Work Text:
but it's golden
Some days, she has to get up at four am. The world is different then, tinged blue, and still loud. On those days, Harry picks her up for work, driving fast on empty roads. Allie’ll make him coffee, black coffee with a shot of vanilla syrup from a twenty ounce bottle she bought at the grocery store. She doesn’t even like vanilla syrup in her coffee, but he does, and most of the time she’s making coffee for the both of them.
“Have I ever told you your coffee is the best?” he’ll ask, loudly, the radio turned up to some pop station, one hand on the wheel.
And she’ll smile at him, wide and tired. It never feels like four in the morning when he drives her into work.
At the bakery, she’ll shape baguette loaves while he preheats the ovens and takes the pastries out to come to room temperature before baking. They take down chairs together, flip on light switches, and dance to Harry’s morning Spotify playlist (he makes themed spotify playlists like a teenage girl. Allie makes fun of him relentlessly for it, but still avidly listens to them at home).
Early mornings like these happen maybe twice a week. Afterwards, Harry’ll drive her home, both of them snacking on the pastries too ugly to make it to the display case. Sometimes she thinks Harry makes a couple ugly on purpose, just for these drives home. She doesn't ask, though, too afraid of ruining the magic.
It wasn’t her plan to work at a bakery after college. Sure, she didn’t exactly have a plan, but she’s near certain that if she did, this wouldn’t have been it. Only, Grizz is one of her best friends, and he’s taking a big plunge opening a bakery straight out of school, so it only really makes sense to take the job. And then there’s Harry too, another friend of Grizz’s from a sort of adjacent world, who’s been right there next to her from the start, through every sheet tray burn, and deformed loaf of bread.
Now her plan is to start a catering company, to make fancy food for rich people. She can almost see it in the distance, everything working out. Only it’s blurry, grows hazier the longer she stares. Sometimes, she wonders if this is going to be her whole life, working at a bakery her friend owns. She wonders if that’d really be so bad, if that could be her dream life if she really tried to make it that.
Weirdly, Harry’s right there beside her while she wonders, poking her in the side and asking if she wants half of a day old croissant. At some point, she realizes, he became part of her future too, a wide smile sitting next to her in the car while they eat pastries. She doesn’t wonder what this means because she only really sort of notices it.
The first time she meets Harry is at a party. He’s holding a red solo cup, and mixes her a drink so good that goes searching for him to make her another. It’s bright, and sweet, and makes everything a little fuzzier.
He remembers her when Grizz introduces them at the bakery.
“You made me make you that drink what, three times?” he asks, but he’s grinning at her, smiling from ear to ear.
And though she doesn’t recognize him at first, her memories of the night hazy at best, his smile brings him back in quick flashes that won’t seem to go away. “Twice, actually.”
“You’re welcome for that, by the way.” He’s joking, she thinks, offering her that tilted grin that makes her feel weird inside. Sometimes she forgets that he’s Harry Bingham, this larger than life guy who she’d hear about sometimes in the dorms, whispers about how perfect he was. They’d grown up near each other too, a fact that she wouldn’t find out until later.
“West Ham?” he’d asked her with a tilt of his head.
She’d nodded. “Yep. Born and raised.”
“North Ham,” he’d said with a grin (always a grin. He never stopped with it, never stopped to give his poor facial muscles a break). “We always beat you guys at football.”
She didn’t think twice about how different everything might’ve been if they’d grown up together. West Ham is a tight knit sort of community, one where everyone knows everything about everyone else, a rich person’s version of small town America.
Now, though, she wonders if they would’ve been friends, if he’d always sported a grin like that, if he played sports growing up, pitched for his little league team, or played point guard in basketball. It’s little things that make her stop and pause while she waits for pastries to finish baking.
He always pulls her out of it, though, with a quick nudge in the side, or a “Pressman I need your help up front.” But sometimes, she wonders if he thinks about what the if’s too.
The five moments where Harry and Allie become friends (in no particular order).
- Their first four am shift when Allie brings extra coffee. (She drives herself in that day, and only gets honked at once. Sometimes she wonders how she ever even got her license.) “You want a cup?” she’d asked, holding her thermos in the air, and he’d smiled, all tired and undeniably Harry before saying sure. Two weeks later, he’s giving her drives to and from work those days, and she keeps a bottle of vanilla syrup in her cabinet.
- That first time he offers her a drive to work. It’s in the morning, when they first get there, after he watches her struggle into a parking spot. “You need some help, Pressman?” Normally, Allie would turn beet red and shake her head over and over until the embarrassment at least sort of wore off, but it was way too early in the morning for that, so instead she steps out of her car and suddenly he’s parking it for her. “I’ll just give you a ride next time.” he tells her later while sipping his coffee. A week later, the next time they share the four am shift (mostly it’s Grizz’s shift, but sometimes he needs a break, or has meetings in the morning; that’s when her and Harry take it), he’s there in front of her apartment. That’s also, coincidentally, the first morning his coffee has that vanilla syrup in it.
