Chapter Text
1- HARRY
As soon as the clock strikes 1 p.m., Harry turns his computer off, stands from his chair, and pushes it under the desk. He’s not feeling great; his headache has been getting progressively worse, so he’s decided that he’s going home. No one will miss him here; with his team being in France for a video games conference and his boyfriend, Tim, in an all-day meeting in Liverpool, he’s not needed in the office. His position as a junior character artist doesn’t have much meaning when everyone else isn’t around and there’s no big project in the works, so he leaves the building quietly.
It’s a very cold Thursday in the third week of January, and the crisp air feels like sharp knives on his face. He has a woolly hat on all the way down to his ears and eyebrows, trying to cover as much as possible. His green jacket’s hood is over his hat, and he has a thick scarf wrapped around his neck; the synthetic hairs around it tickle his nose, making him giggle despite his migraine creeping in quickly.
He gets on the tram; it’s not too packed because it’s only after midday and people are still at work. There are some teenagers roaming around the chicken shop on the corner of his road, and he's thankful for the layers of clothing around his ears because teenagers are so loud, and his head feels like it’ll explode at any minute. He can’t wait to get home, have a nice warm bath, and get into bed with all the lights off. Hoping that his migraine will ease and that he’ll feel better when Tim gets home. Since Harry moved into Tim’s house, they’ve not missed a dinner together. They started the tradition when Harry was only staying over: dinner, soft music, and red wine, and they carried it on when he started living there. Every night, Harry cooks and sets the perfect atmosphere. He still can't understand why his family was so against the idea of him leaving his shared flat; they told him to keep it many times, just in case.
The first unusual thing Harry notices when he approaches the house is that Tim’s car is in their driveway, parked next to Harry’s. He’s almost sure it wasn’t there this morning. Tim can’t possibly be back; he would have texted him, as he always does. The second thing that shocks Harry is that Mochi is not jumping on him the moment he opens the door, which probably means she’s outside in the garden, but he swears he left the door slightly open so she could come in and out, so it makes no sense that she’s not running towards him to greet him like she always does. But Harry quickly forgets about that because there’s a third thing that he finds strange: the light in the kitchen is on, and he’s 100 percent sure he turned it off before he left. He always does.
He quickly unlocks the garden door, which was indeed closed, but before he can worry about why things are not how he left them this morning, something catches his eye. There’s a jacket on the sofa that he recognises. It’s not Tim's, and it’s not Harry’s, but Harry is very familiar with it because he bought it. It was a Christmas present for Jordan, his best friend. He then leaves his bag, hat, and jacket on a living room chair, wondering what is going on, when everything becomes clear. Harry hears suspicious moans coming from upstairs, but they’re not from his boyfriend; he knows those well.
Shaking like a leaf and barely breathing, Harry goes upstairs. Every step he takes feels heavier, every breath is harder to take, and as he gets closer, his heartbeat is all he can hear. His migraine is even worse than it was, like needles stabbing him in the right eye, so he puts pressure on his temple with his thumb to try and mellow the pain. It doesn’t work.
The sounds coming out of what he assumes is their room are loud. He can hear what he thinks is the headboard banging on the wall, and two different grunts can be heard as he stands in front of the bedroom door. As painful as it’ll be, he wants to see it with his own eyes to believe it, so he takes a deep breath and, with a shaky hand, holds on to the doorknob and pushes it in.
The scene he’s met with is absolutely soul-destroying for him. His bed is still made with his favourite bedsheets, but on top of it, his boyfriend is fucking his best friend. Harry feels his chest aching and his gut turning. He thinks he's going to be sick and places his hand on his belly, like that is going to stop the pain that threatens to rip him up. His eyes are full of angry tears, and he can't believe what he's witnessing. His brain seems to go into overdrive. What the hell is going on? Tim is cheating on him? Since when is Jordan into guys? Jordan is on all fours, and Tim is pounding inside of him with aggressive thrusts. They’re screaming from pleasure, and Jordan is repeatedly saying he’s about to come. They’re so into what they’re doing that they haven’t heard Harry open the door, and they haven’t so much as glanced in his direction to see him paralysed and on the edge of a panic attack. But Tim must sense something, or maybe he hears Harry gasping for air at some point because he turns suddenly, locking eyes with a stunned Harry.
