Marry Me - Hardin Scott Oneshot

Marry Me

While listening to Atmosphere by Bebe Rexha.

"I don't date. I never want to date anyone. I think I'll stay single till I die." He said with a laugh.
Those words kept repeating themselves in my head as I downed another glass of wine. I didn't remember if this was my third or fourth tonight, but even it couldn't drown out the sound of those words repeating themselves over and over again. Hardin had given an interview today, talked about his love life, about his plans for the future. And that had been his answer to the question about a girlfriend.

I wasn't his girlfriend. I knew that whatever this was between us, it would end someday. I knew that we wouldn't last. Since the beginning I knew that we wouldn't date, we wouldn't marry. We did everything couples did, we talked almost every day, we had sex. And yet we weren't dating. We weren't even friends with benefits. Just friends. Just nothing. And I was tired of it. Tired of being both everything and nothing to him. Hardin might've liked being with me, but never in a million years would he love me. Not when he still loved her. Tessa Young. She'd been his first love, his first heartbreak, the person to cause him to forget about drinking and rage and seek out help, become a better person. It was her that caused Hardin to go from smashing things when he was angry to talking things out, talking about his emotions, fears. Confessing feelings. She was the reason he was an accomplished writer, entrepreneur.

And I? I was just a distraction, someone to pass the time with, to stop loneliness from eating away at his heart. We'd met in a tattoo parlour through a mutual friend and things had developed from there. Hardin had been getting his tattoos retraced, I - tattoos on my forearm. Red spider lilies turning into roses with a dagger lying on them. For some reason that had fascinated him and we'd talked about the meaning of tattoos all night, even going to a bar after getting the work finished. It had been easy to talk to him, to explain what those pieces meant to me, to explain my world. And although Hardin had been more of a listener at first, by the end of the night I knew what each of his tattoos meant. We became friends after that. And we were supposed to remain just that. But he came to me one night. The anniversary of the day he met her. He'd needed a distraction, just someone to be there for him, just someone to kiss him and make him forget about the pain of heartbreak. And I had done just that. The morning after Hardin told me that he wasn't ready for a relationship, for loving, that he just needed a friend. Back then I'd agreed because I hadn't been ready either. I had been dealing with my own demons from a previous relationship and just wanted to not be alone. And things had worked. We hanged out, we had sex, we were there for each other. I don't know when it was exactly that I started falling in love with Hardin. But I knew that it was wrong, that my love would never be reciprocated. He would never love me. Not like I loved him. And I did. I'd tried to ignore it, to push those feelings down, but I couldn't do it any longer. I couldn't pretend that I felt nothing for him when my every thought was of him. And that's why I couldn't pretend any longer. I needed to be loved back and he wasn't going to do it. Maybe I'd be the one to stay single for the rest of my life, because I couldn't imagine loving anyone more than I loved him.

Beside me, my phone rang again. It was Hardin. Like always. I'd ignored his calls all evening, wanting more time to decide what to say to him, to gain the courage to save myself from his hurricane. I needed more than he would give me, but at the same time he was what I needed. He was the person I'd drown for, had already been drowning for for months. And if I continued now, I'd never leave him, never leave this not-relationship. For my sake and his, we needed to go our separate ways. And that's why I picked up the call.

"Hey Hardin." I heard myself slurring. Maybe I shouldn't have drunk so much. "Scott. Y/N Scott. That sounds quite nice, doesn't it? But it's not like that matters. I have more chances of marrying your brother than you." I laughed.
"What the hell, Y/N? I've been calling you for hours! I was worried that something had happened to you. Fuck. Do you know how worried about you I was? I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't just picked up." He almost screamed and I heard him run his hand through his hair. He was moving things on the other side, an obvious way out for his agitation.
"Wait. Are you drunk?" His voice rang in my ear, concern filling his voice instead of anger. I heard him still.
Damn, I loved his voice, loved his British accent. I'd heard it just yesterday, but I'd managed to already start missing it. Missing him.
"Maybe I am. Maybe I not. That's not really any of your concern." I answered.
"You are my concern." Hardin sighed back. Somehow he sounded tired, defeated.
"Not for much longer though." My heart was heavy and my chest constricted. I didn't want to do this. But I needed to. If I wanted to survive. But was survival worth never feeling his touch again? Never waking up in his arms again? Never staying up discussing the universe with him?
"What do you mean?" Now he sounded calm. But I knew his voice. Knew that the calmer he got, the closer he was to blowing up and probably screaming my ear off.
"Lets end whatever this is between us." I started.
"Y/N." His interrupted me, his voice was filling with some strange emotion that I hadn't really heard before.
"No, Hardin. Let me finish."
"You're drunk. Let's talk about this tomorrow, when you've sobered up." Pain. It was hidden pain. And that almost made me give in, forget about everything I had planned on saying.
"I want to talk about this now. It's quite overdue too. For both our sakes, let's end things now. I don't want to lose you as a friend, but we can't keep being this chaos in between. You don't want a relationship, I no longer want this insecurity. We don't fit. So let's go our separate ways, at least in terms of messing with each other." By the time I was finished, my voice had changed from powerful to barely a whisper and my eyes were watering. I loved him. And saying all of that hurt. Hardin had been my rock, my wall. He'd helped me gain my self-confidence back, grow as a person, a dancer, an artist. I wasn't sure how I'd helped him, but I prayed that these two years that we'd been kind of together had made him a better person too.