Madness ➮ Harry Styles AU

C5

But soon enough, the outline was clear, and I was certain of what I wanted to draw; what I wanted it to feel.

I glanced back to her, the mere sight nearly intoxicating. Her bottom lip was trapped between a top set of teeth, and her hand moved furiously, almost as if it was angry.

"Stop staring at me," she said, grinning.

"Do you mind?" I asked.

Ashley smiled wider and it suddenly felt like the room was a bit less of itself, and more of us. "Not at all."

I smiled with her, then went back and continued drawing; bringing curves and depth to the picture. A matter of time past that we did this, and there was something nice about just being in the same room together; drinking in each other's presence, maybe. I really didn't know, but everything about it was just so real. Perhaps it was comforting to know that I was there, right then, and somehow, within all the times and places she could have existed, she happened to be sitting next to me, and I thought, that was a bit of a miracle in itself.

"Done," she stated, her lips curled upwards in satisfaction, eyes trained on a masterpiece. "How about you?"

"I-uh, hold on." Quickly, I stroked my pen over the lines a bit more, just so it pathetically looked like I could actually draw at all. "Okay, okay, now done."

But I flipped my page over, rendering it face down on the carpet, because it really wasn't important, after all, it was about her.

"Can I see yours?" I asked her, even as she looked like she was about to protest about the putting aside of my drawing.

However, she flipped hers as well, and gestured it away from me, saying, "only if you let me see yours," with her dark chocolate hair draping over her shoulders in tangled and messy and beautiful fashion.

I thought about it for a moment; eyes dozing off to white walls and white floors. "Deal." 

So she handed her paper over, shy without really having a reason to be and I wanted to ask her why. And I thought about it then, as I was passing her mine, how strangely it all fit; a unsolved girl, living a rather puzzling life.

Yet, when I turned the canvas over, I seemed to understand even less.

And anyone would really, when the paper was overturned all you saw was:

A gun.

A sleek and complex handgun entirely composed of jet black ink. And it just stayed there, selling itself; seeming like its sole purpose of creation and presentation was to be feared.  And you could see it, almost all too well, the lines being thinner and sharper than sewing needles.

But of course, I knew Ashley was good at drawing. She was artist, for God's sake. Yet, I couldn't decipher how her picture made me terrified and allured and wonder struck all at once; like it couldn't decide to be anything but contradictory.

And I looked at it for a while, in fact, it was one of those things you had to look at; one of those things that demanded attention without ever asking for it.

But still, I tore my eyes from it, immediately feeling like the strings of vision between myself and the picture had been snipped, and I asked her, "Why?"

The word just kinda lingered there, in the stale and shared air, open for interpretation.

"Why what?" She replied, eventually, peeking her head over my own drawing to gaze at me.

"Why would you draw this?" I said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, the drawing's fantastic. I can't... I can't really comprehend that someone could actually draw this. But..." The sentence stopped short, seemingly looking for other words to attach to. "Out of all things, why a gun?"