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aggresivelyfriendly · 5 years

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Summer’s Child-Chapter One

Hi loves, SO this cult fic thing is happening. I have pages notes and an ending which means this book is in my head and will find its way out. Thanks to @emulateharry, @dirtystyles, and @imetherinthemorning for the looksies! Writing here is about the community for me, so leave me asks!! REBLOGS ARE LOVE! Here we go!

October 1967

"To a daydream believer and a homecoming queeeeeeen!"

"You realize singing in an enclosed space would hurt someone's ears at that volume, even if you owned a bucket to carry that tune?"

Harry wanted to keep his eyes on the road, but they kept drifting over to Jillian gleefully singing in his truck's bench seat. "How are you so up right now anyway? You just worked like 8 hours at ye olde dairy house?"

"It's not the olde dairy house!" Jillian had a musical laugh; it was the first sound Harry remembered when they moved to New York from Cheshire when his mom died; the first thing that made him smile. He was in the principal's office, about to start the first day at this new elementary school, and sulking because his whole life had changed seemingly overnight... and he was missing recess. The window was open and her lilting laugh (it hadn't changed) floated in the window. The adults were so immersed in their conversation, they didn't notice he had gone moved to the glass he looked out. It was then he got his first sight of Jillian. She was riding the swing with another girl, and when it was her turn to go backwards, she'd leaned way back, her friend's weight anchoring her to her swing, her blonde, baby fine hair trailing the ground and her laughing in a way that made him sure it would all be okay. If somebody could laugh like that here, this must be an ok place. And if the blonde girl with the magic homeplace laugh would be his friend, he could make a life here, even without a mom. It would be okay.

It was, and it wasn't, okay. But, her laugh was the same, tonight, a decade or so later in his truck. Her hair had thickened up and wasn't that tow head shade of blonde anymore, but something sandier, frutier. She had gorgeous hair. Yet, that he could ignore or simply acknowledge. But her body had changed in a way Harry really tried to ignore but couldn't, and would never acknowledge. Not out loud. Jillian was always a beauty, just recently she knocked him out with it, her changes. He was pretty sure that he loved her then, when they were in first grade. He loved her the same and different now. Same because of her unchanging laugh, and different because of the things they carried together, and that filled out form taking up half his front seat and every inch of his brain.

"It may as well be 'ye olde dairy house.' Why is a restaurant called 'dairy barn' at all appetizing? I do not want to eat with my meal's sister you know?" He glanced over expecting to see her biting her lip so she could pretend he wasn't funny and instead got a glimpse of her tonsils. "Oh, my scintillating company putting you to sleep now? You were so lively a second ago. It just hit you?"

"Yeah, and you talk so slow it makes me doze off." She gave him a lax smile that he took his eyes off the road to catch. "You could just eat the fries, when you come to see me. I was just reading this article about how people in California, in San Francisco, are giving up meat, and even cheese!"

There was her spirit and obsession. "No dairy barn in San Francisco then?" He dimpled her way. "Where will you work when you move there?"

"I dunno! Wherever! Oh! Maybe a rock venue! A coffee shop, hell, I'll wait tables at a diner. As long as I can get a bed in the Haight." She got quiet suddenly and Harry had to look at her from the way she changed the energy in the car. The way she could do that, flip the feelings around her on a dime, made him ready to give her the hundred dollar bill he got for hauling lumber that one time, every coin

"What?" He elbowed her lightly, she scooted closer. "Don't go all quiet on me now.

"You'd go with me? Right?" Her eyes were so big. And he knew their exact shade of blue green, even though he couldn't make it out on the moonless night in their small town. He was driving them out to the small house she shared mostly with her mom. They were past the streetlights now.

"Go with you where?" He was glad the road was empty as he drifted to the middle line.

"Go with me to California! Of course!" She smiled. "For the smartest boy in school you sure lose the plot sometimes Harry." He couldn't help but think there was a lining of knowledge along the curl of her lip. He lost the plot because it was her story, and he'd been thinking more about the sound of the instrument forming it than the lyrics. He loved Jillian's speaking voice, too. He loved a lot about her. Mostly everything.

