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@in-my-head-i-do-everything-right
gave me the blues and then purple-pink skies
His smile turns from nervous to beaming in the blink of an eye. It’s the type of smile she could write a million different songs about. It’s the type of smile she wants to write a million different songs about.
-
or harry’s an actor, and allie writes songs
ao3
11 for hallie?💗
She really hates zucchini. She hates it. It’s slimy, and weird, and unfortunately one of the only things Harry has yet learned to grow in their tiny garden behind their row house.
And no, his pretentious ass calling it courgette does not make it any less disgusting.
He’s taken a week off because he literally hasn’t used a single vacation day, other than when they went to Dublin for a week, because he’s a workaholic. Allie’d insisted he take some time for himself, and when he’d said, “To do what?” she probably should’ve considered her severe distaste for this fucking vegetable. Because him being off has meant more time to ‘tend to his crops’ and that she’s expected to eat this thing every night for dinner in varying preparations.
(And look, she’s a supportive girlfriend. She is. Gardening helps him with his stress and anxiety, and he sort of really likes it. It started with small pots of herbs in the house in the winter, and a Christmas Cactus her grandma gave him. She encourages him because it’s good to see him with an outlet for his anxiety that isn’t work, or alcohol, or generally catastrophizing until he’s breathing into a paper bag.)
Coming home to the house smelling amazing and her fine ass boyfriend standing in the backyard in his jeans and barefeet with barbecue tongs in his hand is…
“Well hello, Harry Homemaker,” she says, stepping through the sliding door. He snorts a laugh and glances over his shoulder. “Did you fold all the laundry?”
She noticed it in neat piles on the living room table. It’s not like they don’t split housework evenly - they do. Which is why it’s notable that he didn’t wait for her.
“Mhm. And mopped, and emptied the dishwasher, and baked a cake.”
Her eyes light up, and she wraps her arms around him from behind and leans up to kiss his neck. “Tell me more.”
Yeah, he turns his head at that tone of voice and she just grins up at him. The sun gets in her eyes, but it’s fine. She likes the way he looks. She honestly thinks he’s spending most of his days out here while she’s not around, because his tan keeps getting deeper. It’s kind of ridiculous.
“Zucchini chocolate cake.”
She freezes. She thought he was joking about the cake. “Wait. You’re serious? You baked a cake? And put vegetables in it?”
Look, it’s not that she’s disappointed. She’s really trying not to be a shit about the fact that he’s making dinner - and apparently homemade baked goods - but god, would it’ve killed him to go for some funfetti?
He opens the lid on the grill and she sees he’s got a cast iron on there with a bunch of veggies, including sweet potatoes, red peppers, and yet more zucchini.
He seems to clock the look on her face as he moves things around in the pan. “I think they’re almost done.”
Allie nods. Maybe the cake is good. It could be good, right? Like, it’s still cake.
“I’ll go change and wash up.”
“No, I mean...,” he says, grinning at her and reaching for her waist, pulling her close again. He maneuvers them so they’re not too close to the grill, drops a kiss to her lips. “I know you don’t like courgette.” She rolls her eyes. He keeps saying it in french on purpose. Either to show off or to be a smart ass. No. It’s both. It’s definitely both. “I don’t think there’re any more coming up.”
She doesn’t want to confirm it, even though she knows there is no sense lying to him or denying it. Honestly, she’ll eat whatever’s put in front of her that she didn’t have to make herself. And even she’ll admit that the pasta sauce he made last night was pretty good, but that’s probably because the pieces were so small she could barely notice them.
“I’m surprised you haven’t broken out the graph paper to plan next summer’s garden,” she says, slides her hands up his back. He gets a very, very cute look on his face that lets her know he’s done something close to exactly what she’s said.
“I’ve done some pretty extensive research on how to grow the best tomatoes.”
He’s grinning like this is something to be proud of, and Allie loves him so deeply all she can do is grin back.
“I’ll go change, then you can tell me all about it?”
He winks at her, tells her there’s wine chilling in the fridge.
The cake is in there, too. She’s very tempted to sneak a bite of it, but she won’t ruin the reveal, or whatever. She just pours them each a glass of moscato and joins him outside, and listens to him tell her his plans for the spring. She’ll have to put up with those weird trays of seedlings again in the spare bedroom that gets the most sunlight, but he’s so excited about it that she just sips her wine and nods along and pushes the zucchini around on her plate until he rolls his eyes and stabs a piece with his fork so he can eat it and she doesn’t have to.
ice cream + hallie
He’s pretty sure her name is Allie. He heard that guy she was with last week say it, or something that sounded like it. Maybe Alex? Allison? No. No, it’s definitely Allie.
He’s definitely being stupid about it. But she’s hotter than literally any other girl he’s seen this summer, so it’s not crazy to think of what it might take to get her to pay attention to him, too.
He hopes she isn’t with that guy. They’re pretty close, he thinks - he keeps seeing them around. He wonders what she’s studying - she wears this cut off little Brown tee shirt she’s turned into a crop top. He wonders if it’s her family that has a place here, or what. It’s been a couple weeks since the first time he noticed her, so he doesn’t think she’s just on vacation.
She smiles at him once when he’s on the beach walking with his sister and she’s with a girl who looks too much like her to not be her sister, too. Harry smiles back, and then his sister’s running towards the water and he takes off after her, because the literal one thing his mom said when she told them to get out of the house so the caterers could set up, was to not let the kid get her hair wet.
On the Fourth of July when he’s wandering through town looking for something to do because staying at home with his mom’s lame friends. She’s not even supposed to still be here, and maybe it’s shitty of him to think this, which is why he hasn’t said it out loud, but this isn’t even her house anymore. It’s his. His dad left it to him in the will. But whatever. It’s not a battle he’s willing to fight with her. Not now.
He sees the girl who’s been catching his eye for weeks now. She’s got a cup of ice cream in her hand and she’s wearing a black romper thing that looks insanely good on her.
He panics because he’s legitimately bad at flirting when the stakes are high (when the girls are as hot as this one) and so when he’s in front of her and she’s smiling up at him, what he says is, “Where’d you get that?” and points to the dish in her hand.
The name of the shop is right on the side. She shows him. “Mango’s the best. Pistachio is a close second.”
Yeah, he isn’t a big ice cream guy, so this was a stupid opener.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he tells her, and she grins up at him like she absolutely knows what he’s trying to do and that he’s bad at it. “I’m Harry.”
“Allie.”
So he was right.
“Nice to meet you,” he says, and she eats a spoonful of her ice cream as she looks up at him. Shit. She’s even hotter when she’s right in front of him like this. “What are you up to tonight?”
She shrugs. “I’m not sure yet. All my friends are working.” Okay, so she’s local. Or local enough that the people she knows have jobs around here. “You?”
He shrugs. “Nothing, really. My mom’s hosting friends. I hate fireworks.”
She hums, has another spoonful. “I know of a barbecue,” she tells him, then seems sort of nervous to have said anything. “Like a proper smokehouse. If you wanna check it out?”
Harry tries to remain calm and not just agree too fast. He nods towards her ice cream cup. “Starting with dessert?”
She lets out a little laugh. “I won’t be judged for my choices.”
Harry holds up his hands, and she’s seriously fucking cute when she tilts her chin up at him like that.
“Lead the way,” he says, and then asks where she’s from and what she’s studying and a bunch of other questions he’s thought over the last few weeks.
When he’s wiping barbecue sauce from his fingers and sitting across from her at this picnic table, watching as she sips her beer, he says, “You’re easy to talk to.”
He likes that her reply is, “I know.”
He likes that she kisses him on the beach when he’s walking her home, asks him for his number and tells him there’re a bunch of other restaurants she wants to try if he wants to join her. After he says yes, she asks if he wants to meet her for brunch tomorrow. His hands are on her hips and her he says if they’re gonna end up together in the morning, maybe they should just spend the night together.
Allie grins up at him and says, “You know, you have a point,” and pulls him by the hand towards her house.
Hallie: Road trips
*note: this is written in the quarantine dreams ‘verse aka: quarantine au*
It starts the winter after the first wave. In January, they both have a shit ton of holiday time to take, because both of them barely put in for PTO when they were, you know, unable to travel and working from home. They should’ve taken it, absolutely. But oh well. Because they’re still working from home. They’re both just burnt out now, too.
After the election, after Allie had cried in his arms on the sofa when the winner was announced, and they drank celebratory champagne they’d bought just in case it went like this, she’d pulled away from him and said, “We should go to Georgia.”
It had been a joke, he thought.
But when they’re staring down the barrel of two weeks of holiday, she brings it up again. She says she knows it’s a weird time to travel, and they’ll have to be really safe, but what if they just got in the car and went South?
Anyway, Allie looks kind of beautiful in Savannah with these old ass houses all around. She looks kind of beautiful everywhere. She buys a souvenir tee shirt, the tackiest one she can find, tucks it into her jeans and pulls her cardigan overtop and somehow makes even that look cute. They eat a bunch of good food and then when they’re back at their hotel, after he’s brushed his teeth and is getting into bed, she has her map app open, saying something about always wanting to try Tennessee barbecue.
When they’re in line on a Saturday morning at 6am for this brisket a man at the place they had dinner last night told them is the best around, Harry shrugs his shoulders up closer to his ears and tells her, “Next roadtrip, let’s make sure it’s not cold as fuck.”
Allie smiles, leans into him, her hands stuffed deep into her pockets. His arms go around her because maybe that’ll help both of them.
“You wanna do more road trips?”
He shrugs, looks over her head towards the front of the line for no reason; they know this place doesn’t open til 7:30. He doesn’t want to commit to anything. Then he laughs at himself and glances back down at her.
“You’re a pretty good travel companion.”
Allie grins, all smug and cute, and says, “You just love me and wanna be around me all the time. It’s actually gross?”
He kisses her as he smiles, tells her, “Okay, Allie,” and her eyes are shining when he looks again.
-
They split the driving when they go to Yellowstone. It’s after Cassandra’s wedding, and Allie mentions it on a whim thinking Harry’ll tell her he can’t afford to take more time off. But after last year, after he used barely any days and both his boss and the director of HR at his firm gave him a talking to, he can sort of do whatever he wants.
He asks her when she wants to go, and she thinks she might literally cry. He knows how stressed she’s been about work, and that she can’t see herself lasting another six months at this company. This year has been hard and a lot of her trust has disappeared. She doesn’t think they'll ever get it back. She doesn’t think she wants them to try. She knows she could just quit, but maybe all she needs is a reset.
It’s hot and sunny and they brought Harry’s SUV instead of the sedan because of the hills or whatever, even though Allie’s feeling sort of shitty about the gas consumption.
Harry takes her favourite picture she’s ever seen of herself, when they’re hiking one day and the views are better than any she’s ever seen. The photo doesn’t do them justice.
“Let’s move here,” she says, and she’s definitely joking. Harry says some comment about becoming ranchers, and how he doesn’t feel like he’s cut out for barn chores.
