Just listening to Lana, crying, writing a little Harry and Hermione.
"Tonight You Belong To Me" by Billy Rose and Lee David, was written in 1926 and is now comfortably in the public domain. No infringement intended.
The time to leave would have been between 10:43 and 11:22. After the firewhiskey but before whatever that sweet smoke thing in the highball glass had been. After the surgical intern's face had been blotted away, but before the room had dissolved into wheeling trails of color and sound. The two shots are pushing it, signified by Seamus, himself, coming from behind the bar to deliver them, and the lime wedges, and to drop the salt cellar onto the booth's table with a wholly unnecessary clatter.
"We're not repeatin' that scene from last time, Granger. You're cut off as of riiiiight…" he drags it out, waits for the clock over the bar to strike midnight, "now. And don't think you're taking it elsewhere, either. I've already called your chaperone."
The first shot catches high in the back of the throat, clings. Wince and shudder. The lime after is a sparkling burst of tart, sets off a sudden, sharp salivary release you have to swallow down quick to keep from drooling down your front.
"Here. Take back your salt, stoolie." Hag voice. Wonderful. You nudge the marble box jusssssst to the very edge of the table with one finger. See? Not so impaired, you git. "Can't a girl just have a bad night on her own, anymore?"
"Not in this pub, doll. Not again." He's swift with the teetering salt cellar, smiles like the tobacco jar devil set beside his till.
Close your eyes. Listen as he goes, his footsteps lapped over into the noises from up front far away - the chair leg scrapes, and the laughing, and all the voices voices voices. You hum your little song to yourself, the earworm crawling circles in your head. Let your throat lend it shape, this sickeningly twee thing, so spot on for your particular strain of sadness it makes the back of your eyes burn.
I know you belong to somebody new…
but tonight you belong to me…
Let it out. Hope it goes, too.
Don't. Cry.
Tears invite intervention, same as quick naps in pub toilets. Former future in-laws swoop in. Dear Arthur had been very kind and vanished the sick from his shoes as if it were a well practiced habit. He'd been a perfect angel, standing in the door long enough to make sure the Sober-Up had kicked in and you'd found the lamp and weren't stumbling about in the dark before leaving you to your sofa, and your ingenious telephonic device and your empty, unblinking answering machine. Inevitably, it wil be Molly this time, and she will insist on coming inside to fuss about tea and take inventory of the state of the flat, and Try To Figure Out Just What's Going On, Dear, and the dread of fighting her off at your door is just one more reason to hurry up and down this last swallow of tequila, chop chop.
It's an audience what always mucks it up, and not a soul is seeing you now, so this one goes down easy as cream tea. You hold the chunk of lime to your lips, lean against the worn, red leather of this circular booth-for-two, close your eyes against the spinning, hum and drift. It's an old, old song and there must have been other arrangements, proper orchestrations, slow and sorrowful and properly evocative of the words. Proper. Not these insane, fluffy harmonies bouncing like bunny tails through pink clover.
Although we're apart…
you're a part of my heart….
Just a whisper. Just air through the shapes your lips make. No one seeing or hearing you in this corner. Suck the chorus down with this mouthful of juice.
"I thought you said that was bad for your teeth."
Oh no. No. No. No.
Cringe away from his voice, screw your eyes tighter closed, and twist into the red leather.
"No. No. It's Friday. Friday nights are…"
"A good night to go round the chippy. You look like you could use a meal." Harry's voice comes at you level across the table. You never even heard him pull up a chair.
"Go home, Harry." Look his direction through one open eye. "You … you shouldn't be …."
"I should, and I will be from now on." Black hair mussed and damp in the lamp light, and his hand curled on the table. Pale scars. You can't bring yourself to see his face. "I hope your weren't too stroppy with Seamus. I asked him to send for me."
"Seamus is fine. Seamus bats my bad temper away like a gnat." Flick of the wrist for emphasis. Something inside the joint goes clic as you gesture. Age, or an old injury. Doesn't matter.
"So, what all have you had this evening? I'd like to know what I'm getting into."
"You don't have to get into anything." Focus on the point just over his head. Smile sweetly. You are sweetness and light and no trouble at all. "I can get a cab down the way and be jus' fine."
"No," he says, and that's that. He lifts one of the shot glasses. "May as well out with it. I know what Seamus told me, but was there anything else?"
