Something’s bumping in the night (Patreon)

get your mind out of the gutter !!

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It is not often that Harry is torn from sleep by a rapid banging on his door.

He thinks the last time that he had it was to answer an angry one night stand whose messages he had not bothered responding to, and apparently in a drunken daze he had promised to pursue her, but had ignored her (which he felt guilty for for a moment, until she started calling him a curly-headed fuck and accussing him of doing it to her friends -- which he could have or couldn’t have -- to be honest he spent about all of his freshmen year in inebriated haze). So it’s safe to he was a little wary to answer this time around, no matter how he had transformed into a much better person than he had once been; there were fewer conquests and much less frat-ing around his junior year. . .it took a serious upbraiding from his mum but he had done a complete turn around.

Stil, he was hesitant, with his socked feet and boxers the only thing he’d been sleeping in. He grabbed hastily at the soft white robe (he stole it from a hotel a year ago) that had been hanging on the towel rack in his bathroom, stuffing his arms into iit as he trips over a forgotten loafer that laid without its partner on the floor. Catching himself on the wall closest to the door, he peeked through the peephole, and sees the side profile of his neighbor.

Brows furrowed, he pulls the lock on his door and pulls it open, registering in his sleep trodden brain that she looks nervous -- more nervous than he’d ever seen her.

“Y/N?” His voice is but a croak, his throat unused and a little sore, like he might be getting sick but he knows that he had just been snoring, “You alright?”

Her face drops when she sees him, “Oh god, I woke you up?” Lips drawing backward, thinning out, “M’sorry, it’s stupid, I --”

“Don’t worry, Babe, wha’s wrong?”

They had spoken some before; this was his first year out of the fraternity house since he’d been in school so he had been a little worried about not having any friends around. Like when he’s run out of things he can’t just go a door over and knock on his mate’s door, or if he’s having trouble with putting something together because the instructions are in Swedish. So he kind of overcompensated that first move in day, with his door propped open and as soon as he saw her walking by while he was setting the box scribbled with KITCHEN: FRAGILE all over it. Popped out of the room and greeted himself, maybe a little too abrasive, because she looked caught off guard but she was kind nonetheless. Shook his hand, told him about the creep down the hall who will ask for feet pictures if he catches you in conversation (but is relatively harmless), that the elevator is always shit no matter how many maintenance requests go in, and that their above neighbors have a bigger, four bedroom so they’re always clip and clamping around. Though she does tell him it is the best for the price range, and it has the coziest rooms, the best heater and air conditioner, and free carpet cleanings when requested; they also have consistent hot water, which was worth the feet picture requests.

She had also told him that her friend works in the bookstore and gets her free printer ink, so if he ever needed to print, to just let her know and they would link the computer and printer up. Harry had been ecstatic that he got a decent neighbor and not a crazy one like all of his mate’s proclaimed he would. She never gave him trouble, let him crank his music up if he wanted it (sometimes if they saw each other the next day, she would ask about one of the tunes and hum it for him so that he could tell her what it was), and she was incredibly helpful. Probably more than she ought to be -- once he had to make pumpkin bread for a bake sale and ruined about three to four batches of it, before he had knocked on her door to ask for some more granulated sugar, only to find out that she was the absolute master at making pumpkin bread. So she stayed up all night with him, making five separate batches of pumpkin bread loaves and muffins, and Harry had told her he was forever indebted to her.

So here, as she stood with wide, panicked eyes at his doorstep, he didn’t even feel frustrated that she had woken him up in the first place. More alarmed than anything -- she normally doesn’t bother him with anything (not that this was particularly a bother).

“Like, don’t laugh, alright?” She prefaces it, shifting her weight from foot to foot, the hallway floor creaking beneath her, “But I was watching this horror movie to like, get into that Halloween spirit right? And I think the found footage films scare me most, so I was watching one of them, and it was actually really getting me. Then I started hearing something like -- it sounded like there was someone in my flat, right? Which usually wouldn’t worry me, because this place is always settling like an old house, but it sounded like something was in my walls or something? And when I went out to go get water one of my cabinets was open and --” she sighs heavily, dejectedly, “This is stupid.”

Harry shakes his head, “No, no, s’not,” he understands -- he used to be rather scared of horror movies but then he lived two years in a frat house so his threshold for being frightened had raised considerably, “If you want d’ya -- well, d’ya want to come in?” He reaches up, scratching the nape of his neck idly, “Or I could go over there --”

“What’re you going to do against a demon, Harry, tell me?” She asks him seriously, “I don’t want to impose either, s’just -- if you don’t hear from me in a few days, literally come see if I’m a lifeless --”

“Fuck sake, Babe, just come in,” he steps to the side, motioning her inside, “You’re not imposing, I promise.”

It’s as she’s walking into his flat that he finally takes a look at her in all her sundown glory; she’s got on cat slippers, the left one was missing a button nose, a pair of pajama pants that looked hastily pulled on, like she decided to come here on a whim, and an old, beaten Van Halen shirt. Her hair was a bit mussed and she only had her phone in hand. She makes a beeline towards his couch, plopping down, looking stressed, and Harry bites down on his bottom lip, he suppresses a laugh.