Harry buys her a worry stone from one of the kitschy roadside stores as a joke. She secretly loves it, the smooth polish of the gem under her thumb as he drives. She puts it on her desk when they’re back home and she’s working. She rubs it between her fingers when she’s on Zoom calls. She thinks Harry’s definitely noticed but hasn’t said anything about it.
-
They do Vermont when his mom begs them to come to the summer place and he manages to tell her they can only swing a couple days with her because this is their one shot at a vacation this year. He honestly could propose to Allie, because she books the hotel literally as he’s on the phone with his mom telling her they can’t stay long.
They spend the rest of their time off fucking around, taking too long to drive from Connecticut to Vermont, and then deciding on a whim to come back through upstate New York.
Allie wants to stop at this candy store she’s seen on YouTube, and he wants to eat pastries at different local spots. They get a flat outside of Rochester and Allie thinks it’s hilarious that Harry both knows how to change a tire and does it right there on the side of the road. She takes videos and posts them to her stories, and her commentary, he can tell, is something she’s very proud of. When they get back into the car, she grabs him by the front of the shirt and just tells him, “You know I just think that was hot, right?”
Harry wipes sweat from his temple and nods. “I know.”
They see two people get engaged at Niagara Falls and Allie makes a gagging sound and it makes him laugh so hard the other couple look their way. He wheezes out an apology and takes Allie by the arm and tells her she’s awful as they make their way back to the car.
-
They end up driving around Italy because the thought of staying in one place for two weeks is kind of dreadful to both of them. Harry says something about how that probably is pretty telling. Allie just likes to see more. She thinks there’s so much value in making the most of your time in a place when you’re there.
Harry looks so good here that she kind of can’t stand him for it.
She buys an expensive dress in a local shop in one of the small towns they stop in. He kind of talks her into it. It’s this white summer dress with delicate yellow needlework on the straps and it fits her better than anything she’s ever had on. Harry says he’ll treat her, but he literally paid for the plane tickets, so.
They go to a pasta making class, which is about the most touristy thing they do. They meet this couple from Halifax who’re at the station in front of them. Harry honestly doesn’t need a class - while everyone else was making bread during the pandemic, he was perfecting pasta - but he still does everything. Allie mostly sits on a stool with an apron on drinking red wine and chatting to their new friends.
“Just like at home,” Harry says, grinning as he kneads. Allie squints at him and he looks pretty pleased with himself.
At the end of it, when she’s tipsy and full of delicious food, she holds his hand and god, he looks good here.
“What?” he asks, laughing. “You’re staring, drunky.”
She sticks her tongue out at him, which just makes him shake his head. “I could live here.”
“You always say that,” he reminds her, chuckling. It’s true. She says that at least once a road trip. “This is probably the first time I agree.”
She’s too drunk to be seriously considering buying a house in Italy with her fiancé. That’s absolutely not what she’s doing.
She googles houses when he’s in the shower the next morning, before they drive on to the next place.
No. No, that’s absolutely crazy.
Harry steps out of the bathroom with his hair wet, his skin tanned and a towel around his hips. He’s barely paying attention to her as he pulls clothes from his suitcase.
“We could live here,” she says quietly. Harry freezes, and then looks over at her, and she loves that he can tell when she’s just talking shit and when she actually might want to discuss something.
He just smiles at her, his white linen shirt in his hands. “Let’s talk about it in the car?”
Allie laughs, gets out of bed. She knows this is his way of reminding her of their checkout time. She kisses him on the way past to get to the shower. He reaches for her wrist to pull her back in for another.
“I’d live anywhere with you,” he tells her, and he’s being serious, too, and she knows that.
She scrunches her nose, because she knows he thinks that’s cute on her. But she doesn’t have any witty quip for him. She just tugs open his towel, which is one of her favourite ways to pester him, and then laughs all the way to the shower when he whines out her name like he’s annoyed.
Sprawling on the floor with the fan on and lights off + Hallie? 🤗
His AC breaks in summer of their second year in New Ham, when he’s got his house to himself again and Allie sleeps in his bed almost every night.
He does not know how to fix a central air conditioner. It’s not like he can just google it or call a repair service. He spends three days trying to research and tries a couple things and ultimately cannot fucking get it to work.
Allie’s house has AC, but it also has people in it.
He’s drinking iced coffee in the kitchen, sitting at the counter with an old National Geographic in front of him. He found three boxes of them in the basement storage room and he’s kind of into reading them and learning things, even though he’s sure lots of the facts and figures are outdated.
“Jesus,” she says when she walks in. He has all the windows closed and blinds pulled, but it’s still sweltering in here. This has to be the hottest day of the year. “You can’t live like this.”
He shrugs. What’s the alternative?
(He’s suggested an alternative that Allie’s vetoed. The alternative being that they just move into the house next door, the GIffords’ old place. It’s been empty and he knows there’s a spare key in his safe.)
“Don’t be so stubborn,” she says, but she’s grinning, because they both know she’s about the most stubborn person around. “Just come stay with me.”
“Mm. Sure. Me and Will can pop popcorn and braid each others’ hair,” he says, turns the page on this story about this weird fish that lives in the Congo River. “I was just going to sleep in the basement until it gets cooler.”
Allie heaves a deep sigh like he’s being unreasonable. Which he isn’t really. Will wants him around about as much as Harry wants Will around. Which is not at all. Which drives Allie crazy, but, admittedly, she does a good job of balancing her friendship with her best friend and her relationship with her boyfriend.
“Okay, well,” she says, and then her lips twist and he thinks she’s up to something. “If we’re gonna sleep down there, we should at least make it fun.”
Harry’s brow goes up. “What’ve you got in mind?”
She gives him a look like yes, absolutely that. They just look at each other a moment, and then she smiles and he smiles and she continues talking.
“Movies and snacks, bare minimum.”
Mhm. Right. Movies.
To her credit, she manages to ignore his hand until two thirds of the way through Independence Day.
Afterward, they’re lying on the floor, naked, sweat drying on their skin. It’s the first time all day he’s felt cool. Allie’s hip is pressed against his and she laughs after a moment, then takes a deep breath and lets it out.
“What?”
“Your ceiling fan makes a weird noise.”
His brow furrows and he looks over at her, barely able to make out her shape in the darkness. “What? No it doesn’t.”
“Mhm. Listen.” She waits a moment, then emulates the sound, which is absolutely hilarious and makes him laugh. “I can’t sleep with that going on.”
Harry leans up on his elbow, uses his left hand to draw a line down her stomach and then back up.
“Well, we didn't even make it through one movie.” His fingers drag over her hip and she sucks in a breath just like he knew she would. “And honestly, who needs sleep, anyway?”
She pulls him closer, kisses him a few minutes before pushing at his chest. “Nope. Too hot.”
She curls herself against him, and falls asleep while the big last scene of the movie plays. In the morning, he teases her about the whole thing with the fan noise, considering she was able to sleep with an action movie on.
In the morning, she also presses her naked body all up against his and kisses along his jaw and says, “Let’s stay down here all day,” and he just breathes out, “Okay,” which makes her laugh, too.
be the one to stay
“I’ll see you.”
He gives her this truly gorgeous look, pulls his keys from his pocket. “Probably,” he says, and Allie doesn’t want to think about fate, or luck, or timing, or chance, or any of that shit.
But when she’s watching him back out of the driveway, all she’s thinking about is whether there’s something bigger at play here. If there’s a reason they keep seeing each other and a reason it never really feels quite right, but definitely never feels wrong, either.
harry/allie | 26k | au
harry/allie: “You snuck into my room, at 4am…to cuddle?”
They shouldn’t even have ended up living together.
It was supposed to be Kelly and Harry and the overpriced loft conversion in the up and coming cusp-of-gentrification area of town. A nice two bedroom apartment to take into account Kelly’s nightshifts, and the late nights Harry might put in at the office.
Then Kelly and Harry broke up (again, Allie likes to think wryly) but apparently for real this time. And Allie ended up at the same work drinks with Cassie who’d dragged her there under false pretences - and Harry just happened to overhead her sister complaining about Allie crashing on her couch and how she couldn’t do that forever, come on, Allie -
They were both wine flushed, unsteady and off-kilter from the free bar. Allie watches Harry approaching and - his tie is loosened, his top button undone. His shirt’s untucked at the back and he still looks good, far too good. Even with glasses he pushes further up his nose with an impatient index finger, even with an untied lace.
“I have a spare room,” he starts. “I can do a deal, if you’re struggling.”
Allie scoffs at the insinuation. (It’s not wrong). “I don’t need your help, Bingham.”
It’s easy to tread old ground and it’s easier to dismiss then admit that maybe following her sister to New York with no actual plan of what to do next was not the wisest thing she has ever done. She’s ended up in the same bubble of people despite being hundreds of miles from home.
Harry says, “suit yourself,” and his tailored blazer moves as he shrugs a disinterested shoulder.
Their eyes keep meeting all night. Even when she’s standing on the damp pavement with bare feet because her shoes are pinching. Even when she has to wait for Cassie in the cold because she’s saying an over convoluted goodbye to that guy she insists is just a colleague, God, Allie.
Allie wakes up to a kink in her spine and the noise of her sister having painfully quiet sex with the strictly platonic colleague.
She texts Harry Bingham.
Cassie says it’ll last a month, maximum.
The whole roommates thing works better and worse than expected. Allie is subject to Harry’s off key ballad performances in the shower. Is witness to his extremely lacklustre attempts at cooking and the subsequent vicious protests from the smoke detector. The way he rolls an extremely precise joint if a day at the office becomes too much, the way she learns that it wasn’t always a joint - sometimes it was something heavier. But not now. Now he stands on a fire escape and contemplates for ten minutes.
She learns he tucks his phone between his cheek and his shoulder and say, “yes, mom,” and most of the time it’s impossible to tell whether it’s Kelly or his actual mom.
The loft has exposed bricks and pipework and too much chrome and glass to be actually comfortable. There’s a tiny nook in a window that Allie can squash herself into to read - then she starts finding classic literature there; an empty coffee mug. It looks out over a back alley – she can watch everyone else’s windows; watch everyone going about their day.
They’re roommates in the loosest sense because their paths rarely cross. Harry works long hours in the corporate law firm that seems determined to steal his soul. Allie works at the diner down the street which fancies itself a dive bar at night. It’s just for now. Just temporary.
They communicate via notes.
Stop stealing my towel written in the condensation on the mirror so she can see it when she showers.
I thought you didn’t like my shitty beer? on her cans of Bud light.
How does one human eat two pints of ice cream in less than 24 hours? I’m almost impressed but mostly pissed. Buy more.
Harry suggests they have a wine and cheese night completely unironically on the one night their schedules line up. They sit on the couch with slices of artisan cheese from the overly pretentious new deli on the corner in tiny waxed paper packages. Allie produces cheese slices and saltines and Harry stares at them in horror.
“A charcuterie board, Allie. Not a lunchable. How hard is it to understand?”
Allie wrinkles the packet of saltines at him, nudges the cheese slices with one socked toe. “Cheese, crackers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
She drinks beer because she’s not a middle-aged mother of three, but Harry sips red wine and gets stains around his mouth and on his front teeth. He complains that she didn’t tell him earlier when he slopes back from the bathroom.
