for jenny_starseed: "Cheesecake and Tea"
Original Author: jenny_starseed
Original Story Title: Biscuits and Wine
Original Story Link: Here
Original Story Pairings: Harry/Clara
Original Story Rating: T
Original Story Warnings: none
Remix Author: fennishjournal
Remix Story Title: Cheesecake and Tea
Remix Story Pairings: Harry/Clara
Remix Story Rating: M
Remix Story Warnings: alcoholism, co-dependency
Remix Story Beta: Major kudos to lostgirlslair, tripleransom and HiddenLacuna, who beta-ed at speed and were wonderful.
Remix Story Britpicker: Also thank you to vix_spes, who saved us all from embarrassing Americanisms!
Summary: “I got lost and Clara followed me into the woods.” The Story of Harry and Clara.
"Cheesecake and Tea"
Chapter 1: Where you like and when you like
“Have you met the new bird from accounting?” Jeff said with an audible sneer, waving his martini in Simon's direction. “Unbelievably stuck up, won't even drink.”
“Really?” Harry craned her neck, trying to see where he was gesturing. “She's a looker, though,” she pointed out, admiring the blonde woman in the simply cut white dress who looked a little forlorn right on the edge of the crowd.
Simon snorted. “You just haven't had any in a while,” he teased. “Believe me, she's a prude and a stuck up bitch to boot.” He pitched his voice into a rather strained imitation of female speech “No, I don't drink,” he simpered, “I'm much too good for you and your stupid parties and I'll die a dried up spinster.”
“Oh, for fuck's sake,” Harry rolled her eyes. “Turn you down, did she?”
Simon flushed slightly and shot Harry a challenging look. “Why don't you have a go then? See if she's into girls?”
“You know,” Harry said, putting her glass down on the window sill, “I will. If I stay around you lot any longer I'd just punch you again and you really aren't worth the pain.”
As she made her way through the crowd she tried to shake off the vaguely dirty feeling that always settled over her after conversations with Simon and Jeff. For some reason they had decided that Harry being a lesbian meant that she would enjoy horrifyingly sexist conversations about “pulling women” and nothing Harry said or did could convince them otherwise. She sighed, wishing, not for the first time, that law wasn't quite as much of an old boys club.
By the time she had pushed through to join her, the woman in the white linen dress had turned to stare out of the window, obviously lost in thoughts. Harry took a moment to admire the dark honey colour of her hair, which just touched her shoulders, and to drink in the subtle, sensuous curves of her hips. Then she cleared her throat and extended her hand when the woman turned around.
“Hi, I'm Harry Watson. You must be new?” She could never work out original pick-up lines in advance but the woman smiled warmly at her and extended her own hand.
“Yes, I'm Clara Hastings, I just joined Accounting.” Her grip was soft but firm, the smooth skin of her hand pleasant to the touch.
“And regretting it already?”
Clara laughed. “Just a little,” she admits. “I'm from Edinburgh and London seems a bit crowded.”
“It is, a tad,” Harry agreed, “but we have the best bars in the country.” Clara flinched a little and Harry nodded towards her nearly empty glass of fizzy water. “But you don't drink, right?”
Clara's face went tense and defiant at that and lifting her chin she challengingly said: “No, I don't. And no, I'm not a religious nut or a spoilsport. I simply don't like the taste.”
“They give you a hard time over that?” Harry asked, inclining her head to where Simon and Jeff were probably following her every move. “They aren't too bright and their gender politics are firmly stuck in the 1950s.” She grinned up at Clara, who was a good foot taller than her. “You should have seen their faces when I told them I'm into girls. Also, you've finished your water, can I get you another?”
“Does that usually work for you?” Clara asked, her mouth quirking up into a smile that was surprisingly mischievous. “Casually alluding to being a lesbian and hoping the girl will bite?”
Harry laughed, more freely than she ever had at her boss's dinner parties and said challengingly: “Do you bite then? Because I love biting.” She took care to inject just the right amount of teasing so she would be able to claim it was just a joke if things went South.
Clara flushed slightly, which looked exceedingly pretty, her skin turning a pale rose colour around the neck, and said: “I do on occasion, yes. But I usually ask a girl to buy me dinner first.”
“Is that so? And what about women you meet at dinner parties? Does that count?” Harry was faintly baffled at her own forwardness and at the ease with which this conversation was flowing. Normally meeting a woman she liked turned her into a tongue-tied idiot.
Clara laughed, a dark, rich sound and said: “That depends entirely on how much fun the dinner party turns out to be.”
Harry hid her face in her hands theatrically. “Oh God, in that case I'm doomed. Have you heard Patrick give a speech yet? No? Believe me, it would kill the libido of a sex-crazed rabbit.”
“Ah well,” Clara said philosophically, “no lesbian sex for me then. At least not tonight. It's a pity, I haven't had lesbian sex in a while.”
