Stars Leave Black Holes Behind [HS]

18

The door swung open and Valerie jumped out of her skin, the bang slicing through the tension like a knife. She could almost hear the sizzle.

And it was Zayn. Smiling. He brought with him a wave of cigarette smoke and Valerie almost wanted to shout at him. They might not care about living or dying, but Harry clearly did.

"Sorry if I'm interrupting, I was just wondering if you're staying for dinner Harry? I'm gonna get a takeaway," his brown eyes didn't look at Val's. He probably knew that if he dared she would glare a hole straight through him.

"Oh, um," Harry looked to Val, scratched the back of his neck, then glanced to the lit cigarette between Zayn's parted lips. "Yeah, yeah okay- why not?"

"I'm getting Chinese. Hope that's calm with you."

"Chinese?"

Valerie swallowed. That used to be her and Harry's thing.

"Yeah, the one down the road. The spring-"

"The spring rolls are the best, I know."

"Sick. I'll just get the usual." He snuck a glance at Val but she remained in stony silence. She thought if she opened her mouth an entire ocean would escape.

He left in silence, probably trying to convey a message to Valerie through his eyes, but Valerie couldn't read them. It wasn't the same with him.

"So you and Zayn go to Moons?"

"Yeah."

Harry hummed. "You and I used to go there all the time, remember?"

Remember?

Of course she fucking remembered.

"Yeah. I do."

"We used to go there every Friday," his voice had suddenly gone soft. Like fraying jeans and old cotton socks. "God, I've missed that place."

Valerie felt like she was about to be sick. Everywhere. All over. Because he was bringing it all up again- the memories - which she had tried so hard to choke down, to push over and forget. It hadn't worked, though. Clearly.

Val couldn't count on two hands how many times she had stayed up all night, suffocating on air, trying so fucking hard to forget the feel of his fingertips as he played with her hands, the way he would smile at her with his tongue behind his teeth, the way he would read books with his feet on her lap, his curls pushed back by a hairband and his eyes so focused on the words in his hands he wouldn't realise the way Valerie was looking at him.

The way those blue eyes traced him, up and down, up and down. Silently committing him to memory, burning his outlines seamlessly into the insides of her eyelids.

Back then, she thought her off-by-heart knowledge of him was for her paintings, for her own enjoyment, to feed her own fascination.

Those permanent imprints were not made to torture herself with endlessly once he was gone, were not to constantly remind herself of what she had let slip though the gaps of her fingers like grains of sand.

Harry leaving never crossed Valerie's mind then. Not once.

She was too preoccupied with the star before her to worry. Every day he was pulling her in closer and closer, and she supposed that was the thing about stars. Once you got too close, you burned up. Turned into nothing all because it was too pretty to keep away from. And that was kind of funny, wasn't it? Because something so beautiful was able to cause so much fucking damage.

__

Song: Deadroses by Blackbear

"We had a vision though, now we dead roses."