Honey Rain

Chapter Three

To Harry: Come over we have to work

Well, it's not like we had to do it now, but it had been a couple of days since we made any progress.

From Harry: Fine

I could practically hear him groaning through the screen.

He came in wearing different clothes that he had worn to school than day. Not that I had been paying attention, but he dressed for school like he was trying to land a job, with his fancy jumpers and his stiff button-downs. Right now he was wearing simply a dark blue hoodie and a pair of loose-fitting blue jeans. I thought he looked better like this to be honest; more authentic.

We had both worked about as much as we could by ourselves when we finally had to start talking.

I stretched my arm out across the bed and tapped his arm with my pencil, not really wanting to speak to him. He tilted his head up to look at me and raised his eyebrows.

"Hmm?"

I held up my textbook, opened to the text of the play. "We need to read through this part."

Harry furrowed his brow slightly and sighed. "We can do that separately."

"Well, we're doing it together." We probably could do it separately but I had way too much trouble reading by myself. Old English is so unreasonably hard to understand.

He sighed again, almost intentionally dramatically, and then moved to sit next to me. "Okay."

Our knees touched when he crossed his legs, and surprisingly, he didn't pull away or act disgusted. I stared down at the page for a while trying to figure out how I was meant to read this, and Harry eventually turned to me.

"Want me to start?"

I slowly nodded, feeling stupid, and Harry pulled the textbook a couple inches closer to himself. I was almost shocked when he didn't make a crass comment about illiteracy or insult me in any way. Maybe he just didn't notice my confusion.

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound. But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou, her maid, since she is envious. Her vestal livery is but sick and green, and none but fools do wear it. Cast it off."

His voice sounded lovely, and I was almost glad that I had asked him to read. He spoke so softly and languidly, as if there was honey dripping from his tongue, and he sounded not at all like he did when we were at school.

"It is my lady. Oh, it is my love. Oh, that she knew she were. She speaks yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it."

Harry glanced up at me for just a moment before turning back to the text.

"I am too bold. 'Tis not to me she speaks. Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven , having some business entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, as daylight doth a lamp; his-" He cleared his throat, blushing just a bit as his mistake. "-her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing and think it were not night. See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand. Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek."

I hadn't listened to a word he said, too encapsulated with the movement of his lips.

He moved his index finger away from where he was following along the lines and looked up at me. "You have to be Juliet."