- When Grizz and his boyfriend, Sam (who also just so happens to be Allie’s cousin. It’s a small world sometimes), are both in, Allie and Harry take lunch together, making sandwiches and eating them on the patio in the back. They’ll switch halves, one making there’s on sourdough while the other makes it on focaccia. Sam thinks it’s cute; Harry thinks it’s ingenious. “We’re so fucking smart,” he’ll say while eating. Allie’ll take a sip of her La Crioux (Harry hates the stuff, and she doesn’t like it much either, but the look on his face when she opens the can makes it all worth it) and smile and that’ll be that.
- Their first lunch rush together, about a week after the bakery opens when it first begins to really pick up steam. They alternate between working the cash register and making sandwiches. She laughs at his concentration face, the one he makes while slicing the sourdough bread where his features scrunch up and brow furrows. Now, sometimes, he’ll scrunch up his face just to make her laugh. It makes her feel a lot less like the twenty-something year old she is, and a lot more like a teenage girl with an almost crush.
- On the fourth of July when they walk through the downtown to a park where an annual celebration is held instead of heading straight home after work. They get tacos and share a bag of kettle corn, and suddenly it’s nearly ten and she’s not back at her apartment yet, and they’re about to watch the fireworks.
The fourth of July is her second favorite holiday, right after Christmas, and right before Thanksgiving. The bakery opens a little later that day, closer to the time where, according to Grizz (she doesn’t really know the town all that well), a parade sweeps through the downtown. They catch the lunch rush and all the pre-dinner snacks, before closing an hour or two late.
It’s Harry’s idea to go to the park.
“I smell food,” he says. He’s her ride home; her water bottle is locked in his car from when she forgot to grab it this morning, and she keeps a pair of sunglasses in his glove compartment.
“Twenty minutes,” she tells him. “I wanna go home and watch the fireworks on TV.”
He snorts. “Thirty minutes,” he says. “And you do know they do fireworks at the park too?”
Fun fact: she didn’t know that. He doesn’t need to know that she didn’t know that, though.
“I’ll give you forty if you buy me a taco.”
“You are absolute shit at negotiations, Pressman,” he says, but already he’s waving goodbye to Grizz and grabbing her wrist to pull her out of the building.
“You’re right.” He’s still holding her wrist. She doesn’t really care much. “I want three tacos, and a drink.”
They walk down the street towards the park, laughing at a lemon shaped lemonade stand up ahead. They weave through crowds of people in search of Harry’s favorite taco truck (“They sell them at the farmers' market.” “Of course you go to the farmers' market.”), and Allie wonders if an extra twenty minutes would get her an elephant ear.
“Your tacos,” he says, holding out the plate to her. Harry sits down next to her on a ledge, feet dangling over. In front of them, a couple of kids are playing catch with a beach ball. Harry looks a little like he wants to join in, and Allie can’t stop smiling. They’re pressed together, knees brushing and feet bumping every time they swing their legs forward. When they’re done eating their tacos, Harry throws away their trash and holds up his keys.
“Time for me to take you home, I guess,” he says, and she scrunches up her face.
“I was thinking dessert maybe, elephant ears, or snowcones? If you want, of course.” And there’s his grin again, a mile wide as he pockets his keys.
“We can share a snowcone while waiting in line for an elephant ear,” he tells her, bumping his shoulder against hers as they walk back towards the food vendors. “Hope you don’t mind blue raspberry.”
At the snowcone stand, the person gives them two spoons, and Allie leaves a hefty tip. It’s just ice and sugar, but she loves it. The line for elephant ears goes on forever, but she’s fine with that; she’s fine with waiting and waiting and standing next to Harry while sharing a snowcone. Sometimes, their spoons will bump (‘cause they’re both losers who eat snowcones with spoons), and he’ll grin at her and she’ll grin back and blame it all on the sugar.
“These elephant ears better be really fucking good,” Harry says when the snowcone is all gone and the line still looks twenty minutes long. Allie’s starting to wonder if they’re worth it too, it’s going to get dark soon, she can see it in the blue of the sky (and the time on her phone). Somehow, disregarding drives to and from work, this is the only time Harry and Allie have hung out somewhere besides the bakery. It’s fun.
The elephant-ears-and-then-go plan quickly becomes the Harry-buying-two-bubble-guns (“One for both of us!”) plan, which in turn becomes caramel corn and fireworks once the sun begins to set. Harry shoots bubbles at the little kids that pass by, and buys them both copious amounts of glow sticks, cracking them over and over until they glow neon colors.
