He'd made an effort, dimming the lights and finding an old wireless that was willing to cooperate in playing music with him in the room. The old sofa in his new apartment was covered ceremoniously with a throw that Charity had been kind enough to let him borrow, and the room was awash in candlelight. Sure, one of the candles was shaped like a bear and was hideously half-formed - it had been used once before for little Harry Carpenter's third birthday - while the other was a Disney princess castle, but he nonetheless hoped Karrin would appreciate it.
Her appreciation manifested itself into a much smaller eye-roll than Harry had expected, and he was duly appreciative in response. They sat together on the sofa, nonchalantly doing the "slowly shifting closer to each other" thing as they talked about the date so far, until she was more or less on his lap.
She looked down at said lap, and her mouth twitched into a small smirk, causing a chain reaction that caused her to smirk even more. "Here we are at last, huh?" she said, looking up to his face - though not his eyes. Still not those. Not yet.
"Yeah," Harry replied. His throat felt dry, and his pitch was higher than usual.
Karrin glanced down again, and her grin widened. "Just the three of us."
"Wha--oh. Very classy."
"Thank you. I pitch my humour according to the company."
"Is this how you always talk to your dates?"
"No, of course not, Dresden. I've been saving it for you."
The banter continued, getting slowly more suggestive, their bodies getting closer together, and then his lips were on hers and her arms were around his neck and everything was glorious.
He didn't know how long it was before she pulled back, flushed and breathless and adorable, and said, "Should we..."
HELLO. IS IT ME YOU'RE LOOKING FOR?
The rest of Karrin's sentence was drowned out as the radio ended its streak of good behaviour and blasted Lionel Ritchie's romantic plea to every corner of the apartment. Karrin jumped, then disentangled herself, padding over to turn the sound back down.
"Sorry," Harry said sheepishly as she rejoined him.
"How come it stopped working? It was fine..."
Harry found himself feeling more warm than he should. He wouldn't have been surprised had he discovered he was blushing like a schoolgirl, though he hoped to god he was not. "Well you know how technology acts when I get..."
A glint in those blue eyes. "Excited?" she asked, a wicked smile playing on those lips.
"Emotional," Harry replied, giving a small snort and leaning down to resume the pleasant activity which Lionel had so rudely--
I LONG TO SEE THE SUNLIGHT IN YOUR HAIR.
The look Karrin gave him was filled with solid exasperation as she pulled away, her shirt open, her hair a mess, looking far too appealing for the interruption to be remotely fair. "Just turn it off, Harry," she said, with the sort of breathless impatience that made Harry obediently get to his feet with lots of haste and little complaint.
When the dial was turned to the off position, Harry rejoined his date on the sofa to see what they could do about the rest of that clothing. It turned out that the answer to this puzzle was a particularly interesting one, involving wandering hands and soft body parts, and--
TELL ME HOW TO WIN YOUR HEART, CAUSE I HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE
"Oh for fuck's sake," Karrin growled.
"Or not," Harry said, a joke that was almost worth the look of sheer hatred it evoked. He held up his free hand in a defensive gesture. "Hey, I turned it off."
"Not very well, apparently. Christ, Dresden, I finally come over and you make it my night out with Lionel Richie."
Harry found it a little bit more difficult to disengage this time, and before he fully could, he heard the final chorus swell, and a new thought hit him, one which was likely to see him killed.
She saw the look on his face, and said, "Harry, don't you dare."
It was too late.
He gave her a grin, opened his mouth, and--
"'CAUSE I WONDER WHERE YOU ARE"
"Harry."
"AND I WONDER WHAT YOU DO."
"Harry."
"ARE YOU SOMEWHERE FEELING LONELY?"
"That's it. I'm leaving."
"BECAUSE I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU!"
"Those aren't even nearly the right words." Karrin was reaching down for her bra, and the look on her face was priceless, enough that Harry felt justified in completely ignoring her and continuing his song.
"TELL ME HOW TO WIN YOUR HEART!" he and Lionel crowed, and Karrin shot him a look - and a smile.
"'Cause you haven't got a clue," she half-sang back at him, and Harry's heart skipped a few beats and he gave her a fierce grin.
(Inspired by: x)
The first time, they tried to go out for dinner. He’d plucked up the courage to ask her two weeks previously, and she’d suggested a place that did nice steak – no, we’re not going to Mac’s, Harry – and asked him to make a reservation. And wear something nice, Dresden, because it’s a classy establishment.
