Harry/Clara: Set Down Your Glass, PG-13
Title: Set Down Your Glass
Pairing: Mainly Harry/Clara, some John/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~6,800
Summary: The year 2010 through the eyes of Harry Watson.
For: talkingtothesky. ♥ Her prompt was, “Harry/Clara, healing, Mycroft gets involved in bringing them together again”.
Set Down Your Glass
The first time you try wanking after you left Clara, it doesn’t go very well.
It has been a week and three days. You are lying on your bed; the room is dark. Outside in the living room the TV is on low, and you can barely make out a woman’s voice. You can’t hear what she’s saying, but you like the way her voice sounds. It reminds you of-- of Clara.
There’s a half-empty bottle on your bedside table. You stare at it, vaguely remembering other bottles discarded carelessly on the living room floor. You close your eyes and focus on the woman’s voice, and you slip one hand under the waistband of your pants, and brush a finger against your clit.
Threads of fantasies run through your mind, snippets of worn dialogue you’ve enjoyed too many times before, ribbons of images from different situations: strangers, faintly familiar faces. But you’re not very interested in any of them; all of them are hazy and thin, save for one. Fantasy bleeds into memory and snags on the crisp edge of Clara’s smile. Your hand stills, defeated.
You have always drunk to forget, but Clara isn’t so easily washed away by the alcohol in your system. She stays stubbornly, clinging to the insides of your veins. Clara is the first lover you’ve missed when drunk. Maybe that says something about how much she means to you.
Or maybe it just says something about how you’re drinking so much that you’re now immune to the oblivion it once provided.
The phone Clara gave you lies innocently next to the bottle, with the engraving facing up. You find yourself tracing those three kisses imperfectly, with the same shaking finger you were touching yourself with moments ago.
In your mind, Clara’s red hair falls across your shoulder, and her hand comes to rest over the jut of your hipbone.
You squeeze your eyes shut. God, you are so fucked up.
---
“You could stay with me,” you offer, hesitantly, not entirely sure whether you would want him to say yes. But you feel a sisterly obligation.
He frowns at you; he knows what you’re thinking. “Yeah, well, even if you are being sincere, which I doubt you are, I don’t think Clara’s going to like it much, me being around all the time, doing nothing. I’d be a nuisance.”
His eyes are underlined with shadows. There is a tightness to his jaw you have never seen before. His hand trembles slightly where it rests on the table.
It’s strange, you’re kind of... disappointed he doesn’t want to stay at yours. Maybe you miss him more than you’ll let yourself acknowledge. Maybe you’ve realised that you could have lost him while he was out there-- you almost did lose him. But the fact is that you haven’t lost him, and he’s sitting less than a metre away from you. You could reach out and put your hand over his if you wanted.
Instead, you wrap your hands around your cup of coffee to draw warmth. “John,” you begin. And falter. “John. We’ve... we split up.”
“You and Clara?” His eyes are wide. He believed in you two. Oh, everybody believed in you two. Even Clara believed that the two of you could make it through right up till the moment you walked out of the door. “Harry... When?”
“About two months ago,” you reply, shrugging, as if that would make him think you were okay. “I think we might get a divorce. So, you’re sure you don’t want to stay at mine, then? I won’t make you pay a single penny.”
“Are you working?” he asks.
“Not at the moment, no,” you admit, leaving out the story of how you turned up to work late and hungover one too many days. “Is that a problem?”
“You’re not seriously suggesting that you’ll be able to support the two of us? We’re both unemployed,” John says.
“Oh, all right, little brother. At least take this phone.” You slide it across the table. “I saw that shitty little thing you were holding earlier-- does that model even have colour?”
“Do you have another phone?”
“Yes, my old one.”
He picks it up, turns it over in his hand, studies the engraving quietly. And then he pockets it without a word. Odd. You expected him to make more of a fuss, but you’re glad he doesn’t. You really just want to get rid of the bloody thing. It sits there glowing at you every night while it charges, its gleam reflected off the tinted glass of whatever bottle happens to be standing next to it at the time.
“Thanks,” he says, at last.
“Funny, isn’t it?” you say, laughing a little. “You having a phone which has kisses from Clara on the back of it. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
He looks at you like it’s not funny at all. Well, you find it hilarious.
“Hang on, you’ll need the charger too.” You rummage around in your bag and hand the tangled mess over to John. “Good luck straightening that out.”
“Have you been drinking?” John asks. You’re almost grateful he’s omitted the ‘again’.
“Is it obvious?” you drawl.
John gives you a pained, incredulous expression. You just smile back.
---
It’s ten minutes to midnight and you’re sitting in front of the TV thinking fuck, how the hell is it going to be 2010 already? You wonder what John is doing. Probably not much better off than you, to be honest. Definitely with a bit less booze, but alone, like you.
Clara’s probably alone, too. God, you hope she’s alone.
You’re impossibly selfish, really, trying to keep something you don’t even have anymore, something that you yourself let go of in the first place. Could you be happy for her if she wasn’t alone right now?
Onscreen, people are screaming numbers. You lean back into the sofa, swirling a bottle. The camera zooms in on a couple kissing. You grip that bottle tight, tighter, as if you’re afraid it would slip out of your grasp. Maybe that would be a good thing, if it smashed to pieces on the floor. Maybe the noise of it would startle you, wake you up from this perpetual dream-like atmosphere your life has taken on lately.
Zero.
You hear the hiss and burst of fireworks. They are nowhere near loud enough.
You take another swig from the bottle.
---
You find John’s blog. You visit it every single day, but he hardly ever updates, and all his entries are brief and meaningless. You text him a lot, ask him to call you, but he never does.
And then he does call you, finally, after your comment on his blog post mentioning the mysterious Ella. You left that comment at nearly two in the morning and you never expected your phone to light up almost straight away, but it does.
The first thing John says is, “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“You say that about a lot of your girlfriends,” you say, then pause to think about it. “Not that you’ve had that many.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Ick.” You pull a face that you know John can’t see. “I don’t need to hear a list of my little brother’s conquests. But I don’t believe you.”
“I’ve had more girlfriends than you have.”
“True,” you concede. “But my list of conquests isn’t that impressive because I found Clara pretty early on.”
“Are you going to any AA meetings?” John asks, rather abruptly.
“What AA meetings?”
“I can hear you, Harry. I know you’ve just been drinking. Bloody hell, you’re probably drinking right now.”
You eye the glass of wine next to your laptop. But wine is classy. At least it’s not... whatever that shit was you drank last night. That was crazy. And you’re not drinking the wine straight from the bottle either. “I don’t need to go to AA meetings.”
“I talked to Clara. She said you went to a couple, but then you stopped,” John says.
“Hrm? You talked to Clara? How did you get her number?”
“It’s on the contacts list on my phone. You know. The one that you gave me?”
“Oh, yeah,” you mumble, grasping the stem of the wine glass.
“Or you could see a therapist, or something,” he suggests.
“Therapists,” you declare, waving the glass around in a dramatic fashion that no one will appreciate, “are for people with real issues.”
There is silence, for a while. Then John says, “I’m seeing a therapist, Harry. Ella. She’s my therapist. Not my girlfriend.”
“Oh. Sorry. Right. The war!” you exclaim. “How did I forget? Would you recommend her, then?”
“Find your own damn therapist, Harriet.”
You bristle, but before you can launch into your old five-minute rant which boils down to don’t you fucking call me Harriet, John hangs up on you. Well, you’re starting to remember how you never really got along, and you’re glad he refused to stay at yours.
So that’s why he kept putting off calling you.
You down the last few drops of wine from your glass, and looks forlornly at the empty bottle on the other side of the table. Time to go hunt for some more.
---
You eventually get a part-time job because you need to survive. You make enough to not starve, and also to keep replenishing your stash of booze, which always dwindles too quickly. You never seem to have enough to drink, though you’re not entirely sure what you mean by ‘enough’. That varies, a lot.
If you’re being honest with yourself, it’s not really that you don’t know that you have a problem. You do know. Even if you weren’t quite aware of it before, you certainly are now. The fact that alcohol has made you delusional enough to think that choosing it over the most important person in your life was a good idea-- that’s clear evidence of how much of a problem it’s become.
