don’t lie, don’t tell the truth [harlan]

Honey shrugged one shoulder, close to laughing. “Can’t make any promises.” She blinked but otherwise held his gaze with a soft smirk; he didn’t give her any indication to what he thought ‘the plan’ might have been, what he thought she was meant to be doing if not slapping him; it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling to feel like she didn’t know where she stood with him, but it wasn’t a recent one.

She followed his gaze up, but she brought it back down just as quickly, studying his face as he continued looking skyward. “Hmm.” She almost expected Harlan to want to at least appease Audrey by showing up to dinner but he didn’t move. And he was right there, so close, well within arm’s reach; Honey kept her hands to herself, holding her glass in her lap with both hands. She didn’t want to ruin whatever this was, the space that was allowing her to forget that she shouldn’t have been thinking there was anything left to ruin in the first place. (Or that there could be something again--that idea had crept in in the last few minutes.)

“Think so?” Honey raised an eyebrow, but she was glad she didn’t need to suggest (again) they stay. She smiled, watching him relax, letting herself think she’d helped with that.

She looked down at her glass--still empty--and thought about asking him to make her another but she didn’t want to risk him not sitting so close when he came back. She didn’t want him to move at all, for that matter. She handed him her glass after another second and leaned back over the other side of the chair, just enough to point her wand at the bar and summon a bottle of gin. She hesitated before summoning soda as well, setting the gin in her lap as she grabbed the new bottle out of the air.

Straightening back up, she shrugged with a casual, “What?” She grinned. “Still technically a party, aye?”

There was a newfound lightness between them; even more than the last time he saw Honey. Harlan hoped that might mean for something of a positive future. What kind of positive exactly he couldn't be certain, but it didn't hurt to believe that she might not always hate him. Then again, had she ever really hated him? His guilt, he was learning, was much harder to divert.

He'd been so preoccupied by his own thoughts that he hadn't noticed when Honey put her glass into his hand to lean over the side of the chair. Her actions weren't entirely clear until the decanter of gin came flying in their direction. He pretended to duck. The witche's wandwork was clean (infuriatingly so) despite having been drinking. "Careful with that, Flume" He teased, nudging her shoulder as she went back for the bottle of tonic that seemed far less likely to cause any real damage.

Eyebrow raised, he clicked his tongue at her hands full. "Something like that," A party for two people was usually reserved in his mind for something else. Harlan adjusted again on the arm of the chair, the uncomfortable choice of seating he'd been relegated to. It was far from ideal but he was too stubborn to give it up. Besides, for whatever reason, he didn't feel the immedate need to put distance between them again.

"Just have it straight from the bottle, then, go on," Harlan teased, eyes narrowing down at Honey, his mouth pulled up into a wolfish grin. Once upon a time, he wouldn't have put it past her, but he wasn't sure how she was going to act in Audrey's home. For all he knew, the Honey that was Audrey's friend was as proper as they came. Regardless of the outcome, he held the glass up above her head, just out of reach to push her along. What he would give to have his sister walk in as she drinking straight from the crystal.

"Punishment for taking my seat," He nudged her knee with the bottom of his shin. He wasn't going to give up that, it seemed.

“Something like that,” she repeated, smirking, assuming his thoughts were heading the same direction hers was. She slid her gaze over what she could see of him, taking a few seconds before meeting his eye again. It’d be a lot easier—for everyone—to skip ahead to that without all this pretense; it’d take a lot less thinking on her part, for a start. But that wasn’t them, now. It was confusing, all of it; she stood the bottles in her lap and grabbed the necks of both with one hand, holding out her other hand to get her glass back. Gin would help.

Honey gaped at him as he told her to drink from the bottle. She looked down at her lap—it was more some fancy decanter than a bottle—and back up, lips curled into a smirk now. “What, you think I wouldn’t?” He answered her question by holding her glass out of her reach, as if she wouldn’t want the excuse to get closer to him in an attempt to take it back from him. She showed immaculate restraint, not immediately reaching for him (and the glass, too, she supposed), scoffing instead at the insinuation she needed a glass at all.

She rolled her eyes as he nudged her, moving the soda to the corner of the chair so she could use both hands on the gin, sliding the stopper out and holding onto it as she lifted the decanter to her lips. She held his gaze as she took a sip, small at first before a larger one once she’d figured out the flow and that expensive gin was clearly easier to drink.

