felt completely changed.

He’d been doing very well though. Harry and Louis laughed and kissed and put on a show in all the right moments, and the alpha had made a point to talk with each of their friends individually so they all got a piece of him. He was jovial, helpful, even a little lighthearted. He’d played the part of who he’d been just a couple days ago very well, in his own charlatan opinion. It had been a long night though, and Harry had needed a break. Just a moment to breathe and recenter. That’s how he’d found himself on the balcony by himself after dinner.

“Harold, what would your omega say?” Zayn asked, playfully scandalized by Harry’s previous response.

“Same thing your alpha would, I think,” Harry chuckled. He looked out over the London skyline and shook his head.

“That you couldn’t handle me?” Zayn quipped. Harry laughed a bit more genuinely at that one.

“Have you met Louis and Liam?” Harry asked incredulously. Zayn laughed too and then they both were quiet for a beat. Zayn’s scent---which was sweet but in an earthy way, like Linden and Birch trees---was so potent now that even in the fresh air it wrapped itself around Harry. It was comforting, on a biological level, but also in other ways. Harry’s alpha had come to take comfort in the scent of all of their friends over the years, even Niall’s barely existent beta scent. Zayn’s was particularly soothing now, so heightened by his pregnancy.

“How’s the trusting happiness again going?” Zayn eventually asked. Harry took a slow breath in through his nose and shook his head silently.

“Fine, I suppose,” Harry murmured under his breath. He turned his head to meet Zayn’s patient stare and gave the omega a tight lipped smile.

“Then why have your eyes been sad all night?” Zayn asked bluntly, not even so much as blinking as Harry’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. The alpha released a long breath and dropped his face to his lap. He chuckled darkly at himself.

“Does anything get past you, actually?” Harry wondered, mostly just to stall as he tried to come up with a reasonable explanation that wasn’t his horrifying truth.

“No,” the omega said confidently. “So I don’t suggest trying to lie about it either.” Harry looked back at the omega again, searched his calm expression for a moment as he tried to decide how much to divulge. 

“The label is being difficult about letting me out of the tour,” Harry said with a shrug, hoping that could be the end of it, but of course it wasn’t. The information was sitting too heavily in the front of his mind for him to have any hope of containing it, especially with Zayn looking back at him like he was, with patience and understanding and softness. He was the first truly uninvolved third party to all of Harry’s mess, and the alpha’s need for comfort from someone unrelated was great.

“Yeah, Liam told me,” Zayn hummed. “I’m sorry. It must be hard for you to always have to choose between your passion and your family.”

“It wasn’t actually,” Harry said, with a bit of frustration. “It never has been. The moment I realized Louis wanted me I never thought twice about my career.”

“Oh,” Zayn responded, and the alpha could hear the hesitation in his voice, like he knew he’d just hit a nerve but couldn’t make sense of it.

“Until now,” Harry added quietly.

“ Oh ,” Zayn repeated, all traces of confusion gone. “What’s different about this time?”

Harry didn’t mean to, but he told Zayn everything. He opened his mouth to shrug off the question like he simply didn’t know, but the overbearing truth of the last twenty four hours came tumbling out without his permission. The omega listened intently as Harry rambled on about his late night spiral in a graveyard, and to Zayn’s credit, he didn’t even bat an eye at that. He eventually pulled himself out of the seat beside the alpha as Harry talked and wandered over to the railing of the balcony. Zayn leaned on it and looked out over the night sky as Harry relived the entire morning at his mother’s house. When Harry got to the part about telling Louis what he’d learned, Zayn remained silent, but he turned and leaned his back against the railing instead so he could run his eyes over Harry’s ashen face. The alpha didn’t quite know what it was he was looking for, but he could tell Zayn was searching for something by the time Harry concluded his tale.

