Seeing the Thing

Chapter 12

warnings: angst, a not so clueless Harrison

***

Dancing around Tom, pretending as if he may not exist for these past few days was hard.

You woke up on Tuesday with your head on Harrison's chest, Harrison already awake. You thanked him for helping you the night before, for listening to you.

"Anytime, you know that right?" Harrison says as the two of you get up.

You nod and agree to meet him for lunch later.

Tom: hey I'm sorry about what I said

Tom: you're not nothing this isn't nothing

Tom: you're gonna kill me for sending you a thousand messages

Tom: we're not nothing

Tom: please tell me you're okay

All from last night. You respond quickly before making up your mind to take a break. From Tom, from whatever this was.

You: it's fine, I'm fine, I'll see you Friday for the off book rehearsal

You set your phone to silent before getting ready.

The rest of the week was easy, really, Tom understood your message loud and clear. He was an expert at avoiding you, never going to breakfast with Harrison, never running into you while you did laundry or studied at the library. As easy as it was for him to find you in odd places, like the coffee incident at the library, it was just as easy for him to avoid you. Or that's what you thought.

Avoiding his physical person was simple, not thinking about him? That was much too difficult for you to attempt. You'd find your mind wandering to his soft touches, the way he let you fall asleep on him while watching Hercules, the way he held you in his arms, strong and reassuring. But god damn it you were supposed to be avoiding him.

***

It was killing Tom to avoid you, catching a glimpse of your smile or your hair, one of your shirts, then have to duck and dodge other students to avoid you. He wanted nothing more than to burst through the crowd waiting for their smoothies at the student center and kiss you in front of everyone, wooing you so that you drop your stupid kale smoothie and take him to be yours, giving you no choice but to confront your feelings for him. But he didn't, he kept his head down and kept walking. He studied in his room instead of the library because god forbid he has another "I totally didn't buy this coffee" stroke his brain pulled. He watched and he waited because the one place you couldn't avoid him was rehearsal. You were probably going to kick his ass because he wasn't nearly as off-book as he should be. He wanted nothing more than to sit with you and run lines, too stubborn to ask Nikk for any help, she was way too condescending in rehearsal alone, spending time with her outside of rehearsal? No dice. Besides, you were definitely too busy making sound cues and doing whatever else stage managers do, he'd have to ask you at some point. But he had a plan, he was going to confront you in front of Harrison, he was going to say "listen, I really like you, so let's be a thing" or something along those lines. He wasn't exactly sure but he knew he would do something, a ridiculous confession of sorts. On the quad, he heard you rambling about a movie, and rolling down a hill, and a princess Buttercup? He planned on finding out what movie you were talking about.

Friday passed like any other day that week, he was looking over his lines between classes, counting down the mere hours until he could see you.

The second he got to rehearsal he was going to pull you aside but he saw you applying your chapstick, tapping your foot against the ground and talking to Gianna and Quentin in a hushed voice.