salute [h.s]

there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you

Recent events in Salute have made many a reader wonder what Harry has been keeping to himself with regards to his feelings and I thought there was no better time to explore them than Valentine's Day. This is basically Harry's love letter to Piper that he'll never write.

*

There were a lot of things he wishes he were brave enough to say to her.

*
He wishes he could tell her just how beautiful she is and that she would listen. He tells her all the time. About how he loves her red hair and how it catches the sunlight and looks like sparks of a flame, and that he loves to play with it and feel its silky smoothness as it wraps around his fingers. About how her brown eyes can shift from a honey gold full of warmth when she's happy to a ferocious and vibrant reddish brown when she's furious to a dark chocolate brown when he kisses her just right. About how he loves the way her cheeks get pink when she blushes, a contrast to her pale skin, and how he takes a twisted sort of pride from being able to make it happen when he gives her a compliment or he whispers naughty things in her ear. About her body being perfect for her and who she is, her hips that he likes to hold onto and her shapely legs and her breasts that are just right for his hands and her long neck that he can't seem to keep himself away from or her back which dips and rises in all the places he likes until it curves into her lovely bum. He worships at the alter of her body and she knows it. But there are the things he doesn't tell her, like how her smile is shifting and there's this little gap between her second and third teeth on the left side of her mouth and that he loves that little gap because it's perfectly imperfect and it's a testament to her bravery and her courage. He doesn't tell her that he loves the way her body fits in all the right places against his side when they cuddle or how her thigh is an appreciable weight on his when she flings it across in her sleep. He certainly doesn't tell her about how he loves her fingers, how they're a little short and stubby but with astounding dexterity and he loves watching them undo the buttons of his shirt. Or how he loves her lips and the way they quirk to the side when she's thinking or how they look when she pulls them between her teeth. Those are the things he doesn't tell her. And even when he does tell her, he can see in her eyes that she doesn't believe him even when she nods and smiles and blushes, and he wishes that he could get through to her and make her see what he sees. He wants her to understand that when he tells her she's the most beautiful woman in the world, it isn't just words. He means it.

*

He wishes he could tell her how she is the smartest person he's ever met and how that intimidates him. Sometimes it catches him by surprise because Piper is certainly not the scholarly type and she speaks the way any normal person would — well, any normal person who uses an excess of profanity. He knows that people have underestimated her in the past and he doesn't do that purposefully but he forgets sometimes and then she'll say something utterly brilliant and it will stop him in his tracks. She does mental maths better than anyone he's ever known and she can quote literature verbatim without a moment's hesitation. What really throws him off guard is how quickly her mind works, how it puzzles and works its way around problems before he's even had a chance to grasp the situation at hand. It's not just the sheer power of her intelligence either but her astounding memory that holds onto everything she encounters. Sometimes, he worries that he's not intelligent enough for her. He went to uni and he's got degrees but not like hers. He's not smart like her and he knows he never will be and he's afraid to tell her that sometimes her brilliance scares him because he feels like he can't live up to her even though he wants to.