This, Harry decided, was unbearable. Cute, funny and into girls? She would rather drown herself than let her get away.
“Well,” she said musingly, “I could always spirit you away out of the window and take you to my bohemian home of tasteful lesbian pleasure.”
“Hm, I don't know,” Clara said, “we still wouldn't have had dinner.”
And that's how they ended up in Morena, a lovely little café with a cheerfully yellow front and the best cheesecake in the city.
“Hmmm,” Clara said, licking her fork in a way that was positively obscene, “this is good cake.”
“So,” Harry said, reaching over to snag a perfect bit of crust Clara had left for herself, “you are a hedonist then, just not a drinker.”
It was the wrong thing to say and it made Clara go stiff and cold, wiping the smile right off her face. “I don't drink because I don't like the taste.” Clara said and it sounded like something she had had to say over and over again and was heartily sick of. “And I really wish everybody would just get the fuck over themselves and stop asking me about it.”
Harry shrugged. “You don't drink in Britain, people will think you're either sick or judging them for falling prey to the demon alcohol.”
“Yeah, well,” Clara said, her body still ramrod straight and very still, “they can fuck off then. I don't mind people drinking, I don't judge people for doing it and I'm not fasting or giving alcohol up for Lent. I simply don't like it. Why is that so hard to get?”
Harry thought about that for a moment. “Well, I think it's like sex, really,” she finally said.
Clara gaped, looking like she was both surprised and amused despite herself. “How the hell is this like sex?”
“Well, most people want sex, right?” Clara nodded and Harry continued. “And society tells you you need to have it, it's like a rite of passage.”
“I guess,” Clara said, but she looked interested now instead of defensive and Harry counted that as a definite win.
“But,” she went on, “society also tells you it's bad to want it; that it's somehow virtuous to give it up. So, you want it but you feel guilty for wanting it. Chances are, you meet someone who doesn't want it, you end up thinking they are judging you for wanting it. Same thing goes for alcohol.”
“Huh,” Clara said, looking at her pensively, “that's one fucked up double-bind, isn't it?”
“It really, really is,” Harry agreed.
Suddenly, Clara smiled, brilliantly and open. “God, I'd forgotten how hot it is when a woman is really smart at me,” she said and Harry couldn't help but grin back, her heart suddenly pounding.
She reached out to take Clara's hand, intending, in a vaguely old-fashioned and romantic way, to kiss it.
But Clara was having none of it. Instead, she used their intertwined hands to pull Harry close until their faces were mere millimetres apart and then breathed lightly: “I'm going to kiss you now.”
Her breath tickled the skin of Harry's cheek, making her eyes flutter shut and Harry inclined her head and opened her lips in mute acquiescence. Clara's mouth was soft but confident on hers and Harry opened her mouth with a sigh, the kiss turning deeper and wetter and altogether more intense. This had nothing of the awkwardness she associated with first kisses. Instead, it was sweet and easy, as if they had practised kissing each other for a while. And wasn't that a lovely thought?
When they finally came up for air, Clara's hair was mussed where Harry's hands had slipped into it, and her mouth was a deep red that made Harry think of geraniums. They grinned at each other stupidly for a moment and then the sound of a throat being cleared right next to them brought them sharply back to the real world.
Harry looked up and saw the barista standing next to their table. He raised one eyebrow at them, though not in an unfriendly fashion, and said: “Don't get me wrong, ladies, I enjoyed the show as much as the next person but maybe you should continue this somewhere a little more private?”
When both of them blushed bright red he just grinned and then added solicitously: “It would be a shame to start something like this somewhere you can't finish it.”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing and Harry thought she had never seen anyone who looked so endearingly out of control when she gave herself over to laughter.
“You don't drink?” John asks. “Then how the hell did you meet Harry?”
Clara feels her face draw tight into the unattractive mask that seems to descend whenever someone asks a variation of that question.
“We met,” she grits out, “because I don't drink and your sister was the only one who wasn't a complete arse about it.” We met, she thinks, because she spirited me away out of a window and took me out for cheesecake and kissed me as if nothing else existed for that moment.
Chapter 2: There still remains the cocaine-bottle
For a while, everything was easy and in flow between them.
Harry loved the quirky comedy shows Clara dug up on BBC 4 and there were quiet evenings at home where they would sit in the warm light of a summer sunset, softly quoting passages from their books at each other.
They spent lazy Sundays at Morena, getting lost in each other's stories, quietly talking as the rain beat down outside.
Brian, the barista, became a friend and they went out together. Clara was usually a quiet presence on the edge of the group, sipping on her water or a non-alcoholic cocktail, but at the end of the evening, she and Harry tumbled into bed together.
“Oh God,” Harry gasped, fingers digging into the mattress desperately as Clara slid two fingers into her, crooking them just right. “Oh God, nobody has ever fucked me so well.”
