All You Need Is Love (4/9)
Parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9
It had been good, but it hadn’t been their best show ever. Something had been off with Harry all night. Even now, when they were sweaty and exhausted and back in their room, something was off with Harry. Someone else might not have noticed, but Pratik knew him, knew that that the way he bent over to unlace his shows was too steep that night, the way he dropped his bag next to his desk was too loud that night, the way he ran a hand through his hair was too rough that night.
He also knew he was making what Harry referred to as his “music face” as he settled back on his bed. Finally, he reached over for his guitar, pulling it into his lap and playing a small section from “Don’t Be Upset.”
Harry visibly stiffened. “How was dinner with your sister?” he asked out of nowhere, not looking at Pratik.
Pratik switched to playing “Crazy Train.”
Harry finally looked at him. “There’s nothing you want to tell me about it?”
Pratik tilted his head. He plucked out “Badger Badger Badger,” just on the off-chance it would make Harry smile. It didn’t.
There was a brief pause, where Pratik wasn’t sure what to do, how to deal with this Harry that seemed both frayed and sharp around the edges. Then Harry stepped forward, right up to the edge of his bed, and pulled the guitar out of Pratik’s unresisting fingers. Pratik watched him, feeling like he was walking on a tightrope where any false step could send him plummeting to oblivion and the only safe decision was to stay perfectly still.
Harry kneeled on the edge of the bed and pushed Pratik back, gently, until he was lying against his pillow.
Then he collapsed on top of Pratik’s chest.
“… Oof?” Pratik offered, belatedly. He propped his head up on one arm and tentatively reached forward with the other, tugging fondly at Harry’s hair. “You okay?”
“Can I sleep here tonight?” Harry asked, his voice an almost ticklish rumble against the bottom of Pratik’s rib cage.
Pratik froze, his earlier conversation with Sara still fresh in his mind.
Harry must have felt him tense, because he quickly added, “Just to sleep. Is that okay? I just… think it would be nice.”
“Oh,” Pratik said, most of the tension fading. “Right. Of course.” He took a deep breath. “Just sleeping. Liam probably won’t mind just sleeping.”
Harry snorted, rubbing his head against Pratik’s shirt like a cat. “He walked in on worse even before we were dating,” he pointed out, and Pratik laughed a little.
He tapped out “Tell Me Why” on the back of Harry’s neck, grinning when Harry groaned.
“No reason,” he said. “I just want to. I also want you to play me less-sucky music.”
Pratik wrinkled his nose and hummed a bit from “Shower the People.”
Harry snorted. “Fine,” he said. “If it will make you happy.”
Pratik changed to humming “So Happy Together.” It came out a little more hesitantly than he wanted it to.
“I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you, for all my life,” Harry sang, voice soft and sweet, and the stone in Pratik’s stomach pretty much disappeared.
He was probably worried about nothing.
He still believed that the next morning, at least at first. He had woken up happily, Harry’s arms tight around him and Harry himself asleep until Pratik started tapping the guitar part for “Good Morning, Beautiful” on his neck.
Harry woke with a start and blinked at him in confusion for a moment before grinning and pinching his side, which Pratik couldn’t let slide, so he kicked him in the ankle, which led to Harry kneeing him in the thigh, which led to him elbowing Harry in the ribs, which led to Harry rolling on top of him, hands on his wrists to hold his arms above his head.
He froze that way for a minute, staring down at Pratik with slowly wakening eyes, grin fading. Pratik smiled up at him. “Good morning,” he said. It was only polite.
Instead of laughing or kissing him or doing something else that would’ve been nice and understandable, Harry practically jumped off of him. “It’s Sunday, isn’t it,” he said, in a tone of voice that said Sunday foretold the end of the world, tripping over his own feet as he stumbled out of bed. “I’m going to get dressed and we’re going straight to the library.”
Pratik grimaced. “If I promise to study really, really hard, can we stay here instead?” His fingers twitched in the direction of his guitar.
“No,” Harry said into his dresser. He was rifling through the drawers as though his collection of undershirts took all of his attention. “Library,” he repeated. “Get up.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
Pratik blinked at the closed door before slowly pulling himself out from underneath his comforter. The nervous feeling in his stomach was coming back with a vengeance.
The entire way to the library, Harry walked just far enough ahead of him that Pratik couldn’t reach over and grab his hand. Pratik tried a couple of times anyway, but Harry would always suddenly notice a piece of lint on his jacket that he needed to brush off, or suddenly need to turn and check something in an adjacent corridor, or suddenly raise his hand to hide a cough. In one particularly un-smooth movement, he had desperately waved in the direction of an air vent, claiming to have seen a glimpse of Eric’s hair.
That was ridiculous. No one ever actually saw Eric in the air vents. Plus, the last time Harry had thought he had seen Eric in one of the vents, he had thrown his shoe at him.
