A/N: I'm so, so SO sorry this is late. I had just become so busy in the last week or two, that it became hard for me to even get a word on this chapter. But here it is, and it's all the juicy stuff people like; drama, drama and more drama. (*dedicated to onedirectioncharming for the awesome trailer she made for this story on the side, everyone follow her! She's absolutely lovely.)
Enjoy, my babes!
May 27th, 2002
"Do you, Sydney Adeline Ronan, take Harry Edward Styles to be your lawfully wedded husband through sickness and in health, and only in death do you part?"
"I do!"
A giggle escapes a young girl's mouth, as the eight year old boy standing in front of her smiles with glee as she slips a white daisy's stem behind his ear.
"And do you, Harry Edward Styles; take Sydney Adeline Ronan to be your lawfully wedded wife through sickness and in health, and only in death do you part?"
The boy grabs a hold of the tied pink petunia provided by his 'best man,' a snotty nosed boy by the name of Andy Clairemont, out of his hands and places the circled stem around the girl's shaky, blue varnished finger before answering the same as his 'bride.'
"I do."
The priest, a bright girl named Eleanor Peters, manages to snicker along with the rest of the audience sitting on the pavement of the playground as they watched this week's 'wedding' take place at recess. Eleanor immediately collects herself though, like the serious persona she is and proceeds.
"With the power vested in me, I know pronounce you husband and wife. You may-"
The loud chiming bell rings, signaling that lunch and the following recess are over and that class is now starting. The plethora of students gathering on the cement for the ceremony now scatter among the grass as Eleanor Peters shuffles into her classes red door with a lady bug designed lunch bag in tote and Andy Clairemont runs and sniffles at the pollen inflicting his nostrils. Soon enough, Sydney and Harry are left outside as they place their flower bearings on the dirt and bury them in effort to make them thrive again.
"You know Sydney, one day we're going to get married for real," Harry denounced as they strolled back to their class beyond the red door.
"How do you know that, Harry?" Sydney asked as she rearranged the dirt below her with her new gold sandals.
"Because-" he begins and she thinks he won't complete the sentence until he pulls her towards him by her wrist and lands a big, sloppy smooch on the skin between her eyebrows, shocking Sydney and delaying the duo even more than they already were.
"-I just sealed the deal."
It had been days and cities from when Harry finally mustered up the courage and sang to Sydney, never once letting his eyes wander from her own. It had also been days and cities since she had properly spoken to him with sentences containing more than one syllable.
After the emotionally hellish experience in Detroit, the boys, their band and Sydney had moved along to the next stop, Chicago. With each passing rest stop, Harry had prayed to the highest god available to have Sydney to not look him in the eyes with misery, but she did anyways. In Philadelphia, as they were entering the hotel, Harry had held the bulky, metal door open for her to walk through to which she just responded with stares on the pavement and a choppy sigh. In Boston, the lads and he were on the brink of finishing a radio interview when the interviewer asked him about the spontaneous song he sung in Detroit.
"So Harry, that song in Detroit..."
"Yeah, yeah..."
"We already know you initially wrote it for the album, but what both the public and I want to know is who the song is about."
"All I can say is that the message in the song is about someone, um- very important to me and has been for a long time. It's kind of just saying that I'll always be there for them, no matter what, excuse me; shit- comes in the way."
"So is this 'message' friendly, or does it tread into romance?"
Silence. Exhausting, abhorring, damning, convulsing silence.
Finally, Harry sighed and let the truth overwhelm his tongue.
"A little bit of both, I would say."
Even after that said with her a mere six feet away, she still wouldn't utter a word or steal a glance at him.
Every day, the fans on Twitter and in person had begged Harry to sing that same song from the previous night. Harry had contemplated it for a brief moment, but as he remembered how much it burned him white to know and witness Sydney wanting nothing to do with him, he dutifully and confidently answered "no." He was looking at these mentions blinking blue on his feed en route to New York when a silhouette casted over his screen and seized his attention.
"Hey," he exhaled heavily when he realized the shadow was one that hadn't given him this proximity in days.
Instantly, the screen displaying Twitter faded into black as his phone slid into his back pocket and his off-guard attention turned undivided.
She stood there, fiddling with her fingers in nervous habit but with her gaze settled on Harry. Her pupils maximized and minimized at every angle, contour and mark on his face in effort to delay her impeding sentence.
"That song was really... really..."
"Really?..."
"Something."
Harry blinked his eyes a few times, to make sure she wasn't in the midst of finishing her sentence. When she didn't, he mumbled out the only words she had given him at that moment.
"Something..."
"Yeah," she said almost condescendingly, as if she expected him to be pleased with her one word, two syllable answer.
At that, he laughed.
Manically, bizarrely, uncomfortably, extensively laughed.
"Well, I guess I should be happy with that. It is after all, a word."
She screwed her eyes hawkishly, and the twiddling of her limbs stopped.
"What are you saying?"
"Come on, Sydney," he said, allowing his laughter to carry over to his words. "You haven't said a word to me since I sang my song in Detroit."