Truly, he'd probably follow her anywhere. "Like tomorrow? Should I pack a bag?" He wondered why she was stuck on it tonight, thinking about leaving this place.

"No, not tomorrow," she looked forward and scooted a little bit away. Her house came into view with a new car in the drive next to her mom's. "But soon."

"Who's that?" The truck clunked to a stop when he pushed the lever to park.

She groaned. "My mom's new boyfriend, Richard. Keeps telling me to call him Rich," she leaned in with a put-upon leer and said 'Rich' in Harry's face.

He didn't like that, but knew if he asked what that meant she'd shrug and say something dismissive. Try to pretend it meant nothing, so he made a joke, so he could hear her laugh, so it would be ok. "Sounds like a right Dick, that's what you should call him!" Every once in a while he emphasized his faded britishisms because he knew she liked them. She touched him usually in response, which he liked.

Jillian leaned her whole body into him while she giggled. "He is a dick!"

"He already move in?" Harry figured. Since her dad left, three guys had moved in, then out.

Jillian nodded. "Are we going to the bonfire after the game on Friday?" She's closed the subject. He'd only get stony walls and a moat if he kept talking about it. Gate was closed on Dick.

"If you want? We can do whatever you want. I thought you worked though?" He looked down at her clutching her knees.

"I work, but I'd like to go afterwards. Can you pick me up after the game, are you, um, going?" She was picking at the threadbare area now.

"Nah, I'll probably skip the game, study for the SAT."

"Harry, you aren't supposed to study for the SAT, and you don't need to anyway. You're the smartest person I know!" She thought she was dumb, but really, she was smarter than him. She at least knew how to be comfortable in her own skin. Or that she could shed it. He worried too much about what people thought of him. His glasses, and crazy curls, and that he'd grown so fast he fell over his own feet, was rail thin no matter how much he ate.

But he was smart enough to know she didn't want to go inside, and that she wanted to go to the bonfire for the same reason. "Well, my dad says I should study. He still entirely set on me going to his college at Oxford."

"I don't want you to go to rainy England. I think you should go to Berkeley and live with me in San Francisco. Where it's sunny."

"I don't think it's actually that sunny in San Francisco, didn't Mark Twain say the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer there?"

"I have no idea what Mark Twain said," that laugh. "That's your department."

Harry tried not to, but he glanced at his watch, he thought subtlety.

"You have to go." It wasn't a whisper, but her voice sounded a little afraid of the wind.

"It's almost curfew." His dad didn't have a lot of rules, expectations, maybe, but he did set a curfew. "Do you wanna sleep over?" It was torture for him when she did, but at least they both slept then. Him less than her, but the dark shadows under her eyes other mornings gave him a clue about some nights at her own house.

She shook her head. "I don't have any clothes."

"You could borrow some of mine." He offered. He hadn't met Dick, but he already hated him. Was she afraid of a repeat offense or a possibility. What exactly had Rich done or made her afraid he would do?.

"No, it's alright Harry, I'm alright." She smiled at him. It only reached her cheeks.

"Actually, I think I have your jean shorts and the um, the...." God, just say it.

"The what Harry?" Oh wide eyed faux innocence, well at least she was laughing at him instead of the other kind of wide eyed.

"Your pants, your knickers, from when I threw you in the lake, that last week of summer."

"Not really shorts weather." She smiled at him.

"I can wash your uniform pants. In the sink, hang 'em on the line. It's Saturday, we can stay inside until they are dry."

"What if it rains."

"Why don't we worry about that then." He could hear the beg. "I can't sleep without you snoring anymore anyway!"