"Seamus… bloody…bleeding canary…" The other place, broad and deep with the high ceilings. All the people, your would-have-been peers were you not an anomaly of nature. Absolutely teeming. The barman had to lean close even as you shouted.
"One glass of white at 8:30 p.m. on the dot, and then a slosh of gin."
Smile for Harry as he rubs his hand down his face.
Lime on your lips. You can't even remember the intern's name.
"Okay. What we're going to do now is stand and go out the back door, alright? No. Don't worry about settling up, I got it."
He stands there, ten feet tall, face and shoulders way up in the shadows wrapped over the lamp's shade, hand held out, palm up, for you to take.
So, you take it.
…
Yet another bloke, this one coming off shift from some job that sends one's knuckles through a grater, nods toward your table in the corner, winks, says "'Arry."
"Eddie."
"That's five," you say.
"Five what?" Harry brushes your shoulder with his as he leans forward.
"Five people who know your name."
"You're counting. You can count. Chips must be doing the trick."
"They're very nice chips." Poke through, find the one with the most pepper, the least salt. Your hair is a screen he can't see around. "But, how do all these…people," you almost say 'muggles,' "know you?"
"Guess I've become a bit of a regular."
Once again, look across the floor, the overhead fluorescents glaring off the small, white tile matrix, the black tiles stuck in at random. There's no flow, no pattern, not even a hint at the Golden Ratio. The six black tiles zigzagging through the grid under the empty chair across from you make more sense than Harry being a regular in this chip shop, but…
"Since when?"
"Just gradually over time, I suppose."
He is beside you instead of in front of you because he'd insisted you needed padding, and this long booth seat lining the length of one side of the shop corner to corner is all the padding there is, and since Harry does not sit with his back to the door, ever…
"Got a bit of help holding it down tonight, eh?" Eddie says, massive sack of food cradled on his forearm like a baby.
"She's my secret weapon. Hermione, this is Eddie." Look alive. Nod at Eddie.
"Don't be fooled by that face, yeah," Eddie extends the sack baby in Harry's direction. "'E's a proper brawler when needs be."
Smile, say "I'd wager so." Lean into where his shoulder leans into you. Just for a second. Your friend, the Proper Brawler.
"How's the missus coming along, Ed?"
"Big as a house," Eddie's face opens, beams brighter than even these fluorescents, burns the backs of your eyes. "Three more weeks! And they're probably starvin', so I'm off. Nice to meet you, miss."
The chip that's been held between your fingers has grown cold, seems to swell to an unimaginable volume as you chew. Force it all down. Turn round. No shadows to hide in, here. You look, for the first time tonight, into Harry's eyes.
The dark slashes of his brows jump above the rims of his spectacles. "Hi, there," he says. The cheek. You fold your hands in your lap. You will not touch his face.
"So, you come here often?" You say. This Chip Shop Life, how expansive are its edges?
"Often enough. How are you doing?" He nods toward the chip basket.
"'M alright." You lean your head against the wall. "You know, your acquaintances here are going to think you pull sad, drunk picked-overs from down the pub, now. You probably should've taken me elsewhere."
"I like this place. And no one's going to think that. And I guess what I was really asking is, how have you been?"
Pans clank. A quantity of water gurgles down a drain. You're about to have to leave this place, and there's a short cab ride between here and your flat and him leaving you to yourself at your door.
Your blood shuttles the circuit of your body. That's good enough. Be happy. No shadows here to hide in. Smile for Harry, then look away.
"Fine."
"I don't think so," he says.
"Alright, I'm not fine. So what?" Shrug. "How have you been?"
"Knackered."He quick smiles, then it's gone. "But enough about me…"
This long seat, though, the padding against the wall is very good for cradling the head. Close your eyes. Let the shapes behind your lids spin, spin, spin you out of this shop and into the street where anything could happen, but probably nothing will, except one ruined Manolo and a twisted ankle. This urge to ask why he's knackered - ignore it. Not your business, now, to know what stops him from sleeping.
"I really would rather not keep you, Harry. I'll find my way home. Go back to what you're with and who you're doing. I promise, nothing like this," you gesture the length of your body, "will ever happen again."
The vinyl creeks. Your thigh dips as his weight shifts beside you.
