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They were at a roadside diner, the type of place no one intended to go to but ended up at out of desperation to break up the concrete monotony that was the A1(M). The sign had splayed red across the road in neon carnage, the lettering flickering and if this was a slasher flick, the audience would already be yelling at them to get the fuck away. Usually, Tom wouldn’t have stopped at a seedy diner, but Harry had been complaining about being hungry for almost thirty minutes at that point and everyone had their limits.
Inside, the place was open and empty and just as shabby—the hot beams of fluorescence buzzed above them, showing up every crack in the vinyl upholstery and every stain on the carpet; it was sticky too and Tom was doing his best not to touch anything he didn’t absolutely have to. Harry had no such concerns and was happily spread over the entire length of the booth, his back against the wall and his legs kicked out in front of him, he’d even had a foot up on the table until Tom had affectionately batted it off with a paper straw.
At least he’d stopped complaining about being hungry. The menus were gummy and laminated, the words so faded he could hardly read them, but Harry had found the authentic (undoubtedly a challenge in the heart of Yorkshire) All-American hamburger in five seconds flat. Before it had arrived, Tom had honestly been expecting a sad, limp thing, but whatever else could be said about this place, they delivered on the food front. The thing that had arrived at their table was a towering Frankenstein-esque creation of beef burgers, bacon, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, all just oozing with sauce—a comprehensive parody of American excess condensed to a single plate.
Frankly, it looked like a health hazard, but Harry appeared to be having the time of his life as he licked the indeterminable sauce off his fingers and grinned at him. Tom smiled back, feeling something that he couldn’t quite name flare up, soft and warm inside him; other people might have called it love and once, when he was younger, he might have done too. Love was tricky and trying to diagnose it based on absence was even trickier.
Tom had spent so many late nights online, combing internet forums, trying to find out what it felt like to fall in love, reading the signs like they were symptoms of a foreign disease, and he knew, deep down, that he’d never felt like that, and while he wasn’t a fan of certainties, he wasn’t sure that he ever would feel any of those things that supposedly united every human being.
For a while, it had felt like an immense hole inside him, a profound absence, that had ached with a specific and insidious kind of longing; the desperate wish that he’d wake up one day and just be normal, average and entirely uneventful. Back Then, he had wanted to hide it as if it were shameful. Without quite intending it, he had glossed over and over the space inside him until he could pretend that it wasn’t a space at all, and not once had he examined it, for it felt like such an ugly thing to have between his ribs. So instead, he faked attractions, constructed crushes, and pretended that he was entirely too busy for love.
His thoughts were interrupted by Harry saying something that was rendered unintelligible thanks to a mouthful of burger.
“Try again,” he said, watching as Harry did his best to swallow the frankly obscene bite he’d just taken as he chewed delicately on a single chip. He hadn't ordered anything because despite what Harry might think, he wasn't going to be able to finish the burger and the onion rings and the chips, certainly not on top of the milkshake he'd ordered—he knew that because Harry had tried something very similar a month or so ago and had then spent the entire next day complaining that Tom had let him do it. So, instead, Tom would nibble at Harry's chips, making enough of a dent in the numbers for Harry to be able to declare triumphant victory over the meal but without making him feel like he cheated. It was a delicate balancing act.
“I said,” Harry managed eventually, “are you absolutely, definitely sure you don’t want any?”
Tom looked between him and the burger—Harry was holding it out, the juices sliding over his hand and dripping onto the napkin; he was still grinning, perhaps even more than before. And even if he had been hungry for it, he wouldn’t have wanted to deprive Harry of it, not when he was genuinely enjoying it so much.
“No,” he said, “believe me, it’s all yours.”
“Okay, but this is totally your last chance,” Harry said, waving the poor burger around, sauce splattering the table until it looked like a crime scene, “and it’s going once, going twice, yep, it’s gone.” He raised it to his mouth and took another bite. “If you want it now,” he said, all the words mushed together with the meat and bread, “you’re going to have to order your own.”
“You know what? I think I’ll be fine,” Tom said, moving on to take a small sip of his drink—he’d tried to order tap water, but Harry had interrupted and then strongarmed him into getting a milkshake, a strawberry-flavoured, bubble-gum-coloured atrocity that wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought it would be; it was almost nice in that airconditioned room on a sticky summer day, kind of way.
He took another sip and gazed out the window. You couldn’t see the road from here and outside was just an endless stretch of empty car park streaked with red light; as he watched another car pulled up to the neon oasis, its lights on full blinding beams. When he turned back, Harry had shifted to sit forward, his elbows on the table, clutching at his milkshake, and just gazing at him, and that might have made another person’s heart skip, but it just filled him with dread.
Tom swallowed, dropping his own gaze down to the plastic table with its peeling coating and unpromising stains; despite what people thought, he understood the mechanics of love perfectly well, and he knew when someone had a thing for him. He’d been trying to convince himself that he’d got it wrong though. Every time that Harry gazed at him, or stood in real close, or touched lightly his arm, he’d sought to fit it into a platonic frame, but that frame was straining at the edges and the feelings were beginning to leak out.
Neither of them said anything and that made it so much worse. For in the silence, the things that he’d been trying to dampen were free to grow and they swelled—uncontrolled and uncontrollable—between them until the weight of it was pushing him back against the vinyl. There was no one else in here anymore and the tacky pop songs rattled around the empty seats, serenading the dirty plates and black concrete landscape. It was a big room, wide and filled with so much space, but even that much space was claustrophobic, and it wrapped itself around them.
Tom dug his nails into his palm, he hadn’t wanted to address the feelings that Harry had been cultivating and certainly, he didn’t want to do it now, but it felt like his fault. He hadn’t told him. He hadn’t made his position clear and nipped it in the bud, and now he had to ruin someone’s day, and usually, he wouldn’t be concerned about that, but this was Harry and he cared about him.
