Stars Leave Black Holes Behind [HS]

15

The room was silent, awkward- stiflingly so, and tense. So ugly and tense that it kind of ripped her heart to pieces and split her mind in two.

Because this wasn't how it used to be. God, this wasn't how it used to be.

Harry and Val's time together was always soft, always playful, the air between them full of laughter and love and their warm breaths that mingled together when their faces grew so close to each others their foreheads touched and sparked from currents of electricity that ignited between them, in their thick inhales and exhales that passed from his mouth to hers like water.

It was always light; happy; bursting with their sly glances and unsaid words of 'I love you'.

It tore Val apart now, sitting in the room with Harry standing by the door and her far away on the bed, because look at them both. Barely speaking, barely looking at each other, the air between them filled with the unrelenting echoes of Valerie's hurt, her pain, her endless yearning for this boy, who was now silent too. Whose clear green eyes were now smothered in murk, in the unknown, in something else.

Something after Val.

He coughed, and Valerie was looking at the carpet, but knew that his fingers were curled in a fist and his nose was crinkled and his eyebrows were drawn.

Val just knew Harry like that. Just knew what he was like, the fundamentals of him, of everything he was.

She liked to think he knew her like that too, that he knew her heart was beating so fast she was sure her ribs were bruising, that she was biting her lip so hard she was drawing blood, that in her head she was screaming.

Screaming.

"How are you?"

And she wanted to fucking laugh at that. After all this time, this year, these gallons of pain she had swallowed and spat back out into this room, this house, making her own sea of suffering that for the past fucking year she had been drowning in- after all of this, he had the nerve, the fucking ignorance to ask her How are you?

"Good," she shrugged, staring out of the window. She needed her heart to slow, needed to calm, to relax.

But how could she?

Really, how fucking could she?

Because Harry was back. Suddenly. Standing in her flat with his chocolate curls and magnificent voice and glorious smile. Looking at her the same way he used to, with the same eyes and the same lips and the same skin.

Val hated it, but she was reminded of her star. Glowing in the shadowy corners of her bedroom, a little lighthouse in her swamp of sad; his skin somehow alight, searing through Valerie with each breath he took. The warm, comforting brilliance that surrounded him hadn't changed, had only intensified. She remembered him as a light, an incredible fucking burning light, and now he was like a new supernova.

She was set on fire.

Valerie simply ached looking at him. She could feel her skin melting off her bones, could feel her blood humming and her gums hissing in his presence. Could feel him radiating towards her, big waves pushing through the air and engulfing her completely, easing her body into the flux and flow of his stream of light-

Because Val was in love with Harry. Still. Entirely. Loved him so much that maybe she didn't care that he'd cut her open and taken her heart so easily, that he'd planted a garden of roses in her chest and all she could feel now was the thorns cutting into her with every breath she took, that she could still see that heart of hers. Fragile and broken in the palm of his hand, but beating, alive, still hopeful.

God, it was just so pathetically hopeful.

"You?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good actually," and he sounded it. Sounded happy. Sounded like always.

She couldn't help but feel hurt by that. Because Harry was fine. He was glowing and okay and living.

But she wasn't. She so clearly wasn't.

"I, um, I moved to London. I have this nice flat right outside and we get the train in. You'd love it."

Valerie could feel the tears pricking at her eyes so still she refused to look at him. He just said 'we'. We. Him and the girl from the voicemail, they have a lovely flat outside of London and they get the train in. She would love it.

She choked on her tongue because she could feel the wrong words pushing at her throat.

"That's nice. Really nice."

"Yeah." There was a pause and she could feel these words, these words full of feeling pushing and clawing and bursting. "Are you gonna stay here, then? After uni? With, um, with Zayn?"

No. Because Zayn was going to leave as well. He liked the look of America. He said it was because of the books and the history, but it wasn't. No. It was because that would put an entire ocean between him and Elizabeth. Would create separation. Would make it easier.

Valerie couldn't imagine doing that to herself. She couldn't cope with the distance. Not even this one right now in her room.

She wanted closeness, contact, skin on skin. Hated the idea of oceans separating them. Even if he didn't care anymore, she did. Oh god, she did.

"Maybe. He wants to go to America, so, yeah."

"Oh right."

She hummed and took three deep breaths, looked up, and honestly, she was almost blinded.

__

Song: Give Me Love by Ed Sheeran

"All I want is the taste that your lips allow, my-my-my-my oh, give me love."