chamonix | pyramids | bérénice

“Fuck off,” Harlan swatted down Davies’ hand where a flame extended from the end of his index and thumb fingers that he’d pulled together into a pinch. It was an attempt from the man to make a joke, try and light his captain's eyebrows on fire when igniting the cigar, but Harlan had seen right through it. The laugh that escaped his mouth pushed out hot air that manifested as steam under the freezing air and falling snow. They were outside of the safe barrier of the warming charms placed around the threshold but they’d had enough to drink that it didn’t matter.

It was good-natured, he and his teammates' spats, one of many that night so far. And they still had at least two hours to go until the clock struck midnight. Well, they had the last time Harlan checked. “Would you come off it, you prat,” He puffed at the finally proffered cigar with a shake of his head, inevitably tensing in the cold.
 
Chamonix was unbelievable. It was so unlike anything he’d seen before. It was the kind of winter wonderland only read about in fables. From the chateau, they overlooked the whole town, a distant peppering of lights half-visible through the cover of trees, secluded in the mountainside and just as he had hoped for. And the home itself was sublime. An indoor heated pool, more rooms than countable, and large open living space with floor to ceiling windows and everything draped in furs.

“Try not fall over, would you?” Harlan said over his shoulder with a grin as he turned to go inside, the large sliding door automatically gliding open to reveal the lush interior, soft music pumping from somewhere, a handful of faces. Inevitably, though he thought not obviously, he found himself looking for only the one. Bérénice knew the team and their plus ones (some fresher than others), but not all that well. She was amiable. She knew how to hold her own in social settings. Better than most.

Making his way to the kitchen, Harlan spotted the familiar back of her head as she worked over something on the counter island. “F— Merlin,” Harlan instinctively dodged a knife that flew past the side of his head. He had practice with objects such as that trying to take him out, but he hadn’t been expecting it. “Trying to kill me?” He asked as he sidled up to the counter more hesitantly than he entered, venturing a glance over.

When Harlan had suggested Chamonix for ‘a getaway’, Bérénice had foolishly thought it would be just for the two of them. Admittedly, it had started that way; they’d arrived at the chalet--perched above the village and with every small luxury anyone could want--and settled in, then later gone for a ski on the mountain— and on the slopes, they’d ran into Harlan’s teammates. The chances of them being in the same alpine town on the same weekend that Harlan had use of “a friend’s” chalet just seemed too coincidental. Harlan, polite as always had invited his team to join them, and Nice had assumed they would do the right thing and graciously decline.

No such luck.

She had come inside half an hour ago to warm up--she had dressed up, it was New Years Eve--and to get away from the cigar smoke. She’d made conversation with a young witch until they had exhausted their mutual interests (it hadn’t taken long), then excused herself to the kitchen.

She had just pulled some cheese and cured meats from the fridge, finding a large wooden board to arrange everything on, when she heard the voices outside grow louder for all of a few seconds -- which invariably meant the door had opened and then closed again. Nice summoned a knife from the magnetised rack on the wall by the stove, and didn’t look up as someone entered the kitchen -- just by his stature and the way he held himself she could tell out of her peripheral vision that it was Harlan even before he opened his mouth.

Bérénice looked up sharply at him, her lips pressed together, and quickly focused back on her task--putting some garlic and rosemary into a camembert to bake; her summoned knife started slicing a loaf of bread beside her--without answering him immediately.

She exhaled softly through her nose. “Trying to feed you,” she told him, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The French witch turned and reached for the olive oil to drizzle over the cheese. “And your friends,” she added, a hint of bitterness in her tone.

The stupid, half-drunk, grin on Harlan's face faltered the moment Bérénice turned to meet his gaze, albeit briefly. At the same time, the knife that had been working away on the cutting board adjacent started chopping more aggressively of its own volition, seemingly having picked up on the sentiment of its conjurer. There was a sharpness in the way that Nice moved which served as a sobering dichotomy to the way that her limbs usually seemed to effortlessly just float through her every action.

