After his mother's death, Louis begins to fall apart. Between his grief, the pressure to stay strong for his siblings and the stress of debuting his solo career, it all just becomes too much for him to handle.
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After lunch, the boys decide its playtime. I'm not sure how I feel about playtime, I'm not really feeling up to pretending I'm excited about toys, but I figure they won't make me do anything too horrible.
Sure enough, as soon as lunch is cleaned up, Liam gets me to sit on the floor by the coffee table in the living room.
"We're just going to do some colouring, Lou. I thought it would be okay as an activity for now, and we can do it with you. We've got a bunch of different colouring books, and some crayons. What do you think?"
"Um, s'okay I guess." I honestly thought it would be worse. Colouring might be a bit boring, but at least I don't have to pretend to be excited about driving plastic cars in circles or anything.
"Which book do you want? I've got Marvel, Pixar, farm themed, and one of cars and vehicles!" Apparently, Niall is excited about colouring, because he's got all the books spread out and is practically bouncing with happiness.
"Um, I'll have the Pixar one I guess." I'm kind of curious what kinds of pictures are in it. Flipping through, I see scenes and characters from a lot of movies, including Cars, Monsters Inc, Wall-E, and Toy Story. I find a picture from Cars that looks complicated enough to be potentially enjoyable.
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Niall grabs the farm one, flipping through to find a picture of food, while Harry picks the vehicles and Liam takes Marvel, all three of them finding spots around the coffee table. This feels really odd, but it's okay. I like having my three best mates nearby, even if I'm wearing a stupid nappy and we're colouring pictures like children. This is the third day of this, only seven more until I'm free. I can do this.
"What colour crayon would you like, Lou?" Harry asks. I ask for red, and he passes it to me.
We spend about an hour colouring, mostly in silence except when we are passing crayons around. I think Liam engineered this activity to force me to use their names to get attention when I want a new colour, because they keep all the crayons out of my reach, and only respond when I call them Daddy, Dada, or Papa. It's a bit irritating, because I constantly forget to use those names, and they ignore me, but by the end of the hour, I'm remembering a bit better. It just feels so odd to be referring to my mates as my fathers.
"Let's clean this up now, Louis. Then we're going to play a game. Papa's choice. Can you help me put the crayons back in the box?" Liam's talking like I'm stupid again, his words simple and his voice sickly sweet. He's been edging toward it this whole time, but now he's crossed a line. I don't like it, but I don't want to complain and get in trouble, so I just look at Niall, hoping he'll understand what I need.
"Actually, Li, I think Lou and I are going to go to his room and have a chat for a minute, and then we'll come back and play a game." Not quite what I had in mind, but at least he understood that I need something. Niall leads me to my room and pulls me onto the bed, where he sits facing me.