"You are what I'm with," he says, close in to your ear, "and I'm not worried about 'again,' I'm worried about 'why tonight.'"
Exhale the breath out over your lips. Don't think of how it is it can be so warm, why it clings, damp. Don't think about the frigid tip of your nose, blue, frozen, close to chipping away. Hum out the earworm, let it lie on your chest.
But tonight you belong to me…
"I think you need some air," he says. "Let's walk."
…
The bloke behind the counter says "Tomoz, mate," over the clatter of mop-bucket wheels. Harry gives him a nod, holds the door, then says, "Come here a second," leads you beyond the cone of light illuminating the shop's entrance. He extracts a rolled scarf from his pocket, pulls off his coat. "Put this on, please," he says, holds the coat up for you to slip into.
"I hadn't planned to be out this late. Is it cold?" Your skin can't tell. You are porcelain doll-parts strung together with silk floss, loose and numb and hollow.
"It's freezing. Too cold for what you're wearing." He's in front of you, wrapping the scarf to cover your earlobes, stuffing the ends into the sides, then reaching with both hands to do up the first button of his coat at your throat. "There. Two birds, one stone. You won't freeze to death, and I don't have to look at that horrid jumper, anymore."
"I beg your pardon, this is vintage Betsey Johnson, you barbarous…"
"It's vintage bloody awful," he mutters, grins, throws his hood up over his head, then holds his arm out like a wing for you to take. "Looks like something Mrs. Figg had draped over her recliner."
It's sheer, unprovoked meanness, but you wedge your hand into the crease of his elbow, anyway, cough out a little laugh.
"Cor, then no wonder he scarpered…" you say into the night to no one as he moves you along.
"What? Who?"
The pace is slow. A mosey, really. You'll be walking home until dawn at this rate. "My date."
"Your date?"
"Mm. Mum of my friend's son…no…son of my friend's mu…friend of my son…A blind date."
"You had a date? With a Muggle? Tonight?"
"A plan for a date, yes." Eyes open. Now is no time to slip away. Hold onto the fact of his flexed bicep under the smooth cotton of his hoodie, bigger than you remember. "Friday nights are for cracking on with it, right?"
You try, but those words don't lift off the tongue as lightly as they did the first time.
"So I've been told," he says.
The clop of your heels matches the half-time rhythm of the grit grinding under Harry's boots. You count it out to twenty, then thirty. A slow beat for the earworm to inch along to.
Way down by the stream…
How sweet it will seem…
Don't think the next line. The turn in the bridge that gives it all away. If Harry would only keep talking…but that seems to be at an end.
Don't. Cry.
The cold on your cheeks. Focus. This must be close to what he is feeling all over.
You should undo the button at your throat. You should flag a cab, seat him inside and send him and his lovely biceps back to whichever rumour from the papers is true. You should. And you would do, but the lights out here on the pavement come faster than you can follow, veer and sling in impossible directions, and his arm is all that holds you up, stops you from listing into the mayhem, and, Christ, this state you're in…Shameful. So shameful.
"So, what was his name, then?" He says out of nowhere after forever.
"What?"
"Your date. What was his name?"
"Um…Ian? Ewen? Hard to recall. We never actually met."
"'S a weird date."
"Not for me." Smile. Keep smiling. Walk. Keep walking. Here is his arm, his shoulder. The tip of his nose, red from the cold. "They're all like this."
"All?"
"Yes. You see, Mum has a list. Mum is turrribly concerned…and, anyway…The first two canceled last minute, then never phoned back. The next one didn't show, then never phoned back. And this one, tonight…I saw him, and I'm sure he saw me, and I looked down to drop my gloss in my bag, and when I looked up again, he was leaving." These are the facts. Just things that happened. All the same. None more significant than the other…"I presume he, also, will never phone back."
It comes down to talk or hold up your head, and you jerk from where you've been sagged against his shoulder, press your lips closed. Traffic revs, swishes by, muted. It's best to look up into the still, black sky, just over the tops of the streetlights. Imagine walking into it, away from all this.
It was right to stay quiet, wrong to blurt it out. Harry has gone silent, but what could anyone say, really.
You were wrong to blurt it out.
Apologize.
