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The sun was a glorious state of warm and welcoming. The breeze was serene and the sky was the clearest it had been in months. A truly unusual day for any person living in England, but it was welcome nonetheless.
The blonde boy revs the engine on his go-kart, the ground below him rumbling, and with a quick press of the peddle he was off. Harry enjoyed these little moments in life. With how busy he and the Sidemen are with filming he feels like he never truly gets a break, so it's nice to be able to finally feel the breeze in his hair, the rumbling on his feet, and have a brain with absolutely no thoughts whatsoever. Yup, Harry was happy.
The road in front of him began to twist and turn. Why were there no cars on the road with him? It was a Monday morning, surely people would be heading to work right about now. Odd...
He reaches down to turn on the radio, the song is familiar, though, he can't quite remember where he's heard it before. He shimmies his shoulders to the beat regardless, but can't help but feel uneasy. Although it was the most beautiful day he'd ever seen in England, the world around him felt so barren.
The steering wheel starts to falter, he's gripping it as tight as he can, but to no use, the go-kart begins driving itself. It roughly turns off the road and into the grassy Guernsey fields at a speed, Harry had never driven at before. "HAROLD CONTROL THIS THING WILL YOU?!" He looks to his left and sees his mother adorned in a floppy hat, clearly panicked, hair flowing in the now tumultuous breeze.
She turns the radio's volume up, the song is still the same as before. 'How long has this song been playing?' he wonders. His thought process is interrupted as he sees a massive figure in the distance, foggy and unclear. The kart drives them closer, with no indication of it stopping.
Ehehe-ahahaha..." Harry whips his head around to look at his mother again. She's laughing. Why is she laughing? "Oh, my dear Harold... The council has ultimately decided your fate."
The fog finally clears, and he sees a giant table, sitting at that table is none other than the rest of Sidemen. They look down at him with disapproving eyes. He carefully watches JJ as he slowly reaches his hand into his jacket pocket. "no." Harry whispers. "I didn't do anything..." He gulps. JJ pulls out a red card. "You've messed up buddy."
His go-kart crashes into the table, and sounds of glass shattering ring in Harry's ears. His head is throbbing. But the music is still playing. His vision goes dark.
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Harry's eyes fling open with panic.
It was just a dream, but his head still ached as if he was in a car accident. He runs his fingers through his messy hair as he tries to garner some semblance of clarity. Harry has absolutely no recollection of the night prior, but he was aware that he currently had a hangover. The clock reads 10:30 am. 'Shit.' He was already 30 minutes late to their Sidemen recording.
The never-ending song in his dream makes much more sense when he looks over at his phone and sees his alarm going off. The very same alarm that was supposed to wake him up 30 minutes prior.
He opens his phone to see around 17 text messages from the Sidemen asking where he is and if he's okay. He isn't usually late to recordings, so it's a fair assumption that something was wrong. He quickly shoots them an apology text and graciously accepts the yellow card given to him.
In record time he throws on his promotional Sidemen hoodie and he's off, ignoring the persistent hunger gnawing at his stomach.
As Harry is rushing out the door to his car he reflects on the night prior. Why did he drink as much as he did? From what he can recall he went out with the Cals despite knowing he had a recording the next day. An utterly incompetent decision it was to drink as much as he did fully knowing he had responsibilities to take care of the day after. He really was a child in the body of an adult.
While in the car he can't help but remember his dream. Harry's never been the kind of person to believe in dreams having hidden meanings, but he's had his fair share of 'guilty dreams' in the past. Usually presenting itself in the form of being chased, falling off cliffs, or you guessed it, car accidents. He undoubtedly felt guilty. He's one of the only Sidemen members to have never missed a Sidemen Sunday, and to walk up late to a recording hungover, was incredibly shameful. But a yellow card is a yellow card. He was well aware that he deserved it.
Harry needed to decide whether or not to tell the guys he was hungover or not. It sounded easy enough, but the hard thing was feeling the shame that came alongside it. He had two options. One, tell them he's hungover, apologize and try not to make the day harder for them. Or Two. try to pretend he didn't have a throbbing headache to not break his friend's trust in his ability to be a responsible adult.
Harry liked the second option better. He couldn't stand awkward silence as is, adding a layer of public shame would just make it ten times worse.
His car pulls up to the recording studio, he takes a deep breath and checks the time. 11:04. Over an hour late. This is gonna suck.
Upon opening the door Harry is met with many pairs of eyes on him. He lets out a grounding breath. "Hi everyone sorry I'm late. I slept through my alarm. We're recording the gameshow one right? With Simon as the host?"
"Kind of you to grace us with your presence, Harold." An exacerbated Simon chides. "It's fine, we've been trying to iron out the kinks so we'd be ready as soon as you arrived. You're aware you're getting less credit on this video right?"
