Aerial

The Fourteenth Chapter

You stop in your tracks and grab his wrist to tug him towards you, his jaw falling slack at your determination and sudden displacement of aloofness, "I feel guilty. Okay?" He should understand that feeling of culpability better than anyone else, "I can't shake the blame for you getting hurt. Tex wouldn't even allow me to visit you in the hospital because my presence was so upsetting to you, especially after the last time we spoke. It was horrible. I feel somewhat responsible for everything; your accident, your memory loss. I'm not surprised your brain has erased me."

Harry has an extremely difficult time hearing anything negative that you recount about your history and he usually walks to the edge of the earth to avoid conversations like this, so it surprises you that he's willing to voluntarily explore in this way. Regardless of where he thought the conversation might have ended up when he started it.

His eyes ice over but he sniffles the sorrow back, "I couldn't have possibly hated you. I don't think it was even about you. I was tryin' to self-destruct. It doesn't surprise me that I sabotaged our relationship." You can see the slow burn of something familiar in the subtle shift of his expression, "when Indy died, the circus suggested I leave the country to avoid backlash and I had no fucking idea what to do with my life, so that's why I chose to live in a van on the beach like a useless junkie. I have nightmares every night. I was fucking random women in an effort to feel somethin'. Anything. So I wasn't alone. Now I finally feel somethin' that's real and I'm flippin' out over it. I don't care about all that shit before."

His candor is making you second guess every single crude interaction that you had before his accident, whether or not it was really as bad as your memory makes it out to be and if you're just such a perfectionist that the thought of anyone trying to hold you at arm's length was too much for your faultless ego to handle. You can feel his anger bubbling and boiling underneath his flawless skin, his cheeks pooling with a soft flush that's frankly quite intimidating, "but I care about all that stuff before because I remember it and you don't."

He pauses for a moment to inspect the sadness in your eyes and the downturned pout of your beautiful mouth before clearing his throat to allow for a tiny bit of flame that you haven't seen since before his surfing accident, "son-of-a-bitch, Honeybun. Get real. That's over, okay? I appreciate you wantin' to not keep any secrets, but please stop fuckin' bringing that fight up. I get it. You think you're the reason I wiped out." A fleeting thought passes through his fractured mind that maybe this is actually all Rusty's fault – drawing him back to the circus before he was ready and pushing him into the same position that got him injured in the first place – but Harry's trying really hard not to hold grudges or let others infect his mood anymore, "I'm in control of my actions. If the fight was really that bad, then I shouldn't have gone surfing so upset. Tex said I forgot my leash and my wetsuit. It's not your fuckin' fault! Alright? It's mine."

This is the first time he's ever allowed you to bring up and actually dwell on something so unpleasant to consider when it comes to your history and you weren't prepared for the topic to continue in this way and in such an abrupt manner, but you can't help but be reminded of when he screamed that seeing your face only reminds him that Indy would never come back and it's all his fault. He certainly holds a lot of blame in his soft heart. His eyes are so glassy that you're worried tears are going to spill and you already miss the cloudless and happy sunflower Harry, so you shed your hesitancy and take one step forward to wrap him up in a warm hug.

If this was the way he was before the accident with Indy, so pliable and tender and exposed, it's possible to see the frenzied tracks of self-protection that he'd traveled to end up such a grumpy and avoidant person. He's much too brittle for all of this abrasive discord, "I'm sorry." You can feel him sigh and then hum into your hair, his body melting against yours and his one free arm so bound around your waist that you feel instant comfort from his affectionate squeeze, "I won't bring it up again. It's pointless. It only hurts you." Tex was right, you have a need for confession and it seems to stem from only wanting to relieve some guilt from your own congested chest, the evidence lying in the reminder of how much you're able to work Harry up with just a few words, "I'm really sorry, Harry. That was bad timing and... just stupid. Forget it. You're right." His arm grips you tighter, his claws sinking into your skin, "light suits you much better than dark."