fly me to the moon | kate

It definitely felt like there was something wrong with it--being alone. “Independent” as she’d been calling it, as her friends liked to remind and reassure her she was, but that was dressing up reality. Independent, single, whatever, they all meant the same thing--being by yourself. Getting into bed without anyone else.

Life was much lonelier without someone to curl up next to who you knew loved you, wasn’t it? Lonelier without caring touch, shittier without someone to do things for and who did things for you because they wanted to, without having a partner. She felt used up to already be divorced at twenty-one, hoped that in time someone would find her who she felt the same way about (doubtful) and who didn’t care about things and people in her past, but that was all it was, really. Hope. The most indefinite and malleable of futures and feelings were built on hope. She’d had a hopeful future already and it had burned to the ground, so what likelihood was there something like that could happen again?

“Hmm, I’m glad you think so.” Kate told Harlan, not entirely sincerely, but he could read between the lines, couldn’t he? She didn’t have to spell it out for him that she didn’t agree, and that there was something wrong with it and that she didn’t feel like it was bad to want companionship. Kate considered that it probably wasn’t bad to want companionship itself, but it could be bad to want it from a specific person, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which one her life had more closely modeled thus far.

“Yeah, hiding place,” That brightened her up. She nodded and shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t bring a jacket. Nowhere to put it and it wouldn’t have gone with the dress, sooo, I hope said hiding place isn’t out of doors.” Kate slid down off her stool and winced at the tiny crack her heels made on the floor. “Oops. Lead the way.”

It wasn't hard to tell that they had gone too far down a line of conversation that didn't sit well with Kate.

Harlan couldn't quite relate. He wasn't quick to open up in sharing the finer, more personal details of his life with anyone, let alone dig into those intricacies with an otherwise perfect stranger. The thought of it was almost foreign. But then again, his tendency to hold himself at an arm's length from damn near everyone had been the cause of a lot of his own personal tribulations that were different but potentially not all that unlike her own.

The two of them seemed to exist on two vastly different planes of existence— one who had opened up too much, letting herself get torn apart in the process, and the other unable to open up at all. Objectively, neither seemed less or more painful than the other.

"The hiding place," Harlan repeated distractedly just as the sound of dress shoes on marble had started to grow nearer. "Well, then, I've got bad news..." He glanced over his shoulder at Kate (she had mentioned the dress, he couldn't help it) before his eyes landed back on the carpeted grand set of stairs. A safe spot. From where they were in the hall, levels up where the private boxes were located, the rooftop was a short journey.

Harlan led the way up the spiraled staircase to an otherwise uninhabited corridor. "Afraid you'll have to settle for magic," He said, his voice softer than before as if the performers below might hear them. "Jacket didn't go with the dress either," He shrugged as he pushed open a door that exposed the outside world looking down on London. "This is it," He breathed in the cool air, running a hand through his hair and markedly more relaxed.

“Magic,” she repeated with a funny little expression, remembering that, of course, she was a witch and could use spells to keep herself warm with. Kate wondered frequently ever since being with Charlie whether or not she was really born to be a Muggle, and if their lives would have been exactly the same if they’d been in that world instead. Certainly wouldn’t have had a crazy groupie sneaking around their house to steal her hair and turn into her in the middle of the night.

Well--maybe the sneaking around their house part, but not the second part. Being a Muggle seemed like it would have been so much easier, like, all across the board. It made some creaky wheels turn in her brain.

The fresh air was an antidote to the dizzying feeling of being drunk whilst traipsing up that spiral staircase, and as she observed him, Kate noticed that Harlan might have been feeling the same way. “You seem more at home, outside. Seems like you were all cinched up in a little box in there.” Her hand gestured vaguely toward the door they’d just come from, the one that led back into the theatre.

“Guess that makes sense, though. What do you do outside when it’s like, pelting hail or something? You get a bunch of cuts on your face and just deal with it to keep playing, or?”

Harlan followed, belatedly, to where Kate had gestured toward the door. He lingered on it for a moment before flicking back to her curiously, eyes narrowing. So, she could sense the tension, could she? Usually, it started in his chest, then made its way through his veins, up to his spine, tensing his shoulders. Harlan could feel it of course— he desperately wished that he couldn't— but in hearing it out loud he wondered if it was really all that obvious.

Kate seemed to have noticed, either way, and there was something both unnerving and flattering about that. Harlan tried not to dwell, instead of focusing on the outside air. His shoulders loosened again with an inhale of crisp air, the breeze running through his hair and over the fabric of his shirt. His foregone jacket inside was sounding nicer by the moment.

Then— hail?

Quidditch of course. The millisecond of question on his brow succumbed to thoughtfulness as he leaned back against one of the concrete ledges to face Kate, his palms pressed beside him casually as if to anchor himself to something. "Yeah, we keep playing," A smile pulled at his mouth at the thought. When it came to the sport, they played in almost every condition. Though, talking about it any further wasn't of real interest. Talking about himself, in general, wasn't.

Harlan watched her for a moment before glancing at the streets below. "Think your sister will notice you've gone?" He wondered, glancing back up. He'd always been curious about what the crowd looked like from the stage. Similar to the pitch, he liked to think— a sea of nothing.

She found it strange when men simply answered questions, sometimes not even all the way, and then said nothing else for elaboration. They were the worst about it with letters--she would send an owl to her dad asking multiple different questions and only get replies to one or two, so she had to be careful to spread them out or convey their urgency, otherwise it was hopeless.