“I didn’t take your seat,” she said, lowering the bottle to her lap again and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before she replaced the stopper. “And I’d be willing to share,” she said, smirking again as she held out her hand again, this time motioning to his unfinished drink as if she’d earned it.

Honey called his bluff, unsurprisingly. He should have known better than to challenge her on such a thing. In his experience there were few things that that the woman wouldn’t try at least once. “Less talking. Go on, then,” Harlan cut off her question with a grin despite knowing fully well that she was going to go for it with or without his added goading.

“Shit, Audrey—“ He waited until the very moment before the bottle was to her lips to interject as though his sister had just walked in on them. He let out a laugh, nodding to the empty doorway before gesturing for Honey to continue.

He studied her with half a smile as she took the decanter to her mouth, noting that she hadn’t broken their eye contact. Half of him was waiting for some kind of reaction but the other half knew the quality of the gin, and her stubbornness, well enough to not hold his breath.

Harlan tried, and failed, to turn serious as he eyed the actual seat she inhabited. There was room for both of them if they were in a place where being on top of each other was normal. “No, no it’s really quite comfortable here,” It wasn’t. He leaned back again on the arm of the hair, taking a mouthful of his drink (from glass) smugly, ignoring her gesture to it as if it were hers to take.

"Would you like to try it out?" His eyes moved down to the arm of the chair. It was a longshot, but maybe she would be interested in a trade and he could spare himself conceding to her.

No one was at the door when she looked; she looked back to Harlan, biting her lower lip so her grin wouldn’t be too obvious. “Not fair,” she said before she lifted the bottle to her lips again, lifting her middle finger as well as she drank.

Honey held onto the gin as she motioned for his drink, though after a few seconds of not handing it over she would have settled for the empty glass. She raised an eyebrow at his claim of comfort, figuring she could say the same thing about holding her arm in the air but she decided not to give him the satisfaction. “Is it?” She watched him readjust as much as he could; he didn’t exactly have a lot of options available. She watched him drink, too, lowering her arm back to her lap after another few seconds. He didn’t want to share, drink, chair, whatever. The gin was helping her not read into it.

“No thanks,” she said, following his gaze to the arm of the chair, bringing it back up to his face slowly. “I told you I’d be alright with sharing.” She opened the bottle of gin again and risked another sip, not bothering to replace the stopper this time. “I can’t help you’re a bit of a prude.” That’d really be the only way to share that chair anyway, getting laps involved. Friends could sit on another friend’s lap without it being weird, right? Probably not--and they weren’t really friends, were they?--and her even thinking it was possible was probably a contributing factor to their breaking up.

“Y’know,” she said, moving her mind on. “If you need to have the chair because your back hurts--” from age, of course-- “You only need to say so.” Still, she moved to make herself more comfortable in the chair, slipping her feet out of her shoes and tucking them up under her, the new angle bringing her a little closer to him still.

Harlan figured he deserved the not-so-subtle fuck you over the neck of the bottle.

“Aww, very sorry,” He teased with a frown. “You’ll survive,” He added matter-of-factly, more quick with his words, followed by (with what he could only assume was) an infuriating shrug. The best and worst part about their familiarity with one another was how well they knew how to push each other’s buttons— great for banter, but catastrophic for fights.

Honey wasn’t sold on the offer. He couldn’t blame her, either, his acting ability was subpar. “Suit yourself,” He doubled down on the charade and pulled a leg back over the other, careful to keep his balance.

A prude. Harlan dropped the hand he’d been holding out of her reach once it was clear she was perfectly happy drinking from the bottle (which was more amusing than he cared to admit). “We both know that’s not true…” His eyes narrowed as she pulled her legs up under her in time to bring up his age— again. There were a lot of things she could say about Harlan, old being one of them, but prude, no shot.

Now he had something to prove.

“Right, then,” Harlan set her empty glass on the side table as he stood up from the armchair, masking any sign of discomfort in the process— that was the last thing he needed Honey seeing. “Shift over,” He stood deliberately in front of her, taking a drink to mirror the one she had from the decanter. There was no way they were both fitting on it, but he figured she would give up and just move to the other chair eventually, prompted by the idea of him actually sitting.

“Shall,” she said matter-of-factly, betraying the seriousness of her statement with the way she intently watched him cross one leg over the other.

