For Claire. Have a wonderful birthday, my lovely.
Let It Be
Harry Cunningham doesn't dance. Never. Not since he made a spectacular fool of himself at his prom because Joe Hayden had been spiking his drink all night. Throwing up on your date whilst slow-dancing to ABBA isn't the best way to win a girl's affections, he found.
Of course, this doesn't mean that he can't dance, because he can. He has a particularly painful memory of a dreadful summer camp with the Boy Scouts where persistent rain in the Welsh countryside forced their leader to improvise a week's intensive ballroom dancing course with the Girl Guides in the cabin next door.
So yeah, he doesn't dance.
Except for now.
And he's at a Christening party in some quiet residential street in the living room of a couple he's only met a handful of times – which is perhaps why he felt uninhibited enough to walk over to Nikki Alexander, take her drink from her fingers and place it on the mantelpiece (after downing the rest of her champagne himself for Dutch courage), grab her hand, and start to dance.
"Blimey, how much have you had?" she giggles, falling easily into the steady rhythm he sets in motion as Lenny Kravitz begins to serenade them.
"Not enough," he tells her, but he's smiling. Her chin falls to his shoulder and she smells all flowery and is so solid and warm in his arms and he can't understand why he hasn't asked her to dance a long time before now.
There were times I wasn't kind,
And there were times I wasn't even around,
And there were times I made you cry,
So many times I had to say goodbye.
The irony of the lyrics isn't lost on either of them.
Much later, as the summer sun slowly descends behind the suburban skyline and gradually the crowd of people begin to return to their cars and trickle away, Harry decides it's also time for them to leave. But he makes a diversion on the way home down a narrow, gravelly lane, parking the car on a grass verge at the edge of a vast expanse of sloping fields. At the top of the nearest field is a large copse of trees.
"Where are we going?" she asks, laughing as he takes her hand (like it's the most natural thing in the world) and leads her into the field. "Are you sure we're allowed to trespass like this? I'm pretty sure this is a crop of some kind."
"Of course we are, I've done this hundreds of times," he scoffs, but she doesn't look altogether reassured.
"That doesn't mean we're allowed."
He ignores her, tugging her up the hill and not paying any attention to her demands to stop because of a stitch in her side.
"I'm wearing heels, Harry! Heels! Did you even think about that? No. Because men don't, do they? These were expensive shoes. If they get ruined in all this mud then you're buying me a new pair. And can you slow down a bit? I have a stitch, you know."
He stops suddenly, turning to face her. She almost walks into him, shocked at his abrupt standstill.
"Maybe if you stopped talking so much, you might be able to breathe a bit more," he tells her teasingly, causing her to shoot him a withering glare.
They set off again, buoyed by the fact that level ground is in sight. Once they reach it they pause for a moment to regain their breath, before entering the darker trees.
"Why are we rushing, anyway? And you still haven't said where we're going," she reminds him as he pulls her along (he doesn't think he ever wants to let go of her hand again).
"You'll see where we're going when we get there. And the reason we're hurrying is because I want to arrive before we lose the sun completely."
He glances up at the sky as he walks; it's a dusky blue, flecks of gold and orangey-pinks just visible through the treetops. Five minutes later and the trees begin to thin, the ground becoming grassy once more. When they finally emerge back into the light, he can tell by her gasp that this route home was worth it.
They're on the other side of the hill, with a steep expanse of grass rolling out in front of them. Right at the bottom, hundreds of feet below them, winds the Thames, meandering into the city. The city which they can just about make out in the distance, its tall silvery buildings and orange lights glimmering in the settling darkness. A footpath winds its way underfoot, following the line of trees until it disappears around a corner. Beside them sits a solitary bench which has seen better days.
"How did you find this place?" she asks in awe as he leads her to the bench and tugs her down beside him.
"Me and my dad used to go for walks up here when I was young," he tells her, reluctantly letting go of her hand to instead drape his arm around her shoulders. "Worth the walk?"
For the first time since they appeared from the trees, she looks at him. "Definitely," she smiles.
They sit awhile, watching as the pink sky gradually turns navy and a small boat chugs along the river. A dog-walker strolls past with a smile and a 'good evening', which they return. It then occurs to Harry that the passer-by might have thought they were a couple, and for some reason this prods at an inexplicable guilt somewhere deep in his stomach. He's not sure why it's there, but he knows that it isn't the first time he's looked at her and felt it.
Maybe it's the universe's way of telling him yeah, you screwed up there.
"Why did you bring me here?" she enquires quietly, snapping him from his reverie.
He thinks for a moment. "Didn't want the day to end, I guess."
She nods, seemingly satisfied with this answer. "You really meant what you said earlier, didn't you? About starting a family."
Exhaling deeply, he says, "Yeah. Yeah, I think I did."
"That's good. I think you'd be an excellent father."
He turns his head to look at her so fast that he cricks his neck. Rubbing it, he says, "You do?"
She smiles again, in a way that tells him he's an idiot for thinking otherwise.
They sit there for another few minutes before darkness really does begin to fall and they decide to head home, for fear of not making it back to the car without tripping over otherwise. They drive to Nikki's apartment in a comfortable silence, arriving far quicker than Harry had hoped.
He walks her to her door, which he doesn't do all that often, and waits patiently as she unlocks it and then turns to face him in the doorway. There's an unspoken agreement between them that tonight isn't a night for him to come inside.
"I've had a lovely day," she says softly. "Thanks for taking me."
"Well, I wasn't going to dance with Leo."
An irrepressible laugh escapes her and she steps forward to envelope him in a hug. He holds onto her waist tightly, and if he closes his eyes and imagines hard enough, he could almost be dancing with her again. Whether she's thinking the same thing, it's difficult to tell. But her laughter dies away quite suddenly and he feels her gather his shirt up in her fist.
He pulls away slightly and tugs an arm free, but only so that he can look at her and gently brush a thumb over her cheek.
"Harry..." she whispers.
But he's already touching his lips to hers in a gentle kiss, and he doesn't think she was exactly going to protest, anyway. And judging by the shiver that he feels travel the length of her spine, objection is the last thing on her mind.
His fingers dance lightly over her hips and he stops kissing her, but doesn't make any attempt to distance himself.
She takes a deep breath, falters for a moment, and then whispers, "Family."
It takes him a little while to interpret what she's saying, not wanting to metaphorically throw up whilst slow-dancing to ABBA again. But it's not really that difficult to understand.
It wasn't a question, because now it's nothing more than an inevitability.
"Maybe," he murmurs, dropping a tiny kiss onto her lips again (it's very difficult to stop kissing her), "One day."
And she smiles at him, her eyes shining, because it's a promise. They know it's not time yet. They're not ready. And who knows when that day will come. But there's a promise that it will.
(And I'll tell you this: that day does arrive. Several years later. And a family is exactly what they have, a year or so after that. And when he's dazedly watching a bottle revolve around a microwave at 4am, he thinks of the day he danced with Nikki Alexander and smiles.)
Oh the cheese. But it's been ages since I've written anything as fluffy as this, so it made a nice change (it won't last).