Some nights you lock it away and try to forget where you put the key, but in the mornings you always wake up wildly empty and dry and your entire body feels like a violin string still vibrating long after the bow has left you, and you can’t last an hour before your tremulous hands fall upon every surface and delve into every drawer in search of the key-- just one sip, and then I’ll go to work.
Of course, once you find the key, it’s never just one sip.
But you want to try, now. You really do. Occasionally you actually make it two days, even three, with gritted teeth before everything feels like the aftermath of an earthquake and you have to get your hands on that bottle or you’ll just shiver into pieces. But that’s still progress, isn’t it?
(Sent: 4-Feb-2010, 9:51PM
clara? i know i’ve been an absolute dick, but can we not go through with the divorce just yet? please? i want us to wait a year, and if we both still want a divorce, we can do it then.
Received: 4-Feb-2010, 10:16PM
all right. i hope you’re doing okay. you’re a dick, but that doesn’t mean i want you to die of alcohol poisoning or something.)
John, apparently, gets a flat-share, and with it a crime-solving flatmate, and they run around London getting up to all sorts of dangerous things and even though John has been to Afghanistan and back, you still can’t help but refresh his blog constantly hoping for his safety.
His crime-solving flatmate sounds intriguing and suspiciously like he’s John’s boyfriend, because John describes him with a myriad of adjectives that might as well all be ‘fabulous’.
But you’re dubious, because then John starts talking about Sarah. And it’s odd to think that your little brother isn’t really straight after all this time and he never told you. Not that you’re close, but you came out to the family at seventeen, and you were so lonely and afraid back then it would probably have helped if John had come to you and said, “I’m not sure about who I like myself.”
Or maybe it would have made things worse, knowing the way the two of you always get.
You text John more often now, and he calls you more, too. He doesn’t bring up the alcohol again. You’re probably both just trying to reassure yourselves that the other person is still alive.
Keeping in touch with John seems to help, unexpectedly, because he calls you at all the right moments and sometimes it stops you from reaching for that bottle. It seems eerily like he’s gained psychic powers. And though every minute of withdrawal is excruciating and alcohol never stops permeating your entire mind, you somehow manage to drag yourself out of bed on your fifth morning sober, take a deep breath, and try not to rip all your own hair out.
It is a fucking record.
And then John bloody ruins it with his stupid bloody flatmate-boyfriend-thing.
---
“Five days sober, John. Five fucking days,” you mutter. You’ve avoided discussing these things with him in the past, but when he’s lying in a hospital bed barely able to move it doesn’t seem to matter that much.
“Impressive,” he says quietly. You’re not sure whether he means it. “And then I went and got myself blown up in a swimming pool and you went straight back to the liquor.”
“Your fault.” You lean forward in the chair so you can see his face better. It is unblemished by the explosion.
“When don’t you try again now?”
“I could,” you agree. “But I probably won’t make it very far before you do something ridiculous again, like sink to the bottom of the fucking Atlantic.”
“I wish you wouldn’t swear so much,” John says.
“Fuck off,” you respond, as you always do.
John smiles, a little. Then he says, “I’m so going to regret telling you this when I’m less drugged up, but I think Sherlock...” He trails off, like he’s trying to find the right word.
“Is head over heels in love with you?” you suggest, brightly. You saw Sherlock, earlier, in a private ward, because you really just had to meet the man at last. He was probably more drugged up than John, and he was asking you about John, saying they wouldn’t let him get out of bed to go see John, looking at you curiously like he was cataloguing which of your features reminded him of John, and generally just acting like a lovesick (and drugged up) idiot.
John sighs. “I wouldn’t put it like that, but yes.”
“I’m surprised you two aren’t already doing it,” you say, raising your eyebrows. “I saw him. He’s so in love with you, John.”
“He is?” John says.
“You sound so hopeful,” you comment cheerfully, patting his head. He would bat you off if he could move his hand, but he can’t. He just looks at you angrily. Oh, bloody hell, since you’ve already been having one of the more emotional conversations you’ve had with your brother since the Stone Age, you might as well carry on. “So... you never knew you liked guys until now?”
“I sort of did,” he says. “I mean, it wasn’t... I always felt I preferred women.”
“Right. So... what about Sarah?”
“Sarah and I aren’t really seeing each other,” he says. “Well, we were, and then she almost got killed by some Chinese gangs. We’re more friends now. Anyway, I stood her up by getting blown up in a swimming pool.”
“I think she could forgive you for that, if you wanted.”
“My life is all about getting blown up in swimming pools, now. I think I should just get used to that and try not to get other people blown up too.”
“Embrace the whole package? Crime-solving, flat-share, and the flatmate that comes with it?” You grin at him, and put your hand near his, so that your fingers barely touch.
“Yeah. Wish me luck.” He squeezes your hand. Weakly, but he squeezes it all the same.
---
A few weeks later, you’re walking home from Tesco’s with some ready-made meals.
Phones start ringing all around you.
You’re already a little tipsy, though, and when you’re tipsy it takes a lot more than being stalked by ringing phones to faze you. But then a car pulls up by your side, and a brunette looks out of the window and says, “Get in.”
You stop and blink at the woman. Now that gets your attention.
“Um, who are you?” you ask. “I mean, I’ve seen some really direct pick-up attempts, but no one’s ever been quite as literal as this.”
The woman smiles, blandly, and says, “Hmm. Anthea.”
“I’m Harry.”
“I know. Get in.”
“Where are you going to take me?”
Anthea doesn’t say anything. You wish you had a drink in your hand right now. Maybe things would make more sense then.
“All right. Since this is all weird, I bet you’re something to do with that bloke my brother’s obsessed with. Are you?”
“In a way,” Anthea replies. She types on her BlackBerry. You can see what she’s typing from where you’re standing. She’s typing ‘Sherlock Holmes’.
So you get in the car.
You arrive at an empty café some time later. Empty save for a well-dressed man standing in the midst of all the chairs and tables. He is twirling an umbrella.
“Harriet Watson,” the man announces, like you don’t know your own awful name. You roll your eyes.
“Harry, please,” you say.
“Would you like to take a seat... Harry?” He indicates a chair for you. You sit down. He takes a seat opposite you. “Coffee? Tea?” he asks. You shake your head. “Hot chocolate?” he continues.
“No, thanks.”
“Oh, but they do a brilliant hot chocolate here.”
“There aren’t any baristas.”
“Good point. Now, Harry, I see you haven’t dissolved your civil partnership with... Clara Moore. Yet, you’re not actively doing anything to... save your relationship, as it were, aside from that one attempt where you managed to maintain sobriety for five whole days.”
You swallow. This is unnerving. “And your point?” you ask, not bothering to enquire why he knows the things he knows.
“Might I recommend an Alcoholics Anonymous group?”
“Oh, and you have loads of experience in this field, obviously,” you scoff.
“You really should go to some meetings. It’ll make your brother much happier.”
“Why do you care whether my brother is happy or not?”
“Your brother’s happiness appears to be crucial to my brother’s sanity. Some would consider your brother... the heart of my brother.”
“Your brother...” Something clicks. “Is your brother Sherlock?”
“Yes, you are quite correct. It rather pains us both to say it out loud, though. He much prefers the term ‘archenemy’. But I didn’t want to confuse you.”
“I’m confused enough by all this unnecessary...” -- you look around, wave your hand a bit -- “er, kidnapping-type-thing. But if I was cool enough to have an archenemy it would probably be my brother too.”
The man’s eyes narrow. “We are rather more similar than I thought,” he says. “And yet.”
“And yet?” you prompt.
“Nothing. Your brother is very worried about you, you do realise. Here is the address of this particular Alcoholics Anonymous group, in case you change your mind. Which you will.” He hands over a slip of paper in one elegant, fluid movement.
You pocket it. He stands up, and gestures for you to leave. “Time to go home, Harry,” he says. So you do. Anthea has been standing by the door all this time, her BlackBerry glued to her hand. She looks up, and leads you out of the café and back to the car.
On the way back, you feel slightly unsettled, but you don’t quite know why. You weren’t even unsettled before, when you had to get into the car without knowing where you were going. But now you do know. You’re being taken back home. So why is there that bubbling feeling in the pit of your stomach?
You look out of the window, drum your finger against the pane, and then you realise why.
