easy to find [harlan]

He didn't hold his breath for elaboration after Honey pulled her glass to her lips. There seemed to be something that she wanted to say, but in true Honey fashion, she had masterfully avoided confronting it head-on. Harlan breathed a sigh of something— not quite relief— as his eyes narrowed on hers. There was a question there too that he wasn't speaking.

The still of quiet still seemed to not sit right with her— 'seems that way'.

Or maybe it was more that the quiet was between them that was more unsettling. He could feel it too.

Harlan watched, amused, as she began a statement, stopped, and then started it again. It was both infuriating and endearing to think that he knew that was exactly what she was going to do, well used to the manner in which she breached (more, didn't) less than savory topics of conversation— her modus operandi.

"You came here to what, Honey?" The question wasn't tonally unkind but there was a twinge of something that hadn't been there before, teetering on impatience. He caught her eye and held eye contact to reinforce it. He wasn't particularly in the mood for a guessing game and more than anything he felt a bit too old to be tiptoeing so openly.

It wasn't lost on him that he hadn't taken the bait and told her to leave, of course.

Honey thought she had been perfectly clear, hinting at the things she didn’t want to explicitly say. No, she knew she had been clear and he was just being difficult, not taking the lead and answering any of her unasked questions. She didn’t have a right to be annoyed, but it was hard not to let her emotions edge toward that point.

She felt caught out as he questioned her, directly, explicitly. Why was she there? The breath caught in her throat as he looked at her, as she realized she was too tired to come up with any excuses, anything besides the real reason (even though it must have been obvious to him). “Your letter,” she said, starting slowly, clarifying after a couple of seconds: “Back home.” It was tempting to stop there, let him fill in the rest, but somehow she knew he’d stay quiet until she had talked herself out.

“Thought you meant like before.” She couldn’t believe she was saying it, explaining herself truthfully; this wasn’t what she had been expecting to do tonight. “But you didn’t.” That was crystal clear now. Honey rested her hands flat on the counter, on either side of her glass, fingers pressing into the cool marble.

“So now I’m wondering if--” she looked down at her glass before glancing back up again. “--you’re seeing someone.” She said it as if that could be the only reason he hadn’t lunged at her immediately, as if him dating someone would be a reason not to--she wasn’t too fond of that reminder--and she sighed. “Because that’ll make this a lot more clear.” This. Them. It would at least help her think twice before showing up here again.

Harlan narrowed his focus, watching Honey carefully as the creases of thought moved across her features. He could see the familiar gears turning. She started another thought and left it unfinished. The casual stance he assumed with his back pressed to the counter behind him betrayed the alarm bells singing in the back of his mind. What it was he should be warned of, he wasn't quite sure.

Not yet, at least.

"You wrote me," He reminded, not unkindly, but firmly. It was becoming more clear that there had been a disconnect in their communication; he hadn't meant anything like before.

She wondered if he was seeing someone and to be honest, he wondered the same. He hadn't spoken to Nice since— the thought made him take another sip of his drink in a way that he hoped came across as subtle. He nearly drowned it but stopped short.

"You told me to leave you alone, Honey," Harlan reminded her. "And I've left you alone," He set his glass down with a soft, familiar clink on the marble countertop. Which way she wanted it, he wasn't sure. He never had been. "Seems clear enough," The cynicism crept into his tone despite the fact that he caught her eye and softened— only just. So,, she still had something over him.

Harlan said that she wrote him—not wrong—and ignored what she had said about his reply; he either regretted what he wrote or he was trying not to embarrass her by pointing out how she had interpreted it wrong, even though she had already admitted to knowing he hadn’t meant it like that. Like before, when they had reasons to see each other. But she couldn’t leave it like that. “You replied,” she said, swallowing and trying to keep her facial expressions in check, not willing to take all the blame for her showing up here— only most of it.

It was almost funny: he had told her before that she was hard to talk to, hard to find, and there she was trying to talk to him, try to get a clear picture of all of this (them), asking a direct question and getting anything but a direct answer. If this was how he handled telling women about Honey when they were dating—by not answering the question either way—then no wonder they had ended the way they did.

(Except, of course, she had met Bérénice at that quidditch match so the other woman couldn’t claim ignorance on whether or not he was seeing someone— like Honey could claim now, if she actually thought anything was going to happen.)

But she had said it already and it was still obvious now: his letter wasn’t meant like it had before, and she shouldn’t have read into it, shouldn’t have shown up like she did. (Maybe she was far too deep into the preparations for Valentine’s Day and had somehow let that get to her.) She had asked him to leave her alone, stop interfering—she had asked that so she could more successfully stop feeling whatever emotion kept her so tied to him, so easily drawn back—and he had left her alone. It didn’t matter if he was dating anyone because this, whatever they had left after dating, was definitely over.

