Fic: Pains of the Past (Harry/Lance)
Title: Pain of the Past, Be Healed
Author: loonie_lupin (ff. net)/nilitara (livejournal)
Fandom: HP, Bones
Rating: PG
Summary: Harry and Lance’s relationship take a new turn over dinner.
For: crossovers100
Prompt: 058. Dinner
Disclaimer: The characters are the property of their respective creator. I own nothing
058. Dinner.
For a little while, Harry and Lance saw each other, just from time to time, having a drink or simply a walk, just a little break in reality. Harry was still unsure on whether or not he was going to accept the FBI proposition, though he was leaning towards yes nowadays. Actually, he was almost certain he was going to end up saying yes, but he still had about two weeks left before he had to give them his final decision.
Their meetings were a breath of fresh air. Harry liked having someone to talk to, someone who didn’t already knew all about his life, someone who could discover Harry step by step, like Harry wanted. Well, Lance probably knew more about harry that what the wizard told him since he was a psychologist, but he didn’t know it through the papers. Harry could decide what he wanted to disclose and that was something that hadn’t happened in quite a while.
Lance, for his part, enjoyed having someone his age to talk to. Granted, Harry was a few years younger but he seemed older than he should. Yet, he was still very young and it made Lance feel more adequate, especially after one of Booth’s joke about his age, which still happened every so often. He knew the agent didn’t mean any ill but it still bothered him, mainly because he knew he didn’t have quite the same amount of life experience than his patients.
With Harry, it was easier to talk, something that hadn’t happened since Daisy. But the young woman and he had broken up a bit ago, just the day he had met Harry actually. It had been the main reason he had accepted the young man’s invitation, to take his mind off it and now he didn’t regret it. He wasn’t sure what Harry and he were doing exactly but it seemed to be growing to be another relationship.
It was strange. He had never felt himself attracted to a man. Of course, he had found some good looking, but it was an esthetic appreciation, never enough to pursue a relationship with them. Still, he found out he didn’t mind with Harry. He knew that the young man felt the same way, it was something that was kind of easy to read for him because he knew more than most about human behavior. He knew that Harry wanted something with him, even though he wouldn’t push.
It should have been the other way around really. Harry was younger, he shouldn’t have been the one hesitating to take the first step but, still, he was waiting for Lance to make a move and so Lance did. He invited Harry to dinner and made sure the other knew it was a date and not just a meal with a friend.
So here there were, at the restaurant, enjoying their meal. It was strange to do that with a man and yet Lance didn’t feel ill at ease, as he had so many times in the past. It was mainly because he knew that with Harry, he didn’t have to live up to any expectation to be what he wasn’t. He could be himself.
While Harry and he hadn’t talked all that much about important thing up to now, it was time for it to change and he asked more about Harry’s personal life, more about his past and, with the answers he got, he couldn’t help telling himself he didn’t know Harry, not yet, and probably wouldn’t for a while.
He listened quietly to the answers he was given and knew that Harry wasn’t lying. He would have seen it if he was and he knew Harry was telling the truth. Still, he was ghosting over a lot of things; that much he could say. It wasn’t the words, because the words were right and they could have been the whole story, except they weren’t.
Lance knew human beings, he knew the human psyche. He had studied them, studied body language, the way people talked, the way people moved and the correlation between the two. He could recognize enough to see that something just didn’t add up.
Because Harry’s words were telling him a story, a very believable story which must have happened but his eyes were telling him so much more.
They were telling him that his soul was way much older than his face, something that probably steamed from the fact that he had lived through quite a lot, though Lance wasn’t sure of what it was.
They were telling him that he had felt a lot of suffering in his time, both physically and mentally. Yet, when Harry talked about his parents’ death and his subsequent stay with almost abusive relatives, Lance knew it wasn’t all that was there. That had happened, yes, and it was part of the reason for that look but it wasn’t everything and Lance wasn’t sure of what it was.
They were telling him he had seen the worst of what humanity had to offer but the story about terrorists haunting the city of London, of his parents’ murderer and his cult being after him, seemed to be only a small - if very important - part of the story and there must have been more but Lance wasn’t sure of what it was.
All in all, Harry’s mouth was telling him a story and his eyes were telling him another, with meeting points, both of which were truth but only part of it and Lance wasn’t sure of what the complete story was. He wasn’t sure of what it was but what he was sure of, was that he wanted to learn and, for that, he would have to earn Harry’s trust first.
And he was going to.
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