PART 13... fanficparker
New moodboard :)

Insisting your mum to sit and wait on the dining table while Harrison and you were cooking dinner was indeed one good decision. It was a real fun time to look at the boy who had just minutes ago proudly claimed to be a wonderful chef, struggling to chop carrots. He was repeatedly shifting and bouncing on his feet, changing the angle of the knife with the chopping board, placing the carrots back and forth, yet needing too much force to cut them.

You had already finished preparing the gravy and was waiting for the vegetables to be put into it, but Harrison... You turned off the flame and stood next to him, sneaking a peek at his MasterChef skills. He stopped for a second, looked up at you, saw you grinning, made a face and started... more like 'struggled' to continue chopping. A small chuckle left your lips imagining yourself as Gordon Ramsey and calling him something like 'you donkey.' Harrison ignored your chuckle but soon you erupted into a hysterical laughter. He glanced at you from the corner of his eyes and dropped his knife on the board. He turned to face you.

"What?" He said folding his arms to his chest and rolling his eyes. He wasn't expecting the next thing to happen. You stood up on your tip-toes and softly pecked his cheek. It was out of his expectations and now he was out of breath. He looked at you, you were giggling, eyes crinkling.

"You are so adorable, Harrison."

Those maybe just a few words for you but for him, it meant nothing less than a ray of hope. He didn't care if you could see him blushing, he didn't care if you could see him staring at you. He just stood there in his natural form, completely displaying everything he felt for you in his eyes.

See it Y/n. See it for yourself because I don't know how to say it. His chest constricted when you turned to the chopping board and started cutting the left carrots. He closed his eyes, heaved a slight sigh and ducked his head down. A small smile spread across his lips.

Hope.

His teeth nipped at his lower lip trying to contain the smile. He shook his head slowly and made his way to the stove. He switched on the flame and started stirring the gravy while you put in the chopped vegetables inside the pan, smiling back at him.

Things weren't any different on the dining table. Harrison found himself unable to concentrate on his food. He couldn't involve himself in the conversations. He felt your hand rest on his knee from beneath the table, his head shot up and swirled to look at you. For once he just wanted to stare at those e/c eyes.

"Didn't like the food?" You quipped. He shook his head and smiled.

"... I-I love it."

Your hand reached out to hold his free hand but before you could barely make any contact, his arm hurriedly rushed to wipe off the sweat that covered his clammy palms but you held it before he could do so and interlaced your fingers with his.

***

Days were passing by...

Harrison was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, his hands were folded at the back of his head. He was biting at his lower lip as a message flooded across his mind.

Warning: Are you sure you want to quit? Everything not saved will be lost. His mind couldn't get rid of the normal video game exit message all of a sudden. It had just simply stuck on his mind.

"Are you sure you want to quit?" He mouthed the sentence, trying to feel how it sounded like in his voice and felt like on his lips. He sighed feeling stupid. He should be sleeping. He couldn't anyway sleep on time, it took a lot of time and efforts for him to finally drift to sleep. Sometimes it took him two hours after lying down on the bed and sometimes even more than four hours. Tonight, was the latter. His insomnia only led him to wake up extremely late in the morning and even sometimes he ended up waking up in the afternoon. It was a compulsion to wake up early when he had work but in these free times, he simply couldn't. In all these eleven days he never woke up early.

Eleven days... Eleven days have passed.

Wait. No. It was the twelfth day already.

Harrison's stomach churned painfully, his breathing started to get heavier. He turned his head to look at you. One of your arms was resting over his torso and your head was pressed against his shoulder. You looked so peaceful. And it somehow managed to hurt his feelings.

How can you be so peaceful?

HOW CAN YOU BE SO PEACEFUL?!!

He turned his head again towards the ceiling, closing his eyes momentarily, trying to clear his mind. But... Don't you know it's the twelfth day? Twelve out of thirteen days of the agreement! His eyeballs roamed violently and anxiously hidden under the cover of his eyelids. He could hear the sound of the ticking wall clock. He dreaded of being unable to stop it, reverse it or at least slow it down.