Allie complains she can never feel her toes because of the stupid, impractical windows. Harry’s limbs are rolling and he sighs and lets her tuck her toes beneath the pillow separating them.
They barely cross over. In the morning, Harry grunts a greeting. Whoever’s up first makes the first pot of coffee. Allie orders his most commonly ordered dish whenever she gets Chinese and leaves the leftovers in the fridge. A thick knit blanket appears on the back of the couch.
Leftovers in the fridge.
Harry’s an embarrassingly good cook. Even his tomato and basil pasta makes her feel like she should go to confession.
Cassandra comes over one night, with Becca in tow. They laugh and drink wine and eat pasta Allie doesn’t admit she didn’t make the sauce for. Harry clatters in around 9pm, exhaustion pulling down the corner of his mouth. He smiles vaguely at Becca and Cassie.
“Ladies,” he greets, and he braces his forearms against the counter. He looks too good; his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbow, wire rimmed glasses on his nose. Allie pushes a glass of red wine over.
“There’s some in the oven.”
Harry tilts his glass her way, touches a hand to her shoulder on the way past.
Six months in, she’s gone way beyond the point where it would be reasonable to sleep with him.
Their sniping is more banter than anything else, now. She joins him on the fire escape and they practice interview techniques because she’s finally applying for an actual, real job.
Harry bakes cookies when she gets it although he’s the worst at icing them. He teaches her how to make basic pasta and tacos and stops complaining about the heat being on all the time. Lets her tuck her feet under his thighs to keep them warm.
They share dinner and joints and a blanket on the couch. Share the reading nook – share books, share bottles of wine (she’s warming to the idea) and taking out the trash. Clothes, sometimes, if Harry happens to leave a sweatshirt around and she’s cold. He leans against her side when they cook – their shoulders press together on the fire escape. He lays his feet in her lap and hugs her goodbye.
She’s fast asleep when her door creaks open, a sliver of light emerging through the crack. The motion itself isn’t startling - Harry sometimes comes and sits on her bed and talks about books or what colour suits him best or whether he should quit his job.
“Harry?” the name rasps in her sleep roughened throat. She recognises the figure and his steps – assured, measured. He’s paused at the side of her bed like he’s weighing up his next options.
The neon light of her alarm clock shows five to four.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Okay. Maybe drink more. That always helps me.”
She thinks he huffs out a single semblance of mirth. Remains standing, although he’s inching slowly closer. Allie thinks she recognises his state of mind.
“Harry,” she says softly. “You’ve snuck into my room, at 4am…to cuddle?”
“No,” he brings his shoulders to his ears and Allie can’t see it in the gloom, but she knows they’ll be tinged red. “Not at all. Just wanted to make sure you can’t sleep too.”
“Mission accomplished.” She knows she could close her eyes and retrieve sleep easily. But – she shifts sideways. Pulls the covers up.
“Presumptuous, Pressman.”
“You’re in my room at 4am.”
“Touché.” The sheets rustle as he slides between them – and then he’s close, closer than they sit on the couch or the fire escape but somehow still not close enough. Then one warm arm slides in the gap between the mattress and her neck. It’s warm and toned because he deals with stress by working out in his non-existent lunch break.
Allie curls a hand around the crook of his elbow. Waits for his breathing to even out. Closes her eyes.
56 for hallie?
He meets Allie on a blind double date. Which isn’t as messed up as it sounds, he swears. See, it’s only blind for them. Maybe it’s weird to call it a blind date, then. Whatever. She’s dating his girlfriend’s brother. And dating probably isn’t accurate, either. He’s been with Kelly for years, and Kevin’s now been with Allie for six months. It’s the longest relationship the guy’s ever had, despite Kevin being two years older than him and Kelly.
Anyway, she and Kevin show up at this trattoria Harry chose. She looks pretty and nervous, and he knew what she looked like because Kelly showed him pictures on Instagram. God, she’s been showing him pictures of this girl for like, three months. Since the first one popped up on Kevin’s page and everyone started losing their shit about how it must actually be serious.
Kevin sits across from him, and Harry chooses the wine for the table, and Kelly has no chill at all and is way too excited to like, interrogate this poor woman.
Harry learns that Allie works in strategy for this startup that’s not really a startup by definition but has just started to scale. Harry’s pretty familiar with their trajectory, because his financial advisor keeps them on his radar. He mentions something about one of the pivots the company just made, and Allie gets this little look on her face and tries to suppress a smile, and Kevin just looks at her like he’s proud of her, or something.
She says, “That was all me,” which is not at all how Harry’d expected her to take credit for it, but there’s something he likes a lot about this honestly adorable woman who seems pretty humble owning her big success.
When he and Kelly are getting into bed in the evening, she asks, “What’d you think?” and he’s honest when he says Allie seems great and she and Kevin seem happy together.
…
The holidays are fucking awkward, because the holidays are always fucking awkward. Only he and Kelly know about their parents’ affair, and they both dread going home for this occasion or any other one. They’ve been able to get out of it because of Kelly’s schedule at the clinic, but this is her off year and they kind of just have to suck it up and deal with it, don’t they?
Christmas Eve, Harry walks into the kitchen of Kelly’s house to open another bottle of champagne, and finds Allie there eating leftover Chinese straight from the container. They’d ordered in, as is the Aldrich Christmas Eve tradition, but Kevin and Allie had been late arriving from the city.
She looks a little embarrassed at being caught, covers her mouth with her hand as she looks at him. He just smiles, lifts a brow, and walks past her to get to the wine fridge.
“We didn’t stop for food. I’m starving and drunk,” she says, and then laughs, and Harry can’t help laughing with her. “I know better than to drink on an empty stomach, but…”
Harry wonders if she’s going to say it. She just looks up at him and he knows she won’t.
“Gary’s persuasive,” he says, and it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, honestly, but whatever. At some point, he should probably let it go. Allie nods, anyway, and then continues eating fried rice. “Good drive?”
She shrugs. “It was fine. I keep thinking about work.”
Harry breathes a laugh, pops the cork on the champagne and starts pouring. “Same. I took some days while Kelly’s off, and I know it’s gonna come back to bite me in the ass.” Allie smiles too brightly, pulls her phone from her back pocket and shows him her Slack notifications on her homescreen. She has to scroll three times to get to the end. Fuck. He gives her a look. “On Christmas Eve?”
She shrugs. “I’m kind of the glue that holds everything together.” Her phone lights up on the counter again and Harry just...He thinks she likes it. Being the one people need. “Kevin hates it.”
Harry scoffs, wonders how shitty he can be about the guy in this house, to this woman.
“I mean, Kevin wouldn’t get it,” he says, figuring it’s sort of delicate. It’s not that Kevin’s useless or doesn’t have a good job. He does. He works in HR for a Fortune 500, but his culture is strictly 9-5 with sundown hours on communications and… It’s just different. “But you should definitely turn off notifications.”
He grins, and she laughs, and she puts the container back in the fridge and picks up her glass and offers to carry the bottle back to the living room while he carries glasses. Kevin makes a big thing of her returning, and Harry tries to ignore how pretty she looks when she sits down on the floor near the fireplace and the colouring looks good on her.
He fails.
...
One of Kelly’s patients goes into labour right literally as they’re walking towards Kevin’s place to meet him and Allie for board game night. Which is a thing he hates but does once a month anyway, because Kevin and Kelly are nerds and he and Allie always lose but try to cheat and conspire and play spoiler. Last time, they played Catan and he and Allie hoarded shit and wouldn’t trade with Kevin and helped Kelly win because Kevin was being kind of a dick.
He wants to bail when Kelly has to leave, but she insists he should go because it’d be rude to cancel last minute, so he shows up and feels awkward as fuck as he explains that Kelly’s not coming. Kevin pours him a beer and Allie tells him they now have way too much charcuterie so he better eat both his and Kelly’s shares.
He convinces them to play poker instead of some shitty board game and Allie is way too excited, says she and her best friend went through a period in high school where they learned to play and she always used to beat him. Harry doesn’t know how, because she’s got the worst poker face he’s ever seen.
“Care to make things interesting?” he asks, and Allie looks right at him across the table, narrows her eyes.
“I’ve only ever played for pennies,” Kevin chimes in. Harry barely spares him a glance.
“$100 a hand?” Harry suggests as he shuffles and Allie laughs.
“No thanks, rich boy. Some of us have to make rent.”
It makes him laugh, and she decides they should just play for pistachios, and Harry has fun anyway, so that’s kind of something.
Kevin packs it in before things are cleared up and Harry’s left, which feels rude as fuck, but Harry doesn’t comment. He just says goodnight and asks Allie if she wants a hand as Kevin closes the bedroom door behind him.
They’re mostly quiet as they move dishes to the kitchen, but Harry thinks he can tell she’s...embarrassed or something. Which he sort of gets, though he thinks the one who should be embarrassed is Kevin.
“Early morning, or something?” he asks, and he only realizes maybe it’s shitty is because of the look she cuts him.
She seems to think about her response, then leans her hip against the counter and says, “Or someone whose mother babied him and refuses to break the habit of being looked after.”
Oh. Oh shit.
Harry crosses his arms and raises his brow. “Wanna tell me how you really feel?”
She lets out a breath, sinks her hand into her hair at the top of her head. Which is...She looks good. He’s allowed to notice.
“Sorry. I’m...It’s a whole thing.” Right. So they’ve talked about it before and Kevin’s pulled this anyway. “Do you have this issue with Kelly?”
Harry tilts his head. He thinks it’s different, because gender roles, or whatever. Kelly’s super tidy, but also doesn’t let him get away with leaving her to do everything on her own. Not that he tries.
Jesus, it only dawns on him now that this situation is even more fucked because Allie doesn’t even live here.
“No,” he answers honestly. “Also, I was babied, too, but I don’t expect to be waited on.”
She definitely hears what he’s actually saying. Which is that he agrees she shouldn’t have to put up with this shit. She gives him a little smile, blinks up at him and says, “Then you’re a unicorn. Because the men I date just want a replacement mommy.”
He should laugh at her joke. He should laugh at her joke and definitely not say what he does say.
Which is, “Then you’ve obviously never dated anyone like me.”
Allie’s eyes narrow like she’s wondering if he’s really doing what she thinks he’s doing. He doesn’t have an answer for that, because he honestly doesn’t fucking know what he’s playing at here.
So he just lets out a little chuckle, asks if she needs help with anything else, and then says he’s gonna take off when she tells him she’s got the rest.
He walks home in the cold and knows he’s gotta be more careful.
…
They end up dancing together at Kelly and Kevin’s cousin’s wedding in May. Allie looks beautiful in her pink dress, and this is the kind of occasion where it’s safe to tell her so. She has one hand resting on his upper back and the other tucked into his when she looks up at him and thanks him for the compliment.
“It’s weird I’ve never seen you in a suit, since you probably wear one every day,” she says, and he feels her thumb slip up under the collar of his jacket at the base of his neck. Which is strikingly intimate and he wants to be surprised by her boldness, but he isn’t, really.