Harry was the one to crack open the silence and let everything spill out. “So, uh, I’ve been thinking,” he said, his hands tucked into his sleeves but still fidgeting, “and, uh, I’ve kind of realised something—something I think you should know.”
“Okay?” Tom said, asking the question and already bracing himself for the answer. Without being too obvious, he tucked himself further into the corner, so that he was walled in on three sides as if that could protect him from another confession—though this one was different because this one was coming from Harry’s lips.
Harry stared at his plate, picking up a chip and dunking it into the splatters of sauce, but never bringing it to his mouth. “So, I know that you don’t like… date, and that’s totally cool, so like I don’t expect anything, I just think this is one of those things, and Hermione said I should tell you before—”
“Harry,” he said, “get to the point.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Harry smiled at him, and Tom couldn’t help the fondness he had for that smile. “Uh, well, I think—I think I’m in love with you.”
And there it was. This was the monumental confession that defined so many lives and haunted so many dreams; this was that great exposure, the ultimate helplessness, and yet, up close, it was so meaningless. People said opening yourself to another’s love was the most vulnerable thing a person could do; Tom didn’t agree. To put it like that, made vulnerability seem so small and so confined; human fragility was exposed in so many ways—pain, fear, anger, horror, kindness—and to squeeze all of that into the moniker of love could never do it the justice it deserved.
Despite this, everyone he’d ever met had professed the great supremacy of this intangible thing. It was timeless, endless; it was completion and with it, you would be made whole. Alone, it could stave off old age and prevent the shattering ache of loneliness that simply must accompany a loveless life. Tom was not lonely, nor was he incomplete, and his life wasn't a great waste, or a tragedy played out in five acts. There was so much more to him—and to every other person on this planet—than their romantic entanglements.
But he couldn’t just say that, even in the dead of night, even in a place where no one else would hear, he still couldn’t say it. So, he looked down at the table to gather his thoughts in his arms and prepare himself for the worst, before raising his gaze to meet Harry’s.
“I know,” he said softly. “You’re not exactly subtle.”
For a moment Harry looked completely mortified and, under the bright lights, his ears were practically the colour of the neon sign still flickering into the night. But he found his voice soon enough. “Mate, come on,” he spluttered, “why the fuck didn’t you say anything? You could have stopped—you might have saved me from looking like an idiot.”
“I don’t think anyone could save you from that.”
Harry threw a, thankfully dry, chip at him and it bounced off his t-shirt and flopped onto the table. They both looked at it, but that might have just been to avoid looking at each other. After all, at least from Tom’s perspective, it wasn’t that he didn’t like Harry, it was that the way he liked him was so foreign from the way that so-called ‘normal people’ liked someone.
He didn’t get butterflies in his stomach, and he never felt awkward or nervous around him—his heart didn’t pound or flip or even flutter, but he felt such a lovely peace with him. He liked him. It was in his stupid grin, the gentleness of his hands, and his ridiculous stubborn pride, but also in the aesthetics of him—he could look at Harry forever, even if he didn’t quite know why he was so interesting. Harry had this whole space right under his skin, and even if Tom couldn’t name what he felt for him, he couldn’t deny that it was something.
“So,” Harry said, and it sounded so loud as if he was yelling across the full length of the diner, “so, uh, do you—”
“I don’t love you—” It was blunt, but it had to be said and it was easier, and less painful for everyone if he just said it.
That didn’t stop it from being uncomfortable and Harry shrunk back in his seat. “Yeah,” he said, and it was painfully flat. “Yeah, yeah. That’s cool—totally cool—can we just, like, forget I said anything? We can be friends, right? Or have I just made this weird? Fuck, I’m sorry for making it weird.”
Tom swallowed; he couldn’t leave it like that. “I don’t love you,” he repeated, “but, I think I feel something.”
“Huh?”
It took all his willpower to keep holding Harry’s gaze; his nails pushing further into his palm. “I care about you,” he said, “and, before you ask, it’s not like a friend, but it’s not—I’m not in love with you either.”
“So, it’s like a secret third thing?” Harry said, looking way too proud of himself and just for that, Tom flicked that chip right back at him and then, for good measure, he flung the milkshake straw as well.
“Alright, alright, I get it—wrong time.” He was grinning though, and that made Tom want to smile too; he didn’t get love, but that wasn’t the barrier that it used to be. He didn’t need to perform to the conventions of love to feel comfortable with himself, and he didn’t mind being loved by someone, not if it was Harry. Of course, it didn’t feel particularly freeing and he certainly didn’t feel as if he’d achieved some great, life-fulfilling moment, but he didn’t mind the way Harry looked at him
The moment passed though, and Harry dipped his head again and went back to drawing a pattern with his chips. “Is, uh, is this other thing something that—you wanna explore it a bit?” he said, not daring to look up, “because, like, I’d totally be down for that—if you are, of course.”
Someone else might have swooned at that, their heart soaring right out of their chest, but Tom’s heart stayed firmly grounded between his lungs. "You know I really won't love you, don't you?" he said softly, "I won't even try."
"Yeah, I know," Harry said just as softly, daring to look up at him, "it doesn't, like, bother me—if you're worried about that." He smiled to himself and nudged his knee against Tom’s, not trapping him in, but just being a presence. "I mean, why the fuck would I want love when I can have whatever it is that I have with you?" he said and because that apparently didn’t feel like enough, he added, “I know you care, and that's—that's all I want really, to feel like someone cares, you know?"
“I know,” Tom said, letting his knee rest against Harry’s. He had no interest in feeling or performing the standard shape of love, but he still wanted to perform the rituals of intimacy, with all their tender fascination, and perhaps this was the way to do it.