“Do you feel better?” Zayn asked when Harry finally fell silent. Harry wiped his hands over his face and marveled at the lack of tears for a moment. It wasn’t like he’d told a million people, but this was the first time he’d gotten through any part of this explanation without crying. It did feel a little better this time around.

“A little bit, actually,” Harry said truthfully. When he uncovered his face again he found a warm smile on Zayn’s lips.

“Good, you’re entirely too hard on yourself,” Zayn said nonchalantly. Harry grimaced.

“Someone should be,” Harry muttered. “Everyone else keeps letting me off the hook.”

“Maybe because you shouldn’t be skewered for missing your dad?” Zayn said, but his voice turned up at the end of his statement as if it was a question.

“I would have left them, Z,” Harry stressed.

“Yeah and Louis really did leave you---for nearly four years,” Zayn said with a shrug. “Almost killed himself and Eli in the process, might I add. Yet, here we all are, completely in love with him anyway.”

“He thought he was doing the right thing,” Harry argued for his omega. Strange that when he first found out he was the one who raked Louis over the coals for his reasoning, and now all these years later he seemed to be the only one who still found them relevant. The rest of their family had moved on, but in a weird way, Harry was still caught in the orbit of the lie that failed to keep them all apart. “And I was just selfish.”

“Harry,” Zayn said pointedly, then waited for the alpha to look at him. “You didn’t actually leave them, you know that right? None of that actually happened because Louis never gave you the choice. You’re here and you’ve been here, not performing this whole time so you could be with them despite what Louis did. You aren’t selfish just because you’re finally facing the loss of your father.”

“But I’m not the alpha who stayed despite what Louis did,” Harry agonized. “I’m the alpha that would have left him too, and I don’t want to be that guy, Zayn. I just don’t want to be.”

“You’re already that guy, Harry,” Zayn said definitively. His words were full of compassion, but there was no room to argue with them. He wasn’t sugar coating things for the alpha. As gentle as Zayn was being, he meant for the words to cut right through everything else---really sink in for the alpha. “There’s nothing you can do to change that. I think you just learned the hard way that you can’t run from your past.” Harry shook his head in frustration, feeling called out and particularly vulnerable being forced to face his own reflection so pointedly. Zayn was patient while Harry struggled internally, he didn’t push him in either direction or try to comfort him. The omega rubbed his distended belly and waited for Harry to find his scattered bearings.

“ That guy doesn’t deserve the life I have, Z,” Harry eventually murmured, easily coming back to his inability to rationalize how he could accept one truth without forsaking the other.

“Then choose to be someone else,” Zayn said simply. “Because the people in your life deserve you.” 

“They deserve someone who’s too scared to let go of their past to choose them?” Harry asked solemnly.

“They deserve someone who’s willing to face the worst thing that’s ever happened to him in order to make a better choice this time,” the omega corrected softly.

“It’s easy to feel strong when none of the consequences were real,” Harry sighed. “When my career wasn’t actually on the line, and when I didn’t know that losing it would mean losing my dad. Facing what happened might be what makes me too weak to do the right thing.”

 Zayn looked down at the belly he cradled in his hands and pressed his mouth into a thin line. He was silent for a beat and Harry stared up at the sky, drowning in the quiet. The words of the song he’d hummed out beside Robin’s grave filtered through his fuzzy, sleep deprived mind and threatened to carry him back to Cheshire. Before he lost himself completely, Zayn sighed quietly and pulled the alpha back to his balcony in London.

“Briar isn’t my first child,” Zayn murmured quietly. Harry’s eyebrows flew up to the line of his hair as his mind whirled with the new information. The pregnant omega wasn’t looking at Harry, he was still gazing down at his belly while he held it almost insecurely. Harry blinked rapidly and tried not to blurt out the first thing that ran through his mind, which was a flabbergasted what the fuck?!

“I, um,” Harry cleared his throat, once again choking on what the actual fuck . “No?” Zayn laughed quietly through his nose and finally peeked up at Harry. HIs dark hair was hanging in flattering tendrils around his face tonight, and they framed his eyes beautifully as he took in the alpha’s carefully composed expression. Zayn laughed through a grin this time.