Reflected in the window is Anthea, no longer preoccupied with her BlackBerry. She’s been staring at you, instead.
You turn around. Anthea’s cheeks are a soft pink. Her hair seems more tousled than it was before. You’d love to run your fingers through it.
“Hey,” you say.
“You’re... John Watson’s sister, aren’t you?” she asks.
“Yep.”
“You’re much more attractive than he is.” She smiles, and this smile has more warmth to it than any of her previous expressions. It’s quite disarming.
“Thanks.” You grin. You’ll have to tell John that. John must’ve tried to ask her out. She’s hot. Mysterious, a bit intimidating, but gorgeous. Mmm. Yes. She’s still looking at you, quietly intense, the BlackBerry lying forgotten on her lap. Is she...? You’re a little confused. It’s been a while since anyone’s tried to--
She leans in, closer. She smells good. Like the first bite of an apple. Hmm. Cider. You haven’t had cider in a while. It’s not very strong, though, cider.
Then her lips on yours and there’s a searing flare of panic inside your chest. Your heart races, and you’re thinking, wildly, it feels good, it feels so good, but god, you can’t cheat on Clara, you really can’t, nothing compares to the way Clara kisses you, always like the world’s going to end the next moment and it might be the last kiss you ever share-- no one kisses like that except Clara, and no one else ever should.
You turn away and babble something that sounds vaguely like “I’m sorry”, and you catch a glimpse of what appears to be a sliver of pity on Anthea’s face, and then she resumes her tapping on her BlackBerry keyboard as if nothing’s happened.
Your thoughts are still going at light-years per second and then suddenly you’re outside your flat and you stumble into the night air, your burning cheeks finally cooling. Your thoughts start to slow.
You’re halfway up the stairs before you realise that you wouldn’t have been cheating on Clara. There is no Clara to cheat on. How did you even think that? Honestly, you weren’t even drunk. You fling open the door to your flat. It stinks of alcohol and it’s a mess, there are clothes everywhere, and it’s your flat. Not yours and Clara’s. Just yours. You walked out of the life you and Clara made together half a year ago. This is your own life now. You could have kissed Anthea. You wanted it.
But maybe you wanted-- want something else even more.
You don’t touch anything, not a drop of alcohol, even though you desperately need some right now because that was one of the weirdest evenings you’ve ever had. You go straight to bed.
When you wake up the next morning, you fumble in the pocket of the jeans you wore last night, and find the slip of paper there.
You go to a meeting that very day.
---
Five days later, because that’s as far as you got last time, you text Clara.
Sent: 7-May-2010, 9:32PM
i want to talk. how about lunch tomorrow? sober, i promise.
Received: 7-May-2010, 10:05PM
yes. 12:30. that indian place we used to go to on tuesday nights.
So at 12:30pm the next day, you are at that Indian place they used to go to on Tuesday nights, and so is Clara.
“I was beginning to think you never wanted to talk to me again,” Clara says. “Or that you’d met your end in a sewer somewhere.” She folds and unfolds a corner of her napkin. “John calls me sometimes, though, to tell me that you’re not dead.”
“Does he actually?” you say, genuinely surprised.
“Yeah. You know that I think he cares about you more than you think,” Clara says.
“Chicken tikka masala?” you ask.
Clara nods. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“I want to quit,” you tell her. “And I need your help. Last time I tried to do it without anyone’s help I failed miserably after five days and it really wasn’t good. It’s been five days now, this time.”
“How do you want me to help?”
A waitress walks past, and you order for Clara and yourself. The waitress asks, “Drinks?”
You glance at Clara, who shrugs, and you say, “Just tap water, please.”
And then the waitress walks away, and you say to Clara, “I need texts. Just texts. Nothing big. Text me once a day. Remind me not to touch that bottle.”
“So, I’m like your apple a day, keeps the doctor away?”
“Yes. Will you do that for me? Please?”
“Yes, I suppose. Yes,” Clara says, and to you, the sound of that ‘yes’ sounds more like the first rainfall in spring than it does any word. You look down at the table, at your hands, inspect your nails, think I need to clip them, and then not that I’m going to get lucky anytime soon.
Then you look up at Clara, really meeting her gaze for the first time in months, and you smile and say, “Thank you,” and you don’t think you’ve ever sounded so grateful in your life.
---
Received: 9-May-2010, 7:31AM
sixth day sober. you can do it.
Sent: 9-May-2010, 8:42AM
best text ever to wake up to. thank you.
---
Received: 10-May-2010, 3:40PM
So. Sherlock told me that his brother’s been meddling in things he shouldn’t be meddling in again. Have you met Mycroft?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 3:45PM
the guy with the umbrella and the hot PA? he’s called mycroft? john, are you not questioning the holmes parents’ ability to come up with the world’s most awesome names.
Received: 10-May-2010, 4:00PM
What did he say to you?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 4:07PM
not much? i wasn’t really listening. his PA tried to make out with me.
Received: 10-May-2010, 4:20PM
Wait, what? She tried? /She/ did? You didn’t start it?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 4:34PM
no. she did. why, did you try something with her? are you jealous?
Received: 10-May-2010, 4:50PM
No, I am not jealous.
Sent: 10-May-2010, 4:56PM
no, of course you’re not. you’re all lovey-dovey with sherlock now, aren’t you?
Received: 10-May-2010, 5:12PM
Sherlock says it was a tactic.
Sent: 10-May-2010, 5:29PM
what was?
Received: 10-May-2010, 5:41PM
Mycroft getting his PA to snog you. A successful tactic. You’re going to AA meetings now, apparently.
Sent: 10-May-2010, 5:49PM
aww, she wasn’t making out with me because she was actually interested in me? that hurts my self-esteem, john.
Received: 10-May-2010, 5:56PM
I don’t get it. Why would asking his PA to snog you make you go to AA meetings?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 6:02PM
go ask sherlock? it’s a bit confusing for me too. but. uh, thanks.
Received: 10-May-2010, 6:13PM
For what?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 6:20PM
for worrying about me.
---
Received: 18-May-2010, 7:30AM
don’t touch that bottle! drink more water. you never drank enough water. 6-8 glasses a day!
Sent: 18-May-2010, 8:50AM
i got a therapist. going to see her for the first time today.
Received: 3-Jun-2010, 9:30PM
please tell me you aren’t thinking about alcohol.
Sent: 3-Jun-2010, 9:56PM
oh god, clara, clara, you have no idea how close-- it was particularly bad today. i couldn’t stop shaking.
Received: 3-Jun-2010, 10:08PM
do you want me to come over?
Sent: 3-Jun-2010, 10:20PM
no, it’s fine, it’s getting late, you have work tomorrow. i’m fine now. thank fuck you sent me that text.
Received: 14-Jun-2010, 7:41PM
the kids were ridiculous today. SHUT UP AND STOP RUNNING AROUND. sit down and learn your addition, it’s good for you.
Sent: 14-Jun-2010, 7:58PM
you’re such a kind teacher, clara. i wish i had you when i was in prep school. (it’s probably summer holidays getting closer.)
Received: 14-Jun-2010, 8:09PM
um, harry, ew. no. we would never have ended up in a relationship that way.
Received: 30-Jul-2010, 6:09PM
OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD i bumped into my first kiss today at tesco’s.
Sent: 30-Jul-2010, 6:14PM
NO FUCKING WAY wait don’t tell me, was her name cassie?
Received: 30-Jul-2010, 6:25PM
it’s so creepy how you remember all these details about my life before i met you. yes her name is cassie. it was awkward. her husband was there.
Sent: 30-Jul-2010, 6:31PM
at least your first kiss was a girl? omg if i bumped into my first kiss it will be SO TERRIBLE it was a boy i don’t even remember his name i ran away and left him in the rain??? did i tell you that story
Received: 30-Jul-2010, 6:37PM
yes harry you’ve told me a few times.
Received: 24-Aug-2010, 7:34PM
it’s our civil partnership anniversary today. not a drop, harry, do you hear me?
Sent: 24-Aug-2010, 7:51PM
four years.
Received: 24-Aug-2010, 8:01PM
yeah.
(You barely manage to refrain from typing ‘I love you’. It’s probably not a great thing to say when you’ve been separated for almost a year and you haven’t really talked about getting back together yet.)