“Fuck!” Tim breathes out. He immediately pulls out of Jordan, who ends up not coming, and falls on his belly. “Harry!”
Tim’s voice sends an instant energy down Harry’s spine, and he quickly runs down the stairs. He jumps over the last two steps, wanting to get out of the house as quickly as possible without interacting with either of them, but he’s about to open the front door when he feels someone grab him.
“Let me go!” Harry shouts, moving his arm frantically to force Tim to loosen his hold.
“Harry, listen,” Tim says, calmer than Harry would have expected.
“I’ve heard and seen enough! Let me go!” At this point, Harry knows he's not having a full-on panic attack, but the pressure of Tim’s fingers on his bicep is suffocating.
Tim has always been stronger than him, and Harry is pinned against the wall in an instant. Tim finally looks a little bit shocked, with sweat still running down his forehead and his naked chest. Harry feels Tim’s still half-hard cock against his thigh, and his stomach turns, disgusted at the sensation. They’re both breathing heavily, and for a moment, Harry thinks Tim is going to kiss him, but thankfully, he moves back, still holding Harry’s arm to keep him still.
“Harry,” Tim starts. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not!” Harry is so angry that he can’t even think or speak clearly. All he wants to do is get out of there as fast as possible. “Let me go, Tim, for fuck’s sake! Let! Me! Goooo!”
There’s a charged silence for a few seconds. They just look at each other and still breathe heavily into each other’s faces.
“You’re not sorry you were fucking Jordan, and you’re not sorry you hurt me,” Harry finally spits it out. “You’re just sorry you got caught; you’re just sorry you won’t have me and your side piece, but you can keep him! I don’t want to ever see you or him again. You deserve each other, you pieces of shit!” Harry yells, spit flying out of his mouth and landing on his boyfriend’s face. He’s surprised at how clear his mind is.
“You don’t mean that; come on! You love me. And you love him; he’s your best friend!” Tim’s tone hardly shows regret, and it hits Harry like a brick. Everyone was right about Tim. Everyone but him.
“I do love you, and I thought you loved me. I defended you with everything I had. I put my friendships and my relationship with my family on the line for you. They hardly ever call me anymore. Everyone warned me about you, and I foolishly didn’t listen.” Harry chuckles, embarrassed that he sacrificed so much for the man in front of him.
“Your stupid family knows nothing about us!” Tim shouts. It's the first time that he’s raised his voice in anger since Harry found them, and Harry knows why.
“You’re right. And that’s because I never let them know us, just in case they were right, and look at what happened,” Harry says, his tone calmer now.
“Fucking idiots, what do they think they know about me?” Tim shouts.
“Much more than I did, it seems! Their intuition was right, and I disregarded every single comment and concern from them because it couldn’t possibly be true! You loved me!”
“I do love you!” Tim insists in a last attempt to clear his name. He hates it when people don’t like him, getting defensive whenever Harry expresses the opinions of his family or when Harry dismisses him.
“No, you don't, because you don’t cheat on someone you love!” Harry screams, losing every ounce of cool he’s managed to gather.
“Don’t scream at me!” Tim yells back.
“Oh, excuse me for being upset! I fucking found you fucking someone else—my straight best friend at that! What don’t you get, you fucking moron?” Harry shouts. Over Tim’s shoulder, he finally sees Mochi run towards him, but before she reaches the hallway, where they are, she stops by the stairs and barks. Seconds later, a mop of blonde hair appears behind Tim.
“Who are you calling a moron?” Jordan asks aggressively. “If you were enough for him, he wouldn’t have been tempted to look elsewhere.”
“Since when do you fuck men? Or do you only fuck my man?” Harry angrily asks him.
Harry wants to wipe the stupid grin off his stupid face. He can’t believe he got fooled like that. Harry met Tim on a night out with Jordan. They were ordering some shots at a nightclub when Tim approached Harry and offered to pay for their drinks if he danced with him. They danced all night, and Tim paid for his drinks until the club closed. Jordan left them in front of the club’s door when his taxi arrived, and Harry got in Tim’s car, who fucked him in the back seat and drove him home after. The following week, they saw him again in the same club, and the night worked out more or less the same way: Tim paid for the drinks, and Harry danced with him. But that second night, it was more grinding than dancing, and they were hungrily kissing in the middle of the dance floor before the fifth song. Jordan had stayed close to them but never interfered, finding other people to dance with. Tim and Harry became inseparable from then on; the eight-year age gap didn’t matter because they understood each other. They had fun alone, and they had fun when Jordan tagged along. He didn’t suspect a thing because Jordan was always preoccupied with his next fuck—a female fuck, as far as Harry knew—and never mentioned anything about liking men or finding Tim attractive.