“You’re ridiculous,” the omega giggled. “It’s appropriate to be shocked Harry, you won’t scare me off. I’ve already said it, no going back now.” Harry held his breath for a moment while he searched Zayn’s face. He seemed sincere and decidedly comfortable. Harry didn’t know what it was about him that kept inspiring this kind of trust in Zayn, but Harry didn’t want to betray it in any way. Once he was sure Zayn truly meant what he said, Harry let his face open back up to reveal the disbelief he’d felt at the omega’s uttered confession.

“What the fuck , Z?” Harry finally murmured. He still held onto the phrase reluctantly, so it slipped out of his lips slowly and cautiously. The omega’s grin fell and he turned back towards the railing of the balcony to lean on it, looking out over the London skyline once again.

“Liam knows, just so you know,” Zayn told him, his voice level. “Want to get that out of the way, before any protective alpha feelings crop up. He knows, and it’s not really a secret I’m trying to keep. I’m just really private about it all. I don’t like thinking about what used to be. What I used to be.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Harry offered immediately. The last thing he wanted was his own tumultuous feelings forcing Zayn into sharing things he didn’t want to. Zayn looked back at him and gave the alpha a melancholy smile.

“I know,” Zayn said simply. “But I think you have to hear it.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked. Zayn turned back around, once again looking out into the night and shrugged his shoulders lightly.

“When it gets dark it's easy to believe that you’re all alone,” Zayn explained slowly, taking his time in letting the words roll off of his lips. “That you’re the only person in the world who would make such a terrible decision or do such a terrible thing, and that somehow means you deserve to be punished or suffer more than the rest of the world. But we all make horrible mistakes, Harry. Especially when we’re hurting or afraid. Louis made a terrible mistake when he hid Eli from you. It cost a lot of people a lot of things, but he wasn’t alone in that mistake. Niall made it too, when he turned you away while knowing the truth. Do you think either of them deserve any less now because of those decisions?”

“Of course not,” Harry said immediately, unable to shake the knee-jerk reaction to defend Louis. No one understood the omega’s fears better than Harry did, and Niall had only been trying to be a good friend. They both deserved to be happy. Zayn didn’t look at Harry, but his answering silence made Harry feel put on the spot anyway. After a deep breath, Zayn started again.

“Do you think I don’t deserve Liam and our baby now because, back when I was seventeen, I made the decision to carry a child without an alpha and then, after the sudden death of my sister, prioritized my drug addicted mother instead of my own health, which ultimately resulted in the death of my baby before she could even take her first breath?”

“ Zayn ,” Harry breathed. The wind knocked out of the alpha, the blow Zayn so gently landed making him sputter and gasp for air. This time Zayn did look back at Harry. The omega gave him an ambivalent look that stilled Harry’s frantic mind and hushed all of the questions and concerns poised on his lips.

“Don’t pity me,” Zayn said quickly. “I can’t handle that. I don’t like being pitied. I made the decisions I made, and it happened. It was terrible, but it brought me to Helene, and ultimately to all of you. Now I have Liam, and we’re having Briar. It’s a good life, Harry.”

“Of course you deserve that, Zayn,” Harry said softly. “What happened to your first baby wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” Zayn asked. “I’m the one who lied for my sister the night she snuck out, she wouldn’t have been in that car accident if I hadn’t. I knew my mother wasn’t well, but I turned a blind eye when she started raiding my dad’s pain medication, because it seemed to help her sleep. I’m the one who stopped going to my own doctor’s appointments after my dad left us because I was afraid to leave my mum at home alone. I’m the one who ignored it when the baby started moving less, stopped moving at all. I made all of those decisions, Harry. There are arguments to be made that it was in fact my fault, and had this been even two years ago, I would have made them.”