Received: 30-Oct-2010, 7:30PM
so, it’s been a year. do you still want to...
Sent: 30-Oct-2010, 7:38PM
oh fuck, no, i absolutely don’t want to. you don’t, either, do you? please say you don’t.
Received: 30-Oct-2010, 7:46PM
i hope we’re talking about the same thing.
Sent: 30-Oct-2010, 7:50PM
we are. trust me, we absolutely are. meet me for tea tomorrow?
Received: 30-Oct-2010, 7:58PM
at that little place we used to call the cupboard under the stairs?
Sent: 30-Oct-2010, 8:01PM
yes. 3:30. see you there, weasley girl. x
(You figure that’s not too much, right? One kiss? You’ve been texting each other for months, you should be allowed to add one kiss at the end of your texts.)
---
At the cupboard under the stairs, she calls you Potter and you call her Weasley and you eat little croissants and cupcakes and drink hot chocolate and everything feels like it used to be.
“Five months sober,” she says.
“Five months,” you echo, a little awed, too.
“You’ve got a chocolate moustache,” she says, and before you can pick up a napkin, she reaches out and wipes it away with her thumb.
You want her to kiss you.
And then she does, but she pulls away again too quickly, like she isn’t sure. She looks at you nervously, her eyes darting across your face.
So you lean in and kiss her instead, still tentative, but you make it last.
After the kiss, you end up back at your tiny flat, watching Hairspray on DVD, and afterwards she says, “Zac Efron is kind of hot.”
And you say, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
She laughs, and leans against your shoulder for a while. “Hmm, I should probably go soon, it’s getting late,” she says, but she doesn’t move, and you don’t want her to.
“You could stay the night, if you want,” you offer, trying not to sound too hopeful. “Um. We don’t need to--”
“Yes, I want to,” Clara interrupts, her emphasis on the word ‘want’ so pure and bright.
“The bed’s tiny, I’m sorry--”
“Of course it is. We’ll fit. We always did, remember?”
You blink. Yes, of course. How did you ever forget? Back in the beginning, when you weren’t living together yet, when you each had your own little flat with your own single beds-- eight years ago. Eight.
You don’t think about it often, but now that you do, you realise that it’s kind of amazing. And you never want it to stop being amazing.
You touch the back of her neck, and guide her in for a kiss, no longer tentative, but confident.
Yes, you’ve always fit.
---
You wake the next morning, cold and sprawled out all over the bed. You’re alone, and normally this wouldn’t bother you, but today is different, today you were-- you were supposed to wake up with Clara.
You’re so scared you can’t breathe, and your first thought is to find something to drink but you emptied the house of alcohol months ago and you’ll need to get dressed and go buy some and that’s going to take time and you want it now.
You could call Clara. You could call her and ask her why she left, maybe she regretted sleeping with you, maybe she realised she wasn’t ready to get back together with you yet, maybe-- but why? You sit up to retrieve your phone from your bedside table but there’s a sticky note on top of it. You peel it off.
It says, in squished handwriting because there isn’t quite enough space:
Oh gosh you idiot you probably think I left you because I freaked out about last night. I haven’t freaked out about last night. I’ve got work, remember? Screaming kids at 8am who refuse to listen to me and learn the days of the week? You didn’t wake up when I was getting dressed, and I didn’t want to wake you. You look absolutely gorgeous when you sleep. Have I ever told you that? Not that you don’t look gorgeous otherwise. xxx
You think, yes, yes you have told me that, but I’ve never been so glad to hear it, and you lie back down in bed and punch your pillow gleefully, and resolutely push all thoughts of alcohol to the back of your mind.
---
You meet up with her for meals more and more often now, a lunch here and a dinner there, and once or twice you end up in bed together afterwards. You’re hoping that she’ll ask you to move back in with her soon, because as the person who walked out, you don’t feel like it would be right for you to ask her whether she’ll let you back inside.
On the night of her birthday, 2 December, you show up at her flat with a present and a bottle of sparkling water. “Hi. I thought, since I couldn’t bring wine, I’d bring some sparkling water instead?” you say.
She smiles and welcomes you in with a hug. The way your bodies press together gives you the buoyant feeling you drank so much alcohol in search for but never found. And here it is. So simple, so warm, so tangible. Here in Clara’s arms, everything is reduced to Clara’s hair against your cheek, and the world feels fresh and crisp.
She lets go of you and unwraps her present. It’s an iPhone 4, with an engraving on the back that says:
Dearest Ginny Weasley
Love, Harry Potter
xxxxx
She shakes her head. “People will think this is the weirdest thing ever,” she says, but she’s laughing. “You really shouldn’t have--”
“I tried to outdo you on the kisses,” you say.
“You’re so silly. Where’s the phone I gave you, anyway? I haven’t asked, but I’ve been wondering.”
“I gave it to John,” you admit, sheepishly. “When he came back from Afghanistan. Thought he needed a new phone, and we’d just split up then--”
Clara touches your hand. “Honestly, how did you manage to afford this? You would never have--”
“Well, you know, I’ve quit drinking, and money’s easier to come by when you’re not--”
“Yes. Obviously. Thank you.”
“Happy birthday,” you whisper, tucking a strand of her red hair behind her ear and following it with a kiss.
When you pull apart, she murmurs, soft, “You can move back in if you want,” and you can’t even say yes fast enough.
---
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 7:52PM
do you wanna watch a movie on sat?
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 7:58PM
Are you sure that text was meant for me?
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 8:01PM
oh crap! i meant to send it to clara. oh well. do you wanna come anyway? with me and clara? dinner afterwards.
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 8:07PM
Movies are dull. No.
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 8:13PM
hi sherlock! john, stop letting sherlock steal your phone.
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 8:20PM
Sherlock says you sent that text to me on purpose.
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 8:25PM
never mind what sherlock says. what do you say?
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 8:34PM
I think you sent it on purpose.
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 8:40PM
are you coming, then?
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 9:10PM
john?
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 9:28PM
Yeah, all right. What time?
---
After the movie, you and Clara cook dinner for John. Well, Clara does most of the cooking, you just stand around and watch her because you’re kind of useless and she’s kind of sensational in the kitchen, with her hair tied up in a bun. You chop up some tomatoes and hand her the olive oil and look in the fridge for the ham, all the while stealing glances at her and wondering when she’ll stop being so busy, so you can kiss her and tell her what a fantastic cook she is.
“Okay, I think you’re done here. Go out and talk to John or something, he must be bored,” Clara says, waving you out. “I’ll be done in about ten minutes.”
You go outside and sit there and smile stupidly at John for a while, unable to say a word, and he looks exasperated at you until he starts smiling stupidly too, probably remembering something horribly dangerous he did with Sherlock yesterday.
Then he laughs and hands you the phone you gave him a year ago.
“I--” you begin, but he interrupts.
“You’re the only person this could ever belong to.”
“Thanks,” you say, softly. “I’m happy for you too. I’d be even happier for you if you weren’t getting up to all sorts of potentially fatal adventures with your boyfriend, but who am I to judge you for your adrenaline kink?”
It’s a step forward, being able to admit that you’re worried about him not just when he’s drugged up and lying in a hospital bed.
You pocket the phone, fingertips sliding over the engraved kisses. Then Clara comes in with steaming dishes, and you pull her in for an actual kiss, and the whole world just seems to melt away.
---
(The night before 2011, you and Clara are sitting side by side, shoulders brushing, on a sofa in a flat that you bought together six years ago. Your stuff is still in a couple of boxes by the door, but you’ll unpack them eventually.
It is your first New Year’s without booze, but you don’t think you’ve ever felt this happy welcoming in a new year except when you were still a kid and countdowns just meant fireworks to you. It’s been a tough year, 2010, and there’s been parts of it you had to crawl through on your hands and feet and with a heavy rock on your back, and parts when you almost did give up and were just a spider's thread away from relapsing into old habits. And that makes finally coming out of the other end that much sweeter.
At midnight, Clara slants her lips against yours and kisses you in that fiercely perfect way only she knows how, and you tangle your fingers in her beautiful red hair and swear to yourself you’ll never let go again. In her kiss you taste all the promises of 2011.
It is going to be a brilliant year.)
