** So there's another edit in the sidebar today. It's another of Harry! I'm going to try to have an edit with each chapter from now on :) Also, I am revealing my playlist at the end of this chapter so if that is of interest to you then stay tuned at the end for the author's note!**
I was caught off guard completely, having not seen nor heard Harry in the slightest before his hand fastened to my wrist and his lips crashed onto mine. My suprise froze me momentarily, his lips moving against my stone ones before my body took over and I was kissing him back instinctiveley. Harry's hands were all over, rumpling my shirt up by my belt so as to place them on the small of my back. Mine went to the nape of his neck, pulling his head down to mine just the slightest bit more until we were in this perfect position, kissing with his head tilted down and mine up.
My brain took an embaressingly long time to catch up to all the action, suddenly I was pulling our mouths apart and a question was exploding from between my lips. "What was all that?" My breathe was coming in gasps, our kiss having been very vigorous. Harry's was puffing from his lungs as well.
He didn't answer, just pulled me closer with the belt loops of my jeans. His eyes were roaming me, scanning up and down my body in a way I hadn't experienced from him ever. "Kari, just please kiss me again."
I tenderly ghosting my lips over his. If he wasn't going to answer my question, he was going to be teased. When he moved his head forwards to make full contact of our lips, I pulled back, smiling slightly, so I was just out of reach again. His breathe was hitting me in ragged puffs, his need apparent.
"Kari," he half whined, half growled.
I brought my lips to his then, feeling signs of relief from him. He relaxed into the embrace, his movements more fluid and muscles relaxing. We divulged in another, Harry walking me back towards the wall, pressing me against it with his own body. His hands found the skin of my hips beneath the light tunic I wore and pressed to the semi sensitive skin.
My stomach tightened, a shiver passing through me and then Harry as well. The way we reacted to one another in times like this was amazing; we were in synchronization, like two pieces of one being. His dark wings fanned out, shielding us from the world beyond, even blocking the small amount of light from the murky window above.
Harry's tongue easily slipped into my mouth and tangled with my own, deepening the kiss. His broad hands snaked around my back and he lifted me up against him. Instinctively, I wrapped my legs around his waist, eliciting a small, low groan from his throat.
I didn't know where this was going or when we would stop, and rather frightening was the realization that I didn't mind. It was only the sound of footsteps above that drew us from the embrace. I froze when I heard the shoe on the stairs, Harry following suit. We stood with his forehead pressed to mine, still holding me against the wall.
Then Harry moved as another footstep sounded, deftly swinging into the shadows of the staircase and placing me back upon the floor beside him.
I turned to tell him to be quite, lifting a finger to my lips as I didn't want to make any noise myself. No one wanted to be caught in the middle of making out by someone else, that would be embarrassing for all parties involved. He was doing the same to me though, one long pointer finer pressed to his lips.
Feet came into view between the poles of the stair railing and then legs. When the person had reached the bottom step, we could see their face from our position in the shadows. Niall quickly walked to the door at the bottom of the stairwell and slipped through, heading down the hall of the first floor and on his way without a clue that we'd been embracing moments before he'd walked past.
As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, Harry began laughing. It wasn't any sort of simple laugh either, it burst from him unexpectedly, a boom of light hearted noise. His hand clapped over his mouth, shocked at himself, but he was still giggling beneath his hand, his shoulders shaking. A dimple I had never seen before popped into existence on his cheek.
"Why are you laughing?" I said, a giggle making its way into my own words as I watched him.
"I don't even know," he said, still finding humor in the situation.
Soon we were both laughing whole heartedly, the relief of not being seen in such a compromising manner washing over us as well as the thought of it being Niall who saw. The whole situation would have been terrible had it happened. Instead, it was funny and horribly so to our tired brains. Proper rest hadn't been our way in almost three days because of the raid.
Once we had calmed, I found myself simply staring at Harry. His eyes shone even in the dusky light of the stairwell, green irises twinkling. His lips were slightly plump from our earlier experience and I idly wondered if I'd bit his lip somewhere during the heated moment. He was crouched slightly to fit into the alcove we were occupying, his curls slightly brushing the underneath of the higher set of stairs.
I surprised myself by breaking the silence of our mutual observing of the other. "We need to talk," I told him.
"But obviously not here," he added, motioning to the dust bunnies we currently shared the company of.
"The foyer?" I asked. It seemed the only place to go for us, our place that meant us.
He shook his head. "A soldier of The Straze was spotted near here this morning, we can't risk going in the foyer right now. But there's an empty room down the hall from yours."
I took his hand then, leading up the stairs and into the hall. He dropped his hand from mine when a noise like a door opening sounded. I tried to hide my disappointment. And even more so when nobody appeared from a room and he didn't simply interlock our fingers again.
"Which one?" I asked, looking at the uniform wood doors around us.
Without speaking, Harry headed to one, holding it open for me.
We ended up sat on the bed beside one another. Harry seemed nervous, running a hand through his hair repeatedly and messing up the already bedhead-esque curls.