He’d done his best, calling up and booking a table, wearing an old dinner jacket he’d found lurking at the back of his wardrobe, and even forgoing the protection of his duster for this one night. He brushed down his hair and examined himself in the mirror, and thought that he didn’t clean up so badly after all.
Karrin, of course, outdid him by miles. She was wearing a simple blue dress that made her eyes shine, and the effect was kind of breath-taking. She gave him a smile that almost looked nervous as she joined him in the cab, and didn’t comment when he put his hand over hers in the back seat.
When they arrived at the restaurant, the doors were closed and the windows were barred. When Harry managed to stop a passerby and asked what was going on, the man told him that there had been a fire last night. “Kitchen burned to the ground, buddy. Place is gonna be out of commission for weeks.”
When the man walked away, Karrin glanced up at him. “It wasn’t me,” Harry said defensively.
She laughed. “Are you sure?”
“Almost,” Harry replied. “What do we do now?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, shrugging. “We’ll just reschedule, do something else. Maybe during the day this time. Maybe somewhere I don’t need to wear a dress.”
--
The second time, they tried, they went to a museum. Unsurprisingly, this had also been Karrin’s idea. She’d initially wanted to go to one of those new interactive ones, but Harry had reminded her of what happened when he went near computers, and she’d thought better of it. Her next choice had been the Field Museum, but Harry had told her he’d prefer not to - because you only need to ride a dinosaur once - and she’d thought better of that, too.
The place they went to was small, but well chosen; a “museum of magic” housed on all five floors of a tall old building in the city. Harry hadn’t commented on her choice, and had actually found the whole thing quite interesting. It was a mix of the “true paranormal” – or at least, what the museum owners seemed to think counted as that – and stage magic, and Harry kept interrupting Karrin to show her some of the old props that had been used in stage acts.
“My dad used these!” he kept saying, dragging her away from what she was doing without even thinking, and when he did she would give him the kind of smile that made him feel all warm inside.
When the shouting started, they were on the fourth floor. A quick glance at each other, and they hurried back down to the first, in time to see a man being dragged out by police officers, making “kicking and screaming” an art form.
“Sir, ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to leave the building,” another officer said.
“Why?” Karrin asked. “What’s going on?”
The officer may have recognised her, or perhaps he just had the unfortunate tendency to gossip. “That was the owner,” he told them. “This place is being used as a front for a drug operation. We’re shutting it down.”
“But we’re on a date,” Harry objected, and gained twin looks from both Karrin and the police officer. The former grasped him firmly by the hand, and pulled him outside.
“Calm down, Harry,” she said, laughing a little at the thunderous expression he knew was on his face. “We can reschedule. It happens.”
“Sure,” Harry replied, wondering if he was cursed. And then wondering if he was cursed.
--
The third time, they went to the park to have a picnic. This was Harry’s suggestion – what could go wrong on a picnic?
Long story short, it involved two dogs, five children, and a runaway horse and carriage.
They decided to reschedule.
--
The fourth time, Karrin told him to just come over to her house. “It’s where we were going to end up, anyway,” she’d said, her mouth quirking up into a smile that made Harry feel warm in a decidedly different - and not unpleasant - way from before.
He turned up at her house with a bunch of flowers, and the second he handed them to her, her face darkened.
“Harry?”
“Yes?”
“Are these roses?”
“…yes?”
“I’m really allergic to roses.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
--
Luckily, Karrin had enough antihistamines on hand to get the reaction under control before it came to more than a mild swelling of her face, while Harry disposed of the offending flowers. After, both flopped on the couch.
“We’re cursed, Karrin.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“No, I mean really. I think it’s magic. I think someone’s deliberately—”
“Harry, we’ve just had bad luck. We can—”
“Don’t say reschedule. I’ve been in my business long enough to know that there’s no such thing as ‘just bad luck’ for me.”
Karrin folded her arms, giving him a look. “I was going to say we can go upstairs,” she said, and Harry shook his head impatiently.
“Murph, if we’ve been cursed, we need to get to the bottom of it, and soon.”
She stood, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation. “Fine,” she said. “Have it your way. Let’s get hunting.”
--
The ‘hunting’ lasted most of the night and some of the next morning. Karrin fell asleep around two, and Harry took the time to go back to his own home and do some searching around there. He found nothing; no cursed objects, no lost memories. He had Bob take a look at him, but the skull told him there was nothing, and weren’t you supposed to be banging the cop chick, Harry?
