the social experiment // haylor au

two // stargazing

"Goodnight Harry."

-

At precisely 6pm, the following day, a black Jeep stopped outside Taylor's house. It was Harry's of course, and he was annoyingly punctual, as she had predicted. The weather outside had warmed up considerably, but it was still Wintery and chilly outside.

She zipped up her coat, under which she was wearing a cute sweater with a fox on the front of it, and a long-sleeved vest. Taylor stood by the door and shoved one foot into her boots, while shoving her phone into her pocket and grabbing her purse.

She almost shouted a goodbye into the house and up the stairs as she closed the door, but she remembered at the last second that she was home alone.

Harry jogged out to open the passenger seat door for her, and she was reminded of how painfully polite he could be at times. She thanked him, and he stared the car, pulling out of her driveway and turning onto a road that would lead them to the highway.

"I know a really good place to look at the stars from – I hope you don't mind that I picked somewhere," he said, a bit nervously.

"No, no, that's absolutely fine, thanks," she said, giving him a small smile, even though he couldn't see her, his eyes firmly concentrated on the road ahead of them.

The car turned onto the highway, and he leaned back into his seat a little, which Taylor took as a sign that he was loosening up. He spoke a moment later.

"I've got a couple of my telescopes there in the back seat, I was thinking we could pull them out and I can show you all the different constellations and maybe even see some planets, if the lights aren't too bright," he said, with a faint look of wonder and... excitement? Taylor couldn't tell.

"Do you enjoy this a lot?" she asked, trying to keep the conversation flowing as they drove away from the city and inland, where the light pollution was less dense.

"Oh, yes definitely. Astronomy has been incredibly fascinating to me, ever since I was a little boy, we—" he stopped himself and seemed to hesitate before bringing his hand to the radio and turning it on, "Music?"

Taylor knew he was about to say something important, perhaps about his childhood, and she was so close to getting him to open up, but then he'd stopped.

She decided that she still had a bit of time before they reached where they could set up the telescopes, and the entire ride back to probe him further – if not as his shrink, then as his friend.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and quickly hooked it up to the car's stereo system – she saw Harry slightly frown as she scrolled through her music app, trying to pick a song that Harry might enjoy.

The sound of drums and a voice counting down filled the speakers and immediately, Taylor's spirits lifted as the song began to play. Harry had both hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road, but every two seconds or so, he glanced across at her, with an amused look on his face, as if trying to read her mind.

"This is what friends do – they bring music to make the drive out more fun," she told him as John Mayer's voice filled the car interior. Harry's eyebrows knitted together at her words.

"Okay, now I have a question," he said, slowly.

"Shoot."

"You said that we would be doing some experiments to show me that activities can be more enjoyable with the company of friends. And you just did something you said that friends do – are we friends, Taylor?"

His innocence was so adorable, if it had been under any other circumstances, she may have kissed his cheek – but this was her patient. Who had just asked if they were friends. Were they?