She knew she had him when she called him a prude; the comment on his age was merely a bonus. “Do we?” She backtracked a beat, shrugging one shoulder. “Could’ve fooled me,” she said, exaggerating more than was probably necessary. She’d missed this, poking fun at him without worrying about accidentally jeopardizing their relationship. A smaller, easier to ignore part of her missed having their relationship to accidentally jeopardize; it wasn’t the time or the place (and there wasn’t enough gin) to think about that now.

Harlan stood up suddenly--or suddenly because hadn’t he just made a point about how comfortable he was--and Honey raised an eyebrow, responding with a quick, “Right,” before she could figure out what he was up to, if she’d convinced him to share or inclined him to leave. Shift over. Honey caught his eye and smirked, not moving as she watched him take a drink, wondering how long he’d wait before giving up and sitting on her to prove something. That wasn’t how she wanted things to play out, really; she wanted to keep the upper hand, or in this case, the upper lap.

Honey rolled her eyes as she unfolded her legs from under her, placing her feet on the floor and handing the bottle of (unuseful) soda to Harlan to set aside before she shifted to the side. She lifted her backside just enough to sit on the arm of the chair, her legs still angled in toward the cushion. “Sharing is caring,” she said with a shrug, having every intention to crowd his space when he sat down.

It was a surprise that Honey agreed; he assumed that she wouldn't allow him a win for at least ten minutes— or however long it would take for her to get a win first. Then again, perhaps he was just being cynical. Harlan rolled his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip and watched the seemingly deliberate slow procession from her; first the bottle shoved in his direction, then feet on the ground, finally a shift to the arm of the chair to make room. His eyes narrowed, the beginning of a grin on his mouth that he ran a hand over before moving to his jaw.

"You think?" That was ironic. He set the tonic water on the side table and leaned forward to wrap his free hand around the arm of the chair so that they were closer to eye level.

Harlan's own eyes were grey in the dim lighting, even the flecks of blue looked as dark as the sea. They studied her from the new vantage point. It was one that he had seen countless times before. yet, still he could feel his heart in chest, his breath by proxy, despite himself.

"You know—" Harlan began, his gaze dropping to her thigh, then hand following suit and lingering for a moment to run a thumb over her familiar skin. He used it as leverage to stand up straight again, the hand that had just been on her fell to his side. "—I don't really care for sharing," He said with a one shouldered shrug.

Also, ironic.

He took the bottle from her hand and drank a mouthful of gin. It was a stark contrast to whatever he'd been nursing in his glass. That he needed. Harlan handed it back over and then made his way to the uninhabited (and unproblematic) armchair opposite, sitting down with a smirk, pulling an ankle over his knee and leaning back.  There was some sick part of him that hoped that she might retaliate, continue on the game of cat and mouse.

You think? Honey shrugged one shoulder, She wasn’t going for some deeper meaning here, assuming that was what he was trying to get at. Besides, there wasn’t time to worry about some deeper meaning; Harlan leaned forward and Honey’s breath caught in her throat, anticipating the thing that never happened.

She brought her gaze up from his lips—reluctantly, almost—and met his eye, wondering if he was finding anything different there. Wondering how they could get here after all that. She dropped her gaze back to his lips as he spoke, followed his gaze down to her thigh.

Oh. Fuck. She glanced up again to meet his eye, her breath returning to her quickly as he stroked her skin with his thumb. It wasn’t fair that he had such an effect on her; it was even less fair that he clearly knew it. He removed his hand, removed himself. “Right. Of course.” She decided not to read deeper into that, either, rolling her shoulders back to sit up a little straighter when he took the bottle from her.

This should have been when she seized the moment, the one where she stormed out saying she knew that he didn’t like to share unless it was some other man’s girlfriend— but then there was this. She didn’t want to ruin this, whatever sort of moment they were having, stupid wordplay aside.

Honey raised her eyebrows as Harlan handed the bottle back and moved farther away from her, brow narrowing as he smirked at her. Was that how he wanted to do things? Really? She rolled her eyes and sank back onto the chair, taking another swig from the bottle, her gaze back on him. “I think,” she started as she replaced the stopper, “This would fall under the definition of ‘prude’.” She lifted a hand to make air quotes around the word.

“Don’t care for sharing,” she repeated with another roll of her eyes, getting up to stop in front of where Harlan was sat, over an arm’s length away. She held the bottle out to him, despite whatever his opinion on sharing was.

Harlan found a strange pleasure in the way that Honey's chest rose and fell, in the way that her eyes traversed down to his lips then to her leg, following his own. If he were better he would have listened to the voice in the back of his head— what he was doing was wrong— but as usual with her he had started down a path that there was no real coming back from.