Harlan naively thought he knew women well enough to determine when something was wrong. In truth, though, he probably just knew her enough. Bérénice, in all of her softness, was tough. She always had been when they were growing up as well. She didn't make a habit of hiding the way that she felt and he respected that. In the moment, he even feared it to some extent.

"You don't have to do that." He offered something of a sympathetic smile, venturing to touch her side, the soft fabric of her dress pinching between his fingers without much effort. It only made the lingering feeling that plagued him the day before worse— that everything was becoming entirely too domestic. Noticing her nearly emptied wine glass, Harlan summoned the bottle and refilled it with a flick of his wrist. He took a sip for himself before getting a second glass— he must have left his own drink outside, he realized.

"Can I help?" That was easier than asking what was wrong, anyway. And safer. Harlan snuck a slice of prosciutto from the cutting board before looking for something else to keep his hands busy with.

“No, I don’t,” she replied sharply, setting the olive oil back on the bench with a little more force than was entirely necessary. At his touch her eyes closed, her brow furrowing softly. It was tempting to curl into him and try to forget it all, but her mood was just a fraction too far over the threshold to be brought back so easily -- she knew she was overreacting, but she still felt justified in her irritation. It wasn’t like they hadn’t touched on the subject at Christmas, and this almost felt intentional. Perhaps it was.

When Bérénice opened her eyes again Harlan had summoned the wine -- the bottle poured itself and he had a sip when it was done. The French witch picked the glass up after he put it down and had a large swallow of her own. Can I help? Bérénice set the glass back down to free her hands and scooped up the camembert to place it in the oven before turning back to meet him. He could help, and that part of her that was always eager to forgive him tried to make itself known -- he’d sought her out, hadn’t he? He could have stayed outside, avoiding her, safety in numbers, all of that.

But coming to find her now wasn’t the same as spending the whole evening with her, and she was feeling selfish enough (and had had enough wine) to let that bother her.

Nice turned her attention back to the food; she had bought (more than) enough for the two of them, not to cater for a party, but she could always go into the town tomorrow to top up their supplies -- if she was still here, and right now she wasn’t sure she wanted to be, not if Harlan didn’t want her. “No,” she said, more calmly than she felt. “You should go and enjoy yourself.” She wasn’t trying to test him, but there would definitely be a right and a wrong thing for him to do next.

There was tension, palpable, that Harlan could feel emanating from Bérénice, her tone bordering on sharp, her body stiff underneath his hands, his fingers, where he'd selfishly expected something languid in return— a bad habit. He wondered if perhaps he was reading into it too much though he pushed that concern further back in his frame of mind. Either way, the shift in temperature in the room was enough to know it was wiser to return his hands to himself.

Harlan found himself studying her as she turned from the oven in an attempt to gauge what the look on her face meant. In truth, he knew, he just wasn't yet willing to admit fault— Merlin, invited half the bloody team and their plus-ones to a weekend (New Year's Eve, no less) that had been planned for just the two of them. It was a decision that was more intentional than he cared to dwell on.

When Nice spoke again, her tone was softer than before, though Harlan didn't quite relax in return. Still lingering was the sense of danger. Deep blue eyes juxtaposed against the whites and light browns of the chateau narrowed on her pointedly. "Oh, I know better than to do that..." A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth despite the fact that in his chest he knew that the teasing wouldn't go over all that well. It wasn't the time.

"What've I done?" Harlan said after taking another sip of his wine, as metered as his tone in an attempt to be aloof. That had never been in his nature.

He was trying very hard to be charming -- and while it would usually work, she was just not in the mood. “Do you?” she snapped at him before she could stop herself.

Bérénice glared softly at Harlan, her full lips pulled together in a tight line, her brown eyes darker than usual. “Are you really asking me that?” she hissed quietly, trying to keep her voice down so that his guests wouldn’t hear. It was so unseemly to get worked up like this, and she’d tried for years--when she was younger, and now, older--to be the cool girl for Harlan, and she had thought, in these last few months, that he’d finally noticed her the way she’d wanted him to all this time -- had gotten to that point where he was ready to grow up, settle down. She hadn’t rushed him, she had been patient, and for what?

