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❛ 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄 . . . ❜ 001.ever since new york by harry styles SEASON 5, EPISODE 15
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Yeah, screw this.
Nothing quite terrified Beth like an airplane.
She didn't like the precariousness of it, of how you could feel every move and jolt of an aircraft that seemed so small in the face of everything else in the universe. She didn't like the performance of taking off, of landing and the in-between.
She, also, just didn't like the feeling of getting onto that plane and never being able to shake off the feeling that this flight would be her last––
Every flight she'd ever taken, she was just totally convinced she was going to die going down on it.
It wasn't an irrational fear. She promised. She pinky promised, despite how much the sentiment made her teeth ache. It wasn't an irrational fear at all.
She didn't have those. She'd always been a smart kid that knew smart things, whether it was niche facts about the production of niche things or science facts that she'd once memorised out of a kid's biology textbook with a torch under sheets.
She'd watched the air hostess' safety demonstration with a clenched jaw, a mint racing between her teeth as she tried to concentrate on things other than the present. As they spoke about death and disaster, she tried to not think about Seattle, which, funnily enough, spelt out nothing but death and disaster too.
It was always the same, no longer how long or how short the flight was, she gritted her teeth, inserted music that was traditionally considered calming and curled her toes in her shoes. A flight to Toronto out of New York had once left her with her forehead pressed against the mirror in the restroom, chest heaving and lungs struggling for any semblance of air.
Now, Beth was rendered breathless by the prospect of a landing in Seattle for a prospective funeral.
Flight AC8089, she thought to herself, staring at the tiny dot flying across the Canadian border into Washington State, Oh, how you can suck my ass.
A succession of four flights out of Indonesia had led her here: chipped nails gripping Air Canada fabric for dear life. Days upon days of living out of a suitcase, trying to justify overpriced purchases in airport lounges and sleeping in beds that had reminded her of a brief stint of homelessness in her past.
She'd been passed country to country, city to city, all until that light shone in the distance, happy to inform everyone that they had officially entered into United States airspace.
The only peace was the music in her ears: a Bach concerto that she'd been playing over and over to drown out the thoughts that had left her sleepless for the past few days. It was an odd backing track to hours that felt a lot like a horror movie–– the thump of her heart in her chest, the tremble of the world as she resigned to life in a suspended metal cage––
