Suburbia (h.s)

prologue.

TAKE NOTE: This story does not take place in the past- it takes place in the present day. I do not condone these behaviors nor do I promote them or am I attempting to shame anybody who likes to read this sort of thing. This is a story I started writing/posted back in 2014 and have been revisiting regularly over the last few years. After going to see DWD it reminded me of this project in an eerie kind of way! So I felt like it was a good time to try and continue where I left off. If you are an old reader, I'd recommend rereading as I am actively changing this and rewriting.

With this being said, read at your own discretion. If at any time you feel uncomfortable reading, please stop and move on to something else. I understand these topics and this concept are not for everybody, so they should be treated with caution. In addition, in no way am I relating Harry to these behaviors. This is an AU- I'm really only using his appearance. That is where the resemblance ends.

Lastly, not everything in this story will be entirely accurate to the decade of the 1950s (the decade in which I drew my biggest inspiration for writing this). Some themes and ideas will be more dramatized. Thank you for reading.

- Evie

♡

One year ago. April 21st. 10:45 PM

I was sitting at the dining room table managing to finish the final few paragraphs of my history paper. The words on the screen were beginning to bleed together, the brightness making my eyes water. I'd been working for around four hours putting the finishing touches on the cumulation of all my hard work over the last semester. HIST 499, the class I'd spent hours at the library collecting research for my term paper over the last few months, was nearly finished. In the process, I'd become a near expert on early 20th century American women's fashion. I knew probably more than anyone needed to know about social classes and how they impacted the ways women dressed at the turn of the century. I studied fabric patterns and hat styles and all the like. I had also become surprisingly meticulous on the Chicago citation style.

Now I was just going line by line, ensuring each comma and apostrophe were properly placed. This was the easy part. But it was also the boring part, which was contributing to the way my eyes were fluttering shut at each stroke of the key.

It was just roughly half past 11:00 when I heard the familiar sound of the front door closing and opening. The noise woke me up a bit, stirring me enough to guide my hand to my cup of tea that was sitting next to me. I sipped the drink. It was ice cold.

It was only a moment until the smiling face I expected appeared at the threshold of the kitchen and dining room arch, smiling as he held a crumpled white paper bag that clearly contained burgers from the fast food joint down the street. Harry was a grad student at the university, but unlike me he preferred strictly to do his schoolwork in a private room at the campus library. That was where he'd likely been since earlier in the afternoon. Like me, he'd also been busy putting the finishing touches on his paper, except he'd been working on his for much longer. His master's thesis was vastly different from the kind of thing I was writing. Mechanical engineering was something I hardly understood. He'd taken way too much of his time trying to explain his project to me, but I still hardly understood it.

"I figured you hadn't eaten yet, so I went ahead and picked us up some food for our hard work." Harry took the seat across from me at the table, hands going into the bag to dig out the contents. I couldn't help but smile at his thoughtfulness. He was always doing things like this.

"I could kiss you right now." I shut my laptop and pushed it aside as he handed me a carefully paper-wrapped burger and a pink lemonade. He grinned at me, shrugging as he set his own food in front of himself.