“If you have to ask I’m not going to dumb it down for you,” she said sharply, grabbing the knife from mid-air and starting to cut the bread by hand to have something to do other than stand there and look at him. She got through one slice before setting the knife down, hands balled into fists on the counter as she inhaled and exhaled deeply.

“Why did you invite me if you didn’t want me here?” she asked mutedly, half-twisting her body towards him but not meeting his eye.

Harlan paused to consider the question. He did know better— at least, he thought he did. The look on Bérénice's face was making him reconsider.

Before he had a chance to formulate a response, she spoke again, another question that verged on rhetorical and he imagined served to make him feel bad for even having to ask. There was a fine line between answering honestly and coming off like a dick— something told him that confirming he had in fact asked might not go over well— so he kept his mouth closed and waited for elaboration. Clearly, Nice was upset, and he didn't think it was his place to articulate the why on her behalf.

"By all means, don't," Harlan finally piped up when she mentioned dumbing it down for him. He inclined his chin slightly and indicated for her to continue. The question of his intellect was not something that he took kindly to. Instinctually, heat rose in his chest before—

He remembered who he was talking to. It was Bérénice, and there was merit to the way that she was feeling.

"What makes you think I don't want you here?" Harlan raised his hand to touch her chin so that he could look her in the eye. It was bold, considering, but he couldn't stop himself. She knew him well enough to know that he didn't do things he didn't want to do. "Because of everyone else?" He took his hand back and gestured vaguely to the rest of the chateau. Of course, that was why, he didn't need to even phrase it as a question, not truly. Again he found himself on edge waiting for her to speak exactly what was on her mind.

For a moment it felt like the conversation was going to escalate into something else. Bérénice braced herself, physically and mentally, for Harlan’s voice to rise, to be on the receiving end of the outbursts she had witnessed over the years— But it didn’t come. Instead, a shiver ran up her spine at his gentle touch, so far from what she had expected from him, and it would have taken every bit of willpower to avoid his gaze -- willpower she clearly didn’t have, she conceded, as her dark brown eyes met his brilliant blue.

Her jaw remained set, despite an unintentional softening in her gaze. “Yes,” Nice answered Harlan quietly -- unnecessarily. Of course it was because of everyone else. She had deluded herself for long enough, thinking this fantasy could ever be anything real -- tonight just proved that he wasn’t ready to take things seriously. To take her seriously. She could try to blame Harlan for the demise of her relationship with Will, but she was enough of an adult to know she had made that choice for them -- and perhaps, she realised now, that was why this was never going to work.

Bérénice swallowed, her mouth drier than usual, and she turned to face Harlan more square-on. “You cannot tell me you didn’t know,” she accused him calmly, no longer meeting his eye. “I thought—” She stopped sharply, glancing out of the window from which they would see the snowy French Alps during the daylight; right now, it was almost pitch black, broken up only by the lights from other cabins. “I don’t know what I thought,” she said, smiling sadly as she brought her attention back to him.

In what felt like a déjà vu, Bérénice started a thought then paused. Harlan was left hanging onto the breath in between. He was waiting for her to just come out and fucking say it. Address it. Speak the thought that had been plaguing him for months— eating away somewhere beyond the every day— that he was going to inevitably destroy whatever it was that they had created. What they were still creating despite everything that was screaming they shouldn't.

It was selfish of him. Not just that night, but all of the nights. Every single night that had culminated with them at present in the kitchen— not truly looking at each other— edging around what they both knew. Harlan had wanted it. All of the painfully mundane and domestic things that for years he had wholly convinced himself that he was beyond. At least since—

The mere thought of Arya he was able to push it away with the practiced precision of someone who was all too well used to doing just that. "I know," He said it at the same time that the thought had come to him. There was no denying the calculation in his backtracking, inviting his friends to a holiday weekend he had planned for them in the throes of sentimentality.  "Sorry—" The sound of glass shattering from the veranda gave him pause and briefly his gaze flicked from her.