It was three in the afternoon before he dragged himself back to Karrin’s house, his clothes dishevelled, a large potion spill on his leg, his eyes tired from straining themselves to read books that contained no information whatsoever. Karrin sat at her kitchen table, a white circle neatly drawn around her chair, sipping a cup of tea. “Did you find anything?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “It might not have been magic.”
“You look exhausted.”
“I am exhausted.”
“You should come to bed.”
Harry agreed with her, and was halfway up the stairs behind her before he realised she’d said “come” instead of “go”. Oh. Right. He hesitated outside the bedroom door, and she turned to face him, her arms folded, her expression impatient. “What?” she asked.
“I just don’t get it, Karrin. If there isn’t anything magical going on, why has everything we’ve tried to do this week went so horribly wrong? What if--”
Karrin silenced him with a look, then snorted, slipping her hand into his and pulling him into the bedroom. “When do things not go wrong for you, Dresden?” she asked, and he tried and failed to formulate an argument against that. “Normal people have bad days too, you know.” She gave him a gentle shove, making him sit down on the edge of the bed.
“But … ” Harry started, with no ending to the sentence, somewhat distracted as he was by Karrin removing her t-shirt in front of him.
“It’s us, Harry,” she said, wriggling out of her jeans. “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.” She turned to face him, and on her face was the most wicked little grin that he had ever seen. “Haven’t you ever heard of Murphy’s law?”
She was wearing the same dress she'd worn to the family picnic, and she looked just as cute in it as she had then, which Harry had mentioned probably more than he should have. She'd told him to shut up every time after the third.
They were too old, and had known each other for too long, to be doing this stammering and blushing, too close to need to go through the whole standing-on-the-doorstep-and-unwilling-to-go thing, but here they were, telling each other they'd had a good time, making jokes at each other's expense, neither willing to move, neither willing to leave.
"Anyway, Dresden, we should do this again," Karrin said. When she smiled, her eyes sparkled. "You're not a bad date."
"You're not too bad yourself," Harry told her, knowing a stupid grin was on his face.
"Not great. Don't get ahead of yourself. Your head's big enough already."
Harry laughed, taking the compliment. He assumed there was a compliment in there, somewhere. They lapsed into a silence, which seemed to go on and on, until Harry said, "Do you want to come inside?"
That caused an even bigger silence.
Then, "Oh."
Then, "Um, I shouldn't. I mean, I'd like to. I mean, I want to, but ..."
Harry saved her from stammering, like the eloquent hero he was. "Right, yeah. Sorry Murph, stupid of me to ... "
"No, I mean ... "
"It's fine, I just ... "
"I'm really ... "
"Don't ... "
The window opened, and two familiar faces leaned out; a young girl with long white hair, and a man with black hair. "Oh my God," Thomas yelled, and Harry and Karrin both looked up to stare at Harry's brother. "Just kiss already you two. Seriously."
Justine mouthed the word "sorry" at them, before pulling Thomas back inside.
Harry and Karrin looked at each other, then back up at the window.
So my Harry and Karrin Sims are at college and I told him to sketch her as part of the flirting that I have going on so he did and this is what he drew I might cry oh my god??????
Harry’s exasperation only grew when Mouse and Thomas exchanged knowing looks instead of answering his question. The smug superiority from his brother was part of the package, but when it came from Mouse it was a stark reminder that the dog was probably the most intelligent person in the apartment – Harry was never sure if this was more unnerving or impressive, although he was fairly certain it was some combination of the two.
“What?” he asked again, as patient as only a wizard could be. “I’m going to be—”
“Late?” Thomas finished. “Late for what? Have you finally got a date, little brother?”
“What?” Third time was the charm, after all.
“Well,” Thomas drawled, “We couldn’t help but notice you’re all dressed up with somewhere to go.”
“What?” Damn. Oh well, plus one for luck. Harry shook his head. “No, I don’t have a date. I’m just meeting Murph—”
Mouse let out a huffing sound which was suspiciously similar to a laugh. Harry shot a look at him before continuing.
“—for lunch—”
“Uh huh.”
“—because the wedding was a while ago, and we haven’t had a chance to–
“To…”
“… don’t you have work or something? Do you need a ride?”
Thomas shrugged, graciously not pointing out the clumsy subject change. “Not until one. I’ll walk.”
“It’s twelve thirty.”
Thomas grinned again. “I’ll walk very fast,” he promised, then made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go on. Karrin will be very upset if you miss your date because you were talking to me.”
“It’s not—” Harry started to insist, then thought better of it and turned toward the doorway, clinging to his purpose and his last shred of dignity. He pretended not to hear his brother and his dog laughing at him as he went.