“Yeah,” he says, then grins at her. “Wasn’t sure you could handle it.”
She lets out a laugh and shakes her head, and Harry just smiles and keeps leading her around the dance floor using steps he learned when he was a teenager.
…
Kelly doesn’t cheat on him. She’s adamant about that and he believes her because they stopped lying to each other when they were like, 18.
She’s crying when she tells him she thinks she’s falling in love with one of the nurses at work, and Harry just…
Honestly, he feels numb.
He’s not mad at her - how the fuck could he be mad at her? - and he isn’t bothered that they’re breaking up. He’s mostly just scared to be alone again. Because when they broke up for a few years in college, he had some pretty terrible habits to deal with his loneliness, and he doesn’t want to do that again.
Allie texts him that she’s so sorry, and to let her know if he needs anything.
Kelly moves out of their place. The place they got together when they moved in with each other. He doesn’t know if he wants to stay here, and there’s a whole bunch of shit happening with a friend of his who’s a lawyer, so they can figure out how he can buy Kelly out of her part of the place.
It feels weird to be here with all her shit gone. Feels less like his home and more like a hotel, or something. The mantel is clear now. It was previously covered with all Kelly’s little decor pieces and some pictures. He’s obviously not going to keep pictures of them in this place now.
He sends Allie a picture - knows she’ll know what the mantel used to look like - and asks what he should put there now.
She replies ‘This is the saddest fucking message I’ve ever gotten.’ and then sends him a bunch of Pinterest links ranging from nice, to cluttered, to outrageous and clearly joking. He considers trying to use one of them as an example, but just hires a decorator instead. Allie sends back a gif that makes him laugh when he tells her.
…
Kevin invites him over to watch the Stanley Cup finals, and Harry goes even though he doesn’t really care about sports and definitely doesn’t give a single fuck about hockey. He thinks he goes because he thinks he might get to see Allie. Which sort of fucks him up, honestly.
“Nah. We broke up.”
Harry’s head turns too fast when Kevin says that. Maybe because it’s so casual. (That’s definitely not why.)
“What?”
Kevin shrugs. “I think we were just comfortable and going through the motions. She said something about Kelly inspiring her to not settle. Which felt like an insult.”
Harry wants to roll his eyes. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with Allie saying she doesn’t want to settle.
He texts her when he leaves Kevin’s between the second and third periods of the game. Says he just heard the news.
She sends back a Spotify link to Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, that Dylan song Harry remembers his dad playing when he was younger. He doesn’t know what that means, but he listens to the song on his way home, anyway.
…
Allie brings a six pack of canned wine to the park when they meet up, and Harry sort of thought they’d just sit and chat, but she looks cute as fuck and happy to see him and then unpacks the drinks and literal Cracker Jack because she saw it at the bodega and thought it’d be funny to bring it. She also has a little container of cut fruit and two fancy looking cupcakes.
“I literally brought nothing,” he says, and she cracks a can open for herself and sets another next to him.
She smiles. “You can get it next time.”
Right. Next time.
Anyway, she doesn’t feel badly for breaking up with Kevin, and she says she’d wanted to for a while and just waffled back and forth because there wasn’t really anything wrong, you know? Harry knows. He’s been there.
“I hope this doesn’t sound awful, but hearing about you and Kelly - and Kelly specifically - just like, gave me permission to want more.”
Harry nods. He’s not bothered. He thinks she’s right. He thinks she’s braver than he is.
…
He leans in to kiss her and she leans away, looks at him through her lashes like she’s not sure what he’s doing. So that could be embarrassing, right? Except there’s this little, tiny smile on her lips and she won’t break eye contact, and Harry lets out a breath and ducks his head a little.
They’ve made their ‘games night’ bi-weekly, and sometimes weekly, and it’s now less of a games night and now more of a time to do whatever they want.
What Harry wants this time, when they’re on his balcony and drinking this iced tea she promised he’d like, is to kiss her.
“Harry,” she says all quietly, so he looks back at her again. “Is this a good idea?”
He answers, “Yes,” too quickly. It makes her laugh, and he thinks he’s fucking blushing, or something, which is stupid. He watches her a second, and her hair’s blowing around a bit, so he reaches over and pushes it behind her ear. She lets him do that. Watches, even. “What, you’ve never thought about us?”
She says, “I have,” in this soft voice he likes too much.
“Yeah?”
She nods, says, “For too long,” and he thinks he knows what that means. She was thinking about it when she was with Kevin, just like he was thinking about it while he was with Kelly.
“So,” he draws out. “Why aren’t we kissing?”
He asks it with genuine curiosity, but also to make her laugh again, which she does. They both turn so their shoulders are square. Allie touches him first, puts her hand on his waist. It’s not like they’ve never touched before. They hug every time they greet each other or say goodbye. He’s thrown his arm around her before, and two weeks ago, when they were sunbathing because that’s what she wanted to do, he traced his fingertips over a scar on her back and asked her what it was from.
“I guess I don’t really have a good reason.” She’s smiling, and Harry’s smiling back at her, and he thinks maybe he’s never wanted someone the way he wants her. “Why don’t you try again? See what happens.”
He tips his head back, laughing, and then Allie’s other hand moves to the back of his neck and he’s holding her hips when she’s definitely the one kissing him first.
keep pushing back the time to call it quits
His room feels differently in the daytime. Less like some weird boy cave. Full of natural light coming through the windows. Everything feels lighter and she does, too, unencumbered by the thought that people downstairs might’ve seen them coming up, or the idea that Cassandra would be disappointed. Because Allie’s already done this once before, so what’s there to worry about doing it again?
27K words | canon ‘verse | aka: they were sleeping together the whole time | aka: they were in cahoots
10. “I’m going to marry you one day”
He’s a model turned influencer and all round thirst trap and Allie is definitely, certainly not interested.
She meets him once at a party in Vegas and he looks her up and down in a way that makes her roll her eyes and turn away from him. Then he leans on the bar next to her and says, “I’m Harry,” like he thinks that means something and it’s not a total dick move because everyone with a phone knows who he is.
“I’m not interested,” she replies, and he grins like he likes it. Allie ends up smiling, which is a thing she regrets. When he lifts his drink to his lips, he’s still looking at her like he knows something she doesn’t.
He says, “We’ll see,” as she’s walking away, and she shoots him a disgusted look over her shoulder, because gross.
…
He starts commenting on her Instagram posts, and it’s honestly truly annoying that he’s even found her. It obviously wasn’t hard. And she’s not a celebrity, or anything, but she’s got a bit of a following because she’s a stylist and some of her most famous clients tag her in stuff.
This profile comes out on this website, and Apartment Therapy comes to do a house tour of her place in the Village.
Harry DMs her about one of the art pieces on her wall, asks if she’d consider doing some design work for him.
She thanks any deity she can think of that she’s in a good enough financial position to turn him down.
…
She doesn’t so much agree to go for a drink with him as they’re out with people and apparently he and Becca are friends, or something, and he’s there and actually acting more chill than Allie’s ever seen him.
When her glass is empty, he says, “Another?” and Allie nods and tries not to think his smile is handsome.
Fuck. It’s just that...Look, he’s a model. He’s a literal model. Was, anyway. Him being handsome is just an undeniable fact. And that cut of jeans looks really good on him.
His arm brushes hers as she asks Becca a question about how long she’s in town, and Allie doesn’t move and knows she should.
…
He’s high at the Teen Choice Awards. She can tell. She hasn’t seen him since that night in New York, but sometimes when he DMs her now, she replies. And he asked her for her number and she said no, and he said one day she’d give it to him. Two weeks later, there were photos of him leaving Nobu with this model Allie knows is a fucking horrendous person. They were holding hands and getting into a car.
“Allie!” he says, his voice too loud, just a little too sharp even for a party. He puts an arm around her and she hugs him back, because she’s just...She’s gotten over not liking him at all.
She thinks, really, part of the thing is, she keeps getting these little glimpses that he’s different, you know? And she likes those. She isn’t the biggest fan of this.
“Hey. You’re having a good time.”
He grins at her. She looks at his hair. It looks good. Almost perfect. She thinks his outfit is basic and bad. She wants to tell him to let her style him.
“It’s a party, Allie.” He says her name too much. It’s weird. Then he steps closer, looks down at her and honestly, it’s sort of hot that he isn’t touching her. Would be hotter if he wasn’t so obviously on something. “We could have a good time together.”
She scoffs, shakes her head and, despite knowing better, smiles up at him. “Keep dreaming, Harry.”
He reaches for her hand, then brings it up to press against his heart. “I do, you know.” She rolls her eyes, but thinks...No. No, this isn’t flattering. “Dream girl, right here.”
She presses her tongue against the back of her teeth and he grins down at her. She pushes against his chest and tells him to have a good night.
Weirdly, she thinks she knows him well enough to know he definitely watches her leave.
…
He gets a three episode arc on a popular show that makes everyone cry every week. When he posts TikToks with the key cast members, Allie finds herself laughing and almost wishing she could text him. Just to say congratulations.
She DMs him instead, thinks this is the first time she’s ever reached out to him first. He sends back the black heart. She doesn’t know why that makes her feel so fucking weird.
…
She dresses Zendaya for the Met Ball, knows she’s got massive shoes to fill and that this is another make or break moment.
She, herself, is dressed in all black and gets Zendaya in the car and out of the car and fixes the dress and the headpiece and the jewelry, and then the flashes are going off and Allie feels like she can breathe because her work is done. When she turns around, Harry’s standing there in an all black suit with gold dust in his hair and a delicate tie pin, and…
He looks so fucking good Allie hates herself for staring like everyone else.
He leans down to kiss her cheek, which is...There’re cameras pointed at them and flashes going off and god, this is going to be such a fucking thing, isn’t it?
“Sorry,” he says, and she thinks it’s for the attention, but then he reaches up with his thumb and wipes gold dust off her nose as he smiles at her.
“You’re gonna be late.”
He says, “They’ll wait,” with a confidence she finds hotter than she should.
He winks, then slips a hand into his pocket and walks towards the carpet and the stairs.
Allie watches him for as long as it takes to count to 10 and then leaves.
…
“You look great,” someone says behind her, almost sounds surprised, and when she turns around and he’s standing there, she’s a little flattered.
She’s not usually the one in the fancy dresses, you know? She’s trying to think if he’s ever seen her in anything other than whatever pants she threw on.
“Thanks,” she says, because Becca made her promise to get better at accepting compliments.
She’s at this gala for a charity she volunteers with. She’s surprised he’s here. When she asks him about it, he just looks a little bashful and says, “I just...made a couple donations.”
She thinks those were not small donations.
“Are you trying to keep me on my toes, or something?” she asks, and he laughs, smiles at her. “You keep popping up where I least expect you.”
He hums, reaches out and pushes a lock of hair off her shoulder. “I’d be pretty happy to see you more often.”
She thinks they’ve been doing this for like, 18 months or something. She can’t really remember why she was so insistent on ignoring him.
“Maybe you’ve earned my number,” she says, and then tries not to smile too widely at the way his eyes light up.
“Yeah?”
