a/n ope ope ope title chapter incoming!
25.
HARRY'S POV
We sit on the fire escape for a while, wrapped together in the blanket and looking out at nothing in particular. She rests her head on my shoulder hesitantly. I can tell she feels weird because of her outburst. Guilty maybe, angry, annoyed. With me? I hope not. The thought of her being upset with me is hard to stomach.
What she said hurt, but it's not real. That's what I have to keep telling myself. I have to keep reminding myself of what she's said in the past. That my touch leaves traces of red against her skin, that she cares, she's jealous, she wants something she's not ready to have. It's so obvious, the way she's sitting here with me quietly now. It's what she wants. She wants to stay.
I've tried to be really intentional about touching her today. In the car and now out here. I know it's something that she resonates with, just like me. We're both very physical people.
I just want her to feel something here. I want her to feel like there's no option but to be together because I know as soon as she has an out she'll take it. Maybe that's selfish of me, but I know that what's holding her back isn't something she can control or wants to keep. I feel like I have to push her.
"That night," she begins to speak, breaking the quiet suddenly. "When I called you baby," my heart freezes up at the phrase, but I nod. "I heard you, in your bedroom as I was falling asleep. You were singing a song. Singing, don't call me baby again, over and over." She looks up at me. I can feel her chin resting softly against my shoulder. I can feel her breath against my neck. "Why was that?"
I keep my gaze fixed on the building before us and rub the end of the blanket between my fingertips. "It didn't feel right." I decide. And it's true. At the time it felt like a word she used with Emma, not with me.
She shrugs and turns away. "I don't know. It's just a word of endearment, a nickname. It's something you call someone you care about. I don't think that's weird."
Someone you care about.
The phrase makes the back of my neck heat up. She wants this. She cares about me. That's what she told me on the floor of her bedroom at my house. That's what she's telling me now. She doesn't know it, but that's her bedroom in my mind. No one else will ever get to sleep there.
"Well then call me baby," I concede. We fall back into a lulling silence, but then she breaks it once more.
"Baby," she mumbles shyly.
"Yeah," I murmur back, bringing my hand up to run through my hair.
"That night, you called me Anna. You called me my middle name." She barely whispers. My heart seizes again. The way she's suddenly opening up, talking to me, touching me, I know it's because she feels guilty for blowing up, for making me cry. "No one's ever called me that before."
"Mm," I respond. "Well maybe that can be my word for you."
"Okay," she agrees. And I feel satisfied with that. For now that can be enough, for a few minutes I can be satisfied with just having a word. One word that's ours.
The window creaks behind us. "Hey baby," Emma calls out. We both turn around to look at her. "Oh," her eyes widen when she sees me. "I didn't realize you were out here," she nods to me. "I was just coming to check on Quinn because she's been out here a while, most everyone's gone home."
"It's okay," Quinn smiles softly and pushes the blanket off her shoulders, slowly standing up. As she moves away from me, the chill of the night seems to seep back under my skin. I shiver a little and watch my breath cloud up in the air. "I think I'm going to bed anyway." She steps over my legs to get to the window, and before she climbs in she turns back to look at me. "Goodnight, Harry."
I nod. "Night."
She slips through the window and into the dark of the apartment, right through my fingers.
I turn back to the city and sigh, wrapping the blanket tighter around my body. The night feels colder without her.
"Hey," a low, raspy voice calls out. I jump a little and turn around. Wes has snuck out the window, I didn't hear him come out. He gestures to the empty spot next to me. "Can I join you?"
I don't say anything, but look out at the city again. He climbs over me, sitting down where Quinn just was. Slowly, he brings his cigarette to his lips and breathes out the smoke, a puffier cloud than my frosty breath.
"She likes you," he finally says. I roll my eyes. I have a feeling I'm not going to enjoy this conversation.
"I know that."
"She doesn't like most people."
"I don't think that's true," I tilt my head. "I think she just doesn't pretend to like people. She doesn't lead people on."
He snorts.
"But in my experience she likes a lot of people."
"What's your deal," he changes the subject suddenly. I kind of give him a look, he came out here with a lot of attitude for some reason. If he's got something to say to me he should just say it.
"What do you mean."
"Why are you here right now," he kicks at the corner of my blanket with his foot. His legs are long, like a spider's. He's taller than me, but lanky, his limbs extending like ropes from his body. I could probably take him.
"I'm here because Quinn wanted to see me."
"And why do you do what she wants."
"Because I like her very much and want to see her happy. And for her to be happy I need to do what she wants me to do."
He watches me carefully, seemingly unaffected by the cold. He barely shivers in his thin, green long sleeve shirt and jeans. He brings the cigarette back up to his lips. "You're tired," he offers gently. His tone is weird, fatherly, it makes me wince. I don't like the authority behind it.
