We're on the home straight now, Harry hugs as promised to the lovely NewspaperBalloons, tigpop, pinkswallowsun, Ann1119 and Lilypad1.
Harry pulled his thumb and forefinger across his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, he had to think this through, analyse, draw conclusions, devise a strategy, get his heart rate down before he had a coronary. Nikki had managed to get through her week and by the end of it was able to find something positive. Leo wouldn't have done this just to be vindictive. It wasn't who he was. But had they gone too far this time? Pushed Leo beyond the limits of his patience?
His mind was whirling, images, thoughts, emotions and sounds all crowing for his attention and all without any order. Harry hated disorder. He tried breathing deeply but found his thoughts drawn towards Leo's pictures.
Those pictures; they had been shocking. The vehemence of their anger, the transformation of her face from that smiling picture of her earlier, to the one with the files. And it was his fault; all his fault; he did that to her. He scrubbed his eyes again. She just got under his skin like no one else he had ever known. He paused, that wasn't quite true; his mother could do it to, but thinking of his mother and Nikki in the same moment was not something he liked to dwell on, it led to all sorts of scenarios that he had trained his brain not to investigate.
'Positives,' he thought, refocusing again.
'Must find the positives.'
Leo obviously hadn't learnt how to add music to his slides or switch on the speakers, as there would have been some frightful soundtrack alongside it he decided. That wasn't entirely comforting, but it was positive and the best he could do so far. He dreaded to think what the song would have been: "It had to by you?", "Some enchanted evening?" One of those songs from Lion King, that Leo hummed relentlessly that time they were in Africa together, there was one of those about love he was sure.
'Love' the word left a trail through his thoughts like a smoke ring, definitely there for an instant but vanishing or being banished as quickly as it came.
'OK' he said to himself, that was one good thing. The students, they had seemed to enjoy it, and he had been able to get the information across, so maybe that was two.
So that left his embarrassment. He would certainly avoid Leo for the rest of the day. It would be hard to be civil with all the adrenaline still pumping, but maybe tomorrow, or next week he'd be able to see the funny side and they'd be able to get back to normal, go for a drink even, apologise properly and clear the air.
Then there was Nikki. If Leo's aim had been to give Harry his share of humiliation in retaliation for their stupid week of fighting; that was one thing but to inflict it on Nikki as well. That was galling.
Maybe Leo hadn't expected her to be there. She had gone to Essex and served her sentence but to return to this! A whole new intake of students that whenever they saw her on campus would look and remember those images. Remember the time that Dr Cunningham had referred to her as 'an old thing,' or make snide comments whenever they saw her holding a stack of files, or just make the anthropology unit oversubscribed by testosterone fuelled adolescents with no love of human history whatsoever. It wasn't fair and he couldn't think of a way to make it right.
And he'd been so close, so close this week to letting go. He'd been staring at that door for so long now, but this week, just this week he'd almost convinced himself that he could give it a nudge. Face the monsters on the other side. He couldn't help but believe there was something more, his mind wandered back to that Cure song he'd found:
"For a second of your life
Tell me if it's true
Anywhere beyond
It's all I want of you
On your lips lies a secret
"the promise of a kiss"
...or something more than this? "
He'd been fantasizing about that kiss for a week; but now to see it played out on the big screen. Well Leo had ruined that for him. He just never seemed to get a break. He imagined hearing a loud clang, like on the films when all the doors in a prison shut at once. 'Not very positive,' he chided himself.
Positive, positive.
If she'd had any sense she would have left long before the end, wouldn't she? Maybe she hadn't seen the last bit at all? But then he didn't remember hearing the door open. He flicked his eyes up to the back of the auditorium where she had been sitting.
There were still one or two students by the back door waiting to sign the register on the way out and just to their left one seat that hadn't been vacated. The occupant was sitting straight up in the seat, seemingly frozen in place and still staring at the screen.
Not only had Nikki not left early.
She was still there.
He tried a small finger wave but there was no response.
Ready or not he would have to do something.
The song's fantastic, called More Than This by The Cure, originally used on X files first movie soundtrack, hence why it fits H&N so perfectly.
