A/N: I had a request from ladycobert to write some Harrica and that, coupled with a challenge I've issued myself, resulted in ... this. Fluff? Check. Feels? Check. Smut? Well, see for yourselves.
"Our House," written by Graham Nash, appears on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album Deja Vu. It was my parents' song and for that reason I used to adore it. It was very "them." Then their marriage ended abruptly after 24 years and I couldn't stomach it anymore. I listen to a lot of Pandora and all my stations (even the kids' favorite Hipster Cocktail Radio) seem to want to play it. I got sick of having to thumb it down, so I thought, let's see if we can redeem this one. So my challenge is to write a piece featuring it for each of my OTPs. I started with Harrica and it's good I did. I think.
Disclaimer: Something's Gotta Give and its brilliant lead characters, Erica Barry and Harry Sanborn, are the brainchild of Nancy Meyers. I like to think of them as belonging equally to Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson as well. Marin and Danny's daughter isn't mine either, but her name is.
Do give me a shout if you would. I've been writing for Brits and Scots for such a long time now that I don't know whether I can do Americans justice anymore.
xx,
~ejb~
It's late when he turns the Benz down Daniels Lane. The moon is full out over the water and as he pulls into the drive it highlights the trim of the house that has become home to him in ways literal and figurative, small and large.
It's her house, Number 29. That's the way he makes certain to refer to it when answering his acquaintances' remarks of "Nice place you've got here." But Erica insists that it's theirs, particularly since he sold ⅔ of his interest in Drive-By Records so that they could make her summer bolt-hole their year-round residence. He's never had a home before. To be sure, he has owned and occupied several places of residence and rented countless others in his day, but none of them had felt like anyplace he'd ever want to put down roots.
How times change.
He is met with evidence to prove the extent to which that sentiment rings true the instant he steps inside. There on the table by the door, between the bowls full of pebbles (he's still top of the heap) and stacks of books are vases of various shapes and sizes, some filled with Erica's prized hydrangeas, others with lilacs whose fragrance fills the room. And out in front are the tiny plastic tea cups in garish pinks and oranges and purples, filled with all sorts: dandelion blooms and clover and buttercups, blades of grass and leaves. A small pink velour blanket is draped over the back of an armchair; a basket by the coffee table overflows with teddy bears and board books, blocks and dolls. He grins as he rescues a stray stuffed kitten from beneath the edge of a sofa cushion. Three generations of Barry women have taken over his life, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
He stops off in the nursery, pausing in the doorway to make certain its occupant is asleep. The sounds of soft, deep breaths meet his ears and he goes and stands by the crib.
He still can't get over how perfect she is. Now eighteen months old, Talia Jane Benjamin is Erica in miniature in so many ways. She spends the weekend in Sagaponack every couple of weeks so that Marin and Danny can have some adult time. Most of the time Harry is "Papa" to Talia, but on occasion she will saunter up to him, hands on hips, roll her eyes and dress him down exactly like someone else he knows. "Honestly, Harry," she'll scoff in her baby lisp, and he'll scoop her into his arms, blowing raspberries on her belly until she squeals with delight.
"Nana's trained you well, baby grand," he'll tell her. While that may be true, it is he who is wrapped around her tiny finger.
For the moment, however, Talia perfectly exemplifies the phrase sleeping like a baby, with her long, dark lashes fanned out against rosy cheeks and her thumb planted firmly between her lips. He adjusts the blanket covering her and runs his finger across her downy cheek. He never was a father. Never had any designs on being one. Yet now he can't imagine not being a grandfather.
He stops off in the kitchen and pours two glasses of the new malbec that Erica's turned him onto. Local wines are a newly-discovered passion of theirs and are yet another in a growing list of items that prove a tiger can, indeed, change his stripes.
They have been together for nearly three years now, and married for just over two, yet she still manages to take his breath away with alarming regularity. This evening he finds her asleep on the chaise in their bedroom, a copy of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes abandoned in her lap, her reading glasses perched adorably on the end of her nose. She is wrapped in the diaphanous white robe she wore on their first evening together, when they'd fed each other eggs straight out of the skillet by candlelight, and it makes him smile. He knows she's worn it for him, that she's aware of how he loves it for the way it skims the contours of her body.
He contemplates simply sitting and watching her sleep all night, but he knows that she was waiting for him, and so he kneels before her and slips her glasses off, letting the pad of his thumb trace along her cheekbone. Tenderly he kisses her lips.
"Hi, baby," he whispers in her ear, "I'm home."
He watches her come awake slowly. The smile that lights up her face when their eyes meet makes the hour and a half he spent stuck in traffic on the LIE well worth it.