Pairing: Mainly Harry/Clara, some John/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~6,800
Summary: The year 2010 through the eyes of Harry Watson.
For: talkingtothesky. ♥ Her prompt was, “Harry/Clara, healing, Mycroft gets involved in bringing them together again”.
Set Down Your Glass
The first time you try wanking after you left Clara, it doesn’t go very well.
It has been a week and three days. You are lying on your bed; the room is dark. Outside in the living room the TV is on low, and you can barely make out a woman’s voice. You can’t hear what she’s saying, but you like the way her voice sounds. It reminds you of-- of Clara.
There’s a half-empty bottle on your bedside table. You stare at it, vaguely remembering other bottles discarded carelessly on the living room floor. You close your eyes and focus on the woman’s voice, and you slip one hand under the waistband of your pants, and brush a finger against your clit.
Threads of fantasies run through your mind, snippets of worn dialogue you’ve enjoyed too many times before, ribbons of images from different situations: strangers, faintly familiar faces. But you’re not very interested in any of them; all of them are hazy and thin, save for one. Fantasy bleeds into memory and snags on the crisp edge of Clara’s smile. Your hand stills, defeated.
You have always drunk to forget, but Clara isn’t so easily washed away by the alcohol in your system. She stays stubbornly, clinging to the insides of your veins. Clara is the first lover you’ve missed when drunk. Maybe that says something about how much she means to you.
Or maybe it just says something about how you’re drinking so much that you’re now immune to the oblivion it once provided.
The phone Clara gave you lies innocently next to the bottle, with the engraving facing up. You find yourself tracing those three kisses imperfectly, with the same shaking finger you were touching yourself with moments ago.
In your mind, Clara’s red hair falls across your shoulder, and her hand comes to rest over the jut of your hipbone.
You squeeze your eyes shut. God, you are so fucked up.
---
“You could stay with me,” you offer, hesitantly, not entirely sure whether you would want him to say yes. But you feel a sisterly obligation.
He frowns at you; he knows what you’re thinking. “Yeah, well, even if you are being sincere, which I doubt you are, I don’t think Clara’s going to like it much, me being around all the time, doing nothing. I’d be a nuisance.”
His eyes are underlined with shadows. There is a tightness to his jaw you have never seen before. His hand trembles slightly where it rests on the table.
It’s strange, you’re kind of... disappointed he doesn’t want to stay at yours. Maybe you miss him more than you’ll let yourself acknowledge. Maybe you’ve realised that you could have lost him while he was out there-- you almost did lose him. But the fact is that you haven’t lost him, and he’s sitting less than a metre away from you. You could reach out and put your hand over his if you wanted.
Instead, you wrap your hands around your cup of coffee to draw warmth. “John,” you begin. And falter. “John. We’ve... we split up.”
“You and Clara?” His eyes are wide. He believed in you two. Oh, everybody believed in you two. Even Clara believed that the two of you could make it through right up till the moment you walked out of the door. “Harry... When?”
“About two months ago,” you reply, shrugging, as if that would make him think you were okay. “I think we might get a divorce. So, you’re sure you don’t want to stay at mine, then? I won’t make you pay a single penny.”
“Are you working?” he asks.
“Not at the moment, no,” you admit, leaving out the story of how you turned up to work late and hungover one too many days. “Is that a problem?”
“You’re not seriously suggesting that you’ll be able to support the two of us? We’re both unemployed,” John says.
“Oh, all right, little brother. At least take this phone.” You slide it across the table. “I saw that shitty little thing you were holding earlier-- does that model even have colour?”
“Do you have another phone?”
“Yes, my old one.”
He picks it up, turns it over in his hand, studies the engraving quietly. And then he pockets it without a word. Odd. You expected him to make more of a fuss, but you’re glad he doesn’t. You really just want to get rid of the bloody thing. It sits there glowing at you every night while it charges, its gleam reflected off the tinted glass of whatever bottle happens to be standing next to it at the time.
“Thanks,” he says, at last.
“Funny, isn’t it?” you say, laughing a little. “You having a phone which has kisses from Clara on the back of it. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
He looks at you like it’s not funny at all. Well, you find it hilarious.
“Hang on, you’ll need the charger too.” You rummage around in your bag and hand the tangled mess over to John. “Good luck straightening that out.”
“Have you been drinking?” John asks. You’re almost grateful he’s omitted the ‘again’.
“Is it obvious?” you drawl.
John gives you a pained, incredulous expression. You just smile back.
---
It’s ten minutes to midnight and you’re sitting in front of the TV thinking fuck, how the hell is it going to be 2010 already? You wonder what John is doing. Probably not much better off than you, to be honest. Definitely with a bit less booze, but alone, like you.
Clara’s probably alone, too. God, you hope she’s alone.
You’re impossibly selfish, really, trying to keep something you don’t even have anymore, something that you yourself let go of in the first place. Could you be happy for her if she wasn’t alone right now?
Onscreen, people are screaming numbers. You lean back into the sofa, swirling a bottle. The camera zooms in on a couple kissing. You grip that bottle tight, tighter, as if you’re afraid it would slip out of your grasp. Maybe that would be a good thing, if it smashed to pieces on the floor. Maybe the noise of it would startle you, wake you up from this perpetual dream-like atmosphere your life has taken on lately.
Zero.
You hear the hiss and burst of fireworks. They are nowhere near loud enough.
You take another swig from the bottle.
---
You find John’s blog. You visit it every single day, but he hardly ever updates, and all his entries are brief and meaningless. You text him a lot, ask him to call you, but he never does.
And then he does call you, finally, after your comment on his blog post mentioning the mysterious Ella. You left that comment at nearly two in the morning and you never expected your phone to light up almost straight away, but it does.
The first thing John says is, “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“You say that about a lot of your girlfriends,” you say, then pause to think about it. “Not that you’ve had that many.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Ick.” You pull a face that you know John can’t see. “I don’t need to hear a list of my little brother’s conquests. But I don’t believe you.”
“I’ve had more girlfriends than you have.”
“True,” you concede. “But my list of conquests isn’t that impressive because I found Clara pretty early on.”
“Are you going to any AA meetings?” John asks, rather abruptly.
“What AA meetings?”
“I can hear you, Harry. I know you’ve just been drinking. Bloody hell, you’re probably drinking right now.”
You eye the glass of wine next to your laptop. But wine is classy. At least it’s not... whatever that shit was you drank last night. That was crazy. And you’re not drinking the wine straight from the bottle either. “I don’t need to go to AA meetings.”
“I talked to Clara. She said you went to a couple, but then you stopped,” John says.
“Hrm? You talked to Clara? How did you get her number?”
“It’s on the contacts list on my phone. You know. The one that you gave me?”
“Oh, yeah,” you mumble, grasping the stem of the wine glass.
“Or you could see a therapist, or something,” he suggests.
“Therapists,” you declare, waving the glass around in a dramatic fashion that no one will appreciate, “are for people with real issues.”
There is silence, for a while. Then John says, “I’m seeing a therapist, Harry. Ella. She’s my therapist. Not my girlfriend.”
“Oh. Sorry. Right. The war!” you exclaim. “How did I forget? Would you recommend her, then?”
“Find your own damn therapist, Harriet.”
You bristle, but before you can launch into your old five-minute rant which boils down to don’t you fucking call me Harriet, John hangs up on you. Well, you’re starting to remember how you never really got along, and you’re glad he refused to stay at yours.
So that’s why he kept putting off calling you.
You down the last few drops of wine from your glass, and looks forlornly at the empty bottle on the other side of the table. Time to go hunt for some more.
---
You eventually get a part-time job because you need to survive. You make enough to not starve, and also to keep replenishing your stash of booze, which always dwindles too quickly. You never seem to have enough to drink, though you’re not entirely sure what you mean by ‘enough’. That varies, a lot.
If you’re being honest with yourself, it’s not really that you don’t know that you have a problem. You do know. Even if you weren’t quite aware of it before, you certainly are now. The fact that alcohol has made you delusional enough to think that choosing it over the most important person in your life was a good idea-- that’s clear evidence of how much of a problem it’s become.