"I don't snore!" She crossed her arms, and dammit, she had the most perfect breasts. That was knowledge he hadn't studied but had clearly committed to memory. He'd caught sight of them this summer at the lake. Her top had come down when he had thrown her. One time she'd insisted she face away from him. And then her bum was in his face while she wiggled. He thought he might die. He was already hard as a rock from it, but her trajectory had pushed the cups off her boobs and she hadn't realized for a second. He'd got an eyeful he was never going to forget, no matter how much vocabulary he shoved in next to their curvilinear memory. It willfully swam to the top of his consciousness when he was taking care of himself. Those were weak moments, not like when he was in control of himself. Like now, so he could be around her and not look. It was harder when she crossed her arms, in defiance or self satisfaction. It pushed them up. Harry had to work on not looking. But he wasn't one of them, those guys like the ones her mom brought home. He was her safe place, best friend. So he didn't look down, but his peripheral definitely saw their jiggle. And his brain filled in the rest. It would be a long drive home thinking of derivatives. Those worked better than words at erasing her silhouette.

"You do! But I like it."

"Yeah, far out, I have a groovy snore." She huffed and kinda kicked his dashboard.

"The grooviest. And if we are gonna be roommates in San Francisco in a year, I better be really used to it."

"I thought you needed it to sleep."

"Practice makes perfect." He was already slowly reversing. Glad he hadn't shut off the engine, the idle wasn't as much of a sound footprint as the kick over. They sang Beatles tunes and Scott McKenzie on the way to his house. He made up the bed, and they didn't talk much, only in whispers to not wake his dad.

Just before he laid on the floor, she wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on her toes. His eyes closed over the feel of her. She wouldn't talk about it, but he got to guard her castle.

That night, he slept on the floor, like he had ever since the first time she slept over when they were 8. His dad knew back then. He was pretty sure his dad knew now, no matter how quiet their whispers. His dad didn't mention it, so long as there were blankets on the floor when he caught Jillian's scent in the air or laugh on the breeze. Harry was thankful. He had stopped asking questions two years ago when he'd seen Harry with red eyes for a week and a big bruise on Jillian's chin.

That was right around when her dad stopped coming off the road. Well, to the house Jillian and her mom, Karen, shared.

She slept in her own house for a long time then.

Until Ted moved in.

Then Brian.

Now Dick.

She usually didn't need the escape hatch this soon though.

Would he ever be brave enough to ask for the truth? Was there a password or key for the drawbridge.

Would she even tell him? Even if he knew the right way to ask. He'd see her just the same. Maybe love her a little more for her strength.

Jillian, well, his ideas about it were just conjecture, but when something happened, and Harry didn't know what was worse, the getting hit or feeling the other kind of threatened? She withdrew. He simmered. Both filled him with a burning rage and a feeling of helplessness he despised. Whatever was going on, with Tom, Dick, but not Harry, was making her seem hopeless and dreamy.

Harry felt helpless. Jillian lost herself in escape. Far out, unlikely escape. It had started young, and continued 'til now. He worried at times where it would go. Where it was going.

It had started innocently enough. Jillian had always talked about planes, how she'd love to get on one. "Tell me about it. What'd it feel like?" She was fascinated he'd flown there from England.

Harry had reached far back and tried to recall. "It's loud, and it hurts your ears. But they give you some food, and my dad and I played go fish. It took a really long time." He didn't have warm fuzzy feelings about flying. He couldn't manufacture them for her, he was little and his mom was gone, that's what he remembered.

"Did you feel light?" She's picked up her favorite plane toy, and made it fly. She kept hold of it though. He remembers thinking it was weird she didn't throw it to check if it was light. He would have tossed it to check the lightness, he was sure. Maybe she was afraid she wouldn't see where it landed. Jillian would miss it if it was misplaced. She liked the blue jet best.

When they were little, small enough to still play with his vehicle toys in his bedroom when she'd make the long walk into town to hang with him. Jillian always chose the planes while Harry smashed around cars and trains. They'd make whole transit systems. They'd talk about where they were going on each vehicle.

"What about the blue car Harry? Where would it take you?" Jillian would ask.

He'd make something up, New York City, London, the village he grew up near Manchester. Almost always places he had been. He wasn't a daydreamer. He liked concrete images to go with his make believe. Ones that had smells and sounds to complete them. Jillian didn't need them, her imagination was rich enough.

