Beside
Main Masterlist / Word Count: 4.6k / Warnings: Is angst considered one? Is sadness? Excess fluff? / Song: Beside You by 5SOS, ofc
Premise: You had been his first fan, before anybody else, arguably. Perhaps, that had been what had made it hurt the worst when he had forgotten you, amongst so many other things. How could you ever tell him that, if you were given the chance?
Pairing: Harry x Reader
“He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams.”
- Unknown
You’d be lying to yourself if you said that it looked any different. Sure, the addition of the few cardboard boxes and elliptical could maybe chalk up to that. But, the lie fell away before it was even really thought when a memory was sparked by every item your eyes fell on. What was different about it was how it felt, and how it felt more than different, if there was even a word for that. You were rather sure that there were never words good enough for your feelings after everything that had happened over the years.
You hadn’t even been sure if you could make it this far. That started with the drive, the worst part being driving past his. You thought that nothing could trump that until you opened the door and the multitudes of memories came flying at you. Long ago, you had taken down the pictures tacked to cork boards and shown in frames, but somehow, they had reappeared. Thanks to your mum, you thought. It felt like knives in the back of your eyes when you saw them, reminded for the hundredth time of how much things had changed. You weren’t sure if the reminders would ever stop, seeing as how they had been coming for the last nine years. Although they had dwindled over time, according to your proximity and whereabouts, they still never ceased. They never stopped hurting, or stirred up ‘what if’s inside of you.
*
Tears streamed angrily down your cheeks as the cotton fabric of the curtains left your hands. You had checked maybe twice now, three if you were telling yourself the truth. The thing was, you hadn’t been doing a lot of that lately, but you had needed it right in that moment as his curtains remained still. Then, there were yours, yanked to the side in a blush pink crumple. The images stared back at you, making your head hurt more than it already did. You weren’t sure how that was even a possibility.
“You rang?” a voice nearly demands. “Hullo?” you still don’t know what to do or how to say it, until you do.
“I’m sorry.”
“Reckon it took ya long enough. Now, why’re you cryin’ over Maths? Don’t think it deserves that much attention, don’t you agree?” he replies, making the pages in front of you blur all the more when your bed dips from his weight. “God, remind me again why we’re takin’ Geometry t’gether when we could’ve done somethin’ easier?”
“I dunno. I thought it was your idea,” you answer sheepishly, finding his shoulder with your head.
“Beats me. Whatever helps me avoid mo’ Maths down tha road,” he suggests, and you find yourself humming along in agreement. His fingers calloused from trying to learn guitar are felt on your forearm. “What d’ya say we take a break from this t’ bake some cookies?”
“But I want to finish it now,” you protest, meeting his eyes for the first time. They’re green as ever, and softer than you predicted after the argument you had had last night.
“Ya, and yer not gonna get anythin’ done if yer upset. I think doin’ somethin’ fun, like bakin’ fer a bit will be jus’ tha trick. C’mon,” he almost cooed, shutting the textbook and then tugging on your hand. They had ended up burnt, but the both of you ignored it when you later ate them on your bed as he explained tangents, cosines, and the like.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive,” he answered with enough confidence in his voice that you thought maybe you’d ask for some. You thought to yourself, isn’t that what you had been doing all of this time? Regardless of how many times you had asked that question, the same answer never made you feel any better. You nodded, just like every other time, assuring him you believe him, but you didn’t. How could you?
“You really won’t forget me if you make it big on the show, Harry?”
“Truth or lie, bubs?”
“Don’t tell me,” you whisper.
“‘Course not, love. How could I forget me bestest friend in tha whole wide world, huh? ‘ve known you since we were in nappies, ya don’t f’get that kind o’ rubbish,” and then, you were laughing.
Every time you’d think of that memory, you’d chide yourself for how you’d left it at that. The way that you let him leave you, but more importantly, how he let himself leave you.