It becomes Harry giving her his coat when a light breeze causes her to shiver, and Allie leaning a little on his shoulder as they wait for the fireworks to come on.
“You know,” she says to him quietly. There’s a band playing a little ways in front of them. It’s some weird rock-country-pop fusion that doesn’t at all work. “If you freeze glow sticks they’ll glow for longer. Some science-ie stuff happens.”
“Some science-ie stuff?” he repeats with raised eyebrows. “Glad you weren’t my lab partner.”
She makes a face at him, taking a handful of caramel from the bag sitting between them and shoving it in her mouth rather ungracefully (he laughs at her; she leans a little closer). “I’ll let you know that I was a great lab partner, passed all my science classes and everything.”
“Nah, you’re right. We work pretty well together.”
Later, once the caramel corn is starting to disappear too, the fireworks will start. The little kids sitting in front of them will ooh and ah the whole time, and Allie will nearly lean her head on Harry’s shoulder. After the last firework sounds, they’ll walk back to his car, Harry shooting bubbles out in front of them as they walk. Allie will laugh at some stupid story about Harry and his sister while he drives her to her apartment, and once they get there, while stopped outside she’ll thank him for such a good time.
“Anytime, Pressman. I’ll see you Monday,” he’ll say, smiling at her all soft and quiet. It’ll be the first time she’ll see him be not-loud. It’ll be strange, just a little weird because it’s new, but she’ll like it.
“See you Monday, Harry,” she’ll say back, lingering only a half second too long in his car. She’ll wonder if he notices.
His headlights bright in the dark, will leave his car sticking out like a sore thumb as he waits for her to enter the building before pulling away. She’ll wave goodbye before stepping inside, and he’ll wave back, shooting a stream of bubbles out of his window and watching for her laugh. And that’s how her second favorite holiday will end.
Little things that change after the fourth of July. They stand closer now, pressed together at their sides during the lunch rush and they pivot back and forth between the cash register and the sandwich station. There’s inside jokes about bubbles and elephant ears and glow sticks that still make Grizz smile even though he’s not entirely in on it. And there’s Harry Bingham’s hand on her wrist as he pulls her places, to their lunch break, or his car after work, or a new antiques shop he wants to visit before dropping her off.
Allie has no problem with any of these changes. They’re friends, and friends stand close together, and have inside jokes, and touch sometimes, and go places together. Harry’s a good friend, a nice one who remembers her favorite kind of pastry, and the stories she tells about her childhood. And though maybe sometimes she thinks a little too long about his smile, or that face he makes when he’s just about to tell a really good story, how his eyes light up if you say the right thing at the right time, and how good he is with little kids, it doesn’t matter much, because they’re friends, and she’s sure friends do that too.
He doesn’t find out her name for two weeks.
Allie thinks it’s funny, watching him hype himself up when he sees her walking towards the bakery, only for his faux confidence to disappear the second he steps inside. She’s never seen him so flustered before.
It’s Kelly. She lets it slip out when Harry gives her his own name while handing her a croissant. As she walks out of the bakery, back turned to the register, Harry turns to face Allie and give her a thumbs up.
“Just ask her out,” Allie tells him over dinner at a new italian place across from the bakery. She’s twirling carbonara on her fork and wishing they’d gotten an order of garlic bread.
“And how do I do that?” he asks. “Should I write it on a croissant or something, or would that seem creepy?”
She laughs at him, the pasta slipping off her fork and back on the plate. “Definitely creepy, Harry. You really shouldn’t do that.”
“I’ll ask her out when you ask out that delivery boy you always flirt with,” he tells her, staring over at her with a wide grin and some sort of look in his eyes. He likes to make everything a competition.
“Will?” she asks, and he nods. She feels herself turning a pale pink, and shakes her head furiously. “No. I don’t even like him. Plus, I only see him like once, maybe twice a week. You see Kelly nearly every day; you hand her a chocolate croissant nearly every day. I’ll even do it for you if you’re too chicken. I’ll pass her a note that says do you like Harry-- yes or no?”
“Wow Pressman, you’re just chock full of good ideas, aren’t you.”
(Harry picks up the check for dinner. Allie doesn’t think of it as a date, because just last week she’d paid for lunch at the mexican restaurant on the corner. Walking out, while they’re pressed close together and each grabbing two mints from the bowl up front, an older lady waiting for a table says that they’re a cute couple. Both smile. Allie adds that to the list of worlds she doesn’t think about, right next to the one in which they grew up in West Ham together.)
