Starboy. {h.s au}

twenty.

HARRY'S POV

Bittersweet.

I never knew what bittersweet was, nor had I ever heard the word until I traveled to Earth. How could something so sweet be so bitter? When I would think about sweets, I would think about the first cupcake I had with Aurora. The thick icing was overpowering, but the taste of the soft cake underneath was just enough to even it out.

Bitter was the black coffee I drank when I stopped by the coffee shop without Aurora one time. Because of the fact that I didn't remember the drink I had ordered with her previously, I didn't know exactly what to put in it. So, I ordered a coffee, because that word I knew for sure was a part of it. It came black, a vast difference from the blonde beverage I was accustomed to with her. It was hot, bitter, and made the roof of my mouth have an odd taste to it.

So when Leon and I were traveling down to Earth to say goodbye to Aurora, all I could think about were those two things together: bitterness and sweetness, a cocktail of misalignment. If you would have asked me, I would've eaten a million sweet cupcakes until I got sick if it meant that I never had to experience the bitter taste of that bean water again.

That I knew for sure.

But those were two odds of a spectrum, and I never quite understood how things could co-exist when on either side. Now I think I understood.

This was what bittersweet felt like, and it was painful.

When Leon told me about his past lover he had on Earth, it made me feel like we were closer, at least given that I was still a bit cold towards him. But that didn't take away from the fact that he had hidden this from me for so long. I'd never even seen him with another star-being on our planet. I always chalked it up to him always being too busy with missions and not having enough time for any form of relationship with others. That was what he led me to believe anyway.

But now I began to wonder if it was because nobody would ever fill the Mathilde shaped hole in his heart.

I wondered if that was going to happen to me after tonight.

As our bodies traveled in speed that was much faster than anything that moved on Aurora's planet below us, I couldn't help but somehow get lost in my thoughts. What normally would have felt like fleeting moments, then felt like days spent on Earth, lost in thought.

I thought about Leon's Mathilde. My mind warped images in my mind of what she could have looked like. According to history books I had found in Aurora's bookshelf, people dressed differently based on where they lived and when it happened. There were no tops like Aurora would wear with her bellybutton poking out beneath the fabric–at least not in the years that Mathilde was around.

I also began to think about personality traits she must have had. Was Leon the same Leon that I knew when they were together? It was so hard to imagine Leon going out of his way and expressing his feelings, something that apparently people in relationships did on a daily basis based on the romantic comedies Aurora would have me watch with her. I grew to really like them.