"Hey, you," she greets him, reaching for his lapels. She draws him down and kisses him thoroughly. "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough to look in on Talia and pour us a glass of wine," he says, sitting down beside her.
She sits up straight at the mention of their granddaughter. "Is she okay? I didn't hear her on the monitor."
He wraps his arm around her. "Easy, Ace. She's sound asleep. I just …" He trails off, looking sheepish. "I missed her."
Her heart threatens to burst out of her chest at this admission. His old crowd would never let him live it down if they knew that the lifelong serial playboy had taken such a domestic turn. The vulnerability he shows her in moments like this one has been a long time coming. The knowledge that she is the only one who sees this side of him still thrills her to no end.
"She missed you too," she tells him, turning her head to press a kiss to his shoulder. "All day long it was, 'Papa coming home now?' and 'Bake cookies for Papa?,' and 'Papa read a story?' I expect we'll have a visitor long before morning."
He grins. "Is she the only one who missed me?"
She lays her copy of Hellman aside and lies back, her head in his lap. "I can't imagine what you could be getting at," she teases. He runs a hand through her hair and she sighs happily.
"Want me to light the fireplace before you get too comfortable?" he asks.
She quirks an eyebrow at him. "You cold?"
He shrugs. "Nah, you know … Romantic." There he goes again, turning her insides to mush. He rises and turns on the gas, switching the stereo on before returning to her side with the wine glasses.
"So how's Hellman treating you? Are you still thinking it's the direction you want your next project to take?" He pulls her feet into his lap and watches her sip the wine, smiling when she tips her head back and closes her eyes, savoring the finish.
"I don't know if there's going to be a next project, Harry," she tells him, "and I'm actually feeling really great about that. Oh my God, that's good!" He runs his knuckles along the arch of her foot and chuckles at her response. She continues, "I don't plan to stop writing or anything, but … I don't know … things change. If you'd told me five years ago that I'd be married again, with a granddaughter, living out here full-time, I'd have laughed in your face."
"I don't doubt that!" He grins, and she pretends to kick him, so he tickles her foot in retaliation.
"Alright, alright, I give!" she shrieks. "Don't make me spill the wine! No, but … I'm kind of tired of doing something all the time, you know? I've had my fill of running back and forth to the city, of producers and deadlines and casting and all of it. And I try to work when Talia's here and ha! What a joke! But she's only going to be a baby once. And I try to work with you around and …" she is interrupted as he trails his fingers up her legs, paying special attention to the sensitive places behind her knees, "... that happens! Not that I'm complaining!" He leans in and she kisses him, teasing his lips open and nipping at them. Conversation falls by the wayside as she climbs into his lap, their kisses deepening.
"This needs to go," he tells her between kisses, undoing the knot in the sash of her robe.
"Mmm," she answers, her fingers busy with his zipper. She gasps as the robe falls away, her skin exposed to the air in the room.
He grins like a fool. She is completely nude before him now, the cool air making her nipples stiffen.
"Honestly, Harry, you're a lech!" She pretends to be horrified, but in truth she loves it - the way he looks at her, the way she feels when they're together like this. It took some time for her to believe that he wasn't putting her on, but she knows it now: she is beautiful to him. She is enough.
"Darlin', I want you right here," he tells her, and there was a time when she'd have questioned whether that was wise - letting him take her on the chaise - but now she knows that he needs to find out the answer on his own.
"Yes," she answers, freeing the hem of his shirt from the waistband of his pants. She reaches beneath the fabric, flattening her palms against his stomach, gliding them up over his chest. He is warm and he is hers and he is not the only one who wants. She gets him to lift his arms and pulls his shirt up and off.
"Lie down, baby," she says softly, pushing at his shoulders. He complies with a smile on his face. The bare, brazen beauty before him certainly is a far cry from the caustic, turtleneck-wearing, knife-wielding divorcée he met three summers ago. She kneels, leaning over him to plant a trail of kisses on his abdomen before gliding her fingers beneath the waistband of his shorts, managing to rid him of both those and his pants in one smooth tug.
"How did you—?" He gapes at her, and she grins.
"I'm just that good," she teases.
He growls, pulling her on top of him. "You certainly are."
She feels his erection prodding her hip and glides her palm over his length. "Is this for me?" she asks. There are days he needs Viagra, and she knows not to take it personally. The man is sixty-six for God's sake, and a heart attack survivor to boot. But then there are these days, her husband hard for her and lying naked in her arms, when she absolutely takes it personally.
As well she should.
"Erica." She treasures the sound of her name falling from his lips as she strokes him. "You are a saucy little thing tonight, aren't you?"