Clara, who crouched over her, sweaty and wild haired, looked like a maenad and she grinned deviously as she used her thigh between Harry's legs to press her fingers in more deeply.
Uncontrolled, desperate sounds began to force their way out of Harry's throat as she writhed against Clara's palm and when Clara bent down to take one of Harry's nipples between her teeth, Harry keened. Clara always, always hit the right amount of pressure, riding that razor edge between pain and pleasure, pain as pleasure, blurring the two into sharp electric currents just under Harry's skin.
“You look delicious when you're about to come,” Clara panted and then twisted her fingers in maddening circles that rubbed right along the opening of Harry's cunt.
“Oh bloody hell,” Harry cursed and felt her body open wider, her internal muscles pulling on Clara's fingers and finding the resistance delicious. Clara touched just the tip of her finger to Harry's clit, butterfly light and brief, and Harry shuddered and shuddered, sensation cresting in a wave that all but drowned her.
“I like to fuck you when you're drunk,” Clara said musingly, when Harry finally managed to crack open an eye-lid. “You are much more relaxed like this, I could almost fit my entire hand inside you.”
Harry's head thudded back onto the mattress. “Jesus Christ, woman,” she said weakly, “warn a girl, will you?”
“Ah,” Clara said, “but where would be the fun in that?”
But it had been five years since that fateful dinner party now and there was nothing, really nothing easy about this anymore.
By now, every day in Harry Watson's life was a day when she consciously didn't drink. Except for the days when she slipped up. She wanted to drink every day. She needed to drink every day.
Sometimes she went into a frenzy about finding some alcohol in their flat even though she knew Clara kept it clean. Harry always felt awful later for the rows they had when she got like this, when Clara tried to stop her from going out to buy a drink.
More often than not these rows ended with her head in Clara's lap, both of them exhausted and crying miserably. But the times she felt most guilty about were the times she actually left the flat, actually got on a bus to go to the supermarket in the next borough.
The supermarkets and newsagents around their flat had all received a visit from her asking them not to sell her anything. She both hated and loved her therapist for coming up with that strategy, for making Harry be the one who visited each establishment in person, for taking responsibility.
It had the added effect that she had usually got out of her frantic need and into a more rational mindset by the time she actually arrived at the supermarket. Mostly she managed to call Clara instead, who made her come home. Clara, who would pour both of them sweet tea and hold Harry while they tried to gather their frayed nerves. Clara, who was sometimes distraught or exhausted but never angry with her.
“You're trying,” she would say, “you're trying so hard, love. That's the only thing I ask.”
But the self-loathing, oh the vicious, dark self-hatred that bubbled up in her after these relapses, like hot tar in a wound.
You're weak and disgusting, she would tell herself, looking in the grey face the mirror showed her. Nobody could love a wreck like you. Especially not someone like Clara.
“Why the hell does everything have to be about alcohol with you?” Clara asked, her voice snide and cold with exasperation. “There are millions of people in the world who manage just fine without it.”
“Don't touch that,” Harry hissed, her grip on Clara's hand so hard it mottled her skin red, as she forced her to put down the bottle she was going to empty into the sink. “I'm either going to do this on my own or not at all.”
Harry's strategies varied, from complete abstinence to controlled use, to indifference, and binges.
Clara's strategies stubbornly stayed the same.
“Well, I don't know, John, maybe Harry would be less likely to get drunk at family reunions if you weren't all so bloody emotionally constipated.”
“I swear to God, Harry Watson, you will either stop destroying your life like this or I will walk out on you right this very moment.”
“I'm sorry, Harry won't be able to come in to work today. Yeah, another migraine, I'm starting to really worry about her.”
“If you go out with Simon and that crowd, I'm not coming with you. And you'd better answer my calls or I'm going to assume that you're drunk in a ditch somewhere.”
It was inevitable, really, but it seemed inexcusable all the same: Harry began to hate Clara.
She hated that Clara still didn't like the taste of alcohol, still stuck to her mineral water and virgin coladas.
She hated the feeling of guilt that crept over her like poisonous fungi when she found Clara asleep on the sofa where she had clearly been waiting up for Harry.
“This isn't anything new,” Clara insisted with exasperation. “It has nothing to do with you! I've never liked alcohol. And how many times do I need to tell you? I don't judge you for this.”
“No,” Harry sneered, “you just pity me. And don't think that that isn't worse.”
“I can't do this anymore,” Clara said finally, sliding down the wall and hugging her knees as she looked up at Harry. “I just can't.”
“So what,” Harry asked wobbly, “you're ending this? You've finally had enough of living with a damn alky?”
And really, what had she been expecting? This day had been coming ever since that first kiss, had been in the making even as she made her way towards Clara in that dinner party crowd. Nobody could love a nasty addict like me.
But Clara's head jerked up from where it had been resting despondently on her knees as if she'd been kicked. “What? No! I'm not ending this!”