A soundless pause calibrated the exchange and Harry felt a buzz against his jeans that signaled a text, most likely from Management. But he ignored it, as he continued this somewhat awkward but necessary conversation.
"Why is that, actually?"
"I don't have to tell you anything, considering you do the same," she sneered.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Come on, Harry," she mocked. "I know about how-"
She stopped for a moment to recollect her stolen breaths but her eyes still bled red as she pursued her tirade.
"-how he called you the night before the letter."
If time could stand still, the seconds following Sydney's revelation would be a prime example. It was as if all actions and senses halted but the unofficial sixth sense, thought, churned and wound rampant. He almost forgot about that one, fifteen-second phone call; almost.
He had also almost seemed to fail to recollect when she had asked him who he was on the phone with, to which he conjured up a very intricate, detailed fib.
Almost.
"The Saints didn't lose that day, Harry. Unlike what you told me," she started to thaw out of the frozen time block, her indifferent voice similarly changing into one of disappointment.
"They went into overtime and mercied the Red Skins."
Struggling to swallow the huge jagged ball forming in the base of his throat, Harry listened. Albeit reluctantly, he listened as she spewed the facts he already knew and the lie that made him just as bad as him.
"I found out while flipping through the channels the night before, but I thought nothing of it. After all, you don't know shit about American football-" a small laugh escaped the corners of her lips, before they stitched into a tight, downwards seam.
"-But then, at the concert in Detroit, I got a call from Cynthia. You know what she asked me, Harry?"
He was about to shake his head a hesitant no until she looked up from her longing gaze at the ground and shifted it to his probably frantic, blinking green one.
"She asked me if John had since 'contacted me' and if he hung up 'just like he did' with you-"
"Sydney-"
Apparently his rebuttal was not welcome, for her tiny fist balled into pale anger and slammed on splintering coffee table beside her, so much so that tiny chips of wood flew in the air towards him and fell below his stiff legs.
"Why would you lie to me?" She screamed so loud and so shrill that he felt the bus driver brake in alert.
Seconds passed with no answer from Harry so he waved at the bus driver through the transparent window blocking them, signifying him to "carry on." The driver did as he was told, and the bus and the couple's tense interaction gained momentum as Harry finally spoke.
"I didn't want to worry you. He didn't really do anything-"
"He did a lot, Harry."
"What- no," he corrected himself hastily. "I meant he didn't really say anything on the call."
"But he did call, did he not?"
The sound of dripping water halted the conversation and as Harry was bound to awkwardly get up and turn off the sink, he realized the source of the sound was not water but rather that small, but still repulsive amount of burgundy liquid dripping from Sydney's fingers; blood. He bit his lip as that damned ball in his throat dropped to the pit of his stomach and exploded into bile, as the sight of seeing Sydney bloodied once again under his watch became all too sickly familiar for him. But she wouldn't relinquish his attention, for she whispered to him to "open his damn eyes" and take in the sight; drop by drop, drip by drip and sliver by bloody sliver.
"He did."
Her tightly wound fist collapsed into dangling, lifeless limbs as the gash poured out more crimson than previous. Similarly and simultaneously, her pinched eyelids lifted and revealed the ocean of tears that were once hidden by her tough and rigid exterior. Harry couldn't help but parallelize this scene to the one three years back when the security light of his house illuminated every single smear of blood and potential stich (eleven of them, actually) carelessly marked on her face by the hands of her father.
Except this time, at this moment; he could not run his hands through her hair, nor kiss the wound to reassure that he thought she was still as breathtaking as she was before or make the promise to her that he would always protect her no matter what. Because now, he couldn't drag his hands through her endless length of hair or burn lip-marks into her skin without her flinching and screaming for him to "get off of her," and he certainly couldn't genuinely promise her he would protect her because she and him both knew it would just be another lie he couldn't take back.
So they stared and glanced and gazed at one another so that once that all the synonyms of sight were used, they would have nothing left to do but talk to one another. Sydney, although, stopped after "glaring."
"I'm done."
"Done with what, exactly?" He mumbled as he rubbed his raw, chapped hands against one another for some sort of warmth in this cold atmosphere.
"I mean; I'm done. Done with this bus, this tour, this country..."
She inched closer to the curtain separating her from her assigned bunk and as she hooked her index around the black fabric to pull it back, Sydney took her final bow.
"And mostly, I'm done with 'this.'"
Within seconds, the curtain draped behind her as Harry was left both dumbfounded and ecstatic. He was dumbfounded for obvious reasons. As quickly as the conversation came, it went and their "stable" friendship now withered at its roots and dented its foundation with just two words and syllables:
I'm done.
But within his numb stomach came a fire of white, foreign electricity that he had never felt before. He once thought their chemistry was only acknowledged by him and no one other until she disputed that with four words and syllables:
I'm done with 'this.'
And Harry didn't know which was sadder; the fact that she didn't need him to stand by her or the fact that she was done with something she hadn't even explored yet. While raking over it, Harry Styles; world famous pop-star and heartthrob, did something he hadn't done in a very long, long time;
He cried.