*
That was one of the last times things had been so normal, and the last of burning cookies in the oven. There weren’t any more food fights in your kitchen, splashing hot, sudsy water at the other, or snapping tea towels at the other’s bum. A few weeks after the burnt cookies, you’d found the last one at the bottom of the cookie jar, amazed that any were left after his greedy hands. With an emptiness in your chest, you dropped it in the trash bin hurriedly, and escaped to your bedroom. It hadn’t been the first time, and you hoped, somehow and in some way, it would be the last.
Without knowing it, you had started a bad habit of lying to yourself, right then and there. As you stood at the window, pinning the curtains to the side in your secret S.O.S message, you waited. It wasn’t nearly as long as a few days before when your legs had ached for being there so long, but you still waited, too long. He didn’t come or pull his curtains aside. Somewhere deep inside of you, you knew that he never would come to your rescue ever again.
*
You couldn’t remember the last time that you had came home since moving out that a visit hadn’t been marred by the memory of him. Then again, when you thought hard on it, you were sure that there had never been a time where it wasn’t. Even if it had been nine years since things had changed, your eyes still strayed to his window at every visit. Sometimes, you even thought you saw his outline behind his curtains, or in the near dark, on your bed waiting for you. He never was there waiting, and unbeknownst to him, you could never help it but be waiting. It was what you had done best, and worst, for the last near decade.
It was difficult for you to remember the last time you had been home, stretching your thoughts until you figured it was last Christmas. Another one where he left you waiting, seeming as if that was the thing he was best at himself. Leaving you waiting for a text from him, but regardless of the bittersweetness, they came. On Christmas. Your birthday. Random days. The day you graduated with all of your classmates and without him. Then, when you had graduated uni, unable to stop wishing that he had been there, just like he was supposed to at all of the big moments. Most of all, when your mums told him to text you and the other way around, which you think hurt you the worst.
*
The house was quiet after a busy day cooking with your mum for a Sunday lunch. It always had confused you how so much fuss and work could be made just for a meal that lasted shy of twenty minutes. Tick tocking, the clock above the tap was the only sound in the house later that night. A mild summer heat still clung in the air outside, but you had chosen to stay in. You tried not to register the traditional disappointment on your mother’s face when she had asked you to join her to go next door for dinner. After several times of obliging, sitting at his family’s table with memories splashed all around, you found it unbearable to do it ever again. Worst of all, it made you doubt yourself when you’d remember the way your eyes gravitated towards the door, wondering if he’d walk in. It happened every time, even if you knew he was on the other side of the world at the moment. You couldn’t do it again, not just that, but so many other things.
At the memory of fingerpainting on the sliding glass door, much to your mum’s horror at your mere ages of three, you retreated to your bedroom recalling how you had insisted it was his idea. You didn’t believe him when he pulled the same thing then, and certainly you didn’t now, when a Peter Pan like scene waited before your eyes.
Your blink was long and purposeful, but no matter how many times you repeated it, it failed to do its job. It was still there when you opened your eyes, leading you to have a hard time believing them. At first, you weren’t sure if you wanted to believe them. If you were going to lie to yourself, you’d tell them that you wished it was a mirage of sorts just like all of the other times. You wishfully thought that it’ll go away with a blink, but it doesn’t.
If you weren’t lying to yourself? You’d tell them that you should be a lot of things, including wanting it to be imagined, but you couldn’t change the fact that it was not. Deep inside of yourself, you knew like black and white that you wouldn’t ever want to change it. If you thought with your brain, that’d be another story. You should be mad, but you weren’t. For once, you hoped that the good feeling would outweigh all of the bad ones for just enough time so that you could have a good visit. You had wanted that, and so much more, for so many years, more than anything at all, that it could be like old times. That dream had yet to come true, and you had buried it long ago.
Swallowing against a dry throat, you decide with your hand that you’ve been ready for years for this to happen, and the light flickers to life at your fingertips.
“Y’know, ya shouldn’t just leave yer window open. A burglar or someone dodgy like that may very well take advantage o’ it. ‘s quite dangerous.”
Were you lying to yourself right now? No, you weren’t, and so you saw how he had changed. His chocolate curls were longer now, but still cropped around his ears. More rings claimed his fingers, and so did the ink all over his observable body. Self consciously, you wondered if the little train in his noggin was running on the same tracks.
