The Timeline

59.

September - October 2017: 

It was a dangerous game, the one Harry had been playing with Claire.

A game where, he'd learn at one point, there'd be no winners.

A game where, he learned at one point, the only outcome would be to come out badly burned.

A game where, he had learned at one point, he shouldn't have meddled in.

His mistake had been in thinking that everything would be easy. Without consequences.

Why would there be? That was him and Claire. Claire. His Claire.

They had always come back from everything bad that had happened to them.

Two magnets who couldn't bear to stay away from each other, who couldn't resist the pull, who would always end up gravitating around the other.

A moon and her satellite.

But this time, Harry fears, there's no going back.

And it's all his doing.

How has he gotten to this point? Fear. Incompetence. Ineptitude. Anxiety. Not communicating.

All things that, Harry knows, somewhere in the back of his brain, have always led him to fucking things up, over and over. It's something he brings with himself wherever he goes.

He has always known that, somehow, with Claire, they'd always manage to find a way back to each other.

But not now. Not after what he has done.

He wonders, sometimes at night, when he manages to be alone, if all of his mistakes started when he first kissed her. If their lips meeting were the first signal of the impending doom that awaited them right around the corner.

Harry had decided to be blind to it.

Because he had gone back to her, despite promising himself he wouldn't seek her out until she did. He had gone back to her, again and again. It was impossible to stay away. He had had a taste of her, and he couldn't get enough. Nothing else could do, once he knew how perfectly her lips fit against his, how they opened and closed around his. How it was meant to be.

All Harry wanted to do was immerse himself in that feeling. All Claire wanted to do was talk.

And what was there to talk about? Couldn't she see it? Couldn't she feel it? Couldn't she hear it, in the way Harry sighed and moved, that she was everything he had ever wanted?

That had been his first mistake, apparently.

He knew, the moment he had convinced Claire to go with the flow, that she wasn't doing something she wanted to do. That it wasn't her way of things. He promised her they'd talk, because at one point they would talk. But for the time being, Harry just wanted to enjoy what it felt like, looking at her and being able to kiss her whenever he wanted, without needing to bite his lips and keep his hands to himself.

Claire, despite having yielded to him, succumbing to what was undeniably incredible between the two of them, still didn't feel as immersed as he felt. Harry could feel it, oozing off of her, in waves and storms, depending on the day: her anxiety at what was to come. What could change between the two of them. It had annoyed him a bit, how she couldn't guess it from the way he had eyes only for her, or from the way he'd drop anything he was doing in a heartbeat, just because the occasion to spend some time with her had presented itself.

Wasn't it enough? Did he also have to verbalize it?

For a short period of time - a week or two - it felt like Claire had finally understood. And then things started going badly again.