Harry pulled a face that she knew looked bitter and unattractive but she was simply unable to help herself. “Yeah well, maybe I should just walk out,” she said. “Go somewhere I don't have to see your bloody judgemental face every fucking day. God!”
Clara reached for her, her face suddenly desperate, so desperate. (Harry knew that look. She had once seen it in the mirror behind a bar.) “Harry, no! Please! Don't leave me, Harry, please! I'm sorry!”
It was horrible, it was unbearable, it was inevitable: That night, Harry packed a bag while Clara ran after her, pulling on her, entreating her to stay.
Later on, Harry would wonder how she could have been so stupid, how she could have overlooked the love that must have been there. But that night Harry was unable to hear, to see, the steady, throbbing pulse of her own disgust with herself drowning out Clara and everything but the one thought: I have to get out now.
Chapter 3: Journeys end in lovers' meetings
“I've been reading up about codependency,” Clara said as they were sipping mediocre cappuccinos in the visitors' lounge. They usually had it to themselves on Thursday afternoons, as most of the other patients only had visitors on the weekends.
“Yeah?” Harry asked. She was wearing grey track suit bottoms and a hoodie that was about two sizes too big for her. It should look grubby and unattractive, Clara thought, but instead she found the strangely youthful and vulnerable aspect it gave Harry distractingly appealing.
“Mm,” Clara hummed, looking down into the fading foam at the bottom of her cup. “They say that codependency is just as much of an addiction as alcohol is.”
Harry snorted. “If that were the case you'd be in here with me.” But her eyes were intent and questioning.
Clara shrugged. “Maybe I should be.”
“Hm,” Harry said. And then: “Are you still seeing that therapist my brother recommended?”
Clara nodded. “She's who loaned me the book on codependency,” she admitted. “She runs a group as well. I might go.”
“Huh,” Harry said and maybe Clara's eyes were deceiving her but it seemed like she was sitting up straighter.
“Thank you very much for coming, Ms Hastings,” said the young man who met her at the reception area.
Clara nodded. “Of course. When Harry told me you offered couples counselling - ”
But he interrupted her. “I'm afraid we don't actually,” he admitted apologetically, nervously pushing his glasses up his nose. “We offer to moderate meetings with relatives and partners, but usually only once or twice during a patient's stay. I can recommend a great counsellor in London, though,” he offered as he saw her disappointment.
“That would be lovely, yes.” She knew her smile was tight and nervous but she had no real idea of what to expect from a “moderated conversation”.
The room they ended up was a bit clinical but nice, light furniture and a big window making it seem bright even in the November sun.
“Why don't you start,” the young man said, who had introduced himself as Dr. Bleuler, “with telling each other what it was that you found attractive about each other when you first met?”
Clara closed her eyes for a moment, trying to conjure up that moment at Patrick's party when she had suddenly stopped feeling like the new girl at school. But before she even opened her mouth, Harry's voice broke into the dark behind her lids.
“I remember,” Harry said and her voice sounded full of wonder. “I remember that you were so beautiful there next to the window. So beautiful and so lonely.”
Clara opened her eyes, suddenly desperate to see Harry's face as she continued talking.
“And then you laughed. You were beautiful and lonely and you laughed at my jokes and you stole away from that dinner party with me.” Harry looked at her, face like an open flower, soft and damageable and facing the light.
There was suddenly a tightness in Clara's throat and Harry's face blurred a little, there, across the table. Clara swallowed painfully and then said: “You were kind. You were kind and funny and smart and you looked at me like nobody else has ever looked at me.” Words had always been Harry's forte rather than her own, but she kept going. “You bought me cheesecake and you read me poetry and you once made love to me in the rain.” There were tears running down her face by now but she didn't care. Because Harry was crying as well. Not the terrible, desperate sobs Clara remembered from countless relapses. This crying was gentle, somehow, gentle and nourishing like summer rain.
“Well,” Dr Bleuler said finally after clearing his throat, “I think you've made an interesting start.” And maybe Clara was imagining it but it seemed as if his eyes were glittering a little, too, behind those thick glasses.
There are only non-alcoholic drinks at the reception, and Harry notices with devious satisfaction that not one of the guests dares to complain.
Her brother catches them as they are reading their letters and cards and, it must be said, crying a little in a quiet corner. He looks uncomfortable, as he always does when forced into a tux but he smiles at them warmly and toasts them with non-alcoholic champagne.
“You two look lovely,” he says and sounds as if he means it. “But I have to admit, I found the invitation a tad surprising. People don’t often re-marry their ex-wives.”
“Well,” Harry says, drawing Clara's arms more tightly around herself, “I got lost and Clara followed me into the woods. After that, I figure, we can hack anything. Even marriage.”
Clara snorts and kisses the top of Harry's head and John's face crinkles up into warm amusement. “That sounds about right,” he admits.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Remember to leave feedback for both authors!