"I'm sorry. About all of this. I should have assumed it'd go wrong after last time. It's just I…I forget I'm the drab bird, sometimes…build up expectations. He sounded so nice on the phone…"
"Drab bird?" Harry says.
"The dull female always flitting around colourful males…"
"Psh. Hardly. I could spot you from the moon in that jumper…"
"You. Arse." You slap his chest with your little bag, make to pull away. He clamps your arm in place with his, faster, stronger, sober. "You know what I mean."
"I understand what you're saying, but it doesn't make it true. It's nonsense on stilts."
"Come on, Harry. We're a bit past all that, now, don't you think?"
"Past what?"
"Vague denials. I know how you see me. I've known for years, and it's alright."
"Oh, yeah? Fill me in."
"'I don't think you're ugly,'" you say, voice pitched low, and you can't stop the stupid giggle that follows, then the full on braying donkey guffaw. "God, you might as well have slapped a badge on my forehead that said 'MINGER.'"
"I said that? When?"
"Fifth year. I don't expect you'd remember. I only do because it was so comical how you piped up to deny it, like a child who's crayoned all over the wall blaming it on the dog." Smile into the sky. It was funny then, and it is still funny.
"So we're clear — I said I didn't think you were ugly, which you, to this day, understand to mean I did - that I still do - think just that?"
"Maybe not ugly, per se, but just…unfanciable. Plain." It's not so amusing when you say it like this. Look into the black sky. Listen to your steps, the slow, steady buh-dum buh-dum buh-dum he's trained you into. "Anyway, it's probably been for the best, and it's not like you're the first to think so, and it's clear you won't be the last. 'S alright."
"It's not alright for you to think I think something I don't."
You pat his arm. "You're kind, Harry."
"I'm not being kind," he murmurs.
"You are." You bump your temple against his shoulder. "You can't help it."
Nothing left to say. Walk on. The earworm eats the insides out of every other thought. Start at the beginning. Hum it away. Set it loose.
How sweet it will seem…
Just to dream once again in the moonlight…
Because it is just a dream, all this. Friday night. Harry, ten feet tall. Your hand around his arm. His heat and his blessed forest smell bundled around you. Not for long, now. A few more blocks and he'll go back to the one he's chosen, leave the one he thinks he owes.
And that's okay.
It's what's right. It's what you wanted.
Don't. Cry.
Deep breath. Headlights blur left and right. You misstep, sway.
"Sorry," you say. "I'm so sorry."
He stops, swivels, says, "Oh…hey…" then wipes the wet off your cheeks with his thumbs.
"Maybe that's enough walking," he says. You blink at the sky above his head, try to tilt the tears back into their ducts as he peers up then down the street. "Hey, look at me. You want to see something I've been working on?"
He smiles, and the corners of your mouth automatically curl up, too.
"Yeah."
"We don't need an audience," he says, pulls you down the pavement you just tread into the darkest part of the nearest alley.
"Okay," he says, moving behind you. "I'm right here," he says, voice rasping just above a whisper at your ear. "Now, I'm gonna put my arm around like this, my hand is here," he clutches your shoulder, "and my voice is here," breath at your ear. "Close your eyes. Lean back. Rest your head. My hand…"
clutch…
"And my voice…"
breath…
"Hand…"
clutch…
"Voice…"
breath…
clutch….
breath…
clutch….
breath…
"Open your eyes," he says through a big grin you can hear, his forearm still heavy on your chest.
"How?" Your building. Your lamp's light a little glow in a third floor window. "How did you do that?"
"I've been practicing. I've always dreaded that….I dunno…compression through the tube of time and space? I'm sure you understand the magical theory behind it more than I ever could, but I thought, what if I just didn't do that, anymore, and…I've been working on - not just my intent to move, you know, but my will - on not allowing my body to fight to hold me in the same place, to make space open wider. It's hard to explain."
"It's extraordinary, Harry…you…you have to show someone…"
"I'm showing you. I've pretty much got it down on my own, but I'd never done it side-along before. You were brilliant, by the way. I knew you would be…"
"I didn't do anything." You shake your head. "I didn't even know I was along for the ride."
You turn, look at his face way up there.
Pure magic.
"You did exactly what I needed you to do."
He smiles, takes your hand.
"Come on, let's get out of the cold."
…..
