AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a lengthened and revised product of a drabble that I wrote during a songfic challenge based on Minnie Driver's "Hungry Heart." Please review as you feel compelled! Enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: Sadly, I own nothing pertaining to Wizards of Waverly Place. If I did, it would go a little something like this...
The walk back from the movies was quiet, and for one of the first times, slightly awkward between the two best friends. Harper had made repeated attempts to make light-hearted conversation that were met with either silence or indifference from her brunette counterpart, and she wasn't sure if it was time yet to confront a possible underlying issue head-on yet.
When they passed Alex's favorite hot dog stand without her pestering Harper for money to get one, the redhead knew this was serious.
"Alex, what's wrong? You don't seem like you're having a good time," Harper remarked.
"I'm fine, just, distracted I guess," the reply came quietly and with little emotion.
Against her better judgment, Harper persisted. "You're not acting like yourself: you don't want your favorite food, you didn't like the movie, you didn't even want to play the game where we pick out all the couples in the theater and make fun of them!" Harper listed the evidence matter-of-factly, hoping it would speak for itself. "This wouldn't have anything to do with you and Dean breaking up, would it?"
Alex shuffled the sole of her Converse sneaker against the pavement, watching it scatter tiny pieces of gravel into the air and back down again. "It might."
Although it was the first thought that jumped to mind for Harper, it still didn't sit quite right. She had bit her tongue earlier in the week when Alex told her that she and Dean had split, since Harper had warned Alex about him from the beginning, but even so, she knew when Alex was truly passionate about someone or something, and this didn't seem to be one of those times. "But I thought you weren't even really that into him toward the end. You told me that he wasn't what you expected and you were thinking of breaking up anyway, so... I guess I'm confused."
Trailing her eyes up to meet her best friend's, the wizard spoke with the most sincerity she had in quite some time. "Maybe I'm... just afraid of being alone. Okay?"
The two continued to walk in silence, an unspoken cue from a higher power that a few wordless moments were needed. Alex didn't want an automated, cliché response; she wanted the truth, no matter how hard to hear, so she could at least prepare for it.
Without another word toward the subject, the duo walked through the front door of the Waverly Sub Station, making quick, pointless conversation with Alex's family who were working the dinner rush. Not willing to surrender her night off, Alex urged Harper to follow her as they scurried up the stairs to her bedroom.
The door clicked shut loudly in the still of the room, and before Alex could get her jacket off, Harper couldn't stand it anymore.
"It's okay, you know. I'm scared to be alone, too. I think everyone is at some point," she spoke up, shattering the foreboding silence at last with an outstretched hand.
Alex didn't take it, though. She folded her arms tightly across her chest in an attempt to protect the most vulnerable part of her.
"Yeah, but that's just people being insecure when in reality, like, none of them have an actual reason to be worried," the brunette replied as her eyes darted around the room for a place to divert her attention.
Harper tried to shift her position so that she was facing Alex as the taller girl floated about the room, organizing things she never before paid attention to. "And you think you need to be worried? Why? Like, what makes you any more likely to be alone than me?"
"Harper, you're sweet and wonderful and fun and loyal, you have everything that everyone wants! Of course you're going to find someone," Alex retorted. Had she not been organizing her closet, she may have seen Harper's normally pallid complexion quickly give way to a deep shade of red as the now-familiar silence held the room captive for several moments.
"And yet I've never been in a relationship," Harper broke the silence once more, attempting to prove a point.
"But you will and you know it," Alex said with such confidence and conviction that it was almost enough to overwhelm Harper with emotion, "Anyone that isn't willing to give you a chance is someone you don't need to waste your time on anyway, because you need someone like you that doesn't judge. Now, me on the other hand... everyone always says I'm stubborn, that I don't care, that I don't try, that I have an attitude... my own parents don't even want to deal with it and they have to love me."
"Well, you are all of those things," Harper stated matter-of-factly, captivating Alex's attention and demanding her eye contact, but before she could congratulate herself for doing so, she quickly kept speaking in hopes of erasing the heartbroken look on the young rebel's face, "but you're so much more, too. This side right here is the side you don't let anyone see, this realness and compassion. You hurt and worry like this, not because you have a reason to be scared, but because you have such a hungry heart and no one even knows."
Casting the sweater she had in her hand back onto the floor where it normally slept, Alex resolvedly stepped away from the closet and sat at an arm's length distance from the redhead on her bed, looking her in the eye as she was entitled.
"I guess I can't complain about being alone if I keep myself so guarded, huh?" Alex said, a reluctant yet undeniable smile pushing up the very ends of her lips as she reluctantly gave into the reason that Harper always seemed to find.
Their good friend silence made an appearance for another several moments before Harper finally uttered, "I don't know..."
"What do you mean?" Alex asked, an anxious feeling that she couldn't identify building in her stomach.
Harper paused to think -- what did she mean? Well, she was fairly certain she knew what she meant, but the questions of whether she wanted to say it and how to say it were the more prevalent. She finally settled on something and approached her reply with bated breath. "I guess I mean... maybe it's not up to us to put ourselves there but instead it's up to whoever we're supposed to be with to find their way in naturally, and that's how you know. Or maybe that's just me being selfish, but..." she stopped abruptly, her vocal chords catching the fear-fueled paralysis that normally infected her mind.
As expected, Alex needed to know more. "Selfish?"
She searched for a semi-safe response. "Well, I guess I kind of like the idea of being the only one who gets to see this side of you. I don't know if it would be as special if everyone got to see it."
That feeling in Alex's stomach both calmed and intensified all at once as it upgraded from unidentifiable to something more thrilling as her teeth expanded the corners of her lips to give way to a full-toothed smile. She cautiously extended her hand across the space between them and rested it on the hand that was offered to her before. Harper's features awoke and accepted the gesture with a nervous-but-happy smile and bright eyes.
Silence took up a welcomed residence that evening as there was a clear, yet unspoken understanding that from then on that neither of them were alone, but alone together.