“Since your boyfriend fucked me so good, I couldn’t stay away, and he’s fucked me every week since,” Jordan tells him proudly. Tim looks at Jordan disappointedly but doesn’t correct him or tell him to stop.
“Fuck you, Jordan. Fuck you!” Harry yells at him while Mochi barks loudly.
“Shut up, stupid dog!” Jordan shouts and almost kicks her, but luckily she’s fast and clever and moves back in time to avoid his foot.
The grip Tim had on his arm finally softens, and Harry is able to move to the side. As if she knows, Mochi runs towards him, barking like crazy at Tim and reassuring Harry with loving licks. Mochi looks up at the black leash hanging next to Harry, and he grabs it and a jacket fast, opening the door and making space for her to walk beside him. He closes it behind them, leaving a quiet Tim in the hallway.
“Let’s go, girl, let’s go!” Harry encourages his dog with a knot in his throat and anger in his heart.
He turns onto the main road, the bubbly energy of the city hitting him in the face and the brightness of the day blinding him even if it’s cloudy. He feels his head pounding and his right temple about to explode, so he presses it firmly; unfortunately, it does nothing to calm the pain. The sounds of cars and motorbikes are doing very little to drown out his thoughts, but he’s not even sure the thoughts he’s having are coherent anyway. He recognises flashes of hurt and disappointment with random breakup songs playing; he feels his chest tighten at certain visuals his brain remembers, but what has him raging is the certainty that his family tried to tell him so many times. His mum tried to warn him in the endless conversations they had when he started seeing Tim. Gemma, his sister, had told him a million times that she thought he wasn’t good enough for Harry, that she thought he was arrogant and entitled and didn’t treat Harry right. Did he listen? Did he ever even consider that they were saying it for a reason? No, he didn’t. He felt attacked, judged, and avoided the topic. Every time he saw them, he barely made eye contact so that they didn’t read his hurt soul, and he tried to divert their conversations elsewhere. He gave his private life no space at all when he was with his loved ones, so they didn’t see the pain it put him through. And Jordan? Jordan has always been the straightest man he’s ever known, with almost a new weekly hookup and women at his feet wherever they went. They met in secondary school, and Jordan always protected and defended him from the occasional homophobe in class. He would be a different, more reserved person if it weren’t for Jordan, and now he feels his betrayal so deeply that he can’t even begin to think about him without feeling his chest seize. He’ll deal with this one heartbreak at a time.
He takes a left turn and follows the little road away from the busyness of the main street, and Mochi seems determined to take him somewhere specific. It really feels like she’s walking him, not the other way around. She seems distressed and nervous, and when he sees the small, semi-private park at the end, he understands.
When Harry got Mochi a year ago from the shelter, the first place they walked to was this little green area in between buildings. Mochi was nervous, and Harry understood, so before he took her home, he showed her around. As soon as she stepped onto the grass, she instantly felt calmer. Harry observed that she stopped shaking and sat down, the fresh grass probably feeling nice against her fur.
He’d wanted a dog all his life, but his mum always told him it was a lot of responsibility, and with work and other commitments, she wasn’t sure they would be able to look after it properly. But a year ago, after moving in with Tim, Harry thought it was the perfect time to adopt one to keep him company when Tim was travelling for work. He stepped into the shelter one Saturday morning and felt an overwhelming love and a strong need to protect every single animal there. They seemed well looked after; everything was clean, and there was someone playing with a group of dogs who looked happy to be entertained. The cage-like spaces they had for each animal were, of course, small, but the dogs seemed pretty comfortable. Harry’s heart still broke when he saw so many abandoned dogs, all beautiful and smart, left to their own devices in a city where they would not survive alone. Harry would have loved to take them all home, but the one that really caught his eye was an orange-looking pup in the third cage. “Shiba inu” read the sign, and when the little dog looked into Harry’s eyes, he melted. He knew then that there was no way he was leaving without her.