Shoes off in the foyer, but the staircase is still one long, dizzy trip, and if Harry weren't here to gently haul you forward you'd be crawling.
You are just outside your door, inhaling the breath that will thank him and send him on his way, when he pops the latch open with one touch of his wand, says, "After you…" before you can even form the first syllable.
"Chamomile?" His arm comes around your shoulder, guides you away from the edge of the hallway wall, steers you into the dark toward your bedroom, "Or would you rather have plain water?"
"Just water, I suppose, but you don't have to…"
Light in the hall where none should be. You look up, squint at the dim bubbles glowing, shifting gently near the ceiling.
"What are those?"
"Night lights. I make them for Teddy. They follow you in the dark." He maneuvers you through your bedroom door. "Can you manage in here on your own for a minute? Gonna have a quick rummage in your cupboards, just in case. I'll be right back, yeah? Get changed," he says over his shoulder.
Deliberate steps. Your bed is just there. Go to it. You're golden until you catch a toe on the nightstand, over-reach for the wall, almost tip the lamp onto the floor, bang your knee when you go to catch it, then knock it over, anyway.
"Alright?" Harry's voice, far away.
"Fine! I'm fine!" Unwrap the scarf. Undo the button at your throat, roll your shoulders back, slide Harry's coat down your arms. It's the sort of move that might be quite sexy if you hadn't just torn a hole in your stocking, and your jumper didn't look like it should be lining a cat's basket, and you were all around a different sort of woman, entirely. You ball up the ruined stockings, throw them toward the chair, watch them unfurl, two mournful streamers drifting to the floor.
Everything else ends up in a pile at the foot of the bed. The pyjama shorts are trickier to put on than the skirt was to take off. Your top is scratchier than you remember. You lean your head back, look at the champagne-coloured orbs clustered over the bed. Tiny bubbles. The thought of sipping anything else from a glass makes your stomach turn over and your mouth flood, and you close your eyes, sit, swallow, wait for it to pass.
It's quiet when you're not crashing about. Harry is soundless. He's always been careful, but this is uncanny silence. The sort that surrounds apparitions. The sort where one thing never touches another. No feet to floor. No fabric against skin. Another by-product of being an Auror. Another item to add to the shelf of things he's mastered without any help from you at all.
Don't dwell. The earworm creeps the worn furrows it has made in your brain. The bridge. Make the tune with your throat, pierce the hush. Streams and dreams. Sweetness. Moonlight.
You feel him in the doorway, a disturbance in the staid atmosphere of your room. The lamp in the floor flicks on with his spell. You don't open your eyes, even as he dabs at their corners with the wrist of his hoodie.
He says, "Drink this, okay, and then we'll sleep." And, for some reason, he's only almost whispering, as if using his whole voice might break open some realm that must remain closed. You blink, look into his eyes, uplit, the colour of a bright sky through green glass.
You wrap your fingers carefully around the cold tumbler.
"Harry…listen. You've done so much already. I can't ask you…"
"You're not asking," he says, quick smiles. "And I'm not leaving. I've work tomorrow, and I'm not going back round mine to toss and turn and wonder if you're still breathing here, alone. I won't do it. You can't make me, so, please, stop trying."
He kneels in front of you, reaches over to right the lamp. He sweeps a finger through the little tray on the nightstand, picks out the hair elastic. "Here. You probably want to pull it back, just in case…"
You trade him, the water glass for the elastic, and he sits on his heels, drops his eyes when you lift your arms. Don't think about it, whatever is in front of him he doesn't want to see. You are doll parts, simple muscle memory. When you wake up in the morning, he'll be gone.
So, say all the correct things, now, tonight. Make sure everyone knows, even in this state, you know your place.
"I never meant for you to be roped into doing this," you say. "Will you please tell…. I'm not sure who, but tell her I'm sorry, and it'll never happen again."
He's on his knees, again, pointedly lifting your hand from your lap and placing it around the glass.
"We'll talk about it later. Drink this."
"We don't have to talk about it. Just…"
"We do. And I mean it, Hermione. Not like 'we'll make it up during the week.' I'm still waiting on that one, by the way." He sits back, unlaces, shucks off his boots, then leans forward, forearms to knees, pulls his glasses away with one hand, scrubs the other over his face.