Original Story Title: Biscuits and Wine
Original Story Link: Here
Original Story Pairings: Harry/Clara
Original Story Rating: T
Original Story Warnings: none
Remix Author: fennishjournal
Remix Story Title: Cheesecake and Tea
Remix Story Pairings: Harry/Clara
Remix Story Rating: M
Remix Story Warnings: alcoholism, co-dependency
Remix Story Beta: Major kudos to lostgirlslair, tripleransom and HiddenLacuna, who beta-ed at speed and were wonderful.
Remix Story Britpicker: Also thank you to vix_spes, who saved us all from embarrassing Americanisms!
Summary: “I got lost and Clara followed me into the woods.” The Story of Harry and Clara.
"Cheesecake and Tea"
Chapter 1: Where you like and when you like
“Have you met the new bird from accounting?” Jeff said with an audible sneer, waving his martini in Simon's direction. “Unbelievably stuck up, won't even drink.”
“Really?” Harry craned her neck, trying to see where he was gesturing. “She's a looker, though,” she pointed out, admiring the blonde woman in the simply cut white dress who looked a little forlorn right on the edge of the crowd.
Simon snorted. “You just haven't had any in a while,” he teased. “Believe me, she's a prude and a stuck up bitch to boot.” He pitched his voice into a rather strained imitation of female speech “No, I don't drink,” he simpered, “I'm much too good for you and your stupid parties and I'll die a dried up spinster.”
“Oh, for fuck's sake,” Harry rolled her eyes. “Turn you down, did she?”
Simon flushed slightly and shot Harry a challenging look. “Why don't you have a go then? See if she's into girls?”
“You know,” Harry said, putting her glass down on the window sill, “I will. If I stay around you lot any longer I'd just punch you again and you really aren't worth the pain.”
As she made her way through the crowd she tried to shake off the vaguely dirty feeling that always settled over her after conversations with Simon and Jeff. For some reason they had decided that Harry being a lesbian meant that she would enjoy horrifyingly sexist conversations about “pulling women” and nothing Harry said or did could convince them otherwise. She sighed, wishing, not for the first time, that law wasn't quite as much of an old boys club.
By the time she had pushed through to join her, the woman in the white linen dress had turned to stare out of the window, obviously lost in thoughts. Harry took a moment to admire the dark honey colour of her hair, which just touched her shoulders, and to drink in the subtle, sensuous curves of her hips. Then she cleared her throat and extended her hand when the woman turned around.
“Hi, I'm Harry Watson. You must be new?” She could never work out original pick-up lines in advance but the woman smiled warmly at her and extended her own hand.
“Yes, I'm Clara Hastings, I just joined Accounting.” Her grip was soft but firm, the smooth skin of her hand pleasant to the touch.
“And regretting it already?”
Clara laughed. “Just a little,” she admits. “I'm from Edinburgh and London seems a bit crowded.”
“It is, a tad,” Harry agreed, “but we have the best bars in the country.” Clara flinched a little and Harry nodded towards her nearly empty glass of fizzy water. “But you don't drink, right?”
Clara's face went tense and defiant at that and lifting her chin she challengingly said: “No, I don't. And no, I'm not a religious nut or a spoilsport. I simply don't like the taste.”
“They give you a hard time over that?” Harry asked, inclining her head to where Simon and Jeff were probably following her every move. “They aren't too bright and their gender politics are firmly stuck in the 1950s.” She grinned up at Clara, who was a good foot taller than her. “You should have seen their faces when I told them I'm into girls. Also, you've finished your water, can I get you another?”
“Does that usually work for you?” Clara asked, her mouth quirking up into a smile that was surprisingly mischievous. “Casually alluding to being a lesbian and hoping the girl will bite?”
Harry laughed, more freely than she ever had at her boss's dinner parties and said challengingly: “Do you bite then? Because I love biting.” She took care to inject just the right amount of teasing so she would be able to claim it was just a joke if things went South.
Clara flushed slightly, which looked exceedingly pretty, her skin turning a pale rose colour around the neck, and said: “I do on occasion, yes. But I usually ask a girl to buy me dinner first.”
“Is that so? And what about women you meet at dinner parties? Does that count?” Harry was faintly baffled at her own forwardness and at the ease with which this conversation was flowing. Normally meeting a woman she liked turned her into a tongue-tied idiot.
Clara laughed, a dark, rich sound and said: “That depends entirely on how much fun the dinner party turns out to be.”
Harry hid her face in her hands theatrically. “Oh God, in that case I'm doomed. Have you heard Patrick give a speech yet? No? Believe me, it would kill the libido of a sex-crazed rabbit.”
“Ah well,” Clara said philosophically, “no lesbian sex for me then. At least not tonight. It's a pity, I haven't had lesbian sex in a while.”
