What Goes Around... || H.S. Harry Styles

50.

The last box is a heavy brown movers box that is covered in dust and crumpled on the corners.  It looks like it has been transported from place to place with her and has KEEP OUT: PROPERTY OF NAT - DO NOT THROW AWAY written hastily in black permanent marker on the side of it.

Harry knows what it is.  He's been wondering where it was for the last two hours but looking at the adolescent markings on the side of the box he is positive this is it and he's not sure if he wants to open it.

Tash feels the same way.  That box has been closed since the day she packed it seven years ago, countless tears falling into the dark space as she filled it with the dreams that were destroyed in a night. 

Harry's hands are shaking as he pulls the tape off the box that has been sealed shut for the best part of a decade and he peels back the folded edges to reveal the contents.

The box is full to the brim, old school books, past birthday presents, a mixture of his clothing and hers as well, her diaries, letters, cards, photos, soft toys, movie ticket stubs, CDs, travel brochures, an unopened box of condoms.  

Everything is recognisable or familiar to him, even at first glance, and Harry holds his breath before looking at Tash who looks like she's on the verge of breaking down at the tiniest glimpse of her repressed memories.

Harry makes his way to her, pulling her up to the same position as he kneels in front of her, his arms wrapping around her waist to hold her to him and hers circling naturally around his neck as he rests their foreheads together and licks his lips.

"Baby, listen to me. I love you, more than ever. More than back then, more than yesterday, more than anyone in the world," he says sincerely. "We don't have to go through this box, ok? You can keep it or throw it away, I don't care, but I don't want this to bring up everything we have worked to hard to overcome?"

He knows how sentimental she is, he knows that this will effect her emotionally more than most people, he knows that looking back at things in her past grips onto her soul and tugs at it until she's broken and having to re-heal old wounds.

Biting his bottom lip, he brushes the tip of his nose against hers, silently making sure she is still present, her mind not already falling back into the dark abyss of reminiscence and nostalgia where he knows she can get trapped for days.

"I don't want to go through it," she sniffles after a while and he lets out the breath he was holding in relief before kissing her soft mouth once then twice in support.  "But I can't throw it out Harry, it's us, what we were, our memories, I can't..." her voice catches and he pushes his lips to hers again and tries to swallow some of her emotion that is caused by an attachment to things that would look like junk to anyone else.

"S'okay baby, you don't have to, we can keep it forever, alright? Maybe we can show our kids one day," he says so seriously that her heart swells in her chest at how far they have come and the realisation that whatever is in that box has got them to this point.

She leans forward and kisses him again with more intention, his hands instinctively slinking past the hem of her... his... sweatshirt and onto the warm soft skin of her bare back.

Their tongues meet and they taste each other in gentle but hurried brushes before Harry slowly lifts the sweatshirt over her head, Tash holding her arms straight up in the air to help him before their lips collide again.  

He slowly undresses them both, kisses to her skin replacing the fabric he peels off it and he guides her down onto the floor beneath him. 

He makes love to her in long languid strokes, pouring more feeling and sentiment into every slow thrust of his cock than anything she could ever bundle up and store on a shelf.