Did he even spend any time with you? Seriously, what did you two even do in all these days? He tried to think. He forced himself to think, to remember, yet all he found was his brain in a frozen state, his mind was stuck over the constant fact- it's over.

Everything not saved will be lost.

His palms were all pins and needles, he clenched them into a tight fist but the sensation didn't leave him. His throat was dry and suddenly it was too difficult to breathe or maybe even impossible. His chest felt like constricting. A single tear left his eyes and trickled down to fall into his ears. It was happening again, after so many days. Just in two days, he will be back to being alone- lonely. He hated being lonely.

He tried to calm himself down. Failing to do so forced him to remove your arm that rested on him. He counted under his breath, inhaling and exhaling with each even and odd numeral as he got up from the bed and walked inside the bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror while his palms were pressed against the counter. He sucked in a breath and splashed water across his face, almost violently yet it helped, he soon felt better.

On getting outside the bathroom he noticed you sitting on the bed, while the table lamp was switched on. Lifting your head, you glanced at him as he walked back to the bed giving him a sleepy smile. And he did smile back. How couldn't he? There was something in the way you smiled that reminded him of his better self, something you brought in him. He sat beside you and as if everything wasn't enough, you slid closer to him (basically bumping into him), closed your eyes, snaked an arm around his waist and rested your head on his shoulder while slowly caressing his arm with your fingers. His eyelids fluttered shut, allowing himself to get lost in the feeling.

"I'll miss you..." You whispered in a sleepy, groggy voice, trailing off the words. A stupid chuckle left his lips, his heart momentarily lurched, calming the damage it suffered moments ago.

"What?" You quipped, lifting up your head to look at his face. Opening his eyes, he bent his head down so that it rested over your head, inhaling the sweet smell of the almost faded shampoo. He planted a little kiss in your hair, a sweet loving one, the one that made your heart flutter and skin burn.

"You don't have to miss me."

You pulled your head away and looked at him, curiously.

"How?"

He turned to face you and folded his legs beneath him. He inhaled sharply and looked down at your hands. His arms reached out and held them both in his bigger ones. He breathed out slowly, looking back into your eyes. You shifted closer to him, knees bumping, waiting for him to speak.

"It's-It's... I don't want this to end." His voice almost cracked saying it. He gulped and chose to continue speaking, ignoring the dryness in his throat.

"I... I... I really like you Y/n." He uttered in a single breath making your breath hitch in your throat. You would be lying if you didn't consider it coming. He had given signals, enough signals, but you chose to pretend not to notice. Your fingers curled and you gently slide away your hands from his grip, turning away so that he couldn't see your face. The sudden surge of wetness in your eyelashes forced you to look up at the ceiling. Harrison didn't speak anything, he just sat there waiting for you to respond something, literally anything but your tongue was tied into a thousand knots. You picked at the cuticles of your fingernails, not knowing what to feel about any of this. Inhaling deeply and wiping off the little tears you turned back to see him. He was looking down at his hands, badly fidgeting.

"Sorry..." Your voice came as a whisper and his head shot up.

"... Sorry?" He repeated in disbelief.

"I... I don't know." Your chest felt like swelling making it difficult to breathe. He grabbed your hands again, tracing circles on the back with his thumb.

"It's okay. I understand." His smile seemed forced and pained.

'"I am not saying no. I just... How do I explain?" You had started getting frustrated. You wanted to scratch your head but he had held your arms and was lovingly drawing patterns over them. He was still facing you, patiently waiting for you to explain but that was the exact problem.

How to fucking explain this weird turmoil in your heart?

"You don't trust me, right?" His voice came.

Shit. Right. He was right. Y/n didn't know how to move on. Stupid Y/n. You mentally scolded yourself.

"... I don't trust me neither." His hands left yours and dropped onto his thighs like they had zero strength. Your heartfelt heavy at his words. Why would he say that?

"Why? Why are you saying---"

He cuts you off and his voice came a little louder, "Forget what I said. Christ! What was I even thinking?! Me..." He let out a dry, broken laugh that just made your stomach fall. He shifted back and raked his hands through his hairs, his hands were shaking.