And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, once they had reached the library everything got a million times worse. Ever since they had started dating, they had used one of the studying carrels instead of a table, pressed together from shoulder to knee while Harry tried to explain everything Pratik had supposedly learned in the past week in a way that actually made sense. But today Harry moved straight to a free table, dumping his books across it without preamble.
Normally, Harry would reward right answers with a smile, small and proud and just for Pratik, but today he hardly even looked up from the books.
Normally, when Pratik managed to get a bunch of questions right in a row, Harry would lean over to press a quick kiss to his cheek or shoulder, whichever was closest and less obvious to the room at large, but today he wouldn’t even touch him, shying away when Pratik so much as reached across the table to pull a textbook closer.
Pratik was quickly realizing that the problem with dating your best friend was that you had no one to talk to when your boyfriend started acting like a crazy person. Plus, he wasn’t good at talking anyway. He didn’t know if anyone besides Harry would understand even if he tried to talk to them.
So he gave talking to his best friend a shot, when they had gotten back to the room that night. Harry hadn’t touched him all day, had hardly even looked at him, and Pratik went straight to his guitar and played Buckcherry’s “I’m Sorry.”
Harry froze next to his desk. “Don’t play that,” he said, voice rough and wretched. Pratik immediately stopped. Harry sighed, slouching a little. “It’s not you,” he said, staring at his desk. “You have nothing to apologize for. It’s me. We need to break up.”
Pratik stared at him, mouth open. Normally he’d have brushed it off as a joke, but Harry had been so strange, all day long. This actually explained a lot, he realized with a pull somewhere deep in his stomach.
Harry grimaced and was silent for a long, painful moment. “I… I was wrong,” he finally said. “I don’t like you… uh, not that way. I think it’s better if we are just friends.” He laughed, the sound strange and harsh. “I mean, you’re not gay or anything. This was just, like, a blip. Or something. So.” He let out his breath in a long sigh. “So we’re breaking up! And you can go back to, you know. Not being gay.”
“… What?” Pratik said. No other word in his admittedly somewhat limited vocabulary managed to express quite what he wanted to say.
“I think I’m going to spend the night at Ben’s,” Harry said, sounding miserable. He picked up his bag again. “See you in class tomorrow.”
And, for the second time that day, Pratik was left staring as the door closed behind Harry.
“Well, that was horribly, horribly awkward to watch,” Liam said from his desk. He still had his hand half in the air from where he had raised it to greet them.
“I don’t know, I thought it was interesting,” Eric said from the top of Harry’s desk.
Pratik stared at them, eyes wide. There was no music in his head. Only silence.
“I think the British wannabe broke him,” Eric observed. “Very unfortunate. He was an integral part of my back-up vocals.”
“Eric, be nice,” Liam said.
“I wasn’t?” Eric frowned in confusion.
“Do you have any idea where that came from?” Liam asked Pratik. “I thought you guys were doing fine.” He scowled. “I also thought you promised I wouldn’t wind up living in a romantic comedy this year.”
“I don’t know,” Pratik said. His voice sounded stiff and mechanical. He touched his throat, trying to prove to himself that the sound was really coming from him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Liam said, sighing. “Look, I’ll talk to him and figure out what’s going on. Just stay here.” He stood up and paused, glancing at Eric. “Eric, come here for a second.”
“I don’t want to go see the British wannabe,” Eric said.
“You don’t have to, just come here for a second,” Liam said.
Eric sighed stormily. “Fine,” he said, and left the room with Liam.
Pratik sat down on the edge of his bed, mind still an empty buzz.
He hadn’t bothered making the bed this morning. The sheets were still a rumpled mess, worse than usual because Harry had slept with him last night.
Eric came back into the room. “I’ve been instructed to not say anything inappropriate or possibly hurtful,” he announced. He scowled. “Which is ridiculous, I would never say anything like that.”
Harry had sang “So Happy Together” to him last night.
Pratik frowned, a small downward turn to his lips, a look no one but Harry would have understood.
Just like Pratik understood Harry.
Pratik stood up again.
“Liam said you need to stay here,” Eric said. He was standing on top of the mini-fridge, staring at Harry’s Blondie poster from a couple of centimeters away. Pratik didn’t bother questioning how he had even known Pratik had moved. It was just Eric’s way.
“I’m going to find Harry,” Pratik said, simply.
“Why?” Eric asked, head not moving an inch in Pratik’s direction.
“He’s being stupid,” Pratik said. “I want to know why.”
Eric shrugged. “It’ll be faster if we go through the vents,” he said.
Pratik looked at him, confused. Eric looked at the Blondie poster. This lasted for several minutes, until Pratik finally said, “You’re coming with?”
“Of course.”
Pratik gave up. “Can I have your spare harness?”
Eric’s only response was to toss it to Pratik’s feet.