"For all of it," All of him. Harlan had added it almost as an afterthought after taking a large mouthful of wine that went straight to his head. Turning back to Nice and leaning against the countertop with a casualty he was certain he wasn't afforded, he found himself studying her face once more. Bérénice was familiar. Like the physical embodiment of a home. And in truth, he figured he had no business with that.

The corner’s of Bérénice’s mouth tightened at his admission. Her eyes stayed trained on Harlan’s for a moment before she glanced away, confronted with the reality of what he was saying. Admitting he knew what he was doing was as good as saying he wasn’t ready -- and when they had started this she hadn’t thought herself ready either, but at some point she’d changed her mind and she had foolishly expected Harlan to do the same, eventually.

Sorry— he said, and the brunette’s gaze flicked back to him for a brief moment before being drawn to the doorway by the smashing of glass outside; her soft features shifted into an exasperated frown -- could they not even have this conversation without outside distraction? Part of her wanted there to be more reason to draw them both away from this, prolong the inevitable, but she would only be hurting herself more in putting it off.

Nice brought her attention back to Harlan swiftly. All of it sounded an awful lot like he regretted this -- them. Her. She watched the casual way he leant against the counter and her right hand, still resting on the marble counter, tightened so that her manicured nails dug into the flesh of her palm. “That’s it?” the witch asked him with an edge of hysteria in her tone. Her eyes stung and her chest grew tight as she began to comprehend what this was.

“You’re sorry,” she repeated, laughing this time because if she didn’t laugh, she thought she’d cry, and she had been through that before, with another man -- though at least he’d had the decency to define the relationship. Harlan had expertly avoided it, and she regretted not setting things straight sooner. She had been complicit, she knew, but in hindsight it had been out of the (vain) hope that not rushing things would somehow allow them to work.

“You were right.” Nice told Harlan in a low voice, stepping forward into his space. “You are just like him,” she said harshly -- and she didn’t mean her ex-fiancé.

Harlan sat with what he said for a moment, allowing it to linger in the space between him and Bérénice. While it had been an admission of the very thoughts that had been stowed away somewhere in the back of his mind, Harlan found that he felt somehow heavier— the weight of saying it out loud and all that came with it. There was a part of him that wished that he could take it back, that they could just continue on how they had been. But more than anything, he knew that wasn't possible.

Was that it? Harlan considered the question though he knew that the sentiment behind it when coming from her mouth was more rhetorical than literal. In truth, he didn't know what it was. He didn't know what they were. There was a moment of delay that felt like a hesitation as he tried to formulate his thoughts into something more concise. All of the drinks that night certainly weren't helping. And neither was Nice taking a deliberate step toward him.

You are just like him. In an instant he felt the air knock out of his chest. His eyes went dark as they narrowed on her own challenging ones that brimmed with something between anger and an unmistakable sense of sadness. The look on his face visibly faltered. There were things that Bérénice knew about Harlan that not many did— most of all the desperate way that he clung to everything that his father was not.

She knew what she was doing in using that fear against him, and even still he couldn't blame her.

"Dodged the bullet then, yeah?" He finally spat out callously as he pushed his wine glass away and put space between them. Using her logic, she really had. What business would she want with him? Bérénice had just as much part in whatever they had become as he had, he figured in his current state, anger and pride swelling in his chest— a dangerous cocktail of emotion. She was equally as adept at the game of avoidance in favor of something easier

Harlan’s face fell for the briefest of moments and Nice was shunted back to another time, when they were younger, when he’d confided his feelings about his father to her – he’d had the same look in his eyes back then. She immediately regretted wounding him in that way, wishing she could rewind the last few minutes, take back her words. Knowing just where the hole in his armour was and stabbing the knife there was a calculated and callous thing to do, unlike her usual self–or the one she presented, at least–in so many ways.

But maybe that was part of why she had done it too, to prove something to him.

It was her turn to look hurt, soft brown eyes gazing at Harlan as he put distance between them – the last thing she wanted, despite everything. Before she’d said that, there had been a vain hope that talking about this finally might somehow fix things – that seemed far from her grasp now.