“But it wasn’t though,” Harry interjected passionately. “You were grieving, hurting, and you were only a child. You weren’t supposed to be taking care of anyone but yourself. You were left all alone, how were you supposed to know how to navigate any of that?”

“Two years ago I would have argued that I killed my first child, and in the pain of losing her I abandoned my sick mother just like everyone else had, because those were choices I made. That’s the kind of man I am,” Zayn said, voice growing heavy and serious again. “I tried to run from it for years. I thought if I could put enough distance between who I am now and who I was then that I could pretend like it didn’t happen at all. But I’m always going to be that guy, Harry. Just as you will always be the guy who left his mother while she was grieving and might have abandoned your own son out of your own grief.” Harry shook his head, reminded of his own internal battle once again and immediately plopped back into the cesspool of his own emotional turmoil. Zayn eyed him contemplatively as Harry struggled with himself.

“It's a wonder how you offer compassion and forgiveness so easily for the ones you love and yet you withhold it from yourself for far less malicious things,” the omega commented. “Were you not also a child, all alone, without any idea how to navigate the loss you’d just suffered?” 

“I’m not a child now,” Harry pushed back sadly. “I have a child of my own to think about--- children . It shouldn't be this hard to choose them.” Zayn winced suddenly and turned towards Harry. With a pained expression he waddled slowly over to his vacated chair beside the alpha. He sat carefully and rubbed his belly with tender hands.

“Briar likes to kick right here,” Zayn said in wonder, indicating a spot just beneath his ribcage. He laughed around another small wince as he leaned away from the point he’d just indicated. “It hurts so bad. Sometimes I think she’s going to break that rib.” Harry watched the omega with worry coloring his face. Worry for what Zayn had just revealed, and worry for the obvious pain in his face now. The alpha panicked a little. He didn’t really know what he was supposed to do. Zayn laughed fondly when he looked up and saw the plight on Harry’s face.

“I love it though,” Zayn said quickly, probably to placate the nervous alpha. “I love this pain because I have a deeper appreciation for what it means. She’s alive. She’s in there, and so ready to come out and take her first breath. To be loved by me and Liam, and to grow up alongside Eli and your new baby. She’s so ready for the life I’m going to give her, and I love when she reminds me, even though it hurts like a bitch.” The omega winced, as if Briar chose that exact moment to kick at her mum to help emphasize his point. Harry’s hands went up in front of him, half way reaching for Zayn but not really knowing what he could do to help alleviate his discomfort. The omega waved him off with another breathless chuckle.

“I’m fine, alpha. Jesus ,” Zayn hissed. Harry settled back into his own chair but he kept his eyes steadily on Zayn. Pain scrunched his face for another moment or two and then it evened out and Zayn looked back at Harry.

“But when we first found out about her, all I could think about was Evelynn,” Zayn admitted. His words were soft with shame. He peeked up at Harry through his eyelashes. “That was her name. My first baby. I was going to name her Evelynn.”

“It’s a beautiful name,” Harry said thickly. Zayn nodded and looked back at his swollen belly. He ran his hands over it lovingly again.

“I didn’t love anything about Briar when we first found out, all I felt was afraid,” Zayn said, his own voice thick with emotion as well. “I was clinging so tightly to the pain of Evelynn’s loss, holding on to what I thought was the only thing I had left of her, that there wasn’t any room for Briar in my heart. She couldn’t get in past the mark Evelynn had left behind. My inability to connect to the new baby was becoming a problem, hindering her growth. It got to the point where I felt like I had to choose---Evelynn or Briar.”

Zayn paused then to take a couple of long slow breaths and Harry waited in silence for the omega to collect himself. He could see where this was going, especially as Zayn continued to rub his belly like he’d never loved anything more than he did the uncomfortable protrusion sitting in his lap.

