are we out of the woods? | h.s

v

~ Looking at it now

Last December

We were built to fall apart

Then fall back together ~

"el."

"don't 'el' me."

i turned away from him and crossed my arms over my chest. i knew i was acting like a child, but i couldn't help it. the tweets i had just seen on my timeline made me feel sick to my stomach. how could people be so inconsiderate when it came to harry and i's relationship? people could be so ruthless on what they said in their space of 140 characters, or even in their endless articles written about me. people seemed to like me before, but now that harry and i were official, every person's opinion changed in a snap moment.

i felt his hands make their way to my cheeks and pull my attention towards him, his green eyes coming daringly close to mine. my heart fluttered deep within my chest; so hard i was positive he could hear it loud and clear. god, why did he have to suck me in with just a blink and flicker of attention in his irises. he was so close to me i could practically see my reflection in his pupils, with my face contorted into a look of pain.

"let's not focus on that stuff, okay?" his voice was careful, and his thumb brushed against my jaw bone. "it's a rainy day, and that is bumming my mood enough as it is."

 i tried to turn away from him now, but he only tightened whatever grip he had. 

"look at me, ella."

the dark thoughts that came with reading those dark tweets started to cloud my mind again, and i couldn't look back into those eyes of his. his eyes held such warmth and care and brightness, they weren't worthy of what i had to give at the moment. i shut my eyes but faced towards him, trying to lower my head to make it easier for me. i took a deep breath and refused saying anything, though i knew he wanted me to.

"ella."

he said sternly, his voice lowering an octave. i could feel him staring into the top of my head, and i tried to keep my stomach from twisting up and crawling out of my mouth. those tweets were right. i was a coward. i couldn't face my fears. i was lame, i was insane, i was irrelevant, i was hated, i was... i was nothing.

"ella, please."

his voice was still low, but it had gotten softer since he last said anything. somehow my eyes had opened up and i found myself looking up at him, and his eyes seemed somewhat glassier than they had before, and he had fresh tears about to flow out and down his cheeks. my heart pulled at the thought he was crying over the pain i was going through; that wasn't what i wanted at all. i dropped whatever sour expression i held and turned every bad thought out of mind. harry was my priority right now.

"harry," my voice cracked from my lack of speaking, but i ignored it and now reached up to touch his face as he did to me. "are... are you crying?"

now it was his turn to shut his eyes and scrunch up his face in a look of pain, but with him, a few tears escaped and quickly ran down his face, running down the side of his nose until i could reach up and wipe them away. he had no reason to have tears stain his precious cheeks.

"i just... i see what they say, and i know that it hurts you, and seeing you hurt makes me hurt, and..."

i held a finger to his lips before he started to cry even more, because i could tell he was on the verge to. he looked at me and moved his eyes back and forth as he looked between mine, taking in a sharp, shaky breath to keep his cool. a lump grew in my throat as i fought back my own battle of tears. god, if he was crying, i was sure going to cry too. i was so consumed and entangled with his feelings that they often became my own, and vise versa. he continued to take sharp, uneven breaths and his chest started to move as if he was loosing whatever lick of control he had left over himself.

"hey," i say, trying to snap him out of it before he started to cause himself to break down even further. i frantically searched his eyes for a holding gaze, but never found one. "hey, hey, hey. just because what they say makes me upset doesn't mean it should make you upset too."

"what am i supposed to do, ignore it and let you sit with those kind of thoughts in your head?" he snapped. he started moving his head back and forth as he desperately searched the room for something i didn't know, maybe for an object to look at besides me, maybe for an answer to his problem. i tried to hold him still by moving my hands along the back side of his head and digging my fingers into his hair, like reins on a horse. his cheeks, even with the darkness of the world around us, started to blotch up with a deep pink color to match his bloodshot eyes.

"i want to get them all to stop, each and every one of them. but... but i can't. i can't stop it for you, and i feel like i'm doing something wrong because of that."

"harry, the only wrong thing you're doing is letting this get to you this much. it's my problem, and yes, it get's me upset often, but the last thing i want is you upset for something that i should deal with myself."

he finally held his eyes still enough to look at me for a moment, and i could almost feel the angered heat start to drain from his face. his neck was burning with warmth though, and he sounded like he needed to blow his nose and wipe away the tears. my poor baby. my poor, considerate, sympathetic baby.

"i'm sorry ella. i'm so sorry."

this was the weakest i had seen him in a while, especially over things like this. usually whenever things like this happened, he would sit down in the living room and breath for a moment, keeping his phone off and placed in another room. he would read these things and get disgusted by them, but somehow he couldn't stop himself. they were like drugs. once you took one, you needed to take another, and another, and another.

"don't be sorry for anything." i whisper to him, helping him guide his head onto my shoulder. i was only a few inches shorter than him, yet he still had to bend his body a bit to rest on me, he did it. he pressed his forehead into my shoulder and let his hair trickle down my arm. the feeling almost caused me to giggle, but who could giggle in a time like this?

"i just don't want those things to take control over you. i've seen them damage people further than they're able to fix and... i don't want to lose you. i can't lose you."

"you won't lose me harry." i find it hard to speak now, hearing the emotion held in his voice. i almost lost control of my cloudy vision and let tears fall onto his head, but i took a deep breath and closed my eyes to stop it. ella, harry was the weak one at the moment. calm yourself down before you make things worse. "you could never lose me even if you tried."

harry surprised me by swiftly lifting his head from me, his eyes no longer holding tears. his upper lip began to curl as he reached his hand back around to hold my face, his fingers still holding their usual warming touch. he brought his forehead against mine, and i could feel his heat transferring over. i was cold like the ice, but he was warm like the sun. ice and sun. dark and light. yin and yang.

"really? even if i tried?" he asked. i ran my tongue over my lips as i admired the sparkles of light seeping back into him. i wrapped my fingers around his thumbs to bring his hands down, and almost immediately we weaved our fingers together like pieces of string winded together. and with both our hands together against our sides as we faced one another, they were damn strong ropes we made.

"even if you tried." i quietly reassured him, with a glowing smile to match his before his mouth engulfed mine.

im sososososoSO sorry for not updating in forever, school is really killing me. this chapter is dedicated to @robburs for getting me back into the spirit of updating :-) thanks love! i made this chapter sorta long for you guys to make up for the lack of updating too. love youuUUuUu