Jillian was a daydreamer. But her lucid hopes were full of blue skies. "What about the Pan Am jet, Jillian? Should we go to Paris?" He'd try to derail her plane of thought. Widen her map.

"No, I think Disneyland!" She'd lain back dreamily. "Dad took me to see Mary Poppins, and they had a short in the beginning of Walt Disney walking around with Mickey there. Harry, it's like a dream, they have treats and flying cars. Do you think cars will ever fly? Like birds?" He'd answered her and they'd talked about amusement park rides and which ones they'd heard about. Harry didn't like the thought of the ones he'd heard were in total darkness, like the Matterhorn. Jillian dreamed of flying through the dark like she had wings and eagle eyes. Ones that could really see, into the dark. She loved eagles.

Birds, actually, , she loved birds her whole life. Harry tried to convince his dad to get her a pet one for her tenth birthday, but he couldn't. His dad told him you couldn't give someone a pet.

When he'd apologized to her, she'd sighed happily, and hugged Harry exuberantly. They'd daydreamed all the places the bird might fly to.

"I hope my bird goes to California!" She'd been listening to The Beach Boys record they pooled their change to get. Harry wasn't sure he loved the beach boys, he preferred the Beatles, like the Englishman his voice still marked him as, but he liked that even during winter days, if they listened to The Beach Boys, the sun shone out of Jillian's face.

When it was time to go home, she'd hugged him tight, and thanked him for the bird. The one he hadn't given her, but just wanted to.

"It's better this way, they wouldn't let me keep it. My dad might kill it." That she'd said like a joke. Harry knew better. He didn't see Mr. Sweeney very often, and he was happy about it. His wife and daughter were blond with blue eyes, and maybe his dirty hair approached that coloring, you just couldn't tell from the grease. He wasn't sure about his irises. Harry couldn't see the color of his eyes, only the dark blotches around them. He might do it, kill the bird. Jillian would never recover. She was right, it was better to dream up the bird, away from their gray sky days in NY, safe and warm and with its kind. "Now I get to imagine his travels. Think he flies near the surfers?"

Surfers had been her burgeoning obsession then. She read voraciously about it afterwards. Before long, she knew all the terms, littered her speech with them in Junior High. Some phrases stuck around. She even called wipe out when she saw Harry's books fly outta his hands the first day of Sophomore year.

He knew she hadn't seen Mark Martin knock them down on the other side of the locker, she would have had a fit and rethought her opinion on Mark. Mark hated Harry, and his glasses. Told him so in sneers. He was always asking him lewd things about Jillian. Which Harry hated. It was so disrespectful. Harry hated most that he remembered them when he was alone. Made Harry hate Mark. Jillian didn't know who Mark really was. She thought he was nice. He was nice, to her. Like most of the boys who picked on Harry.

In any case, she had been saying tubular before it turned into groovy, then psychedelic. If she couldn't be in California, she'd talk like she imagined they did. Dress like they did, live her own approximation.

He'd noticed a bit of sheer fabrics and bell bottoms and crop tops she favored these days. More of her playing the part. He couldn't not notice them. No wonder she wasn't excited to wear the plain Jane summer outfit he had of hers. Or his sweats. God, she might wear his clothes. He thought about that while she snored.

And the next morning, after a mostly sleepless night where Harry worried about his friend and how he didn't always think of her like a friend, she was still there. Usually she was gone, and he worried where. Where did she go when she snuck out? He hoped to the donut shop until it was lighter. He had nightmares about her hitching home and never turning up again.

Most of his dreams were Jillian lately.

She was stirring. So Harry went to check if his dad was up, how quiet they needed to be. Make a cup of tea, for both of them if he was able to pull it off.

"Jillian still asleep?" Harry jumped a foot at his father's voice. His hand was red where he caught the cup and it spilled over the edge. Bloody hot water. He shook it off and reached for the towel before his dad could tell him to.