This, Harry decided, was unbearable. Cute, funny and into girls? She would rather drown herself than let her get away.
“Well,” she said musingly, “I could always spirit you away out of the window and take you to my bohemian home of tasteful lesbian pleasure.”
“Hm, I don't know,” Clara said, “we still wouldn't have had dinner.”
And that's how they ended up in Morena, a lovely little café with a cheerfully yellow front and the best cheesecake in the city.
“Hmmm,” Clara said, licking her fork in a way that was positively obscene, “this is good cake.”
“So,” Harry said, reaching over to snag a perfect bit of crust Clara had left for herself, “you are a hedonist then, just not a drinker.”
It was the wrong thing to say and it made Clara go stiff and cold, wiping the smile right off her face. “I don't drink because I don't like the taste.” Clara said and it sounded like something she had had to say over and over again and was heartily sick of. “And I really wish everybody would just get the fuck over themselves and stop asking me about it.”
Harry shrugged. “You don't drink in Britain, people will think you're either sick or judging them for falling prey to the demon alcohol.”
“Yeah, well,” Clara said, her body still ramrod straight and very still, “they can fuck off then. I don't mind people drinking, I don't judge people for doing it and I'm not fasting or giving alcohol up for Lent. I simply don't like it. Why is that so hard to get?”
Harry thought about that for a moment. “Well, I think it's like sex, really,” she finally said.
Clara gaped, looking like she was both surprised and amused despite herself. “How the hell is this like sex?”
“Well, most people want sex, right?” Clara nodded and Harry continued. “And society tells you you need to have it, it's like a rite of passage.”
“I guess,” Clara said, but she looked interested now instead of defensive and Harry counted that as a definite win.
“But,” she went on, “society also tells you it's bad to want it; that it's somehow virtuous to give it up. So, you want it but you feel guilty for wanting it. Chances are, you meet someone who doesn't want it, you end up thinking they are judging you for wanting it. Same thing goes for alcohol.”
“Huh,” Clara said, looking at her pensively, “that's one fucked up double-bind, isn't it?”
“It really, really is,” Harry agreed.
Suddenly, Clara smiled, brilliantly and open. “God, I'd forgotten how hot it is when a woman is really smart at me,” she said and Harry couldn't help but grin back, her heart suddenly pounding.
She reached out to take Clara's hand, intending, in a vaguely old-fashioned and romantic way, to kiss it.
But Clara was having none of it. Instead, she used their intertwined hands to pull Harry close until their faces were mere millimetres apart and then breathed lightly: “I'm going to kiss you now.”
Her breath tickled the skin of Harry's cheek, making her eyes flutter shut and Harry inclined her head and opened her lips in mute acquiescence. Clara's mouth was soft but confident on hers and Harry opened her mouth with a sigh, the kiss turning deeper and wetter and altogether more intense. This had nothing of the awkwardness she associated with first kisses. Instead, it was sweet and easy, as if they had practised kissing each other for a while. And wasn't that a lovely thought?
When they finally came up for air, Clara's hair was mussed where Harry's hands had slipped into it, and her mouth was a deep red that made Harry think of geraniums. They grinned at each other stupidly for a moment and then the sound of a throat being cleared right next to them brought them sharply back to the real world.
Harry looked up and saw the barista standing next to their table. He raised one eyebrow at them, though not in an unfriendly fashion, and said: “Don't get me wrong, ladies, I enjoyed the show as much as the next person but maybe you should continue this somewhere a little more private?”
When both of them blushed bright red he just grinned and then added solicitously: “It would be a shame to start something like this somewhere you can't finish it.”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing and Harry thought she had never seen anyone who looked so endearingly out of control when she gave herself over to laughter.
“You don't drink?” John asks. “Then how the hell did you meet Harry?”
Clara feels her face draw tight into the unattractive mask that seems to descend whenever someone asks a variation of that question.
“We met,” she grits out, “because I don't drink and your sister was the only one who wasn't a complete arse about it.” We met, she thinks, because she spirited me away out of a window and took me out for cheesecake and kissed me as if nothing else existed for that moment.
Chapter 2: There still remains the cocaine-bottle
For a while, everything was easy and in flow between them.
Harry loved the quirky comedy shows Clara dug up on BBC 4 and there were quiet evenings at home where they would sit in the warm light of a summer sunset, softly quoting passages from their books at each other.
They spent lazy Sundays at Morena, getting lost in each other's stories, quietly talking as the rain beat down outside.
Brian, the barista, became a friend and they went out together. Clara was usually a quiet presence on the edge of the group, sipping on her water or a non-alcoholic cocktail, but at the end of the evening, she and Harry tumbled into bed together.
“Oh God,” Harry gasped, fingers digging into the mattress desperately as Clara slid two fingers into her, crooking them just right. “Oh God, nobody has ever fucked me so well.”
