Stars Leave Black Holes Behind [HS]

16

She took in a deep breath, the air in her lungs rattling around as she forced herself to calm down. To just ask the question. Why the fuck was he here?

Val wasn't stupid enough to think he was here for her. To get her back. To make her his again.

Although, really, she already was.

But she wasn't clever enough to work out why the fuck this boy who she hadn't spoken to in an entire year, was standing in her bedroom, looking at her, and smiling like he wasn't the one who had left scars the size of handprints across the empty hole of her heart.

To her, it made no sense.

"Um, Harry?" She asked slowly, cautiously, willing the soft waver of her voice to disappear. "Why did you come? Do you want something, or did you leave anything behind?"

She already knew that he hadn't left anything. He'd taken it all, or thrown it out. The only thing he had left behind was her, battered and broken and miserable.

"Oh, yeah," he laughed nervously, and Valerie could see a faint blush rise to his cheeks. If he was asking for money, she knew she would give him whatever he needed, because she would do anything for Harry. Literally fucking anything. She had done it before, was doing it now.

Because she gave this boy herself entirely and watched as he shattered every piece in return. As he tore up the threads which made up the fibres of her soul, ripped apart the tissue, and twisted her heart around his fingers- while she just looked on and smiled.

It was the kind of situation when if he told her to jump, she wouldn't even blink when she asked 'how high?'.

It sort of terrified Valerie: the things she would do for him. To make him happy. To keep him fine. She knew she would fucking rip herself to pieces all over again, unpick the threads and cut open the scars if it meant stitching him back together. If it meant saving him.

"Um, I-I got a message- a voicemail. From Louis."

"My brother?"

"Yeah. Your brother. Louis."

"Oh."

She paused because fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. She knew he was angry, knew that conversation had gotten him riled up, gotten him pissed off and aggy, but she didn't think he would leave any kind of voicemail. Val had even forgotten that they had each other's numbers.

Her heart immediately began beating fast, because fuck what did it say? And fuck, what was she going to do about it? Apologise? Say it was all bullshit and that she was actually fine? Say that it didn't matter that he fucked her up and that she can't go a day without thinking about him? Yeah. Because she was fine.

Absolutely dandy.

"Is everything okay?"

When she said this Harry looked up at her. Looked straight at her with those searing green eyes. And there was something in them. Some type of sadness. Of pity.

"That's actually why I came. He- he said that you weren't doing so well. That you were, um, struggling a bit."

His eyes didn't stray from hers, and Val felt like she was in a trance. Trapped in his gaze like a prisoner in a cell. Except she didn't feel imprisoned. Her heart was singing and her blood was pumping. She loved looking at his eyes. Loved the way they crinkled up, and the way his eyelashes brushed his cheeks when he blinked. Loved that they were green, like leaves and fresh grass and daisy stems in the summertime.

"And he, well, he mentioned it was because of me."

__

Song: Landfill by Daughter

"Leave me on the tracks to wait until the morning train arrives- don't you dare look back. Walk away, catch up with the sunrise."