“You’re right,” she said, barely nodding as she held his eye contact. “I’m just gonna…” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder, at the door, as she picked up her glass with her other hand. She drained it in two quick swallows, not tasting the whisky that deserved to be savored. “Sorry,” she added, hoping he would say something else so an apology wouldn’t be that last thing she would say to him before she left.

He had replied. Harlan dipped his chin slightly to indicate confirmation, though the crease of a question still furrowed his brow, pulled at his mouth. Of course, he had replied but had that hadn't meant that he had some the impossibly covert plan to get her over there through double meaning.

That was always been the way before, all those years ago, so he knew he couldn't fault Honey for the association.

However fleeting.

"Don't be sorry," Harlan said carefully, slowly, not yet moving from the counter where he'd pushed himself back against. It was an attempt to anchor himself, plant more steadily. Something about idle hands came to mind. "You don't have to—" Honey finished the drink in two mouthfuls and he nearly winced. He'd done the same in his time, but still. "—okay,"

He still hadn't shifted, considered telling her to stay, but he knew that wasn't fair. "I really was trying, you know?" Harlan smiled faintly, vaguely reminiscent as if he wasn't anymore (he was, even more so). "To leave you alone," He clarified. He had been making an effort to speak his feelings more.

His therapist had only been saying it for nearly half a decade.

"You know we can't be friends," Harlan said it and he wasn't sure who he was talking to, him or her. It wasn't in an unkind way, more threaded in painstaking inevitability. It was something he was sure they had said to each other before, or maybe he had just thought it, but he finally started to understand it. He wasn't sure what they could be.

Harlan still hadn’t moved, and Honey hadn’t made any more efforts to leave, her eyes still on his, as if eye contact could convince him to convince her to stay. (It wasn’t a very sound logic.) But then-- he really was trying. Honey didn’t know what to say to that, a little taken aback; there was the hint of a smile there, too, and was he talking about what she thought he was? She had been trying, too, had said that numerous times while they were dating. She had never tried so hard at a relationship before him, nor since, probably wouldn’t any time soon. But it was… something, hearing it from him. It wasn’t nice--if that had been him trying but they had still ended like they had--but maybe it was hopeful? Maybe they could--

To leave her alone, he clarified, and Honey blinked. She had gotten ahead of herself, reading into things, interpreting her words to fit her narrative. But this set things back on the path of realism, deflating things a bit. “I know,” she said, unsure if she had known until he told her. It made sense, if she thought about it; it had been four months since she had asked him to leave her alone, four months of silence on his part, four months of her wondering if that had been the right choice. But she didn’t want it to make sense.

She nodded once, shifting off the stool until one foot met the floor, timed perfectly with what Harlan had to say next. They couldn’t be friends, and she must have known that, but she let it sink in for a few seconds before replying. “I know,” she said again, more sure this time, as much as she didn’t want to admit it. There wasn’t an inbetween for them, there never had been; the social intimacy came with the physical.

He had said she didn’t have to--leave, she assumed--when she had finished her drink, but she didn’t think she wanted to risk it, didn’t think she would like what he would say if she tried to stay any longer. She wasn’t sure when she got like this, or why she let him get to her like he did, but-- “Right.” At least she wasn’t about to apologize again. She blinked a couple times before she stood up the rest of the way, moving her glass toward him an inch. “I’ll see myself out.” He hadn’t moved by the time she turned toward the door, and she didn’t think he moved to follow after her once her back was to him.

[out]

Honey stood up to leave. Despite the phantom twitch somewhere in his limbs, Harlan kept still aside from having set his glass down. The distraction of holding something in his hand, in the comfort of a drink, both felt less significant than the alternative— actually feeling. "Right," He repeated purely out of habit.

His word hung uncomfortably in the air as it moved between them, a result of the friction of movement.

Harlan knew better than to protest Honey leaving. That would have been going against everything he had just confessed. He had been actively trying to not seek her out, not fucking think about her. There was no weight lifted by the confession, in fact, quite the opposite. There wasn't some grand moment of closure that he (naively) imagined.

It hurt either way.

He had known that since Arya, but the vague reminder stung like a paper cut.

The soft sound of his door closing registered in the back of his mind and brought him back to the present. Harlan drained what was left of his drink in the sink before turning off the lights with a flick of his wrist, the familiar padding of Aslan's stubborn paws filling the newfound quiet.

fin