these bountiful silences

xxxi. sonder

"I woke to loneliness lingering in my bones and a new fire igniting in my chest."

xxxi. sonder

Water falls against the bruised bridge of his nose, throwing him out of his slumber in the matter of a few seconds.

Reaching his hand out blindly beside him, Harry feels nothing but cold cement around the thin cot that he has been laid on. He blinks his eyes lazily, ridding the phosphenes from his line of vision before slowly sitting up, grimacing through the resultant pain that bursts through his ribcage. He's alone in a small, dismally grey room. There's a leak in the ceiling, steadily dropping water onto his tattered clothes, and a single window nestled in the corner of the minuscule room. Harry rises to his feet shakily, pressing his palms against the rough walls for support before shuffling towards the window. There isn't any trace of glass nestled in the windowpane, nor is there any sort of curtain strewn over it, either. He rubs his eyes, taking one last glance around the empty, dark room, before sticking his head outside of the window.

The inordinate amount of dirt is the first thing that Harry notices, and then he realizes that there are several other, windowless buildings on the road opposite of him. A few sparse, sickly looking trees are nestled between the crumbling buildings, and there are people walking around on the street, talking freely. None of them are wearing bracelets. A small, blonde girl stops from where she was sprinting down the dirt path to look directly up at him, eyes narrowing at the sight. Harry moves away from the window and leans against the wall, chest heaving and a nervous sweat trickling down his forehead. Is he in the Outlands? Is this a trap? Voices carry through the open window and the sunlight shines a single ray into the dark room. Harry slowly slides down the wall, cement scratching the scarred skin of his back painfully, before curling in on himself.

He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, thumping at a spine-shuddering staccato, as he tries to force himself to breathe. He stares at his dark jeans that have been torn at the knees, and he waits. He waits for the door to open, and for Simon to come in and start to yell at him. He waits for the building to crumble, and for his body to be forever lost in the grey, unreliable rubble. He waits, with anxiety flooding over him in unforgiving waves and sobs ripping from his throat because he knows, he knows that something awful is about to happen. He can feel it.

He's about to move from where he was sitting, body collapsed on itself like a fallen star, to lie down on the floor so that he could cry until his entire chest felt like a black hole, so filled with this depressed force that nothing, not even light, could ever escape from him; and then the door opens in a fit of forceful groans from the rusted hinges that makes him startle. Harry inhales shakily against his knees, mustering every sheer inch of power to look ahead, and then feels all of the air that he has kept expanding in his lungs release in one forceful gasp of suppressed air.

"Niall," he says, voice trembling with tears and heart soaring. He still can't breathe, still has bleary eyesight, but Niall and his massive smile that could rival the sun and his messy brown hair is coming closer to him, leaning down to gather him into a warm hug. "Niall."

"You look like a proper mess, lad," Niall says, voice warm like a heated blanket and bathed in a tinkling laugh, "what's wrong?"

"I-" Harry gasps for air, pressing his nose against Niall's shirt. He thinks that this is the first time that he hasn't seen him completely dressed in white. "I don't know, I'm just scared."

Niall detaches from the hug, moving to sit beside Harry, his skinny thigh brushing against him barely. The annoying, dripping sound is still echoing throughout the dreary room, and Harry vainly tries to match his breathing to Niall's while his heartbeat slowly begins to subside. The explosive clashes of dying stars slowly starts to fade into nothing but a few, flickering embers, and Niall hums a slightly familiar rhythm under his breath. It's not until what feels like hours later until Niall turns towards him and tucks his lips into a soft smile.