Some nights you lock it away and try to forget where you put the key, but in the mornings you always wake up wildly empty and dry and your entire body feels like a violin string still vibrating long after the bow has left you, and you can’t last an hour before your tremulous hands fall upon every surface and delve into every drawer in search of the key-- just one sip, and then I’ll go to work.
Of course, once you find the key, it’s never just one sip.
But you want to try, now. You really do. Occasionally you actually make it two days, even three, with gritted teeth before everything feels like the aftermath of an earthquake and you have to get your hands on that bottle or you’ll just shiver into pieces. But that’s still progress, isn’t it?
(Sent: 4-Feb-2010, 9:51PM
clara? i know i’ve been an absolute dick, but can we not go through with the divorce just yet? please? i want us to wait a year, and if we both still want a divorce, we can do it then.
Received: 4-Feb-2010, 10:16PM
all right. i hope you’re doing okay. you’re a dick, but that doesn’t mean i want you to die of alcohol poisoning or something.)
John, apparently, gets a flat-share, and with it a crime-solving flatmate, and they run around London getting up to all sorts of dangerous things and even though John has been to Afghanistan and back, you still can’t help but refresh his blog constantly hoping for his safety.
His crime-solving flatmate sounds intriguing and suspiciously like he’s John’s boyfriend, because John describes him with a myriad of adjectives that might as well all be ‘fabulous’.
But you’re dubious, because then John starts talking about Sarah. And it’s odd to think that your little brother isn’t really straight after all this time and he never told you. Not that you’re close, but you came out to the family at seventeen, and you were so lonely and afraid back then it would probably have helped if John had come to you and said, “I’m not sure about who I like myself.”
Or maybe it would have made things worse, knowing the way the two of you always get.
You text John more often now, and he calls you more, too. He doesn’t bring up the alcohol again. You’re probably both just trying to reassure yourselves that the other person is still alive.
Keeping in touch with John seems to help, unexpectedly, because he calls you at all the right moments and sometimes it stops you from reaching for that bottle. It seems eerily like he’s gained psychic powers. And though every minute of withdrawal is excruciating and alcohol never stops permeating your entire mind, you somehow manage to drag yourself out of bed on your fifth morning sober, take a deep breath, and try not to rip all your own hair out.
It is a fucking record.
And then John bloody ruins it with his stupid bloody flatmate-boyfriend-thing.
---
“Five days sober, John. Five fucking days,” you mutter. You’ve avoided discussing these things with him in the past, but when he’s lying in a hospital bed barely able to move it doesn’t seem to matter that much.
“Impressive,” he says quietly. You’re not sure whether he means it. “And then I went and got myself blown up in a swimming pool and you went straight back to the liquor.”
“Your fault.” You lean forward in the chair so you can see his face better. It is unblemished by the explosion.
“When don’t you try again now?”
“I could,” you agree. “But I probably won’t make it very far before you do something ridiculous again, like sink to the bottom of the fucking Atlantic.”
“I wish you wouldn’t swear so much,” John says.
“Fuck off,” you respond, as you always do.
John smiles, a little. Then he says, “I’m so going to regret telling you this when I’m less drugged up, but I think Sherlock...” He trails off, like he’s trying to find the right word.
“Is head over heels in love with you?” you suggest, brightly. You saw Sherlock, earlier, in a private ward, because you really just had to meet the man at last. He was probably more drugged up than John, and he was asking you about John, saying they wouldn’t let him get out of bed to go see John, looking at you curiously like he was cataloguing which of your features reminded him of John, and generally just acting like a lovesick (and drugged up) idiot.
John sighs. “I wouldn’t put it like that, but yes.”
“I’m surprised you two aren’t already doing it,” you say, raising your eyebrows. “I saw him. He’s so in love with you, John.”
“He is?” John says.
“You sound so hopeful,” you comment cheerfully, patting his head. He would bat you off if he could move his hand, but he can’t. He just looks at you angrily. Oh, bloody hell, since you’ve already been having one of the more emotional conversations you’ve had with your brother since the Stone Age, you might as well carry on. “So... you never knew you liked guys until now?”
“I sort of did,” he says. “I mean, it wasn’t... I always felt I preferred women.”
“Right. So... what about Sarah?”
“Sarah and I aren’t really seeing each other,” he says. “Well, we were, and then she almost got killed by some Chinese gangs. We’re more friends now. Anyway, I stood her up by getting blown up in a swimming pool.”
“I think she could forgive you for that, if you wanted.”
“My life is all about getting blown up in swimming pools, now. I think I should just get used to that and try not to get other people blown up too.”
“Embrace the whole package? Crime-solving, flat-share, and the flatmate that comes with it?” You grin at him, and put your hand near his, so that your fingers barely touch.
“Yeah. Wish me luck.” He squeezes your hand. Weakly, but he squeezes it all the same.
---
A few weeks later, you’re walking home from Tesco’s with some ready-made meals.
Phones start ringing all around you.
You’re already a little tipsy, though, and when you’re tipsy it takes a lot more than being stalked by ringing phones to faze you. But then a car pulls up by your side, and a brunette looks out of the window and says, “Get in.”
You stop and blink at the woman. Now that gets your attention.
“Um, who are you?” you ask. “I mean, I’ve seen some really direct pick-up attempts, but no one’s ever been quite as literal as this.”
The woman smiles, blandly, and says, “Hmm. Anthea.”
“I’m Harry.”
“I know. Get in.”
“Where are you going to take me?”
Anthea doesn’t say anything. You wish you had a drink in your hand right now. Maybe things would make more sense then.
“All right. Since this is all weird, I bet you’re something to do with that bloke my brother’s obsessed with. Are you?”
“In a way,” Anthea replies. She types on her BlackBerry. You can see what she’s typing from where you’re standing. She’s typing ‘Sherlock Holmes’.
So you get in the car.
You arrive at an empty café some time later. Empty save for a well-dressed man standing in the midst of all the chairs and tables. He is twirling an umbrella.
“Harriet Watson,” the man announces, like you don’t know your own awful name. You roll your eyes.
“Harry, please,” you say.
“Would you like to take a seat... Harry?” He indicates a chair for you. You sit down. He takes a seat opposite you. “Coffee? Tea?” he asks. You shake your head. “Hot chocolate?” he continues.
“No, thanks.”
“Oh, but they do a brilliant hot chocolate here.”
“There aren’t any baristas.”
“Good point. Now, Harry, I see you haven’t dissolved your civil partnership with... Clara Moore. Yet, you’re not actively doing anything to... save your relationship, as it were, aside from that one attempt where you managed to maintain sobriety for five whole days.”
You swallow. This is unnerving. “And your point?” you ask, not bothering to enquire why he knows the things he knows.
“Might I recommend an Alcoholics Anonymous group?”
“Oh, and you have loads of experience in this field, obviously,” you scoff.
“You really should go to some meetings. It’ll make your brother much happier.”
“Why do you care whether my brother is happy or not?”
“Your brother’s happiness appears to be crucial to my brother’s sanity. Some would consider your brother... the heart of my brother.”
“Your brother...” Something clicks. “Is your brother Sherlock?”
“Yes, you are quite correct. It rather pains us both to say it out loud, though. He much prefers the term ‘archenemy’. But I didn’t want to confuse you.”
“I’m confused enough by all this unnecessary...” -- you look around, wave your hand a bit -- “er, kidnapping-type-thing. But if I was cool enough to have an archenemy it would probably be my brother too.”
The man’s eyes narrow. “We are rather more similar than I thought,” he says. “And yet.”
“And yet?” you prompt.
“Nothing. Your brother is very worried about you, you do realise. Here is the address of this particular Alcoholics Anonymous group, in case you change your mind. Which you will.” He hands over a slip of paper in one elegant, fluid movement.
You pocket it. He stands up, and gestures for you to leave. “Time to go home, Harry,” he says. So you do. Anthea has been standing by the door all this time, her BlackBerry glued to her hand. She looks up, and leads you out of the café and back to the car.
On the way back, you feel slightly unsettled, but you don’t quite know why. You weren’t even unsettled before, when you had to get into the car without knowing where you were going. But now you do know. You’re being taken back home. So why is there that bubbling feeling in the pit of your stomach?
You look out of the window, drum your finger against the pane, and then you realise why.
Reflected in the window is Anthea, no longer preoccupied with her BlackBerry. She’s been staring at you, instead.
