REDAMANCY [h.s. au]

18

"Out of all the people who had to hurt me,
why did it have to be you?"
- unknown

✰ no one's pov ✰

~a summer evening 5 years ago~

Holland, tanned and willowy, lithely skips across the wood floor and swings the door open to find Harry on the other side. His tall figure looms over her, his face etched with an expression she'd seldom seen on his usually sunny countenance.

That was the first sign that something in the universe was awry.

Or maybe it was the second. The first was maybe that a summer rainstorm showered London with a force that wanted to be reckoned with. Like the universe knew the golden strings that tethered Harry and Holland together were straining, fraying, loosening and so it weeped-it cried for the love that'd be lost and buried and shattered.

Harry, twenty-three but still so boyish, wears his pain; the way his lips curl down and his brows are heavy, stitched together. He never looks like this. Especially around Holland Becker, the love of his life.

He half hoped she wasn't home so he could put off the toughest conversation he'd ever have to have. But he's running out of time and he has to do it now.

She takes one look at him and the original smile she had is replaced by the kind of smile you bear when you're nervous and don't know what's going on.

She knows him far too well and he's too bad at hiding his emotions.

"Hi," she breathes, trying to get a sense of him and what's happening.

"Hey," he mutters, walking in.

"Are you okay? Is something wrong?" She asks, acutely aware now that something isn't right. The air is off. She couldn't explain it if she tried, just feels strange-wrong, even.

He rolls his lips into his mouth, wishing there were a way he could pretend just a little bit longer that things weren't about to change.

"Uhm," is all he says standing in the dim hallway, soft summer light filtering through the linen curtains. He focuses his eyes on that-the way the dust floats about in the light, dancing almost. He can't bring his eyes to the weary hazel ones he adores so much.

She knows something's off. The two of them know each other better than themselves sometimes. So she grabs his hand, doesn't say a word, and leads him into her room where she locks the door and turns slowly to the devastation that awaits.

Her hands start to get clammy, her heart picking up speed. He takes one look at the beautiful creature in front of him with a wistfulness that aches down to the bones.

"Harry, what's wrong?" She demands, trying to sound stoic but her voice shakes a bit. "You're scaring me."

"Holl, I-" she's pacing now, "Can you sit down for a second. You're making me nervous."

She silently sits atop her unmade bed. Still all rumpled up from the night before when they were in it. She peers up at him and it physically pains him how pretty she is. But also how upset she looks. Wide eyed, like a deer waiting to be executed.