Nice knew the muggle expression he’d used, understood what he was trying to say – accusing her as if she had had some sort of choice in the matter. She took a steadying breath, her head swimming; the hand that had been balled into a fist relaxing before tightening again along with her resolve. “Pushing me out of the path isn’t the same as me dodging it,” she told him – because wasn’t that what he was doing, pushing her away?

There was selfishness in Harlan— the cancerous part of him— that was waiting for Bérénice to fight, to really twist the knife where she had broken skin. What else was there left to lose, anyway? He didn't miss the way that she pulled a breath in between her full lips that were parted in thought, but he did best to focus on the way that she was looking at him instead. There was a mix of regret and assurance there that he was certain he wouldn't be able to forget.

Harlan let out something of an exasperated sigh as he wondered just what the fuck she wanted him to say. He was mad that she hadn't continued down the path of weaponizing the things that she knew would set him off. That would have made things easier. Cleaner. Drawn a line in the sand where they both could see where they stood. He wanted to be mad with her. Harlan didn't do well as far as ambiguity was concerned.

"I don't know what you want me to say," He shook his head. Sorry wasn't enough, anyway, clearly. "I'm not ever going to be, fucking—" Harlan tried to conjure up a word for the person that came to mind when he imagined who Bérénice might end up with, waving his hand briefly. A man of pedigree (that, he had that), someone close with his family (less so), a solid reliable career (even less). Prince-god-damn charming.

"I'm not ever going to be what you're looking for," Harlan finished the thought succinctly, only aware of how harsh it sounded after the fact.

The way he sighed cut through her more than something so simple as an exhale should have. Bérénice pressed her lips together, eyes still on him defiantly – she didn’t trust herself to say anything in this moment, but she also wanted to hear what he had to say. He couldn’t just storm off this time (or, she supposed he could, but that would just be inviting more drama with his teammates than he had ever expressed a desire for), and it was both reassuring and devastating that he was finally standing his ground, having this discussion.

Harlan swore and Bérénice blinked, inhaling sharply through her nose. He didn’t need to finish, she thought she knew exactly where he’d been going with that – he’d teased her about it (good-naturedly, she’d thought) for years—

Her breath caught in her chest and her eyes became glassy, tears forming in the inner corners despite herself. Harlan had focused his words on himself, but all Nice heard was that she would never be what he was looking for, because wasn’t that what he really meant? She nodded, once, full lips still in a firm line, and averted her eyes from him, blinking in an effort to keep the tears at bay. (It didn’t work.)

“Because you don’t want to try,” the brunette said after a moment, her voice tremoring with the effort of trying to maintain some level of composure in front of him. She glanced back at Harlan, meeting his piercing blue gaze. She brought the hand that had been resting on the counter up to dab her fingertips delicately at the corners of her eyes as she looked up at the ceiling instead, then folded her hands together in front of her, feeling silly and small before him.

“I think I should go,” she said quietly, not meeting his eye; it wasn’t a test, this time.

Bérénice cast her eyes up to the ceiling and Harlan found himself studying the familiar line of her jaw down the length of her neck— that beauty mark settled at her collarbone that he so loved to tease her about when in the vicinity (which was often). Even then, he thought, she needed to get it looked at. All of it was an excuse to avoid the emotion in her eyes. In his peripheral, he saw that they had started to well with tears at either corner.

And for fuck's sake, did he not need that.

Harlan averted his own eyes and blinked them dry, raking his teeth over his lip roughly to avert the pang of something in his chest. It wasn't that he didn't want to try— "I can't," There was a break in his voice that even in all of stoicism he couldn't have seen coming. Promptly, he cleared his throat in an attempt to save face. If Bérénice wanted him to be the bad guy, he could do that. All too easily, in fact.

Immediately he went into practical mode. She should go, but how would she go? "Right," He agreed, catching and boldly holding her gaze, unable to help himself. He had a better mind than to challenge Nice once her mind was made up, however it came to be— but Merlin did he want to take it all back. The painstaking look on his face said as much. "You can stay here, you know?" At once, he forgot how to have a conversation. Was it a question, he wasn't sure.