“Reckon it’s also dangerous to just help yourselves into a girl’s window,” your reply sounds anything but firm like your words had implied, but you don’t. It’s a tie between whose lips begin to curl first, but secretly you hope it’s his, so that it means you’re closer to seeing those trademark dimples. “Harry,” it falls before you have the chance to reel it back in. In succession, your name drops from his pair. The ones you had always dreamt of, and according to your mums whenever they got the chance, you had kissed once or twice when the two of you were little. You couldn’t blame yourself, if you were telling the truth.
“Ya didn’t use t’ mind it,” he defends. Only now, do you allow your eyes to stray from that face you weren’t sure was real. Your prior wish is nudged at when you realize that he’s sitting in the same spot he always had been when you found him like this. Whether it was after school, when the moon was high in the sky, or after you’d ripped the curtains to the side, it was always the end of your bed where he sat.
You can’t help it, and you say something that you’ve been trying to for too long.
“Hare, that was almost ten years ago.”
It catches him off guard, just like the words had done in your mind, unspoken for so very long. On your one hand, you could count the number of times you had seen him since he walked on to that stage. Each one was less personal and more unfulfilling than the last, and you hoped undyingly with every fiber of your being that this time wouldn’t be. For once, you didn’t want him to disappoint you, but you couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t. If you tried and if you didn’t lie, you could think of one long ago, you could think of so many. You wanted this time to be different, and at the same time, you didn’t want him to be. No, you wanted him to be him. Your Harry.
“What do you want, twerp? Why are you breaking into my childhood bedroom at nine o’clock at night?” your questioning lips deal. No matter the itch you have, you can’t get your feet to move in his direction.
The fact couldn’t be more of a truth when you hear what he says, “Mum told me ‘bout yer engagement.” Without you knowing, your feet wander across the room and away from him. On your vanity, sits the gold band with diamonds of all sizes set into it. It was the very reason you had come home, but if you were being honest with yourself, it wasn’t the only one. No, that one was sitting behind you on your bed. The biggest one of all, for so very long. “‘m sorry.”
“What could you be sorry for?” your voice is still and rather quiet, but the feelings inside of you are the least bit that.
“Loads. That I didn’t congratulate you earlier, that I didn’t know ‘til now. You should’ve told me, ‘m really happy fer you. Congratulations t’ tha both o’ you, ‘d love t’ meet tha lucky man.”
All at once, words and emotions are flying at you, and you’re unable to make sense of them. First, you want to be mad. Then, you want to be sad. Is there a middle ground or a combination?, you wonder. “Well, you don’t need to worry about it, because I’m not getting married,” it had been the third time you had said a version of these words out loud. The bloke in question, of course, your mum, and now, Harry. You hadn’t thought that this was how it would be playing out.
“What?” hasty questions are riddled in his one breath. The images pass before your eyes until you tear them from the ring, but it doesn’t make them go away. Out of sight and out of mind didn’t really work for this one, you had found, or with this one over there, either. He had been in your mind more than he had ever been in your sight, you think. “Love, why not?”
“Well, Harry, marriage doesn’t really seem to be in the cards for me. I dunno why I ever thought it had,” you confess gently, as if you need to soften the blow for him, of all people. You weren’t sure if he deserved it anymore, even.
“What d’ya mean? That’s all you could jabber ‘bout when we were kids, and teenagers too. It was all ‘bout walkin’ down tha aisle and bein’ a mum . . havin’ four bloody kids, and no less. What were tha names, again? Avery, Margot, Henley, and . .”
“Jones,” your lips decide for you. “I’m surprised you could remember all of those.”
“‘s not hard when you’d already decided our kids’ names when we were only five, bubs,” he wheezes, a nostalgic happiness dripping off of his words, likened to honey. “You’d always insisted you’d marry me one day, and not let anybody else have me.”
The tears had come and went over the last few days, and once again, they had made their fateful return. Sometimes, you had wished that he could know how many multitudes you had shed because of him. For him. At others, if you thought with your heart, you knew that he shouldn’t know. He couldn’t.