She shrugs, grabs her glass of champagne off the bar. She says, “Maybe,” and brushes against him as she walks away.
She DMs it to him as she’s leaving at the end of the night. It only halfway feels like a mistake.
…
It’s Paris, and Fashion Week, and Harry in a wool Burberry coat that hasn’t even been on a runway yet, and she knew he’d be here but didn’t tell him she would be. No, she doesn’t know why she kept that to herself.
It’s raining and she’s, frankly, worried about her outfit, this crepe-y top with her pants and these Louboutin heels she treated herself to just for this trip.
She’s holding her umbrella as he walks towards her outside this venue.
She never would’ve paired that jacket with those boots. She tells him that instead of saying hello, and he laughs, leans in to kiss her cheek like he’s started doing. Something about Harry in Paris is just almost too much to handle. He smells differently. His hair’s a bit damp. He looks so fucking good she feels like she’s making it up.
“I’m working,” she tells him after he’s asked her to come for a drink at his hotel after the show.
Honestly, he’s never been so direct. He’s never invited her to his hotel before. God, they’ve never even actually been alone together.
“I respect the hustle,” he says, though she can tell he’s disappointed by her no. She sort of likes that, too. She thinks he does mean it. “I leave in two days, though.”
She lets out a laugh and they move towards the steps. “Yeah? Is there an expiration date on your very clear adoration for me?”
Harry stops, and she regrets her words immediately. She meant it to be teasing. It’s just supposed to be a joke. It’s this thing they do.
She turns, and he’s on the step two lower than hers, just looking at her like she’s hit on something a little too close to home.
“No,” he says, which is definitely not what she was expecting. Then that grin is back, the one she sees directed at her regularly, but hardly ever anywhere else. “No, I’m gonna marry you one day.”
Allie lets out an obnoxious and probably very unflattering laugh, and turns to continue inside. It’s just that Harry reaches for her wrist and pulls, and she sort of crashes against his chest, and then his hands are moving up onto her face and they’re level with how they’re standing on the steps. So when he kisses her, it feels so natural and so good and so…
Allie curls her fists into the lapels of this expensive ass coat he’s wearing and lets out a little sound, then feels him smiling against her lips.
When he pulls away, she notices the cameras, knows there’re now gonna be photos everywhere of them and him in that coat with those stupid boots and her umbrella over them and she distantly thinks she’s really happy she knows she looks as good as she does.
She says, “Let’s skip the drink, but keep the hotel.”
Harry breathes a laugh like he wasn’t expecting that, but nods, and then they walk into the venue side by side.
She feels the need to make something very clear, though.
“I’m not gonna marry you.”
Harry’s lips twist and he sets his hand on her back as navigate through the crowd, and he says, “We’ll see,” and she thinks he really likes the way she looks at him over her shoulder.
Harry/Allie: I'm the one you never thought to look for. You're the only one I see.
i’m the only one you never thought to look for. you're the only one I see
She was seven and he was eight.
Allie always says that she doesn’t remember the story past that, that the only part she really, truly knows is the start. She says that Harry’s always been the one to color it in, all vivid and bright, until it lights up enough that she can’t help but think that what she’s telling is her own.
“How do you not remember?” he’ll ask over and over, almost incredulous, incredibly fond.
She’ll shrug, and he’ll roll his eyes and go on telling it to whoever’s there to listen.
She doesn’t remember pushing him out of the tree or chasing him across the playground. She doesn’t remember kissing him on a dare or stealing his baseball cap or telling him all of her secrets just for fun.
She was peculiar and intense, he’ll say, and he’ll look right at her as he says it, his look a mixture of admiration and something else, something she’s never quite been able to place.
Any other boy with a smile like that would tear her apart. Not him, though. No, never Harry.
-
He’s smiling at her from across the room.
She’s right next to the Christmas tree, keeps bumping into that ornament Harry made when he was five, the one that looks out of place amongst the silver and gold of everything else. She’s talking to his aunt, his Dad’s sister, the one who’s always going on and on about freedom.
There’s something about Bingham’s and freedom, something in the way they talk about it, like it gives a person the strength to live forever.
Harry always talks about freedom so reverently, in a way that’s so incredibly unlike him. He’s so serious about it. You’re not bound by anything, he’ll say. Don’t you want that, Pressman?
She wonders if there’s a difference in being bound by someone and being bound to someone. She wonders if he knows the answer. She wonders if the answer matters as much to him as it does to her.
Because sometimes she thinks that they’ve been holding onto each other for their entire lives, and sometimes she worries that she’ll never be able to let him go.
His aunt is still talking, going on and on about fast cars and danger and how there’s a sort of freedom in that too, but Allie’s not listening to any of it. Because Harry’s walking over and there’s confidence, so much confidence in his stride. She can’t remember a year she didn’t attend this Christmas party; she was here when Cassandra was sick, and was here when her Grandfather died, and she’ll probably come back here long after she’s out of West Ham. Still, she doesn’t have anywhere near that much confidence in her step. She probably never will.
Faintly, it’s registering that he’s saying something, something like, I’m going to have to steal Allie away for a moment. And then his hand is on the small of her back, and that’s constant and familiar and confident, and his aunt is laughing, and she’s still talking about freedom still going on and on even without a proper audience.
“So, where’s my thank you?”
She blinks up at him. They’re in the kitchen now, the holiday music suddenly faint. She doesn’t know if she misses it. She likes hearing him hum along to the classics. He could probably make a career out of that, out of Christmas music or just performing in general. She’d pay to watch him perform. She can’t be alone in that.
“What?” she asks.
He laughs. “For saving you from my aunt. You looked bored out of your mind.”
She’s smiling, playing with the edges of her dress but still staring up at him, always at him. “It happens every year. You’d think I’d know how to escape by now.”
“Well, you’ve got me to save you, Pressman.”
“Always?” she asks, purposefully not soft. Never soft. They’re not going to do that again. She’s not going to let them fall back into that.
“Always,” he echoes, and it’s soft anyways, almost defiantly soft. She can hear her heart beat loud in her chest, traitorous and booming and also familiar, just like everything else that comes along with him.
He grabs her a slice of that flourless chocolate cake his mom always has the caterers make. It’s because it’s Allie’s favorite, and it’s because the Bingham’s always seem to remember stuff like that. Harry probably knows her better than she knows herself, and he probably always has.
“What’d you get me for Christmas this year?” she asks. It’s a routine now, has been since they were little, back when she was pushing him out of trees and chasing him around playgrounds.
“I thought we were past presents, Pressman.”
“Well that’s good to hear because I didn’t get you anything.”
He grins over at her. “That’s a lie.”
Her face scrunches up, her fork scraping the plate, Harry pushing his last bite of cake towards her. “I guess you’ll never know.”
Karen slips into the kitchen at that moment, rolling her eyes when she sees the two of them. She smiles first at Harry, like there’s a secret in the air that Allie isn’t aware of, and she her gaze shifts to Allie, turns soft.
“I swear to God if you two ate all the cake…” she jokes, and Allie lets out a light laugh, turning to Harry like they have a secret, like they’re co-conspirators, partners in crime. Only he’s looking at her with something akin to admiration in his eyes, admiration mixed with something else, that look that she’s never quite been able to place.
“I think I’ll miss this, once I’m gone,” he’s saying, probably to her, but she’s too caught up in the sound of her heart to really be paying much attention. Here he goes again, on and on about freedom. Maybe one day she’ll remind him that it’s not possible to live forever, no matter how free you are. Maybe one day she’ll remind him that it’s okay to attach yourself to someone. Anyone.
Her.
A boy like him with a smile like that… Harry’s always been the only one with the power to tear her apart. It’s always ever only been him.
Yeah, only him.
send me song lyrics and a pairing and i’ll write you a drabble
46. “Somehow, i always seem to end up here. With you.”
He has a one night stand with her when all he knows is her first name and that she looks pretty fucking good in these ridiculous overalls with her little black top underneath. There’s a party, and alcohol, and he keeps checking she’s sure and she keeps laughing and saying yes. Keeps saying it until it’s breathy and her hands are in his hair, and…
“Fuck,” she says in the morning, just enough panic in her voice to make him scared. “Fuck.”
“Are you okay?” he asks, because he’s not an asshole, and she’s throwing back the covers and getting out of his bed, and yeah, he looks, because she doesn’t have any clothes on. He rubs his eye with his fingertips as she spins around and looks at him. She looks distracted by him, too. He likes that.
“I have a fucking boyfriend,” she tells him, and it almost sounds accusatory, like it’s something he was supposed to know even though they just met last night, or whatever.
And honestly, it sounds like her problem.
He says, “Okay,” and flops back against his pillows, and it makes her laugh, which is unexpected, but he’s into it.
She gets dressed, says goodbye without touching him again, and look, it’s not like he’s never done this before, okay? He goes about his day just like he normally would, and frankly, ignores the text he gets from his own ex-girlfriend asking if he went home with that girl last night.
…
Calling it a one night stand is a little bit of a lie, really, because a week later she’s knocking on his door and pushing him against the wall when he lets her in. He asks her what the deal is with her boyfriend, and she asks, “Do you actually care?” and he decides he really doesn’t. He’s getting what he wants. Who’s he to have any kind of feelings about her situation?
She stays the night again. He wonders if she’s done this kind of thing before. He thinks she hasn’t, or she wouldn’t be sleeping next to him. But he likes the way she looks in the morning. Likes the way she looks like she wants him again. Likes the way she says, “I should go,” but is also looking at his mouth and sliding her hand down his body.
…
He sees her on campus months later walking with some dude who...Harry’s not being an asshole deliberately, but the guy’s not as attractive as he is. He just...it’s a fact, okay?
She locks eyes with him, gives him way to hot a look considering she’s literally with someone else, and Harry tries not to react because he doesn’t feel like getting into a fight with this random guy for hitting on his girl, or whatever.
…
She’s at a beach party he goes to in the summer. She’s wearing this bikini that makes him a little weak, and a Yale ballcap with her hair all wavy over her shoulders, and he sort of wants to comment that this is what dreams are made of, but as he’s approaching, the guy walks up to her, hooks an arm around her waist and presses a kiss right on her lips in front of everyone.
She comes to sit next to him later, by the fire, crosses her legs and sets her beer between her thighs and looks so fucking good he just watches her a minute.
“You know, I wanna ask for your number, but that just creates all this temptation to keep doing this.”
Harry grins, looks into her eyes and resists the temptation to play with the strings of her bikini at her hip. “Oh yeah? What’s this, exactly.”
She laughs, which he likes. “Come with someone else and leave with you?”
He takes a sip of his drink and looks her up and down. Blatantly. He wants her to see it.
“Let’s be honest. You come with me, too.”
She barks out a laugh and shoves at his shoulder, says, “You’re awful,” and yeah, he’s got a witty reply to that, too. He just leans over and says this one into her ear, hears the breath she lets out, feels her hand brush his as their palms are pressing into the sand behind them.
Her eyes meet his when he pulls away, and she says, “Can we go?” and Harry knows he should say no, but that’s not what happens.