"What is it Kari?" He asked quietly.
I hesitated, worried that what I was about to say would turn him away. We always were going back and forth, making progress and then declining back to avoidacne of one another. Right now, the last thing I wanted was to go back to our neglectful ways, it was the worst thing I could think of, but we also could not continue this back and forth nature.
"Harry, I really do like you but we can't keep up the... teeter totter routine we have going. We can't keep going back and forth like we have."
My words were met with silence. I watched Harry as he opened his mouth several times, about to speak and then changing his mind. Then, "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Stop going back and forth!" I said, more loudly than I meant to. "If you put yourself fully into it and just accept that we have something here, then you'd realize that I've been here all along waiting for that to happen. I don't understand why you retract sometimes. Why do you ignore me?" My voice broke at the end, emotions coming through that I had hoped wouldn't make an appearance.
"You don't understand-" Harry began.
"Then help me understand!" I told him. "I want to understand it."
Suddenly Harry seemed angry and I regretted interrupting him like that. But everything I said was true, the back and forth nature of us was killing me but he needed to be all in or not at all. I couldn't handle the cold shoulder one minute and him pulling me into a stairwell the next.
His voice was rough when he spoke again, like he was controlling his emotions with some effort. "I don't even understand myself so what the hell makes you think I can explain any of it to you?" It was rhetorical, I just sat in slightly stunned silence; Harry had never been harsh to me before like this, only silent towards me when we weren't getting on well. "I wouldn't want to anyways," he added.
And with those words, he was up and off the bed, striding to the door and leaving. The room reverberated with a loud slam and I sat there in stunned silence, too shocked to move.
Where had it all gone wrong?
It took only a minute before I was going after him, swinging out the door and following the angry noises to find him in his room.
As I pulled the door open, he slammed a drawer of the dresser, having just pulled out a clean shirt. By the other items he held in his hands, it looked like he may have been planning to take a shower, and a very angry shower at that.
"Harry, talk to me," I begged him as he stood, seemingly stunned that I was standing in the doorway of his room. Had he really not expected me to follow him?
"What the hell is going on?" A voice asked. We weren't alone in Harry's room. Ed's face popped around the corner. It appeared that he had been sitting on one of the beds. His eyebrows rose when he saw me. "Oh. I'll just...go for a walk then," he dismissed himself, jumping from the bed and squeezing past me out the door.
Harry and I stood, simply staring at one another, for a full minute after Ed left. I was determined that he be the one to speak next. I just needed him to give me anything, anything at all, right now that showed he cared about keeping us alive.
"Why the hell are you being so persistent?" Harry groaned, throwing the items in his arms down on the bed where Ed had sat. They bounced on the mattress, something hard falling to the floor with a clunk, but Harry didn't move to retrieve it. His head was in his hands and his breathing seemed ragged but in a much different way than earlier.
Hesitantly, I moved to sit beside him. It was exactly as this conversation had begun, me sitting on Harry's left.
"You don't understand," he began. I was careful not to interrupt him this time. "I don't get close to people, not anymore."
He didn't say more for a minute. I didn't push for him too. I was getting more from those words alone than I had ever received from him before. I knew noting about Harry's past and this was at least a clue as to what had happened then.
"I was fourteen when Strazier took over. That Sunday, I'd been in the back garden with my sister." His words were slow, deliberate. I suddenly wondered if anyone had heard this story before. I was also surprised to hear Harry had a sister. Somehow, I had always pictured him as an only child. "We heard commotion and my mum came to the door and told us to get inside. I knew something was wrong just from her tone of voice."
He took a pause here and for a moment I didn't think I'd get to hear the rest of the story. I thought he was done. And he was in a sense.
"I'm sure you know how that day went for everyone. I'd imagine you experienced it too. But I just can't bring myself to open up to people anymore, I don't let people in to love and care for because then it just hurts too much when they're gone. I can't handle that again, having people torn from me, having people leave me." His voice broke slightly, showing how much emotion even talking about losing his loved ones caused in him.
I scooted closer, timidly placing a hand atop his that were folded in his lap. He visibly relaxed at my touch. I had no clue what to say in response to his words. How did you convince someone who was closed off to making relationships that he should?
"I just don't want to lose anyone else I care about," Harry said. "I don't want to let people in, I don't want to feel that again, I don't want it." The words could be that of a small, stubborn child but they weren't; they came from a broken young man who didn't know how to handle the loss he had endured.
It hit me then. I was in, he had let me in by telling me this. He had obviously liked me and trusted me enough to open up to me, to divulge his troubles and let me see past the fortress he had created. For once, I felt not just like I was getting a glimpse over or through his walls but I was truly inside. Perhaps I had just ventured a few meters down a path that wound through a thick, dark forest but I didn't care. I had been allowed beyond Harry's walls, into the unknown, and I had learned something I wasn't expecting.