The Beetle took a few minutes to get going, but, trustworthy as ever, they were soon on the road. He thought about the wedding, which had gone so … well, he’d been going to think pear-shaped, but, really, it had been kind of an ordinary day as these things went for his little band of adventurers. However, today was a different day, and he kind of hoped it was extraordinary in that regard. He had some things he wanted to say. He passed a garage, and wondered briefly if he should stop and pick up some of the flowers on display.
Not that he was going on a date.
Shaking his head, he drove on.
—
“You’re late,” Karrin said, not even looking up from the table as he entered the little café. “I went ahead and ordered for you.”
“How did you know it was me?” Harry asked her, pulling out the chair opposite her and sitting down. She looked up, and there was a merry glint in her blue eyes as she smiled at him.
“Nobody else has a shadow that darkens the whole room when they walk in a door,” she replied simply. “You look good,” she added, almost casually.
Harry found himself smiling in return as he swept his eyes over his friend. It was a warm day, which was why she was dressed the way she was, obviously – in a little tank top and, Hell’s bells, was that a skirt? “Same to you, Murph,” he said finally, and her smile turned into something radiant.
The waitress arrived then, placing some form of suspiciously healthy looking toasted sandwich in front of him, a salad in front of her, then swanning off. Harry looked at his meal – for want of a better word – and back up to Karrin, who was giving him a look which just screamed “go on, challenge me.”
“Looks good, Murph,” was all he said.
She gave a small laugh, picking up her fork and spearing something green. “Georgia called from Paris,” she told him after a few bites.
“How’s the honeymoon going?” Harry asked. The sandwich, it turned out, wasn’t too bad. “Should we be expecting puppies?”
“Will said you’d say that,” Karrin said dryly. “Does it hurt to be so predictable?” Harry shrugged, and she continued, “They’re having fun, but they’ve had to change their plans. The Disneyland visit is cancelled. Something about having had enough of fairies.”
Harry grinned at that. “Figures,” he said. “I should have warned you that my world ruins Disney forever.”
“I’m sure I’ll survive somehow.”
Harry hesitated before continuing, for two reasons: one, he didn’t know how to phrase what he wanted to say. Two, he wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to say. The hesitation must have shown on his face, because Karrin was giving him the strangest look, and it wasn’t helping.
“Spit it out, Harry,” she said eventually.
“I actually … wanted to talk to you. About the wedding.”
“I’m listening.”
“I—”
He was interrupted as a loud ringing came from Karrin’s handbag. “Sorry,” she said, reaching in and taking out her cellphone. “Just a sec.” She held the device up to her ear, and Harry pointedly shuffled his chair back a little. She gave him a look of what he decided was gratitude, and spoke into the phone. “Murphy … What kid? It’s my day … Of course it is. Yeah, he’s here. I’ll tell him. We’ll be right down. Yeah, keep her there. Yeah. Thanks. Bye.”
“Tell me what?”
“There’s a girl down at the station looking for me,” Murphy told him. The glare she was directing at him was hardly fair, it wasn’t his fault. “Because someone told her she could find you through me.”
Oh. Maybe it was his fault. “Well, we’re busy,” he said, convincing nobody.
“It’s apparently a matter of life and death,” she replied.
“Of course it is.
—
They arrived at the station in Murphy’s car – she had both insisted on driving and refused to take the Beetle – and headed straight to her office, to find an officer who Harry didn’t quite recognise standing outside with a look of pure bemusement on his face.
“Murphy,” the officer said, his relief palatable as he saw them arrive. “She’s in there. With the animal.”
“Thanks, Jacobs,” she said, nodding in the other direction, and the young man hurried away as quickly as walking pace permitted.
“Animal?” Harry asked, shooting a questioning look in Karrin’s direction. She shrugged and moved into the office.
The girl inside was maybe sixteen, seventeen at a push, and she looked like a victim from a horror movie. She sat, curled up on herself, in the corner of the office, her eyes wide and terrified as they peered over her knees to the corner diagonally across from her. She didn’t even look up when they came in, and Harry followed her gaze to the opposite corner, where a small pet carrier sat.
“Letitia?” Karrin was saying, her voice gentle, as Harry took a few steps toward the opposite corner. “Letitia, can you hear me?”
“Don’t!” the girl shrieked suddenly, as Harry reached down to touch the crate. He jumped, taking a step back and turning to face the terrified teenager. “Don’t let him out!”
“Don’t let who out, Letitia?” Karrin asked soothingly. If Harry hadn’t known her so well, the strain in her voice would have been impossible to hear.
