Background Noise [HS]

FOURTEEN

They ordered pancakes, his with butter and hers without. Delivered in a heaping steam, the sight was mouth-water worthy. Violet practically couldn't wait to dig in, fork and knife positioned in either hand. She thanked the waitress as she left before plunging the prongs of her fork into the soft fluff. There was a sound of deflation before she was cutting the stack into triangular pieces.

The visibly eager girl couldn't remember the last time she had the pleasure of eating a home-cooked meal. Pancakes were her favorite breakfast food and microwaveables didn't exactly come close. These were warm—cooked all the way through to the middle on a sizzling stovetop. Her stomach grumbled as she blew away the smoke swirling in the air. Impatient and feeling starved at the sight of something so tempting, Violet willed the food to cool.

Harry was slow to cut his own breakfast, eyes flickering between the rose and the girl sat across from him every now and then. He was sure the flower had reached the point of no return long ago, though it was hard not to admire the hope in her expression whilst attending to the wilting plant. Part of him felt renewed upon watching the act play out. Gave him a different kind of hope, one that he could steady himself on.

Violet observed him between bites. The smile produced by the melting of pancake in mouth faded at the sight of Harry so quiet, so kept to himself. Part of her expected the lightness of their interaction in his kitchen just half an hour earlier to carry over into the café. There was no real reason for his sudden change in mood—the sadness stitched into his brain just followed him wherever he went, simple as that.

It was hard to detect, what with his daunting demeanor. Broad shoulders hunched forward so as to support the weight of him onto his elbows spread across the table, the black material of his shirt stretched around the strain of muscle, Harry was anything but average. He may as well have been a model strutting down a runway what with the way people stared. Legs long and lean all the way to the narrow of his waist, the V-shape his hips made in connecting with his shoulders was something to admire.

But to strip him down would mean to make him vulnerable, and vulnerability was something he didn't show. Maybe in the darkness that the night provided and beneath the cover bed sheets created, but never in the light of day. To strip him down would mean revealing the tautness of his skin stretched across bone, the sad slope of his shoulders and back, the harsh dip his sides made in outlining his ribs. Though, there was no hiding the cutting valleys of his cheekbones.

No amount of light that could soften the light shade of purple making a mask of his eyes.

The rose acting as the table's centerpiece was once beautiful. Thorns stripped so as to rid itself of striking flaws, the flower held the same liveliness that was being drained from it now. Beyond it, an unruly mane of hair rendered a man blind to the girl studying him so tediously. There were comparisons made between him and the wilting flower, for his body language matched it so. Head drooped, shoulders hunched towards the food he struggled to pick apart like she did him.

Neglect did things to people, that Violet knew. What she didn't, what she pondered, however, was the question: What had to be done to bring something back too far gone?

The rose was helpless, rigor mortis already set in that no amount of care could reverse, although—a bag of bones and broken heart had time to heal.

Sometimes it takes destruction to recover something lost. Wildfires leave death in their every wake only for the ground to replenish itself and new life to burst out from beneath the ashes. There was practice in this-the setting of throat and lungs afire with alcohol—though maybe a different fire was required to seep the numbness from out his sunken bones. One that burned deep within the heart, a fiery passion that refused to be burnt out.