The bottom of the water glass leaves a cool, wet ring on your thigh. You lift the glass, look at it, make an evaluation. Tonight, you're a half-empty kind of girl.
Sip the water. Ask the question.
"So, when did you take on Saturdays?"
"Saturdays, Sundays, every day…since several weeks ago."
"Big case?"
"Not really. Just the same, old artful dodgers."
Ah. You see.
Sip the water. Cold and clean.
Her name is Maple, but you'll pretend not to know it when people inevitably ask.
"Holly, is it?" You will say. "Ash?"
"I think they met at work," you will say.
You'll say, "Yes, she's very pretty."
You barely glanced, and so don't remember much from the photo on page ten. Just the matching uniforms, the clutch of her hand about his waist, the way he leaned. And, so, now you know. Of all the rumours, Daphne was ages ago, and Katie probably never happened, but this girl has enough draw to make him volunteer for overtime.
Smile. Smile for Harry, even if he's not looking. Keep smiling. Smile forever.
Don't. Cry.
You pat the place on the bed where no one ever sleeps, say "Well, come on, then."
He whispers "Nox," and the lamp flicks off, leaving the faintest champagne glow from his night lights up above. You slide under the covers and he climbs over your feet, stretches out on his back on top of the duvet. You lie with your back to him, hug the edge of the mattress, leave plenty of room for Maple to fit in by his side.
Your pillow is partially on the nightstand, and your arm hangs your fingertips to the floor. Maybe once he drifts off, you'll find your way to the bathroom, crouch in the tub beneath a towel and go numb, well away from all your soakable soft goods, and the warm, hard body of some other woman's boyfriend, and the inevitable, empty morning light.
"You're going to wind up on the floor, hanging off the edge like that," he says.
"You have work. I don't want to crowd you."
"You could never," he says. You feel him pat the empty place beside him. "Come on. You'll hurt yourself if you fall."
Shift and settle. Harry twines his fingers beneath his head. You lie there, cut silk floss, discarded doll parts in a pile. The night lights grow still over your body, dozens of tiny, leashed moons.
Dead quiet. Fix your eyes to the snake shapes your stockings make on the carpet. They crawl, forth and back, forth and back with the earworm.
How sweet it will seem…
Just to dream once again…
Sweet to dream. Smile for Harry. Close your eyes. Turn your face into the pillow. Press the damp into your cheek, the length of your nose. And it happens involuntarily, the stupid catch then tremble in your chest that stirs him to speak.
"I don't know what it is about this Ian Ewen bloke that's so under your skin, but he was a fool, Hermione."
"No. He's just the same as anyone else. Knows what he likes."
"I've been thinking about it since you mentioned it, how it works with us and Muggles…and, it's not fair, but it seems like one or the other always has to give up everything, in the end, don't they?"
"They probably do, in the end."
"Maybe…maybe tonight was for the best, then…in the long run."
"Yeah. Probably. All for the best."
If you repeat it enough, maybe you'll begin to believe it. The split with Ron - for the best. The way it never got off the ground with Terry Boot, after - for the best. The things you said to Harry months ago: That it was probably right to let some of the comfortable, old habits go, that he shouldn't have to feel he was canceling things with you every time he wanted to go out on a real date with a real woman, that you shouldn't have that sort of claim on his evenings, that, going forward, Friday nights were for cracking on with it, that it would be easy enough to make it up during the week, right?
All for the best.
So, resolve the emptiness when hitting the usual weekend spots, when faking your way through the motions of ordering for one. Answer why you stopped scanning the papers entirely after the photo on page ten. Explain to him, now, how the dread of missing him makes it easier to just not see him at all.
All these sorry outcomes. Yours. For the best.
Uncanny silence. Harry's fingers, twined behind his head. The empty space all around you, like lying on a raft floating atop calm waters. When you wake up, the shore, and everyone on it, will be well out of sight.
So drift, unmoored. The tail of the earworm drags a trench through your fading consciousness. Insane, fluffy bunny harmonies wrapped around the end of all hope.
My honey, I know with the dawn…
That you will be gone…
Open your eyes. Blink. Blurred snake shapes in the champagne light. His boots to the side, toes pointed toward the door, ready to go.
Close your eyes. Don't see. Deep breath. Exhale the gentle breeze that will propel you farther and farther away from it all. Your mum's list. Ian Ewen's discerning eye. Maple, somewhere waiting, for the best.