“I remember it being the other way around. You said I’d be your wife one day, I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
“A truth or a lie, love?” the saying brings your actions to a halt, making your eyes freeze on the bottle of contact solution just within reach.
“Truth.”
“I was sad t’ hear you’d broken yer promise t’ me when Mum had told me you’d gotten engaged,” this time, you’re not sure if his words are imaginary or actual. The feelings bubbling inside of you, demanding to be felt and then spoken, feel quite like the latter.
It was never ‘my mum’ between the two of you, because growing up it was as if the both of you had had two mums and a dad, or for Harry, two. Since the day he went away, she had never stopped being your mum either, and she reminded you with every card and text checking up on you. Sometimes, you’d wished she would just stop, but you didn’t know how to do that. You feared not knowing how to accept that if she had even agreed, if asked. She had spent countless times stroking your hair when you found your way onto her sofa, another sob on your lips from missing her son.
“‘s it shitty o’ me t’ say ‘m tha least bit relieved?” his next words come, and you can hear the sheepish tone in them.
“No, join the club.”
“Did he cheat on you? ‘Cuz if he did, I swear t’ high heavens that I-,” you stop him when his words become unnecessary, but after the ‘stop’ you utter, your lips falter.
How do you tell him that he’s the reason? The very one that led you to end the engagement with a man that was everything you had wanted and more, and yet, he wasn’t. Because, he wasn’t the man who stands behind you now. The exact one who at one time in your lives would walk around your gardens in nappies with you and nothing else. The boy you took baths with as a child, took naps with fighting over who got the Mickey Mouse blankey and the next day who got the Scooby Doo one. Try as you might, you couldn’t find a way or a time to tell your fiancée any of that, in all of the years you had been together, or even just the other day when he wrapped the ring back in your hand with wet eyes.
If you were even able to tell Harry that, how could you ever bring yourself to tell him what you’ve been holding inside of you for all of these years? You had tried again and again to forgive him for what he had done, but each time it had failed sooner than the last. What was to say that even if he was there in front of you, that one more try would work? How could you tell your lifelong best friend who wasn’t really your best friend anymore, who hadn’t been almost longer than he had, that you had never stopped loving him, but never stopped hating him for leaving you?
“No, he didn’t cheat on me. He was perfect . . but not for me.”
“‘m really sorry ‘bout that, love. Mum had good things t’ say ‘bout him afta meetin’ him and I trusted her.”
“Harry, like you ever approved of my boyfriends when we were in school,” you argue with a smile, not realizing you’re facing him until well, you are. His lips are smiling at you until they’re not, and it’s the furthest thing from your own, too. “You never liked any of them, and always were mean to them.”
“I rememba. Only gave ‘em a hard time ‘cuz there wasn’t one who treated you good enough, like you’d deserved,” if he sees the wetness collecting on your cheeks, he doesn’t mention it. His lips don’t, but his eyes do all of the talking, and more.
“Why are you saying all of this now, Harry?” it had been years in the making and there was no stopping it now. You couldn’t lie to myself anymore. No, not with the tears in your voice could you mask another one fed to his ears.
“Truth . . or lie?”
“I’m done playing games with you, Harry! We’re bloody twenty five years old, we’re supposed to always tell the truth. You promised all those years ago that you wouldn’t lie to me, and you did just that, Harry! How could you?” you feel the words swell inside of you, and you’re past trying to figure out how to get them to stop. He stares back at you with a face devoid of any inkling of understanding, telling you what you had always known, despite the lies you’d told yourself. “You left me, Harry! You forgot about me! Y-You went on that tv show and I didn’t exist anymore. How could you do that to me? We were the bestest of friends, ever since we were babies! I cheered you on, Harry. I was your biggest fan before anybody else, listening to your made up songs on guitar before we even started school. We wrote our own songs and we had our own band, The Brunette Bunch, with you on guitar and me on the keyboard . . I always knew you were a rockstar, because you were my favorite person in the entire world, Hare. But, you were there one day, and then you were gone. My best friend never came back after that . . I couldn’t count the hundreds of times that I’d hate myself for wishing that you’d never went on that show.”