“I guess adults know what they’re getting into, but,” her arms curled around her middle to grasp for some warmth she wouldn’t find in her twiggy body, “kids in school… seems like that’s irrationally dangerous for them. Especially, like, twelve year olds.”

Quidditch wasn’t the sport at Ilvermorny, and she hadn’t really been big on going to sporting events anyway--wasn’t now either, but she’d gone a few times with friends or to watch other people play for fun. Kate was more of a yoga, jogging, hiking, swimming person, not so much a … violent team sport person. Skinny fingers scrabbled around to pull her wand out of her tiny bag, waving it around a bit to shittily cast a charm that would at least make her teeth stop chattering. It felt like there were holes in the invisible shield because she could still feel the wintry breeze brushing up against her skin in several places, but she didn’t think she could do any better at the moment.

“Notice?” Kate asked him, as though she’d heard the words but hadn’t processed his meaning, “Oh, yes, she’ll notice,” She laughed darkly as soon as Harlan’s question registered fully in her addled brain and shook her head. “I’ll be in huge trouble tomorrow, that I ditched that… toad she set me up with and that I didn’t stay to watch the last part. Trust that much.”

 More or less dangerous than an exploding Quod?" Harlan quipped, catching Kate's eye with a faint smile, only half-teasing. The American sport was dangerous in an entirely unique way to Quidditch. Still, that didn't mitigate the point that she'd made. In terms of danger, both had their pitfalls. "My parents went mad when I started in school..." The memory was spoken without hesitation, almost a stream of consciousness.

In hindsight, if he had his own children to be thinking about, he was sure that he would be too pleased, either.

He didn't linger on that train of thought for too long.

Harlan watched her cast a spell before pulling out his own wand and reinforcing it; their shared magic would be stronger together than in silo. Mirroring her smile, he eventually chuckled. There was no way her sister would know that Kate had snuck off from the stage. He figured she would be in the clear until her date spilled the beans. "Trouble?" He repeated. Her sister must have been a bit like Audrey, then.

"I'm sure she'll understand," If it were Audrey, he wouldn't, but he chose to have a bit of faith (for once). Kate had just described the man as a toad, for Christ's sake— surely her sister didn't want that for her. He wondered briefly why she had set her up at all, then ventured. "A toad, even..." Harlan reveled, watching her for a moment before letting out a laugh. What a way to be known.

"Too cold?" The wind whipped his ever slightly unkempt hair. The charms seemed to help, but he wondered what she really made of his little hideaway.

“Yes, trouble.” Kate nodded once. She’d used that word on purpose and it was an accurate description for what was going to befall her once Francesca found out she’d dipped on her performance--and, knowing her, she already had. Best she go home soon, have another few drinks to lighten the weight of impending doom. “You know. You have a sister who’s a little… hard to please.”

Harlan’s charm helped hers quite a bit and she was warm enough now to let down her arms, but she did wish she had something else to fiddle with. It was weird to stand around, close but not really that close to someone, with nothing to play with. Kate liked having something in or around her mouth a lot; she wondered if that meant she had an oral fixation or just nervous tendencies.

“Not as cold now,” Kate smiled widely and felt her cheeks turn red. “Guess I’m bad at magic when I’ve had too much to drink.” She pushed her tongue into the side of her cheek. “You know that I used to live in California, though, right? And I still do, some of the time.” Less of the time than she’d intended after the divorce proceedings had begun, actually, but she still escaped there when the bustling business world of London felt too cold, too hard, or too much.

“And that guy really was a toad. No manners. No hygiene, either, from the… smell of it.”

"Hard to please?" Harlan repeated with an amused smile. His own sister was far beyond hard to please. "That's certainly one way of putting it..." He mused, watching her and revelling himself in the warmth from their charms. The magic had a strange effect— like a blanket blocking the chill of the air but not eliminating it entirely. "I don't know about your sister, but Audrey prefers scrupulous," Both eyebrows raised told a better story of how Harlan felt about that.

He felt his smile mirror her own of its own volition, that damn thing. "Could be worse," Harlan said honestly. If weakened magic was the most of her drunken worries she was better of than he had been at that age. If that tables had been turned he'd be halfway to someone's bed by that stage, or stuck in a brawl with strangers who had made even just the one comment.

"You did mention that," Harlan's eyes flickered up to the sky briefly in thought before landing back on Kate. Either she had said something or Audrey had explained it to him, though it was easier to think that it was the former— certainly easier to explain, at least. He lingered on her for a moment before letting out a quick, decisive breath. As it turned out the bad habits of his own twenties seemed closer at the mere fleeting thought. It was time to leave.

"We should go back in before the show closes," He said, sure that he wasn't explaining the fact. With a final glance around them, he lead the way.

fin

He was right, they ought to get back inside. Maybe she could avoid the brunt of Francesca’s rage if she appeared for the ending act, and avoid a bad comedown of this drunkenness and her emotions too. “Right, you’re right.” Kate remembered to answer verbally and nodded her head up and down, feeling herself teeter backward just slightly as she craned her neck to glance at the night sky.

No stars, obviously, they were in London and the light pollution was too intense to really see any until one left and went out to the countryside. A pang screeched in her chest because, as long as she was remembering correctly, the last time she’d been to the English country had been with Charlie to visit his parents.

Kate’s strappy heels clicked down the stairs behind Harlan, more clumsy than rhythmic, and she was thankful that he had done the unconventional thing and gone first in case she toppled right down them. She had a feeling he knew that was a possibility. Perhaps it was better to call such a gesture kind. No--people could be kind and unconventional, couldn’t they?

out