Clara, who crouched over her, sweaty and wild haired, looked like a maenad and she grinned deviously as she used her thigh between Harry's legs to press her fingers in more deeply.
Uncontrolled, desperate sounds began to force their way out of Harry's throat as she writhed against Clara's palm and when Clara bent down to take one of Harry's nipples between her teeth, Harry keened. Clara always, always hit the right amount of pressure, riding that razor edge between pain and pleasure, pain as pleasure, blurring the two into sharp electric currents just under Harry's skin.
“You look delicious when you're about to come,” Clara panted and then twisted her fingers in maddening circles that rubbed right along the opening of Harry's cunt.
“Oh bloody hell,” Harry cursed and felt her body open wider, her internal muscles pulling on Clara's fingers and finding the resistance delicious. Clara touched just the tip of her finger to Harry's clit, butterfly light and brief, and Harry shuddered and shuddered, sensation cresting in a wave that all but drowned her.
“I like to fuck you when you're drunk,” Clara said musingly, when Harry finally managed to crack open an eye-lid. “You are much more relaxed like this, I could almost fit my entire hand inside you.”
Harry's head thudded back onto the mattress. “Jesus Christ, woman,” she said weakly, “warn a girl, will you?”
“Ah,” Clara said, “but where would be the fun in that?”
But it had been five years since that fateful dinner party now and there was nothing, really nothing easy about this anymore.
By now, every day in Harry Watson's life was a day when she consciously didn't drink. Except for the days when she slipped up. She wanted to drink every day. She needed to drink every day.
Sometimes she went into a frenzy about finding some alcohol in their flat even though she knew Clara kept it clean. Harry always felt awful later for the rows they had when she got like this, when Clara tried to stop her from going out to buy a drink.
More often than not these rows ended with her head in Clara's lap, both of them exhausted and crying miserably. But the times she felt most guilty about were the times she actually left the flat, actually got on a bus to go to the supermarket in the next borough.
The supermarkets and newsagents around their flat had all received a visit from her asking them not to sell her anything. She both hated and loved her therapist for coming up with that strategy, for making Harry be the one who visited each establishment in person, for taking responsibility.
It had the added effect that she had usually got out of her frantic need and into a more rational mindset by the time she actually arrived at the supermarket. Mostly she managed to call Clara instead, who made her come home. Clara, who would pour both of them sweet tea and hold Harry while they tried to gather their frayed nerves. Clara, who was sometimes distraught or exhausted but never angry with her.
“You're trying,” she would say, “you're trying so hard, love. That's the only thing I ask.”
But the self-loathing, oh the vicious, dark self-hatred that bubbled up in her after these relapses, like hot tar in a wound.
You're weak and disgusting, she would tell herself, looking in the grey face the mirror showed her. Nobody could love a wreck like you. Especially not someone like Clara.
“Why the hell does everything have to be about alcohol with you?” Clara asked, her voice snide and cold with exasperation. “There are millions of people in the world who manage just fine without it.”
“Don't touch that,” Harry hissed, her grip on Clara's hand so hard it mottled her skin red, as she forced her to put down the bottle she was going to empty into the sink. “I'm either going to do this on my own or not at all.”
Harry's strategies varied, from complete abstinence to controlled use, to indifference, and binges.
Clara's strategies stubbornly stayed the same.
“Well, I don't know, John, maybe Harry would be less likely to get drunk at family reunions if you weren't all so bloody emotionally constipated.”
“I swear to God, Harry Watson, you will either stop destroying your life like this or I will walk out on you right this very moment.”
“I'm sorry, Harry won't be able to come in to work today. Yeah, another migraine, I'm starting to really worry about her.”
“If you go out with Simon and that crowd, I'm not coming with you. And you'd better answer my calls or I'm going to assume that you're drunk in a ditch somewhere.”
It was inevitable, really, but it seemed inexcusable all the same: Harry began to hate Clara.
She hated that Clara still didn't like the taste of alcohol, still stuck to her mineral water and virgin coladas.
She hated the feeling of guilt that crept over her like poisonous fungi when she found Clara asleep on the sofa where she had clearly been waiting up for Harry.
“This isn't anything new,” Clara insisted with exasperation. “It has nothing to do with you! I've never liked alcohol. And how many times do I need to tell you? I don't judge you for this.”
“No,” Harry sneered, “you just pity me. And don't think that that isn't worse.”
“I can't do this anymore,” Clara said finally, sliding down the wall and hugging her knees as she looked up at Harry. “I just can't.”
“So what,” Harry asked wobbly, “you're ending this? You've finally had enough of living with a damn alky?”
And really, what had she been expecting? This day had been coming ever since that first kiss, had been in the making even as she made her way towards Clara in that dinner party crowd. Nobody could love a nasty addict like me.
But Clara's head jerked up from where it had been resting despondently on her knees as if she'd been kicked. “What? No! I'm not ending this!”