"Um," he had to put down the tea. They hadn't directly addressed this since his dad had told him no more when Harry's voice had deepened. Though it was long after Jillian's nipples had pushed against the fabric of her tees then disappeared. He had noticed but not noticed at the time. "Um, did you ask if Jillian was asleep?" Clueless, he'd go for that. He went to push up his glasses and for the life of him, how did he not know they were not on yet. The world was blurry.

"Yeah, you know, the beautiful young girl you call your best friend that you think I don't know sleeps in your bed weekly."

His spoon clinked loudly on the tea cup he was making. "Look, Da." How did he start.

"It's alright, son. I see the bedding in the closet, and the hollows under your eyes. She may sleep in the bed, but you don't. But I can't help but think I have been remiss."

"About what?" Harry knew where this was going, and he wished for his glasses again, so he could clean them and avoid eye contact. He settled for turning around and dunking his tea bag. His dad taught him lots of things, like thermodynamics and vectors. Not vas deferens and fertilization.

He heard his dad's throat clear. It was always as loud as a bullfrog at times like these. "You are really old for this, but I felt like I missed the right time, and then I didn't know how to bring it up, and it was so late, but now I think it's nearly too late."

If Harry was another person, he might cross his arms and ask 'too late for what?' But he knew his face was beet red and he wasn't that person, it wasn't too late. He knew anyway, from the library. Where he had spent a long afternoon the first time he had soiled his sheets, and again when he'd had to help Jillian find money for sanitary napkins. But not too late the way his dad meant. Who'd have sex with him anyway, except himself?

"Too late?" He said to the darkening tea instead.

"You know, how, um..." he swallowed that huge frog down again. "About sex, sexu, sexual intercourse, and" he blew hot air out his nose. Harry wondered if it was steamy as the air coming off his tea. "How to not get a girl, pre, preg, up the spout."

The air was dead silent, the only thing alive was their twin mortification. Harry closed his eyes and turned around. "Dad, look, Da. That's not a worry. Nobody. I'm not." He held his breath and dropped the eye contact he'd tried to be brave with. "Who's gonna let me get close enough to them to get, um, knocked up?" He swallowed those words but they were heard.

His dad's brow drew in and his lips curled. "Well, I feel I should take offense, as you resemble me pretty closely." This was true, sort of. Harry dressed like his dad and did his hair in the same fashion; his face looked like his mother's though. The big eyes behind the gLass and wide mouth framed by dimples. his coloring was someone in between his dad's fair and mum's brunette. "And a beautiful woman let me give her a child." Now it was his dad's turn to close his eyes. The air was pregnant with memory. When his dad could lift his eyes, they were as wet as Harry's. "Do you see why the pretty girl who spends all her time with you and many nights in your bed would worry me?"

Harry could only muster a shrug. He really couldn't, see.

His dad's shoulder rested against his own, Harry's slouch erased the inches he'd gained on his father. "Harry," he sighed. "I see the way you look at her. And she may not yet. But don't forget she'd be as lucky to have you as you would to have her. The time may come where you need to make a play, do it. When it does, I need to know. You understand?"

Harry wanted to laugh, but nodded. He understood little, like how this talk about sex had turned into one about how him liking Jillian was just punching above his weight. Like into the stratosphere, where her planes flew.

"I know," his Dad sighed. "I know she needs an escape, and you are it. But there will be somebody who likes you for more than that. If she's as smart as I think she is, I should be worried. But I won't kick her out. Because, well...." His dad looked exhausted, like this talk had aged him years. It was a lot of talking l for them that weren't about school or NASA. His dad was usually careful with words, he felt like they were worth more than people thought. "You'll tell me though, when I need to worry?"

Harry nodded. His beautiful, dreamy best friend was as likely to be homecoming queen as he was to need to ask his father's advice on birth control methods. That was a daydream as far away as California.

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #summer's Child #harry styles au #harry styles alternate universe #1970s #1970's au #chapter one #chapter 1 #sleepy jean

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