the social experiment // haylor au

two // stargazing

It had been six days since his first session with the psychologist his sister had made him go to. For the most part of his week, he had been able push aside his thoughts on the matter. He was at work, and needed to be fully focussed. He was able to compartmentalise his thoughts, and due to his lack of down time, Taylor and his session with her had barely entered his thoughts.

Taylor had gone on with her normal everyday business – she saw clients most of the day and went grocery shopping or had lunch with her friends. It had even snowed that week and she'd gone out to a close-by park. Harry and his green eyes and deep voice had only crept into her mind late at night when everything was done and she was lying in bed, half asleep. Then she'd remember how he pulled his fingers though his hair or how slightly weird he looked when he smiled – like he didn't do it very often.

She really wanted to help him overcome whatever it was, that was stopping him from having anyone in his life. Taylor sought out to help all her clients, but for some reason he was different.

The attraction to him was there – of course it was there – but obviously she couldn't exactly act on it. They had a doctor-patient professional relationship. Taylor had seen her fair share of emotionally damaged people. People who wouldn't acknowledge the pain that they felt, and she usually knew how to help them, but he had something different about him. She didn't really know what it was.

She had sensed that he wouldn't be willing to talk to her in the environment she worked in – he had already told her that he didn't believe in psychologists. So, she'd decided not to help him as a client, but as more of a friend.

It only took Harry about five minutes to find what he was looking for. Being good at hacking into things was part of his job. He stared at his phone screen after he'd typed Taylor's number in, running through everything he wanted to say one more time, so their correspondence would be efficient. Then he clicked 'call'.

Taylor was still up; despite how tired she was, finishing some paperwork that she could file in the morning. It was late, by any standards. She'd been working since her last patient had left in the late afternoon. She shuffled upstairs from the study, where she had been working, to her bedroom, yawning a couple of times on the way there.

She was tired and couldn't wait to literally throw herself into bed and pass out immediately. It had been a long day and an even longer week – but tomorrow was Friday. That meant the weekend was close – and it also meant she would be seeing Harry, who hadn't been on her mind for a long while now. She allowed a small smile as she thought of their little experiment.

At the time, she had thought that it would be a god way to show him that friendship was more than a distraction from his work. Taylor found friends very important – it was her friends – and her family – that helped her get back on her feet emotionally after Tom left.

It was almost impulse for her to roll her eyes every time he came to mind but she had managed to suppress it these days. At least he was back—her thoughts were interrupted by her ringtone – the default one the phone came with – and vibrating in the pocket of her sweatshirt. She pulled it out, noting there was no caller ID.

The paranoid part of her brain was telling her that answering a late night call from an unknown number was exactly how horror movies began. She swiped right and put her phone to her ear.

"Hello?" she said, hesitantly.

"Hi. Taylor? It's Harry."

Her eyes widened, both out of relief that it wasn't a serial killer and confusion. "Harry – as in Styles right?"