Harry pulled a face that she knew looked bitter and unattractive but she was simply unable to help herself. “Yeah well, maybe I should just walk out,” she said. “Go somewhere I don't have to see your bloody judgemental face every fucking day. God!”
Clara reached for her, her face suddenly desperate, so desperate. (Harry knew that look. She had once seen it in the mirror behind a bar.) “Harry, no! Please! Don't leave me, Harry, please! I'm sorry!”
It was horrible, it was unbearable, it was inevitable: That night, Harry packed a bag while Clara ran after her, pulling on her, entreating her to stay.
Later on, Harry would wonder how she could have been so stupid, how she could have overlooked the love that must have been there. But that night Harry was unable to hear, to see, the steady, throbbing pulse of her own disgust with herself drowning out Clara and everything but the one thought: I have to get out now.
Chapter 3: Journeys end in lovers' meetings
“I've been reading up about codependency,” Clara said as they were sipping mediocre cappuccinos in the visitors' lounge. They usually had it to themselves on Thursday afternoons, as most of the other patients only had visitors on the weekends.
“Yeah?” Harry asked. She was wearing grey track suit bottoms and a hoodie that was about two sizes too big for her. It should look grubby and unattractive, Clara thought, but instead she found the strangely youthful and vulnerable aspect it gave Harry distractingly appealing.
“Mm,” Clara hummed, looking down into the fading foam at the bottom of her cup. “They say that codependency is just as much of an addiction as alcohol is.”
Harry snorted. “If that were the case you'd be in here with me.” But her eyes were intent and questioning.
Clara shrugged. “Maybe I should be.”
“Hm,” Harry said. And then: “Are you still seeing that therapist my brother recommended?”
Clara nodded. “She's who loaned me the book on codependency,” she admitted. “She runs a group as well. I might go.”
“Huh,” Harry said and maybe Clara's eyes were deceiving her but it seemed like she was sitting up straighter.
“Thank you very much for coming, Ms Hastings,” said the young man who met her at the reception area.
Clara nodded. “Of course. When Harry told me you offered couples counselling - ”
But he interrupted her. “I'm afraid we don't actually,” he admitted apologetically, nervously pushing his glasses up his nose. “We offer to moderate meetings with relatives and partners, but usually only once or twice during a patient's stay. I can recommend a great counsellor in London, though,” he offered as he saw her disappointment.
“That would be lovely, yes.” She knew her smile was tight and nervous but she had no real idea of what to expect from a “moderated conversation”.
The room they ended up was a bit clinical but nice, light furniture and a big window making it seem bright even in the November sun.
“Why don't you start,” the young man said, who had introduced himself as Dr. Bleuler, “with telling each other what it was that you found attractive about each other when you first met?”
Clara closed her eyes for a moment, trying to conjure up that moment at Patrick's party when she had suddenly stopped feeling like the new girl at school. But before she even opened her mouth, Harry's voice broke into the dark behind her lids.
“I remember,” Harry said and her voice sounded full of wonder. “I remember that you were so beautiful there next to the window. So beautiful and so lonely.”
Clara opened her eyes, suddenly desperate to see Harry's face as she continued talking.
“And then you laughed. You were beautiful and lonely and you laughed at my jokes and you stole away from that dinner party with me.” Harry looked at her, face like an open flower, soft and damageable and facing the light.
There was suddenly a tightness in Clara's throat and Harry's face blurred a little, there, across the table. Clara swallowed painfully and then said: “You were kind. You were kind and funny and smart and you looked at me like nobody else has ever looked at me.” Words had always been Harry's forte rather than her own, but she kept going. “You bought me cheesecake and you read me poetry and you once made love to me in the rain.” There were tears running down her face by now but she didn't care. Because Harry was crying as well. Not the terrible, desperate sobs Clara remembered from countless relapses. This crying was gentle, somehow, gentle and nourishing like summer rain.
“Well,” Dr Bleuler said finally after clearing his throat, “I think you've made an interesting start.” And maybe Clara was imagining it but it seemed as if his eyes were glittering a little, too, behind those thick glasses.
There are only non-alcoholic drinks at the reception, and Harry notices with devious satisfaction that not one of the guests dares to complain.
Her brother catches them as they are reading their letters and cards and, it must be said, crying a little in a quiet corner. He looks uncomfortable, as he always does when forced into a tux but he smiles at them warmly and toasts them with non-alcoholic champagne.
“You two look lovely,” he says and sounds as if he means it. “But I have to admit, I found the invitation a tad surprising. People don’t often re-marry their ex-wives.”
“Well,” Harry says, drawing Clara's arms more tightly around herself, “I got lost and Clara followed me into the woods. After that, I figure, we can hack anything. Even marriage.”
Clara snorts and kisses the top of Harry's head and John's face crinkles up into warm amusement. “That sounds about right,” he admits.
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