In the clear yet?, good.

The one with one too many cocktails

For @Thelakes12

"Hello?"

"Hey babe" – she slurs as she closes the stall door and leans on it.

"Taylor?"

"Yeah, Tay-lah". She giggles playfully.

"Have you been drinking?" He asks frowning.

"Maybe". She sighs. "What are you doing Harreh?"

He scoffs, amused.

"Well, if you must know, I am making myself a cup of tea".

"Aww", she moans. "That sounds boooring", she pans out.

"It's 10 in the morning here", he smiles.

"Shhhhh", she suddenly shushes him, and he hears muffled background noises.  "Someone came in, I am in a stall" she whispers.

"They can't hear me, sweet. I am on the phone"

"Shhhhh" She shushes him immediately, and he rolls his eyes, shaking his head.

"They are gone", she announces after a while.

"You sound like you have been having fun. How come you are not back at the party?"  he hears her shuffling around.

She is trying to sit on the loo, but she trips bumping her arm on the toilet roll holder, and ends up cursing, before clumsily settling down, as she sighs, "I ran out of smiles. Being this happy is fucking EXHAAUSTING", she emphasises the last word, and he smirks in response.

She realises then her feet are hurting, and leans down to remove the boots she has been wearing all day. Moaning in the process.

"Why don't you get someone to take you home?"

She snorts at his words. "Home? And where is that even?". She slurs the words out, a protest.

"I don't know. Where are you now?".

"Bloody Kansas", she sighs out, bothered. And he cannot stop a chuckle.

"Ok. Then go wherever you are staying"

"I don't wanna be there", she whines in a low tone. Finally removing the second boot, dropping it on the floor with a thud.

"Where do you wanna be then?" he asks patiently, sipping his tea.

There is a brief silence on the line. 

And he is about to speak when she breathes out...

"with you", and she sounds half hopeful, half exhausted.

He freezes, mug half way to his lips. "Tay...", is all he can put together as an answer at that moment.

"Do you miss me?", she sounds pitiful.

And she must be really drunk, he realises. In that way he knows she won't be able to recall any part of this conversation tomorrow.

She would not dare otherwise, she is breaking their sacred code. The silent code in which they agreed to not speak out feelings, or hopes, when it came to them.

He sits at the kitchen table and rubs his eyes, ok, we are doing this. He thinks. 

"I do", he says quietly, and she sighs with relief.

"I miss so many things about you", she moans, her voice soft, and he can hear her shifting again. She is struggling to stay put, her head going dizzy from the stillness of being seated.

"Taylor..." he warns her again. Exhaling loudly.

"See!", she cuts him off, "like how you say my name... and how you probably would have already found me if I had been missing from the party this long". She sulks.

"I probably would have, that is true", he reflects on her words. Why the hell is she on her own?.

"You would have not liked my frown though" he adds teasingly... "why are you drinking this much? You are back on tour soon" he asks hoping for a change of subject.

She makes a noise then, he doesn't know if it is a whine, or a cry, or a moan...

"I just want it to stop" she tells him, slurring words out, "this nagging feeling".

She groans then, resting her head on her free hand.

He frowns, worried and curious. "What feeling, love?" he asks softly.

"Impending doom and... what if I mess it all up?", she shifts again, dropping to the floor. Her knees against her chest, her free arm bracing them.

"What if I am doing this for the wrong reasons?".

If there is someone who knows what it is to do something for all the wrong reasons it's him. All the times he had prioritised greed or fame to happiness, and ignored following his heart.

Her words take him back to pap walks, and cuddling with the wrong person on a yacht, and nights spent wondering if the harm caused between them could ever be reversed. He knows now, it cannot.

She sniffs then. And he knows she is now crying.

His first instinct is to get on a plane, to be there. But he can't, it would do them no good, getting into that dynamic again, and anyway by the time he would get there tomorrow, it wouldn't matter, because she would not remember.

The last time he had done this, it had ended up badly. At least for his heart. He recalls her tears over the phone, his gut clenching, the pounding heartbeat all the way to the airport, the sleepless seven hour flight, the rush into the hotel lobby, the knock on the room door, all to be faced by an excessively courteous Tom Hiddleston.

He didn't even see her. He just turned around, grabbed his phone out of his pocket, and dived into his recurrent wrong at the time, Kendall.

"There's just so much noise in my head...", she sniffles, and she sounds vulnerable and tired.

"Hey, you did not get to where you are doubting yourself or your intuition", she nods profusely at his words. "Don't listen to it, just trust yourself", he tells her quietly. "You are Taylor bloody Swift", he teases her, earning him a teary chuckle.

"Taylor!?!", he hears a distant voice he recognises, Andrea.

"Go with your mum, Tay, it is going to be fine". She nods and sobs then.

"I love you Harry", she chokes out in a low voice.

He feels a knot of tension on his chest, and the warmth of his own tears.

"I love you too", he hears himself say. "Now go!", he encourages her, needing to be left alone with this whirlwind of emotions, that he must now sort out and order, before setting them aside.

"Mum?" He hears her voice out, and then the line goes dead.