Rain tapped softly against the windscreen as Harry drove one-handed through the nearly empty streets of London at night.
The city blurred gold and silver beyond the windows — streetlights bleeding across wet asphalt, neon signs glowing dimly through the drizzle, the occasional bus hissing past and spraying puddles in its wake.
Inside the car, Queen were playing loud enough to make the speakers rattle.
Harry was singing along terribly.
“DON’T STOP ME NOW—” he belted, drumming both hands against the steering wheel for a second before hastily grabbing it again as the car drifted slightly to the left. “—I’M HAVIN’ SUCH A GOOD TIME—”
“You’re going to kill us,” George informed him flatly from the passenger seat.
Harry grinned widely without taking his eyes off the road.
“You say that every time.”
“That’s because every time Freddie Mercury spiritually possesses you, the Highway Code ceases to exist.”
“You sped up during the guitar solo.”
“It felt spiritually correct.”
George snorted despite himself and turned back towards the window again.
The laughter faded quickly after that.
Harry didn’t try to fill the silence.
That was something George had started noticing about him lately. Harry never pushed when people went quiet. Never picked at bruises just because he could see them. He simply made space around them.
Outside, rainwater streamed across the glass in blurred rivers.
George watched reflections slide across Harry’s face as he drove. Messy dark hair falling into his eyes; one hand resting lazily on the wheel, sleeves rolled to his elbows; lips moving faintly with the music whenever he thought George wasn’t listening.
Something twisted painfully beneath George’s ribs.
Because Merlin, he’d missed this.
He had missed Harry specifically.
But also — just being somewhere late at night, existing beside someone without pretending, laughing without forcing it, feeling something other than grief for longer than ten minutes at a time.
The car slowed at a red light.
Harry finally glanced sideways.
“There’s a place near here that does chips absolutely drowned in garlic butter,” Harry said seriously. “Life-changing experience.”
George let out a quiet laugh through his nose.
“Do you always solve problems like this?”
“With food and driving around.”
Harry shrugged one shoulder.
“Seems to be working so far.”
The lights changed green.
The car rolled forward again, Queen humming softly beneath the sound of the rain.
George watched Harry in silence for a few more seconds before turning back to the window so Harry wouldn’t notice the expression on his face.
He was beginning to realise something deeply unfortunate.
The dangerous thing had never been the drives.
The chip shop was a fluorescent-lit box wedged between a launderette and an abandoned bookshop, steam fogging up the windows from inside.
Harry parked half on the kerb with the casual disregard of someone who had never received a parking ticket in his life thanks to magic and had no intention of starting now. He killed the engine, and sudden silence flooded the car — rain hammering against the roof, cooling metal ticking softly, George exhaling slowly beside him.
“They’ll be closed,” George said, making no move to undo his seatbelt.
“They won’t.” Harry was already opening the door. “Ahmed stays open late on Thursdays.”
“How do you even know what day it is?”
“I don’t. But he’s always open late.”
George watched him jog through the rain towards the shop, shoulders hunched, hair immediately plastering itself to his forehead. Fluorescent light caught him as he shoved the door open, and then he became nothing more than a dark silhouette behind fogged-up glass.
Alone in the car, George let his head fall back against the seat.
The music had stopped with the engine. No Queen. No Harry humming under his breath. Just rain, his own breathing, and the faint smell of petrol and old upholstery.
He was getting better. He genuinely was. The shop was running again. He was joking again. He could get through entire days now without feeling as though someone had carved out his ribs and left a draught where his lungs were meant to be.
But then nights like this happened.
Nights when Harry turned up uninvited. Nights when Harry drove him around the city for no particular reason, sang off-key, and bought him chips just because he’d gone quiet for too long.
And George would think: I can’t keep doing this.
Not because he wanted it to stop.
Because he wanted too much.
He glanced towards the chip shop window. Harry was leaning against the counter now, apparently saying something that made Ahmed laugh. Wet hair dripping onto his glasses. He’d forgotten to put his coat on properly — one sleeve twisted inside out, collar crooked.
George pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until stars burst behind them.
You absolute disaster, he thought. You’ve been in love with him since you were fifteen and you’re still just sitting in his car.
The passenger door opened.
Cold air and rain burst inside.
“What’s wrong with your face?” Harry asked, tossing a greasy paper bag onto George’s lap.
“You were making a weird expression.”
Harry looked at him for a second longer than necessary — long enough for heat to crawl up the back of George’s neck — before merely shrugging and settling back into the driver’s seat, already stealing chips from his own bag one-handed.
He didn’t start the car again.
They ate in the dark while rain battered the roof and the chip shop’s neon sign flickered pink across the dashboard.
George risked another glance at Harry. He was eating with the intense concentration of someone who had solved dinner entirely through stubbornness; cheeks slightly pink from the cold, glasses still speckled with raindrops, a smear of sauce on his cheek.
“You’ve got—” George started.
Harry looked at him with cheeks puffed full of food.
Harry narrowed his eyes suspiciously, swallowed, then returned to his chips.
And the thing was, George thought, the most unbearable thing —
Harry had absolutely no idea.
Harry just drove around the city, fed people, sang Queen songs, and failed to notice that he was systematically dismantling every wall George had ever built.
And George would let him do it.
He would absolutely let him do it.
Just like always, still your passenger by ezolenta
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