"You know you love it," she says in a breathy half-whisper, straddling his hips. The first few times she tried this with him she was all false bravado, her stomach a quivering mass of butterflies for the duration. Each time she witnessed the way his eyes beheld her, her confidence had grown. Maybe his black book had at one time been filled with the names of twenty-five-year-olds whose bodies time and gravity and childbirth had not yet visited their ravages upon. But now it is she who shares his bed and his name. It is she who wears his ring. And she is the only one ever to have held his heart.
As if reading her mind, he catches her hands in his, wrapping their fingers together. "I love you," he tells her, his eyes locked on hers. She watches as those eyes roam her body, her skin flushing with the heat of his gaze. His thumb traces a line from her shoulder over the ridge of her collarbone and begins a trail down her midline. "Alright?" he asks. That was one of the first surprises she encountered in making love to him. He is so considerate, even in the heat of passion.
"Touch me," she breathes. Her eyes drift closed as he moves his hand lower, resting lightly at the apex of her thighs. He bends his head to nuzzle at the flesh of her breasts and she laughs joyously, deep and throaty. He lingers, his breath hot on her skin, giving her a taste of what she wants from him but intentionally withholding what she needs most. She is fine, she thinks; she will not give him the satisfaction of showing him how close to madness his touch is driving her. And then he begins to talk to her, and all bets are off.
"Erica," he whispers, his tongue darting out to trace the shell of her ear, "I want to be inside you, baby. You're so warm, so wet." He lets his fingers brush against her center almost accidentally, and then his hand drifts lower, teasing her entrance. She rolls her hips, seeking the contact she longs for, and he moves his hand away from her body.
"You're cruel, Sanborn," she groans, falling forward, her head resting in the crook of his neck as he resumes his teasing touch. If he wasn't so damned desirable, if he wasn't looking at her with such longing and devotion in his eyes, if the sound of his voice alone didn't have her stomach tightening in a way she couldn't control, she could just crawl into bed beside him, content to let him hold her all night.
She will not beg him. She is not above doing so, but it isn't what she wants tonight. She locks her gaze on his and takes his length in her hand. Slicking her fingers with her own moisture, she strokes him steadily.
He sinks his teeth into her shoulder and breathes a heavenly obscenity in her ear. At last he touches her, long strokes of her labia that have her gasping and clenching and reaching for his lips, kissing him savagely. He closes his hand around hers where she touches him and rubs his head against her entrance.
"God, so open," he breathes and she grasps his shoulders, rising up on her knees and lowering herself on him.
She eases down slowly, feeling every inch as he stretches her, stilling when she has him pressed against her cervix, feeling his pulse within her. Close, he is so close to her, and her heart and her body are so full. "Harry," she sighs, a whisper against his skin.
Their eyes meet and he wipes away the tear that runs down her cheek. She doesn't hide from him anymore when the tears fall, and he has learned that they have nothing whatsoever to do with sorrow. She'd said it to him once and he thinks of it always: "I love you so much I don't have room for it all!"
"I know, baby," he whispers, "I feel it too."
She rocks her hips and if she'd thought it couldn't possibly get better she was wrong.
"Jesus!" he grunts. "More." So she does it again, and it's so good - so intimate and vulnerable and connected. She sobs with the weight of it, him bottomed out inside of her, knowing he can feel every twitch as her muscles clamp down on him with each new sensation. There is no getting nearer to heaven than this, no more that two people can share.
His fingers splay across her back as the pads of his thumbs slide over her nipples; he curses as he feels them stiffen at his touch and she moans. His mouth latches onto her breast as she draws up and away from him and slowly sinks back down. He isn't gentle and she will be tender later and she loves it, the scrape of his teeth and the way he draws deeply from her.
He reaches between them, touching her and himself where they join, grasping her hand in his so that she can feel it too. He pushes his hips up as she bears down over him and she feels him move in and out and her muscles suddenly relax. Then she swells around him, and somehow takes him just a little bit deeper, and her breath catches on the inhale.
He knows her tells, feels the edge that she's balancing on. "Yes," he rasps, his stubble scraping her skin as he sucks on the pulse point in her neck. "Come now, Erica."
It hurts; it aches, she thinks just before thinking becomes impossible, her body no longer hers to control. It does, and it doesn't - that moment of lingering on the precipice, just before she falls. It's the sweetest kind of ache - she just wants more, more; more of him in her and the two of them moving, breathing, existing as one. She wants it over with and she never wants it to end and then none of it matters because she is coming so hard she could swear her heart stops. She feels him surge inside of her as the walls of her sex squeeze him relentlessly and then she feels nothing; everything.
