Stall

Chapter 72.

"My head’s under water
But I’m breathing fine
You’re crazy and I’m out of my mind"

***

While I know how important for Harry to get all of this out, to break down over it since he never let's himself and he needs to do that with someone he trusts and let's him know it's okay - hearing him like this is absolutely destroying me.

You never want to hear someone you love in pain, especially when you can't just reach into their chest and ball it up, throw it away so it can't tear them apart any more.

I don't know how he's managed with the life he's had, with what's been done to him, I don't know how anyone could. I hate it even more that what he's told me was the normal he was referring to, that was his base line for what life was meant to feel like, no wonder he wanted it to be over.

I want to give him new standards though, a new normal, one that only involves pleasure, comfort and warmth.

I want him so familiar with happiness that he could describe it in a million different ways, write novels and essays on all the ways he's felt it.

Maybe one day when he understands it properly he could do the same thing with love too, he could be his own Google with endless information on it, how it feels, what it looks like and know how fiercely I feel that for him.

What's happened today isn't a fix for everything, I doubt it will stop his nightmares, and the pain that has burrowed it's way inside of him, that sits and festers, weaving it's way through him like a weed.

You can't undo years of trauma in one day.

It's a step in the right direction though, it's a start to covering the paths in his mind that are filled with monsters and villains that haunt and torture him, and instead making new paths he can take, ones filled with comfort and safety, ones that don't hurt him.

I just stood in the water with him, while he spilled out the agony in him and reassured him any way that I could, as well as letting him know that what he was doing was okay - he's allowed to be hurt, to be angry and he's allowed to cry and there's nothing weak about it.

I can only imagine how it would feel, spending your whole life being punished for having emotions and never being comforted when you cry, to finally have someone tell you it's okay.

I want him to know that I love all parts of him, the soft parts, the dark ones and the broken parts like right now and I don't think less of any of them, I love all of him, even if he doesn't know that yet or really know what that means.

I really wish I could tell him.

I don't know how long we just stayed there with him clung to me, I had no way to keep track of time and frankly I wasn't paying attention to it any way.

He finally settled down, only the occasional small whimper coming from him but it didn't stop it hurting any less, but I'll take any pain I have to, to help him heal his.

"Fuck" he croaks muffled against my shoulder, sniffing and clearing his throat while his crying subsides "Don't know what just happened, feels like I just drained all this shit out of my body"

"You were in pain, you let it out - it's okay Harry, nothing wrong with it" I say keeping my tone soothing, holding the back of his head and tracing my fingers in slow patterns around his back.

"Crying would only made it worse, made him more angry. Not use to this" he says hoarsely, the emotion in his voice making his vocal chords sound raw.