"I am an absolute piece of shit. You remember how I humiliated you in front of a big crowd? And still, you're here being nice to me and I was falling for you and expected you to feel the same for me. Ha." He slapped the side of his head and tears were slipping down his cheeks. For a minute your body froze, unable to respond, taking in his appearance.

"You know, you are not the only one I fucked up with. I fuck up with everyone. All my friends hate me. My family, damn... How are they even keeping up with me?" He hurriedly jumped off the bed and started walking around the room. You tried to get up and approach him but he showed his palm at you when you tried to get out of the bed. You stopped and his hands again made their way to his hairs and he was almost pulling at his curls.

"You know... I had this great big friend circle. We all were like buddies but then... But then... I fell in love with Shelly and fucked up everything."

You sat there and listened, that was the maximum you could do right now.

"I was just thirteen and I was in love with my best friend. And damn I thought she loved me back. She used to spend so much time with me, hold my hand, held me when dad died. I was sixteen and decided to tell her but then... I saw her kissing Tom. Tom oh... My other best friend, the brother I never had and they were kissing. I let it happen... Obviously. They seemed happy together and I was happy for them.

"But then Tom had to go to the States for months and she came to me. She said she realised she loved me. I told her to tell him but she said she already did. I shouldn't have believed her, I should have checked for myself but I was too desperate. Fucking too desperate! She cheated on Tom with me... Me- her best friend and Tom's best friend. And when he came back, everyone blamed me more than her. They all left me. Shelly got away to Ireland and everyone... each one of them ghosted me even when we lived in the same town, studied in the same school. I failed my semester that year. Tom, Harry, Tuwaine all of them just ghosted me, pretended like I didn't exist. And you know what I did?" He stopped on his tracks and looked at you, you were just sitting there like a statue unable to understand how to respond to anything he said. You tried to open your mouth but words didn't form. He snorted and looked to the other side, deciding to continue.

"Then I became an absolute asshole, having no remorse for anything. I stopped caring if my actions broke the heart of the other person. And then there was you... You who seemed like the old me, too naïve to believe me just like I believed Shelly but... I was wrong. You were better. A better person and yet I ended up hurting you at multiple occasions, not even realizing that I was hurting myself in the process. But... I deserve it and you don't." He paused, exhaling sharply. "I just wanna say that... I am really sorry Y/n." He looked down at his feet, standing in the middle of the room. There was complete silence in the room for what seemed like hours.

"...Not like I am any better." Your voice came out quieter but clearly audible. Harrison looked at you as you got up from the bed and walked towards him. You wrapped your arms around his torso and leaned in to place your head on his chest. He didn't respond, just stood there while you hugged him tightly.

"You know if Simon didn't turn out to be a bad guy, I was basically just using him to oppose you. And then I dragged you into this act without your consent for my personal gains." You confessed, hearing his heartbeat through his chest. His hands twitched and he slowly placed an arm around your back.

"We have our own demons, Haz. But I am glad we realised and aren't making an excuse out of it. We learnt and grew out of it."

He sighed, running his fingers through your hairs and resting his face on the top of your head.

"I feel better letting everything out. It was easier than I thought. Thanks for listening."

"... And thanks for everything," You mouthed, snuggling into his chest but he pulled himself back, holding your shoulders and looking at you for answers.

"Everything?"

"I mean... You supported me in all my career insecurity and so much more. I had my best fortnight ever with you." A blush crept up your cheeks but you were genuinely grateful.

"That's nothing," He shrugged.

"Meant a lot to me," a half-grin plastered across your face and he did smile back. Like he always does. He realised that he was staring at your face and that made him bounce back on his feet, pulling away from your embrace. He once again looked down at his feet and scratched the back of his neck.

"So... what now?" He bit the inside of his cheeks, looking at you through his lashes.

"Maybe just sleep for now."

Like he'll be able to sleep when you had a big ass question unanswered.

"Sure."

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Word count: 2.7k words
Published on: 17 Apr'2020