"I'm aware."
"It's unlike you to be late for recordings though, were you up late or something?" A curious Vik asks.
Great. He hates lying. He sucks at it too.
"Yeah, stayed up till like 4 am watching this documentary." It was vague, but usually, they didn't care about the content of his documentaries, so he didn't feel the need to elaborate.
"Ah." Vik didn't seem to question it. They had more important matters to attend to.
"Okay, let's get started shall we." Josh chimes.
With Simon as the host, the teams were made. Harry and Ethan, JJ and Josh, and Tobi and Vik.
The set consisted of 4 podiums, one dedicated to each team, and one slightly larger podium meant for the host.
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The recording was going rather swimmingly despite the fuzziness of Harry's brain. The group most certainly noticed his change in demeanour but didn't choose to say anything about it. Why would they? He still cracked his usual jokes and still provided content for the video. That's all they required anyway.
Plus, Harry was just like this sometimes. He always shows up to recordings with messy hair. And honestly, if he didn't have to wear Sidemen merchandise for the main channel videos, he'd turn up in pajamas every time.
It had been a couple of hours of filming already and the shoot was nearly done when Harry had started feeling a little odd. The room felt hotter than usual.
It's probably just the production lighting. After hours of use, it really does start to feel like a sauna. That, combined with being in a closed environment with not much air conditioning and over 20 people breathing the same air. Yup. It's completely normal.
His head hurt. A lot. Kind of like... A dull knife was slowly pushing its way into his scalp, and then slowly pulling itself out again. But repeatedly. This had been a continuous feeling for over 4 hours. Manageable, but he couldn't help but wince.
And the nausea. The nausea was the worst. Not because he feared throwing up. He'd thrown up many times in the past due to drinking a tad bit too much. It was the fear of throwing up over the film set in front of everyone. He'd already shown up late, he didn't want to delay recording any longer than needed.
The anxiety of it all in truth, started to get to him. He could barely focus on the gameshow playing out in front of him. He felt like he was melting into the podium he and Ethan were both standing at, placing more of his body weight onto it as each second passed.
With every passing moment, the world around him felt less and less real, and all the more distant as black spots forced their way into the corners of his vision.
"-arry?.." It sounded like Ethan.
Then, for a couple of moments, he felt calm. Like he was sleeping. No more anxiety, no more pain.
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When Vik arrived at the recording studio, something immediately felt off. As he looked around the room, everyone seemed to be there. Josh and Simon were running through the scheme for the video, Tobi was talking to some of the camera crew, JJ was on his phone, and Ethan still had yet to arrive. Well, that is until he walked through the door no more than 2 minutes behind Vik.
Everyone but Harry was here.
Each time Vik glanced at his phone's clock the time got closer and closer to the deadline. 9:30 am... 9:45 am... 9:55 am... 10:00 am... Harry isn't usually early but he's rarely late. And he felt bad giving Harry a yellow card over text when he wasn't even there in person to recieve it. What if he was in a car accident? Or there's a family emergency? What if something completely unexpected happened and they were oblivious, and they had just given their friend a yellow card without knowing the whole story.
Harry didn't even give a reason as to why he was late, he simply apologized and said he'd be here soon.
It still didn't sit right with him.
The time still passed. 10:15 am... 10:30 am... 10:45 am... 11:00 am. Harry was an hour late. Something was wrong.
It was 11:04 when Harry walked through the studio doors.
Simon, seeming slightly miffed about the whole situation brushes it off, accepts Harry's apology and everyone's ready for filming.
Vik does inquire about Harry's lateness though. "It's unlike you to be late for recordings though, were you up late or something?"
"Yeah, stayed up till like 4 am watching this documentary."
Vik finds the subtle grimaces he makes tells a seemingly different story. But, unfortunately, he has no time to question the boy any further and must continue with their schedule.
Every so often during the filming process Vik would look over to Harry, and every time he just looked worse as the day went on. His nose would scrunch up in what looked to be pain and he swayed with imbalance.
He knows he has to intervene at some point. The poor guy looks like he's gonna collapse.
The next time his attention is on Harry he watches as the warmth drains from his face as he becomes ghostly in colour. His eyes blink slower than ever before.
He needs to do something now. Even if Harry is completely fine. Him falling on his head will inherently do more damage than to have a false alarm. So he decides to notify Harry's teammate, who is the closest in proximity to the ailing blonde.
"Ethan."
"Huh?"
"Can you grab Harry please?"
"Why???"
"He looks like he's gonna pass out."
"Huh? Whaddya mean?" He turns his head left to see Harry, clearly out of it. "Harry?"
Harry's head drops and his knees buckle as he becomes deadweight. Luckily, Ethan was able to react of Vik's words quick enough, and caught Harry with one arm around his chest, and the other supporting his back as he slowly lowers him to the ground.