He thought he was doing pretty good at hiding it too, until she looked over and her face dropped into an immediate pout, “I said don’t laugh, it’s not funny! If there’s a demon in my place, there’s probably one in yours too, we share a damn wall.”

“I’m not laughing at you!” He says defensively, though he bites his tongue before he finishes it off with you’re just right cute, is all, “You’re just funny.”

She rubs tiredly at her eyes, groaning, “I’m sorry about this,” she tells him, shaking her head, “M’never this big of a baby.”

“You’re not a baby,” he responds, stepping over his loafer to avoid tripping again as he makes his way closer, “But even if you were, s’okay to be a baby sometimes. I’ll get you some blankets and you can set up here for the ni-”

There’s a sharp thud that comes from the otherside of their adjacent wall, clearly from her flat, and both of them stop with Y/N’s going wider and Harry’s brows raising considerably. It sounded like someone balled up their fist and slammed it against the wall, and when it happens a second time, she practically leaps over to him, standing and staring at the wall like something might reach through the wall and grab her.

“Bloody fuck,” Harry turns from the wall to her again, “That was -- you don’t have an animal?”

“If I had one, I wouldn't leave him with a proposed demon, Harry, fuck sake,” she pushes herself closer to him, their bodies merely centimeters apart as her gaze is undeviating from the wall.

He nods though she isn’t looking, “Maybe -- how about I go over there and --”

“No!” She cuts him off before he can even finish the thought (though he isn’t actually sure where he was going with it), pivoting on her heel and looking at him like he’d just told her he’d met an alien, “How would that make sense? You’re no exorcist!”

Again, he nods solemnly, “You’re right,” he motions towards his room, “Okay, new plan I’ll sleep out here closest to the demon and you can have my room.”

“Splitting up is what got someone possessed in the movie I was watching.” She looks even more stressed than she had been prior, “New plan, we run away from our problems, and get a hotel.”

“Who has the hotel money, ‘cos it surely isn’t me.”

Her frown deepened, “We sleep on the street?”

“Listen Babe, everything is fine,” he points back at his room, “We both can sleep in my room then. I’ll be on the floor and everything will be good -- in the morning, we’ll see what we can do about the demon, but we can’t do much of anything when we’re sleepy.”

She stops for a moment to contemplate it, before nodding, “Yeah okay,” she looks towards his room, “But we lock the door and you keep your bed, m’not making you sleep on the floor ‘cos I’m a baby.”

Harry doesn’t bother mentioning that locking a door definitely wouldn’t stop a demon, but he does remind her that he doesn’t think that she was a baby as he led the way to his room. He was thankful that he had tidied at least a little bit before he had flopped down on his bed, and she busies herself looking around his room while he goes into his closet to retrieve blankets to at least make her a suitable floor pallet. He does it up with about three puffy blankets, and tears off the afghan that he usually cuddles up as her top cover, lying his fluffiest pillow at the head of it.

As he looks down at his work he hopes that he remembers she’s right beside his bed in the morning and doesn’t step on her. Y/N crawls in gratefully, snuggling beneath the covers and bidding him about ten dozen thank you’s until he had stuffed himself beneath his blankets.

Harry forgot how comforting it was to have a roommate until that night, as he fell into a deep sleep, listening to the sound of her breathing to lull him. When she shuffled, the sound of the blankets beneath her even helped -- just the knowledge that he wasn’t alone sometimes, was something he enjoyed. It probably would have been better if they just had a nice, platonic cuddle, but he figured that would be pushing it.

It was the best sleep he had gotten in a while though, and when he finally stirred from sleep, Y/N was beginning to wake as well. He had peeled his eyes open, listening to the patter of rain against the windowsill, and realized that not only was he on his side, but he was looking at Y/N’s peaceful, non-distraught sleeping face. Gentle slopes and curves, lips puffy and nibbled like she might absently pick or bite at them as she dreams. Her hair is tousled more than it had been when she first approached him, and the blanket had been shoved to the side, her shirt crumpled up to show the soft, smooth expanse of her tummy. His brain wanders a bit, thinks about what it might feel like to kiss down the skin, suckle bruising kisses into the tender skin. He wonders what she would sound like. . .wonders if they would be loud, wanton moans, or soft, sweet little whimpers. Would she grab onto the sheets or his hair? Would she want to grind down on his face, or would she want him to be in charge?

His mind is racing, progressively filthy thoughts filtering through his brain, only pausing when her eyes flutter open and she registers first where she is, and then that he is staring at her. Her tired eyes go wide, “Oh no,” she rasps, her words a little garbled, “Are you possessed?”

He gives her a sleepy laugh, shaking his head and closing his eyes as he stretches out, “No,” he murmurs, “Not used to waking up next to such a cute girl.”

She snorts, “Shuddup,” she murmurs, words muffled by the pillow as she tilts her face against it, before she pushes herself up against the pallet and looks around. Finally her eyes settle back on him, though her gaze falls short of his own, brows darting up some. When Harry follows her gaze, he realizes that she’s staring at his crotch -- more specifically, the morning stiffy that he had begun sporting.

“Oh,” he huffs, embarrassment tickling at his sides, “I’m sorry, just happens in the morning sometimes —“

“That’s fine, I get it,” she knuckles at her eyes. “Do you want me to help with it?”