…
They meet for a drink when there’s a brand new diamond ring on her finger and he’s seeing someone and they both know exactly how this is going to go, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
It’s not like they don’t do this regularly anyway. Last month when she pulled him into her apartment, her hand was bare. He knows that much. And he’d told her about his girlfriend and she’d just nodded when her lips were against his neck, so.
Honestly, he doesn't know how she doesn’t feel bad about this. He does, and he’s not committed to marry someone.
He asks her about it when they’re in his bed and she’s playing with his hair.
She shrugs. “Getting married feels like the thing I’m supposed to do. Doing this with you is the thing I want to do.”
He lets out a breath, looks over at her. “It can’t be that simple.”
She shrugs, and he knows he’s right. That it’s not that simple.
…
She shows him a picture of herself in her wedding dress. His heart beats too hard at the sight of it, the delicate lace against her skin, her hair swept over her shoulder. Fuck.
“What if he finds out?” he asks, his hand skimming up under her shirt. It makes her breath catch when his thumb brushes against this spot he’s known about for years now.
“What if she does?”
He barely stops kissing her neck as he says, “We broke up,” and Allie freezes, pushes him away so she can look at his face. He shrugs a shoulder and she gives him this sad little smile, puts both her hands on his face and kisses him softer than she ever has.
Harry presses her back against the sofa because he doesn’t want to think about that too hard. What it means. What he might want it to mean.
…
He isn’t sure, really, how to tell her he’s moving out of state. In the end, he avoids the conversation entirely, and then when she invites herself over and he’s not strong enough to say no, his house is half packed into boxes and she looks like she’s going to cry.
“You’re leaving,” she says, and it isn’t a question, and Harry just nods as he pours her a drink. He’s having a hard time looking at her, which is sort of not at all his normal experience. “Where? When?”
“DC. Couple weeks.” He turns, sees the sad look on her face and presses the glass into her hand when he’s standing right in front of her.
She hesitates, chews her bottom lip and looks over again at the stack of boxes in his living room.
“Were you going to tell me?”
He sighs, is surprised that he doesn’t avoid her eyes now. Honestly, he waffled back and forth on letting her know. He only now feels like it would’ve been kind of awful not to.
“Does it make a difference?” he asks anyway, because…
Because suddenly it feels like her answer is really fucking important.
Allie blinks. He thinks there’re tears in her eyes, and he hates that. Then she just nods gently, and he doesn’t honestly even know what that means. They’re not together, have never been together. They just do this regularly enough to know each other pretty well. To be important to each other. But she’s married to someone else and Harry…
Harry needs to get over the idea of them at some point. Maybe moving away will help him with that. Not that that’s why he’s doing it.
“Somehow I always seem to end up here,” she whispers, looks down, swirls the ice in her glass. He looks, too, at her hand. Her right hand, the one without a ring, and her dark red nail polish he knows’ll look incredible against his skin when she’s touching him after this. When they undress each other and reset things, stop talking about feelings. She looks back up at him, a little smile on her lips. “With you.”
He grins, because he thinks if he doesn’t steer this away from this serious shit, they’re going to do something stupid, like fall in love.
“What you want, right?”
She laughs, this bright, gorgeous sound that echoes through his half empty house.
Before she leaves, when she’s getting dressed and wearing just her bra and jeans, she stops, drops her shirt on the bed and moves to sit down next to him. She looks him dead in the eye and then sets her hand on his side.
“Don’t move,” she says, dead serious, and Harry lets out a breath, wishes she wasn’t making this so fucking hard. “What if you don’t move?”
He shakes his head. “I already gave notice and accepted the offer, Allie. I’ve bought a house.” She looks mad, like she thinks he should’ve consulted her, or something. Which is a little fucked up, because like...God, they don’t owe each other anything. She’s not his wife.
She leans closer, reaches up and moves her thumb along his bottom lip. He parts his lips for her on instinct alone, and fuck, he wishes he never wanted her this bad.
“I could give you a reason to stay,” she says, and he thinks she’s joking. She sounds like she’s joking.
It’s late and there’s someone waiting on her to get home. She’s gotta be joking.
And honestly…
“You’ve had lots of opportunities to do that,” he tells her, and he shouldn’t, and he feels badly, and he’s surprised as hell that she doesn’t pull her hand away immediately and leave.
What she does instead is lean closer, slide her hand around to the back of his head and kiss him, and...God, he knows this is always a bad idea, and that he shouldn’t feel this fucking good about her reaction to the thing he’s said. It’s not gonna change anything for them.
She still leaves. She still looks sad but doesn’t say anything else about him moving. They don’t say they’ll see each other soon, but that’s not a thing they’ve ever actually done.
…
His hotel room is stark and modern and he spins his phone in his hand at least 80 times before he says, “For fuck’s sake,” out loud to himself and just gives in and calls her. He’s fooling himself thinking he doesn’t want to.
She answers, “Well, well,” and sounds fucking happy, and he catches sight of his smile in the mirror at just the sound of her voice. God, he’s a fool for her.
“We don’t talk for a year and this is how you greet me?” She laughs in his ear, which is exactly what he wanted. “I’m in town, if you wanna grab a drink.”
“A drink?” she asks, all skeptical, like she knows that’s not what he’s really asking. And she’s right. It’s not, really. There’s a brief silence where he’s trying to figure out what to say, and then she just… “Come to mine.”
Harry freezes, his fingers flexing against his phone, because…
“What?”
He sounds a little breathless. He doesn’t feel bad about it.
“Yeah,” she says, sounding a little more confident than he’d expect. “See my new one bedroom in all its glory.”
Harry rubs his fingers against his jaw, tries not to think too far into the future - which is something he’s got lots of practice with, with her.
“All right,” he says, and Allie lets out this little laugh he’s always loved. “What’s the address?”
2. “The thought of losing you scares me.”
She can’t sleep, which is more of a general statement than just a fact about this one evening. She feels like she’s stuck between two realities and doesn’t know which one she can trust. Which is a thing she’s told her mom, who just told her she’s home now, that everything’s okay now. Allie would believe it more if her parents didn’t look so fucking devastated all the time.
Two of their daughters disappeared and only one came back. She doesn’t even blame them.
It’s probably super fucked up of her to wander around town in the middle of the night, but there’s something about it being quiet that makes her feel normal. Like, the world is fucking loud. It’s why she hasn’t gone to college yet. Why she and most of her friends deferred. God, the idea of going to New York and being around all those people still freaks her out, and she’s coming up on the end of her gap year. She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s going to do, honestly.
Seems like a problem for another night.
She’s on the swings at the park at the edge of her neighbourhood. Sometimes she brings her earbuds with her, but not tonight. Tonight it’s just her and the wind blowing the leaves.
She hears a car engine, which isn’t weird, really. Like, their town is sleepy, but it’s not like everyone just passes out until 5am, or whatever. There are cars out and around every time she does this. Which is often - too often.
This car sounds familiar. She thinks she could pick it out blindfolded. She knew it’d be him before she even laid eyes on the shiny black paint, the blue tint of the headlights.
She sees him duck his head to look out the windshield when he sees her, and he pulls into the parking lot, his headlights almost blinding her as he gets out. He doesn’t lock the car. He pockets his keys and comes over, sits on the swing next to hers and pushes just slightly with his feet in his sneakers. Allie likes that. She smiles to herself.
“Nightmares?” he asks, and...Look, this is far from the first time they’ve spoken, okay? They talk a lot. They do this a lot.
Allie shakes her head. “No, just...Insomnia, or something.”
He hums, pauses. Allie glances over at him. “You could’ve called. You know I’m always up, too.”
She smiles a bit and looks down, leans back in her swing and then pushes hard, pumps her legs to get some momentum. “I can’t just call you every time I’m bored, Harry.”
He turns his body a little so he can watch her. She doesn’t let herself go too high. She thinks the squeak of the chains on the metal bar is irritating.
“I think you can do anything you set your mind to.” She rolls her eyes, though he won’t see.
She knows how he feels about her. She knows how they feel about each other. They aren’t anything, really, other than this. And it’s good. They don’t talk about it, because it’s too much. They can’t really handle it. She thinks they decided that without having to say it out loud, and she honestly loves him a little for that.
She slows down, drags her feet on the pebbles and then just sort of rocks a little like he is. He reaches over and pushes at her hair. He does that a lot, too. She leans away, cuts him a look, and fixes her own hair while he lets his hand drop to his lap.
“What’s up with you?” she asks, because she realizes she hasn’t checked in on him, and that’s a thing she likes to do with some regularity. “Bad dreams?”
“Mm.” It’s non-committal, so she doesn’t know if it’s really true or not. But she does know that sometimes he has dreams, too. Mostly about how they got home and how awful it was. She gets that. It’s the same for her. “Yeah, I got really scared.”
She still can’t tell if he’s joking or if he isn’t.
“Of what?” she asks, because if he’s being truthful, he’ll tell her, and if he’s teasing, he’ll make her laugh. She’s good with either.
“Lots of things.” Right. So, he’s being serious. She wraps her fingers around the chains on the swing and tilts her head at him. “Honestly...Honestly, the thought of losing you scares me.”
He finally looks at her again, and they just watch each other, and she reaches over, slides her hand down his arm until they’re holding hands.
“Still here,” she says, gives him a little smile. He smiles back. She feels sort of childish and free and good just sitting on the swings holding hands with him. Like there’s nothing other than just them. It’s things like this she likes best, really. “Sometimes I think I’m invincible.”
Harry squeezes her hand. And she meant that as a joke, but he says, “You’re not,” and yeah, now he’s definitely referring to how they got back here.
She squeezes his hand back.
“I should get you to drive me home,” she says, but neither of them makes a move to leave. He’s being really quiet. He’s usually the one making things feel a little lighter. “Wanna stay again?”
He looks over at her, smiles a bit. “Yeah?”
Allie nods, stands up and closes the space between them. She puts her hands on his shoulders, and his go to her hips. “I think my mom’s getting used to waking up and finding you in my bed.”
“Mm,” he says, and his thumb slips up under her shirt, which...They don’t even do that. Like, at all. When he’s in her bed, they’re fully clothed and sleeping. Or talking. But… Look, it’s just easier for them both to sleep when they’re not alone. “She just pities me because I’m an orphan.”
Allie laughs too loudly, considering it’s a fucking awful joke and it’s also the middle of the night. Harry grins up at her like the sound makes him happy, or something.
(And he’s not an orphan. He’s just...There was a trial and a whole thing, and someone had to take the fall for the whole incident. Considering his mom masterminded it, it was pretty cut and dry.)
“Secretly,” she says, all soft and gently as he stands and weaves their hands together. They start towards his car. “Secretly, I think she likes that you can get me to do that.”
“Yeah?” he asks, and she knows that grin. Knows he’s about to say some joke at her expense. “Let out that ridiculous laugh you have?”
Allie shoves at him, calls him a dick, but he just wraps an arm around her shoulder and presses his lips against her temple.
45 for Hallie
He remembers Allie Pressman as the snotty little girl who used to call him Harold because she thought it was funny, and stuck her tongue out at him during church and laughed when he got in trouble for doing it back.