"I could say the same for you."
He laughs dryly and presses the cigarette butt against the railing, leaving a dark, ashy mark against it before letting the end drop to the floor. The movement reminds me of Quinn putting out her own joint that night we sat out here and smoked. "I'm always tired," he confesses. I'm about to respond, but his eyes grow cold and he seems to be looking at something beyond me. "I don't sleep unless she's there." He whispers to himself.
I shift uncomfortably. What am I supposed to say to that?
But he snaps back and looks at me with a new ferocity. "You've got baggage," he decides simply. My eyebrows knit together.
"What?"
"I can see it in you, you're running from something. You think you're running toward Quinn right now, but you're really just running away from someone else."
I open my mouth to respond, but then snap it shut, unable to argue. Louis. I wonder if he knows. Would she have told him? Not freely, if she had, it was because he interrogated it out of her. He watches me carefully, a smile growing across his face.
"So I'm right?" He reaches into his pocket and takes out another cigarette. I watch him light it and then hold it between his fingers. I nod. She was right too, you can't keep things from him. Even if you want to, he was a way of pulling information out of you. The thought of Quinn dating this man suddenly makes me sick.
"Did she tell you," I mumble. He shakes his head.
"I'm very good at reading people."
"She must've picked it up from you then," I say. He laughs to himself. A laugh that feels patronizing to me.
"No, she got that from her mother."
Her mother. The phrase doesn't fit quite right in my head. The thought of Quinn having a mother, parents, it doesn't compute. She seems so distant from a domesticated life, a family. But she has them, she's told me about them in passing, obviously she's told Wes. "Have you met them?" I ask. He nods.
"They're the worst," he smiles and smokes. "But you're distracting me. I came out here to figure you out."
He narrows his eyes and sits back a little. I take it back, I couldn't take him. The way he moves, sits, watches me. I feel like a bug under a microscope. I feel like an animal at the zoo. I feel naked. He's a snake and I hate it. I hate that he's in her life.
"A forbidden love," he decides to himself. I shift and cough, crinkling my nose and looking away up at the sky. "None of those publicity stunts, none of those women, something secret, personal, just between you and her," he smokes again. I smirk at the pronoun, but catch myself too late because he's caught on. "Oh?" he chuckles playfully. I roll my eyes and sigh. "Not a woman? Okay."
"It doesn't matter--"
"Yes it does," he snaps and recoils. "If you're going to fuck around here, it matters where you've been."
"I mean it doesn't matter for you," I turn to look him squarely in the eye, trying my best to intimidate him, but this only seems to make him happier. He grins ear to ear. "You have no business in my personal life, or in Quinn's."
His face falls and his mouth twitches back and forth. A moment of unbelievable tension passes, before his voice finally breaks it, tenderly. "When she came back, who do you think she went to? To show the tattoo to. She told me she wanted it removed." He murmurs coldly. I purse my lips, refusing to look away, but I can feel my heart starting to race. "You know, not once after we've spent time together has she decided to go out and dye her hair some crazy color."
His eyes dart to my feet, and slowly pan up my figure, stopping at my lips, and then my ears, and then finding their way to my eyes again. I can't breathe, I want to look away so badly. I can't speak either. It's like suddenly he's grabbed hold of my throat and won't let go.
"You don't have anything to say now?"
I narrow my eyes but remain quiet.
"She's going to end up hurting you, because that's what she does. And you're going to end up hurting her, because you can't take it anymore. And then you'll both be hurt, and she's going to ring the bell at my apartment and find her way to my door. And you're going to find your way back to your lover's bed. Because we tell ourselves we can be reborn and move past our pain, but at the end of the day, the people we imprint ourselves onto when we're young are the relationships we trap ourselves in for life."
I snap. I stand up and step over him, climbing back inside through the window. He rolls his eyes as I pass by him, unimpressed by my stamina, but I don't care. When I'm back inside I can finally breathe. It's strange how the air feels so much fresher in here.
It's dark, quiet, peaceful. I feel my muscles relax as I look around the space. Leo sleepily opens his eyes and watches me from the chair. Emma's sitting at the kitchen counter, her earbuds dangling from her head as she hot glues little, metal figurines to earring pieces. She looks up at me and smiles warmly.
"How're you doing?" She murmurs. It's like a different world in here. She has no idea what just happened a few feet from her. I feel an overwhelming sense of safety.
I sigh and grab Quinn's guitar off the floor where I left it. Then I sit down across from Emma at the table and hug the instrument against my body. Having a guitar in my hands is comforting. It makes me feel a little better. She watches me intently.
"That bad huh?"
"Why does this have to be hard? And weird? Why can't it just be easy and simple and happen?" I begin strumming the guitar lightly. She pulls out her earbuds and sits back, watching me.