Even sweeter, he found, was stepping away and putting distance between them. Though, he figured they could do with less.

“Would it now?" By the time that she had brought up him being prude again Harlan was pushed back against the velvet armchair casual as could be, strumming the fingers of his free hand over the cushioned arm.  “Because I would prefer to be comfortable?” He half scoffed at the chair left (somewhat) open for him opposite, where she sat. In no world could they have shared it comfortably without crossing some type of line.

He had little time to dwell on the faux-argument because before he knew it Honey was up and in front of him, and just out of arms reach with the bottle in hand. Harlan’s gaze narrowed, first on it, then slowly up her torso to her eyes. “Yeah, go on,” He inclined his head slightly but made no immediate move to get up from his seat. What exactly he wanted her to go on with wasn’t clear, but he had a few ideas.

Honey shrugged at both of Harlan’s questions, gaze flicking from his fingers--hard not to imagine them elsewhere--and back to his face. The smart thing would be to drop it, to move on from the whole topic and continue sitting in their own chairs with what felt like miles between them, but Honey wasn’t that smart, especially with her one-track-mind-around-Harlan sort of thinking.

He raked his gaze up her and she didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until she met his eye; go on, he said, but she didn’t move. “Yeah, alright,” she said after a few more seconds of eye contact, another second searching his face for some sort of hint to what he was expecting her to do. She knew what she wanted to do, but she didn’t want another polite rejection. It was too much, coming from him.

She held out the bottle to him again with an unconvincing, “We should probably get back.” But she didn’t move in the right direction, toward the door, back to the party and the dinner where she could find some food and clear away some of her new gin buzz and maybe think a bit more clearly. More smartly.

Instead she moved toward Harlan, stopping just shy of any sort of touching; it crossed her mind to casually touch his knee but then she’d need to lean forward and she didn’t want to come across as desperate. Nothing more than her usual amount of interest in him, which was too much at this point. “Or, somewhere else.” There was the slightest bit of hesitation there, but it was closer to confidence than anything else.

Honey was talking more than doing, but he didn't mind— Harlan could be patient when he needed to be. And this was one of those times. She hadn't averted her gaze, so he didn't either, the blues of his eyes lingering on her face, her mouth, where she stood just out of reach (thought he hadn't lifted his arm to prove that theory). In truth, he was willing her to take a step closer, for a multitude of different reasons, nearly all of them selfish.

It was usually the way with them.

She said they should get back to the party but everything else she was doing— well, not doing— said otherwise. Harlan didn't make any immediate movements himself and instead watched as she finally took another step so that the bottle was held at his shoulder level. He flicked his eyes over it briefly before turning back to her. "Which is it, then?" Harlan took the bottle from her hand and took a mouthful, setting to the side table instead of returning it to her.

His hand gravitated to the hem of the all too familiar dress and gave it a gentle tug to pull her forward, just before the sound of footsteps met his ear. "Oh—" A balding man in a three-piece suit with a red face and stupid grin called from the doorway, followed by a snicker. Harlan's face went dark and the man must have seen it from where he stood because he quickly turned on his heels. Harlan finally looked back up to Honey again with a hint of a question in his eye, not immediately returning his hand to his own lap.

Harlan wasn’t moving either and Honey didn’t think that was a necessarily bad sign; she took a step closer, in case he was just waiting for a better opportunity.

He looked at the bottle instead of her—her fault for bringing the gin with her, as if she needed an excuse to get closer—and she didn’t think she looked too disappointed when he met her eye again. “The second one,” she said, more sure of herself now. Their fingers brushed against each other much less than she wanted as he took the bottle from her and it seemed like everything slowed down; she watched his movements--though she was most focused on his lips now--and didn’t protest when he set the gin to the side. She glanced at the bottle and back to his lips before meeting his eye again.

Honey held his gaze as he pulled her closer; she didn’t need to look down to confirm that his fingers had slipped under the fabric of her dress; she could have been closer if not for his crossed leg keeping her at bay. Her breath quickened--anticipation, nervousness, knowing-it-was-a-bad-idea-ness--and she inhaled sharply at the sound of someone’s voice. She turned her head to look, didn’t get the chance to form a proper expression before he’d left.

She didn’t want to look back to Harlan, almost afraid that had ruined the moment, but his hand was still there, wasn’t it? Honey caught his eye again, smirking softly as she bent at the waist, one hand moving to the back of his chair to brace herself. There was the slightest hesitation--half a second for him to stop her--before she pressed her lips to his. She brought her other hand up to the side of his neck, her thumb tracing his jawline, almost too tender a gesture for her.