Drift. You, darling, are free to disappear across the placid sea…
But for the rustle of cotton, the barely-there touch of Harry's fingertips along the line where your ribs fit against your spine. The thinnest of tethers.
But, tonight…
you belong to me…
…
A dream of kitchen sounds. Running water, the roil of a boiling kettle, then grey quiet. The light through the shade is a dull drill whirring straight into the centre of your skull. Blink around it, take in the snake shapes in front of the chair, the empty space where Harry's boots had been.
Slow, slow, sit up. Drink the two swallows of water in the tumbler on the nightstand. You are a trillion burnt-out nerve ends slip-sliding under a flesh veneer. Don't bend so fast to pull your jumper from the pile of things at the foot of the bed. A horrid night slips into a horrid day slips into a horrid night slips into….on and on forever, so just, very carefully, now, go brush your teeth and get over it.
You manage not to vomit in the sink, but the full length mirror on the door is there to tell the story. An aubergine bruise where the stocking was torn, the inside-out shirt, and, from the neck up... best to just look away. Pull the elastic from your hair. Take cover. You shake out the jumper in the hallway, crawl into it, nearly come out of your skin when your head pops through the neck hole to find Harry sitting, smearing a paper thin layer of strawberry jam on a piece of buttered toast at your dining table.
"G'morning, sunshine," he says. "How're we feeling?"
Shocked. Confused. Mortified.
Breathe out a sound, sit in the chair his foot has pushed out for you. He slides the toast onto the plate at your place, reaches into the front pouch of his hoodie.
"First this," he holds out a phial, eyes raking your face. "I'm sorry I didn't have anything on hand last night. Stocked up this morning, though."
You take the phial from his hand, watch the potion inside swirl. "You've been out and come back, already?"
He picks up a second piece of toast, shrugs.
"Silently dissolved in and out of here like a mist, no doubt."
He grins, a crooked thing you remember from long ago. "Drink it. You'll feel better." He loads the knife, pauses to watch you do as you're told, then goes back to his jam.
Instant relief and appalling clarity. You look at the toast, try to compose the right thing to say after an entire night of making a complete arse of yourself.
You touch your chest, your still-throbbing breast bone."You nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought you'd be off to work by now."
"They can spare me for a few minutes at the beginning of a double shift."
Sixteen hours. Add on the night before. Too much of his time, eaten up with your nonsense.
"Thank you, Harry. For this. For everything." Touch the edge of your plate. Blink and blink and blink before you look into his face. "I know last night was stupid and selfish and…you shouldn't have…"
"Don't, okay?" His words are quick, steady. "Don't tell me I shouldn't have when I want to. When you need help, I want to know. Right then. I don't want to accidentally find out four days later through some web of Chinese whispers. Even when you're set on not talking to me, yourself..." He lays the second piece of toast on your plate, sloshes a single drip of coffee over the side of his mug.
"I was never set…" You can't finish the lie. You were. You are. He knows it - you can see it in his eyes.
"It's been months, Hermione" he says. "I want to fix this. And I know there's no time to hash it out, now, but maybe tonight…"
The phone brrrrs from its stand in the sitting room. He blinks away from you and over to it. His mouth stretches into a straight line.
"That'll be Mum checking in…I'll call her back." You pick at your toast, try to catch his eye, freeze the moment the voice after yours comes through the machine.
"Yes, hello, Hermione. This is Evan from, er, well, not from last night…Um…I'm awfully sorry and do apologize about that. Terrible excuse, but the hospital paged an all hands on deck for a pile-up on the M25 and I had to run back and catch the cab I'd just stepped away from…"
Harry is up at the sound of your name, plate and mug in hand, striding toward the kitchen. You watch his back, the flex of his shoulders at the word "excuse," the bob of his Adam's apple while he gulps coffee at the sink. He grabs a paper serviette, picks up his stack of toast.
"…Anyway, um, I was hoping we could, perhaps, try it again. Perhaps tonight, or even tomorrow. I do sincerely apologize…Uh, if you'd like, my number is still…"
"You're right," Harry says, pulls his coat from the back of his chair, throws it over his arm. "He does sound nice on the phone."