You turn around. Anthea’s cheeks are a soft pink. Her hair seems more tousled than it was before. You’d love to run your fingers through it.
“Hey,” you say.
“You’re... John Watson’s sister, aren’t you?” she asks.
“Yep.”
“You’re much more attractive than he is.” She smiles, and this smile has more warmth to it than any of her previous expressions. It’s quite disarming.
“Thanks.” You grin. You’ll have to tell John that. John must’ve tried to ask her out. She’s hot. Mysterious, a bit intimidating, but gorgeous. Mmm. Yes. She’s still looking at you, quietly intense, the BlackBerry lying forgotten on her lap. Is she...? You’re a little confused. It’s been a while since anyone’s tried to--
She leans in, closer. She smells good. Like the first bite of an apple. Hmm. Cider. You haven’t had cider in a while. It’s not very strong, though, cider.
Then her lips on yours and there’s a searing flare of panic inside your chest. Your heart races, and you’re thinking, wildly, it feels good, it feels so good, but god, you can’t cheat on Clara, you really can’t, nothing compares to the way Clara kisses you, always like the world’s going to end the next moment and it might be the last kiss you ever share-- no one kisses like that except Clara, and no one else ever should.
You turn away and babble something that sounds vaguely like “I’m sorry”, and you catch a glimpse of what appears to be a sliver of pity on Anthea’s face, and then she resumes her tapping on her BlackBerry keyboard as if nothing’s happened.
Your thoughts are still going at light-years per second and then suddenly you’re outside your flat and you stumble into the night air, your burning cheeks finally cooling. Your thoughts start to slow.
You’re halfway up the stairs before you realise that you wouldn’t have been cheating on Clara. There is no Clara to cheat on. How did you even think that? Honestly, you weren’t even drunk. You fling open the door to your flat. It stinks of alcohol and it’s a mess, there are clothes everywhere, and it’s your flat. Not yours and Clara’s. Just yours. You walked out of the life you and Clara made together half a year ago. This is your own life now. You could have kissed Anthea. You wanted it.
But maybe you wanted-- want something else even more.
You don’t touch anything, not a drop of alcohol, even though you desperately need some right now because that was one of the weirdest evenings you’ve ever had. You go straight to bed.
When you wake up the next morning, you fumble in the pocket of the jeans you wore last night, and find the slip of paper there.
You go to a meeting that very day.
---
Five days later, because that’s as far as you got last time, you text Clara.
Sent: 7-May-2010, 9:32PM
i want to talk. how about lunch tomorrow? sober, i promise.
Received: 7-May-2010, 10:05PM
yes. 12:30. that indian place we used to go to on tuesday nights.
So at 12:30pm the next day, you are at that Indian place they used to go to on Tuesday nights, and so is Clara.
“I was beginning to think you never wanted to talk to me again,” Clara says. “Or that you’d met your end in a sewer somewhere.” She folds and unfolds a corner of her napkin. “John calls me sometimes, though, to tell me that you’re not dead.”
“Does he actually?” you say, genuinely surprised.
“Yeah. You know that I think he cares about you more than you think,” Clara says.
“Chicken tikka masala?” you ask.
Clara nods. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“I want to quit,” you tell her. “And I need your help. Last time I tried to do it without anyone’s help I failed miserably after five days and it really wasn’t good. It’s been five days now, this time.”
“How do you want me to help?”
A waitress walks past, and you order for Clara and yourself. The waitress asks, “Drinks?”
You glance at Clara, who shrugs, and you say, “Just tap water, please.”
And then the waitress walks away, and you say to Clara, “I need texts. Just texts. Nothing big. Text me once a day. Remind me not to touch that bottle.”
“So, I’m like your apple a day, keeps the doctor away?”
“Yes. Will you do that for me? Please?”
“Yes, I suppose. Yes,” Clara says, and to you, the sound of that ‘yes’ sounds more like the first rainfall in spring than it does any word. You look down at the table, at your hands, inspect your nails, think I need to clip them, and then not that I’m going to get lucky anytime soon.
Then you look up at Clara, really meeting her gaze for the first time in months, and you smile and say, “Thank you,” and you don’t think you’ve ever sounded so grateful in your life.
---
Received: 9-May-2010, 7:31AM
sixth day sober. you can do it.
Sent: 9-May-2010, 8:42AM
best text ever to wake up to. thank you.
---
Received: 10-May-2010, 3:40PM
So. Sherlock told me that his brother’s been meddling in things he shouldn’t be meddling in again. Have you met Mycroft?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 3:45PM
the guy with the umbrella and the hot PA? he’s called mycroft? john, are you not questioning the holmes parents’ ability to come up with the world’s most awesome names.
Received: 10-May-2010, 4:00PM
What did he say to you?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 4:07PM
not much? i wasn’t really listening. his PA tried to make out with me.
Received: 10-May-2010, 4:20PM
Wait, what? She tried? /She/ did? You didn’t start it?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 4:34PM
no. she did. why, did you try something with her? are you jealous?
Received: 10-May-2010, 4:50PM
No, I am not jealous.
Sent: 10-May-2010, 4:56PM
no, of course you’re not. you’re all lovey-dovey with sherlock now, aren’t you?
Received: 10-May-2010, 5:12PM
Sherlock says it was a tactic.
Sent: 10-May-2010, 5:29PM
what was?
Received: 10-May-2010, 5:41PM
Mycroft getting his PA to snog you. A successful tactic. You’re going to AA meetings now, apparently.
Sent: 10-May-2010, 5:49PM
aww, she wasn’t making out with me because she was actually interested in me? that hurts my self-esteem, john.
Received: 10-May-2010, 5:56PM
I don’t get it. Why would asking his PA to snog you make you go to AA meetings?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 6:02PM
go ask sherlock? it’s a bit confusing for me too. but. uh, thanks.
Received: 10-May-2010, 6:13PM
For what?
Sent: 10-May-2010, 6:20PM
for worrying about me.
---
Received: 18-May-2010, 7:30AM
don’t touch that bottle! drink more water. you never drank enough water. 6-8 glasses a day!
Sent: 18-May-2010, 8:50AM
i got a therapist. going to see her for the first time today.
Received: 3-Jun-2010, 9:30PM
please tell me you aren’t thinking about alcohol.
Sent: 3-Jun-2010, 9:56PM
oh god, clara, clara, you have no idea how close-- it was particularly bad today. i couldn’t stop shaking.
Received: 3-Jun-2010, 10:08PM
do you want me to come over?
Sent: 3-Jun-2010, 10:20PM
no, it’s fine, it’s getting late, you have work tomorrow. i’m fine now. thank fuck you sent me that text.
Received: 14-Jun-2010, 7:41PM
the kids were ridiculous today. SHUT UP AND STOP RUNNING AROUND. sit down and learn your addition, it’s good for you.
Sent: 14-Jun-2010, 7:58PM
you’re such a kind teacher, clara. i wish i had you when i was in prep school. (it’s probably summer holidays getting closer.)
Received: 14-Jun-2010, 8:09PM
um, harry, ew. no. we would never have ended up in a relationship that way.
Received: 30-Jul-2010, 6:09PM
OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD i bumped into my first kiss today at tesco’s.
Sent: 30-Jul-2010, 6:14PM
NO FUCKING WAY wait don’t tell me, was her name cassie?
Received: 30-Jul-2010, 6:25PM
it’s so creepy how you remember all these details about my life before i met you. yes her name is cassie. it was awkward. her husband was there.
Sent: 30-Jul-2010, 6:31PM
at least your first kiss was a girl? omg if i bumped into my first kiss it will be SO TERRIBLE it was a boy i don’t even remember his name i ran away and left him in the rain??? did i tell you that story
Received: 30-Jul-2010, 6:37PM
yes harry you’ve told me a few times.
Received: 24-Aug-2010, 7:34PM
it’s our civil partnership anniversary today. not a drop, harry, do you hear me?
Sent: 24-Aug-2010, 7:51PM
four years.
Received: 24-Aug-2010, 8:01PM
yeah.
(You barely manage to refrain from typing ‘I love you’. It’s probably not a great thing to say when you’ve been separated for almost a year and you haven’t really talked about getting back together yet.)