“He’s going to kill me,” Letitia explained in a tense whisper. “If he gets out, he’ll kill me.”
“Who’s going to kill you?” Harry asked her, shooting an apprehensive glance at the crate and taking a few more steps away from it. Her huge eyes snapped to meet his, and he quickly looked away. “What’s in the crate, kid?”
“Mr. Dresden. You’re a wizard. You have to help me.”
“He can help you if you tell him what’s going on,” Karrin told her, crouching down next to her. “Harry will keep you safe. Don’t be scared.”
It was her words more than anything which galvanised him. “Murph, take the kid out of the room,” he said. “I’m going to open that thing.” He hated that it had been too warm that morning to bring his duster. He felt naked without its protective spells right now.
“No—”
It took another ten minutes before Murphy managed to get the girl to follow her out. Harry prepared a circle around himself and the crate – no point in exposing the rest of the station to whatever was in here with him – and crouched to open the little door. The second he did, it jumped out at him, and, not for the first time, he began to regret his career choices.
—
The door slammed open as Karrin came hurrying in. “Harry, I heard … is that …?”
“Terrifying, isn’t he?” Harry replied, chuckling. He was sitting on the floor, with it crawling all over his legs. The kitten was about a tenth of the size of Mister, a tiny little black cat with a big white patch over one eye.
“Is he a magic cat?” Murphy asked uncertainly.
“No more than most cats,” Harry replied, smudging the chalk in the carpet and breaking the circle. “What did the kid say?”
Karrin’s lip twitched. “Her ex-boyfriend,” she told him. “Likes to dabble in magic, apparently. When they broke up, he told her a black and white cat would be a portent of her doom, or something.”
“And then the kitten was born.”
“You got it.”
Harry sighed and got to his feet, holding the tiny kitten in one hand as he did so. “It’s just a cat.”
“You tell her that,” Murphy said with a low snort. She left the room and returned moments later with Letitia trailing behind her.
“Hi, Tish,” Harry said. She looked at him, and her eyes fell on the cat in his hands.
She screamed.
Loud.
—
It took about an hour and a half to calm the girl down and convince her that the kitten wasn’t going to be her death, and a further half-hour to make up a fake dispelling charm to reassure her.
They arrived back in the car park of the café to pick up the Beetle, and Murphy got out of the car with him. “That didn’t quite go as planned,” she said, a resigned smile on her face.
“When does it?” Harry asked her, laughing. She walked him to his car, but put out her hand to stop him when he went to open the door.
“Harry …” she said, staring up at him, her eyes focusing somewhere on his cheek. “What were you going to say, before?”
He looked back at her. Ah. “I—” he started, and was once again interrupted – this time, from a beeping sound.
“Text,” Murphy explained in response to his look.
“You’d better get it. It might be important. Maybe we’ll be lucky, and it’ll be a vampire this time.”
Murphy rolled her eyes, and took out her phone. She read the message, and Harry watched as her cheeks slowly turned pink. A sinking feeling began somewhere at the top of his stomach.
“Not a vampire, then,” Harry said.
“It’s Jared,” she said, more than a trace of embarrassment in her voice.
“Jared,” Harry repeated, forcefully reminded of the definition of the word ‘resignation’.
“I told him I’d meet him … I thought we’d be done with lunch by now,” she explained, her voice almost apologetic. “I wasn’t expecting …”
“I don’t suppose he wants you to help him kill someone,” Harry asked. That definitely wasn’t hope in his voice.
“No,” Karrin replied with a small snort. “I need to go, Harry. But what were you going to say? About the wedding?”
Harry considered for a few deliberate moments, then shrugged. “Thanks for your help,” he said eventually. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You say the sweetest things,” she said, and turned and walked back to her car, leaving Harry to drive home alone.
—
Thomas and Mouse were sitting in the exact same position as when he had left when he returned, and both looked up at him with strange glints in their eyes as he entered.
“What happened to work?” Harry asked, scowling at his brother.
“Lena from the kitchen,” Thomas replied, in the kind of cheerful tone that meant don’t ask me any more. “How was your date?”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“Sure. How was it?”
Harry considered ignoring him, but instead found himself telling him everything that had happened that day. Thomas listened patiently, then laughed. “Well, you tried,” he said. “That’s more than usual.”
“Shut up,” Harry said, leaning over and picking up a sock from the floor. He balled it up and threw it at his brother’s head. “And clean up after yourself.”
Thomas easily avoided the missile, unperturbed. “So you and Karrin almost had a conversation about your feelings, but didn’t.”
