Movement

Chapter Five.

It was, in the simplest of words, very hard for Brady to get out of bed this morning. She sat there at her work desk hours later with a slight amount of grease in her hair from her lack of a shower this morning and a throbbing headache that seemed to reach her toes. She tried her best to focus on the spreadsheet in front of her on her computer screen, but her eyes couldn't focus all that well and with every passing minute she spent staring at the screen her headache seemed to throb that much more.

She closed her eyes then, a loud exhale passing through her chapped lips and her shoulders relaxing ever so slightly. She moved her fingers to rub at her temples and decided that now is the time to think about what had happened last night.

It all started with his hands, she remembered ever so clearly. She'd held them countless times, she's always known they were callused and rough but last night she felt a softness that she couldn't ever remember feeling before.  Maybe it was because he looked so soft the night before- in his white jumper with his painted black nails and dark black jeans that were plastered to his long legs and the elegant Chelsea boots that donned his abnormally large feet. Maybe it's because she couldn't stop staring at that fu.cking curl that went behind his ear and the other one that kept falling over his forehead every time he'd shake his head or laugh at a joke or sing loudly to a song. Maybe it was a mixture of all of those things, and maybe it was the alcohol, but maybe he'd always looked this soft and maybe she'd never really noticed until he was holding her hand by choice, and not by act.

The cab ride between them was silent but she could've sworn he probably heard her heart pounding the entire way to her apartment. He never let go of her hand, and neither did she, because while she was nervous because of him he also provided a puzzling sense of comfort that seemed to calm her even just slightly. She stared out the window and watched the buildings pass as they drove up Madison Avenue, high end boutiques and their high end customers dabbling outside, quickly coming out of eyesight in the quick ride to her house. Soon the high end boutiques became project buildings and bodegas and late-night stoop partiers and for a moment she almost felt embarrassed about where she lived, but then she felt him squeeze her hand and once again she was put back into a relaxing trance.

The walk up to her apartment was silent as well, and when Apollo bounded down the hallway to meet his best friend she relaxed even more, grinning and scratching his chin as he licked at her forearm. He got bored of her quickly, though, prancing around Brady's legs and right behind her to start sniffing at Harry's hands- a smell he already found familiar and safe since it was always on Brady's clothes and in her hair. She smiled at the two of them, Harry getting onto his knees to give the dog a proper hello as she headed into the kitchen to grab some water.

"Do you want some water?" She had asked loudly, her voice echoing through the nearly empty apartment. It was at that moment that he walked in and she was so startled by seeing him in the doorway that she dropped the glass in the sink, shattering it. She let out of a huff of air, her hand still in the air as she glanced at the mess she made in the sink and looked back over at him, her cheeks turning red and a sheepish smile coming over her face.

He blinked at the noise and then smiled back, his own cheeks turning red as his gaze turned down to his feet. "Sorry," he said softly, "I didn't mean to scare you."

He walked forward then, stepping up beside her and looking into the sink, his arm brushing against hers as he looked down at the mess of shattered glass, his nose scrunching up. She looked up at him then- and what a fu.cking mistake that was- because she just couldn't believe what she was looking at.

Harry had always been beautiful to her- all big, green, glassy eyes and long and lean body- but right now the only thing illuminating him was the fluorescent light above her sink that made him look to be otherworldly. The light enhanced the intoxication swimming in his eyes and right then and there they looked bigger- they looked even brighter- a tangle of dark green and light yellow encasing dilated pupils with the whites of his eyes slightly red from his exhaustion. She noticed the shadow of his jawline- how sharp it always had been but right there in her kitchen at four in the morning it was a perfect 90 degree angle, she could draw a perfect square into the corner of it with a pen and teach a fu.cking high school algebra course. The thing that struck her attention the most, though, was his lips- and immediately a song she had heard a while back comparing someone's lips to roses and clovers popped into her head and she felt her eyes tracing them- the plumpness, the redness of them and the unfortunate and overwhelming desire to put her own mouth on his.