Labels || H.S. [#Wattys2020]

FORTY

"Are you kidding me!? Are you seriously kidding me!?" Reagan said, getting out of the car and slamming the door. She was fuming, absolutely livid. Harry had never seen her this angry before and didn't understand why she was in the first place. This had happened to him before, on the main street in LA on a motorcycle. He was sure this situation was better because he wasn't exposed to crazed fans and Reagan was with him. Oh, also because he didn't have to wear the ridiculous glittery helmet in order to hide his identity until someone came to help them.

So he looked at Reagan and shrugged as he got out of the car and leaned against it. He watched as Reagan paced back and forth, her cell phone in his hand. He figured that maybe she just needed to calm down a bit.

"We just have to wait for someone to come get us." He said, pulling out his phone.

"Who? Who are we going to call?"

"Ghostbusters!" Harry said with a huge smirk on his face.

Reagan walked across to him and smacked him roughly on the arm, "You're not funny!"

"I think I am." He said, rubbing his arm.

Reagan sighed loudly, "Call someone, just please, call someone to pick us up."

"I will, but you need to calm down."

"I'll calm down when you tell me that someone's on their way."

Harry started texting Louis, but remembered he was in London by now. So he decided on simply calling a tow truck, all they needed was gas anyway. "Yes, hi, my car's stuck. Yes, again." He said rolling his eyes, "No, all we need is gas. Yeah the tank is full. Yes! I know how to fill a bloody tank of gas, I just forgot. Whatever, just please come as soon as you can."

Reagan stifled a laugh as Harry put down his phone, obviously annoyed at the fact that the person on the other line thought him completely incompetent.

"Why does everyone think I'm so fucking stupid?" Harry said putting his phone away. "Because I didn't finish secondary school? Or is it because I'm bloody famous?"

Reagan didn't know how to answer him. He was, after all, the only member of the group that wasn't really allowed to speak at interviews. As it was, before leaving on their break, she was given specific instructions by Lydia to prepare the questions that the boys could be asked for the James Corden interview and potential responses for them. One of those specific instructions were to make sure that Harry's responses were short, concise, and relatively easy to memorize. He was the only boy that actually had lines for an interview, and she knows that he's prepped to not say anything other than what he was given.

Now that she thought about it, she knew that it was unfair to him. She wasn't naive enough before to believe that the way the boys were represented in the media were actually the way they were. Harry's womanizing personality had followed him for so long, she knew he was much more than that. But lately, after the whole Taylor Swift mess, his personality had been toned down a lot. She couldn't pin point exactly when the change had happened, but she knew that at one point he just stopped talking in interviews, and when he did she would see a barrage of tweets about how slow and dumb he sounded. At one point, he was no longer the womanizer, he was the stupid one. It sucked being famous, Reagan could see that more than ever.

But when rumors start, the band's public relations people have to figure out a course of action. So of course y Harry went from womanizer to stupid, it was to deviate any rumors of him being gay. Of course there were rumors swirling around everywhere that he and Louis were a thing, and of course they weren't true. But the band was just starting to gain traction in the US and they couldn't risk to lose face. Harry was sixteen and had never left home so he trusted whatever the team told him would be best for him. He believed that being something he was not was necessary in order to be famous. And now when he's struggling to be his own person, his team just decided to let people think he wasn't the sharpest crayon in the crayon box. It just made life easier for everyone. Everyone except Harry that is.

So Reagan felt for him, she did. She didn't want him to think he was stupid. He was silly and annoying and dumb, but he was so fucking smart and articulate. He had so much to say, but it was just that people didn't want to listen.

"I don't think you're stupid." She mumbled, walking towards him and leaning against the car with him.

"Nobody likes a liar, Rae."

"Look, I know I'm mean to you sometimes,but-"

"You do it out of love?" Harry said, his long curly hair flipping dramatically as he turned to look at her with a knowing, smug look on his face.

Reagan smiled coyly, "Whatever. I just wanted to let you know that I think you're not stupid. And if I call you that it's not because you are, it's because you're annoying the crap out of me. You're actually quite smart..."

"Actually? You're surprised that I am?"

"Well..."

He bumped her with his hip and she laughed. They took in the scenery, waiting for the tow truck to come along, wondering why they had even made the journey in the first place. Sure, Harry loved a good burger, but he hated the shitty guilty feeling he would get after eating it, and then of course the subsequent 3 days of juicing. Reagan as well had no idea why she had agreed to eating with Harry. Of all the things they could go out and do, they had chosen the one thing that neither of them felt very comfortable with.

Sure, at one point Reagan enjoyed eating. It wasn't done out of stress or necessity, it was done out just a pure love of food. She loved eating and sharing with her friends and family. That's what food did after all, it brought people together. But then it didn't. It just made her bigger and bigger and made her more isolated. And then it was all she had. So it made sense that her relationship with food was kind of a love/hate kind of thing. She couldn't see herself chowing down on one of those huge burgers with Harry, she just couldn't. But she came along because it was Harry and it was an adventure they could take together, she could deal with the rest when the time came couldn't she?

"Look! It's here!" Harry said excitedly, waving down the tow truck and pointing to his Range Rover. "We can finally go eat that fucking burger."

Reagan looked at him, "Are you really sure you want to eat a burger?"

"We came all the way out here didn't we?" .

"I don't know." She said, smilingly, "I think I have a better idea."