“Letting go of that pain to make room for Briar in my heart felt like losing Evelynn all over again,” Zayn managed to say, his voice tightening like he was fighting off a cry that Harry knew he’d never let out. Zayn’s strength was otherworldly. The fact that it had gotten that close to the surface told the alpha that the pain Zayn was speaking of was unimaginable.

“It was an impossible choice, Harry,” Zayn told him, his eyes now steady on the alpha’s. “Impossible. But I made it because this is a good life . And Liam deserved to be a dad, and Briar deserved to live. I deserved to be the mother I always should have been.”

“Doesn’t it haunt you?” Harry couldn’t help but ask. He understood the point Zayn was trying to make. He knew the omega was trying to tell him that he couldn’t hold onto what he’d lost and still have the things he’d gained, but Harry just didn’t understand how one acquired the strength Zayn was talking about. “Don’t you miss her?”

“Of course I do,” Zayn murmured. “Every day, every new milestone we reach with Briar, I wonder about Evelynn and what it all would have looked like for her. I wonder about my sister, and how she’d have been as an aunt. I wonder about my parents, and if Briar would finally be able to close the gaping hole I ripped open all those years ago. I miss them all the time, that doesn’t just go away because I’m happy now.”

“How do you live with it?” Harry asked. “How do you enjoy any of this?”

“By finding a balance,” Zayn said simply.

“A balance?” Harry asked. Zayn only nodded, and then he winced again suddenly. When the pain passed it drew a small chuckle from the omega.

“I thought I’d given up the only thing I had left of my first baby when I let Briar in past all of the fear and hurt, but I’d been wrong. Turns out, Evelynn is growing in there, right alongside her sister.” Harry furrowed his brow in confusion, not understanding what the omega meant now.

“What do you mean?” he wondered.

“I mean I think Briar is trying to force herself out through my rib cage right now,” Zayn laughed and held onto his side. “And it's so uncomfortable but I love it so much, and that's an appreciation I don’t think I’d have if it wasn’t for my first child. I love this pain because it’s so much sweeter than the other pain. When I hear Briar’s heartbeat, I remember Evelynn’s so clearly. I never could before. I used to only be able to remember the silence. I’ve painted a rainbow in the nursery, and it’s like having Evelynn watching over Briar. You see? In my head, Evelynn now lives because Briar does. It doesn't make me miss her less, but it makes every moment worth it. It’s just about finding a balance.” Zayn smiled down at his belly and Harry watched the peace settle over him like a soft throw blanket warding off the slight chill in the air. There was weight on his shoulders that Harry could now see so clearly, but he didn’t hold it in the serene smile on his lips, or in the rich warmth of his dark eyes. Harry chewed on the inside of his cheek and marveled at the omega’s ability to be so much at once, when Harry felt so incapable of being even one thing for any period of time. 

“You make it sound so easy,” Harry marveled. Zayn gave Harry a sad, half smile and a small shrug of his shoulders.

“It’s not,” he told Harry. “I still struggle a lot sometimes. I won’t pretend to have it all figured out. I still haven’t found the strength to reach back out to my parents, wherever they may be now. I might never be strong enough for that. Loss and grief and love are all so complicated. I think I’ll be learning to navigate it for the rest of my life. So will you, I'm fairly certain.”

“It just feels like no matter what I choose it’s going to hurt so bad,” Harry said defeatedly. 

“Pain is inevitable,” Zayn told him. “But some pain will hold you back, and some pain will help you grow. You made the decisions you did in the past. You are that guy, but you can either let that hold you back, or you can choose to let it help you grow. That guy was a child suffering a great loss, in a whole lot of pain, with no idea how to let love in again. Now, he’s all grown up, and his life is good . There is love everywhere. You just have to make room for it again.”

It was impossible for the alpha to see it now, but he hoped desperately that the balance Zayn was talking about was out there for him somewhere. He hoped beyond hope that he’d somehow find the strength it would take to let it in when the opportunity presented itself.