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Walking down the stairs towards the Psychology Department shouldn’t fill him with as much dread as it does right in this moment. He’s been down here plenty of times for his therapy sessions, so he doesn’t understand why it is bothering him so much now.
That’s not entirely true. He does know why being down here puts him a little off-kilter, he just doesn’t want to admit it. It’s a gripe he has been carrying with him since the New Year’s Party and the only way of getting rid of it seems to be confronting it face to face.
Harley walks the empty corridors with the composure of a spooked deer, startling at every little sound of a chair scraping against the floor or a filing cabinet falling shut. It’s way too late for most of the psychologists to actually still be down here, but he knows for a fact – an accidental slip of the tongue from Haldi during staff drinks – that he should still be in his office.
When he finally reaches the door, he loses all the resolve he gathered throughout the day and just stands there unmovingly, staring at the large, golden letters which read ‘DR. ORION LANCASTER – HEAD OF PSYCHOLOGY’.
Head of Psychology, he thinks, his heart pounding in his ears. Of course the guy who drove him home, made sure he got home safe, and left him the world’s most awkward voice message the morning after just had to be Head of Psychology.
Pushing away all the different ways he could embarrass himself even further in front of someone like that, he gives the door three firm knocks and pushes down the urge to run away. There’s a tense stretch of silence that lasts entirely too long in Harley’s eyes before he hears the faint sound of shuffling from inside.
“Come in?” a muffled voice replies, and without a second thought – or any thought if he was being honest – he pushes open the door.
Surprisingly, he doesn’t find the psychologist at his desk hunched over a stack of papers, but rather sitting on the faded green couch, his legs tucked underneath him and a few manila folders strewn across his lap. He looks at him through his round, crooked glasses and Harley all but chokes when their eyes meet.
“Oh, uhm, hi?” Dr Lancaster stammers, visibly ruffled by his sudden appearance. He closes the folder in his hand and scrambles to make the mess around him look presentable. “Sorry, I didn’t expect anyone else to, uhm, to want something from me today. This is–”
“It’s fine!” Harley blurts out, gawkily standing in the middle of the room. “Please don’t feel the need to stop what you’re doing. I just came here to…”
What exactly did he come here to do? He could have gone on with his life and never thought about the man in front of him again, but somehow he just couldn’t shake off the urge to see him again.
“You came to stand in my office and stare at me?” he offers half-heartedly, but the joke comes out more strained than anything.
“No! God, sorry, I probably look like a major weirdo right now, but I came here to… apologise.” An apology. He’s good at those, so it feels like a safe choice.
Dr Lancaster raises his eyebrows in surprise and shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Apologise? Dr Harley, I can assure you there’s nothing you have to–”
“Harley is fine. Or Edmund– Ed ,” he interrupts. “Anything goes, really. Just drop the title, it’s not… it’s not that important.”
A small smile tugs at the corner of the psychologist’s lips. “Uhm, Orion– Orion Lancaster. Either is fine.” He gives him a nod and slowly gestures towards the empty chair across from him. “ Harley , please feel free to sit, I don’t, well, I don’t expect you to keep standing there.”
Despite every voice in his head yelling at him not to come closer, he takes the offered seat without a word. From this angle, he can see Lancaster’s face even clearer. His expression flitters from one of amusement to one of unease.
“I’m genuinely sorry for how I acted during that New Year’s Party,” Harley starts. “That was so incredibly unprofessional, and I don’t even know how I’m still able to show my face around here without getting booted out of town. I– I don’t remember everything I said and did, but I must have been a massive dick for you to actively drag me home by the scruff of my neck.”
He doesn’t look at Lancaster while he speaks, but he can vaguely see the way his soft eyes follow every single awkward movement of Harley’s hands. If they weren’t both way too awkward to be in the same room, he’d almost find that attractive – in an odd, loserish way.
“Well, you were a little out of it and I did think driving you home when I did was probably the best choice, but I promise you weren’t rude or anything. Just… very talkative.”
“Oh God,” Harley groans. “How embarrassing was it? Wait– do I even want to know?”
Lancaster snorts, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Let’s just say that I’m probably the second best-educated person on the Playfair cipher and the Arabic phonetic system at this entire site now.”
“I’m so sorry, that must have been–”
“Incredibly entertaining, actually. I mean, after you successfully avoided throwing up on Chappel’s shoes, you were pretty pleasant to be around,” he says earnestly. “I only ended up driving you home because you almost fell asleep in the middle trying to explain how to pronounce all the letters of the Al-abjadiyah.”
It’s impossible to discern whether Harley is supposed to feel comforted or mortified by this. “Please tell me I didn’t throw up in your car.”
“You didn’t throw up in my car. And even if you did, my car has seen worse.”
“That still wouldn’t have made it okay. You really shouldn’t have felt forced to drive me home. I have a room on-site, and I could have easily walked there on my own.” Arguing over something that’s already long gone feels silly, but Harley would be damned if he wasn’t at least going to try winning him over with some self-deprecating comments.
“And I would have probably beaten myself up about letting you spend New Year’s Day on one of those crappy Foundation cots.”
“Wow, saviour complex much?” It was supposed to be a joke, but Harley realised his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. “Fuck, I didn’t mean–”
“No, it’s okay.” Lancaster gives him a sombre smile. “I have the tendency to worry too much sometimes. ‘Saviour complex’ is probably not too far from the truth.”
In a last-ditch effort to save the mood, Harley jumps on the first comment that springs to his mind. “Do you maybe want to grab a coffee with me sometime? Or lunch? Or whatever you like? If you don’t want to see it as an apology, think of it as a thank you for making sure I got home safe.”
“Harley, you really don’t have to.”
“What if I want to?” The sincerity in his voice startles both of them, but Harley is quick to dig himself an even deeper hole. “Don’t feel pressured to agree or anything, I just want to do something nice as a thank you and I seriously don’t know what else to offer without coming off like–”
“Sure, I’d love to get coffee with you.”
“What?” He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
“I don’t have a lot of free time, but if you want to, we can go and have a drink right now? There’s this pretty sweet café down the street, and I’ve been dying to go there for months.”
“I, uhm, yeah, sure… that’s perfect, actually.”
Harley probably continues to stare at him dumbfounded for at least another minute before his mind actually catches up to what he agreed to with this. Maybe he just fucked himself over even further. Or maybe, he might have finally talked himself into something good for once.