Violent Delights [h.s]

Chapter 4

I was starting to see a whole new side of him that the heat of the moment he had been through before had pushed away; a talkative eloquent person, who had much more in common with me that I could realize.

"Which one is your favourite?" he asked, pointing at the bookshelf.

I walked over so I was standing next to him, facing my books. "Definitely Romeo and Juliet.'

He turned his eyes to me and spoke slowly in his sweet voice:

"«One pain is cured by another.»" His green eyes were staring intensely at mine as he spoke the Shakespeare quote I knew too well, and could so much relate to right now.

"«... Catch some new infection in your eye and the poison of the old one would die.»" I finished. We were now extremely close to each other, as I studied this endangered kind of human being in front of me. I barely even knew him, yet there I was, reciting Shakespeare at my house with him. And somehow, it felt right. I had promised him I'd be his friend, and this was me living up to that promise.

Both Harry and I smiled at the other's cleverness, and our faces were now ridiculously close.

"Are you trying to impress me already?" he asked with a smirk planted across his face as he leaned in closer to me. I smiled at his suggestion, that didn't seem too far from the truth. I wanted to impress him as much as he impressed me, though I knew that wouldn't be possible, because he was so beautifully complex and I was just me.

And we shouldn't dream too big, for we might not have the strength to survive the fall. So I stepped away from him, trying to change the subject to one that wouldn't make me so vulnerable as literature and love did.

"I'm hungry, what about you?"

"Oh" he said, before breaking our eye contact to look at the floor. Was he expecting me to lean in closer instead of stepping away? I was probably just making things up in my head again, so I shook that thought away. "Yes, I am."

"Well, I'm not the best cooker..." I explained, "... Although I have a reasonable amount of food at home. But I just don't feel qualified enough to prepare a meal for someone else to eat, not to mention the chances of me burning dinner are way bigger than I'd wish, so we could just order chinese? Or pizza, I really don't mind, I live off of those two most of the time, so-"

"Do you want me to cook for us?" he asked, leaving me surprised. He wanted to cook for me? "I bet you haven't had a homecooked meal in a long time?..."

"How'd you know?"

"I was just guessing, since your job must take up most of your time and you don't really live with your family."

"Yeah..." was all I managed to say at the mention of my family. We don't necessarily get along bad, but my parents have had way too many problems to have a considered happy lovingful marriage, and sometimes I feel like they take advantage of the fact that I have no one else to rely on to control every single aspect in my life. And the thing is I always let them, because I have nothing to lose, and because there is no one to tell me how wrong it is, to let someone take control of your life, because they don't have control of their own anymore.

"«All happy families are alike...»" he quoted, from Anna Karenina, leaving me to finish it, once again.

"«... Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way»". In the end, we both smiled at each other like we previously had, and just stood there studying the other. Who was this person, who could recite not only Shakespeare, but also Tolstoy?

"So, where do you keep your food?" he questioned me, snapping me out of my wave of thoughts.

"In the kitchen?..." Wasn't that obvious?