Two days after he learns her name, Kelly comes in with someone. They’re holding hands, standing close together while pointing at different pastries in the display case (Allie wonders if they’re just friends, because she knows for certain that that’s how her and Harry look when they enter restaurants. She also wonders, though only briefly, if her and Harry actually look like more than just a couple of friends to people, if people actually think that they’re together).
“Hey Kelly,” Harry says from the register. Allie watches carefully from the back counter, alternating her vision between the sandwich she’s supposed to be making and the scene unfolding in front of her.
“Hey Harry,” she says back, all light and sweet. She nods her head towards the woman standing next to her. “This is my girlfriend Becca. She’s lived around here for forever, but somehow never been here.”
Allie winces, and Harry pales a little, though, to his credit, takes the news in stride. “Nice to meet you Becca. I’d definitely recommend cinnamon rolls if you’ve never been here before.”
Later, while she’s signing for an order of flour in the back, Will asks her out for coffee. She bites her lip and thinks about accepting, only then she spots Harry grabbing a pastry for a little girl up front, and shakes her head no. Before they leave, Allie buys two cream cheese danishes for the ride home.
“Full price?” Harry asks her when she hands him his.
She nods. “Yep.”
“Pity’s never tasted quite so good.”
She doesn’t think twice about Will the delivery boy. She does, however, think about Harry’s too wide smile, and the crinkle around his eyes he gets when she tells a really bad joke.
The five moments where Harry and Allie become more than friends (in no particular order).
- The first time Allie kisses Harry’s cheek when he drops her off at her apartment. It’s quick, and mostly unromantic, but there’s this rush she gets that makes her do it again the next day. Neither talk about it, and it becomes just as normal as Harry grabbing her wrist and pulling them to dinner.
- When they hang out at her place after work because Harry doesn’t believe that she can actually cook (she can; she swears. It’s not that much different than baking), and Allie’s all about proving points. It’s a little strange how quickly she gets used to having him over after that, and then how quickly she gets used to being at his place too. Suddenly, he’s not driving her straight home after work, and suddenly, she doesn’t mind that.
- The first time she falls asleep next to him. They’re at his place watching romcoms on Netflix on his couch (they both love a good romcom) when they fall asleep, waking up to that Netflix screen that asks if they’re still watching. Harry’s arm is wrapped around her, and their legs are loosely tangled. Neither move quickly away while waking up. Allie wonders what that means.
- When he kisses her, soft and sweet while they’re closing up the bakery. Early evening light streaming in through the windows, her sitting on the counter, counting cash, and then suddenly his lips on hers. She wraps her arms around his neck, and laughs a little, because somehow this feels so incredibly right. And then he’s laughing too, smiling against her, and everything feels a little right. Later, he’ll take her home, and she’ll invite him up, and that’ll be that.
- Their first date. He takes her to the italian restaurant across the street, the one they’ve already been to a million times. They’ll go halfsies on the check, and she’ll spend the night at his place.
She really likes italian food. It’s probably her second favorite type of food, right under french pastries, and right above mexican. Harry knows that.
He pulls her out the bakery after she grabs her stuff, waving goodbye to Grizz as they leave.
“Just so you know,” he tells her as they wait to cross the street. “This is a date.”
She snorts. “Okay. And what exactly does that mean? Are you going to kiss me over plates of pasta, or are we finally going to stop getting separate desserts, like, what’s going on here?”
He rolls his eyes, pulling open the door to the restaurant for her. “You’re thinking too much, Pressman.”
She still eats bites of pasta off of his plate, and they still get separate desserts (he wants tiramisu; she wants panna cotta. “How is this relationship ever going to work?” he jokes, and she shrugs). Nothing’s really different, but everything feels different, and she likes that.
Later, they’ll drive back to his place. He’ll kiss her long, and soft, and sweet, and slow, and she’ll smile wide it hurts. She won’t wonder about what-ifs once, but in the morning, when she wakes up beside him in bed, she will wonder if this could be her future.
During four am shifts, she gets to watch the sunrise from the bakery, early morning light streaming in through the front windows. From the back, while he places sheets of pastries into the oven, Harry will ask if she has any song requests. The coffee sitting next to her will taste faintly of vanilla (it reminds her of him, and she loves that), and the light will be tinged pink.
“Have I ever told you that you’re really cute?” he’ll ask.
She’ll lean into him. “You’re cute too Bingham.”
They’ll eat ugly pastries, and laugh at bad jokes, and talk about the catering company they’re so close to starting. Harry’ll kiss her, and old ladies will say that they make a cute couple, and they’ll eat the ugly pastries while driving home.
When she’ll imagine her future, he’ll be right there beside her, rubbing small circles into her wrist, while he pulls her towards something new.
like daylight, daylight