"But Harry," I began, "perhaps you don't want to let people in and care for others again but you have. You saved me without even knowing who I was and brought me here. You've made a connection with me, protected me, even shared this with me. Maybe you think you're closed off but no one is fully. The other boys have gotten through too. You care for them as brothers, watching their backs one raids and such. You don't blatantly show that you care, but you do. I've seen you help Louis in the weaponry, show him how to parry blows to protect himself. You try to hide it and you try not to but you can't. There are people here you care for and they care for you just as much and it has all happened despite what premonitions are in your head."
Harry hadn't met my eyes since I'd sat beside him and he still didn't now as he responded. "I didn't want to let anyone in though, I don't want to feel the pain when someone I know is hurt or upset. I don't want that anymore, I've dealt with too much."
"Harry but you do and you have! You're only human and your emotions are simply going to be human, and that's alright. We are all feeling like that now, we all have suffered loss and feel the pain of others. People have emotions and they feel and care and hurt and sympathize and love." I was pleading with him to see my point, to see that trying to shut himself off was simply impossible. "We're all going through this hard time and we all feel the pain of everything that has happened to us and our loved ones and our country but that's why we're all here, together. We're not only together to take Strazier down one day, but also to have a community. You have people who are here for you, a support system. Liam is her for you, Ed is here for you, Louis is here for you, Zayn is here for you. They're all here for you and you in turn for them. I'm here for you."
I was met by silence but he had changed. Harry was leaning into me, using the support I had just promised him as he cracked under everything happening at this moment. His head on my shoulder, his voice came out as a small child. "I don't want to lose anyone else. Before I even knew you, I was afraid of losing you. I'd been thinking about having someone else and knew that would be impossible because what if they died too? And then I saw you that day, heard the raised voices and knew you were about to become a victim and it all went off in me. I knew I had to save you and feared losing you then even before I knew your name."
I was immediately thinking back to that day too. Harry had seemed so outraged at the soldiers, ready to viciously slice one's head from his body until Liam had stopped him. Knowing Harry now, it showed me how he had cared even then. On raids, he never showed emotion, just went about the deed clinically, like it was a simple task to carry out. The amount of passion he had shown while fighting those vile soldiers hadn't seemed strange then but it did now, after knowing him more.
We sat like that, in perfect, amiable silence for a while. Harry's hand was on my knee, absentimendly drawing shapes with his thumb as one of my hands absentmindedly stroked across the expanse of one ebony wing. The energy had shifted, everything felt different between us. It was wonderful, the change was in a way that had me excited but also gave me a sense of calm, as though I was finally at ease with Harry. I wanted nothing more after our conversation than to simply sit in each other's company, to bask in it.
Sadly, all good things come to an end. Voices sounded from the hall. Above the din of a tift was Ed's voice. "No, just don't go in there for now. No Louis! Just listen to me, go to Niall's room for a bit. LOUIS."
The knob turned and Louis came in. "Occupation Secrete Couple is over. I'm tired and I want to go to bed," he announced.
Harry said a very unkindly word as he rose from the bed, offering a hand to pull me to my feet once he was stood. I made for the door, embaressed by Louis' words in the way a preteen girl would be, my cheeks flaming. Glancing back to see if Harry was following me out, I saw a finger raised in Louis' direction. I stiffled a giggle.
Ed was standing outside the door. "I tried to stop him," he told me.
"We heard," I told him. "It's fine, we'd been in there a while anyways."
A hand on the small of my back told me Harry was behind me, silently telling me to keep walking. We went back to the empty room from earlier. Harry crawled into the bed sleepily, moving on all fours from the foot of the bed to flop with a huff with his head on the pillows. I found myself standing and watching him with adoration.
"C'mere," he mumbled, sounding either very tired or drunk. "This has been too many emotions for me."
I crawled in beside him, still fully clothed and atop the sheets. His arm snaked around me immeditatley, pulling me to him, and we fell asleep like that. Together.
**I am stupidly, grossly, ridiculously proud of this chapter. I haven't attempted writing anything this emotional before so I'm hoping I executed it well! As always, please comment with any opinions or remarks and also vote if you enjoyed the chapter! I hope you all appreciated finally getting to know this Harry :)
Now for the playlist! A lot of the songs relate back to being unable to open up which is why I didn't want to post it before, I felt as though it would make everything too obvious about Harry. For anyone interested, these are the songs in my playlist for Wings. Some of them may not make sense yet because the scenes I'm imaginging them with haven't been in the story yet but I decided to include them anyways. I'll probably be adding more to this as the story goes on!
1. Explosions - Ellie Goulding
2. Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons
3. When the Darkness Comes - Colbie Calliet
4. Winter Winds - Mumford and Sons
5. Sold My Soul - Cattle and Cane
6. Run to You - Pentatonix
7. Figure 8 - Ellie Goulding
8. Shadow Days - John Mayer
9. Through the Dark - One Direction
10. Get Your Guns - The Darling Buds
11. Ships in the Night - Matt Kearny