Take My Breath (KShaw)

Chapter 9

He wakes up in the morning to his alarm going off and JJ groaning. And to JJ lying half on top of him. At some point in the night Harry must have turned over, and JJ had taken advantage of that by crawling onto him, apparently. He's heavy, his limbs weighing Harry down, and he smells like alcohol in the worst way.

"Wha-" JJ lifts his head, looks down at Harry, and groans again. "Oh, God, I'm going to have to do the walk of shame to my own side of the bedroom," he says as he rolls over, legs falling off the bed. He stands, runs a hand through his messy hair, and looks back down at Harry. "Why was I in your bed, anyway?" Harry is red and he knows it. It's a good question, really, but he doesn't know how to answer it. "You, uh, came in drunk," he starts, while JJ makes an impatient sound. "I don't know, okay?! You crawled into my fucking bed and I was too tired to kick you out." JJ gives him an unreadable look at that. "So we didn't, you know." "No, we didn't," Harry says.

He pushes himself up, eyes narrowed. He's in a bad mood. He's so fucking tired. And JJ's pissing him off without even doing anything today. Maybe it's just leftover anger from yesterday, bleeding into his mood for today. "Are we going to ever talk about the times that we did?" JJ wonders. Harry freezes, hand halfway to his drawer. He sucks in a breath and opens it, pulling out clean clothes, and then he slams it shut. His back is still to JJ when he says lowly, "No." He doesn't want to talk about it ever. In fact, he'd love to act like it never happened. That it never happened twice, technically. "It's just going to happen again," JJ says to his back. Harry turns to him, eyes narrowed. He scoffs. "Don't count on it." JJ smirks. "You might hate me," he says, "but that doesn't mean you don't want me." Fuck the shower. Fuck changing. Harry grabs his backpack and heads for the door. "That's exactly what it means!" he shouts before slamming it.

He's early to his first class, but he's distracted. It's a boring class, admittedly, and he has to force himself to pay attention every day, especially given the time that the class starts. Today he just doesn't have it in him to do that. But it's not like he can skip, miss out on anything, because he doesn't know anyone in this class and has no one he could borrow notes from if he decided to bail. And he refuses to let this thing with JJ complicate his academic life.

As he's walking to his second class of the day, bag slipping down his shoulders because they're so slumped with exhaustion, he passes a bulletin board and stops. The lime green of the flyer is what caught his eye, a startling bright contrast to the rest of the black and white ads. Charity Art Class, reads the bold headline. His eyes scan over the rest of the words quickly. Apparently it's a six-week art class held at the school between the middle of November to just before Christmas holidays, where the students are taught amateur painting, sculpting and drawing twice a week, at the end of which they'll hold an auction where a final piece by each student will be sold, all proceeds going to charity. There isn't a number left to call, but it simply states that anyone interested is welcome at the free first day orientation on Monday in Art Room 2 in the west wing at seven. He really doesn't have the time for something like this. There's no room on his plate for an art club, on top of everything else. But he finds himself pulling out a phone and taking a picture of the ad anyway, that way he won't forget the details. It'd be nice to do something just for himself. Something that he doesn't have to stress over. Something for fun.

He's still not sure, all through his classes, but when he heads to his room afterwards, he finds himself deterring, heading for Ethan and Tobi's room instead. This time the whiteboard reads Ethan is out, Tobi is in, and Harry knocks quickly before pushing open the door. Tobi looks up at him from behind his laptop, which he has on his chest while he lies down against the pillows. "Hey," he says, and then he sneezes and makes a pitiful sound. "Come sit." Harry shuts the door and eyes him warily. "Are you sick?" "A bit," Tobi admits. He sneezes again and reaches for a tissue on the desk beside him. "Okay, a lot. I think I have the flu." "I'm going to stay over here, then," Harry says, sinking onto Ethan's bed. "Do you, like, need anything? I could go and get you a drink or something, or-" "Nah, it's fine," Tobi assures him. "Ethan's getting me soup and Advil. I'll be okay."