The benefit of marriage is that she can scream "I love you" until her throat is raw and it will never be idle chatter.
He rolls her under him as she's recovering and shelters her beneath his body. Beads of sweat roll down her forehead and he wipes them away, smoothing back her hair as he murmurs to her that she is beautiful, that he will always hold her close. That he is hers and he loves her.
It's at about this point that she comes back to herself, and if she wasn't going to cry before then hearing those lovely words falling from his lips has sealed her fate. He kisses her forehead, her cheeks. His tongue darts out to lap up her tears and she arches up against him, claiming his mouth. When the kiss breaks he rubs the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, his eyes asking the silent question.
Smiling as tears glisten in the corners of her eyes, she nods. He begins to move and a loud cry issues from her lips. She is slick and swollen and so sensitive on the heels of her orgasm that she can't tell where she ends and he begins.
"Take me," she wails. "Take me, just take me now!" Her legs wrap around his waist and she claws at his back. His weight on top of her is glorious, the friction and the sting as her legs squeeze him, the addictive rhythm as he moves her. He lifts her hips and palms her bottom, the side of his hand pressing into the cleft of her buttocks. She wasn't going to come again, was content to feel the pulsating closeness in the wake of her release that, in her mind, superseded it. But her body has other ideas and as he thrusts hard and fast he feels the rush of moist heat and the contractions of her sex. His rhythm falters and he buries himself deep, his warmth mingling with her own.
She is not the only one who claims the privilege of marriage in the heat of the moment, and she treasures this "I love you" more than all the rest. He is never more himself than in these moments, their souls and bodies bare.
He half-collapses on her after and then tries to right it, but she pulls him back, his head pillowed on her chest. How many times have their positions been reversed, and she wants it to be her turn this time - holding him, soothing him.
He trusts her enough to let it be.
oOo
They are in bed half an hour later, he in pajama pants and she in his shirt. They sip from their wine glasses and Erica regales him with stories of her day here with Talia. After some time they grow quieter, their soft kisses and gentle touches punctuated as they watch the firelight cast shadows on the walls, the bedclothes, one another's faces.
The stereo softly plays and she gasps delightedly as the first notes of "Our House" drift through the room. "Oh, this one's special," she says, laying her head in his lap.
He gets that look in his eyes, reminiscing as he strokes her hair. "You know I was spending a lot of time with Graham and Joan right around the time he wrote this."
She smiles. "My rock star." She forgets much of the time now that he is who he his: the music mogul. Engineer-slash-producer-slash president of major labels for more than half his life.
"Nah," he says, ducking his head. This is one of the moments when it is most thrilling to be his confidante. He has a shy streak when it comes to talking about his career. Some of it is reticence, though she hopes that eventually he'll overcome the shame he evidences over choices made a lifetime ago. But the rest is something that startled her when she first recognized it. He'd come across as a walking ego when first she'd met him, but the truth is that he is exceedingly humble as it pertains to his accomplishments … once you get past the façade.
"They were cute together, you know? Just like it sounds." He's back on Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell, while she's looking up at him and thinking how she's grown to love everything about him.
"He was going to marry her, wasn't he?" she asks idly, reaching up to trace the line of his jaw.
"Yeah. Yeah, they had something special. In another time and place, maybe they'd have made it. Nobody's head was on straight back then. I'm pretty sure you could get a contact high just from standing in Laurel Canyon. On the face of it everybody looked all high-minded and socially conscious but it really was all a great exercise in hedonism. Anyhow …"
"You seem to have come through it all right," she tells him, and then changes the subject. "What about us, huh? Are we in there anywhere?"
He chuckles, catching her hand in his and bringing it to his lips. "'Two cats in the yard?' Guess maybe we could start with one."
"You could never live with a cat," she scoffs. "And I couldn't handle a battle of the wills like that. Maybe we should think about a dog, though, huh? I've always had rescues. Been too long without one."
"We're definitely in there," he says, bending to kiss her lips.
Come to me now
And rest your head for just five minutes
Everything is good
Such a cozy room
The windows are illuminated
By the evening sunshine through them
Fiery gems for you, only for you
oOo
Somewhere around 2 am the baby monitor crackles to life. "Nana? Papa?" Talia calls.
Erica sits up, rubbing her eyes, and begins to rise from the bed. She is halted by Harry's hand tugging at her wrist.
"You stay, darlin'," he drawls sleepily. "I've got her."
She awakens in the morning to the feeling of Talia's little arms wrapped around her bicep. The baby is between them in the bed, Harry snuggling her close. As she ruffles her granddaughter's hair, she finds them in the song once more.
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy 'cause of you