Get up and follow. Now. His free hand touches the door knob, but then he turns, his gaze shuttling the length of your body from your toes to your face. He takes the three steps back to you, then two more at an angle until your shoulder blades scrape the wall, until all you can see is his chest and the corded column of his neck, and you're awash in the combined scent of toast and Harry, a sudden, mesmeric echo of late adolescence, liquifying your forebrain and thrumming right between your legs.
"For the record….for what it's worth," he says, "I don't think you're ugly. And I don't like this jumper. And I don't need Friday nights for…whatever. And I don't want to feed you breakfast, but leave dinner to Evan, tonight."
And then his free hand is at your jaw, and his lips are push-pulling against yours, taking, taking, warm and sure, his tongue a single, slow sweep of hot-dark-sweet, then gone. He draws back, whispers an anguished "figure it out" against your parted mouth, and then his fringe brushes your forehead, and he steps away.
"I have to go."
He yanks open the door, slams through without looking back, leaves you there alone, knees buckling your bare thighs together, head in your hand, dazed and shuddering against the wall.
…
Sip a cup of tea at the table. Worry your lip. Remember how he'd felt, there. Eat the toast - long gone cold - that his hands had buttered and jammed and slipped onto your plate. The puzzle pieces you'd pounded into place, the one's you'd left too loose, the warped, crumbling edges of the picture you'd, last night, been determined to see: Disassemble it all. Put it back together as best you can, the way he had meant it to be.
…
It wasn't just because you were sauced. There truly is no pattern to the black tiles on this floor.
It's immensely comforting, this indisputable fact, obvious from the padded seat in the corner. If this one thing is real, maybe every observation has a root in the truth, and your resulting extrapolations aren't just the outrageous, unfounded, unbridled hope part of you fears them to be. You periodically rifle through the chips piled in the basket before you, glance toward the door.
Once you'd discarded all the pieces making up Maple's big face, once you understood they were from a whole other box with a whole other image (an engagement photo from a couple of weeks ago of the lady herself, and her pro-Beater fiancée, blonde and angel-faced with a chest you could screen films upon), what was left - the black tiles, Eddie, the bloke with the mop, this corner - all snapped into place. A complete, clean portion of the picture of his life - your friend, the Proper Brawler.
It's a start, but just.
Glance at your watch. Thirty-three minutes since shift's end. Consider the possibilities of where else he could have gone. Or don't. If you have it wrong about this place, when time is up you will simply go find him wherever he might be, sure as the sun will bring the morning.
You're not wrong, though, so there he is, now, just passing the window, pushing his hood back off his head in the outside cone of light. You glimpse his face, how he moves, the bone-weary way he grasps the door's handle. Your heart clenches in the exact, old way it always has when you've seen him like this, exhausted, trudging on because he must. He steps inside, his gaze on the menu board, then the bloke behind the counter, then cataloging every face in the room, as he's been trained to do. A cluster of lads, the couple up front, and then you.
An exhale as his eyes light, a nano-second catch of fluorescents across the planes of his glasses as his face tips upward, and his shoulders relax. He crooks out a grin, and the corners of your mouth automatically curl up, too.
You can't go to him without it being a scene, so you make room on the padded seat as he lopes over. His body hits the vinyl beside you, sinks in, heavy. His eyes dart about the dining room, less seeing than rearranging what's already seeped in. He leans his head against the wall, rolls to face you.
"I went round your flat, but you weren't…and I thought…" He shakes his head, blows out a shell-shocked little sigh. He's not grinning, now. "I thought I'd spoiled everything."
Public scenes be damned. You can't stop yourself now from reaching, from touching the intractable thatch of his hair, his ear's cool, pink ridge, the days growth, rough across the plain of his cheek. He turns, presses his jaw into your palm, eyes locked on yours, don't stop. If you weren't here in this place, you would never stop, would just keep touching him down and across every line of his body until you know him by feel alone, until you can read his every need in the knots and cords beneath his skin the way a blind man reads Braille.
Pans clank. The lads' table erupts into a chorus of jeers at some failed flex, and Harry leans in, ghosts his lips along your earlobe, slow whispers, "Let's get out of here."
He rises, stands there, hand held out, palm up, for you to take.
So, you take it.
~fin~
Thank you so much for reading! Would love to hear your thoughts!