Received: 30-Oct-2010, 7:30PM
so, it’s been a year. do you still want to...
Sent: 30-Oct-2010, 7:38PM
oh fuck, no, i absolutely don’t want to. you don’t, either, do you? please say you don’t.
Received: 30-Oct-2010, 7:46PM
i hope we’re talking about the same thing.
Sent: 30-Oct-2010, 7:50PM
we are. trust me, we absolutely are. meet me for tea tomorrow?
Received: 30-Oct-2010, 7:58PM
at that little place we used to call the cupboard under the stairs?
Sent: 30-Oct-2010, 8:01PM
yes. 3:30. see you there, weasley girl. x
(You figure that’s not too much, right? One kiss? You’ve been texting each other for months, you should be allowed to add one kiss at the end of your texts.)
---
At the cupboard under the stairs, she calls you Potter and you call her Weasley and you eat little croissants and cupcakes and drink hot chocolate and everything feels like it used to be.
“Five months sober,” she says.
“Five months,” you echo, a little awed, too.
“You’ve got a chocolate moustache,” she says, and before you can pick up a napkin, she reaches out and wipes it away with her thumb.
You want her to kiss you.
And then she does, but she pulls away again too quickly, like she isn’t sure. She looks at you nervously, her eyes darting across your face.
So you lean in and kiss her instead, still tentative, but you make it last.
After the kiss, you end up back at your tiny flat, watching Hairspray on DVD, and afterwards she says, “Zac Efron is kind of hot.”
And you say, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
She laughs, and leans against your shoulder for a while. “Hmm, I should probably go soon, it’s getting late,” she says, but she doesn’t move, and you don’t want her to.
“You could stay the night, if you want,” you offer, trying not to sound too hopeful. “Um. We don’t need to--”
“Yes, I want to,” Clara interrupts, her emphasis on the word ‘want’ so pure and bright.
“The bed’s tiny, I’m sorry--”
“Of course it is. We’ll fit. We always did, remember?”
You blink. Yes, of course. How did you ever forget? Back in the beginning, when you weren’t living together yet, when you each had your own little flat with your own single beds-- eight years ago. Eight.
You don’t think about it often, but now that you do, you realise that it’s kind of amazing. And you never want it to stop being amazing.
You touch the back of her neck, and guide her in for a kiss, no longer tentative, but confident.
Yes, you’ve always fit.
---
You wake the next morning, cold and sprawled out all over the bed. You’re alone, and normally this wouldn’t bother you, but today is different, today you were-- you were supposed to wake up with Clara.
You’re so scared you can’t breathe, and your first thought is to find something to drink but you emptied the house of alcohol months ago and you’ll need to get dressed and go buy some and that’s going to take time and you want it now.
You could call Clara. You could call her and ask her why she left, maybe she regretted sleeping with you, maybe she realised she wasn’t ready to get back together with you yet, maybe-- but why? You sit up to retrieve your phone from your bedside table but there’s a sticky note on top of it. You peel it off.
It says, in squished handwriting because there isn’t quite enough space:
Oh gosh you idiot you probably think I left you because I freaked out about last night. I haven’t freaked out about last night. I’ve got work, remember? Screaming kids at 8am who refuse to listen to me and learn the days of the week? You didn’t wake up when I was getting dressed, and I didn’t want to wake you. You look absolutely gorgeous when you sleep. Have I ever told you that? Not that you don’t look gorgeous otherwise. xxx
You think, yes, yes you have told me that, but I’ve never been so glad to hear it, and you lie back down in bed and punch your pillow gleefully, and resolutely push all thoughts of alcohol to the back of your mind.
---
You meet up with her for meals more and more often now, a lunch here and a dinner there, and once or twice you end up in bed together afterwards. You’re hoping that she’ll ask you to move back in with her soon, because as the person who walked out, you don’t feel like it would be right for you to ask her whether she’ll let you back inside.
On the night of her birthday, 2 December, you show up at her flat with a present and a bottle of sparkling water. “Hi. I thought, since I couldn’t bring wine, I’d bring some sparkling water instead?” you say.
She smiles and welcomes you in with a hug. The way your bodies press together gives you the buoyant feeling you drank so much alcohol in search for but never found. And here it is. So simple, so warm, so tangible. Here in Clara’s arms, everything is reduced to Clara’s hair against your cheek, and the world feels fresh and crisp.
She lets go of you and unwraps her present. It’s an iPhone 4, with an engraving on the back that says:
Dearest Ginny Weasley
Love, Harry Potter
xxxxx
She shakes her head. “People will think this is the weirdest thing ever,” she says, but she’s laughing. “You really shouldn’t have--”
“I tried to outdo you on the kisses,” you say.
“You’re so silly. Where’s the phone I gave you, anyway? I haven’t asked, but I’ve been wondering.”
“I gave it to John,” you admit, sheepishly. “When he came back from Afghanistan. Thought he needed a new phone, and we’d just split up then--”
Clara touches your hand. “Honestly, how did you manage to afford this? You would never have--”
“Well, you know, I’ve quit drinking, and money’s easier to come by when you’re not--”
“Yes. Obviously. Thank you.”
“Happy birthday,” you whisper, tucking a strand of her red hair behind her ear and following it with a kiss.
When you pull apart, she murmurs, soft, “You can move back in if you want,” and you can’t even say yes fast enough.
---
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 7:52PM
do you wanna watch a movie on sat?
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 7:58PM
Are you sure that text was meant for me?
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 8:01PM
oh crap! i meant to send it to clara. oh well. do you wanna come anyway? with me and clara? dinner afterwards.
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 8:07PM
Movies are dull. No.
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 8:13PM
hi sherlock! john, stop letting sherlock steal your phone.
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 8:20PM
Sherlock says you sent that text to me on purpose.
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 8:25PM
never mind what sherlock says. what do you say?
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 8:34PM
I think you sent it on purpose.
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 8:40PM
are you coming, then?
Sent: 9-Dec-2010, 9:10PM
john?
Received: 9-Dec-2010, 9:28PM
Yeah, all right. What time?
---
After the movie, you and Clara cook dinner for John. Well, Clara does most of the cooking, you just stand around and watch her because you’re kind of useless and she’s kind of sensational in the kitchen, with her hair tied up in a bun. You chop up some tomatoes and hand her the olive oil and look in the fridge for the ham, all the while stealing glances at her and wondering when she’ll stop being so busy, so you can kiss her and tell her what a fantastic cook she is.
“Okay, I think you’re done here. Go out and talk to John or something, he must be bored,” Clara says, waving you out. “I’ll be done in about ten minutes.”
You go outside and sit there and smile stupidly at John for a while, unable to say a word, and he looks exasperated at you until he starts smiling stupidly too, probably remembering something horribly dangerous he did with Sherlock yesterday.
Then he laughs and hands you the phone you gave him a year ago.
“I--” you begin, but he interrupts.
“You’re the only person this could ever belong to.”
“Thanks,” you say, softly. “I’m happy for you too. I’d be even happier for you if you weren’t getting up to all sorts of potentially fatal adventures with your boyfriend, but who am I to judge you for your adrenaline kink?”
It’s a step forward, being able to admit that you’re worried about him not just when he’s drugged up and lying in a hospital bed.
You pocket the phone, fingertips sliding over the engraved kisses. Then Clara comes in with steaming dishes, and you pull her in for an actual kiss, and the whole world just seems to melt away.
---
(The night before 2011, you and Clara are sitting side by side, shoulders brushing, on a sofa in a flat that you bought together six years ago. Your stuff is still in a couple of boxes by the door, but you’ll unpack them eventually.
It is your first New Year’s without booze, but you don’t think you’ve ever felt this happy welcoming in a new year except when you were still a kid and countdowns just meant fireworks to you. It’s been a tough year, 2010, and there’s been parts of it you had to crawl through on your hands and feet and with a heavy rock on your back, and parts when you almost did give up and were just a spider's thread away from relapsing into old habits. And that makes finally coming out of the other end that much sweeter.
At midnight, Clara slants her lips against yours and kisses you in that fiercely perfect way only she knows how, and you tangle your fingers in her beautiful red hair and swear to yourself you’ll never let go again. In her kiss you taste all the promises of 2011.
It is going to be a brilliant year.)