He remembers Allie Pressman as a fucking daredevil who broke her ankle when she jumped from the top of the jungle gym when she was in sixth grade because someone told her they didn’t think she’d do it. He was the someone. But still.
He remembers Allie Pressman as the girl who lost a little of the light in her eyes when she got to high school, who’d hold her books to her chest until you challenged her to something and she’d tilt her chin up and take it on headfirst.
He remembers Allie Pressman as the only girl who’s ever shot him down, and that was just at prom when he asked her if she wanted to dance and she looked at him like he’d lost his fucking mind.
Allie Pressman showing up to the same school he’s at, her little blazer on with her jeans and Doc Martens…
“What are you doing here?” he asks, and yeah, it probably sounds fucking insulting, but like, she’s younger than he is. There’s no way she could be starting law school at the same time he is.
She gives him a smile he doesn’t want to think is hot, but here they are.
“Power of loading my schedule and like, not having summers ever.”
Yeah, that sounds fucking insane to him.
Harry rolls his eyes and walks away. Mostly because he knows for a fact that his biggest competition just showed up, and he’s not entirely happy about it.
…
She gets pissy when he sees her next at the afterparty of the school sanctioned mixer. It’s at this bar he knows because he did his undergrad here, too, unlike her. Allie’s there with a glass of whiskey in her hand, this black dress that looks better on her than it should, considering how plain it is. She’s talking to Jacob, who’s Harry’s friend, and he just…
“Are you even 21?” he asks, coming over and inserting himself into the conversation as she laughs at something Jacob says.
She gives him a shitty look and says, “You know exactly how old I am, Harry.”
He does. He remembers her birthday. It’s a week before his.
Jacob asks him what the history is. Harry thinks what the question actually is, is if he and Allie ever hooked up. He follows Jacob’s line of sight and glances over his shoulder at her.
He’s not gonna lie and say they did. For some reason, he doesn’t like the idea of Jacob…
No, he’s being a fucking idiot.
“No. Small town drama, you know?”
Jacob smiles knowingly and Harry takes his eyes off Allie, which is harder than he wants to admit, okay?
…
She’s walking across campus under an umbrella and Harry sees the guy bump into her as he runs past, sends her coffee flying. Harry honestly laughs when he sees her turn and yell at the guy, gesturing with her hand wildly. He can’t hear what she’s saying, but he can imagine it’s not too pleasant.
He considers replacing her coffee - he’s literally standing inside the coffee shop - but that seems like something he’s really not obligated to do.
He definitely also doesn’t need to take a pointed sip of his drink as he sits down two seats over from her in their lecture hall. She won’t know he witnessed what he did, but he gets a stupid sense of satisfaction from it anyway.
Halfway through the class, she reaches over and takes the cup, drains the rest of it and sets the empty cup on the floor by her bag. Harry’s just watching her and she’s grinning like she’s beaten him at some game.
He leaves without talking to her, because he really feels like she’s got his number - has since they were literal children - and he doesn’t feel like getting into it with her today. Doesn’t have it in him.
…
The next class they have together, she brings him a full coffee, says, “Thanks for the drink,” as she sets it in front of him, and Harry almost doesn’t want to drink it. Like a protest. It just smells really good. And he wants it. That’s the only reason he drinks it. Honestly.
…
Maybe he should get over it and just start being decent to her. This is a thing he starts thinking when he realizes he can’t even name why he’s bothered that she’s here. She deserves it as much as he does, apparently. Worked her ass off just like he did to get accepted to this school. He can’t hold that against her.
But then she debates him in one of their study groups, and flat out says, “You’re just wrong, Harry,” and he really, really doesn’t like that.
He studies way too hard and tries to make sure she never gets to do that shit to him again.
…
There’s a party at the end of the semester. Allie wears another dress she looks incredible in, pins her hair back in these sparkly little clips above her ears. He smiles to himself when he sees she still wears that little star necklace she used to. It’s not a permanent fixture like it was years ago, but he likes to see it.
Her dress is dark blue, and his tie matches, and he sees her glass is empty so he brings her a refill when he goes to say hello, figuring it’d be rude not to.
She smiles up at him, turns a little, and the light catches her eyes just so. She looks fucking beautiful. It’s not new. It’s another annoying fact about her.
“We match,” he tells her, hand in his pocket. She lets out a little laugh, looks like maybe she actually likes it.
“Mm.” She sips her drink, tips her chin up like she used to at the first glimmer of a challenge. “Where’ve you been all my life?”
Harry chuckles, says the first thing that comes to mind, which is, “Hiding from you.”
He thinks she might laugh, but what she does instead is rub her lips together, set her hand on his chest and lean in, look at him from under her lashes.
What the fuck?
She leans up a little so she can say into his ear, “I always kinda suspected you just wanted me to chase you.”
He doesn’t know what the hell to say to that. Like, what the hell is he supposed to say to that?
“That’s not what I said.”
He ends up following her as she turns to walk away. Which is, he thinks, what she wanted.
She presses her shoulders back against the wall in the hallway of this house they’re in, which is enticing, and so when he stands in front of her and she smiles up at him…
“Who’s chasing who?” she asks, smug, and he should find that unattractive, but definitely doesn’t. No, he’s not finding anything about her unattractive right now. Hardly ever does. He’s sort of messed up about all this.
“What are you doing?” He smiles down at her, then steps forward, presses his hand against the wall over her shoulder.
“Whatever I want,” she tells him. It makes him laugh a little.
“Not surprising at all.”
Allie’s hand slides up his chest until her arm’s draping over his shoulder, and then she tells him, softly, “You should just be happy what I want is you.”
You know what? That’s a good point.
He says, “You win,” and she says, “I always do,” and he wants to argue that but it doesn’t feel like the right time to do so.
could you please do 6. “What are you doing here? It’s late.”
He’s being an asshole because his pride was hurt, or his ego, or some other part of him that makes him feel shame. Whatever. He didn’t get too far into that with his therapist before he was thrown into an alternate universe. He got into it just enough to know he’s putting distance between them so he can protect himself.
He’d just asked Allie if she wanted to come over and watch a movie, or something, and she’d given this sad look like he’d misread the situation, and said, “That’s not what this is, Harry,” all softly, and when he asked what the hell that meant, she tilted her head to the side and told him, “We’re not gonna hang out at night time.”
And like, that sounds fucking dumb to him, okay? Not just because he likes her. A lot. Likes her enough to want to hang out with her any time, to be honest. But also because there’s something shitty there about what she’s implying about how they spent those first few nights in this place together. Partying in the church and her knowing he was watching her dance, and then fugitive, and then whatever the fuck that was at prom that didn’t really go anywhere but could’ve. And yes, that was two years ago now, and a hell of a lot has happened since all that, but…
Look, Allie likes him. He can tell she likes him. He’s not an idiot. Maybe things are fuckign odd in this place, but there are some absolutes, some things from the old universe that still apply here. And one of those things, for him, is that he knows when people are interested in him. He’s got a good read on the body language and the flirtation and the way she looks at him sometimes. The little reasons they find to touch one another.
Yeah, for a while there it was just him doing that, because he’s never once been shy about this thing he has for Allie. But now it goes both ways. It’s her hand on his shoulder as he sits in the caf and she talks to whoever he’s sitting with. It’s her leaning into his side when he’s reading documents in the town’s offices and she wants to see what he’s got. It’s her fingers against his cheek when she’s laughing at something he’s said and pushing his face away.
He’s not crazy. There’s something between them. And he thinks if they weren’t stuck here, it would be different. It’d go differently. And if he hadn’t done the shit he did last year, that might’ve made a difference, too. But now they’re on the same side. They’re on the same side and it matters that he cares about her. A lot. Too much, apparently.
He still lives alone, because that’s an argument he won. Will lived with him for a bit, after everything went down, when people wanted someone to have eyes on both of them. Helena made the argument that if there were ever two people who would keep each other in check and blow the whistle if there was anything messed up going on, it was the two of them. Harry’s not going to admit this to anyone, but he thinks he and Will found some common ground during those six months. He doesn’t miss the guy, but...The house is just quiet a lot. Like, all the time. Harry finds reasons not to be here by himself, but he can’t say that out loud either, because it goes against everything he was so sure about in the beginning and people will be smug about it, or whatever.
Honestly, sometimes he thinks about his mom fondly - when he lets himself think about her at all - and sends up a thank you to her for having not only a full wine cellar with a pinpad lock on the door, but also several cases of vodka hidden down there behind the bar that he didn’t even know were there. He doesn’t drink all the time. He thinks it’d be a whole fucking thing if he did, and he honestly doesn’t want to anymore.
But sipping some of this port and watching Ratatouille because it’s one of the movies they own on blu-ray that he hasn't seen super recently is sort of giving him life right now.
The doorbell scares the shit out of him.
Seriously, his heart is racing and he needs to take several deep breaths after the sound of the chimes echoes through the house like that.
When he opens the door, Allie’s standing there by herself, her little green army jacket on, her hands stuffed in the pockets as she looks up at him.
“Can I come in?” she asks, and he wants to say no. He should say no. He should throw all that shit she said back in her face.
But her nose is a little red because it’s still cool at night, and the bangs she cut a while back and is now growing out are sort of falling into her eyes, and he sighs and lets her in because she looks so goddamn good he knows there’s really no world in which he’d turn her away.
Harry watches her toe off her sneakers and then shrug her jacket off. She’s wearing a sweater he’s seen on her easily 20 times before. He’s definitely thought every one of those times how much he likes it on her.
He crosses his arms when she looks at him again, standing there in the entrance to his house.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, and Allie presses her lips together. “It’s late.”
She sighs like she knows she deserved that. Good.
Instead of what he thinks she’s gonna do, she just blurts out, “I wanted to say yes,” and it sort of makes him freeze. Honestly, he thinks he’s gotten pretty good at making predictions about her. This throws him. “Before. When you asked. I wanted...God, Harry. You know I wanted to say yes.”
He just watches her a second, wants to move them to the living room, or anywhere that isn’t so close to the door. He doesn’t want her to go.
“I mean, I thought you would,” he admits, and maybe that’s really what’s bothering him. He wouldn’t have asked if he hadn’t thought she’d be down. He’s never once asked her something he didn’t think would work out for him. Not when he asked her to play fugitive, or when they were in bed together, or even after. Shit, even at prom when he’d asked her to dance, he thought she’d do it. He’s pretty sure she wanted to say yes then, too. Because she didn’t say no.
He’s getting way too deep in his head.
“You scare the shit out of me,” she says on this little laugh, and then walks past him and towards the sofa. He doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t like the words, but he likes that she’s not leaving. He just watches her, then sits down on the coffee table across from her. Maybe they’re too close. But he thinks he likes where this is going. “I don’t know how to do any of this.”
His brow furrows. “Any of what?”
She gives him a look like she’s irritated that she has to explain it, but he refuses to feel badly about it, to be honest.
“I had a boyfriend for approximately two days and then fell victim to a coup. Other than that, the closest I ever came to like, dating, was…” She looks right at him, and he’s almost amused by her little rant, because it’s just so incredibly fucked up that it’s absolutely true. “You.”
