salute [h.s]

tis the season for giving

december 10 - hot chocolate

1D fanfic/Salute extra

Harry/Piper

*

The door to the flat opened so Piper knew Harry had come in. He was the only other person with keys to all three locks which he had given to himself after installing the deadbolts because you need someone to have a backup in case you get locked out or if you're travelling and you need someone to collect the mail. He was a dork like that sometimes. A sexy dork. A sexy super spy dork.

She would have greeted him but she had her head jammed under a pillow and she was doing her best to ignore the world. She could hear muffled sounds and she tried to place them — Harry tossing his keys in the bowl, Harry opening and closing her fridge, Harry creaking open her bedroom door very slowly. It was quiet for a moment and then the pillow was plucked off of her head. "Stop," she whined as she placed her hands over her ears and shoved her face into the mattress. "Go away."

"Don't be like that, Piper," Harry said sternly as he forcibly flipped her over so she was lying on her back, his upper body hovering over hers. She hadn't turned any lights on when she'd gotten home so the only illumination in the room was from the street lamp outside her window. It was enough that she could see the expression on Harry's face. Sympathetic, not disappointed. She hadn't realized how much she'd been expecting disappointment until it wasn't there. It helped her breathe a bit.

"You heard?" she asked on the off chance that Harry hadn't been informed about the huge gaffe that she'd made at work today. The grimace on his face was answer enough.

"It's not as bad as you think it is," Harry told her. She scoffed because, what did he know?

"I realize that you haven't made a mistake for, like, ever but it is actually as bad as I think it is."

Harry sighed as he perched himself on the edge of her mattress, beside where her body was sprawled out, her dress from work wrinkling and her tights pulled halfway down her legs because she just couldn't bring herself to do the whole job before she moped. "Here," he said as he held out the takeaway cup he was holding, "I brought this to cheer you up. It's the peppermint hot chocolate you like. Thought it might help."

Piper stared at Harry for a long while and then finally propped herself up, Harry shoving the pillow back under her as she readjusted. She took the hot chocolate from him and just smelled it, the mix of rich chocolate and sharp peppermint already soothing her worried mind.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Harry asked supportively. Piper considered it because her mum had always said that talking things through helped a lot. So had the therapist at MIT who had coached Piper through a massive breakdown four months into freshman year. It was probably why she was such a talker now, not keeping any of her feelings a secret, except around the One Direction boys. It was just harder to be vulnerable and open around five guys who were confident and seemingly faultless.

Her fuck up had been a magnificent one. She'd been tasked with writing a program that would open a backdoor into the SVR, considering she'd already sort of done it once when Harry was in Moscow. She'd though it was going to be a piece of cake. Backdoor programs were her specialty. It was the reason MI6 had gotten their eyes on her in the first place, and not in a good way. It was probably the reason she had the job she did.

Imagine how humiliating it was when, in front of the entire S, Q, and T branches who had come out to watch the launch, it hadn't worked. She'd been frantic, trying to find the problem and correct it but the damage was already done. Whatever reputation she had built as the T branch whizkid was officially gone. She found the problem eventually — one character. One fucking character.