It took her a couple seconds to realize she hadn’t thought about what she was doing--kissing Harlan had effectively cleared her mind of any doubts about kissing him--until, of course, she was thinking about it again. She might have been (almost certainly was) overcompensating for her thoughts as she dropped her hand to his knee to encourage him to uncross his legs, let her get a bit closer--

”I knew it.” Honey straightened up at the sound of Audrey’s voice, her hand instinctively moving to her lips to clean up any possible lipstick smudges as she turned to look at the doorway. ”Don’t mind me,” she said again, moving to the bar and grabbing a bottle of something before leaving the room again, though not without waving a hand over her shoulder at the two she was leaving behind in the study.

Honey’s face felt warm. She couldn’t pinpoint why; she wasn’t embarrassed to be caught kissing Harlan; maybe seeing Audrey just drove home the point that his probably wasn’t an original-to-Honey idea. But still. She looked back to Harlan with a soft grimace. “Sorry,” she said, not quite meaning it.

His mouth pulled up into something of a smile when she confirmed— the second one— an eyebrow quirked on its own volition, though not questioningly.

Honey leaned forward but he kept attention on her face, eyes flicking to her mouth as met his level with a hand pressed into the back of the armchair just over his neck. Harlan knew what came next, it had happened so many times before then, but this time it felt different. There was a small part of him that questioned his own motives, that knew of the repercussions, but more of him was focused on something else entirely.

Her lips on his and her hand canvassing the stubble of his jaw, Harlan moved instinctively with Honey and shifted to uncross his legs at the other touch to his knee to allow her to room to get closer. He figured they had passed the point of the tracks when there was still an option to take a left, anyway. He had reached up around the back of her neck and tangled his fingers into the tresses of hair while the other made its way to her thigh where the hem of her dress met it, threatening to move up, when—

God damn, Audrey.

Harlan sank back into the armchair breathlessly and dared to catch her eye as she sauntered to the bar, crossing his leg over his knee again. "Oh, we won't," His face soured at his sister's knowing look to match the proclamation made. Of course she had known, hadn't she set the whole thing up, after all? Just as soon as she interrupted them, she was gone, but that was probably the point. Ruin the mood just enough. He sighed, running his both hands through his hair, not bothering to placate Honey's apology because he knew that she didn't mean it, and she didn't need to anyway.

He grabbed the bottle from the side table and took a drink to wet his mouth more than anything. "We should get back," Harlan ran a thumb over his mouth, noticing Honey's slightly smeared lipstick. Audrey, in all of her precociousness, had served as a reminder of the real world outside of her library. Harlan stood up so that he was just in front of Honey— it was strange looking down to her after all of that— and without thought he took another step against her, the thumb that had just been on his mouth running over the bottom of her lip to wipe lipstick they had ruined.

Honey wanted another swallow of gin, too, but she didn’t want to move, as if doing them to take them any farther from their moment would make it all the more irreversible. “We should,” she said, automatically agreeing with him without really meaning it. She was distracted by the way he was swiping his thumb across his lips; he’d missed a spot but she didn’t say anything. Nothing she could say now felt right.

Harlan stood and Honey glanced up at him, unsure if they were really getting back to the party or going to take advantage of being alone—doors to the room still wide open—again. It’d be better if she just left completely, went home, had a cold bath. “I think I’ll—“ she started, unconvincingly, stopping when Harlan took another step forward.

They were close again; she was sure the warmth she was feeling was from him and not from the fireplace or the heatwave or— he moved his thumb under her lip and she looked at him, concentrating on what he was doing. It was a good reminder why she liked to wear lipstick, if only for this action alone. She’d always liked the way his hands felt on her—though they weren’t as rough in the off season, she supposed—and it took a lot of concentrated effort to not turn his gesture into something more explicit. (Audrey was probably lurking just outside the door, anyway.) Instead, she moved her hand to his waist—the safest option—and indulged herself in applying gentle pressure with her fingertips.

She stepped back after another second, letting her hand linger for a second more before it fell slowly back to her side. She didn’t think she needed to spell out why or come up with an excuse as she said: “I should go.” Home, not back to the party. She still wasn’t convinced she should but there’d be another chance. There was always a next time with them. She could worry later about why she wanted there to be a next time at all.