At this point everyone is concerned and recording immediately takes a backseat.
Vik is the first to rush over, kneeling down next to his unconscious friend. "You caught him right?"
"Yeah, he fell like a ton of bricks." Ethan stated, voiced laced with heavy concern. "What the hell do we do now?!"
"Just make him comfortable for when he wakes up" Vik instructs, and Ethan adjusts Harry like so.
Vik decides he needs to be the one to take charge here as no one else seems to be. "Tobi are you willing to share your apple juice?"
"Of course I am!" Tobi says, sounding seemingly insulted, and sprints over to the minifridge and returns with an apple juice.
Simon chips in by grabbing a nearby chair. "I hear it's helpful to elevate the legs right?" He says as he lifts Harry's legs onto the chair.
"Yeah, thanks Simon."
It didn't take long for the group to hear a muffled groan as Harry begins to stir.
"Wakey wakey boggo." Ethan shakes Harry's shoulder playfully in an attempt to rouse him.
"We don't need to call an ambulance do we?" Josh adds, as a slight chuckle escapes his lips.
Harry mumbled something pretty incoherent, but with the slight shake of his head they could only assume he was saying 'no'.
"I know you probably don't want to move right now, but you need to sit up just a little bit so you can drink this apple juice that Tobi is willingly sharing with you." Vik states. "Your blood sugar is probably low."
"Srry-" Harry muttered as he attempted to sit himself up, not realizing he was lying on Ethan, who had been nice enough to help balance him as he leaned against him. He daintily grabs the offered juice box and proceeds to feebly sip the contents.
"When you're ready you can explain yourself." Vik sighs. "And be honest about it. Because don't think for a second I actually believed your documentary story."
After he ensures the contents of his juice box are rendered null, Harry takes a deep breath. "Honestly... I have no clue."
"What do you mean you 'have no clue' ? How does that work?"
"Well... I do but... I don't?"
"Elaborate."
"I- I was being stupid. I drank a lot yesterday with the Cals... And since midday- I don't remember much.. Woke up with a serious hangover a-and was already thirty minutes late by the time I left the house..."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Well did you eat breakfast this morning?" Vik questions.
"No..."
"Okay, do you remember eating anything yesterday after midday?"
"No... I don't remember anything."
"Then I believe we've found our answer."
Ethan quickly chimes in. "I'll order you something. You're fine to sit on your own now eh?"
"Yeah. Thanks Behz."
Ethan slaps a hand on Harry's shoulder and rustles his hand through his hair before getting up to go order food. "Nando's? Same order as always?"
"Please. Thanks again..." Harry says gratefully.
Vik interrupts the wholesome interaction with another well-meaning lecture. "Why didn't you just say you were feeling unwell earlier. If you said you needed food I'm sure we would've waited."
The blonde stiffens at this. "It's because... I know what I did was incredibly irresponsible. Being an hour late, and showing up hungover for a recording we planned weeks in advanced... After doing all that, needing to eat felt selfish."
"I appreciate that you're willing to take responsibility, but you don't need to punish yourself. Your health should always come first. Everyone here understands that."
Harry remains quiet.
"Making a mistake like that is human. Irresponsible. Yes. But the fact that you knew what you did wrong shows us you care."
Josh interjected. "You were so close to hitting your head on the podium you know? You could've had a concussion or worse if Ethan didn't catch you." The room was silent. "Imagine if one of us had to drive you to the hospital because you forgot to eat. Doesn't that sound much more selfish?"
"Yeah..." Harry ashamed, looks at the ground. "I won't do it again."
"It's not about that Harry." He looks up to see Tobi, eyebrows furrowed in concern. "We want you to be able to come to us when you need help. Not fear our reactions. Why do you think we are saying this?"
"Because?..."
"Because... We... Are..." He waits a little bit urging Harry to answer.
"Friends?"
"Exactly." Tobi assures, patting a hand on Harry's head.
"Foods here!" They hear Ethan shout from across the studio.
Vik stands, dusts off his pants and proceeds to hold out a hand for Harry to take. Of which he does.
He pulls Harry up and then goes on to wrap his arms around the blonde's midsection, hugging him.
Startled for a second, he hugs back.
He wasn't used to his friends reciprocating his desire for physical contact. Harry often struggled with words, and because of this, his stutter often gets the best of him, and eye contact was hard to maintain. So when Vik hugs him, it means so much more than he realizes. He melted into the hug, wrapping his arms around the shorter's neck, resting his head atop his black hair.
"You'll be alright- let's get you your food" Vik says, voice muffled by Harry's sweatshirt. As he rubs Harry's back reassuringly.
He wishes they hugged for longer, but perhaps he can cop a longer one later.
They make their way over to the makeshift lounge area when Simon quickly interrupts.
"You're still getting that yellow card though."
"I know."