“You were never very good at sharing me from tha start,” his words are sugar, perhaps the spice, and everything nice. So many still wait inside of you, left unsaid.
“I couldn’t do it, Hare. I couldn’t marry him, because of it.”
“Bubs, you left him ‘cuz o’ me?” his astonishment is vivid in your eyes and his, as well.
“You never did do that great in Lit, trying to make out what the books were trying to say,” your attempt is measly at a laugh, but amongst the glassiness in his eyes, you see an echo of it. “Twenty years later and I still can’t help but want nobody else to marry you.”
The dimples are home again and they make the same word resound inside of you, too. His steps are quiet but they speak volumes in your skull, and in your chest.
“Seems it was yest’day ‘d find you scribblin’ ‘Mrs. Harry Styles’ over and over in yer Comp journal, ‘stead o’ practicin’ cursive.”
“Oh, I was practicing my cursive still, just the important stuff,” this time, it’s the closest thing to a real laugh you've shared in days. It’s been years and more since the last time you’d heard one spill from his own, until now.
“Sure,” he titters. The soft padding of his Vans on the carpeted floor stops, but your heart tells you that it never will. There had been a lot of never’s that took up rent in your heart for too long now, but another one seemed to be turning to dust in front of your eyes. “Could never tell you how sorry I am fer leavin’ you behind, love. Never could, but I never fo’got you. Ev’ry time I called home I asked Mum how you were and what you were doin.’ At first, I couldn’t take the truth, and Mum didn’t want me t’ know, but I told her t.’ Y’know how she’d hug you ev’ry time you saw her? That was from me, told her t’ give you a hug from me ev’ry time I called, ‘cuz I hated that I couldn’t give you one . . I know ‘s no excuse and that it wasn’t anythin’ compared t’ yers, but it hurt too much afta awhile t’ see you when I came home. I wanted things t’ be the same again, but I couldn’t, knowin’ I was to leave again. But, y’know what, I never stopped. I asked Mum each and every call ‘bout you and made sure she told me ev’rythin.’ Saw photos o’ you graduate school without me, uni too, yer fiancée, passin’ yer driver’s test, movin’ t’ London, and at last, I got t’ send her one o’ when you came t’ that concert o’ ours a few back and saw me backstage. I never fo’got you, or stopped worryin’ ‘bout you, knowin’ how bad ‘d fucked things up. Just didn’t know tha first thing t’ do or say t’ fix ‘em.”
If you were dreaming all of this, you realized, you hoped that you wouldn’t wake up for a while still. You needed this to be real for just a bit more, maybe longer. Definitely, more.
“Truth or lie, Hare?” is all that your lips can utter at this point. You think that you made the right call when his lips sing with a laugh.
“Truth. Always, bubs.”
“Can I give you that kiss I’ve been sitting on for a good ten years, now?” it had been so long since your lips had curled with happiness because of him. Within moments, it feels like mere minutes since the days with your heads resting on each other’s shoulders with textbooks and Red Vines in your laps. Not much further, walking home with scraped knees reading Dr. Seuss to each other, either.
But, when his lips touch yours, it could feel like a million miles away, too. For the first time amongst your own lies and truths, you’re telling yourself the truth when you think that you’re glad that you’re here. Cradled against his chest and with his arm around your waist, you’re at last happy where you are, because it’s finally with him beside you again.
“Can I have a truth, bubs?”
“Sure, Hare. What is it?” you yawn, your forehead nudging against the sandpaper feel of his face. Quickly, you’d realized there were so many things you had to learn about him. You couldn’t be more excited to annoy his ears with questions.
“How set are you on that ‘never gettin’ married’ thing?”
With warmed cheeks and heart, at last, just the same, your smiling lips deal an answer you’ve held for too long.
“I’m still set on not letting anybody else marry you, if that tells you anything.”
In that moment, it had been the easiest it’d ever been to let yourself tell the truth. He’d changed and so had you, but he still smelled the same and felt the same and he was your same Harry, and your heart did too. It greeted him again as his lips did the same to your own, giggles shared underneath the covers like you’d been doing for years with him beside you.