Fuck.
“Well…” He can’t help himself smiling even as he tries to play this cool. Something about Allie always makes him just put it all on the table, you know? “Well, do you want to?” She’s just looking at him. “Like, I didn’t say anything about being your boyfriend.” That’s a joke. She’s gotta pick up on the fact that it’s a joke. She must, because she looks like she’s hiding a grin. “I was just trying to get you over here to like, cuddle and maybe make out.”
She lets out a laugh and shoves at his shoulder, and he grabs her hand and holds it. She gets all quiet, but doesn’t pull away, so that feels like something.
“That’s not all you wanted,” she says softly, and then looks into his eyes, and fuck, she… “Right?”
Right. So that’s part of this. She doesn’t want it to be some fling and nothing more. And it’s not like he’s done much to make her think he wanted to like, date her seriously or whatever, but that’s because he thought it’d scare her away. It’s not that he’s against it. He’s actually pretty into the idea. He doesn’t know of a way to casually flirt with someone while also making it clear you’re like, maybe halfway in love with them. And it’s not like he can google methods or ask anyone outside this fucking weird universe for advice, you know?
“You’re right,” he tells her, and honestly, it’s deliberate that he uses those words, because he knows for a fact she really, really loves hearing them. And he’s telling the truth. “That’s not all I wanted.”
She smiles, then, shakes her head a little like she’s happy, but also doesn’t know what to do next. She pulls his hand hard, and he gets up and sits next to her. She maneuvers his arm so it’s around her shoulder and she curls up against him with her legs pulled up onto the sofa.
“Pressure’s on, Bingham,” she says, her hand sort of moving across his chest. Fucking hell. “If you’re a bad cuddler, I’m outta here.”
Harry breathes a laugh, presses play on the movie she still hasn’t made fun of him for, and decides to just fucking go for it.
He kisses her hair and says, “Whatever you say, Allie,” and puts his feet up on the coffee table.
Fluff: 19 + hallie
Allie buys her first house when she’s 28. By house, she means condo, and by ‘buys’, she means takes out a mortgage that literally actually makes her cry because what the fuck is she even doing?
The housing market just took a dip, and she let people pressure her into thinking she should invest in real estate, and she does ultimately think it’s a good decision, it’s just a lot, you know? She spends weeks and weeks painting and updating things and choosing decor items to match the space.
The thing about condos is you have to deal with neighbours. She honestly would’ve loved to have bought an actual house, but she definitely didn’t have enough for a downpayment on anything other than a rundown place that she would’ve had to sink a ton into to make it liveable. So she settled. And it’s fine. She doesn’t have to love everything about her place, right?
“Oh, that’s fucking brilliant,” she hears through the wall. Again. Not that particular phrase, but the woman’s voice shouting. She’s British. Allie’s texted her friend Becca saying she doesn’t need to watch television when she’s got drama playing out on the other side of her living room wall.
She can hear a guy’s muffled voice, because apparently he doesn’t match his partner’s volume when she’s yelling at him, and then a door slams, and Allie sighs. Fucking figures she’d finally move into a nicer building and still have to deal with neighbours’ bullshit. There’s a lesson here, right? That people are what make any place crappy, or something like that.
Whatever. She’s got a little work to do, just some data cleanup stuff she can do with the television on and a glass of wine and her laptop on her knees. An hour later, she hears them fighting again and rolls her eyes.
…
One Sunday morning, she hears the guy say, “Then why are you even with me?” and Allie almost holds her breath waiting for a response. There isn’t one. She sort of feels badly for him.
(It’s rare of her to take the side of a dude, to be honest. It’s just that this woman sort of shits on him all the time, and Allie’s actually been wondering why he’s even with her?)
…
She sees him coming in one evening with a beautiful Australian shepherd on a leash. She knew they had a dog, because even though it’s super quiet and well trained, it’s still a dog and she hears it sometimes. It doesn’t really bother her. She’s sort of wondered if she should get one of her own. She just waffles back and forth on the ethics of having a dog cooped up in a stupid condo all the time with no yard, you know?
“Hey,” he says with a smile, and Allie...First of all, it’s weird that she’s never actually seen his face before. She worries she should’ve gone over to introduce herself when she moved in. “I’m Harry.”
“Allie,” she says, and shakes his hand. The dog, sitting patiently and looking at her, just pants a little. “Who’s your friend?”
Harry laughs, which is...he’s hot. She isn’t going to be shy about thinking that. “This is Poe.”
“Poe,” she says with a smile. That’s a cute name. “Beautiful dog.”
“Thanks.” There’s a bit of a pause, and then Harry rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “Hey, sorry if you can hear…”
Oh god. He really doesn’t have to… She waves him off. “It’s okay,” she tells him, and finds she means it. She thinks it’s shitty he has to apologize for the fighting. She thinks it’s shitty that his partner talks to him the way she does. But that’s absolutely not her business. “Relationships are hard.”
He gives her this sort of kind, gentle smile and nods. “Yeah.”
Allie waits to see if he’s going to say more, then he doesn’t. “Well, I’m off to get a coffee. Ran out.”
“My nightmare.” She laughs, which makes him smile, and...Look, they’re not flirting, but he’s nice. And hot. Did she mention hot? “Try Common Espresso if you haven’t already. It’s great.”
She hasn’t, but she’ll take the recommendation.
“Okay,” she says, and then blinks up at him, and...Fuck. She’s flirting. “Nice to meet you, Harry.”
He absolutely looks her up and down as she’s walking past and he says, “You too, Allie.”
…
The British woman lets the door close behind her when Allie is coming in one evening and it’s fuckign freezing out, and Allie says a sarcastic, “Thanks,” loud enough for the woman to hear. She gives a shitty look over her shoulder and then lets the elevator door close, too, and Allie just…
God, she does not like that woman.
…
She’s stepping out into the hall one day and Poe is bounding in her direction. Harry’s getting off the elevator and must’ve just dropped the leash - she thinks this is a thing he does pretty often, because she can hear Poe’s tags sometimes as the dog runs. Poe stops in front of her and nudges her hand to get some attention, and Allie laughs and reaches down to pet the dog.
“Sorry,” Harry says, though he doesn’t sound too apologetic, probably because he’s realized he doesn’t need to be. “You look great.”
He says it so sincerely it sort of surprises her. God, how can he be so casual about complimenting her appearance when his partner is literally just inside?
“Thanks.” She shouldn’t tuck her hair behind her ear that way. Fuck. “I have a date.”
His brow goes up, but she can’t read his expression, not really. “Good luck.”
She grins at him. “Don’t need luck with this shining personality.”
Harry laughs - she likes making him do that - and says, “Of course,” like he actually means it.
Poe’s tail hits her leg as she walks away. Allie hears him usher the dog into the apartment and definitely does not look back to see if he’s watching her go.
…
She hears the fight they have that breaks them up.
Rather, she hears him say what sounds like, “I don’t wanna do this anymore,” and then a bunch of shouting from the other person, and then a door slams. God, that sound is almost typical at this point.
She waits 40 minutes before she knocks on his door. She agonizes about it, wondering if she should even bother, or mind her own goddamn business. She just...Look, part of the reason she ended up buying this place is that she needed to leave her last apartment fast because she broke up with her boyfriend. She wishes someone had been there for her immediately after that fight, and she thinks she could be that for him, or at least offer.
He looks exhausted when he opens the door, and then confused when he sees it’s her. Then, almost immediately, he seems almost embarrassed.
“Are you okay?” she asks quietly, and he just takes a breath and nods, makes another apology. “No, it’s okay. I just...Wanted to check on you.”
Poe comes to the door, sees it’s her, and then sits down to Harry’s left. They’re like two peas in a pod. It’s irritatingly cute.
“Thanks, Allie,” he says sincerely.
She nods, and then… God, this is stupid, but she just wants to be helpful. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
He says something about her being a good person, and she closes her door behind her and really just feels glad he didn’t think that was weird.
…
He knocks on her door on Saturday morning, when she’s listening to Shawn Mendes and drinking coffee in her sweats. He looks a little amused when she opens the door. Poe’s with him. She realizes she’s never actually seen him without the dog.
“Morning,” he says with a grin, like he thinks she’s cute, or something. “I have a favour to ask.”
Allie’s brow goes up. “Oh yeah?”
God, she needs to sound less flirtatious. Fucking hell.
“Two options, really.” She nods, smiling, and gestures for him to continue. “You watch this guy for me for a while, or the two of us get outta here and hang out while Charlotte moves out.”
Oh god.
She needs to make that sad, scared look on his face go away.
“Is this some bitter custody battle I’m getting roped into?” she asks. Harry lets out a laugh, and she pulls the door open and invites him in.
“Something like that,” he says, and shit. “He’s our dog, but he’s really my dog, you know?”
Allie nods, completely understanding. “He seems pretty loyal.”
Harry looks sort of proud of it, glances down at Poe, then says, “Not to toot my own horn or anything, but he loves me more.”
She laughs, wants to change before they go out, but also wants to know where they’re going before she commits to an outfit.
“I can sort of tell,” she tells him, and Harry shakes his head, gets this cheeky grin on his lips.
“No, I mean he loves me more than she did.”
She shouldn’t laugh at that. It’s dark and deprecating and it’s probably rude to laugh. But she can’t help it.
“Well then.” Allie drains the last of her coffee, meets his eyes, and says, “No accounting for taste.”
He looks really pleased that she’s obviously and very blatantly flirting with him, and then nods when she says she’s going to go change, for him to make himself at home.
They end up spending the day in the park. He treats her to a delicious sandwich from a deli he tells her it’s a crime she hasn’t tried yet, and then a cup of coffee. He tells her about the breakup, and the relationship, and she tells him about her own situation. He makes an offhand comment about how Charlotte and Allie’s ex seem like they’d be perfect for each other. Allie remarks that he doesn’t seem that sad about it, and he just says it’s been a long time coming.
And then he says, “There’re other women out there, you know?” and it sounds like a loaded statement.
Allie should absolutely not let him hit on her when he’s been single less than a week, but she also likes it. So there’s that.
“Mm. I think I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
Harry laughs and knocks her knee with his as Poe runs around on the grass and brings back the ball Harry’s been throwing from his place sitting next to her on this bench.
“Aren’t you glad you moved in next to me and all my stupid drama?” he asks.
Allie sips her coffee, tugs her scarf up a bit, mostly hoping it’ll hide her smile.
But she still says, “Yeah, actually,” way too softly, so maybe she shouldn’t have tried to fool him.
prompt: “So we’re just going to ignore the fact that you drunk dialed me to tell me you loved me?” Okay, so he’s not going to be smug about it. He’s not.
(He is. But it’s based on the fact that he’s so fucking flattered someone like her would deign to even consider loving someone like him. It’s all overcompensation for his insecurities. His fear that he’s unlovable. This fucked up thing he tells himself for no good goddamn reason other than his brain likes to be mean to him.)
But he’s not being smug to tease her. It’s not even like that.
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