Better Now Than Later // h.s.

Better Now Than Later

I wrote this about 3 years ago -- for those of you who are on tumblr and remember how it used to be, I hope you enjoy the Easter eggs of sorts in here! x

Now

*

Anybody could've told him, and many did.

"Is there... something going on? Between you and...?"

"What?"

How often had he shaken his head no?

"We're just friends — I love her, but we're just friends."

Harry had been happy for you when you started dating your now fiancee. That was the right feeling to have for someone he cared about, right? It was casual, he seemed nice, and if you were happy, he was happy. At first, he was just a lad to have a laugh with, but then... something had changed. He didn't disrespect you — never that, for which Harry remained grateful to this day — but Harry got the distinct impression that the other man thought he knew you better than Harry did. He'd tried to squash it, because personal relationships were not an arena in which his competitive nature should thrive, but he'd still coiled like a cobra ready to strike back at the insinuation that just because this bloke shared a bed with you, and spent the night, and got to see you naked that he somehow knew you better.

It'd hit him like a tonne of bricks, then.

This bloke shared a bed with you.

He spent night after night with you.

He got to see you naked.

Nauseated hadn't described the feeling he'd had to swallow back, and chest pains were a step below that funny, fluttery, squeezing thing his heart was doing.

He'd kept waiting for the feeling to go away, but the more it lingered, the worse it got, until he was snappy and irritable with just about everyone. Even seeing you didn't help, because if you weren't with the man, you were talking about him, or texting him, or reminding Harry he was waiting for you.

What had started out as wanting to assert that he knew you best had led him to wanting to know you better — to fill the missing holes (no sexual innuendos intended) in the relationship between you — but all of a sudden you weren't just dating the man, you were living with him. He'd put on a brave face and tried to remind — convince — himself that your happiness was what mattered, but then the engagement had happened and he'd just... snapped.

He couldn't write music after that. He'd tried to write so many songs to put it into words, but the words he got out were stiff on paper and his fingers were clumsy on the strings of his guitar, and that made it worse. He felt mute though he hadn't stopped screaming the entire time you've been planning your wedding, and now the day was here.

When he'd gotten the save the date card, he'd contemplated lying through his teeth — he could send a bloody waffle iron and call it a day and know that you'd at least be fed while he pretended to be in New York, Toronto, São Paulo, Munich, Tokyo, anywhere but where you were on your wedding day. He couldn't do it, though -- hadn't you pestered him specifically to find out when he was free? And warned him time and again to not slot anything in because you were planning your wedding around him and this would be the date chosen?

That was a punch to the chest if he'd ever felt one.

Similarly, as the weeks had dragged on he'd considered faking sick, faking traffic, faking anything to get out of it, but the morning had come. Wished he may, wished he might've, it was there at last. and he'd showered and combed his wet curls before drying them and spraying them with whatever Lou had forced upon him ages ago before zipping up his boots. You'd promised him he could be him — rings, necklaces, hair that's annoying enough to require a hair tie around his wrist for when he needs it, and a shirt just shy of half its buttons being done — because you'd said you wanted to look out towards the crowd and find something familiar in the midst of all the symbolic change.