“Have you named her yet?” he asked the vet that was checking her out.
“We haven’t, no. She’s only been here a week; sad little thing. Now it’ll be your honour to name her.”
So he named her Mochi because mango mochi is his favourite Japanese dessert and because she was the sweetest pup Harry had ever seen.
In retrospect, Tim was never too pleased with the dog; even when they’d both agreed the dog was a good choice, by the time Mochi was living with them, Tim made it clear he wasn't happy about it, but he sighed and told Harry he could keep her. That in itself should have been a red flag that Harry should have seen. That and the fact that Mochi would bark at Jordan every time they hung out at home. It got so bad sometimes that Harry had to bribe her with treats to keep her outside.
Harry and Mochi sit on the grass now, the park offering them the calm they both needed, like that first day together. He can’t believe what just happened—what he’s witnessed in his own house, in his own room. How could he be so blind? But was he blind? Did he miss the signs? He’s sure if he looks back, he’ll find the exact moment where it started, but right now, he’s more worried about his future than anything else. What’s going to happen with the house? How awkward will things be at work? Work. He can’t possibly go back there and see his face every day. But what is he going to do? He still has very little experience in the field, having just finished university a few months ago and only worked in a junior position. But he can’t see himself going into the office tomorrow like nothing happened. There are so many worries flooding his brain and so many unanswered questions that all his body can do is remain in shock. He wants to cry for the good memories they had, cry for a friendship that was precious to him, cry for a future that won’t look how he imagined, and cry for the betrayal he’ll have to live with. The man he loves was fucking his best friend on his favourite bedsheets, but right now he has no tears.
The January rain is unforgiving, and it falls down strong while they’re still at the park. Mochi has been running after a ball Harry found in the bushes that he’s been throwing at her for the last twenty minutes, and they were so distracted that he missed the clouds covering the sky.
“Mochi! We’re leaving!” Harry shouts at his dog, who’s looking for a squirrel she just saw. “Mochiiiiii! Come on, it’s starting to rain!”
It takes Harry another ten minutes to convince her to leave, and when they finally do, Mochi kisses him sweetly on his cheek, licking him a few times. Harry smiles for the first time in hours. He curses himself for not grabbing a waterproof jacket before he left and hugs himself tight in a warming and comforting way. Wet, cold, and heartbroken are truly a really bad and uncomfortable combination.
The rain somehow stops after drenching them. His trousers feel heavy, and the jacket has done nothing to prevent his jumper and t-shirt from getting wet underneath it. He swears his underwear is also wet and can’t wait to take it off, have a hot bath, and ignore Tim for the rest of the night. He really doesn’t want to have to deal with him tonight.
When he gets home, the house is quiet and dark. Tim’s car is gone from the driveway, and Harry feels like he can suddenly breathe. Mochi walks around happily and spends a good few minutes coming in and out of the garden, which Harry realises is a mistake because the living room floor is getting mud all over. He cleans it up and urges her to stay inside by putting food in her bowl in the kitchen, which seems to do the trick, and she eats and drinks for a bit while Harry starts running the bath that he’s been dreaming of since he left the office.
He pours some bubble soap into the water and lights candles. He’s never allowed scented ones because Tim hates the smell, but honestly, fuck him now. Harry hopes the smell spreads through the whole house and stays. When the bathtub is full and the bubbles are almost spilling out, he gets inside. The water is hot against his cold skin, turning it red instantly. Harry takes a deep breath and holds it before he submerges his head under the water. He can only hear the muffled sound of his breathing; he can only feel the water surrounding him and calming his nervous system, and miraculously, he realises his migraine is almost gone. When he can’t hold his breath anymore, he stays a bit longer because he knows he’ll miss the calm he feels right now. He eventually comes out, gasping for air desperately and taking the bubbles off his face with his hand. And while he’s fighting to get some air into his lungs, he starts sobbing. All the sadness, all the disappointment, and all the pain come at once. Now that his guard is down it completely overtakes him.
He cries in the bathtub until the water gets cold, and after putting some fresh bed sheets on the guestroom’s bed, he cries until sleep finally gives him peace.