"My dad used to tell me that when things are easy to obtain you don't cherish them." A smile starts to dance across her face. She gives me a questioning look. "Why don't you just kiss her? You're torturing all of us with this will they won't they crap, although I'm one to talk," she drops off at the end, speaking more to herself.
"Because," I look down at her hands. "I don't want to kiss her. I want her to kiss me," I try to explain. She scoffs. "And I want her to love it so much that she needs to do it again and again and again."
"God, you're such a sub," she rolls her eyes playfully. I give her a look.
"Speak for yourself," I tease. She blushes and looks down at her hands, but then glances up.
"Maybe that's why we're attracted to her. Quinn is the most assertive dom I've ever met."
"Yeah, maybe," I concede. She wiggles her eyebrows.
"Are you going to play me a song, Harry?"
"I'll do you one better, I'll write you one. Right here, right now." I find a rhythm and chord progression that feels good and easy. "I've got to process some things."
"Is that why you write? To process?" She asks as I practice the chord progression I've discovered. I nod. This is the first time we've ever really been alone, just the two of us. But it feels okay, she's a very comforting presence.
"It's what I've been doing recently, yeah. Just writing down everything. Turning it all into songs. Most of them are bad, but it's a release. It helps me understand and move on." I know part of that isn't true. I like to say that the songs help me move on. But most of the time when they're about Quinn, they just make me more obsessed with her.
"Well let's hear it, Mr. Styles," she teases, but prepares herself to be a good audience member. I close my eyes.
"Don't know where you're laying, just know it's not with me. Don't know what I'd tell you if, I passed you on the street," I whisper softly, thinking about Wes's words. She went to him. When she came back she went to be with him and I had no idea. This whole time I thought she was suffering alone like I was but now I know that's not true.
"I don't want your sympathy but you don't know what to do to me!" I whisper and then stop. I stop playing the guitar and sit back, because that line is maybe a little too real. But Emma doesn't make a face. She's not weird about it. She just nods softly and smiles.
"Say what you have to say," she offers. It's strange, doing this here in front of her. But at the same time, it feels like the only way I could do it. I nod and look back down at the guitar.
"Oh, Anna," I sigh. I've only ever called her that once. But now I know she likes it. So I'm going to say it every opportunity I get. I just want to make her happy, make her feel okay, make her feel safe, because maybe if she feels that way enough she'll stay. "Everytime I see your face there's only so much I can take, Oh, Anna,"
I strum the guitar again, thinking about how fiery she is. Like staring into a furnace, that's what I said once.
"Don't know how you taste when, there's smoke in your perfume." I play and think about all the times I've been with her when I can smell him on her. The smoke in her perfume. He's the one that makes her smell like him. The one she doesn't want to smell like. "Chew me up and spit me out, nothing left to lose."
That's how it felt when I was out there. That's how I feel when I'm with her. The way she can read me like a book, chew me up, spit me out, know exactly what I'm feeling when I'm feeling it.
"I don't want your sympathy!" I whisper the chorus that I've discovered again. My eyes peek open to see Emma drumming her fingers along to the song. "Oh, Anna,"
"Oh, Anna," she sings along lightly.
"Hope you never hear this," I play softly, suddenly remembering that she's just down the hallway. She could still be awake. She could be hearing me. "And know that it's for you. Don't know what I'd tell you if, you asked me for the truth." I don't. What would I say? If she came out here right now and asked why I was singing a song about her with her best friend. The thought of her hearing all these songs I've written, she would freak out. She would fly away.
My fingers lose the melody and I slide back into the George Michael song I was playing earlier tonight. Emma grins. 'That's not yours," she teases. I huff.
"Well I guess it would be nice," I softly sing, "If I could touch your body, if I could touch your body, if I could touch your body, if I could touch your body," I'm caught in a loop. That's all I can sing. It's all I want. I stop playing and sit back, closing my eyes and trying to remember the melody from the song I was singing.
"I don't want your sympathy," Emma offers shyly. I nod and strum out the chord on the guitar again.
"I don't want your sympathy but you don't know what to do to me, oh, Anna," I sing.
"Oh, Anna," Emma echoes quietly. She has a gorgeous voice.
"Everytime I see your face," we both sing, she harmonizes above me. "There's only so much I can take, oh, Anna,"
"Oh, Anna,"
"Oh, Anna," I call back.
"Oh, Anna," she echoes like a sweet bird.
"Oh, Anna," I end the song and my hands rest against the strings to stop the sound. Emma lightly claps, grinning ear to ear.
"That was beautiful," she sighs.
"Thank you," I blush and my hand goes up to scratch the back of my neck.
"What the hell," a soft voice calls out behind me.
a/n MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA